[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 2006, a profile of 2006 Grand Master winner Harlan Ellison and a representative early story by him, various other nonfiction pieces and bibliographical material related to the awards, and the two Rhysling Award-winning poems for 2005, together with an introduction by the editor.

Kristin Gray, writing in The Davis Enterprise, calls the anthology "a reminder that short fiction still thrives" and "a book to revisit time and again."

Observing that it "contains both fiction and the best of the year's nonfiction articles about the genre," she highlights Picacio's survey of science-fiction art, an "aspect of the genre isn't often considered," and Anderson's "timely" essay on "the changing face of science fiction."

She notes, however, that the book's "real draw is its fiction, and the contents are admirable.

Her favorites are the pieces by Link, "the sort of story that, for just a moment, makes us believe in magic again," Sawyer, "thought-provoking and a fast-paced adventure," and "for sheer laughs," Harris.