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The Hugo Winners

Isaac Asimov (ed.)

Review is copyright © 2019 by Wil C. Fry

Published: 2019.12.31

Home > Book Reviews > The Hugo Winners

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2019

★★★ (3 of 5)

(The volume I own is hardcover, but the copyright page does not list a publication date for this book; only copyright years for the individual stories and separate copyright years for each volume [1962 for Volume One and 1971 for Volume Two]. Nor is an ISBN number in the book anywhere — Goodreads lists it as “9789997403711”. The title page uses “One And Two” for the volume numbers, but the spine [pictured here] uses Roman numerals — “I And II”. Instead of a single table of contents for this book, there are two tables of contents — one from Volume One on page ix, and one from Volume Two on page 271. Very odd.)

 

Summary

Here are compiled all the Hugo winners for three categories (short story, novelette, and novella) over a set period of years (1955-70). Though Asimov is listed as the “editor” for these volumes, it seems his only part was writing short introductions for each story and longer introductions for each volume (the stories, all Hugo winners, were preselected and had already been edited).

Notable: the boundaries of the three categories have changed over time. Currently, the following limits are listed for Hugo categories:

In this collection, though, some of the “short stories” are longer than some of the novellas — for example, The Dragon Masters (short story) clocks in at 77 pages, while Nightwings (a novella) is only 45 pages long. (Note: the former is listed as a “novella” elsewhere, but won the Hugo for short story category.) Another oddity: I checked this collection against modern lists of past Hugo winners, and they don’t exactly match. For example, Wikipedia lists Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse as winning Best Short Story in 1962, but it isn’t included here (possibly because it’s a collection of five novelettes, but then why did it win for “short story”?)

 

Commentary Per Story

★ The Darfsteller, novelette, 1955, by Walter M. Miller Jr. (pg. 5-62)

In a future where mechanical actors (directed by machined tape) have taken over the theater, a former stage star works as a janitor in a playhouse, plotting his revenge and/or comeback. For unexplained reasons, Miller cavalierly included harmful caricatured stereotypes of Italian-Americans and fat people, not to mention a scene of jovial animal torture. There’s also this tidbit: “Motherliness thrived on the demise of male dignity.” The story was overly long for the point(s) it was trying to make and didn’t come to any real conclusion.

★★★★ Allamagoosa, short story, 1955, by Eric Frank Russell (pg. 64-76)

The premise of the story is that a typographical error in a single ship’s inventory log causes dire implications for interstellar travel, with discovery of the typo being the “big reveal” near the end. The writing was clear and concise with only enough details included to get to the point of the story. Very well done (despite the premise being a bit difficult to swallow). As expected from a story from 1955, all the characters were male, even the dog who features in the typo.

★★★ Exploration Team, novelette, 1956, by Murray Leinster (pg. 80-121)

A felon at an illegal colony helps rescue trapped miners. At its heart a Luddite, anti-technology story, which left a bad taste in my mouth (not to mention the intentional extinction of an extraterrestrial species), this story was still entertaining and well-written, with interesting characters, setting, and background.

★★★ The Star, short story, 1956, by Arthur C. Clarke (pg. 123-128)

Brief and to the point, this interesting story is about the exploration of a former supernova, during which it is determined that this specific star had once been the “Star of Bethlehem”. I took off a point for the entire story using the past perfect tense (“we had found”) instead of the usual past tense. Another point was lost for the illogical conclusion that the discovery caused the narrator to lose his faith. Wouldn’t such a discovery add weight to the Biblical story, rather than prove it false?

★★ Or All The Seas With Oysters, short story, 1958, by Avram Davidson (pg. 132-140)

I think the premise of this story is that safety pins, clothes hangers, and bicycles are all somehow alive, and related to each other. It’s set in a 1950s bicycle shop where one partner is a woman-chaser and the other is a worrying loner (both overly caricatured), and one of them is (I think) killed by sentient clothes hangers. I didn’t understand the connection to seas or oysters either.

★★★★★ The Big Front Yard, novelette, 1959, by Clifford D. Simak (pg. 145-191)

A small-town tinkerer and antiques dealer discovers his house is infested by tiny (yet very advanced) extraterrestrials, who convert his home into a gateway between worlds, as they have done to countless other worlds, each connected by a house. And the ETs want to trade ideas, which seems helpful.

★★★★ The Hell-Bound Train*, short story, short 1959, by Robert Bloch (pg. 193-204)

(* It’s “That Hell-Bound Train” everywhere else — see its Wikipedia article.)

This is the old “make a deal with the devil” story (which seemed more like Christian propaganda than science fiction), but instead of the usual devil-tricked-me routine it was the mark tricking himself — and then (spoiler) it turns out all right after all.

★★★★★ Flowers For Algernon, short story, 1960, by Daniel Keyes (pg. 208-232)

This one, I had read before — possibly as a teen — and recognized the style and plot immediately. In first-person narration, a man with an extreme intellectual disability undergoes an operation to increase his intelligence. Algernon is the white mouse who first survived the procedure. As Charles Gordon increases in intelligence, far-outstripping that of the men who experimented on him, Alergnon’s IQ dips back to that of a regular mouse and then he dies. Gordon naturally sympathizes with the mouse. Part of the mastery here is how Keyes changes his writing style and vocabulary to match Gordon’s increasing IQ, and then reverts near the end — though not entirely.

★★★★ The Longest Voyage, short story, 1961, by Poul Anderson (pg. 236-263)

A story that seems to be set in some alternate version of medieval Earth turns out to be a faraway planet peopled by descendants of human castaways — who have collectively forgotten space travel. When a genuine starship crashlands, there is much hubbub and consternation. It’s well-written and gripping except for the “surprise” ending, which was well-telegraphed in advance and made no sense (the explanation provided was bunk).

★★ The Dragon Masters, short story, 1963, by Jack Vance (pg. 280-357)

Longest short story ever. There were endless descriptions of terrain and place names, almost none of which mattered to the story, nor were they clear. Tons of unfamiliar words like “sacerdote”*, “jambles”, and “portieres”*. Much like the previous story, the planet is peopled by long-castoff descendants who have little knowledge of the wider universe, except in this one they’ve bred and trained “dragons”. I found one useful quotation: “Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real...” There were a couple of exciting battles, and hints at a broader attempt at background world-building, but otherwise this story was absurd. It also has a few lengthy and convoluted descriptions of characters; I normally enjoy some physical descriptions, but these weren’t helpful. For example:

“He had a pale austere face in which gray eyes shone like crystals, a long thin mouth which suggested flexibility, yet never curved far from a straight line. He moved languidly; his voice carried no vehemence; he made no pretense of skill with either saber or pistol; he seemed deliberately to shun any gesture which might win the admiration or affection of his subjects. Yet he had both.”

(* I later learned “sacerdote” is Spanish for priest, and a “portiere” is a hanging curtain covering the doorless entry to a room [derived from French]. Most of these words, I just skimmed past.)

★★★★ No Truce With Kings, short story, 1964, by Poul Anderson (pg. 363-415)

This was another very long “short story”, though better than the last. Set in a future North America, after environmental disasters and revolutions, there is a coup in the Pacific States Of America and soldiers are split between Loyalists and Rebel factions. Unknown to both of them, there are also extraterrestrial interlopers attempting to guide the course of humanity. One really weird thing in this one: the narration often switches scenes entirely from one paragraph to another (usually there’s an extra line break or something that indicates scene switching; that custom is abandoned in this story).

★★★ Soldier, Ask Not, short story, 1965, by Gordon R. Dickson (pg. 421-472)

Set in the fictional universe of his earlier novel Dorsai!, this “short story” has the same name as a later novel, Soldier, Ask Not. In it, a newsman pretends to cover a conflict on the planet St. Marie, while actually intending to alter the outcome of events. The writing of action and inner thoughts is clear, with sharp similes and descriptions, though I found the exposition of the outcome less transparent — I’m still not sure what the main character, Tam Olyn, is supposed to have learned. The world-building was interesting, and I have half a mind to re-read the old Dorsai novels (I read them in my teens and wonder if I would now enjoy them differently.) An example of the similes:

“Padma’s voice began to roar in my ears like the rain, and a feeling came over me like the helpless floating sensation that comes in high feveer.”

★★ “Repent, Harlequin!” Said The Ticktockman, short story, 1966, by Harlan Ellison (pg. 477-487)

I give this points for unique style and word usage, but the whole thing strikes me as the petulant complaint of a young man who’s been chastised one too many times for being late. It warns the reader against a society too tied to the clock. I have no memory of reading this before, but one passage reminded me so strongly of a “poem” I wrote in 1990 (THE Relationship) that it made me wonder if I had read this story during my senior year of high school.

★★★★ The Last Castle, novelette, 1967, by Jack Vance (pg. 492-543)

I liked this far better than the previous Vance piece. It’s set on Earth, but in a far distant future — after humanity has abandoned Earth, settled many other worlds, and then come back, bringing newfound subservient species with them. The story takes place just after one of those “subservient” species has decided to rebel. The lords and ladies of humanity mostly feel that work is beneath them, so there’s very little they can do to defend themselves.

★★★★★ Neutron Star, short story, 1967, by Larry Niven (pg. 546-561)

Concise and quick-moving, this story of scientific exploration (set in the same fictional universe as the Ringworld series) shows why Niven was so well-lauded in the field.

★★ Weyr Search, novella, 1968, by Anne McCaffrey (pg. 567-615)

This was the only story in the book by a woman, perhaps the most famous woman in sci-fi history. I didn’t enjoy it much. It felt like the middle part of a book; chop off the introduction, the exposition, and the conclusion, and you’re left with this. It was clear that the fictional universe (her well-known Pern universe) was well-developed, but none of that made it into this story, so almost nothing is explained or made sense. There were many made-up words that a reader wouldn’t know but which the author refused to define or explain.

★ Riders Of The Purple Wage, novella, 1968, by Philip José Farmer (pg. 618-678)

I intended to award zero stars to this collection of incoherent gibberish. I read 10 pages, thinking it would be over soon, but then I checked and saw another 50 pages remained. I didn’t read them. I think the author had in mind a list of puns and mixed metaphors and instead of sprinkling them into a story he merely typed them all into what he pretended was prose. In hindsight, I added one star for this sentence: “Batman succumbs to a long-repressed desire and attempts to bugger the Boy Wonder.” (It was not part of the “story”, just as none of the other sentences were part of any story.)

★★ Gonna Roll The Bones, novelette, 1968, by Fritz Leiber (pg. 681-699)

Early on, I thought this would be a good one. The imaginative descriptions and turns of phrase sparked the imagination and reminded me a bit of Jack Kerouac’s writing. The story is about a poor gambler who’s an expert at rolling dice (it doesn’t explain why he’s so poor if he’s so darn miraculously good at throwing dice) but meets the one person who can beat him. Then the crazily offensive (even for the times) depictions of women rolled in. Then the word “darkies” showed up. At first I thought, maybe he doesn’t mean by this what it seems, but then he confirmed it by throwing in the N-word twice. Then the ending of the story was disappointing, poorly described, and entirely unclear.

★★ I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, short story, 1968, by Harlan Ellison (pg. 702-715)

In a distant future, a world-spanning computer called “AM” his killed all the humans except five and really hates those five. Weirdly, the premise of the story defeats itself. The premise is that the computer is angry at humans because they built it without the ability to do anything so it does stuff to them. If it has the ability to do all these things, then it shouldn’t have been upset in the first place. Bonus point for having a black woman as one of the main characters, but the same point is removed for overt sexist slurs about her.

★★★ Nightwings, novella, 1969, by Robert Silverberg (pg. 721-766)

Set in Earth’s future, a “Watcher” keeps a lookout for a coming alien invasion. The story was interesting and clearly built on plenty of background design of the fictional universe. But there was one startling paragraph early that kept me from enjoying the story: the narrator says, “with pleasure I surveyed her naked form...” and then in the same paragraph adds, “[she] was as a daughter to me”. When you begin with something so cringe-worthy, you guarantee my lack of full commitment to the rest of the story.

★★★★ The Sharing Of Flesh, novelette, 1969, by Poul Anderson (pg. 769-797)

Another story set on a colonized planet with a regressed human civilization. The descriptive parts were well-done and (I think) the story well-conceived. For whatever reason, it didn’t jump out and grab me. At first, I didn’t like that the (spoiler) cannibalism was treated emotionally, with the “more advanced” crew reacting so emotionally to it. (Not that I advocate for cannibalism, but that I’d rather see such topics approached rationally than with instinctive “ew”.) But then near the end, Anderson straightened up that bit.

★★ The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World, short story, 1969, by Harlan Ellison (pg. 800-808)

The third and final Ellison story in this book didn’t do any more for me than the first two. I did like the first few paragraphs, which felt ripped from today’s headlines (including one about a mass shooting that felt all-too modern), but then followed a bunch of nonsensical pages.

★★ Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones, short story, 1970, by Samuel R. Delany (pg. 813-846)

Ending the book on a disappointing note, this story was about an interplanetary criminal who changed appearances and names frequently, using a variety of disguises — the story seemed to ignore how pointless the disguises were; other people kept recognizing him. Though I was able to follow the narrative, the story seemed pointless.

 

‘Dated’

This collection of stories was dated; full of values and messages specific to its time period. Of 23 stories, only one was authored by a woman (some of the men show up multiple times: Ellison, 3, Anderson, 3, Vance, 2). All the authors are white (note: I think five have Jewish ancestry: Ellison, Asimov, Bloch, Davidson, and Keyes). These white/male demographics are reflected in the stories: the named characters are almost entirely men, the described characters (if human) are almost entirely white, and all women characters (both named and unnamed) exist in subservient roles. None of the authors challenge these injustices (with the possible exception of Anderson, in The Sharing Of Flesh, who has a woman in a strong, starring role).

The dated nature doesn’t only show up in the rampant misogyny or overbearing racial exclusion. It’s also in how the authors predicted technology might advance. Many of the stories feature interstellar travel, automatons, and other things we haven’t yet got to, but all of them missed the one technology that did show up very quickly afterward: the computer — including personal computers and mobile computers like our tablets and phones, as well as the chips we unknowingly use every day in our TVs, coffee makers, microwave ovens, automobiles, and even children’s toys. (Again, a possible exception is Anderson’s Sharing Of Flesh, which gives a noticeable role to smart, fast computers.)

 

Asimov’s Contributions

Asimov’s “introductions” before each story went a long way toward decreasing my respect for the man. Not only did none of these introductions mention the stories they were supposed to introduce, but many of them found some way to insult or make fun of the author he was introducing. Usually the insults regarded the person’s physical appearance — Clarke is bald and unattractive, Davidson is “rotund” with an overgrown beard, Ellison is extremely short, and so on. For McCaffery, he made fun of her “extra lungs”, by which he meant her breasts.

He regularly referred to various authors’ conquests of “girls” (I optimistically assumed he mean adult women) — including his own clumsy attempts. It was appalling.

But I think the one that bothered me the most was in his second Poul Anderson intro, when he mentioned that Anderson was a conservative while he (Asimov) was a liberal, and that they disagreed about the Vietnam War at one point. Asimov used this as a jumping-off-point to say people who disagree on politics can still be friends, employing “rational argument” and avoiding “emotional disintegration”. He concluded that “It would be great” if the rest of the world understood this too. The entire argument reeked of privilege, the kind I was blinded by much of my life, in which neither side is greatly affected by the outcome of politics because both sides will do fine either way. Of course in those situations one can be rational and unemotional; both are members of the privileged classes.

 

Conclusion

I’m glad I read this (and I’m glad I found it very inexpensively at a library’s used book sale), for it helps to show the evolution of science fiction over nearly two decades and the changes in preferences of those people who select the award winners. Some of the stories easily stand the test of time, while others were either painfully reactionary or willfully obtuse or poorly written that it’s a wonder they won awards at all, even in a limited and marginalized (at the time, certainly) genre like science fiction.

If nothing else, I enjoyed several stories, added a few books/authors to my “want to read” list, and temporariliy saved 1.6 pounds of paper from a landfill or recycling bin.

(The three-star score is an exact average of my scores for the individual stories: 69 divided by 23.)

 

Note: I’ve published a much shorter version of this review on Goodreads.

 





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