The Nebulas: 1973

[james_davis_nicoll]

Novels

Isaac Asimov* The Gods Themselves Galaxy Science Fiction
Robert Silverberg The Book of Skulls Charles Scribner's
Robert Silverberg Dying Inside Galaxy Science Fiction
Norman Spinrad The Iron Dream Avon
John Brunner The Sheep Look Up Harper & Row
George Alec Effinger What Entropy Means to Me Doubleday
David Gerrold When HARLIE Was One Ballantine Books

This category draws from a nice diversity of sources, which is not going to be (as) true of the other three.

The Asimov is a collection of three novellas set in a future where the energy crisis has been solved through trade with a universe with different natural laws. Petty self-interest leads various factions to downplay the environmental costs of the new energy source.

Following Sputnik, Asimov devoted most of his writing time to trying to educate the American public (with the result that to this day library shelves have more of his books than books by his contemporaries). This was more or less his return to SF novel writing, which may explain how this unremarkable book won the Nebula. It has a fairly solid reprint but the frequency drops sharply about 1990 (which is roughly when Asimov dies but the "reprints fall off after 1990 is such a recurring theme I wonder if something else is not going on).

I think I missed The Book of Skulls somehow. It was reprinted with fair frequency until about 1990. It's probably good; this was Silverberg's most interesting period.

Dying Inside tells the story of a telepath, living in the USA of about 1970, who discovers his telepathy is slowly dying. Although sections have not aged all that well, this is probably Silverberg's best novel. This was reprinted at a fair clip until 1990ish, after which there's a gap and then a flurry of reprints in the '00s (one of which I had a hand in).

The Iron Dream is the pulp SF novel Hitler would have written had he become an SF writer instead of a politician of some note. It's as heavy-handed as anything by Spinrad, who tends to be as subtle as explosive diarrhea in a small elevator, but some anvils need to be dropped. Although its points are probably as timely now as in the 1970s, the frequency of reprints drops off sharply after the mid-1980s (possibly part of how Norman Spinrad's sales in general tanked around then).

The Sheep Look Up is one of Brunner's extrapolative dystopias; in this one the issue is pollution. It's probably the grimmest of Brunner's dystopias and at least for me well timed; I remember reading the section on acid rain just as acid raid got a lot of column inches in the papers. Looking at the reprint history, its era seems to have been the 1970s whose zeitgeist it reflects so well; not only do reprints become less frequent after 1980 but the publishers become small presses.

I have not read the Effinger. It gets reprinted about once a decade, so I guess we're overdue.

When HARLIE Was One is a story about an AI and the humans responsible for training it. I don't actually remember much about it aside from pot having been legalized; remember when that seemed like a reasonable short-term development in the USA? It was reprinted several times in the 1970s but even a late 1980s second edition could not save it from more recent oblivion.

I fear SFWA allowed itself to be overcome by nostalgia and sentimentality. For me it's a toss-up between the Silverberg or the Brunner.


Novellas

Arthur C. Clarke* "A Meeting with Medusa" Playboy
Phyllis Gotlieb "Son of the Morning" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin "The Word for World Is Forest" Again, Dangerous Visions
Richard A. Lupoff "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama" Again, Dangerous Visions
Frederik Pohl "The Gold at the Starbow's End" Analog Science Fact & Fiction
Gene Wolfe "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" Orbit 10

The Clarke is about the crewed exploration of the clouds of Jupiter (and may be in the same universe as Rama). It's stayed in print reasonably well (aside from a drop in frequency in the 1990s - what the heck happened in the 1990s?).

I have not read the Gottlieb. I probably have a lot of company in that because it has only been reprinted once, in an eponymous collection.

The Le Guin is rather heavy-handed and implausible tale attacking colonialism; to be fair, the 1970s were not a era noted for subtle touches and in any case, nothing in this story compares to what has been done in real life. It's never fallen out of print, as far as I can see.

The Lupoff is set in a universe where cheap star-flight and abundant habitable worlds has allowed various subcultures from the Earth to plant colonies and flourish. Sadly, this includes the American South. I've only read the novel version so I am not sure exactly what happens in this one. As a novella, its fate is tied to Again Dangerous Visions, which was mostly a creature of the 1970s. As part of Space War Blues it had a handful of reprints, none after 1980.

[The novel version had three interesting accompanying essays: being in ADV meant the novel was delayed for about ten years: as I recall, Ellison's essay took a very sympathetic, even enthusiastic view of Ellison, Lupoff's agent was somewhat less enthusiastic and Lupoff just wanted the fuss to end]

The Pohl is about the application of SFnal ruthlessness to the problem of creativity. Unfortunately for the statesmen who fund the project, it is entirely too successful. Pohl went all out trying to get the details right in this one, which inspired a rueful essay by him about how much of it he either got wrong or saw become obsolete (the starbow of the title, for example, doesn't exist in the form he envisioned). It was reprinted with some frequency until about 1990, after which I see only a handful of reprints.

I have not read the Wolfe. It's stayed in print.

I am a little surprised SFWA picked such a meat and potatoes story over the Le Guin but in their place I might have done the same. Not really sure any of these deserved to win, to be honest but that could just be because 1970s loudness no longer fits nicely into my brain.


Novelettes

Poul Anderson* "Goat Song" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Alfred Bester "The Animal Fair" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Gardner Dozois "A Kingdom by the Sea" Orbit 10
Harlan Ellison "Basilisk" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
David Gerrold "In the Deadlands" With a Finger In My I
William Rotsler "Patron of the Arts" Universe 2
Kate Wilhelm "The Funeral" Again, Dangerous Visions

The Anderson is an SFnal retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice and was for a long time one of my favourite Andersons (I have not reread it recently). It's enjoyed a pretty solid history of reprints.

I have not read or even heard of the Bester as far as I know. This may because it fell out of print almost instantly.

I have read the Dozois (it's in Prime's When the Great Days Come). I am not sure how to sum it up, except "not my favourite". It seems to get reprinted once a decade or so.

The Ellison is about a former POW transformed by his experiences. Its fate is tied to that of the collection Deathbird Stories (I thought it was also in The Essential Ellison but nope; I must have read those two back to back).

I know I've read the Gerrold because I own an anthology and a collection that it is in but I have no memory of it. It's in ADV so has suffered that anthology's fate (the eponymous collection fell out of print almost at once).

I have only read the Rotsler in novel form and I don't remember much about it in any case. A child of the 1970s, neither form has been all that popular.

The Wilhelm is yet another one I have no memory of despite owning it in no less than four anthologies; readers like me are why she's a mystery writer now. It was reprinted with some frequency in the 1970s but then there's a 20 year gap when it seems to have fallen out of favour before being rediscovered.

I remember too few of these to have an opinion.


Short Stories


Joanna Russ* "When It Changed" Again, Dangerous Visions
Harlan Ellison "On the Downhill Side" Universe 2
Frederik Pohl "Shaffery Among the Immortals" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Robert Silverberg "When We Went to See the End of the World" Universe 2
James Tiptree, Jr. "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Gene Wolfe "Against the Lafayette Escadrille" Again, Dangerous Visions


The Russ shows an all-female world recontacted by main-stream, patriarchal society; the narrator takes a dim view of how well her culture will prosper once the men get a say. It's been reprinted with fair regularity, not always true of Russ stories. It also inspired a number of replies, not least of which is Tiptree's Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

I am belatedly curious if Russ ever reviewed Brin's Glory Season, which also ends with its gynocentric society facing cultural genocide at the hands of the galactics.

I think the Ellison is about love after death. It has been collected in a number of places, including an anthology called Unicorns!.

The Pohl is about a man who finally earns the fame he yearns for, albeit at some personal cost. It was popular in the 1970s and then languished in obscurity.

I don't think I know the Silverberg. It is in print although the frequency with which it is anthologized drops off around 1980.

The Tiptree is about the downside of extreme xenophilia (Tiptree isn't the author to look for for the upside to anything). It is reprinted with fair regularity.

I have read ADV so I've read the Wolfe but I don't remember a blessed thing about it. Its fate almost entirely tied to ADV's.

I don't know that I should have an opinion here but the Russ seems like a reasonable choice. Well, it or the Tiptree but since the Russ has attracted more replies, it's the more significant of the two.

Comments

[oh6]

Of the novels I've read The Gods Themselves and The Sheep Look Up, and the latter did strike me as grim, although somewhat forced. A number of people get killed by some gang of mystery assassins for no reason that I could see.

I have read all of the novellas except "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", although I read the book version of that one. It's a peculiar combination of three stories that I couldn't really integrate into a coherent whole. I greatly enjoyed "Son of the Morning", in which a pair of intelligent cats and a brain in a bottle fall down a time tunnel into a Jewish village in 19th century Poland, and encounter an energy being stirring up trouble.

Of the novelettes I've read "Basilisk" and "The Funeral". The former was pretty memorable, although I didn't know I'd read it until I saw your description.

I've read all of the short stories, and would tend to concur regarding "When It Changed". "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" is pretty memorable as well.

Review?

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I don't understand how you can say anything about the awards without re-reading all of them and giving us a new take on the past.

I have read them all and could at least give my feelings from the time, but really, what good is this?

I'm not angry, just confused as to your reasoning.

Bob Blough

Re: Review?

[james_davis_nicoll]

What I am not familiar with, other people are and I enjoy the conversation.

[centuryplant (from livejournal.com)]

Was "A Meeting with Medusa" the first gasbags-on-gas-giants story? I'd give it a C for story -- I didn't think the reveal at the end was especially effective -- but an A+ for spectacle. I'd forgotten how good Clarke was at description; the scenes inside the airship at the beginning were particularly vivid.

I seem to remember liking "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" and being nonplussed by "The Word for World is Forest," but I don't remember any specifics. The other novellas I haven't read.

"Goat Song" has some good moments, mostly in the parts that directly retell the story of Orpheus and Eurydice; the walk out of the underworld is really well done. Elsewhere I wish Anderson would dial back his attempts at poetry a little -- for instance on the first page, where he reaches for the word "begrown" to give a sentence more alliteration than it really needed. Also, the theme of the human spirit versus a mechanized way of life is a very old one in science fiction and this story doesn't add anything new to it.

Since you declined to summarize "A Kingdom by the Sea," I'll give it a go. It's about a boy who can see Others, who are roughly faeries, though not at all in a Shakespearean mould. It's nominally set in the near future, but really takes place in the lost era of free-range childhood, where no one even considers going straight home after school, and while you're not supposed to take a shortcut to the beach by walking down the rarely-used old spur line, everybody does and no adult is paying enough attention to know that. The child viewpoint is extremely well-done and persuasive. In the background of the story, aliens have landed, and naturally the two plot threads come together at the end. I found the conclusion unsatisfying because the conflicts set up earlier in the story aren't resolved, just rendered irrelevant. So I guess I'd call the story a failure, though it has some amazing bits.

Kate Wilhelm's "The Funeral" is about a girl in a grim sort of boarding school, facing a choice of career options that range from awful to more awful. It's well-written, and involving in the way that boarding school stories often are. In the gradually revealed backstory, the people of the US -- or maybe it's the world -- have risen up and slaughtered everyone from 10 to 35 because everyone hates and fears youth so much. That is not the most plausible science fiction premise I've encountered. In fact, I wouldn't have been sure what happened if the story weren't followed in Again, Dangerous Visions by a rant about how store clerks refuse to serve young people even though their money is as good as anyone else's. All this seems perfectly bizarre now. I think the story would have aged better with more worldbuilding and less axe-grinding.

Gerrold's "In the Deadlands" is about a soldier assigned to patrol a bleak, eerie landscape that is gradually expanding to cover more of the earth. It's more free verse than prose, and uses concrete-poetry techniques and lots of repetition to evoke a sense of dread. I found this totally ineffective.


I agree that the short story category comes down to Tiptree vs. Russ, and Russ's win seems right. "When it Changed" is obviously fueled by 70s feminism and yet has a timeless quality. I like "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side," but I don't find Tiptree's attempt at evo psych especially persuasive.

Gene Wolfe's "Against the Lafayette Escadrille" is about a man who builds and flies a nearly perfect replica of a Fokker Dreidecker. It's not bad, but it's very slight. I don't know what it's doing on the Nebula ballot.

Ellison's "On the Downhill Side" is about two ghosts and a spirit unicorn. The female ghost is doomed to walk the earth because she never loved; bringing a unicorn onstage means Ellison can tell us right away that she's a virgin. This is a problem that needs to be solved. The male ghost's problem is allegedly that he loved too much, but Ellison seems to have trouble coming up with examples of him acting as if he loves anyone. Instead we hear about how he left his mentally ill first wife to rot in a state institution and did his best to avoid finding out how she was doing. This unforced error makes the story incoherent.

[centuryplant (from livejournal.com)]

Oh, dammit. I mixed up Gardner Dozois's "A Kingdom By the Sea" with his "The Chains of the Sea," which was nominated in 1974. Okay, "Kingdom" is about a guy who works at a slaughterhouse, who comes to believe that a woman is communicating with him telepathically in his sleep. Wherever you think this premise is going, that's not where it's going. The first time I read it I didn't know what to make of it, but it certainly stuck in my mind. Now I do like it, but if I read it again I might see it completely differently.

[centuryplant (from livejournal.com)]

"The Chains of the Sea"

Actually it's just "Chains of the Sea." I need more coffee.

[(Anonymous)]

Novels:

Good to see two classics of the "concatenate title and author" game in the novel nominations: "The Sheep Look Up John Brunner" and "Dying Inside Robert Silverberg". "When HARLIE Was One David Gerrold" isn't bad either.

The Book of Skulls is the one about four students heading off to a remote monastery to find immortality. By the end we have definitive answers on the immortality of two of them, but I can't recall the text making it clear for the other two. I liked the part when one of them, thinking himself immortal, muses about spending years planning the architecture of the novel he intends to write - it's pretty obvious he's never going to actually write it. Though at the time I think my reaction was mostly surprise at the idea of novels having architectures.

I like The Gods Themselves more than you do, mainly for the interesting aliens, but I'd probably go for Dying Inside (having only read four of the seven nominations).

Novellas:

I know I've read all the novellas except the Gotlieb, but the Pohl is the only one that sticks with me. Did his essay mention anything about the ludicrously effective compression scheme the astronauts came up with?



-- Paul Clarke

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

I didn't finish The Book of Skulls, but I do remember it having the silliest treatment of homosexuality that I've ever read.

[(Anonymous)]

That sounds like an area where the competition could be fierce. In Herbert's The Dosadi Experiment homosexuals are the suicide troops of choice because, according to the protagonist, they've already given up on survival of the species and need only a nudge to give up on personal survival too.

-- Paul Clarke

[(Anonymous)]

THE BOOK OF SKULLS was also a Hugo nominee. I've read every Hugo-nominated novel from 1973 through 2012, and THE BOOK OF SKULLS is my favorite of the bunch (though not really SF or fantasy, in my opinion). A great novel.

Alan Heuer

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Good to see two classics of the "concatenate title and author" game in the novel nominations

Otherwise known as The Man Who Melted Jack Dann.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

The Pohl was novelized as Starburst, correct?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that's correct (I was going to mention that, but you beat me to it). Heinlein had ex-Nazis as villains in his 1947 "Rocket Ship Galileo" - but Pohl had them into the 1980s (in one of the Heechee books too), and Sawyer into the 2000s...

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Huh. There's a Bester novelette I've never read. And somebody thought it was good enough to put on the shortlist.

I may have to track it down. Has anybody here read "The Animal Fair?"

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Apparently, grizzled veterans won bigger than up-and-comers in 1973, three to one.

Was the New Wave, crested, now receding?

(Was the New Wave a real thing?)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I think it was two real things, minimum.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

Sure, just ask David Byrne.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

I remember liking The Fifth Head of Cerebus, though I can't remember a blessed thing about it now.