Late last year I finally read Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, the first novel to win the Hugo, and it occurred to me that I had only read about 30% of the winning novels. Consequently I set out to collect all of them in hard cover editions and read them all.
For those not familiar with the Hugo award, it is given out for science fiction and fantasy works and is voted upon by the attendees of each year’s Worldcon (a roving convention that runs as part of a different science fiction convention each year). As a result it usually reflects fan interest at the time. The work that wins might not be the greatest (though sometimes they are) but it often follows the trends.
I wasn’t planning on posting about each of these since I might not have a lot to say on a given novel but the most recent one has left me with some pretty conflicted feelings that I wanted to share. I figured as long as I was at it, why not go back over those early years. If there’s interest I may do a few more of these threads every five books or so (or when I hit a book that I just have to talk about).
If you’re interested in a list of the winners one can be found here.
So let’s get started:
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (1953) - It’s shocking how well this book holds up. I think it’s mainly because Bester focuses on telepathic society and it paints an interesting picture of the complications that would arise. The novel focuses on the conflict between a telepathic detective and corporate CEO who is trying to beat the telepathy and get away with murder. It’s a tight, tense novel with a great ending.
They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley (1955) - This book is often referred to as the worst novel to win a Hugo award and out of the ones I’ve read so far it has been the bottom. The actual writing is nothing special by 50’s SF standards which makes it fairly weak today. What really puts this over the top, though, is the book’s abhorrent philosophy which is essentially pro-Scientology and Ayn Rand. The plot centers on a pair of scientists and a psychic who are the run for creating a computer. Because this computer has only been programmed with objective facts it gains the ability to rewrite human personalities removing bad influences. Think of a Scientology e-reader and the novel attacks psychiatry for not being able to do this. Once these bad thoughts are erased the victim… er… subject becomes an immortal, psychic, supergenius. The process doesn’t work on the members of the “establishment” because instead of allowing the device to erase their subjective conclusions “they’d rather be right”. Unless you’re doing something like me I would not recommend inflicting this upon yourself.
Double Star by Robert Heinlein (1956) - Of these early novels this is the one that I had the most trouble acquiring. The rest I could just locate a hardcover edition through Amazon’s affiliates, but I wound up spending more than $20 for a book club edition without a dust jacket. Ironically I found a copy with a dust jacket the other day for $1.
This was a solid Heinlein work though not really remarkable (especially considering the other three Hugo winning novels he had). The idea is that an actor is asked to step into the shoes of a kidnapped politician on the eve of a historic meeting with Martians. The writing is sharp but the plot does stretch the suspension of disbelief. Not for the science fiction aspects; the politics are just unbelievably shallow. I couldn’t see a novel like this being released after the sixties just due to the changing view of politics.
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (1958) - This book about people who care for the soldiers who fight a war fought over the history of the universe has some good ideas but the plot is incredibly shallow. The whole thing would have made a good short story one quarter its length but this feels severely padded.
A Case of Conscience by James Blish (1959) - For whatever reason there were two novels about the Roman Catholic Church in the early years. Vatican 2 started in 1962 but was it announced at this point setting fire to writer’s imaginations?
Of the two I think A Case of Conscience did a better job of exploring one aspect of Catholic dogma (the Manichaeanism heresy in this case which holds the devil as a second creator who is opposed to God). The bulk of the story deals with a survey team which includes a Jesuit priest exploring a planet with intelligent life on it. Certain aspects of the alien’s culture leads the priest to believe that the planet is a trap set by Satan to undermine Catholicism. It was pretty good but I think Blish didn’t really make his case as effectively as he could have for the priest’s reasoning.
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (1960) - The first of Heinlein’s big three on the list and a book that almost always starts fights when brought up among science fiction fans. I think the problem is that Heinlein had two very good and distinct ideas that he included in the novel but people reacted badly to them together. The core of the narrative details the training and fighting of the Mobile Infantry (picture marines in power armor) in a desperate war. There was military based SF before Starship Troopers but Heinlein laid down the foundation for all that would follow.
The other more controversial idea was the philosophy of the government: in order to be able to vote or hold public office you had to perform a public service for two years. For the main character this is military service but it could be any government job. A lot of people tend to read a lot more into this than what is stated or even things directly contradicted by the text (most notably Paul Verhoeven when he made the film) so I can’t help but think that distancing the intriguing idea of a system where the the relationship of the government and the citizens is more of a two-way street from the military aspects could have cut down on this.
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1961) - The other of the two Catholic novels in these early Hugos. This time there are three linked novellas which follow the development of a monastic order in their attempts to preserve knowledge following a nuclear war. This is, in my opinion, the best of the books I’ve read so far (though it was a re-read for me) as Miller’s examination of the complications in earning sainthood, of balancing the secular and the spiritual, and the monks dealing with a world that has rejected their teachings is extremely compelling.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (1962) - The second of Heinlein’s big three is pretty much a polar opposite of Starship Troopers. While his prose became much stronger it’s also my least favorite of his winning novels. The story deals with a young man who was raised as a martian returning to earth where he first leans what it is to be human and then teaches others what it is to be martian. I like the first two-thirds of the book but…
Once Michael has started forming his cult (and no matter how much he protests that label that’s what it is) I start really getting bothered. Philosophically it’s as flimsy as tissue and having the protagonist at the head of a messianic cult just feels creepy.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1963) - An intriguing alternate history novel that starts with one of the now cliched concepts of the genre: what if the axis won World War 2? What worked for me is that instead of focusing on Germany most of the action takes place in Japanese occupied California. Most of the book covers slices of life in this world such as jew who feared being deported to areas with more friendly relations with Germany, an antique dealer who was selling off America’s culture to Japanese collectors, and an author who postulates “What if the allies won WW2?” (and it doesn’t match up to our world).
Way Station by Clifford Simak (1964) - The novel is very similar to The Big Time in that it focuses on a man who takes care of a staging point just outside of normal world, but I liked the main character a lot more and I got a better feel for the activity that was going it. It was a bit predictable but I enjoyed the book in the end. I can’t give it a great recommendation but you could do a lot worse.
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber (1965) - Leiber had an interesting big idea for this novel but I think his execution left a lot to be desired. The idea is an earth-sized spaceship appears just outside of the orbit of the moon and wackiness ensues. There’s about twenty characters that Leiber follows over the course of the next few hours as the tidal effects wreck the earth. The nicest thing I have to say is that when a person initially encountered one of the aliens the behavior of the alien seemed just wrong to me; I initially thought it was just weak writing but the person in the book called the alien out on their behavior raising the same problems I had. Unfortunately the rest of the book does suffer from some weak writing.
One problem I had is I think that Leiber wanted the readers to be sensitive to the aliens because they were running from the Interstellar Man but they killed millions of people and destroyed our civilization. It’s a little hard for me to by sympathetic with them after that.
Dune by Frank Herbert (1966) - Paul Atreides is the potential messiah figure for two different groups of people but his father is sent to govern the planet Arrakis where moisture is more precious than gold. It’s the most important planet in the universe, though, because it is the source of spice, a drug which allows its users to distort space and guide spaceships through the universe. The posting is a trap set by a rival faction and the Emperor who plan to use the situation to kill them.
I’m one of the significant minority that doesn’t like Dune. A book should not require a thirty page glossary with circular definitions that require you to chase down multiple entries to understand things. And I’m really not a fan of the fact that the entire plot hinges on the fact that in ten thousand years no one has been the slightest bit curious about where spice comes from or the ecology of sandworms. I can accept space drugs that let you bend reality. I can deal with thermally regulating suits that work with better than perfect efficiency. I can even suspend disbelief of worms than burrow through sand like eels move through water. But no one has cared about understanding the nature of the cornerstone of galactic commerce?
And Call Me Conrad (though I read the expanded version called This Immortal) by Roger Zelazny (1966) - The award for novel was a tie in 1966 but the original novel And Call Me Conrad has never been reprinted. Zelazny added a few thousand words and released it again as This Immortal and this is what I wound up reading.
It was standard Zelazny, a sarcastic, incredibly skilled first-person narrator who jumps into everything and deals with the intrigues that result. I know this was early in his career but it sometimes felt that he was writing the same book over and over and over again and in this case he did it better elsewhere. This particular instance has the narrator as an unaging anarchist who has become guardian of Earth’s cultural history. The bulk of the population moved to alien worlds to live after a nuclear war and what remains is generally treated as an object of curiosity by the aliens who are the de facto managers of the remains. The result isn’t bad, but it’s nothing really that special compared to other books Zelazny would write that were similar (especially Lord of Light which won in 1968).
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (1967) - The last of Heinlein’s big novels and my personal favorite. The moon has been turned into a penal colony and its citizens live in a state of near anarchy with only minimal interference from a managing body that sends the grain grown on the moon back to earth and sets the prices for all utilities and markets. When they decide it’s time to clamp down on some dissidents it comes out that the moon’s ecology can only be sustained for a few more years. So a computer tech, his AI friend, a professor, and a revolutionary decide to form a conspiracy to throw off the shackles of the earth and let the moon govern herself. The book might be a bit heavy on the lectures from time to time but the story grips you hard.
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1968) - Zelazny hits all of his themes again but if you’re going to read one book by him this is it. On a distant colony world the first few generations have used the technology that brought them there to remake themselves as the Hindu gods making their descendants live without the benefits of the technology. One of the original colonists doesn’t care for this arrangement and remakes himself after the Buddha in order to take them down.
Zelazny always had a good writing style but here it reaches its peak. He was firing on all cylinders for this and I can’t think of a single bad thing to say. On the positive side, re-reading it made me want to get a book on Hindu mythology so I could read it again and understand more of the references.
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner (1969) - The book that brought me here. It’s a frustrating mix of genius and failure. The story is an examination of overpopulation in the early years of the twenty-first century as examined through roughly a hundred characters. There are a handful of major characters whose plot you follow throughout the novel and then everyone else gets mentioned for a page or two before vanishing for a few hundred pages then cropping up again and vanishing again. On top of that Brunner interweaves narrative with Joycian style stream of consciousness fleshing out the problems of the 21st century. It’s an ambitious novel and I think that Brunner just wasn’t a strong enough writer to pull it off.
There’s some great ideas in it such as the fears and social problems that grow with population. Someone goes crazy and goes on a killing spree daily and the populous lives in terror of encountering one of those people. A eugenics project in a third world communist dictatorship promises to deliver superior children and it throws the world into political chaos. There’s a lot of reproductive technology in the novel that has entered the realm of fact in the forty years since the book was published making some things feel very prophetic.
But so many things seem wrong. If there’s one thing that would bring pro-life and pro-choice sides together its mandatory abortions; the eugenics projects that control population in the novel would require greater social upheaval than Brunner shows to even be plausible. I was also really bothered by the casual racism exhibited by just about every character in the novel. I think it was Brunner demonstrating the culture but things went so far the other way since then.
I can see why the voters chose Stand On Zanzibar but it was a massive, frustrating read.