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A new publisher brings a new titling scheme, and aren't you excited?
The Nebula awards for 1982. Science fiction starts to feel modern.
The introduction is by Robert Silverberg, who takes the "brief overview of the awards and the Science Fiction Writers of America organization" approach. Nothing to speak of, really.
"Souls," by Joanna Russ. Russ used to win these things all the time. This is a novella, and it didn't win, but it is included. It's about an abess who tries to protect her medieval abbey against some marauding Vikings. She is not terribly successful. At the end it turns out she is an alien and her spaceship comes to take her away.
The story itself did not strike me as being nearly so haphazard in its ending as that summary might make it seem, but I notice that in the very useful Turkey City Lexicon, a collection of standard tropes and structures and statements found in science fiction, one of the common plots is named "Abess Phone Home," and is described as a mainstream story that is sold as SF because of a tacked on ending with aliens, or UFOs, or time travel, or what have you. I am not so sure this is a bad thing, but keep in mind who collected this list, and when.
Best Novel: "No Enemy But Time," by Michael Bishop. The first chapter is included in this anthology. Apparently the novel, which I have never read, is about a man who goes back in time to Pleistocene era Africa for research purposes. This chapter involves him training with a native of the area in the modern day, and a ritual circumcision. I was not particularly left wanting to know more. Though I'm not sure reading just the first chapter of a book is a fair way to judge it.
"The Pope of the Chimps," by Robert Silverberg. Chimpanzees get religion. Researchers observe. This is the second story about chimpanzee research I've come across in a Nebula collection. This one doesn't involve any fancy genetic manipulation, though. Just a few generations of teaching sign language. I used to live about one hundred yards from a relatively well known chimpanzee behavioral research lab facility place. This one, as a matter of fact. I never visited it, though, because I am incredibly hidebound. I found myself in at least one moderately heated discussion when I expressed skepticism about the claims their work generated. Political beliefs associated with said research tend to be a bit more wishy-washy (TECHNICAL TERM) than I am comfortable with. Still, uh, these chimps get religion, and it is pretty interesting.
"Burning Chrome," by William Gibson. Published two years before Neuromancer. This appears to be set before the events of the novel, or maybe sometime during the earliest chapters. It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I think the Russian black ops program featured here is the same as in the book. Anyway, pure cyberpunk, before it burned itself out or was outweirded by the real world. Gibson writes well enough to stand toe to toe with any "mainstream" prose stylist I can think of. Recommended.
Best Novellete: "Fire Watch," by Connie Willis. Willis has maybe won more Nebula awards than any other SF author. Despite her superstardom in this regard, I've never read anything by her before. This is a story about a history major from sometime in the mid-21st century is sent back in time for his undergraduate thesis to observe St. Paul's Cathedral in London during the Blitz. He gets caught up events, but this turns out not to be the bad thing he thought it might. A good story, and without knowing what else was nominated this year I can't say it didn't deserve to win, though it did not blow me away. Willis won two awards this year.
"Corridors," by Barry N. Malzberg. I'm not familiar with Malzberg, but I hear that he is an author who is not comfortable with genre distinctions as they currently stand, or stood, at any rate. This is a story about a science fiction author, rather than a science fiction story itself, technically speaking. Bitter. Not suggested if you are hoping for a bright career in science fiction and are easily dissuaded from your goals. Though the author presented in the story is doing pretty well, if you disregard the surrender of any artistic virtue along with any other goal beyond mere professional survival.
Best Novella: "Another Orphan," by John Kessel. Stock trader Patrick Fallon wakes up one day on a whaling ship whose name, he learns much to his regret, is Pequod. A sort of metafictional take on Moby Dick, this story. Not bad. It helps that I enjoyed Moby Dick, I think.
Best Short Story: "A Letter from the Clearys," by Connie Willis. A slight tale about a girl and her family after an apocalypse of uncertain nature. (It turns out to have been a nuclear war sparked by a terrorist act. This isn't particularly important to the story.) Mostly it's about this girl and her dog. Personally, I like the story after it more, but then, I would.
"Swarm," by Bruce Sterling. Sterling's first novel came out when he was 23. This was 26 years ago. I'm 23. My first novel refuses to write itself. I'm beginning to think that it's a terrible irony that reading is so easier than writing. Anyway, "Swarm" is set in Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist universe, where competing ideological factions wage a cold war of sorts in the solar system. In this story, a Shaper agent is dispatched to study (and hopefully exploit) an exceedingly alien race.
quote: "You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness," Swarm said. "As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait."
"Burning Chrome," is a great story, but it is very much connected to its era. Absolutely nobody is impressed by deeds done with a computer anymore. But the Shaper/Mechanist stories, which eventually culminated in the novel Schismatrix, read absolutely fresh today.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well Gidson's comment that his novels would be considered "quaint" in a couple of years certainly applies to the "Burning Chrome" story and the rest of "The Sprawl" books and stories.
All his ideas were gleefully strip-mined by other authors since the early eighties, creating science fiction role-playing games like "Cyberpunk 2020" and "Shadowrun", inspiring Japanese anime and manga, William Shatner's Tek War novels, television movies, and series, shlocky children's television like "VR Troopers", and even "The Matrix" triology.
What makes his stories even more surprising is that most of the early "Sprawl" stories were written using a mechanical typewriter. Gibson wrote that his first computer was an Apple IIe that he brought back to the store because he thought it was broken. "It made a sound like a farting toaster," he wrote.
Registered: Jun 2003
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