2002 Locus SF - PASSAGE by Connie Willis

This is the first Willis I've read not set in her time-travelling historians of Oxford world, though there are a lot of similarities. It's clear to me by now that Willis has a shtick. Take some annoying characters, have the protagonists go to comical lengths to avoid said annoying characters, have the whole plot hinge on failures of communication, and add in some meticulous historical research, and you've got a Willis novel. And there's nothing wrong with that. Most writers have shticks; the question is whether they can engage a reader enough with plot, character, and prose to keep them coming back anyway.

The setting this time in a hospital in contemporary Colorado (Willis's home). Joanna Lander is a psychologist studying Near-Death Experiences, the whole light-at-the-end-of-a-tunnel phenomenon. She works in close quarters with a true believer named Mandrake, who is convinced that these NDEs prove the existence of an afterlife (and psychic powers). Mandrake and his star subject Mrs. Davenport are the prime annoying characters that the protagonists must avoid at all costs this go round. When a neurologist named Richard Wright shows up at the hospital with a plan to study the biochemistry of NDEs, Joanna jumps on board against Mandrake's objections. Wright has found a drug that can simulate the effects of Near-Death Experience on the brain, and, eventually, Joanna agrees to become a subject. As each simulated NDE brings her further into what feels like a real experience of an actual historical event, Joanna struggles to maintain her objectivity and frantically dodges through the corridors of the hospital to try to understand exactly what her experience means.

Why does she move frantically through the hospital? Because Connie Willis thinks it's funner that way, I guess. There's a lot of manufactured drama here. At first, it makes a fairly mundane science thriller into more of a page turner - the fact that Joanna has to sneak, run, and dodge her way through the hospital for tiny tidbits of information makes things a bit more exciting.  After a few hundred pages, however, I really wanted to yell, "Good God everybody!  Get some $%#@*^ing cellphones and have a $%#@*^ing direct conversation for once!"  Joanna, you don't have to take a taxi to the parking lot to avoid Mandrake. You can say "I'm not interested in your work, and I have other things to do."  It's easy! The novel sort of exhausted me, and I started to get the feeling that everything was spinning in place as Willis goes to great lengths to keep her mysteries going. The last part is especially frustrating, as it involves characters reconstructing information that we already know. We have to see the same hundred-page investigation twice!

That said, I couldn't stay mad at Willis for long. Her dialog, as always, is naturalistic yet clever, and genuinely funny and charming, and her core characters are typically lovable (does she make the ancillary characters so petty and awful just to make the main characters more attractive in contrast?). A dying young girl named Maisie, who is obsessed with disasters, is particularly smart and funny. And, as I've said, writing awful people is a real writer's skill, even if it's not one that I always enjoy reading. The core mysteries are interesting, and there are a couple of bold choices here. I knew in a book about Near-Death Experiences that someone important is going to face death themselves, and Willis heavily foreshadows how this is likely to happen in the hospital. But who faces death, how it happens, and the outcome took me completely by surprise. This novel managed to shock me. I also thought it was bold of Willis to write a direct, secular confrontation with the meaning of death. She has a lot of opportunities to give herself an out, but she remains a committed skeptic to the very end.

In the end, I liked the novel, though I was often frustrated by it. I think it could have been a lot better at about 2/3rds the length.  I'd recommend it to Willis fans, but I'd guide Willis newcomers to To Say Nothing of the Dog instead.

Grade: B

1998 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – CONTACT

Contact has such a fine pedigree, that it was pretty much inevitable it would win this award. Based on a novel written by the great scientist/writer/first-contact-enthusiast Carl Sagan, the film was directed by Spielberg-protégé and Back to the Future co-creator Robert Zemeckis. It’s a first contact story, but one that focuses on science and (by Hollywood standards) plausibility.

Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) developed a love of astronomy and a curiosity about the existence of extra-terrestrial life from her caring father, who died while she was still a young girl. As an adult, she sacrifices her career to this obsession and spends much of time listening to the noise from radio-telescopes at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. She’s generally derided, though New Agey Christian guru Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey, at the point in his film career when we were still supposed to take him somewhat seriosuly) has a thing for her. On the verge of losing her funding, she hears a signal from the star Vega. The signal is full of information, including the plans to build a mysterious machine. James Woods, as Evil Government Man, and Tom Skerritt, as Evil Competitive Sell-Out Former-Teacher Man, try to co-opt the project to forward their own careers, but Ellie manages to hang on, thanks in part to the most ridiculous part of the film, the patronage of an extremely mysterious super-rich super-genius named Hadden. Jake Busey plays a Busey, i.e. a madman who screams incoherent nonsense. Ellie eventually gets to use the machine, and….maybe….communicate with the aliens.

It’s a very well-made and well-acted film, and despite some Hollywood-style melodrama, it manages to feel more grounded and relevant than most sf films. The second act drags a bit, but it’s pretty compelling nonetheless. Most importantly, Sagan, Zemeckis et al manage to make this a film about science, and they convey the stimulations, challenges, and overall excitement of scientific discovery. I’m a strong believer in the idea that the world needs more positive depictions of science as a method and as an occupation.

The real theme of the film is science versus faith, and I think the movie manages to pull it off while still doing justice to each side. The theme plays out through a debate between Ellie and Palmer, and both characters manage to present their case and see the other’s point of view without really compromising their firmly held beliefs. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but this movie manages to navigate it nonetheless.

Solid script, solid acting, solid directing, clear themes...throw in some good special effects, and you have a film that really is Hugo-worthy….though 1997 was a great year for sf films. I obviously liked this better than Men in Black. Starship Troopers is a truly stupid movie that many people enjoy; I didn’t like it at the time, but maybe I need to rewatch it to see if there really is some great satire that I missed. The Fifth Element is as different from Contact as you can get, but I think it’s fun and interesting. Gattaca is the real under-appreciated gem of this year; it would have gotten my vote over Contact. I can’t complain though.

Grade: B+

2011 Hugo nomination announcements this weekend (finally).

My guesses are here.

1988 Nebula - FALLING FREE by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold is going to become a very familiar name on this blog. She’s tied with Robert Heinlein for the most “best novel” Hugo wins ever (if you don’t count his retro-Hugo). Most of these wins are for the space opera Vorkosigan saga, which takes place in the same universe as Falling Free, but a couple of centuries later.

In Falling Free, engineer Leo Graf takes a job at a GalacTech space facility near the planet Rodeo. He quickly learns that the station is populated by genetic experiments called quaddies who have been designed to operate efficiently and effectively in a zero gravity environment (they have a second pair of arms instead of legs). Leo adjusts quickly to the strange and naïve quaddies, but grows concerned when he learns of the heavy restrictions placed on their freedoms by the experiment’s corporate sponsors, who view the quaddies as disposable assets rather than human beings.

It’s a fast-paced, short novel. I like the efficiency of what Bujold does here – she sets up the quaddies, introduces a loving quaddie couple, and in the same chapter shows how horrible GalacTech’s control over them can be. There’s also some fairly interesting commentary on reproductive rights going on – as genetic experiments, breeding is prioritized over love for the quaddies. It may be a little too simple and efficient though. The morality isn’t particularly challenging, and the villainous station manager is a cartoonishly callous baffoon. It’s entertaining though, and sometimes it’s fun to watch the good guys pull off a caper that humiliates the bad guys. I’m looking forward to getting deeper into Bujold’s world.

I’m kind of surprised that it won a Nebula, an award which I’ve come to associate with dense prose and risk-taking over straightforward narrative. This novel is quite the opposite.

Grade: B+

2010 Not-a-Hugo Nominee GALILEO'S DREAM by Kim Stanley Robinson

My third and final not-a-nominee entry. Galileo’s Dream is an ambitious work from one of sf’s most prominent (and, I’d say, best) writers, so I expected to see it on the nomination list. When it didn’t appear, I wondered if it’s late US release date (December 29th!) had hindered it in some way. For all I know, that could be the case, and it may even be eligible again next year. However, while I liked the book, now that I’ve read it, I’m not quite so miffed to see it absent from the nominee list.

Robinson’s main focus is on writing a biographical novel of Galileo Galilei, the seventeenth century scientist who made a host of discoveries that reinforced the idea that the earth revolved around the sun and paved the way for Isaac Newton a few decades later. Galileo emphasized mathematics and empiricism, and thus also influenced the modern practice of science. And, he made some of the first important observations with a telescope, discovering Jupiter’s largest moons among other celestial objects. When Galileo published his observations, he faced persecution by the Catholic Church, which had committed itself to a geocentric view of the universe that put the Earth at the center of everything (ironically, this was the result of a thirteenth century bout of rationalism in the Church that had Thomas Aquinas synchronizing Greek thinkers like Ptolemy and Aristotle with the Bible, and Aquinas was also persecuted and recanted, but that’s a whole tangent that Robinson doesn’t really get into).

So, about 3/5ths of the novel covers Galileo’s life, which is suitably operatic: he has an abusive mother, he suffers bouts of debilitating (mental?) illness, he fathers three illegitimate children with the same woman, his two daughters end up in a convent and suffer from their own illnesses, he’s caught up in court intrigues, he makes the aforementioned scientific discoveries, and he has a dramatic trial that includes forged evidence and startling testimony. There’s lots of material to work with, and though these biographical portions started out slow, I eventually came to prefer them to the science fiction portions.

So, yes, the other 2/5ths of the novel involve Galileo being plucked out of time by 31st century colonists of Jupiter’s moons. He’s pulled forward by competing factions who are involved in scientific disputes and want to alter Galileo’s destiny for their own purposes. Early on, these sections were very intriguing, and it’s fun to watch Galileo learn about Einstein (though he takes things in a little too easily). But it all gets a bit fuzzy as the story goes on, and we begin to get vague, pseudo-sciencey talk about “entanglement.” Robinson is usually known as a hard sf kind of guy, but, paradoxically, a hard sf version of time travel inevitably takes you to some sort of probabilistic, quantum mechanics-heavy view of the universe. The uncertainty principle is good science, but it’s not very satisfying from a narrative point of view: “ah, yes, you’re the Galileo who died young – or not – or both. Oh well, who cares?” This story just gets more bizarre and more pointless as it goes on, and I found some of the future discoveries about Jupiter to be just plain silly.

There are other weird decisions in the book as well. The future debates all involve the relationship between science and religion, and what it means for human history. But, it’s never explained all that well, and that entire narrative thread feels unfinished. There’s also a first-person narrator, but he generally refers to himself in the third person and drops completely out of the novel for hundreds of pages at a time. Again, I was left wondering what the point was.

There’s a lot to like here. Robinson’s writing and ideas are characteristically strong, and the Galileo material is generally compelling. But, the novel never quite comes together. It’s very unclear and uncertain, which may have been the goal…but it makes for a difficult and unrewarding read.

Grade: B-

1980 Nebula, Campbell, and BSFA - TIMESCAPE by Gregory Benford

I've always associated Gregory Benford's name with the hardest of hard sf - science fiction with real rigor in its physics. This is mainly because Benford is himself a working astrophysicist. This is the first Benford novel I've read, and I was surprised to find a very grounded piece that is much more about the lives of scientists and the culture of science than highwire applied astrophysics as the basis of a fictional world.

The novel tells two parallel stories. In 1998, the world is in a state of ecological crisis - the Green Revolution (which saved us from the fate of overpopulation that everyone in the '70s was so upset about) has turned into a disaster as genetically identical crops fail all at once at. At the same time, untested polymers have released toxic chemicals into the oceans, air, and food supply. Most of the novel takes place around Cambridge in England, where a group of physicists try to contact the past with tachyons in order warn them of what will happen and save the world. Meanwhile, the world begins to fall apart around them. We spend most of our time with John Renfrew, the head of the experiment, as he struggles to juggle his efforts to save the world while still spending time with his uber-housewife Marjorie. Slowly, the program's government liason, Ian Peterson, begins to dominate the 1998 sections - Benford apparently found him too compelling. Peterson is a privileged aristocrat and a ladies man, and it is fascinating to watch his uncomfortable reactions to the sudden deprivations and his efforts to get every women he meets into bed.

In 1962, physicist Gordon Bernstein at the fledgling San Diego campus of the University of California begins to notice the strange noise in his date. He soon discovers that it is a Morse code transmission with a great deal of biochemical data in it (the message from the future, you see). Many of his colleagues, however, refuse to believe that Bernstein is receiving strange messages from an unknown source, and Bernstein's career begins to suffer. Meanwhile, he has to deal with personal issues as his relationship with his girlfriend goes through a very rough patch, and his Jewish mother harangues him.

Despite the Big Ideas in here of ecological armageddon and communication through time, the novel is mostly a quotidian portrayal of scientists' lives, which is fine for most of the novel. The characters are richly drawn and Benford obviously has plenty of personal experience in the matter - his portrayal is certainly deeper and more balanced than the selfish and closed-minded cartoons of Flowers for Alrgenon...or even Asimov's The Gods Themselves. Still, after a few hundred pages of Ian's flirting, Marjorie's house parties, and Gordon's rotating fights with his department chair, girlfriend, and mother, it does start to get a bit old.

Actually, the novel's biggest flaw is how much the tachyon communication is neglected. Benford presents the communication like it's Sagan preparing a message for unknown aliens, but it's actually English-speaking researchers communicating in Morse code just a few decades back. And yet, the senders can't manage to find out how effective their messages are and can barely confirm that they are being received. Here's an idea: call up UCSD in 1998 and ask the physicists there if they got the message! And, if not....ask what would convince them! There's a lot of discussion in the novel about paradox, but no attempt is made to take the easy steps necessary to test any of the hypotheses.

By the end, it's clear that Benford has dodged the question so that he can make a big Twilight Zonesque reveal about the nature of time (I saw it coming from almost the beginning of the novel, but I've probably seen too much Star Trek time travel). It's an interesting conclusion, but it doesn't excuse or explain why the scientists were so damn dense.

Grade: B-

1977 World Fantasy Award - DOCTOR RAT by William Kotzwinkle

William Kotzwinkle is probably best known as the writer of the novelization of ET (and a sequel set after ET got home). I actually know his work from a novel I read over a decade ago, The Bear Who Came Over the Mountain, about a bear who stumbles upon a manuscript, manages to get it published and becomes a literary celebrity. I remember it as a genuinely hilarious book.

Doctor Rat is not as funny, though it gets a lot of recognition as a comic novel. It’s primarily about animal rights and a rather emotional argument for an end to experimentation on animals. The novel switches back and forth between two contemporaneous storylines. On one hand, we have the story of Dr Rat, a lab rat who has been thoroughly tortured by a team of scientists and has developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Despite his own pain, he identifies with the scientists and argues angrily against their critics among the other lab animals. The parallel narrative is a bit more obscure at first. It starts with a dog on a walk who begins to hear rumblings from dog community, and then begins to move to different animals, all of whom seem to be onto some big occurrence. We get whales singing to each other, and finally a host of African animals (with special attention paid to elephants). It eventually becomes apparent that the animals are fed up with humanity’s callous attitude towards them and are gathering for a council to protest. This spontaneous animal protest also reaches into Dr Rat’s lab, and he must navigate a massive riot that breaks out among the animals there.

There are some nice passages and a few funny moments with Dr Rat, but I can’t say I was enthralled by the novel, nor was I really swayed by Kotzwinkle’s arguments. It's not that I’m a fan of animal cruelty, but I’d prefer to see the topic of experimentation on animals explored with a bit more nuance. Kotzwinkle presents the scientists as evil sadists who torture the animals for fun. I’m not sure what labs were like in the ‘70s, but I know that more thought is put into the ethics of the situation today. I think most people would see a clear difference between cancer research and cosmetic testing, for instance. I also think the extent to which Kotzwinkle anthropomorphizes the animals is a cheat and a shallow over-simplification. He tries to add species-specific touches, but we mostly get human-style narrations.

Generally, I’m not interested in reading a polemic as a novel, even when I might largely agree with the message, and Kotzwinkle certainly doesn’t avoid the pitfalls of such an issue-oriented work here. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the novel really wasn’t engaging or entertaining. At least it was short.

Grade: D

1975 Hugo Dramatic Presentation - YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

As I said last week, Hugo voters were quite fond of comedies in the mid-70s. Young Frankenstein, filmed in black and white, is a parody of Frankenstein (the classic 1930 film moreso than Mary Shelley’s novel). It was directed by Mel Brooks and scripted by Gene Wilder, who also gives a great performance as the infamous mad scientist’s grandson. Dr. Frankenstein inherits his grandfather’s Transylvania estate (and his manservant Igor), and eventually begins to work at replicating his dark research in reanimation. The doctor manages to create his own monster (played brilliantly by Peter Boyle) and debuts the creature with an elaborate broadway number that goes horribly wrong.

It’s a hilarious movie, and one that’s always been a favorite of mine. Wilder's script avoids some of the typical Mel Brooks groaners, and Brooks direction, in homage to James Whale's work on the original, is probably the best of his career. It’s maybe a bit short on the science fiction; there aren’t any big ideas here (even less so than in Sleeper), but it’s fun. The cast really makes the film. This may be Wilder’s best performance, and Boyle’s monster is legendary; Terri Garr is gorgeous as Frankenstein’s young assistant, and Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman are hilarious as the doctor’s fiancée and Igor, respectively. Highly recommended.

Grade: A-

1975 Hugo and Locus, 1974 Nebula Award – THE DISPOSSESED by Ursula K. LeGuin

Yet another Leguin, and yet another triple crown winning novel. As in The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin uses science fiction to explore themes and ideas about human culture. This time, her central question is about government, and specifically, the practicality of anarcho-synidcalism.

The Dispossessed takes place in the same universe as The Left Hand of Darkness. Humans throughout the galaxy descend from an ancient people called the Hainish. In the future, these people, including Earthlings, reconnect and form a large and peaceful coalition of human worlds. "Terrans" make a brief guest appearance near the end, but most of the action takes place on the world of Anarres and its habitable moon Urras. We learn that 160 years ago a wave of socialist revolution swept through Anarres inspired by a philosopher named Odo. Anarres eventually solved the problem by exiling the revolutionaries to the harsh moon Urras, where they formed a utopian society based around their anti-state and anti-property principles. The main character is a brilliant physicist from Urras named Shevek. In order to pursue and spread his research, Shevek becomes the first Urrastian to return to Anarres. The novel follows two alternating narrative paths. The first traces Shevek’s progress in the capitalist society of Annares. The second follows Shevek’s previous life on utopian Urras, from his childhood up to his decision to leave. Throughout, we get his thoughts on the two societies and their views on free expression, labor, class, art, gender, etc.

As always with LeGuin, The Dispossessed is amazingly well-written, and the characters are the richest, most complex, and most lifelike of anything I’ve read. The ideas and conflicts are fascinating. Still, I did not enjoy this novel as much as the previous two. There isn’t much plot to speak of, and utopias, even more than dystopias, can easily fall into preachiness. LeGuin mostly avoids the soapbox, but just barely. Urras may be a utopia, but she does add some complexity: it’s highly conformist and emotions like jealousy have not been completely eliminated. Even without property, people still envy Shevek’s talents as a physicist. In fact, this is the central plot of the Urras story, and it echoes a lot of the ideas about the sociology of science in Asimov’s The Gods Themselves (must’ve been in the air in the mid-70s).

Overall, it’s a really intriguing novel with rich characters, and it’s as good a utopia as I’ve read. But, utopias are hard to write, and this book did not hold me in as rapt attention as her previous novels.

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-

1972 Locus - THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula LeGuin

Ursula K. LeGuin won her first Locus award in 1972 with The Lathe of Heaven (the award began the year after The Left Hand of Darkness appeared). The Lathe of Heaven takes place in 2002, and begins on an over-populated and polluted Earth. Like Brunner, she correctly pegs the population in the first decade of the twenty-first century at about 7 billion, and like Brunner, she fails to predict the Green Revolution which, so far at least, has made that level of population sustainable. You could argue that she’s a bit more on the money with the constant war in the Middle East and the official first mention of global warming in these award-winners so far, though in both cases things are even worse in her 2002 than they were in the real 2002.

Really though, this is all background material. Most of the story takes place in Portland, Oregon and centers around one George Orr (a play on George Orwell?). George believes that his dreams can transform the entire world. For instance, if he dreams that a relative died in a car accident long ago, when he awakes said relative will be dead, and no one will realize that things have changed. George goes for help from a local sleep expert who quickly realizes the potential of such a power and begins to guide George’s dreams through the use of hypnotism.

(An odd sidenote: something I haven’t really mentioned before is the prominence of hypnotism in these books. Apparently, most people in the '50s, '60s and '70s thought that hypnotism was the wave of the future. I think most experts now would agree that hypnotism is of very limited utility for a variety of reasons.)

Anyway, the rest of the novel follows the massive changes in the world as the unethical hypnotherapist/sleep expert makes use of George’s powers. There are usually unintended consequences. When trying to correct a problem like overpopulation, the cure may be worse than the disease.

A plot description really doesn’t do the novel justice. It’s beautifully written (moreso even than The Left Hand of Darkness), it asks some really interesting and important philosophical questions, and has some very fascinating and richly drawn characters (George’s eventual love interest is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in these readings so far). This is a fascinating novel that more than transcends the rather odd (and maybe somewhat tired) central concept.

This is the first time that Hugo, Nebula and Locus have gone with three different winners. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, A Time of Changes, and A Lathe of Heaven were all from the class of ’71. I’d have a hard time deciding between the Silverberg and the Farmer, but I’d probably choose the Farmer. Luckily, Locus magaizine’s voters made the choice moot by selecting one of the best novels I’ve read. I am glad I added that third award.

Grade: A

1966 Nebula Winner (tie) – FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON by Daniel Keyes

The Hugo awards have only had two ties for best novel; the Nebula awards have only had one. Somehow, both major science fiction awards managed to declare a tie in 1966, and, in part because of the different schedules, there are no overlaps. This is the only year where I have four separate novels to talk about, but they are all very different.

Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon tells the story of Charles Gordon, a mentally disabled man who participates in an experiment to radically increase his intelligence quotient. In just a few months he goes from cleaning the bathrooms at a bakery to becoming an intellectual juggernaut in several different fields. Eventually, he’s looking down on the pathbreaking team of psychologists and neurologists that developed his surgery. Meanwhile, Algernon, the lab-mouse who first received the experimental intelligence-increasing treatment, begins to suffer the effects of a deteriorating mind after only a few months' time.

The tragedy is that Charlie’s main motivation in volunteering for the experiment is that he believes he’ll be less lonely when he can interact with others as intellectual equals, but when he surpasses everyone, he’s every bit as alienated as before.

This novel is free from most sci-fi concepts. There’s a simple, fairly grounded, idea here that exists mostly so that Keyes can explore questions about everyday existence. It is a nice change of pace, and one thing I like about science fiction is that it can incorporate so many types of literature and examine so many different questions.

In the end, though, I wasn’t entirely satisfied by Flowers for Algernon. Keyes dances on the edge of sentimentality on one side with Charlie’s tragic story, while he flirts with the edge of cynicism when describing the world that so harshly rejects both the good-hearted and hyper-intelligent versions of Charlie. His depiction of scientists is particularly rough, and I'm starting to think that a lot of sf writers had bad experiences with their science professors at some point in school. As an admirer of the scientific method and scientists in general, this stuff gets on my nerves pretty quickly.

Also, Keyes has chosen to present the novel as a series of reports written by Charlie over the course of the experiments. The novel begins with little punctuation, a simple vocabulary and frequent misspellings. Charlie’s writing then improves, at first subtly but then quite dramatically. It’s a vivid way to reinforce the change in the protagonist and, I’d imagine, a difficult trick for the author. However, Keyes was not the first or last author to imitate the mentally disabled, and I didn’t find his portrayal as real or poetic as Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury or Hadden’s more recent The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

On the whole, Flowers for Algernon is highly readable, though I found it paradoxically too cynical at times and too sentimental at others. Nebula awarded this and Babel-17 over The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (see next post), and I can’t say I agree with the decision, though I can imagine why the writers might pick a pair of novels that play with language over Heinlein’s workmanlike and effortless prose. All three books were nominated for both awards though, and an earlier, shorter version won the 1960 Hugo for best short story (a version which I think I might have preferred).

Grade: A-

1965 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – DR STRANGELOVE

There were 4 nominees but no winner in this category in 1963 (apparently, WorldCon attendees were sick of The Twilight Zone by then; it was nominated but did not win). No award was given in 1964. In 1965, however, one of my all time favorite movies won: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

I never really thought of this film as science fiction. It does, in the end, revolve around an unlikely bit of fictional doomsday technology, but the device is more satirical than speculative. I’ll probably have chances as we go to get into the question of what qualifies as science fiction. Either way, Dr Strangelove is a fantastic and timely comedy worthy of recognition. It’s probably obvious by now how much the Cold War dominated early 60s science fiction – we have the advent of post-apocalyptic fiction like A Canticle for Leibowitz just in time for the world to almost blow up in 1962. Dr. Strangelove takes nuclear war head on. A crazed, paranoid American air force officer launches a nuclear attack on the USSR (provoked by fluoridated water, of course) and the Russian and American governments desperately try to stop him before his actions trigger an unstoppable chain of events ending in nuclear Armageddon. Black comedy rules the day, as the film expertly satirizes the prejudices and self-serving attitudes at the heart of the Cold War mentality. Peter Sellers steals the film with three brilliant performances as a British exchange officer, the American President, and a bizarre Nazi scientist. George C. Scott is also brilliant as a dull-witted, belligerent, and paranoid military adviser. If you haven’t seen this film, go see it now (and keep in mind that it takes about half-an-hour to really get going).

Grade: A

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