The Nebulas: 1971
Mar. 31st, 2013 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicolllong
Novels
1970 Larry Niven* Ringworld Ballantine Books
1970 Joanna Russ And Chaos Died Ace Books
1970 R. A. Lafferty Fourth Mansions Ace Books
1970 David G. Compton The Steel Crocodile Ace Books
1970 Robert Silverberg Tower of Glass Charles Scribner's Sons
1970 Wilson Tucker The Year of the Quiet Sun Ace Books
Four, count 'em, four more nominees from the Ace Science Fiction Specials series. The Nebula then goes to the most old-fashioned work available (more on that theme later).
The Niven is about a group of adventurers traveling to a Big Dumb Object, the eponymous Ringworld. It also won a Hugo and has been in print since it was first published. It also has a roleplaying game, or did, which most Nebula nominees cannot claim.
The Russ is reviewed here. It has been out of print for about 30 years.
I don't know anything about the Lafferty. It has been reprinted sporadically over the years, most recently in 1999, but long periods pass when it is out of print.
I don't remember enough about the Compton to comment. Like the Russ, it has been out of print for about 30 years.
The Silverberg is named after a great artifact being built in Canada to facilitate CETI but what it's really about are the labour relations between an arrogant billionaire and his android workforce and the consequences of his refusal to see the androids as people. Most of the reprints were in the 1970s and 1980s but there were some in the 1990s and aughts. None in the last decade, though.
The Wilson is a The Coming Race War novel, like The Jagged Orbit in 1970 (I think the Silverberg can be treated as touching on related subjects). The last time it was reprinted in English was in 1997. The Coming Race War was a fairly popular subject in US SF until, oh, let's say Night of Power. I don't really miss it. My expectation is that this has not aged well.
The Year of the Quiet Sun was involved in what was imo one of the more bizarre committee choices of the 1970s; in 1976, the jury for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award decided [from their website]
"The committee felt that no truly outstanding original novel was published in 1975. 1st place, therefore, was a "special retrospective award" made to a truly outstanding original novel that was not adequately recognized in the year of its publication (1970)."
The claim that "no truly outstanding original novel was published in 1975" didn't stop them from handing out a second place award to Silverberg's The Stochastic Man or a third place to Shaw's Orbitsville.
The problem with the Niven is that it's kind of boring and while I will inexplicably excuse Rendezvous with Rama's nigh-plotless travelogue, for some reason I was not inclined to do so with Niven (it's also the book where his focus begins to shift from the working classes to the rich as protagonists). It was always the pre-1977 Niven novel I read least often. On the other hand, it has had the most staying power.
Not really seeing a winner here. This was kind of a weak year for novel nominees, at least of the ones I've read.
Novellas
1970 Fritz Leiber* "Ill Met in Lankhmar" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
1970 Poul Anderson "The Fatal Fulfillment" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
1970 James Blish "A Style in Treason" Anywhen
1970 Harlan Ellison "The Region Between" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 Clifford D. Simak "The Thing in the Stone" If
1970 Kate Wilhelm "April Fool's Day Forever" Orbit 7
I am always surprised to see how late the Leiber is. It is the story of how Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, characters Leiber had been using for what, 30 years? met. It has stayed in print pretty consistently.
I know I've read the Anderson because I own it in at least two books but damned if I remember the particulars. It was included in Five Fates, which is as I recall a shared universe book of sorts: all the stories begin with the same event. Anderson was involved in a surprisingly large fraction of the shared universes. Not sure why he found them so engaging. This fell out of print by 1980, although it was included in Door to Anywhere, a NESFA collection in 2013.
I own Anywhen so I must have read the Blish. Don't remember it. It was out of print by the early 1980s and would not see print again until 2008.
The Ellison also appeared in Five Fates and is apparently as memorable as the Anderson. It has been collected in a number of books but as Ellison stories go does not seem to be all that popular.
Is the Simak the pastoral about deep time? Aside from a 1990s reprint, it was forgotten after the 1970s.
I don't know the Wilhelm. It was effectively out of print by the end of the 1970s.
I cannot help but be biased to the one I actually remember 40 years after reading. This may be unfair to the Simak and is almost certainly unfair to the Wilhelm but I think SFWA made the right call here.
Novelettes
1970 Theodore Sturgeon* "Slow Sculpture" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 Thomas M. Disch "The Asian Shore" Orbit 6
1970 Gordon Eklund "Dear Aunt Annie" Fantastic
1970 Gerald Jonas "The Shaker Revival" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 R. A. Lafferty "Continued on Next Rock" Orbit 7
1970 Joanna Russ "The Second Inquisition" Orbit 6
Notice how often Orbit turns up. There will be a story about this.
I have not read the Sturgeon, which seems to have been about determining how best to use an unconventional cure for cancer. It was popular enough until about 1990, when it stopped being reprinted with such frequency.
I have also not read the Disch, which seems to have been collected fairly regularly until the end of the 1990s.
The Eklund was his first published story, if I recall correctly. I have not read it - no, I know I have World's Best Science Fiction: 1971 (ed. Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr) so I have read it but have since forgotten it. It fell out of print almost immediately.
The Jonas is in World's Best Science Fiction: 1971 so I have read it. Don't remember a lick about it. It got included in a number of anthologies in the early 1970s; inclusions in anthologies since then have been uncommon and Martin Harry Greenbergy.
Continuing the theme of my vast and all encompassing ignorance of SF, I have also never knowingly read the Lafferty. Like a lot of the stories this year, it was most popular in the 1970s and then seems to have been forgotten by most anthologists.
The Russ is an Alyx story and I am not familiar with it (Although I think I own The Adventures of Alyx , it is on my to-read list). Reprinted wit fair regularity in the 1970s and 1980s, less so after that. Has not seen print in nearly a generation.
No way for me to have an opinion here.
Short Story
1970 (no award)+
1970 Gardner Dozois "A Dream at Noonday" Orbit 7
1970 Harry Harrison "By the Falls" If
1970 R. A. Lafferty "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite" Orbit 6
1970 Keith Laumer "In the Queue" Orbit 7
1970 James Sallis "The Creation of Bennie Good" Orbit 6
1970 Kate Wilhelm "A Cold Dark Night with Snow" Orbit 6
1970 Gene Wolfe "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" Orbit 7
And now we get the very special story of how it was in 1971 No Award won this category. IN the words of Garner Dozois:
I'm not sure how to describe the Dozois without ruining the twist at the end. I will say when I read Prime's When the Great Days Come, I was struck by the death and doom obsessed elements and wondered if, contrary to some people's assertion that current SF is obsessed with death and belatedness because the Boomers and old and dying is not as right as it being because Dozois is obsessed with death and has been an influential editor for decades. Anway not keen on this Dozois because while the events are different it reminded me too much of another well known story I cannot named because it would be a spoiler.
I've almost certainly read the Harrison but I don't remember it. It survived mainly in various Harrison collections.
The Laumer is a satire set in the bureaucratic world of tomorrow, one where it is possible to spend your entire life waiting in line to talk to some vital functionary. Not heavily anthologized after the 1970s (although Baen included it in their collection of Laumer's comic pieces); probably sabotaged by the effects Laumer's health issues had on his career and the perception of the readability of his fiction.
Speaking of health issues, by screwing the Obiters en mass out of their shots at a Nebula, the Old Guard cost Laumer what was probably his last change at one. The next year he had a stroke that destroyed his ability to write. Good show, there, Old Guard!
I've not read the Sallis. It fell more or less out of print almost immediately.
I have also not read the Wilhelm but since it seems to only have been in Orbit 6 and one later Knight-edited anthology I am not that embarrassed about this.
I have read the Wolfe. Give me a second to remember which Gene Wolfe Death story it is... Let's go with "A young man finds comfort in a story much like The Island of Doctor Moreau. The story ends on an ominous note." It's stayed fairly consistently in print, generally in Gene Wolfe collections.
I don't recall a lot of these clearly but I don't have any problem coming to the conclusion that SFWA made the wrong choice here and if Dozois is correct, a very mean spirited one. I'd go with the Wolfe.
Novels
1970 Larry Niven* Ringworld Ballantine Books
1970 Joanna Russ And Chaos Died Ace Books
1970 R. A. Lafferty Fourth Mansions Ace Books
1970 David G. Compton The Steel Crocodile Ace Books
1970 Robert Silverberg Tower of Glass Charles Scribner's Sons
1970 Wilson Tucker The Year of the Quiet Sun Ace Books
Four, count 'em, four more nominees from the Ace Science Fiction Specials series. The Nebula then goes to the most old-fashioned work available (more on that theme later).
The Niven is about a group of adventurers traveling to a Big Dumb Object, the eponymous Ringworld. It also won a Hugo and has been in print since it was first published. It also has a roleplaying game, or did, which most Nebula nominees cannot claim.
The Russ is reviewed here. It has been out of print for about 30 years.
I don't know anything about the Lafferty. It has been reprinted sporadically over the years, most recently in 1999, but long periods pass when it is out of print.
I don't remember enough about the Compton to comment. Like the Russ, it has been out of print for about 30 years.
The Silverberg is named after a great artifact being built in Canada to facilitate CETI but what it's really about are the labour relations between an arrogant billionaire and his android workforce and the consequences of his refusal to see the androids as people. Most of the reprints were in the 1970s and 1980s but there were some in the 1990s and aughts. None in the last decade, though.
The Wilson is a The Coming Race War novel, like The Jagged Orbit in 1970 (I think the Silverberg can be treated as touching on related subjects). The last time it was reprinted in English was in 1997. The Coming Race War was a fairly popular subject in US SF until, oh, let's say Night of Power. I don't really miss it. My expectation is that this has not aged well.
The Year of the Quiet Sun was involved in what was imo one of the more bizarre committee choices of the 1970s; in 1976, the jury for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award decided [from their website]
"The committee felt that no truly outstanding original novel was published in 1975. 1st place, therefore, was a "special retrospective award" made to a truly outstanding original novel that was not adequately recognized in the year of its publication (1970)."
The claim that "no truly outstanding original novel was published in 1975" didn't stop them from handing out a second place award to Silverberg's The Stochastic Man or a third place to Shaw's Orbitsville.
The problem with the Niven is that it's kind of boring and while I will inexplicably excuse Rendezvous with Rama's nigh-plotless travelogue, for some reason I was not inclined to do so with Niven (it's also the book where his focus begins to shift from the working classes to the rich as protagonists). It was always the pre-1977 Niven novel I read least often. On the other hand, it has had the most staying power.
Not really seeing a winner here. This was kind of a weak year for novel nominees, at least of the ones I've read.
Novellas
1970 Fritz Leiber* "Ill Met in Lankhmar" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
1970 Poul Anderson "The Fatal Fulfillment" The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
1970 James Blish "A Style in Treason" Anywhen
1970 Harlan Ellison "The Region Between" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 Clifford D. Simak "The Thing in the Stone" If
1970 Kate Wilhelm "April Fool's Day Forever" Orbit 7
I am always surprised to see how late the Leiber is. It is the story of how Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, characters Leiber had been using for what, 30 years? met. It has stayed in print pretty consistently.
I know I've read the Anderson because I own it in at least two books but damned if I remember the particulars. It was included in Five Fates, which is as I recall a shared universe book of sorts: all the stories begin with the same event. Anderson was involved in a surprisingly large fraction of the shared universes. Not sure why he found them so engaging. This fell out of print by 1980, although it was included in Door to Anywhere, a NESFA collection in 2013.
I own Anywhen so I must have read the Blish. Don't remember it. It was out of print by the early 1980s and would not see print again until 2008.
The Ellison also appeared in Five Fates and is apparently as memorable as the Anderson. It has been collected in a number of books but as Ellison stories go does not seem to be all that popular.
Is the Simak the pastoral about deep time? Aside from a 1990s reprint, it was forgotten after the 1970s.
I don't know the Wilhelm. It was effectively out of print by the end of the 1970s.
I cannot help but be biased to the one I actually remember 40 years after reading. This may be unfair to the Simak and is almost certainly unfair to the Wilhelm but I think SFWA made the right call here.
Novelettes
1970 Theodore Sturgeon* "Slow Sculpture" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 Thomas M. Disch "The Asian Shore" Orbit 6
1970 Gordon Eklund "Dear Aunt Annie" Fantastic
1970 Gerald Jonas "The Shaker Revival" Galaxy Science Fiction
1970 R. A. Lafferty "Continued on Next Rock" Orbit 7
1970 Joanna Russ "The Second Inquisition" Orbit 6
Notice how often Orbit turns up. There will be a story about this.
I have not read the Sturgeon, which seems to have been about determining how best to use an unconventional cure for cancer. It was popular enough until about 1990, when it stopped being reprinted with such frequency.
I have also not read the Disch, which seems to have been collected fairly regularly until the end of the 1990s.
The Eklund was his first published story, if I recall correctly. I have not read it - no, I know I have World's Best Science Fiction: 1971 (ed. Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr) so I have read it but have since forgotten it. It fell out of print almost immediately.
The Jonas is in World's Best Science Fiction: 1971 so I have read it. Don't remember a lick about it. It got included in a number of anthologies in the early 1970s; inclusions in anthologies since then have been uncommon and Martin Harry Greenbergy.
Continuing the theme of my vast and all encompassing ignorance of SF, I have also never knowingly read the Lafferty. Like a lot of the stories this year, it was most popular in the 1970s and then seems to have been forgotten by most anthologists.
The Russ is an Alyx story and I am not familiar with it (Although I think I own The Adventures of Alyx , it is on my to-read list). Reprinted wit fair regularity in the 1970s and 1980s, less so after that. Has not seen print in nearly a generation.
No way for me to have an opinion here.
Short Story
1970 (no award)+
1970 Gardner Dozois "A Dream at Noonday" Orbit 7
1970 Harry Harrison "By the Falls" If
1970 R. A. Lafferty "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite" Orbit 6
1970 Keith Laumer "In the Queue" Orbit 7
1970 James Sallis "The Creation of Bennie Good" Orbit 6
1970 Kate Wilhelm "A Cold Dark Night with Snow" Orbit 6
1970 Gene Wolfe "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" Orbit 7
And now we get the very special story of how it was in 1971 No Award won this category. IN the words of Garner Dozois:
It's bullshit that this was the result of confusing ballot instructions. This was the height of the War of the New Wave, and passions between the New Wave camp and the conservative Old Guard camp were running high. (The same year, Michael Moorcock said in a review that the only way SFWA could have found a worse thing than RINGWORLD to give the Nebula to was to give it to a comic book). The fact that the short story ballot was almost completely made up of stuff from ORBIT had outraged the Old Guard, particularly James Sallis's surreal "The Creation of Benny Hill", and they block-voted for No Award as a protest against "non-functional word patterns" making the ballot. Judy-Lynn del Rey told me as much immediately after the banquet, when she was exuberantly gloating about how they'd "put ORBIT in its place" with the voting results, and actually said "We won!"
I'm not sure how to describe the Dozois without ruining the twist at the end. I will say when I read Prime's When the Great Days Come, I was struck by the death and doom obsessed elements and wondered if, contrary to some people's assertion that current SF is obsessed with death and belatedness because the Boomers and old and dying is not as right as it being because Dozois is obsessed with death and has been an influential editor for decades. Anway not keen on this Dozois because while the events are different it reminded me too much of another well known story I cannot named because it would be a spoiler.
I've almost certainly read the Harrison but I don't remember it. It survived mainly in various Harrison collections.
The Laumer is a satire set in the bureaucratic world of tomorrow, one where it is possible to spend your entire life waiting in line to talk to some vital functionary. Not heavily anthologized after the 1970s (although Baen included it in their collection of Laumer's comic pieces); probably sabotaged by the effects Laumer's health issues had on his career and the perception of the readability of his fiction.
Speaking of health issues, by screwing the Obiters en mass out of their shots at a Nebula, the Old Guard cost Laumer what was probably his last change at one. The next year he had a stroke that destroyed his ability to write. Good show, there, Old Guard!
I've not read the Sallis. It fell more or less out of print almost immediately.
I have also not read the Wilhelm but since it seems to only have been in Orbit 6 and one later Knight-edited anthology I am not that embarrassed about this.
I have read the Wolfe. Give me a second to remember which Gene Wolfe Death story it is... Let's go with "A young man finds comfort in a story much like The Island of Doctor Moreau. The story ends on an ominous note." It's stayed fairly consistently in print, generally in Gene Wolfe collections.
I don't recall a lot of these clearly but I don't have any problem coming to the conclusion that SFWA made the wrong choice here and if Dozois is correct, a very mean spirited one. I'd go with the Wolfe.
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no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 10:22 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure I haven't read any of the novellas.
I've read the Disch and the Russ of the novelettes, and probably the Lafferty but I remember pretty much nothing about it.
The Wolfe short story is the only one I've read, and I can't say I really understood it. although I agree with your summary.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 10:27 pm (UTC)Dozois' story is fascinating; I'd never heard it (this is all before my time in fandom).
To say the Sturgeon is "about how best to use an unconventional cure for cancer" is to vastly under-describe it. If I had to say "about," I'd say "about how two sick and twisted trees could make bonsai of each other," which is a closely paraphrased line from the story. It's a love story with a very Sturgeon-familiar science element about how geniuses and discoveries get sidelined and dismissed if they aren't in the conventional orbit. And it's brilliant.
That's the only category with other stories that I remember--the Disch and the Russ would both be well deserving of awards. (I don't, however, love And Chaos Died)).
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 07:23 pm (UTC)The Silverberg is one of those I like least from this period. I didn't believe the characters. It feels, though, like it is nearly a great novel in the sense that a small set of changes would make it great - it's in a steeply sloped area of the greatness terrain.
"The Year of the Quiet Sun" is a complex novel, not the standard "race war" novel any more than, say, "The Jagged Orbit" was. Mind you, I was young when I read it and probably missed 90% of what was going on. I have not reread it.
There was no way anything but Ringworld was going to win. Doc Smith could have come back from the grave and collaborated with Heinlein and Shakespeare on "The Skylark's wife is a harsh mistress of Venice" and wouldn't have won. Ringworld made a huge impression at the time, and Niven was one of the gods of the realm.
Of the Novellas I only recall the winner, though I know I've read the rest. I recall liking the Wilhelm, but I liked all of her stories, so that doesn't tell me much.
For some reason "The Asian Shore" depressed me considerably. So I'd have voted for the Sturgeon, which did not.
Of the short stories, probably the Wolfe. I have a tendency to want to hand these things to Wilhelm or Lafferty, but in this case, Wolfe.
William Hyde
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 09:26 pm (UTC)What did he have out?
Novels
World of Ptavvs (1966)
A Gift from Earth (1968)
Ringworld (1970)
Collections
Neutron Star (1968)
The Shape of Space (1969)
Short fiction
The Coldest Place (1964)
World of Ptavvs (1965)
Wrong-Way Street (1965)
One Face (1965)
Becalmed in Hell (1965)
Eye of an Octopus (1966)
The Warriors (1966)
Bordered in Black (1966)
By Mind Alone (1966)
How the Heroes Die (1966)
Neutron Star (1966)
At the Core (1966)
At the Bottom of a Hole (1966)
A Relic of the Empire (1966)
The Jigsaw Man (1967)
The Handicapped (1967)
The Soft Weapon (1967)
The Long Night (1967) also appeared as:
Variant Title: Convergent Series (1967)
Flatlander (1967)
The Ethics of Madness (1967)
From "The Ethics of Madness" (excerpt) (1967)
Safe at Any Speed (1967)
The Adults (1967)
Wait It Out (1968)
The Deadlier Weapon (1968)
Grendel (1968)
The Deceivers (1968)
Dry Run (1968)
There Is a Tide (1968)
For a Foggy Night (1968)
Like Banquo's Ghost (1968)
All the Myriad Ways (1968)h
The Meddler (1968)
Death by Ecstasy (1969)
Not Long Before the End (1969)
Passerby (1969)
Get a Horse! (1969)
Leviathan! (1970)
Bird in the Hand (1970)
Unfinished Story (1970)
What a busy bee! And of the above, the following got nominated for one award or another:
Year Award Title Category Place 1966 Nebula Award Becalmed in Hell Short Story Nomination 1966 Nebula Award Wrong-Way Street Short Story Nomination 1967 Hugo Award Neutron Star Best Short Story Win 1967 Nebula Award World of Ptavvs Novel Made First Ballot 1967 Nebula Award Bordered in Black Short Story Made First Ballot 1967 Nebula Award Neutron Star Short Story Made First Ballot 1968 Hugo Award The Jigsaw Man Best Short Story Nomination 1968 Nebula Award Flatlander Novelette Nomination 1969 Hugo Award All the Myriad Ways Best Short Story Nomination 1970 Hugo Award Not Long Before the End Best Short Story Nomination 1970 Nebula Award Not Long Before the End Short Story Nomination 1971 Hugo Award Ringworld Best Novel Win 1971 Locus Poll Award Ringworld Best SF Novel 1 1971 Nebula Award Ringworld Novel Winno subject
Date: 2013-03-31 09:50 pm (UTC)Novels
Shield (Complete Novel) (1964)
Three Worlds to Conquer (1964)
The Star Fox (1965)
The Corridors of Time (1965
Ensign Flandry (1966)
World Without Stars (1967)
Satan's World (1969)
The Rebel Worlds (1969)
Tau Zero (1970)
A Circus of Hells (1970)
Collections
Earthman's Burden (1957) with Gordon R. Dickson
Time and Stars (1964)
Trader to the Stars (1964)
Agent of the Terran Empire (1965)
Flandry of Terra (1965)
Alexander Jones - Diplomat der Erde 2. Teil (1965) with Gordon R. Dickson
Alexander Jones - Diplomat der Erde 1. Teil (1965) with Gordon R. Dickson
The Trouble Twisters (1966)
The Horn of Time (1968)
Seven Conquests (1969) also appeared as:
Variant Title: Conquests (1969)
Beyond the Beyond (1969)
Tales of the Flying Mountains (1970)
Short stories
Sunjammer (1964) [also as by Winston P. Sanders ]
Mustn't Touch (1964)
Strange Bedfellows (1964)
The Master Key (1964)
Dead Phone (1964) with Karen Anderson [also as by Poul Anderson ]
Trader Team (1965)
Marque and Reprisal (1965)
Arsenal Port (1965)
Admiralty (1965)
The Life of Your Time (1965) [also as by Michael Karageorge ]
Say It With Flowers (1965)
Home (1966) also appeared as:
Introduction: The Three-Cornered Wheel (1966)
Introduction: A Sun Invisible (1966)
Introduction: Hiding Place (1966)
A Historical Reflection (excerpt from "Margin of Profit") (1966)
The Moonrakers (1966)
High Treason (1966)
A Sun Invisible (1966)
Ensign Flandry (1966)
Escape the Morning (1966)
Door to Anywhere (1966)
Eutopia (1967)
Elementary Mistake (1967) [also as by Winston P. Sanders ]
To Outlive Eternity (1967)
Supernova (1967) also appeared as:
Variant Title: Day of Burning (1967)
In the Shadow (1967) [also as by Michael Karageorge ]
Starfog (1967)
Poulfinch's Mythology (1967) Outpost of Empire (1967)
A Gift From Centauri (1967)
A Tragedy of Errors (1968)
Peek! I See You! (1968)
The Inevitable Weapon (1968)
Kyrie (1968)
The Faun (1968)
The Pirate (1968)
The Alien Enemy (1968) [also as by Michael Karageorge ]
The Sharing of Flesh (1968)
Operation Changeling (1969) also appeared as:
Magazine Appearances:
The White King's War (1969)
The Galloping Hessian (1969)
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure (1970)
Ramble with a Gamblin' Man (1970)
Recruiting Nation (1970)
Prologue (Tales of the Flying Mountains) (1970)
Interlude 1 (1970)
Interlude 2 (1970)
Interlude 3 (1970)
Interlude 4 (1970)
Interlude 5 (1970)
Interlude 6 (1970)
The Communicators (1970)
Epilogue (Tales of the Flying Mountains) (1970)
Birthright (1970)
The Fatal Fulfillment (1970)
SOS (1970)
Awards
The ones I know offhand
Date: 2013-04-01 03:28 am (UTC)World of Ptavvs (1966) ✓
A Gift from Earth (1968) ✓
Ringworld (1970)✓
Collections
Neutron Star (1968) ✓
The Shape of Space (1969)
Short fiction
The Coldest Place (1964)✓
World of Ptavvs (1965)
Wrong-Way Street (1965)✓
One Face (1965)✓
Becalmed in Hell (1965) ✓
Eye of an Octopus (1966 )✓
The Warriors (1966) ✓
Bordered in Black (1966) ✓
By Mind Alone (1966)
How the Heroes Die (1966) ✓
Neutron Star (1966) ✓
At the Core (1966) ✓
At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) ✓
A Relic of the Empire (1966) ✓
The Jigsaw Man (1967) ✓
The Handicapped (1967) ✓
The Soft Weapon (1967) ✓
The Long Night (1967) ✓
Flatlander (1967) ✓
The Ethics of Madness (1967) ✓
Safe at Any Speed (1967) ✓
The Adults (1967)
Wait It Out (1968) ✓
The Deadlier Weapon (1968) ✓
Grendel (1968) ✓
The Deceivers (1968)
Dry Run (1968)
There Is a Tide (1968) ✓
For a Foggy Night (1968)
Like Banquo's Ghost (1968)
All the Myriad Ways (1968) ✓
The Meddler (1968) ✓
Death by Ecstasy (1969) ✓
Not Long Before the End (1969)
Passerby (1969) ✓
Get a Horse! (1969) ✓
Leviathan! (1970) ✓
Bird in the Hand (1970)
Unfinished Story (1970) ✓
Re: The ones I know offhand
Date: 2013-04-01 08:58 pm (UTC)Re: The ones I know offhand
Date: 2013-04-02 04:32 am (UTC)--Dave
no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 01:38 am (UTC)But anyhow. Niven was thirty-one in 1969, when he tried to imagine sex with a sexually liberated twenty-year-old woman in Ringworld: Hot stuff, right? They're all Sandstone swingers in the future, just like Gay Talese.
And then the willing suspension of disbelief falls to the ground like pieces of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.Um. Er. What? I'm assuming it's not a "bag of sand" moment, since Niven did marry in 1969, but.
Then Ringworld closes with Louis having sex with the space hooker (really! Louis calls her a "ship's whore") Prill:And we are back to wondering about Niven. Yeesh. Dude, did you lose your virginity to a dominatrix?
no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 08:22 pm (UTC)The Niven is about a group of adventurers traveling to a Big Dumb Object, the eponymous Ringworld...."
And Hamlet is a bunch of old sayings strung together in a standard plot.
7:\
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 09:58 pm (UTC)I believe I've read Orbit 6 and 7 but I'm not having much luck remembering most of the stories. I do know "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite." It's about a group of people from a culture that denies the existence of anything not on Eratosthenes's map of the world, who travel to Africa but think it's a hallucination. Not one of Lafferty's better stories in my opinion, and the racial stereotyping is really unpleasant even though the people who believe in it are clearly nitwits.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 10:33 pm (UTC)After the interesting start which, now that I think about it, seems like Machiavelli-era Italy might have developed, the story follows Earth's Traitor-in-Chief as he sets into motion a plan never explained to the reader, so when it goes wrong, exactly how and how badly, and whether the protagonist is really clever or just lucky in the progressions, is withheld from the reader. It's one of those cases where I would like to get someone to do a cover so maybe that would be clearer.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 01:19 am (UTC)Raising the inevitable question, "Which Nebula nominee would be the least likely basis for a roleplaying game?"
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Date: 2013-04-01 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-02 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-02 02:46 pm (UTC)As to non-winners, I would nominate Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES as least translatable.
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Date: 2013-04-02 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-02 03:01 pm (UTC)(And did you really like it, or did you like the fact that it existed? Being the other person in North America who bought a copy, I have to say that the rules (IIRC) were not well thought out.)
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Date: 2013-04-02 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 09:41 am (UTC)==Awesome Aud
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Date: 2013-04-01 02:19 pm (UTC)It has a science fiction underpinning with a "golly, do you need the science?" overpinning that doesn't seem to connect until you look closely at it, which Sturgeon did well. It has stuck with me since high school, so it has that in its favour. I can't be objective about it, though: I recognize Sturgeon's faults, but I still adore his best ten per cent. It does seem to me that some of the underlying thought seeped into SF in general (and then leached out, but heck).
On the other hand, I seem to recall that the treatment of women in the story was advanced for the time so it's probably reprehensible now. I haven't re-read it for a decade, so I can't be sure.
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Date: 2013-04-02 08:21 pm (UTC)She also seems inordinately impressed with the great man she's blundered into, but I think that has less to do with Sturgeon's attitude toward women than with his attitude toward the scientist character. The story depends for its effect on the reader's willingness to go along with her, and be impressed by his library, his bonsai, his philosophizing, and his bitterness against the world. When I was fourteen I ate this stuff up. Now the story just seems sententious and unconvincing.
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Date: 2013-04-01 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 05:28 pm (UTC)