Updates this month:

8th January - added a review of Asimovs Jan 2005

7th January - Fictionwise have added two further Nebula Preliminary Ballot Nominees

• Bradley Denton's Sergeant Chip which appeared in F&SF in September 2004 and of which I said it was a story which 'had impact'.

• Robert J Sawyer's Shed Skin, originally in 'The Bakka Anthology' and in Analog Jan/Feb 2004 (probably the best story in a weak issue, but fairly routine IMHO)

6th January 2005 - the first fiction online from SCI FICTION in 2005 was posted yesterday : a new story by J R Dunn in the shape of 'Nocturne' and a reprint of Pamela Sargent's 'Gather Blue Roses', published back in February 1972

5th January 2005 - with review site TangentOnline once again struggling to avoid defunction, I am of the mind to commit myself to more regular updating of Best SF than was the case during a lot of 2004. On that basis, I would refer you today to FictionWise who have begun making available for free the 2004 Nebula Award Preliminary Ballot Nominees in the novelette/novella and short story categories. You can now get a hold of Adam Troy Castro's 'The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes' (F&SF July 2003) of which I concluded in my review 'A good story but without having that little extra something'.

At the time of writing you have to pay a few cents for Michael Burstein's 'Paying it Forward' (Analog September 2003) of which I mused : 'A gentle homage to departed SF writers, in particular, Charles Sheffield, who appears in the guise of recently deceased author Carl Lamclear, who, like Sheffield, has a website designed like a spaceship cockpit'.

If you like a bit meatier read, Nebula Preliminary Nominated novels online (costing quite a few dollars in some cases) are

• Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Paladin of Souls'
• Cory Doctorow's 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom'
• Jack McDevitt's 'Omega'

If you like a beatyer meat read then FictionWise have lots of titles like Tabitha Bradley's Enticed: 'More Erotic Science Fiction and Fantasy'. Not a Nebula Nominee I hasten to add, but merely added in order to make the awful play on words at the beginning of this sentence. If you don't have a firm grip of colloquial American, let us just say that this is probably one of FictionWise's highest wanking titles.

I should presumably put ® after Nebula Awards, but can't work out how to do that, and there's a nice lasagne just coming out of the oven....

last month's updates - reviews of Nebula Awards #23. F&SF Jan 2001, Asimovs Dec 2004