End-of-the-millennium fiction is coming fast and furious these days, and most of it consists of dire predictions by barely literate nutbars. Not so with Glimmering, a rich science fantasy by Nebula winner Elizabeth Hand. In her 1999, the sky is a round-the-clock technicolor lightshow, the result of environmental upheaval that has skewed the seasons, raised the oceans, and shattered society. As New Year's Eve draws closer, things get weirder: A Christian rock star crosses over to virtual-reality infamy and drug addiction; a young writer discovers that a strange Tibetan substance has supposedly cured him of AIDS; and a self-described "sociocultural pathologist" is gearing up for the big party at what he assumes to be the end of all things. Of course, it's not Armageddon, not quite. Hand's writing, like William Gibson's, is near-flawless in describing unique, colorful characters and fantastic situations in realistic emotional tones; nothing, no matter how spiritually significant or socially damning, is ever sugar-coated or irredeemable. Few science-fiction/fantasy novelists write as well as Hand does, and with less than three years left on the clock, no millennium novel is as well-crafted as Glimmering.