The 1972 Hugo Awards were held at LACon I, in Los Angeles. (For earlier posts in this series, see Index.) The novel Hugo was won by Philip Jose Farmer’s To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first of the Riverworld books. The premise is that everybody who was ever alive wakes up, naked, on the shore of a very long river that resembles the Mississippi. If they’re killed, they wake up again naked somewhere else along the river. Strange containers they call grails provide food at regular intervals. Nobody knows why they’re there or where they are or what’s going on. To Your Scattered Bodies Go follows the adventures of Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer, as he meets an interesting assortment of all the people who ever lived. It’s a great book, and if the sequels are less great it’s only because no explanation can possibly live up to that premise. I loved this book with wild enthusiasm when I was a teenager and it will always have a place in my heart. I think it’s a fine Hugo winner. It’s in print, and in the Grande Bibliotheque of Montreal in English.
There were six nominees, of which one was withdrawn. I’ve read all of them.
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonquest is the second novel of the Pern series. I loved it to pieces when I was fourteen, but I can now see problematic gender issues and find the sex scenes squicky. It’s not as good as the first volume, but it widens the scope of the series and stands alone well. I think this is the first time we’ve had a sequel nominated, and it didn’t win, which is an overall trend with the Hugos, the voters tend to prefer standalones or first volumes. It reads like fantasy but it’s actually about a lost colony on a world where dragons have been bred to fight the destructive menace of Thread, which falls from the sky. It’s in print, and it’s in the library in French and English.
Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows is a fairly weak Zelazny novel about a thief in a fantasy world. It lacks his usual sparkle. It isn’t in print. It’s in the library in French only. I don’t think it had lasted well.
The Lathe of Heaven (post) is one of my favourite of Ursula K. Le Guin’s works. It’s near future, and it’s about a man whose dreams can change reality. It’s a classic. It’s in print, and it’s in the library in English.
Robert Silverberg’s A Time of Changes is one of two Silverberg novels nominated, the other, The World Inside, was withdrawn. This is generally unnecessary with Hugo voting. A Time of Changes is set far in the future on the strange colony world of Borthan, where people keep themselves sealed off from one another. A visitor from Earth and a telepathic experience change one man into a revolutionary who wants everybody to share themselves instead of keeping apart. The World Inside is about overpopulation considered as a good thing, with everyone encouraged to have sex and children and live in huge towers. They are both in print, and in the library in both languages.
These are all good books and except for Jack of Shadows, worthy nominees. We have five science fiction and one fantasy, four men and two women, and they are pretty much all New Wave books. I’d have voted for The Lathe of Heaven, but I think the Farmer is also a good winner.
What else might they have chosen?
The Nebula went to A Time of Changes, with Le Guin also nominated. Other nominees were Poul Anderson’s The Byworlder, one of Anderson’s best—that would have been a fine addition to the Hugo ballot. There’s also R.A. Lafferty’s The Devil is Dead, which I haven’t read, T.J. Bass’s Half Past Human, which I remember fondly but which is mostly forgotten now, and Kate Wilhelm’s Margaret and I, which is again largely forgotten and which I found disappointing.
The Locus Award went to The Lathe of Heaven. I like it when the awards are spread out between the good books this way. Other nominees not previously mentioned: Philip Jose Farmer’s The Fabulous Riverboat (Riverworld 2), Robert Silverberg’s Son of Man and The Second Trip—he was having a really productive year!—Lloyd Biggle Jr’s The World Menders, Suzette Haden Elgin’s Furthest, R.A. Lafferty’s Arrive at Easterwine and Thomas Burnett Swann’s The Forest of Forever.
The BSFA award went to an Aldiss collection, not eligible as a novel. The Ditmar went to Lee Harding’s Fallen Spaceman with Ringworld winning the International Award.
The Mythopoeic Award went to Joy Chant’s Red Moon and Black Mountain. Also nominated and not already mentioned: Evangeline Walton (no relation) The Children of Llyr, Michael Moorcock’s Chronicles of Corum, John Gardner’s horrible Grendel, Joan North’s The Light Maze, Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan and Isidore Haiblum’s The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders.
Can there possibly be anything of note that all these lists missed? Well, yes. The ISFDB gives me James Blish’s And All the Stars a Stage and The Day After Judgement, Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent Into Hell, Heinlein’s Glory Road, and Moorcock’s A Cure For Cancer. [ETA: Oops, database error, Glory Road was 1963.]
So our list of nominees this year looks pretty good—not “everything good” or “Jo’s favourite books of the year” but a representative set of good books, almost any of which would have been a worthy winner.
Other Categories
NOVELLA
- “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” Poul Anderson (F&SF Apr 1971)
- “Dread Empire,” John Brunner (Fantastic Apr 1971)
- “The Fourth Profession,” Larry Niven (Quark/4)
- “A Meeting with Medusa,” Arthur C. Clarke (Playboy Dec 1971)
- “A Special Kind of Morning,” Gardner Dozois (New Dimensions 1)
Wow, another great year. I think the Anderson is the best, but I’d have had a very hard time voting here.
SHORT STORY
- “Inconstant Moon,” Larry Niven (All the Myriad Ways)
- “All the Last Wars at Once,” Geo. Alec Effinger (Universe 1)
- “The Autumn Land,” Clifford D. Simak (F&SF Oct 1971)
- “The Bear with the Knot on His Tail,” Stephen Tall (F&SF May 1971)
- “Sky,” R. A. Lafferty (New Dimensions 1)
- “Vaster than Empires and More Slow”, Ursula K. Le Guin (New Dimensions 1)
Now here the Niven definitely deserved to win, a real classic. But also some other memorable stories. The Nebulas had three short fiction categories, which were won by Katherine MacLean’s The Missing Man, the Anderson, and Robert Silverberg’s Good News From the Vatican.
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Andromeda Strain
- “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” (recording)
- The Name of the Game: “LA 2017” (screenplay by Philip Wylie; directed by Steven Spielberg)
- THX 1138
Okay, a winner I don’t hate. But they’re clearly having a hard time scraping up enough nominees.
PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE
- F&SF, Edward L. Ferman
- Amazing Stories, Ted White
- Analog, John W. Campbell, Jr.
- Fantastic, Ted White
- Galaxy, Ejler Jakobsson
PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
- Frank Kelly Freas
- Vincent Di Fate
- Jack Gaughan
- Jeff Jones
- John Schoenherr
AMATEUR MAGAZINE
- Locus, Charles Brown & Dena Brown
- Energumen, Michael Glicksohn & Susan Glicksohn
- Granfalloon, Ron & Linda Bushyager
- SF Commentary, Bruce Gillespie
FAN WRITER
- Harry Warner, Jr.
- Terry Carr
- Tom Digby
- Susan Glicksohn
- Rosemary Ullyot
- Bob Vardeman
FAN ARTIST
- Tim Kirk
- Alicia Austin
- Grant Canfield
- Wendy Fletcher
- Bill Rotsler
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two poetry collections and nine novels, most recently Among Others, and if you liked this post you will like it. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
Even reevaluating from a distance, I still think the right novel was picked for this year. I was not as fond of the Leguin book as you, and I still enjoy To Your Scattered Bodies Go. The concept was amazing even though we are pretty familiar with it now. There are at least a couple of movies that were based on it, both pretty lousy, and I am not necessarily sure it will ever translate well to the screen.
I enjoyed the first 4 McCaffrey books a lot, and I find less issues with gender issues than you do, especially since the author is a woman.
This is one of the few years that I can rememeber the novella and short story winners and I agree with both recipients.
As for Clockwork Orange, I have real issues with the movie. I didn’t think it was very good, don’t like it and don’t think it was a worthy recipient. It’s been too many years since The Name of the Game was on and I would have to see the episode to judge it but it was a series I enjoyed a lot when it was on tv.
Something’s gone horribly wrong with the paragraph beginning “The BSFA award went to…” which has all the wrong book titles as links in it, and the links lead to error pages. I’m sure Lee Harding didn’t write Red Moon and Black Mountain, nor did Evangeline Walton write the Chronicles of Corum!
The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders is by Isidore Haiblum, not Le Guin.
Thanks, Carandol, I think I have fixed that now. The post crashed when I was saving, and it lost some, and I thought I had got it all back, but evidently not. Thanks Shireling, that whole paragraph has now been fixed. I hope.
Joy Chant wrote Red Moon and Black Mountain, and I had thought it was published in 1970 (that’s why I mentioned it last time).
Also, Glory Road is from 1963 as I recall — I don’t know what’s up with the ISFDB misdating it.
I confess I have never read To Your Scattered Bodies Go. I’ve really never got on well with Philip Jose Farmer, presumably a blind spot. That said, I daresay I might like the book if I read it.
I probably lean towards The Lathe of Heaven for the Best Novel award, but I did really like A Time of Changes as well.
Other potential novel nominees:
Michael Moorcock’s A Cure for Cancer (not my thing, but some people love the Jerry Cornelius books)
Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction
Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s The Far Side of Evil
K. M. O’Donnell’s (Barry Malzberg’s) Universe Day
I actually wouldn’t add any of those to the short lists — just thought they deserved a mention.
There was one other Silverberg novel (he really was incredibly productive) that was officially published in 1971 (at least according to the ISFDB): The Book of Skulls, but as it shows up on shortlists in 1973, I suppose we can leave it ’til then.
I actually find the whole list, and the short fiction as well, vaguely disappointing. (In quantity more than quality — the best short fiction is very good.) I think 1971 was a sort of local minimum for SF — I blame Ejler Jakobsson. (Half-jokingly.)
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Rich Horton
As for the short fiction … this was the last year that the Hugos only had two categories. Beginning the next year, they aligned with the Nebulas. (I’m not sure when the word count boundaries also came into alignment — very possibly the same year.)
So, Novella. Indeed, the Hugo shortlist is very very good. I can’t argue with the winner, couldn’t argue with any of the choices. The Brunner is one of his Traveller in Black stories, very fine stuff. The Dozois is what we might call “late high new wave”, and it blew me away on first reading. Clarke’s is crackling pure hard SF, as really Clarke was the best practioner of. But my favorite is probably Niven’s “The Fourth Profession”, which appeared in what might seem a very unusual place for a Niven story, a very new wavy anthology co-edited by Delany and his wife Marilyn Hacker, herself an absolutely first-rate poet.
However the Nebula shortlists put “The Queen of Air and Darkness” and “A Special Kind of Morning” in novelette. I imagine the Short Story/Novella dividing point for the Hugo was something like 10,000 words. (“Inconstant Moon”, I’m pretty sure, is novelette length by today’s definitions, for example.) So, arguably, both Hugo awards went to novelettes. I suspect “The Fourth Profession” is also novelette length, though fairly long.
The Nebula shortlist for Novella is a bit curious: the winner is Katherine MacLean’s “The Missing Man”, a very fine story. The others on the list are Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (which for me is insufficiently fantastical for this award, but that’s just my bias), Kate Wilhelm’s “The Infinity Box” and “The Plastic Abyss”, and Keith Roberts’s “The God House”. I don’t remember any of these stories all that well — I should seek out the Roberts, as he’s a favorite of mine. I do recall enjoying “The Infinity Box”, but I couldn’t tell you now what it was about.
The only other novella I can come up with that I recall with particular affection is John Brunner’s “The Easy Way Out”.
To further add to the confusion, Clarke’s “A Meeting with Medusa”, from the December 1971 Playboy, won the Nebula the following year! (When nominally stories from 1972 were eligible.)
Novelette
As noted, the Hugo not aligning with current (or Nebula) definitions complicates things. I’m pretty sure that from the Hugo shortlist three of the short stories (“Inconstant Moon”, “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow”, and “The Bear With a Knot in its Tail”) and three of the novellas (“The Fourth Profession”, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”, and “A Special Kind of Morning”) are novelettes. Of those, I would definitely choose “Inconstant Moon”, a wonderful story. That said, all the others of those six are really good too.
Stephen Tall’s story is perhaps the least remembered — Tall’s real name was Compton Crook (an award for Best First SF Novel is named for him). He was born in 1908 (same year as Jack Williamson), and had stories in Galaxy in 1955 and Worlds of Tomorrow in 1966, but really started publishing regularly in 1970. His stories, many of them linked and fixed up into two novels, The Stardust Voyages and The Ramsgate Paradox, were colorful and fun. But he died in 1981, not terribly young but early in his writing career.
The Nebula novelette nominees, besides the Anderson story (which won) and the Dozois, were Kate Wilhelm’s “The Encounter”, Joanna Russ’s “Poor Man, Beggar Man”, and Edgar Pangborn’s “Mount Charity”. All good stories, but I’d stick with “Inconstant Moon”.
Other good novelettes from 1971:
Robert Sheckley’s “Pas de Trois of the Chef, the Waiter, and the Customer” (originally in Playboy as “Three Sinners in the Green Jade Moon”) — not really SF or Fantasy, but a neat neat story, highly recommended.
M. John Harrison’s “The Lamia and Lord Cromis” (a Viriconium story)
James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Mother in the Sky With Diamonds”
Short Story:
As note, the Hugo winner and a couple of other nominees are really novelettes. The other three short fiction nominees (“All the Last Wars at Once” (the first Geo. Alec Effinger story to really get notice), “Sky”, and “The Autumn Land”) are all fine. The Nebula nominees were Silverberg’s “Good News from the Vatican” (the winner, and a nice story but a bit slight to my taste), George Zebrowski’s “The Heathen God”, Gardner Dozois’s “Horse of Air”, and Stephen Goldin’s “The Last Ghost”. Of all these, I think I’d vote for “Horse of Air” for Best Short Story of 1971, except it really appeared in 1970!
Other potential nominees:
James Tiptree, Jr.’s “The Peacefulness of Vivyan” (this and “Mother in the Sky with Diamonds” are fine stories, but not Tiptree at her best — but check out 1972, one of the most amazing collections of stories in a single year by a single writer in the history of the field)
Arthur Jean Cox’s “A Collector of Ambroses”
Thomas Disch’s “Angouleme” (another part of 334)
Silverberg’s “In Entropy’s Jaws”
Octavia Butler’s first story, which appeared in the Clarion anthology: “Crossover”. (Her first novel wouldn’t appear for five more years, and no more short fiction until the ’80s.)
And, finally, my actual choice for best short story published in 1071: Philip Jose Farmer’s “The Sliced-Crosswise Only on Tuesday World”. (I know, I said I don’t get on well with Farmer, but this story is an exception. And I’m shocked it didn’t appear on shortlists: it made multiple Best of the Year anthologies, it appeared in a prominent place, New Dimensions, and Farmer was a prominent writer and a previous award winner.)
I might note also the primacy of original anthologies: the eleven shortlisted Hugo stories included one from Playboy, one from a collection, four from the SF magazines, and five from anthologies (New Dimensions, Universe, and Quark.) Of the fourteen Nebula nominees, one was from a collection, one was a standalone book, one was from an anthology that had previously been a magazine (New Worlds Quarterly), three were from the SF magazines, and the remaining eight were from original anthologies (New Dimensions, Universe, Orbit, and Protostars).
The key event leading to that was that this was the first year for two of the great original anthology series in the field’s history, Terry Carr’s Universe and Robert Silverberg’s New Dimensions. (It occurs to me that Silverberg all but qualified for Grand Master status in 1971 by itself, with four major novels included a Nebula winner, some strong short fiction including a Nebula winner, and founding one of the major anthology series ever.)
—
Rich Horton
I like Jack of Shadows a lot. The only shortcoming I can think of is that it is too short – probably would be called a novella these days.
Strangely enough, I like The World Inside far more than A Time of Changes and I think it would have better chances of winning.
That saying I am quite happy with To Your Scattered Bodies Go winning a Hugo, even if I have met surprisingly many people who really hate this book.
Half Past Human and The God Whale both blew me away when I read them many years ago. They seem to be part of a fairly rare sub-genre of sf in that they are hard science but the science is biology rather than the usual sf of physics and the like.
I was going to point out that Glory Road was from 1963, but I see it’s been noted. However, I don’t know why it’s being blamed on ISFDB; because that’s where I quickly verified the 1963 date. So I don’t know what’s up with that!
In fact, Glory Road was nominated for a Hugo in 1964 (which was mentioned earlier in this series) so maybe the Hugo voters weren’t acting all that responsibly (at least not that year).
T. J. Bass was a medical student when he wrote those two novels — and, as noted, they are both very good. As of a few years ago, he was still alive, though IMS of retirement age, and living somewhere in California.
— What’s not to like about Jack of Shadows? It’s minor Zelazny, but I don’t see how it’s lacking in sparkle at all. And I like that the hero is more morally grey than most Zelazny protagonists — almost all of whom are, at the end of the day, basically decent. Up until the last 20 pages, this book is very close to being “how I became Evil Emperor”, which is actually a very hard story to write well. (Emphasis on that last. It’s been done many times, but rarely well.)
Also, do you mean Gardner’s _Grendel_ was horrible because it’s grim, nasty and depressing (which it surely is) or because it’s a bad book?
Doug M.
“Fourth Profession” is a great story. It is a shame he never did much more with that universe.
On the other hand, I never got the love for “Inconstant Moon”. The science is risibly bad — if the sun had periodic superflares bad enough to sterilize half the Earth, the signature would be all over the fossil record. The characters’ emotional reactions to the apocalypse seem weirdly off. And, um, six deadly words?
Isn’t _The Lathe of Heaven_ basically “The Monkey’s Paw”? Which, okay, a great horror story can be told again and again. But…
Doug M.
Dramatic presentation: I see the point about scraping to get enough.
OTOH, three of the five were true contenders. THX 1138 is a minor classic (yes! George Lucas was a real director once, with talent and everything!) , The Andromeda Strain was a solid adaptation of Michael Crichton’s best book, and A Clockwork Orange is one of the greatest films of that decade.
Anderson was in the middle of his most interesting period!
Silverberg was being incredibly productive, but IMS that was about to end — I don’t recall the details, but something happened to him in the early 1970s. House burned down, illness, divorce, some combination thereof: anyway, he went away for a while. (And, say some, when he came back he was… strangely /changed/. But we’ll come to _Lord Valentine’s Castle_ in due time.)
Doug M.
ISFDB says the 1971 release of Glory Road is a variant, so RAH probably made a few changes, but I doubt it would have been enough to qualify.
Novels: The Farmer thrilled me when I was 15 and was my first introduction to Richard Francis Burton (who was also one of the models for Flashman). I think my view of it now is too colored by the let down of the third and fourth books. In fact, my general experience with Farmer is that he has really interesting ideas for starting points, but always falls down somewhere in the end.
Dragonquest, well it does have its problems. Not just the sexual politics. It also has second book problems, even if it does stand alone fairly well.
Jack of Shadows may well be my favorite Zelazny book. True it isn’t his best and may not really be Hugo worthy, but it rollicks well. Jack is a typical Zelazny wise-ass protagonist, but he somehow manages to be less annoying than many of them.
Lathe of Heaven is, for me, the best book on the short list. It would almost certainly havve been my vote.
I’d say Silverberg chose rightly in withdrawing World Inside in favor of Time of Changes, but, while good, I don’t see either of them quite matching up.
Novella: “The Fourth Profession” is one of my favorite NIven stories, though he has always neglected the Leshy Circuit/Monk universe. “Meeting with Medusa” is in many ways a Clarke travelogue more than anything else. The winner is probably the right choice.
Short story: “Inconstant Moon” is a very worthy winner. To this day, I look at an especially bright full moon with a slightly uneasy feeling. “All the Last Wars at Once” has probably not aged well, but it stuck with me for many years and I had no idea who wrote it or what it was called. I finally found it again some 20 years after my first reading and it firmly stuck Geo. Alec Effinger in my head forever.
Dramatic presentation: I’d have gone for no award. A Clockwork Orange just doesn’t work on film; it becomes violence porn and much of the message is lost. Burgess wasn’t any too thrilled with it, but then he didn’t like the book either. The Andromeda Strain was okay, but suffers from many of the flaws inherent in films of the era, notably a flatness that makes everything sort of boring. “Bozos” is more sfnal than the previous year’s nominee from Firesign, but they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for nominees. “The Name of the Game” is most notable for being Spielberg’s first long-form job. My parents watched the show, but I always found it boring (I was only 9 when this would have aired). THX 1138 is also horrendously dull.
Other stuff: We have the first appearance of Vincent DiFate in the artist category. I think he tends to be rather underappreciated among the later SF artists, particularly for his interior art. For me, nobody has done spaceships as well since Emshwiller.
Doug M: Grendel is grim, nasty and depressing and just plain unpleasant to read, but very well written, which if anything makes it worse.
And The Lathe of Heaven is a lot more than that.
I almost got thrown out of a book club for picking Grendel as a monthly read. I had bought it because of the title, and suggested it because it was short. It was universally hated.
It’s interesting to look back and see the paucity of pre-Star Wars sf movies. I’m curious to see how much that category changes.
I read the final Riverworld book first, and was never intrigued enough to find the earlier books.
Ugh, To Your Scattered Bodies Go. I’ll have to disagree with the conenses here, I wasn’t very impressed with this novel. Fantastic premise, but executed poorly, with writing that’s too clever for its own good and a lack of real connection to the characters. Burton in particular, there’s too much of a sense of *making Burton* that’s not effective either as a realistic historical recreation or as a literary character. As well, the book deals in with really dark themes and horrific abuse that it’s not serious enough to tackle, the final result is jarring in a rather unpleasant way.
It should have been Lathe of Heaven, for my money–another brilliant Le Guin that’s thoroughly unlike her other work, and has more high-concept ideas than in the rest of the shortlist combined. Well, I’m presuming that, as I haven’t read the Zelazny. Ah well, not a bad shortlist overall, but with some definite weaker voices–my appreciation of McCaffrey in particular has fallen immensely.
If GRENDEL put you off John Gardner’s work, you might better enjoy IN THE SUICIDE MOUNTAINS (1977), which despite the title is a lot more fun to read.
Some good novels, but not a year with one book that stood head-and-shoulders above the rest. TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO is a tremendous setup for the series, unlike anything anybody’d ever done before, but, as someone said, your reaction to the book from this point in time has to inevitably be colored by the fact that the series went further downhill with every subsequent book, and eventually ended up being disappointing overall. I think it’s too bad that the original one-volume version of the novel was lost, and have always wondered if it would have been better than the multi-volume version. LATHE OF HEAVEN is a good book, coming across like a more mellow and less buzzingly paranoid Philip K. Dick, but it’s far from my favorite Le Guin work (THE TOMBS OF ATUAN is not the best of the Earthsea books either). A TIME OF CHANGES is good solid middle Silverberg book, but not his best. THE DEVIL IS DEAD is a wild and bizarre read, and one of Lafferty’s most entertaining novels, but really, it doesn’t make a lick of sense, especially as it doesn’t really end. JACK OF SHADOW is entertaining, but minor Zelazny (although he would do more minor soon). THE FOREST OF FOREVER is weak Swann. And I’ve always hated Jerry Cornelius.
So I don’t have any clear favorite. I’m okay with the Farmer winning, although I would have also been okay with the Le Guin or the Silverberg.
In novella, “The Queen of Air and Darkness” is really the only one that has lasted and is still read and talked about today, so that’s a good indication that the right one was picked. Next best there is the Clarke, although it is a bit travelogish.
The novella that I really think should have won was not on the Hufo ballot–Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” one of the most brilliant SF novellas ever written. Clarke beat it for the Nebula.
“The God House” is good Roberts, by the way, Rich, maybe not quite on the level of the best of the PAVANE stories, but still a damn good read.
“Inconstant Moon” has met the test of time better than the rest of the Hugo Short Fiction category, and is about the only one still remembered, but I’d rather have seen the award go to Tom Disch’s brilliant and melancholy “Angouleme.” I was not as impressed with “The Sliced-Crossways-Only-on-Tuesday World” as Rich was, and wouldn’t have voted for it.
Dramatic Presentation rightly went to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE–although, really, one is tempted to say, Who cares?
LOCUS started its long winning streak.
Gardner @21: “Fifth Head of Cerberus” was on both ballots the next year, but lost to “The Word for World is Forest” for the Hugo and the Clarke for the Nebula. Odd that “Medusa” was on the Nebula in ’73 with a December ’71 publication.
This was also your first Hugo nomination, wasn’t it? Everybody else in the category was already a huge name. Must have been pretty intimidating.
Definitely “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” is one of the greatest SF novellas of all time, and next week I’ll be complaining that it didn’t win! (Losing to a lesser Le Guin story and to an enjoyable but, as Gardner says, rather travelogish Clarke story.)
I admit I haven’t reread Farmer’s “Sliced-Crosswise” in decades — perhaps it will have diminished. And I never read the novel it became (Dayworld). (Indeed, I think it became a series of novels, or at least two.) But at the time I found the central idea irresistible.
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Rich Horton
Gardner – I’m reading George RR Martin’s Dreamsongs Volume 1 and just passed the part where he met you at a DC con (where you mentioned you picked one of his first stories out of the slush pile and helped get it published) and then enjoyed going to your Hugo losers parties. Pretty funny. I hadn’t realized your connection to Martin goes that far back. Rob
A Time of Changes is Anthem, only it’s better written and it makes sense.
Yes, I was the first person George met at his very first SF convention, as I was running the registration desk that day at that particular Disclave, so the first SF fan he ever met recognized him as being a writer and approved of his work–a foreshadowing of things to come!
Gardner @26, shouldn’t there be a diorama of that scene in a museum somewhere?
TNH: As a diorama it would make a great display for a worldcon, you know, to go with those pictures of fans and pros and sample Hugos. Somebody should make one. Some crafty person with art supplies.
When you paint it, remember that I was skinny in those days, not fat. (Neither was George.) I also had long hair–of an “eerie, voluminous sort,” Silverberg once said–that grew down past my ass.
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Andromeda Strain
* “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” (recording)
* The Name of the Game: “LA 2017” (screenplay by Philip Wylie; directed by Steven Spielberg)
* THX 1138
Okay, a winner I don’t hate. But they’re clearly having a hard time scraping up enough nominees.
–Well, all of these are better than SILENT RUNNING…or STAR WARS (even if THE NAME OF THE GAME episode and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN only a bit)…or MOON. But I am a Firesign fan.
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Andromeda Strain
* “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” (recording)
* The Name of the Game: “LA 2017” (screenplay by Philip Wylie; directed by Steven Spielberg)
* THX 1138
Okay, a winner I don’t hate. But they’re clearly having a hard time scraping up enough nominees.
–Well, all of these are better than SILENT RUNNING…or STAR WARS (even if THE NAME OF THE GAME episode and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN only a bit)…or MOON. But I am a Firesign fan.
You have to remember that Silverberg wrote four award worthy titles that year A Time of Changes, The World Inside, Son of Man (Ectaban – I think that is the third novel you mean for Silverberg in this year, not Book of Skulls) and The Second Trip which was serialized in Amazing but not published yet in book form – all of which were wonderful. Also, he hadn’t received an award for best Novel so his time had come. I loved The Lathe of Heaven, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Devil Is Dead and Half Past Human, as well. Great year as far as I am concerned. Haven’t read The Devil is Dead or Half Past Human since that time but the others hold up to re-reading extremely well.
I actually remember that Name of the Game episode, a little. Gene Barry, the editor, falls into a coma in a car accident and awakes in the future. Details now become hazy; but there is one scene that stuck in my head: He is taken to a club where “they play your kind of music.” Behold: there is a geriatric rock band still playing 60/70 rock to an audience of blue-haired women and wrinkled geezers, some of whom IIRC are trying to dance the funky monkey or some such thing. Hah. Who knew the Rolling Stones would last so long?
I recollect that the denoument was “He woke up and it was only a dream.” But I think there was the possibility allowed that the future-folk had sent him back to the moment of the accident.
I suspect one reason that Blish’s AND ALL THE STARS A STAGE didn’t get nominated for anything is that this 1971 first book publication had originally appeared eleven years earlier as a serial in AMAZING and was thus rather stale stuff by the time it limped into book form. I read the serial version back in 1960 and vaguely recall it as fairly good but not of award level anyway.
Yes, I too enjoyed that Name of the Game episode, there’s a short clip on YouTube.