Review - Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea

Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
by Ursula Le Guin
1990 Nebula Winner for Best Novel

I've mentioned tribute awards in the past where the voters select a famous name over the quality of the work. I hope to god that's the case here since if someone voted for Tehanu on its "merits" they need a refresher course in... well... pretty much everything. This book goes with They'd Rather Be Right and Hominids as one of the worst I've read and it has a particularly abhorrent philosophy behind it.

Tenar was the girl who started as a priestess of dark gods and escaped from the second book in the original Earthsea trilogy but after escaping that fate she married the first farmer who made a pass at her and became a housewife. Now her husband is dead, her children are all gone, and she lives alone on the farm that due to laws of inheritance belongs to her missing son. One night a badly burned gypsy girl is brought to her and as Tenar nurses the girl back to health she adopts the girl. Together they go to tend to the archmage of the island in his death where Tenar manages to make enemies of several people because she is a woman. Ged after expending his magic to close off life from death has returned to his homeland a broken man. Meanwhile the people who burned the girl and then turned her over to get healed come back to kill her because she's a girl. People turn up looking for advice but don't listen to Tenar because she's a woman.

I did not make any of that up. In fact, you can apply that sentence to pretty much everything I relate bout Tehanu in this review.

Besides being a terrible book this is an offensive book. It comes from the heart of the most militant feminist creeds that all men are evil rapists just waiting for their opportunity to destroy the purity of women who are inherently good unless corrupted by those vile men. I'll consider it nicely ironic that just yesterday I reviewed "Even the Queen" which was also a very feminist story but was infinitely better than Tehanu: Tehanu is the adolescent rantings of someone unable to put together a coherent thought for the sake of being confrontational while "Even the Queen" deflated that attitude and simultaneously built up feminism.

There is not a man in the novel who is not out to keep women down. That's not an exaggeration; at best men are patronizing but it's far more common for them to active work to harm women just because they're women. That isn't conjecture or a deconstructionist reading; Le Guin comes out and says that this is the reason that her villains are out to harm anything female. The characters discuss how all men hate and fear women while spouting modern feminist ideology.

At this point let me stop and say that it a challenge to not add "Really." after each sentence.

And that's why the philosophy of Tehanu is so terrible: it is one of hatred. Not men hating women but a thin justification of "It's okay for women to hate men because they did it first!" It's an attitude that forms the foundation of the novel and its disgusting enough that I never want to touch anything by Le Guin again. This is the Le Guin I mentioned in other reviews when I said that her writings had put me off but Tehanu actually is the worst I've ever encountered her at.

Enough philosophical objections, let's get back to the novel itself. It stinks. The plot is a mish mash of events with no strong arc. People walk off stage and come back with their problems resolved or moved on to the next stage. There is no development or changes, things just happen. Things that appear to be developing plots just vanish without warning and in one case vanishes for a hundred pages only to reappear to give the semblance of a "climax". Le Guin's prose was at best workmanlike and completely lacked the poetry that she demonstrated twenty years before.

There is nothing in this book to make me recommend it and plenty to make me say, "Pretend it doesn't exist and hope it goes away." I enjoyed the first three Earthsea books but this one is not just a post-modern departure from those themes (something which could have worked) but an angry screed. If I wanted to read poorly thought out ranting I have an Internet connection.

Review - The Falling Woman

The Falling Woman
by Pat Murphy
1987 Nebula Winner for Best Novel

Starting in 1987 the Nebula award for a period of four years went to women and three of their novels dealt with distinctly feminist themes. It was odd reading through this period and seeing the contrast between how each author handled the same themes. In fact if I was going to single out a period of the Nebulas to examine it would start here and run through Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea for three reasons:

First, the four winners represent a paradigm shift in the SFWA. While female authors had been rising to prominence in science fiction throughout the 1970's only three Nebulas for novels had gone to women before this point. After this things are close to evenly distributed.

Second, because there is overlap in themes it is an interesting study in post-feminist writing. The days of the shocking feminist theme are ten years gone at the point that The Falling Woman won and each author wound up in a very different place. One effectively ignored gender issues, one built the transitions into the story, one was still trapped in the anger of revolution, and one looked to the results of it.

Third, the despite the similar themes these are four very different books in structure, content, and quality. In order we have a dark fantasy, space opera, Vietnam war story with a light fantasy overlay, and a more traditional genre fantasy. That may sound like a lot of fantasy but each of them is unique.

So let's get started with The Falling Woman. An archeologist who has visions of the past is digging in Mayan ruins. Her estranged daughter comes to the dig to try to reconnect with her mother while recovering from traumatic changes in her personal life. The Mayan priestess who was the cause of the Mayans to abandon their cities and is the only vision of the past able to communicate with the archeologist warns that ancient evil forces are starting to stir as the Mayan calendar begins to turn to a new age. The priestess demands a return to the old ways but the cost for that may be high.

The plot itself isn't particularly great but Murphy's characters are the book's strength. The archeologist has recovered from a ruined life mainly by fleeing her family and her daughter's return throws that recovery in risk. Her husband had not been physically abusive but drove her to a mental breakdown. Her daughter's life is dominated by abandonment and that continues after she arrives in the jungles of Mexico. Neither of them are presented in a completely positive light; while the archeologist may have been a victim she has also victimized others with some of her behavior. They have friends and lovers with equally textured lives. Consequently the supernatural aspects of The Falling Woman feel buried beneath the human drama that is the real point of the novel.

That brings us to the real theme of the novel: the women in the book are all victims but they turn that on other people and being hurt didn't excuse them hurting others. It is not strictly men tearing down women in the book. The men also provide genuine support (as opposed to simply "rescuing" the women) and in one situation a couple mutually take advantage of each other. The past features powerless women being overwhelmed by men but things have changed by the point the novel starts and the relationships between the genders have become equal.

The fulcrum of a reader's reaction to this novel is how much they appreciate how Murphy handles her characters. The fantasy elements while intersped throughout the novel are secondary to the story of a daughter who is lost attempting to connect with a mother who has never been a mother. Unlike the previous two novels I reviewed those elements are well written and they are not dressed in sloppy writing. For this reason I'd recommend reading The Falling Woman even though it wouldn't go on my list of best science fiction and fantasy novels.

I Had Great Taste for an Elementary School Student

Last night I reread A Wizard of Earthsea so that when I reached Tehanu in my reading list I won't stall on it. The last time I read it I was in the first grade and though I forgot the title and never did look at the sequels (I think they were available at that point but I'm not sure) it had a huge impact on me. Twenty years later when someone mentioned the plot of the book it occurred to me that was what I had read, but by that point I had no tolerance for weak, generic fantasy novels so I didn't bother going back. Besides 95% of what we love as children isn't very good; there's no reason to go back and spoil those memories.

So I didn't have very high expectations when I picked up the book again and I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. Sure it's been copied more times than I can count at this point and the structure of the novel is more than a little choppy but on the whole it's a strong book. I certainly enjoy the "young man learning to be a wizard" plot more with it than with the Harry Potter series; there was more character growth and world building about magic in three chapters than there was in seven books of Harry Potter.

So obviously I had fine tastes in literature as child. I certainly didn't pick up the book because I had just read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia and Le Guin's novel had "Wizard" in the title.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Review - "The Persistence of Vision", "Hunter's Moon", and "Casandra"

Vincent DiFate
1979 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

"The Persistence of Vision"
by John Varley
1979 Hugo Winner for Best Novella
1978 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

While hitchhiking and walking cross country a man comes across a unique community of blind/deaf people and is so taken by their lifestyle he lives among them for a while. They have built a community and culture based on intimacy. Their lack of senses seems to put them in touch with something else beyond what normal men can sense.

Varley creates an interesting insular culture built around taking advantage of the remaining senses. There isn't a lot of story here (the transformation of the man who encountered the community is rather choppily handled) but the community presented is fascinating. I would recommend "The Persistence of Vision" as a pretty good except I have a problem with Varley.

I have read exactly three things by Varley and all three have prominently featured adults having sex with children and these have been presented as positive relationships. In "The Persistence of Vision" it's a thirteen year old girl throwing herself at a forty-seven year old man (which also annoys me with "sexually open culture means young, hot women throw themselves at repressed older men" theme that also is so common). Once is an odd quirk of a strange culture, twice is kind of weird, and at three times I'm suspecting that I'm seeing the author's fetishes on display. I've seen a lot of fetishes dropped into books by authors and typically it ranges from annoying to creepy. Sometimes going from one to the other like Heinlein's spanking obsession. Varley's starts out creepy and just gets worse and it has put me off ever wanting to read anything by him again.

"Hunter's Moon"
by Poul Anderson
1979 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette

Anderson returns to the awards once more with this story that feels like a weaker version of his previously winning "The Sharing of Flesh". On an alien planet human anthropologists are attempting to understand why two sentient alien species are at war. One group, a flighty collective of poets and dreamers, is being preyed upon by feral stone age hunters who think that the fliers are responsible for their low birth rates. Two of the anthropologists use a weak form of telepathy to understand the two species and in their empathy with them gain insight into their strained marriage.

If this story was any more heavy handed it would have to be made from neutronium. It starts with pages of clumsy exposition and then follows that up with some particularly ham-handed parallels. And the whole this is extremely predictable; I could tell you where the story was going from page three. Top that off with one of the most bland couples as the protagonists and this is a story to avoid.

"Cassandra"
by C. J. Cherryh
1979 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

A young woman sees the world overlaid with images of death and destruction. She lives each day seeing death in the faces of those around her until one day she finds someone who appears normal. Cherryh's take on precognition is interesting and I found the story enjoyable even though I knew where it was headed (the story's title is a bit of a clue). She captures the complications in dealing with those visions wel. This is a concept that I think I would have enjoyed seeing expanded on in a longer work but the tiny image she paints with it is worth reading.

Review - Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrell

Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
by Suzanna Clarke
2005 Hugo Winner for Best Novel

No time for a post today. Here's an article from the April 7, 1835 edition of the Morning Chronicle of London to hold you over.

MR. CLARKE'S NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MAGIC A DELIGHT

Much has been made of the new story by one Mr. S. Clarke forming a fictionalized account of the revival of magic in this modern era. The follows of Mr. Norrell have sent many angry missives to the papers and literary journals decrying the depiction of their patron igniting a fresh conflagration in their debates with the followers of Mr. Strange. This reporter found the work to be a delight; in turns an enjoyable flight of whimsy, a dramatic magical conflict between great forces, and a chilling moral tale of the dangers in tampering with such strange forces.

I need hardly recount to any of you, fair readers, how magic had faded from Britain for centuries leaving only historians to pass themselves off as magicians. The discovery of a true magician in Mr. Norrell was a pleasure and the accounts of his services to the crown as well as his adventures in society were the talk of London. And of course when his pupil Mr. Strange was discovered the wonders the two of them created before being drawn into conflict were astounding. Mr. Clarke's novel tells all of this and perhaps most scandalous he depicts Mr. Norrell as one who would in desperation traffic with spirits, a claim that has been vigorously attacked.

Most curiously the novel is written in a particularly modern style that might turn off readers casual readers more adapted to classical works but any student of current nineteenth century English literature such as myself will find it delightful. In fact our young Mr. Dickens is quite taken by the style of the work and has stated that he will endeavor to mimic it henceforth. As the work was serialized first in a weekly paper it shows signs of drifting from chapter to chapter in no particular hurry. Consequently the book is particularly lengthy; some readers may find themselves exhausted with the effort of reading it though many may find themselves exhausted simply by the effort of carrying it.

Perhaps the most perturbing aspect of the novel is that it ends abruptly shortly after the events in Italy. While perhaps Mr. Clarke is reserving the more recent terrible events that have surrounded magic for a second volume this reader was left desiring the narrative to continue.

Mr. Clarke has performed an exceptional task in building a composite image of the first two magicians of the modern era and while some may comment upon certain aspects of Mr. Norrell's depiction it can hardly be disputed that the personality of both great men is captured within the pages. The paths that lead each of them to their distinctive forms of magic are clearly laid out so that the reader can accompany them as the art changes them.

This also leads to the most controversial portion of the novel in which the methods of the two magicians are contrasted and how they lead the two of them into conflict. Every schoolchild knows the results of that confrontation but rarely has the reasons for it been so clearly put to page.

The magical history has become a popular staple of booksellers, but I find that it is often clumsily done with characters out of place and too many things made simple for the characters by use of magic. Mr. Clarke makes it clear that magic while potent is not all powerful and as a result it increases the tension of the story while simultaneously evading the common solution of a new magic fixing complicate problems with no effort that other authors use. In addition Mr. Clarke's modern style gives his work a distinctive feel so while other authors writing of true magic resort to similar weak techniques Mr. Clarke is blazing a new trail.

All in all S. Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is the ideal book for the reader interested in the details of modern magic but not wanting to reach one of the many dry histories that have been published in the past ten years. Perhaps most notably it has gained attention even outside of the magical enthusiasts as a superb novel. You should read it henceforth.

Review - Paladin of Souls

Paladin of Souls
by Lois McMaster Bujold
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Novel
2004 Nebula Winner for Best Novel

Yet another Hugo award for my archenemy Bujold and once more I am forced to concede that it is actually pretty go... hey, wait a second. This one isn't particularly good at all!

Paladin of Souls is the first novel to win a Hugo from the epic fantasy genre. Usually found clustered in three book series it has become the cash cow of sf/fantasy in the past few decades. I can't stand them myself despite having read quite a bit of it when I was younger. It has reached the point where I will not read a fantasy book if it features industrious dwarves, nature loving elves, or evil orcs. Borrowing characterization and world building from someone else is not the path to creating quality fiction.

Bujold doesn't follow the standard pattern of these books by not cribbing Tolkien-esque races, but she does fall deeply into the other major trap that annoys me about epic fantasy. Her cultures are essentially modern day European with the trappings of medieval Europe. In these novels the heroes are the ones who are most like modern day progressive thinkers while anyone who actually behaves like they're living in an feudal society is at best the patronizing foil if not an out and out villain. It's the a similar problem to the one I had with Hominids: modern day western culture cannot be transplanted to an non-industrial agrarian society. The problems become even more pronounced when fantasy elements that should completely transform society are introduced but the author sticks to their Renaissance festival culture.

Paladin of Souls is the second in Bujold's Chalion series (I actually disliked the previous book The Curse of Chalion even more). This time the middle aged dowager queen who was a minor character in the first book decides to flee her life and go on a pilgrimage. On the way she meets a spunky peasant girl who defies society's conventions and faces a demon before getting captured by an enemy nation. She is rescued by an unstoppable knight who takes her back to his castle which is holding the border on the eve of a war. There she finds a mystery involving his brother who is hovering on the brink of death twenty-three hours a day.

Bujold's writing is up to its usual breezy standards but the story she's telling just isn't that interesting. It's another light adventure novel from Bujold but at this point her formula is wearing thin. You could almost copy and paste some of the characters straight from her Vorkosigan books. I wasn't interested in the characters and it doesn't help that there's quite a bit of literal deus ex machinas occurring (in fairness to Bujold some of the divine interference is set up). The result was that I just couldn't care about the book.

My reaction wasn't as violent as it could have been, but that doesn't make me like the book. There's other popular fantasy authors who have the same problems and can't string a sentence together like Bujold. Still in the end I can't recommend Paladin of Souls; I just didn't enjoy it. It's a standard generic fantasy novel just like hundreds of other ones.

Review - American Gods

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
2002 Hugo Winner for Best Novel
2002 Nebula Winner for Best Novel

If there's three things that Neil Gaiman likes in his stories it's reworking old myths and legends, divine beings dealing with modern times, and the nature of stories. He keeps coming back to them over and over again and for his first original full length novel he hit all of them.

Shadow is released from prison just in time to attend his wife's funeral. On the trip home he meets a mysterious Mr. Wednesday who wishes to hire him to accompany Wednesday on a trip around America. On this trip Wednesday attempts to recruit various gods of old pantheons for a final showdown against the embodiments of what modern Americans revere (technology, the media, and so on). Conspiracies abound as Shadow works with Wednesday to locate these old gods and convince them to join the battle.

Gaiman attempts to build to some mystery and suspense around the characters though if you've read any of his major writings in the past or have a general knowledge of mythology then the plot becomes pretty transparent. One character is even given a name that is phonetically identical to his mythological name but is printed differently as part of this deception; an annoying intrusion of prose into the novel's reality.

On that prose I do enjoy Gaiman's style quite a bit. He portrays the mythical in a matter-of-fact way that is being imitated quite a bit with less success by other authors of the magical realist style. Gaiman's unexplained little touches are typically well rooted in real-world lore and at the same time fit smoothly into the narrative so when he throws out a passing mention of a minor detail of a religious practice it feels natural in the text rather than just the author showing off.

The novel falls into a pattern of Shadow goes somewhere and meets a mythological being dealing with modern life. They chat for a bit about their history and then Shadow goes on to the next one. Occasionally it is broken up with Shadow running into a quirky character in a small town. If you've ever seen a road trip movie all of it will seem very familiar to you except this time there's mythology thrown in.

And that's the biggest problem with American Gods: it's been done. Strip the mythology and it's a not very special road trip book. With the mythological themes, Gaiman's already done it in his first major work Sandman. It makes the whole thing rather predictable.

However, if you're not really familiar with those themes then American Gods can seem to be an impressive book. It is the only Hugo winner that my mother has read and she didn't even hear about the book from me. My mother approves of the book, and really do you need a better endorsement than that?

Review - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by J. K. Rowling
2001 Hugo Winner for Best Novel

Here it is, the single most controversial Hugo winner. Every other award left some people happy and others disappointed; this time it left a lot of people angry. I've seen it cited as why the Hugos aren't relevant and why the voting procedure needs to change. Many people seem upset because "It's not science fiction!" (the Hugos never were just for science fiction but this is the first novel winner with no science fiction elements) and "Rowling doesn't care about the award!" (another requirement I was unaware of). I've read some seriously told conspiracy theories for how it managed to wind up on top. In short, a lot of people didn't like that the most popular book of that year overall was also selected as the most popular science fiction or fantasy book by the Worldcon voters.

I'm standing apart from that; my feeling is that the voters select what the voters want. 2001 had the real boom in Potter-mania and the other nominees that year were not very strong. So the fact that an extremely popular children's fantasy book won the award doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that it is a terrible extremely popular children's fantasy book.

If I had encountered the Harry Potter series when I was ten I'm sure I would have loved it. Rowling has built the kind of sense of wonder that always catches the eye. I suspect that if I had read it as a child I would have similarly grown out of it as my tastes changed as they have with Star Wars. Even considering that my tastes in mind candy lean toward the pulpish. I'm not ten so I found Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire to be a poorly conceived, misshapen, overgrown tumor of a novel.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire our titular young wizard returns to the Hogwarts School of Wizardry for a fourth year of learning and mayhem. This time around his plot which coincidently has events falling neatly into the school year involve him being entered into a deadly wizardry tournament.

Let me step back a bit to Harry Potter and the (Your Edition Title Here) Stone. When I read it I thought it was a fine juvenile novel with some flaws but nothing that really got under my skin. Chamber of Secrets had those flaws again but a bit larger, and Prisoner of Azkaban has them even larger still. By that point it was clear that Rowling had some problems with her writing that needed to be addressed or the series would keep slumping downhill until the end. Needless to say they were not addressed in Goblet of Fire. Instead they were magnified by the scale of book.

The first major problem is that Rowling is terrible at world building. "There's a society of magic users hiding among us," is a good place to start but all the details that support that premise are half-constructed messes that leave more questions than answers. Hogwarts teaches young wizards magic but not basic skills like English or math. Even though the real reason why is that those subjects are too mundane to include in Rowling's fantasy it still leaves a big hole in the world.

Magic has completely arbitrary limits and uses in Rowling's world; it appears to run mainly on author fiat. This would be annoying enough but it builds with a bloated mass of excuses as Rowling feels it necessary to justify why every random thing she's ever thrown onto the page won't work to overcome the new obstacle.

On top of that Harry Potter appears to be incredibly dense about the workings of the world. During the first year he could be bewildered and lost, during the second he might still be stumbling, but at this point after living three full years plus the time in the novel he still has to ask questions about basic things that he should have encountered at least some mention of off page such as when he was reading the wizard newspapers. Instead he has to ask his exposition spouting friend about everything for the benefit of the readers.

That's just a quick sampling of the problems, really taking them apart would require digging into the details but it comes down to that nothing fits together quite right leaving a critical reader bewildered.

Beyond that there are my problems with Rowling's writing. The most common problem in the series is with Harry himself. He quite literally has everything handed to him in this novel. Every single challenge he faces is fixed by deus ex machina, someone comes along and hands Harry the answer to his problem. Rowling attempts to explain some of this away at the end of the Goblet of Fire but fails to notice that this still left Harry as completely and totally ineffective in the book and doesn't handle any of the other deus ex machinas she regularly throws in.

And then there is the bloat.

Here's a fun experiment for you. Locate all the works of a very popular author. This works better if its an author who isn't particularly good but is still popular. Now set them so the spines face outward like they're on a bookshelf (if you have them on a shelf already even better) and arrange the books in the order of their publication. Note how the books get fatter and fatter and if you were to read them you would find those fat books didn't really contain a lot more story than the thins ones, they were just bloated up with pointless rambling. I call this "Too Big For an Editor" syndrome, a disease that strikes popular writers and the symptoms include believing that every word they put down on the page is priceless and must be included. Attempting have the author streamline things for the sake of improving the storytelling would cause more problems for the editor than the author. J. K. Rowling is not the first sufferer of this disease which attacks dozens of writers and millions of readers annually but she could be its poster child.

Goblet of Fire starts with a hundred and fifty pages of a pointless trip that could have been completely cut with barely anything lost. The few plot elements that actually matter (as opposed to the ones that get hit on over and over again as the book continues) could have been worked into the story another way with hardly any effort. It's poor story telling that is especially noticeable in Goblet of Fire because this inflamed appendix of writing is so large and appears immediately.

I know this review is looking bloated but I'm still not done with my problems with Harry Potter because I haven't even touched on the simplistic morality and characters Rowling has populated the novel with. Anything that Harry does and is not immediately admonished for is "right" and "justified", if you belong to the wrong group of people (somewhat arbitrarily selected by a talking hat) then you are evil and always wrong. While kind of narrow morality is acceptable in a children's book I have to judge it as an adult reader.

I could go on for a bit longer but there's no need to. The Harry Potter series were never great works but Goblet of Fire is the point where the series completely breaks down in my view. The weight of Rowling's flaws crush the book like an elephant and an ant. I wouldn't recommend it, but then you've probably read it already.

Review - Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 Hugo Winner for Best Dramatic Presentation

When I decided to also go through the dramatic presentation Hugos I knew I would have to deal with this. Let me just run through a few facts about Raiders of the Lost Ark:

• At the time of its release it became the third highest grossing film of all time behind only it's director's Jaws and it's producer's Star Wars. It's still in the top fifty money makers over twenty-five years later.
• On the IMDB it's listed at the 17th best movie of all time marking its continued popularity.
• On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 95% fresh rating demonstrating it's massive critical success.

In short, it's one of the most successful, popular, and well regarded films of all time. It doesn't even have same kind of people who eventually got turned off to it like Star Wars has. I strongly question if there's an American on the Internet who has not seen Raiders.

I suppose I could whine about how weak the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull looks or complain how Temple of Doom lacks the punch and Last Crusade feels too much like a rehash but who wants that?

So a synopsis... Indiana Jones is a field archaeologist who appears to not do an awful lot of archeology. Instead he spends his time collecting treasures from ancient temples with highly improbably but cool looking death traps, getting into bar fights with Nazis on Mount Everest, smashing priceless artifacts to escape a pit full of cobras, riding on the outside of trucks and submarines, and generally causing entertaining mayhem. He does this to keep the Ark of the Covenant away from Hitler who thinks it would look just spiffy next to his Spear of Destiny. It's structured like an adventure serial but with a significantly higher budget.

Okay, it wouldn't have been my choice for the Hugo award winner that year. As an adventure movie the fantasy elements were downplayed and saved for the very end making it a weak genre entry despite its qualities as a film (yeah, I know it's an arbitrary distinction). 1982 also had the underrated Time Bandits and the fine retelling of Arthurian legend Excalibur on the ballot but popularity triumphed.

So if you're the one person who might stumble across this and have not seen Raiders of the Lost Ark drop what you're doing and see it now. It has God going Old Testament on Nazis in it!

Review - "The Girl Who Was Plugged In", "The Deathbird", and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

Frank Kelly Freas
1974 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

Freas continues to be voted in over and over again as the best professional artist (he owns the seventies much in the way certain other artists will own the award during their decade), but you'll note that there isn't a magazine or book cover this time. That year Freas designed the Skylab mission patch.

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In"
by James Tiptree, Jr.
1974 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

A biography of "Tiptree" won the Hugo award for best related non-fiction this year so I'm not going to go into the author's unique history at the moment. Let's just say that in a field filled with unique, quirky personalities (and Harlan Ellison) Tiptree's story is one of the most interesting. I'll talk about that when I get to the biography.

The story is about a very ugly girl who is given the chance to join upper-class society. But rather than a Pygmalion style transformation she controls a perfect woman as a puppet, living the high life through separate eyes. The reason for this opportunity is that in a future where advertising is banned companies promote their products by creating celebrities and having them use the product. The plugged in girl becomes more and more absorbed into the life of her doll until as the doll she finds true love in someone who doesn't realize the body is a doll. Needless to say, complications ensue.

The story uses the style of a storyteller relating a romance to the twentieth century reader and I don't think it was completely successful but it did work to gloss over any technical details which weren't really necessary for this very human story. You can't help but be drawn in as the title character descends into a peculiar kind of schizophrenia. I could not recommend this story highly enough.

"The Deathbird"
by Harlan Ellison
1974 Hugo Award for Best Novelette

This, on the other hand, is a complete failure. The Devil, who the limited information in the story tells us really isn't that bad, wakes up the last man on earth to go confront God, who the limited information in the story tells us is insane. This could have been good but the justification for it is built on anti-religion rants like you'd see from first year college freshmen rebelling against their parents; they rely on sophism and have no grounding in theology or logic. So man confronts God for no good reason on the prompting of the Devil who does it for no good reason and God does something nebulous and unspecified for no good reason and nothing really happens. The whole thing as a result is very unsatisfying.

It doesn't help that Ellison is very deeply into his all-style, zero-substance period. "The Deathbird" is peppered with asides and essays and quiz style questions that struggle to build a point of religion being bad but fail when logic is applied to them (and this is coming from an atheist; I can only imagine what someone with some really detailed knowledge of theology would think). If I want to be preached at ineffectively I'll go to a church.

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
by Ursala K. Le Guin
1974 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

Finally this... um... well... it's not really a story. It's more of an essay or a screed. There's a perfectly happy city where they live in decadence and it's all good except for one kid who they torture because the story says they have to in order to keep their happiness. It's an old philosophical question, what is the value of the happiness of one innocent? Le Guin just drops it there and leaves it sitting. The story is all description: no real characters, no plot, just the city and then the kid and that's it. It's not even told particularly well. Take a philosophy course and skip this one.

Review - "The Word for World is Forest", "Goat Song", "Eurema's Dam", and "The Meeting"

Frank Kelly Freas
1973 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

"The Word for World is Forest"
by Ursala Le Guin
1973 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

You might recall when I reviewed The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness how surprised I was when I read them. My experience with Le Guin had not been good before that. "The Word for World is Forest" is a perfect example of what I encountered before.

If it was any more shrill only dogs could hear it. If it was any more preachy it would have to be delivered by the Pope. It reads like the deranged rantings of an extremist political blogger (feel free to pick your least favorite side for that).

In the first three pages we find that our major human viewpoint character is part of an imperialist colonization group along the lines of Europeans in Africa in the nineteenth century, an agricultural administrator who is unaware of basic principles of agriculture that have been understood since at least the sixteenth century, slave owning, racist, sexist, rapist, murderer, hunts animals to the point of extinction for sport, and has (and this really is a quote) "a final solution" for dealing with the sentient natives of the planet that is being colonized. I would have loved to have called Godwin's law on the story right then but it proceeds to go on for another hundred pages. The caricature of the human beings is so great that Le Guin often sends contradictory messages throwing out bits that would be offensive to twentieth century readers and eventually contradicting those bits of characterization later. While this view point character is the worst of the worst almost all of the humans on the planet condone if not outright share his viewpoints.

The sole exception is, of course, the anthropologist who has studies the wise, caring, perfect natives who lived in a pastoral eden until the humans showed up and clear cut an area the size of Los Angeles that for some reason has "destroyed" a homogeneous environment the size the United States (this joke intentionally left blank). The natives are abused for years until there is finally an uprising where they put those evil humans in their place.

I wish I could say that I exaggerated any of this for comic effect but if anything I've understated my case. There's no complexity or depth to the situation, just humans so ludicrously over the top with evil they might as well twirl their handlebar mustaches against cute aliens so perfect they might as well have halos. The closest Le Guin comes to adding texture is that by being so evil humanity has infected the friendly aliens with evil.

Le Guin tears into the extremities of 19th century style imperialism like it was a daring statement and pats herself on the back for it. She does so with no style, with no redeeming features at all in this story. It is one of the worst I've ever read and the fact that it goes on and on just makes it worse. I'd say to avoid it but it makes a fine object lesson in how to not make a political statement using fiction.

"Goat Song"
by Poul Anderson
1973 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette
1972 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

Once a year the Dark Queen walks abroad in the land and any man who dares to approach her may petitioner her for their heart's desire. A harpist who has lost his true love confronts her and asks for her life to be restored and the Dark Queen takes him to her castle in the Underworld where he pleads with the king of the dead to return her.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

In 1972 Anderson won a Hugo for "The Queen of Air and Darkness" where he took some classic ideas and reworked them very well into a science fiction setting. Perhaps he decided that what worked once might work again because "Goat Song" is very similar and in its own way its even more effective.

Stylistically "Goat Song" is much better than Anderson's previous work. On the other hand I liked the idea that the fairies were archetypes that could be repeated and play off the human mind. "Goat Song" is a more direct retelling of Orpheus so I think the purpose of the story is not as firm. Regardless of that "Goat Song" is a superb story and I would definitely recommend reading it.

"Eurema's Dam"
by R. A. Lafferty
Tied 1973 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

This story takes the comedic point of view that the competent and skilled people make their way in the world as it exists while the incompetent have to make adjustments for their failings. For example, they may need to change pictographs for phonetic characters because they can't learn to read the hundreds of pictures.

One boy is particularly incompetent and needs to do things like make a hand held device that can turn his scrawl into perfect handwriting. He does the best he can but he needs to keep creating things to help him get by. It's a cute story and turning intelligence on its head as the premise is rather unique so I would recommend it.

"The Meeting"
by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
Tied 1973 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

The parent of a disturbed child (who would probably be referred to as "autistic" if the story was written today) attends a PTA meeting at the special school he has enrolled his child into. The meeting and discussions with the other parents help him make a very difficult decision.

That's a brief description but this is a brief story about a very bad situation. The science fiction elements don't even enter into it until the very end of the story but I think that it works. Pohl (his co-author Kornbluth died twenty years before this story was published so I suspect the bulk of the effort is Pohl's) tells a fine, very down to Earth and human story. It's sentimental without being overwhelmed by it. "The Meeting" is another fine story well worth your time.

Review - "The Queen of Air and Darkness" and "Inconsistent Moon"

Frank Kelly Freas
1972 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

I don't own a lot of the old science fiction magazines. By the time I started reading science fiction the days of the magazines had passed, but this is one of the very few that I actually do own. My copy is in much worse shape than this one but it's a lovely tribute cover.

"The Queen of Air and Darkness"
by Poul Anderson
1972 Hugo Winner for Best Novella
1971 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

And here's the man of the hour with a great entry into his monumental pile of Hugo awards (my theory is that Anderson was actually a model rocket enthusiast who simply collected the awards for the attached rockets) and it has a great premise: Sherlock Holmes in the future fighting Celtic fairies. Oh it's not really "Sherlock Holmes", as noted in the story the character emulated the analytical detective archetype. And they're not really fairies but aliens who have hit on the use of those archetypes.

On a trip into the wilderness of an untamed world a researcher's child vanishes without a trace. Local legends tell of spirits that abduct infants and raise them in a magical world of their own. The local authorities refuse to look into the disappearance writing it off as an accident so the grieving mother hires a detective. The detective has a theory about all of the disappearances and it leads them to a confrontation with the Queen of the fairies.

This is a spectacularly good Anderson story particularly with regard to the characters. All of them, human and other, are richly portrayed despite being archetypes. Perhaps that's why it all works so well because the story is about a clash of archetypes. I would have enjoyed the investigation being a bit more fleshed out but that would have entailed expanding the story to a novel. All in all a very enjoyable story.

"Inconsistent Moon"
by Larry Niven
1972 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

Late one evening the moon suddenly changes to become hundreds of times brighter than it was before and a few people up at that hour realize the implications of it. Since the moon's light is reflected it means that the sun has suddenly become so bright that it would have burned away the other side of the world and they have hours to live.

I enjoyed the story which focused almost entirely on two characters and hinges on the fact that each of them know just enough science to recognize the problem. It's not really about the science but instead is about what to do when there's only a few hours left until the end of the world. Niven's characters aren't as interesting as they could be (especially in comparison to Anderson's winner) but there is just enough there to hang the concept on. I liked it but this one was much more marginal.

Review - Dangerous Visions

Dangerous Visions
Edited by Harlan Ellison
1968 Special Hugo Award

I mentioned in my Neuromancer review that the book was a revolution that touched almost all corners of science fiction. It wasn't the first, though. Star Wars, for example, has had a profound influence on what people expect from science fiction. But even before then there was another revolution, one so successful that most readers don't even know it occurred.

For a long time the magazine editors were essentially the gatekeepers of science fiction. If this tiny handful of people didn't care for a work then it never saw print and their tastes were firmly set on certain styles (typically a very pulpy 1930 style). It was difficult for many stories to find a place because of this. In the mid-sixties the tastes of the current audience were changing and what authors were writing was changing but those editors were not. Harlan Ellison, one of those authors who was having problems with these editors, decided to put together an anthology of stories too "dangerous" to see print. He told authors to send him their most extreme material and he assembled this massive book containing thirty-three stories from thirty-two different authors that laid out new styles and touched subjects that were being avoided.

It was wildly successful. More than just being a hit with readers the real impact was behind the scenes where those gatekeepers realized that people did want more and so started accepting works that were more like what Ellison had encouraged. Science fiction would never be the same.

I think it is fair to say that if Ellison hadn't set down this manifesto the changes in style would have seeped into the genre through other methods. All of the new wave writers were pushing the existing boundaries and that erosion would have won out eventually. What Dangerous Visions did was mark a moment in time where we can say before it the editors were more restrictive on what they would accept and after it they realized how much more science fiction fans wanted.

So it was very important but the question then becomes was it any good. Some of the stories are, some aren't, and many of the stories are trying too hard to be "dangerous" and read like adolescent ranting. There's not a single story in the volume that I would still consider dangerous, the restrictions are gone and the shock value is lost.

Most of the stories are very short. Two stories that run over forty pages push the average up to around ten pages, but the mean is closer to four. Ellison's introductions are often close to the length of the story itself. Those introductions and the author's afterwords range from fascinating portraits of the authors involved to dull self-aggrandizement. Phillip K. Dick's is especially depressing as Ellison comments that Dick's heavy drug use has not impaired him like it has some others.

So let me hit the stories in one sentence comments. For simplicity's sake I'm going to flag the ones I enjoyed in a BOLD GREEN while ones I did not in a BOLD RED:

"Evensong" by Lester del Rey - A dull religious allegory that wastes its time by trying to conceal the very obvious plot twist.

"Flies" by Robert Silverburg - A creepy and brutal tale of a man given great power by aliens and how it changes him.

"The Day After the Day the Martians Came" by Frederik Pohl - The reactions of some people to a new race are cleverly examined.

"Riders of the Purple Wage" by Phillip José Farmer - The Hugo winning story which I didn't like; a weak Joyce pastiche where the style for a hundred pages gives me a headache despite the interesting ideas.

"The Malley System" by Miriam Allen deFord - This story about punishing psychopaths by giving them exactly what they want starts with some strong imagery but the resolution is less subtle than a hot pink elephant in a library.

"A Toy for Juliette" by Robert Bloch - A time traveling serial killer picks up the wrong guy from 1889 London in this cute story which succeeds despite the fact that even Bloch has gone to this source repeatedly.

"The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" by Harlan Ellison - This is a sequel to the previous story that takes it in another direction as the prowler stalks a civilization as cruel as himself.

"The Night that All Time Broke Out" by Brian W. Aldiss - A fun gag story about a problem with a system that let's people really live in their past.

"The Man Who Went to the Moon - Twice" by Howard Rodman - The most out of place story in the anthology, this charming fable of tale telling is very enjoyable.

"Faith of Our Fathers" by Phillip K. Dick - This story is what you'd get if H. P. Lovecraft wrote espionage stories in a hallucinogenic haze.

"The Jigsaw Man" by Larry Niven - Organ transplant banks lead to new opinions on the application of capital punishment in this implausible but fun story.

"Gonna Roll Them Bones" by Fritz Leiber - Another Hugo winning story but this tale of a very high stakes dice game is much better than the other winner.

"Lord Randy, My Son" by Joe L. Hensley - A dying man's son is the next messiah in this flat story.

"Eutopia" by Poul Anderson - A man from an alternate world where Alexander the Great's empire never failed gets in trouble for violating sexual taboos which winds up being duller than it sounds.

"Incident in Moderan" by David R. Bunch - It's a one-note story but it does that one-note, a misinterpretation of a brief truce in a war, very well.

"The Escaping" by David R. Brunch - "The Ox-Bow Incident" on LSD which removes the coherence of the original.

"The Doll-House" by James Cross - I didn't care for this tale of a man who gets access to a Greek oracle which had good moments but the resolution was rather trite.

"Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" by Carol Emshwiller - The awkward point-of-view harms this story of a person trying to determine the gender of her neighbor.

"Shall the Dust Praise Thee" by Damon Knight - I'll give Knight points for style in this telling of a Biblical Armageddon but the whole thing just comes across as just an angry rant.

"If All Men are Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister" by Theodore Sturgeon - Removal of all sexual taboos is the key to making everyone healthy and happy in this tale. (And on that subject, why is in the stories about how free love will fix everything that it's only free love of multiple hot women throwing themselves at the uptight men? I've read that theme about a dozen times and it just keeps getting creepier ever time.)

"What Happened to Auguste Clarot?" by Larry Eisenburg - I think this story about the disappearance of a famous chemist is supposed to be humorous but I didn't find it funny at all.

"Ersatz" by Henry Slesar - This gag story about people making substitutions in times of need on the other hand put a smile on my face.

"Go, Go, Go Said the Bird" by Sonya Dorman - Cannibalism is the focus of this disturbing tale.

"The Happy Breed" by John T. Sladek - It's predictable that a utopia where everyone is kept perfectly comfortable is also one no one is allowed any risk but it is told very well.

"Encounter With a Hick" by Jonathan Brand - Yet another joke story; this time I liked the joke about a theologian's encounter with the son of a world builder but didn't care for the style of the telling.

"From the Government Printing Office" by Kris Neville - The unique point of view of a three year old child makes this story about raising better children very interesting.

"Land of the Great Horses" by R. A. Lafferty - A mysterious land appears to give home to wanderers but despite the clever premise the story just feels half told.

"The Recognition" by J. G. Ballard - An twisted circus comes to town and the results are very predictable and it takes far too long to build up to its point.

"Judas" by John Brunner - The creator of an android that has established itself as God returns to shut it down with some very clumsy Christian iconography.

"Test to Destruction" by Keith Laumer - A revolutionary fights aliens on the battlefield of his mind to demonstrate the limits of humanity in this story which just wasn't that interesting.

"Carcinoma Angels" by Norman Spinrad - The build up of a man who can accomplish nearly anything is entertaining but the story descends into a drug trip for the second half and I just stopped caring.

"Auto-Da-Fé" by Roger Zelazny - This simple story of an autodor (think matador but with living cars) is wonderfully told.

"Aye, and Gamorrah..." by Samuel R. Delany - The sexual practices of the sexless is the focus of the final story in book and the exploration of those connections is very interesting.

One final bit of bragging about this. I purchased my copy from a used book dealer for just a few dollars and when I received it I found that someone had scribbled on one of the first pages. On closer examination I saw that the beginning looked like an "H". Yes, I got an autographed, hard cover edition of this key work for less than five dollars. Some days you just get lucky.

Review - "Ill Met in Lankhmar" and "Slow Sculpture"

Leo and Diane Dillon
1971 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

"Ill Met in Lankhmar"
by Fritz Leiber
1971 Hugo Winner for Best Novella
1970 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

Two highly skilled thieves ambush the same jewel thieves at the same time and strike up a friendship. One a former barbarian, the other a former wizard's apprentice: together they cause crime.

By far Leiber's greatest success were the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Though he had written them for decades it wasn't until 1970 when a revived interest in swords and sorcery fantasy that he told readers how this dynamic duo met.

Leiber wrote quite a few new stories about this pairing in the late sixties and seventies but this was the best of them. They make interesting anti-heroes and Leiber paints a vivid image of Lankhmar. His prose does tend toward the clumsy side (in one rather memorable moment after introducing themselves the Mouser asks Fafhrd how to pronounce his name), but there's a lot of fun to be had in this story. It's among the best the sword and sorcery genre have to offer.

"Slow Sculpture"
by Theodore Sturgeon
1971 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story
1970 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

The premise of "Slow Sculpture" is simple: a woman suffering from breast cancer meets a genius who has a cure for cancer which he refuses to provide to the world. This genius has many creations that could improve humanity but he hates people. The story is about their interaction and what it does to both of them.

This is a cynical story even if Sturgeon tries to redeem it at the end and its cynicism is built on the worst assumptions of conspiracy theorists: "they" want to keep down things that would help people because they "don't like alternative medicine" or "wouldn't make money on it". I see that kind of reasoning all the time from people who don't understand the scientific method or economics. That reasoning ignores the fact that there are simple double blind lab tests to demonstrate the cure conclusively regardless of what source it comes from. Any automobile manufacturer who did introduce a super-efficient car would dominate the industry in a manner not seen since Henry Ford. If the character who created these advances was presented as not being particularly stable then I might have been willing to accept this but Sturgeon goes through great lengths to tell us over and over again how brilliant this man is in all fields and since that's the primary driving point of the story it makes the whole thing fall apart for me.

I also didn't care for the several pages of technobabble that accompanied the cancer cure. It was complete nonsense and it served to pull me out of the story when just saying it was doing something would have been effective.

Since the story was built on such a flawed premise I couldn't enjoy it at all. Sturgeon does tell his story competently enough but requiring me to accept that businesses would choose "being evil" over "making large piles of money" just doesn't work.

Reviews - "Weyr Search", "Riders of the Purple Wage", "Gonna Roll the Bones", and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"

Jack Gaughan
1968 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

I'm taking a break from the magazine covers for an interior illustration. This one is from Fred Saberhagen's "Brother Assassin" and features a Foucault stand-in noticing his pendulum while a time traveling murder cyborg from the future which is in disguise (no relation to the Terminator) hunts him down.

"Weyr Search"
by Anne McCaffrey
Tied for 1968 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

The entire Pern series came from this humble origin but I won't hold that against this story which managed to be fairly entertaining. It's not a particularly deep story and while nominally science fiction the tropes owe a lot more to fantasy series than science fiction.

Centuries ago the dragonriders saved Pern from an invasion of a plague from another star system and maintained an early warning system against it. Now their power has waned but its close to the time when the plague will come again. Their queen is dying though and they are on a desperate search among people who no longer respect them for a woman who can rule them. They may find them in the crumbling ruins of one of the few castles who still supported them but was conquered and all of their heirs murdered.

I found all of the characters completely unpleasent in "Weyr Search" but at the same time they were at least interesting. There's the woman (who obviously is the object of their search) who plots murderous revenge for a decade, just the kind of stable personality you want ruling a group of warriors with superior firepower, and is rather casual about the brutal deaths of people around her. The leader of the search is determined to impose a new rule by the dragonriders. They're only looking for nobles; if you're not of the ruling class then you're clearly beneath them. Though they are the protagonists and the villain is set up as so much of a caricature that you have to root for them.

But at the same time they're lively, they pursue their goals ruthlessly, and are interesting to read about. The result is that "Weyr Search" is an entertaining story to read even if it doesn't amount to much. I'm not fond of where the series went or it's acres of imitators the original is enjoyable.

"Riders of the Purple Wage"
by Philip José Farmer
Tied for 1968 Hugo Winner for Best Novella

This on the other hand was painful. Very painful.

The story is pretentious, overwritten and most of it is a set up for a very bad pun. In fact there's a lot of very bad puns in the stream-of-consciousness rambling that comprises most of "Riders of the Purple Wage" something that Farmer attempts to justify by essentially saying other, better writers used them. Of course those other, better writers didn't ram the puns down their readers throats over and over again and create a nearly sixty page, unreadable mess as a set up for a bad pun.

I cannot describe just how horrible the prose in this short story is. Most of it is a very bad James Joyce pastiche and since I don't care for Joyce to begin with someone doing a bad copy of him just makes it worse. It shifts tone and style randomly and it is built around being as pretentious as possible which just makes it worse.

The story is about a young artist who is having a showing that will determine if his family can stay in their home, where his grandfather has been hiding from the police for thirty years, or if they will have to leave the country. In this future everyone gets welfare from the government and nearly everything is provided for them. Those who cannot get by on the welfare check are sent to other countries. The artist is be pressured to have sex with a critic in exchange for a good review.

I'd like to give Farmer the benefit of the doubt and say that his pretentious style was chosen because of his theme but even if he did it still makes it a very unpleasant story to read. If the prose is unreadable then the effect no matter how well intentioned has failed.

"Gonna Roll the Bones"
by Fritz Leiber
1968 Hugo Winner for Best Novelette
1967 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

Even more than "Weyr Search" this feels like Leiber slapped some very loose science fiction references onto a perfectly good fantasy story in order to sell it. He occasionally mentions spacecraft or travelers from other worlds but it doesn't come into the story at all.

Instead it is about an unpleasant man who leaves his wife behind at home one night to gamble and get drunk. He finds a new gambling den open with some very high rollers and he is determined to use his skill in perfectly throwing dice to win a large sum from them. This gambling den is not a normal place and his game is for higher stakes than he first thinks.

Though this is a pretty traditional style of story it is done very well. I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more if I knew how to play craps which is the center of the story but I could follow enough to enjoy it.

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
by Harlan Ellison
1968 Hugo Winner for Best Short Story

What if an omnipotent god was a being of so much hatred that it makes the stuff portrayed in the Old Testament look like a mild scolding? It's the disturbing premise of Ellison's story which tells of five people trapped by a computer which has gained omnipotence. The computer tortures them in some of the most horrifically graphic ways you can imagine. These people live with no hope and no peace. The characters are distorted to the point of inhumanity but you can still sympathize with them due to the nature of their tortures.

Ellison's prose brings this scenario to life and though the story is very short it will haunt you and it can be very unsettling to read. It is still a great story specifically for that.

Reviews - Michael Whelan's Works of Wonder, The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art, and Science Fiction of the 20th Century

So do those books have long titles or what?

The related non-fiction Hugo winning books tends to fall into a handful of narrow categories. There's the encyclopedias (two of which I've already touched on), there are the biographies (Isaac Asimov could be a category unto himself), and then there are the art books.

I am not an art critic. I can't even pretend to play one on television. The best I can do is look at something and say, "I like that." So take any judgments on the art with that grain of salt. Instead I'm going to be concentrating on the presentation of the art in these three books. So let's get started.

Michael Whelan's Works of Wonder
by Michael Whelan
1988 Hugo Winner for Best Related Non-Fiction Book

I'm not a fan of Whelan's work though he is one of those artists that the Hugo voters latched onto for a decade and selected over and over again for the best professional artist. I find much of his work to be too stiff and lifeless, like manikins instead of people are staring out into the vague middle distance from his covers. I have seen works by him that I liked but they are almost all a decade into the future at the point that this collection was published.

So for me the art was a bust but if you like Whelan the package is superb. Each work is given a two page spread. On the right is a large reproduction of the original painting while the left page has the final book cover, preliminary sketches, and a short text piece by Whelan about the painting. The downside of this format is that there's only about thirty of Whelan's paintings in the book and he was far more prolific than that. Large chunks are taken up by demonstrating each painting for a particular series like his covers for all of the then published Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality series.

I would have liked to have seen more works and a more diverse selection in this book but the layout did work to give you everything you could want on the paintings included. If you love Whelan there are more recent books of his art that you may prefer but I don't think you'd be unhappy with this.

The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective
by John Grant, Elizabeth Humphrey, and Pamela D. Scoville
2004 Hugo Winner for Best Related Non-Fiction Book

On the far side of the spectrum this collection of the winners of the Chesley Awards features works from over fifty artists. Their work covers the full range of fantastic images from high fantasy to horror which means that there's something in it for every taste.

The book is broken up into years with large pictures of the winners for each category and a multipage spread of the major works of the winner of the Artistic Achievement award. Occasionally there is a very brief comment from the artist on the work. The awards for specific works are given a minimum of a quarter of page with most of them being larger. In the retrospective sections the images are occasionally smaller but it features a fine selection.

My biggest problem is that the Chesley award selection seems rather similar to the Hugo selection for best professional artists: they tend to pick the same people for the major awards over and over again. I'm not completely familiar with the fantasy art scene but I suspect that it should be large enough that the same four or five people should not dominate awards for decades. Even the achievement awards are given to the same people repeatedly.

Also it bothered me that in some years all of the winners were not included. Too often there was a tiny box that told me who two or three of the winners not depicted were. If this book is intended to cover all of the winners, as it appears to, then not being complete is flaw.

Still if you just want a book featuring a wide variety of high quality fantasy art then you can do worse than this.

Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History
by Frank M. Robinson
2000 Hugo Winner for Best Related Book

There's something that cover image doesn't convey. This book is a monster. This is the book that makes the OED say, "Blimey, 'e's 'uge!" I've had cars smaller than this book. Paperbacks fall into orbit around it. In short, it's big.

To be honest I wasn't expecting an art book. The entry in my list for the collection was simply "Science Fiction of the 20th Century". And the impression I had when I ordered it was that the book was just a history book.

Well the history portion of it stinks. Three quarters of it is dedicated to different magazines where most of what was written about them were different editorial changes. Magazines are obviously a big part of the history but half way through the century they got rolled under by the rise of the mass market book publishers. The result is that the "history" feels like it has huge gaps. It's also dry and sterile. There's only one personal anecdote in the entire text, only three or four anecdotes told second hand that reveal anything, and the rest is just bland.

On the other hand it is packed with over 400 images of just about every major and minor science fiction magazine ever published. Even a few of the major fanzines get a bit of coverage. There is a bit of context given with each picture. It does have a focus on first and historically important issues but sometimes the issue described in the text isn't shown. A common bit is telling us how awful the first issue of a short lived magazine was and showing us that cover and then going on to say that the covers for the other two issues are great without providing them.

In order to pack in that many images there are few full page images and often a cover might be printed relatively small. This is a case where the size of the book helps, though, since relatively small still means a few inches and the text is clearly visible.

As a history book Science Fiction of the 20th Century is terrible but it is an impressive overview of magazines, major book covers, and movie posters. The selection of magazine covers is particularly good and if you are interested in them then it makes a fine coffee table book.

Review - The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen
by Joan D. Vinge
1981 Hugo Winner for Best Novel

I have to confess that I have not read Hans Christian Anderson's original story "The Snow Queen". Vinge took the framework of Anderson's story, placed some science fiction trappings around it, and this was the result. Unfortunately I am not able to compare it to the original work but Vinge's version was entertaining.

At some point thousands of years in the future there is a planet which is the only place in the known universe where an immortality drug can be made. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful this system's access to the rest of the universe alternates between open and closed every few centuries. When this change occurs the climate of the planet changes and by tradition the barbaric tribes take over. When the gate is open the planet is ruled by the immortal Snow Queen who rules a decadent city of technology.

The current Snow Queen knows her time is short and when the gate closes she'll be sacrificed and replaced with the Summer Queen but she has a plan to continue her line. She creates clone embryos of herself and has them implanted into woman from the barbarian tribes who come into her city of a festival. She then plans on locating the child raising it to be a new version of her, and then will take her life to become the new Summer Queen.

Only one of the clones survive and before she is located this clone is allowed into an order of witches forbidden in the Queen's city. Her childhood friend travels to the city to make his fortune and falls under the Queen's spell to become her right hand man and lover. Naturally things build to a confrontation between everyone.

That is a very abridged summary and the story is even more complicated than that. There's plots, counterplots, manipulative outside forces working to limit an omniscient force, and even a quick trip with some time dilation to throw things off. The Snow Queen is a very busy novel but at the same time I never felt lost reading it. Vinge juggles the many plot threads well and builds a spectacular tapestry from them.

I have one very major problem with this book. Let's say that there is a large group of people who are omniscient. They can answer any question put to them accurately though they find it exhausting to do so. That's any question from "What did I have for dinner 428 days ago?" to "How do I build a spacecraft?" It's common knowledge that they have this ability. So do you:

a) Spy on the neighbors.
b) Using some trial and error as well as writing everything down gain basic knowledge and improve the quality of life for everyone.
c) Use them to gain military intelligence.
d) Call them witches and make them complete outcasts.

Vinge goes with option "d" and the whole book and multiple plot points hinge on this. Despite the fact that these people have been around for thousands of years. Despite the fact that anyone who takes advantage of their omniscience would gain such an advantage over someone who didn't that people trying to repress them would be crushed instantly. It's my least favorite plot element: entire planets worth of people have to be idiots for thousands of years in order for the story to work.

This could have easily sunk the whole book for me but Vinge pulled off a miracle with the characters. The Snow Queen is overstuffed with some very rich, fascinating characters. All of the antagonists are given very human perspectives which make them all fascinating. The only problem that I have with the characters is that the main character is a little too willing to forgive attempted genocide.

Vinge's prose is also vivid and brings the setting to life. The decadent city that the Snow Queen rules is very distinctive and it makes the setting for the majority of the book. You can feel the weight of years and people clinging onto the ruins of the past living there.

So the plot hole gave me a huge headache but the rest of the package for The Snow Queen was exceptionally good. For that reason I'd recommend it; the story is very enjoyable and it left me wanting to know what happened to these characters next.

Quite a few of the books I've gotten for my Hugo winner collection have book plates, the most popular being that Boris Vallejo one that every teenage boy who liked fantasy used for a period in the 80's. My copy of The Snow Queen has the most terrifying of them all:


I've removed the name to protect the guilty but looking up that name I found an alternative musician that fits the right age and location for the used book store that I got the book from. Should this person ever hit it big I have the blackmail material handy.

Review - Hothouse

Ed Emshwiller
1962 Hugo Winner for Best Professional Artist

Hothouse
by Brian Aldiss
196 Hugo Winner for Best Short Fiction (kinda)

So what would an early Hugo be without controversy, confusion, and a sketchy publishing history.

In 1962 the short fiction award went to "the Hothouse series": a set of five linked novellas that formed one complete novel. You'll note that in 1961 the novel award went to A Canticle For Liebowitz which was a set of three linked novellas. This is something that never is repeated again. All short fiction awards from then on go to specific stories but in 1962 there was essentially a second winner for best novel.

Only the Hothouse series isn't really available as a novel. Rather than being converted to some extended fix ups for publication in books they were actually abridged for publication as The Long Afternoon of Earth. All five novellas were published in their entirety in the UK but in the US they have only been collected a handful of times by specialty publishers for limited runs.

So you'll have to jump through some real hoops to read the complete thing. The leather bound edition that I have is the cheapest copy that I could find which should tell you something about it. The question then becomes is it worth it?

Hothouse descibes a far distant future where the earth has become tidally locked with the sun so it does not rotate any longer. Plant life has overrun the hemisphere that faces the sun and the continents are covered by one large banyan tree. Life has evolved to be incredibly aggressive and the plants have become mobile carnivores. Only a handful of animal species survive and the descendants of humanity are the weakest of these eking out a cautious existence in the branches of the tree.

To call the book "not scientifically accurate" is a small understatement. On the other hand the book is about a journey that consumes the lifetime of one of these people. He becomes hag-ridden by a fungus with plans for planetary conquest, encounters strange monsters, travels to the underworld, and witnesses the strange transition of life itself. In short, the book reads a lot more like a distinctive fantasy novel than science fiction. Unfortunately Aldiss spends a lot of time on the unsupportable science aspect of things but when he's not the fantastic atmosphere of Hothouse is conveyed very well.

I have to admit that I didn't find many of the characters likable but I did find them interesting. They're primitive and Aldiss doesn't fall into the trap of presenting them as modern people. This does make them hard to connect with. On the other hand the constant tension and peril (there's a lot of sudden, brutal deaths to characters as you read) pulls the story along well. Even the fungal version of Sauron is interesting in how he drives the humans toward his goals.

Aldiss does at one point have the travelers find the remains of our present day civilization and this is the section that I had the most trouble with. It's two billion years in the future. Continents don't last two billion years but somehow a building and a power source does.

For me Hothouse was worth it. It is a very interesting book though if I wasn't making a point of trying to collect everything that's won a Hugo award then I wouldn't have wanted to pay as much as I did for my copy (thirty-five dollars; I got lucky in finding it so cheap). If you can find Hothouse then go for it but I can't say anything about the abridged version The Long Afternoon of Earth.