It was first published in trade paperback by Roc/New American Library in April 2009.

[1] The book collects pieces that won or were nominated for the 2008 Nebula Award for novel, novella, novelette, short story and script, a profiles of 2008 Grand Master winner Michael Moorcock and Author Emeritus Ardath Mayhar, and a representative early story by the former, and the three Rhysling and Dwarf Stars Award-winning poems for 2007, together with various other nonfiction pieces and bibliographical material related to the awards and an introduction by the editor.

Paul Kincaid, writing for the SF Site, finds "an uneasy awareness" in the anthology of the Nebula Awards' "shift in focus" since the Science Fiction Writers of America became the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

... Maybe all we are seeing here is a necessary breaking down of artificial divisions in fiction, writers more freely exploring what the fantastic in its broadest terms allows them to.

The contributions by Chiang, Fowler, Duncan, Johnson, Shepard, Kress, Pelland and Levine are all discussed in some depth.