[QUOTE=Just Some Guy]
Just as an addendum about those '66 Worldcon voters; apparently it was not “voters” but one voter.
As the story that I’ve now read goes, a Zelazny fan at that year’s Worldcon with more money than sense decided that they wanted him to get a Hugo. And so they bought many Worldcon memberships just to vote for “Conrad” and the end result was the tie.
I’m not certain if the story is true or not but if I find this person…
[/QUOTE]
1966 is before even my time but since I started going to Worldcons in 1969 and I’ve never heard this story before, I have to wonder if there’s any truth to it.
Things look vastly different in hindsight and people always wonder how Zelazny’s book could have tied with the almighty Dune.
What people forget is that the book was a rewrite of two novels that had previously been serialized in Analog, “Dune World” in 1963-64 and “Prophet of Dune” in 1965. The novel version itself didn’t appear until December of 1965, and then only in a tiny edition from a small press in Philadelphia. It’s doubtful how many of the voters could possibly have read the whole novel when it was nominated.
Analog itself was in a down year. Dune was the only story from the magazine that made the Hugo ballot. If won for best magazine, and had two serials make the ballot, Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” and E. E. Smith’s “Slylark DuQuesne.”
F&SF was having a fantastic year and so was Zelazny. Poul Anderson’s “Marque and Reprisal” made the Hugo ballot and Brian Aldiss’ “The Saliva Tree” won the Nebula for best novella. In 1965 Zelazny also published “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Feet” in F&SF, which made the Hugo ballot and won the Nebula for best novelette. He had a major short novel, “The Furies,” serialized in Amazing. He also had stories in Galaxy, Fantastic, the Magazine of Horror, and yet another one in F&SF. He was the hottest writer in sf in 1965. And This Immortal conveniently appeared in both an SF Book Club edition and as a 40 cent Ace paperback in 1966 while Dune didn’t appear in paperback until 1967.
So you have a book by a must-read author that everybody has easy access to against a book that’s appeared over a three-year period in a magazine going downhill that not everybody was reading. When you look at it that way, it’s not as shocking that the two could wind up tied.
(Why did they both beat out Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Because it too was a serialized novel from If, and the last two parts didn’t come out until 1966. It shouldn’t have been on the ballot at all. And it most definitely shouldn’t have been allowed to be on the ballot a second time in 1967, when it did win. If there was funny stuff going on in the balloting I’d point the finger there.)
Hindsight is great but the voters in 1966 didn’t have that luxury.
).
I’ve read that it was a weak year but a book about how dianetics will make someone into an Objectivist Superman was a bit out there.