1956 - THE STARS MY DESTINATION by Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man won the first Hugo, so reading this novel, usually considered his masterpiece, feels a bit like circling back to this blog's beginning. Many authors look up to Bester as the father of a darker branch of science fiction - his characters are morally ambiguous and his plots darker than his golden age forebearers', and he's sometimes seen as a sort of proto-cyberpunk figure as a result (Gibson's rather fond of him). This novel certainly brings the dark and morally ambiguous.

In the 25th century, humanity has colonized the solar system, and a war has broken out between the inner planets and the outer colonies. Also, people have learned to teleport across vast distances with the power of their minds. This "jaunting" can't cross space, but it has revolutionized human society and spawned a new puritanical sequestering of women as it's become much easier for amourous types to sneak around. Also, there are a few telepaths. And the heirs of corporations rule as a corrupt aristocracy. Oh yeah, and there's a primal substance that can cause cosmic explosions! Also, wacky space circus! So, yes, as with The Demolished Man, Bester piles on the science fiction concepts, and the novel seems more interested in rolling out ideas than giving us a linear plot. Before this blog, I'd read novels from the '40s and '50s before, but they were generally by Bradbury, Asimov and Heinlein...I'm beginning to sense that those three are rare Golden Age writers in their ability to remain focused and give the readers something approaching a traditional three act structure.

Loosely borrowing its plot from The Count of Monte Cristo the novel centers on Gullivar (Gully) Foyle, a soldier who spends a nerve-racking 167 days on a failing spaceship called the Nomad constantly on the verge of running out of oxygen. He is elated when a ship called the Vorga arrives, but then devastated when it leaves him stranded. He is then rescued by the "Scientific People," inhabitants of the Sargasso asteroid who have turned into a tribal people (my favorite creation in the book - I was sorry to see that they got so little attention). The Scientific People cover Gully's face with tattoos before he escapes and makes his way back to Earth, where he dedicates himself to destroying the Vorga. He attacks and rapes a telepathic teleportation instructor, attempts to assassinate the head of the corporation that owns the Vorga, Presteign of Presteign, runs afoul of a radioactive detective named Saul Dagenham, escapes from a darkened, underground anti-teleportation super-prison, disguises himself as a circus entertainer, and falls in love with Presteign's blind and callous daughter. Meanwhile, the war rages on, everyone looks for the cosmic McGuffin of PyrE, and the novel ends with a series of revelations and a psychedelic jaunt through time and space (that includes some innovative typographical games).

This novel is jam-packed, and, as with The Humanoids, this is both a strength and weakness. Many of these ideas are fascinating and writing the above actually endeared the novel to me more than reading it all. In execution, it can feel like a jumbled patchwork, and the characters get pushed aside in favor of weirdness. Gully himself is intriguing. I guess he's supposed to be twisted by his time on the Nomad, or by the other manipulations in his life, and that's supposed to explain his occasional bouts of violence. It's still hard to get over the rape in the first third of the novel. I guess it's brave for Bester to have his protagonist be so brutal - again, a testament to his noir roots - but Gully never gains the complexity or depth to justify the incident's inclusion. It feels like provocation for provocation's sake. Presteign, Dagenham and Gully's other nemeses feel like generic "men in suits" who speak in exposition. The women are especially atrocious. The whole identity of the victim of Gully's attack, telesender Robin Wednesbury, is wrapped up in her victimhood, Gully's cellmate Jisbella McQueen is an over-the-top femme fatale, and the main love interest in part naive waif/part femme fatale. I didn't care about any of them, probably Gully least of all, and reading the novel became a game waiting for the next wacky idea to keep my interest. At least I never had to wait too long.  

If I sound disappointed in this book (and I'm sure I do), it's very much a product of my expectations. It's easy to see why this is a classic, and, as with The Demolished Man or The Humanoids, I had a good time. But, as with those books, this novel did not seem to be capable of transcending its genre. It's pulpy goodness, but it's not classic literature, and it could be. It should be!

By the way, I believe this novel would have been eligible for the Hugos in 1957, the strange year when the Hugos couldn't be bothered to have a novel category. I'm pretty sure this would have been nominated, and it probably would have won, though I think I'd still favor Asimov's The Naked Sun.

Grade: B+

1949 – THE HUMANOIDS by Jack Williamson

In the 1943 story “With Folded Hands,” Jack Williamson first created the humanoids, sleek black robots whose “Prime Directive” is “to Serve and Obey, and guard men from harm” (it would’ve been great if this bit of gendered language had saved women from humanoid intervention, but that’s asking a lot from a 1940s story).  As the story unfolds, we see that the robots take their Directive a little too seriously, and they create a totalitarian state which carefully monitors everyone’s behavior and drugs or lobotomizes people who refuse to properly avoid potential harm. It’s a dark take on the trade-offs between security and freedom, and a relatively early take (maybe the first?) on what has become a well-worn technophobic trope. “With Folded Hands” may be Williamson’s signature work – it’s probably his most anthologized.

Rather than an expansion or reimagining of the novella, Williamson revisited the concept with a full-on novel-length sequel, The Humanoids, serialized in three parts in John Campbell’s Astounding in 1949. In the process he adds lots of new concepts and themes and comes up with a work that rapidly flits between ideas and never really finds a center.

We learn that the Humanoids were created over ten thousand years in the future, after humanity has spread across the stars and created scores of different planetary cultures (this background isn’t very apparent in the original story, though in both we do learn that the robots were created after a devastating war on the planet Wing IV). The planet Starmont is in a sort of cold war with the totalitarian Triplanet Powers. In his finest speculative moment, Williamson comments on the burgeoning Cold War by warning that “threatened with the inevitable fruit of its own exported know-how, the democratic republic was already sacrificing democracy as it armed itself desperately.” The technology in question is rhodomagnetics, which is like magnetism, but works on interstellar distances and allows Williamson to break Einsteinian laws of physics whenever necessary.

Our protagonist is Dr. Clay Forester*, the world’s foremost expert on rhodomagnetics. At the beginning of the novel, a group of powerful psychics, including a young girl who can teleport vast distances named Jane Carter, contact Forester and warn him that the humanoids are coming. Forester is skeptical of psychic phenomena and wary that these strangers know so much of his research. When the humanoids do land, Forester does little; they are around to help after all, and they promise to remove the threat of the Triplanet Alliance. Then, they begin forbidding science (which could be used to make weapons) and drugging people who are hostile or depressed, including Forester’s neglected wife. Forester’s only hope to defeat the humanoids is to turn to the team of psychics and attempt to unlock the powers within his own mind.

*Yes, for the entire novel I imagined him looking like this:

Yep, it’s psychics versus robots! And it gets weirder from there. I’m not sure if it’s just the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink nature of Golden Age sf (John Campbell’s fingerprints are all over this story – he was a big fan of “unleashing the psychic powers of the human mind” stories), or maybe it’s a case of a serialized story going off the tracks due to lack of planning, but this is a real mess. The pacing is bizarre, as Williamson zips by the key moments (like the humanoid takeover of Starmont society); characters disappear (the entire psychic team mostly fades away after an elaborate introduction – wherefore art thou, Graystone the Great?); and plotlines are foreshadowed without paying off (there are lots of hints about the mysterious origin of Forester’s friend Ironsmith, but he’s really just a robot-loving, wife-stealing jerk). The ending is also a bit of a mess – there’s some intentional ambiguity, but there also seems to be some confusion about the political message.

However, despite this messiness, I really enjoyed this book. It juggles interesting concepts and has some big sf set-piece moments. Overall, the book has a real “anything goes” Big Idea attitude that is both its greatest virtue and failure.

Grade: B+  

2002 Saturn SF – MINORITY REPORT

I rewatched this in a double feature with AI, Spielberg’s previous science fiction outing.  Both films disappointed me in the theater, and I’d avoided both ever since.  Despite these links, they’re actually very different films – almost mirror opposites.

Loosely based on a Philip K. Dick story, Minority Report follows the pre-crime unit, led by Tom Cruise (Cruise is not the kind of actor who disappears into a role, so his character’s name isn’t worth the time).  In 2054, a team of three pre-cognitives have visions of future murders which can be recorded and replayed by the police, who then have to figure out the crime’s location and rush to stop it.  This procedure has led to the end of homicides in the D.C. pilot program, but it is not without controversy, since it leads to people being convicted of crimes they don’t commit. When a Department of Justice representative (Colin Farrell) shows up to investigate, Cruise discovers some inconsistencies in a few of the precogs' visions.  Then, when he is himself accused of a future murder; he has to go on the run, and in the process of investigating the murder he is destined to commit, he puts himself into the position of fulfilling the prophesy.

It’s a very exciting film with fantastic effects.  There’s all sorts of fun near-future tech from Apple-influenced/influencing touch interfaces (RIP Steve Jobs) to vertical highways to jetpacks to eye-scanning spider robots.  The chase scenes are fast-paced and well-filmed.  And, there are some interesting questions about destiny and justice in play as well. A fun, fast-paced film with believable future tech and interesting speculative questions? I told you it was the anti-AI.

So, why did I have a problem with this film?  A lot of my issues concern the film’s conclusion, so I can’t really get into them without spoilers, but I will say that I wanted this film to be about the ethics of precrime and/or the question of causality.  However, a twist late in the film takes it in a different direction, and it becomes a more conventional mystery/thriller.  There are a few efforts made to return to the central themes, but they’re buried, I think, by efforts to give the film a simpler conclusion.

In the theater, this bothered me a lot.  It really ruined the whole film for me.  This time, perhaps because I knew it was coming, I wasn’t bothered nearly as much.  I was able to enjoy the ride, and have fun with one of the richest and most compelling future visuals since Blade Runner.

Grade: B+

2001 Nebula – THE QUANTUM ROSE by Catherine Asaro

I often try to explain my frame of mind going into a novel.  In  this case, between the Nebula awards’ consistent inconsistency, the fact that this is an entry in a sprawling space opera epic that I’ve never heard of, let alone read, and the harlequin romance cover and cover description…well, I wasn’t looking forward to this one.   But, it kind of surprised me. Emphasis on "kind of."

In Asaro’s Skolian Empire books, ancient humans, with some mysterious alien intervention, colonized large segments of the galaxy.  This empire was ruled over by genetically engineered psychics.  It eventually collapsed, and by the time Earth caught up to it, the whole thing was reeling in the midst of an interstellar war.

I’m sure that background is apparent in the other novels, but in The Quantum Rose we start on the backwards planet of Balumil, where no one is aware of any of this.  Kamoj is the beautiful young ruler of Argali, and she is betrothed to the cruel, older Jax Ironbridge.  However, the strange masked foreigner Vyrl Lionstar makes a better offer and wins her away (brides on Balumil are more or less bought by the highest bidder).  Kamoj is initially horrified, but she soon learns that Vyrl is not merely a rude foreigner, but a heroic exile from another planet.  His clashes with the local culture are misunderstandings, and he is kind, handsome, and wants to treat Kamoj as an equal.  He introduces Kamoj to technologies from computers to advanced medicine to spaceships.  He does have his own troubled background; he’s been caught up in a conflict with the Earth Alliance, and it’s left psychological scars that have driven him to alcoholism and a distrust of his Skolian allies.  Meanwhile, Ironbridge still fights for Kamoj, and she has to balance her sense of duty to her planet with her love of Vyrl and complex interstellar politics.

It does have some of the trappings of romance novels that the cover and description imply; I don’t have any particular problem with a romantic storyline, but the genre does have a set of tropes, some of which I find somewhat offensive, and others are just worn out.  Here we do get the beautiful, damaged man, and the initial fear and roughness in a relationship that quickly turns to abiding love.  There’s all sorts of sexual coercion here, and Kamoj is often a victim.  We’re told that her people have been genetically engineered as compliant slaves, but watching her allow herself to be trampled for duty or love for most of the novel can get annoying.  Also, the characters are a little too perfect in their beauty, heroism, self-sacrifice, and love for each other, not to mention their superhuman abilities.  Hey, Vyrl can even dance like a god among men!  Is their a term for this sort of romance-novel, perfect mate Mary Sueism? 

All of this grated, but there was also plenty to like in the novel.  Contact between advanced and primitive societies is old hat in sf, but Asaro handles it quite well here, slowly unveiling the Skolians to us at the same time she reveals them to Kamoj.  The overall plot has a lot of momentum, and the scale of action gets bigger as the novel goes on, eventually moving to another planet.  Despite their unrealistic perfection, the main characters are solid and interesting, and some of the side characters, especially the crew of the ship that brought Vyrl, are even more intriguing.  Asaro has a PhD in math herself, and she keeps the technology interesting and familiar, while also drawing bigger metaphors from mathematical processes (“couple-channeled quantum-scattering”).  I can’t say that I ever really grasped this aspect of the novel’s structure, but I do appreciate that Asaro tried something different.

All in all, I'd call this a mixed bag. When I wasn't rolling my eyes, annoyed by cliché, I was usually caught up in the book and enjoying myself. It gets a middling grade from me, but I'm rather glad that Nebula went with something different this year.

Grade: B-

1998 Saturn SF – (tie) DARK CITY, ARMAGEDDON

As far as I’m concerned, 1998-2000 is the golden age of modern cinema. Yes, there are lots of other great periods in recent film history, but it’s not since the ‘70s that you had so much innovation and so many directors (and studios, amazingly enough) embracing a spirit of independence and the idea of the auteur. There were at least a dozen great films each of these three years, as we got to see the emergence of the likes of Spike Jonez, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, Sam Mendes (once upon a time, I could have put Shymalan and the Wachowskis on this list without irony!), plus brilliant films from the Coen Brothers, Terrence Mallick, and other greats. The biggest component of this renaissance was the financial success of Miramax and the studios’ subsequent willingness to let directors go wild (until they produced enough oddball bombs that the studios reined most of then in). A lesser, but still important, component was the increasing use of new effects techniques for subtler character points or atmosphere rather than just to make things go ‘splodey. I'd say the latter plays a big role here.

I have a very vivid memory of seeing Dark City in the theaters in 1998; it’s not often that a film takes you completely by surprise, but Dark City had been poorly publicized, and I had no idea what it was about. I convinced some friends to see it based off of a glowing Ebert review, and I was completely blown away by the films’ visuals, and its willingness to take the sci-fi elements up to 11. Alex Proyas has done nothing before or since this film to really distinguish himself, but this film does belong on my “Great Films of the Late 90s” list.

In the city, it’s always nighttime, and at midnight, the clocks stop and everyone goes to sleep. John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up during one of these episodes with no memory in a hotel room containing a dead girl. He soon finds out that he’s suspected as a serial killer by a detective (William Hurt), and that he’s separated from his wife Emma after she cheated on him (the always-gorgeous Jennifer Connelly, looking even better than usual), but he’s pretty sure he’s never met Emma and that he’s never killed anyone. He’d also like to see Shell Beach, the oceanside community where he grew up, but no one can tell him how to get out of the city. Soon, strange-looking men are chasing him, and he discovers his own telekinetic powers. It gets weirder from there. I didn’t even mention Kiefer Sutherland’s rather bizarre performance.

This film pays a lot of tribute German expressionism, and rather started a fad for the style’s revival (see The Matrix, which also shares many plot elements). It’s a beautiful film, and yet it’s not shy about its pulpy roots. Dark City is not perfect – the characters are flat, more or less by necessity, but the dialogue is even flatter But, it is unique, and a really great experience if you haven’t seen it. I’m not sure it’s aged all that well, and I think The Matrix stole a lot of its thunder, but it’s still worth a look.

It says on all the sites I checked that Dark City tied with Michael Bay's Armageddon for this award. I’m just going to go ahead and assume that’s some sort of mistake, or perhaps an elaborate April Fool's joke, because Armageddon is an all-around terrible film.

Grade: A-

1997 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – “Severed Dreams,” BABYLON 5

Back to B5 with its second, and final, Hugo win. I chronicled my B5 watching history last time: there’s no question that the long, intricately planned arcs are ground-breaking and influential. However, horrible production values marred the series’ first season. By season 3, the production values have improved quite a bit. It seems to be in the same range as a show like early Buffy (whose production values I have no problem ignoring). However, even in season 3, at the show’s creative peak, I’m still not entirely won over by the characters and plot.

In the last Hugo-winning episode, Babylon 5’s quest for peace was collapsing as the evil “Shadows” manipulated alien races into attacking each other. These problems continue, but the newest threat is from within. An alliance of Alfred Bester-inspired psi-cops, the Shadows, and an evil President have taken over Earth and declared martial law. Under Commander John Sheridan, Babylon 5 breaks with the new Earth government and becomes a beacon of resistance. A lot of fighting ensues, and the production team really does pull out all the stops to make the battles look relatively decent…and even better.

I’m still not entirely sold on this series though. I wish I knew more about the Shadows. I wish everything wasn’t framed as a titanic struggle between pure good and pure evil. I wish the characters weren’t cookie-cutter clichés. I wish JMS could dial back his love of melodrama and preaching from the soap box. I wish a lot of things. There’s so much to admire about this series, but there continue to be a lot of little things that bother me. I doubt I’ll be a convert in the end, but I really do appreciate the layered, continuity-heavy storytelling that the show represents.

Unlike last time, I don’t think this episode was up against extremely strong competition. DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” was a fun, nostalgic romp, but it was also very gimmicky. First Contact is also fun but flawed – more in the JJ Abrams school of Trek movies than the Nicholas Meyer school. If I were to pick an alternate winner, it might be a previous B5 episode called “Messages from Earth,” wherein we learn that the evil Earth government has found Shadow ships on Mars and Ganymede. It’s got a great archaeological mystery and an action sequence that may not be as elaborate as this episode’s but is more exciting (and less inevitably headed toward dues ex machine).

Grade: B

1976 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation - A BOY AND HIS DOG

Based on a Hugo Award winning novella by Harlan Ellison, A Boy and His Dog follows a young man (a very young Don Johnson) who has a telepathic link with a super-intelligent dog as they wander across a hellish post-apocalyptic landscape in 2024. Since Mad Max, this kind of “every man for himself/world of barbarians” post-apocalyptic film has become almost cliché. But, I’ll give A Boy and His Dog the benefit of the doubt and say that I don’t know of anything like this made earlier.

There’s not much to the plot. “the boy” wants to get laid, the dog wants to find a utopia called “Over the Hill,” and various savages with rifles try to enslave or kill them. Later, we get a sequence in “Downunder,” a community of more organized underground survivors who live in a parody of conformist, small-town America. Ellison hates conformism!

There’s a very low-budget, early-independent-film feeling to the proceedings, and I can see how this would become a cult classic. It is very dark. And, as I said, it’s short on plot. Blood, the dog, actually gets some great character moments; he’s the best thing about this film. And, the black comedy surprise ending is certainly worth a chuckle. The rest of the movie… well, let’s just say that I’m getting sick of these dystopias. And the next Hugo-winning movie is also about some evil totalitarian Empire. It never ends.

The film has been accused of misogyny in the past, and I think the argument has merit. You could say that the film is simply portraying a brutal and misogynistic world, but it's still disturbing how little of the perspective of the few female characters we get here. Women are either playthings, victims, or manipulators.

It also annoys me that the original trailer shamelessly rips off the original A Clockwork Orange trailer. This is no Kubrick film.

Grade: C+

1955 Hugo – THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley

"Who’d rather be right," you might ask, and about what? Well, my friends, the answer to the first part is “you and me,” and the answer to the second is “about everything.” You can tell that Clifton and Riley were absolutely certain that they were writing the most profound book ever. Thing is, They’d Rather Be Right is not the most profound book ever written. It’s certainly one of the least profound that I’ve ever read. But it has a Message, and it flogs the Message over and over again...and then some more.

I’d read that They’d Rather Be Right is widely regarded as the worst Hugo winner. I don’t think I let this bias me…In fact, I rather wanted to be able to go against the tide and call this a lost gem. Things did not work out that way.

The basic story (and this novel gives The Demolished Man a run for its money in the overloaded-with-sci-fi-tropes department) is that two scientists have created a cybernetic artificial intelligence named Bossy. When the American Public hears of this, everyone freaks out and the scientists have to go into hiding in the slums of San Francisco with their student assistant Joe, who, by the way, is a very powerful telepath. Eventually, they end up connecting a 68 year-old sex worker named Mabel to Bossy, and Bossy turns her into a beautiful, young (and psychic) advanced being...and manages to remove her personality in the process, but we soon learn that, as far as the writers are concerned, this is for the best.

The American Public discovers Mabel and gets excited as her revivification seems to suggest the prospect of immortality. But, they soon learn that one must give up all preconceived notions for Bossy’s psychosomatic Fountain of Youth treatment to work. Joe warns, “they’d rather by right.” We have a title! The second half of the novel consists of Joe telling us the same thing again and again (more of less every paragraph) – see Joe’s already expanded his own mind. He’s a precursor to the youthful but wise archetype that one sees a lot in the ‘60s – an example contemporary with the novel would be James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. If only we were all as wise and empty-headed as Joe and Mabel!

This is the preachiest novel that ever did preach. Everyone, as we’re told again and again and again and again, is too stuck in their beliefs. Expand your mind, man! The book is especially harsh on scientists (who are so stupid as to only believe things that have been proven experimentally using the scientific method – silly scientists!) and the American Public (who are almost universally moronic, gullible and bigoted). Clifton and Riley outdo Bradbury’s contempt for the masses several times over, while they also ceaselessly attack intellectuals for the horrible crime of believing things. Only free-loving proto-hippies with totally open minds get it, man.

Not only is the novel preachy as hell, anti-rational, and full of sci-fi clichés, it’s also one of the most poorly written novels I’ve ever read. The prose is wordy, lifeless, and repetitive.

I hated this book. I really, really did. This book has made me question this Hugo-reading whole project. I suggest you avoid it like the plague unless you have a real historical interest in an early sci-fi counterculture work, or you’ve figured out how to give a novel the Mystery Science Theater treatment. Avoiding the novel will not be difficult, since it has been out-of-print for most of the 50 years since its publication.

Grade: F

1953 Hugo – THE DEMOLISHED MAN by Alfred Bester

The first real Hugo winner and a certified grade-A science fiction classic. This was one of those Hugo winners that I had long planned on reading but never gotten around to.

In the early 24^th century, psychic cops have wiped out most crime in the solar system. However, a mega-wealthy businessman named Ben Reich decides that he can get away with murder. He makes his attempt in the first third of the novel, and most of the rest of the novel relates the efforts of telepathic detective Lincoln Powell to catch and convict Reich of his crime so that the businessman can be “demolished” as punishment.

I enjoyed this book, but it was a bit odd. On the plus side, Bester does a good job creating a “noir” feel. Some people cite this as a precursor to cyberpunk, and there’s no denying that there’s a gritty, realistic feel to Bester’s future society. Also, both Powell and Reich are complex and interesting characters (probably the ingredient most often missing in sci-fi). Bester also has some interesting ideas about what a society with a limited number of telepaths would be like (there’s a nice bit where Reich’s psychic lawyer has to work to prevent a telepathic interrogation).

On the other hand, there’s a lot going on here…maybe too much. We have telepaths of different orders fighting over the evolution of a psychic society, space travel across the solar system, evil megacorporations of the future, computers acting as juries (with some very high standards), people’s minds getting regressed to birth as psychotherapy, myriad weird weapons, secret fathers and siblings, split personalities, people able to bend all of reality with their minds, and finally the strange punishment of demolition, all as the background for multiple mysteries. Usually I like a lot of ideas in a fast-moving book , but they don’t entirely seem to cohere in this one. The book seems to be tackling a different idea and theme in every chapter. There are also some awkward character moments along with the good. Reich can come off as a cackling megalomaniac at times. Powell, meanwhile, gets a very odd, and I’d say very uncomfortably incestuous, love story with a witness that concludes in an improbable happy ending.

That all said, I’d rather read a book that tries to do too much than one that doesn’t do enough. I’d recommend The Demolished Man, though I wouldn’t necessarily put it at the top of your to read list. I don’t regret the 15 years that I sat on it.

Grade: B+