[1] The book collects pieces that won or were nominated for the Nebula Awards for best novel, novella, novelette and short story for the year 1999, a profile of 1999 grand master winner Hal Clement and a representative early story by him, and various other nonfiction pieces related to the awards, together with the Rhysling Award-winning poems for 1998 and an introduction by the editor.

Kirkus Reviews called the collection "[i]nvaluable, not just for the splendid fiction and lively nonfiction, but as another annual snapshot, complete with grins and scowls."

The reviewer notes that "Jonathan Lethem kicks off this year's debate with his complaint that SF lost all hope of claiming literary respectability when in 1973 the SFWA voted Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama Best Novel, rather than Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

"[3] Kurt Lancaster in the Christian Science Monitor calls Benford's introduction "helpful" and comments in detail on the pieces by Haldeman, Finch, Yolen and Rogers, noting that "[i]n all of these stories, the theme of the spirit of humanity transcends the limitations the characters have imposed on themselves, as they discover something new about themselves and their relationship to others.

"[4] Marta Boswell in The Missouri Review finds the volume's editorial commentary "reeks of [a] 'those-were-the-good-old-days' attitude," nostalgic "for the era when SF writers were 'the bards of science.'"