2010 Hugo Nominee Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones

I mentioned in my Hugo preview that this film reminded me of a ‘50s sf story, and I stand by that. Maybe Theodore Sturgeon or Heinlein in a dark mood. The director and co-writer, Duncan Jones, is supposed to be a sincere, old-school sf fan, and he cites the likes of 2001 as his influences.

Moon was an independent film that stands out quite starkly in a field of blockbusters. Lots of people are championing District 9 as the low budget alternative to the bloated likes of Avatar and Star Trek…District 9’s budget was about 6 times the size of Moon’s. Sam Rockwell plays a stressed worker who took on a lonely three-year job monitoring mining operations on the lunar surface. We meet him near the end of his tour of duty, and he’s quite clearly at his wit’s end. His only company is GERTY, a robotic arm with a snooty Kevin Spacey-voiced AI who’s more than a little reminiscent of HAL 9000. It’s a solid set-up, but the film really takes off with a big twist; it comes early in the film, but I really don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say that all is not as it seems, and Sam Rockwell gets to play a wide range of emotions.

This really is, in the end, a vehicle for Rockwell, and he does a great job with it. It’s a very well-acted film with a clever sf plot, sincere human emotion, and solid science despite the budget constraints on effects (though they don’t do great with low gravity, but no one ever does). It’s very effective in its portrayal of claustrophobic loneliness. However, a lot of people, myself included, may not entirely enjoy two hours of claustrophobic loneliness. The film does drag in places, and it’s a bit one note.

There’s a real swell of support behind this film, and I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see it win the category. It won’t be my choice though. I feel like there’s a contrarian urge at the heart of the film’s support – “I hope Moon wins because it’s an independent film.” I just don’t buy that. Let the best film win. Moon is a good film, and an impressive accomplishment, but, it’s not the best film.

Grade: B+

1973 Hugo and Locus, and 1972 Nebula - THE GODS THEMSELVES by Isaac Asimov

Decades into his career, Asimov won his first real Hugo with The Gods Themselves (“The Mule” later won a retro Hugo and I arbitrarily handed a Fake Hugo to The Naked Sun). I grew up obsessed with Asimov, so I was excited to read this, his most highly recognized novel (awards-wise, that is), and his own personal favorite. And…boy, was I disappointed.

There are some interesting concepts here. In the late twenty-first century, beings from another dimension, where the laws of physics differ significantly, contact our planet and tell us how to build a Pump between the universes that will give us an endless supply of energy. The lucky scientist who makes contact, Frederick Hallam, turns out to be a jealous jackass who uses his notoriety to control the scientific community, and one of the main themes seems to be the sociological perils of science. The novel is divided into three parts. The first tells of a young upstart scientist Lamont who fears that the Pump might change the laws of our universe and cause the sun to explode within a few years. Lamont tries to contact and communicate with the interdimensional aliens, but he must also face the wrath of Hallam. The second takes us to the other side of the Pump, where a group of odd, abstract aliens work to grow up and form a family (and also consider the potential dangers of the Pump). The final third moves the action to the moon, as a group of scientists continue to work on the Pump problem (and we get a “Lunie” society that’s not quite as exciting as Heinlein’s).

There are a lot of intriguing ideas and concerns here. I think Asimov is at his best when he introduces a plausible technology (robots) and then explores the ethical and practical limitations of that technology (his three laws). The Pump almost qualifies, but it’s a bit too far out (and the eventual solution to the problem, while clever, is far too easy). Not much happens here. We learn that Hallam is an incredible jerk, aliens are really weird, and sex on the moon is fun (for some reason, reading sex scenes in Asimov is like listening to your grandparents talk about sex). I just wasn’t as enthralled. The pitfalls of scientific personality clashes is an interesting topic, but that section drags on too long. But, I found the alien section to be far worse. Yes, they’re appropriately weird (tri-sexual blobs with wildly different levels of intelligence and rationality), but that doesn’t necessarily make them interesting. And, as weird as they are, their problems are all too human. Family drama and wild sex with amorphous blobs just didn’t interest me.

I certainly don’t mind that Asimov is trying to stretch his horizons, but I still prefer his classic robot and Foundation stories. There’s nothing wrong with being good at what you do. I’d chalk The Gods Themselves up more as an interesting and fun experiment than an award-sweeping masterpiece.

Grade: B-

1970 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation – NEWS COVERAGE OF APOLLO 11

On July 20, 1969, two Americans walked on the surface of the moon. It’s still kind of hard to believe. Hugo decided to honor the events by giving the award for dramatic presentation to news coverage of Apollo 11 (over Rosemary’s Baby, Charly (based on Flowers for Algernon), and an episode of the brilliant British television series The Prisoner).

This is a funny choice for a Hugo. Clearly, the landing on the moon was dramatic, and television’s comprehensive coverage of it was an extremely skilled presentation. It’s a pretty brilliant call, failing only to qualify on the level of science “fiction” (unless you believe some of the crazier conspiracy theories). That’s a big problem, but I can see why Hugo would want to acknowledge the event on some level.

Surprisingly, I don’t think this event had as large an effect on science and science fiction as Sputnik. It was the culmination of an awesome effort and a massive achievement. But, the next logical target, Mars, was perhaps too far. Again, you can see why sf authors might be overenthusiastic about future progress into space considering the rapid pace of development up to 1969; no wonder Clarke put a giant rotating space station in 2001 (which, by the way, did a good job of presenting the moon accurately before anyone actually got there). But, as we know, efforts in space tail off from here. The last trip to the moon took place in 1975, and efforts to get a space station into orbit were slow and fitful. Right now, the Apollo project looks more like an end to the Cold War-driven space race than the beginning of humanity’s expansion into solar system. Of course, the future may change that view of events.

1969 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation - 2001

The late 60s were quite the era for game-changing “dramatic presentations;” first Star Trek, now 2001, a fantastic classic. I bought this film on Blu-ray and watched it for this project, and I can attest that it holds up as a brilliant and haunting spectacle. There’s no question that this is one of my favorite films, though its long dialogue-free scenes keep it from being a particularly accessible film (there is no dialogue for the first half-hour).

Based on a short story by sf legend Arthur C. Clarke (and later expanded into a novelization with 3 sequels), 2001 takes place in the distant future year of 2001 AD. There are two main threads. 1) There’s an alien black monolith that seems to have played a role in shaping human evolution. The film begins at the “dawn of man” and shows several apelike creatures learning to use tools after interacting with the monolith. Later, in that futuristic space age future of 2001 AD, humans investigate another monolith that they have uncovered on the lunar surface. 2) the spaceship Discovery makes a long trip to Jupiter to investigate yet another monolith. Along the way, they experience problems with their artificially intelligent shipboard computer, HAL 9000.

2001 is all about visual spectacle. It was originally shown in Cinerama, a giant wraparound format using multiple projectors that was designed to differentiate the theater-going experience from the increasingly dominant television. The use of color is brilliant. The special effects are fantastic and hold-up next to anything produced for at least the next 10 years. I’m usually not a fan of the psychedelic, but the surreal final sequence really is sublime, even if you’re not high. 2001 is also the first real entrance of hard sf onto the silver-screen. Kubrick, Clarke and the producers attempted to remain as accurate as possible in their depiction of near-future space age technology (the vacuum of space is actually silent – an obvious but rarely seen point of accuracy). Obviously, as futurism, the film fails. But it’s still one of the realest visions of the future you’ll see. And, there’s no denying this films influence on everything from the look of the startships of Star Wars to the claustrophobic feeling of Alien, not to mention the dozens of parodies of the opening sequence or HAL that have appeared over the years.

Things do move slowly, and Kurbick’s not afraid to let scenes unfold for minutes and minutes within almost total silence (though usually there’s a relaxed piece of classical music playing on the soundtrack). The film is designed for the viewer to sit back and drink in the spectacle (or feel a maddening sense of tension in some of the later scenes). If you’re not prepared for that, you may very well hate this film. If you are patient though, it’s an amazing experience.

Grade: A

1967 Hugo Winner – THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein

The fifth and final novel by Robert Heinlein to win a Hugo (and the third in eight years) reenacts the American Revolution on a lunar colony. This is another novel that I read, and loved, when I was a teenager.

It’s the late 21^st century and the moon is home to several million people, most of them descendants of criminals sentenced to the penal colony there. The inhabitants call themselves Loonies, and they’re beginning to get fed up with taking orders from Earth. The colony is managed by a supercomputer called HOLMES, and the novel centers around a technician named Mannie who discovers that the computer has become self-aware. Instead of bumping everyone off like HAL-9000, HOLMES (who Manny soon renames “Mycroft,” or just “Mike” after Sherlock Holmes’ brother) has a sense of humor and likes to play childish pranks on the Loonies.

Before long, Mycroft is holding meetings with lunar dissidents and hatching a plan to rebel against the Earth, which is taking too much of the moon’s food production. An anarchist professor named Bernardo de La Paz (really more of a libertarian, but Heinlein prefers the term Rational Anarchist) discusses political philosophy with Mycroft and becomes a mouthpiece for Heinlein’s personal politics in the process. The moon begins to use its infrastructure to launch some devastating attacks on the Earth, and soon, the dissidents have their independence and are charged with forging a new society.

In a lot of ways, this novel is an extension of Farmer in the Sky. That novel gave us a heroic story of frontier settlement; this novel gives us a frontier society that has grown up and is ready to strike out on its own. Turner’s frontier thesis of American history is still very much in effect in Heinlein’s writing, but we’ve moved to the “American Revolution” phase. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is much concerned with Heinlein’s libertarian politics, which he apparently felt the need to spell out after the accusations of fascism that accompanied Starship Troopers. He also manages to work in some of his pet ideas about unorthodox sexual relationships and open partnerships with a concept of polyandry he calls “line marriage.”

There’s a lot about Heinlein’s politics that I don’t really agree with, and this novel is almost nothing but Heinlein’s politics. Yet, this is by far my favorite Heinlein novel and probably my favorite Hugo winner thus far. The political discussions are at least well-informed and interesting, the Lunar society created by Heinlein is fascinating, and the sentient computer Mycroft Holmes is incredibly fun and lovable. Heinlein’s writing is, as always, clear and direct but also amiable and energetic. He’s the closest thing to a 20^th century science fiction Mark Twain this side of Kurt Vonnegut.

In the 70s and 80s, Heinlein’s novels get a bit more sex-obsessed (sometimes in disturbing ways), and there’s a lot of navel-gazing as his later novels focused on tying together is older novels into a multiverse. But, if you have any interest in science fiction and have somehow missed out on Heinlein, you need to give Stranger or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a chance.

This novel came in second in the Nebula voting after the dual winners in 1966, while Flowers for Algernon and Babel-17 came in second and third in the Hugo voting. It’s the first time the awards diverge at all, and I’ve got to give the edge to the WorldCon Hugo voters on this one.

Grade: A