INTRODUCTION

This book is more than a collection of science fiction stories.
Of course, it is mainly that, and rightly so. After all, we have
here the fourth annual set of Nebula Award winners and as
many runners-up on the final ballot as could be fitted in. But
in view of the growing acceptance of science fiction as a valid
literary form, it seems time to offer some history and com-
mentary besides.
So widely are the assumptions and conventions of that
form disseminated these days, that nobody feels surprised or
puzzled when they are used by someone as respectable as,
say, John Hersey. At the same time, their regular users are
more and more adopting techniques which, if not yet abso-
lutely contemporary (being associated with such names as
Joyce, Kafka, Capek, DOS Passes), are light-years in advance
of cut-and-dried pulp narration.
Most science fiction has also preserved its own traditional
virtues. It still tells stories, wherein things happen. It remains
more interested in the glamour and mystery of existence, the
survival and triumph and tragedy of heroes and thinkers, than
in the neuroses of some sniveling fagot.  And pace  Will
McNelly, I don't believe "hard" science is on the way out of
it.  The  impressive  terminology  always  did  include  plenty  of
gobbledygook. If anything, we get more genuine science and
technology now, from writers like Hal Clement, Joseph
Martino, and Larry Niven, than ever before.
This combination of new skills and old values has com-
pletely revitalized a field which, a decade or so back, had
decayed to a frighteningly low proportion of stories not flat,
imitative, or idiotic. I don't know what brought on the change.
It wasn't just the many talented new writers, though obviously
they're responsible for a lot. Quite a few old-timers suddenly
caught fire again. Whatever the cause, heightened quality is
earning us  a wider,  more discriminating audience. The
rewards go well beyond such benefits for the writer 'as decent
income and expenses-paid trips to symposia in Brazil. Mainly,
he's getting across.
We still have a long way to fare, but it looks like an excit-
ing journey ahead.
Among reasons for optimism is our organization. Science
Fiction Writers of America. Let's be blunt, the typical writers'
groupand I include some of the most prominentis a
farce. The vitality of science fiction is reflected in the virility
of SFWA. It has won, or created, genuine benefits for its
membership, such as improvements in the contracts of several
publishers and the increasingly prestigious Nebula awards.
The year 1968 was almost as stressful for SFWA as it was
for mankind in general. Not only did we suffer a Year of the
Jackpotsee the obituary sectionbut for a while, political
disagreements threatened to tear us apart. Two opposing
groups were collecting signatures and contributions for two
opposing statements on the Vietnam War, to be published as
advertisements in some of the magazines.
I happened to spearhead one of these, which involved me
in a blizzard of correspondence with SFWA members as well
as officers. Practically without exception, every letter I got
from any sidemore than two sides exist, you knowwas
both patriotic in tone and humane in spirit. The statements
appeared simultaneously, and I haven't heard of any friend-
ships that they broke. The experience gives me a bit of hope
for our poor flayed world. Science fiction people obviously
can't save it by themselves. But are they perhaps representa-
tive of a larger community of people who'd rather think than
scream?
Let's turn from the writers to what they write, a subject
doubtless more interesting to readers. I don't agree with every-
thing that Will McNelly has to say about the year in novels;
neither, probably, will you; and it is obvious that a substantial
plurality of SFWA's professional writers won't, since their
votes bestowed the Nebula on a book that leaves him cool but
that they (and 1) think is a credit to the award. And so
what's wrong with a little controversy? Professor McNelly's
remarks are well worth your attention, both for their own
sake and as a strong assault on those Berlin Walls of categori-
zation which have for too long kept the various literary forms
artificially isolated from each other. The year in magazines
can be summarized quite briefly, since this whole book is
itself a commentary upon that.
Analog offered the mixture as before: stories running
heavily to ideation, interesting fact articles, and provocative
sometimes deliberately infuriatingeditorials. Or was it
really quite .the old blend? John Campbell has never stopped
pioneering. He has, however, recognized that even a science
fiction audience is basically conservative and newness must be
sneaked in. For example, you don't see much about "psi" any
more; it's simply there, as Anne McCaffrey's yarn bears wit-
ness. Analog also enjoyed a gratifying rise in circulation.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction continued in
its  own  tradition,  quite  a  different  one  except  for  Isaac
Asimov's column. It was especially noteworthy how many
stories  here  bore  immediate  relevance  to  our  real,  mid-
twentieth-century world. Editor Edward Ferman also en-
couraged the continued development of such comparatively
new writers as Bruce McAllister, K. M. O'Donnell, and
Josephine Saxton, who rewarded him with fine contributions.
Amazing and Fantastic had their problems, including a
midstream change of editors, but nonetheless published a
good deal of fresh and worthwhile material. Under Harry
Harrison, book reviews came to be handled by such as Fritz
Leiber and James Blish; the anthropologist Leon Stover began
a series of regular reports from the frontiers of his science;
and besides old hands, we got extremely promising recruits
like  Robert  Taylor  and  James  Tiptree,  Jr.  When  Barry
Malzberg took command, he proved especially sympathetic
to experimental writing:  which is not the same thing as
amateurish writing.
But Frederik Pohl was unquestionably the innovator of the
year. He was not content with good solid periodicals like
Galaxywhich regularly includes articles by Willy Leyand
//which has thrice in a row taken the annual Hugo Award
for best magazine, bestowed through vote of fans rather than
writers.  He  also launched  two  new,  at  present irregular,
publications. One is called Worlds of Fantasy and is devoted
to precisely what the title implies. If you don't like space-
ships but do like Tolkien or Lovecraft, this is probably for
you. The other is International Science Fiction, featuring
stories from places as remote as Japan and the Soviet Union.
I hope both of these will become firmly established. Everyone
would benefit.
When he ran the two head-on Vietnam declarations, Fred
PoM and his publisher did not go out and spend the five
hundred dollars they had collected. Instead, they announced
that it would be paid out in prizes for the best ideas they
received on what the United States might actually do about
the situation. Response was large and imaginative. After win-
nowing, it was turned over to a professional study group
which in turn may well call some of the suggestions to the
attention of the government. Again, this does not mean that
science fictioneers can bail out the human race. But it does
mean that, far from being escapists, they are uncommonly
aware of and concerned about reality.
In addition, Galaxy Publishing Corporation instituted its
own awards, cash, for the best stories it has printed within
a year. These are determined by a poll of subscribers, em-
ploying standard statistical methods of sampling and valida-
tion. It is interesting that none of the winners  (first was
Clifford Simak's novel Goblin Reservation) made the final
Nebula ballot. I suspect this indicates not so much a failure
of either system as it does the diversity of science fiction.
In fact, the range is so very healthily wide that what's
going on in Britain today is often too much for me, even
though I consider myself to have catholic tastes. Rather than
scold what I seldom understand, I asked one of that country's
most distinguished writers in our field to comment on it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Aldiss:
"New Worlds: totters from strength to strength. The appear-
ance of every issue is a triumph of hope over economics; the
persistence of the editor, Michael Moorcock, who is now
also publisher, is perhaps a triumph over himself.
"New Worlds is no longer a magazine but a cause: thrown
away the magazine, kept the courage. The November 1968
issue contained only stories by new authorsthey were being
given a chance to speak before the magazine sank forever.
In December, the magazine bobbed up again, with stories by
such Nebula winners as.Delany, Moorcock, and Aldiss. Disch
and Bill Butler were also present, and there was an article on
Andy Warhol. So the vessel still floats, despite severe trouble
with distributors during the year, when Spinrad's Bug Jack
Barron was running. Of course, a hefty Arts Council grant
(now extended into 1969) helps buoyancy.
"Subject matter in the stories is sometimes thin, inexpertise
sometimes shows below the wish to set convention at nought;
but what matters most is the attitude of questioning: the good
hard look at what is going on, the wish to interpret without
falsifying.
"English science fiction has never been too greatly sub-
jected to the enervating pressures of pulp markets. Moorcock's
New Worlds merely uses its liberty to the full; it's for writers
and not for publishers (under either system, readers, as
readers must, fend for themselves). Writers respond to this
policy by writing freelyand sometimes for free, if necessary.
This dedication finds an echo in the staff, and more than an
echo in the editor himself. Moorcock, as he ascends into
legend, begins to look like a Gerald Scarfe portrait of the
French philosopher Rene Descartes.
"Many of Moorcock's contributors are AmericanZeiazny,
Disch, Sladek, Spinrad, Leiber, Zoline, Jacobs, et al. The
typical New Worlds story is pretty cool, has connections with
the attitudes of the 'underground,' and shares little in com-
mon with the American New Wave, which is characterized
by heavier breathing. It is against nothing but mediocrity:
which is why it has aroused so much anger here and there."
I take special pleasure in having Brian's remarks because
one of my great regrets in editing this book was that there
turned out to be no way of including his novelette Total
Environment. Look for it elsewhere, together with the other
fine runners-up. If 1968 had more than its share of catastro-
phes, it also had some very special gloriesamong them the
return of the Pueblo crew, Apollo 8's Christmas journey
around the moon . . . and, not altogether bathos in the
present context, a great deal of first-class science fiction.
Pout Anderson
FOREWORD

The Science Fiction Novel in 1968
by Willis E. McNelly
Professor of English, California State College, Fullerton
The Wandering Jew is alive and an activist in Berkeley.
Seven billion human beings are trying to stand on Zanzibar;
there is conflict in Utopia; puberty rites in space end with the
death of a planet; the Apocalypse will come either with Black
Magic or with the approaching Millennium. Electric sheep
graze, unmolested by fallout, and all is not well on Paradise.
These visions of the futuresome might term them night-
mareswith their extensions, extrapolations, and involve-
ments are the subject matter of the best science fiction novels
published during 1968. Seven of them were the Nebula
  finalistsl the eighth was a superior work overlooked in the
voting.2 Together they continue a trend begun some years
ago, demonstrating again the growth of the novel as the most
representative,  if not the  most  distinctive,  form  for  the
presentation of science fiction.
Thirty-five novels were listed on the preliminary ballot used
by the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America
to nominate candidates for 1968 Nebula Award. They were
a diverse lot, including a few fantasies, dozens of spanner and
grommet stories, some high jinks in time, and several serious
explorations of certain new views of the hell man continually
shapes for himself. It was, in general, a good year for the
i James Blish, Black Easter, Doubleday; John Brunner, Stand on
Zanzibar, Doubleday; Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep, Doubleday; R. A. Lafferty, Past Master, Ace;
Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage, Ace; Joanna Russ, Picnic on
Paradise, Ace; Robert Silverberg, The Masks of Time, Ballantine.
2 John Boyd, The Last Starship from Earth, Weybright & Talley.
science fiction novel, although space operas, by and large,
are not really worth considering seriously. They are mostly
good adventure stories, told, as usual, with a maximum of
action and dialogue, a minimum of characterization, and a
general banality of style: "Starwolf, whispered the void . . ."
They end up as half of an Ace double, thud and blunder
among the stars.
The serious works, like the Nebula finalists, sometimes
show great originality. Indeed, if the editors of the Saturday
Review or The New York Review of Books had read some
of the Nebula nominee novels published during 1968, they
might have discovered that the gap between so-called main-
stream fiction and first-rate science fiction is narrowing. In
fact, there are times when the difference disappears com-
pletely, so completely that even the case-hardened iconoclasts
who occupy the pages of The New Yorker might be unable
to detect the gap at all. For example, John Earth's Giles Goat
Boy is science fiction, but no reviewer bothered to mention
the fact. Earth's McLuhanesque Lost in the Fun House was
also science fictiona non-novel, perhaps, or even an anti-
novel, or a non-book, a piece of mclunacy, but science fiction
nonethelessa fact ignored by every reviewer who tried to
make conventional, representational mainstream sense out of
Earth's fragmented vision.
Good as the Nebula nominees were, they did not produce
a science fiction novel in a class with Frank Herbert's Dune,
Alfred Hester's The Demolished Man, Robert A. Heinlein's
Stranger in a Strange Land, or Walter Miller's A Canticle for
Leibowitz. Yet the general quality of the better novels is
certainly above that of any year within recent memory. To
be sure, even among the finalists there were certain failures,
but the failures were often failures of excess and were not
due to lack of imagination, paucity of conception, or lapses
of style.
The outstanding feature of the finalists was how much
involvement or response they demand of the readers. The
best novels, such as James Blish's Black Easter, Robert Silver-
berg's The Masks of Time, John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar,
oi John Boyd's The Last Starship from Earth, were written
for what might be called a "maximum" audience. The authors
all seem to have realized that creative writing requires cre-
ative reading. Thus they are no longer content to spoonfeed
space pablum to adolescents. Instead, the authors have written
up to their readers, not down to them. Consequently, the
passive reader is forced, by every device in the writer's
arsenal, to become involved, to read between the lines, behind
the lines, and under the lines. The stories are often told by
indirection,  suggestion,  allusion.  The  characters  begin  to
assume a life as independent human beings, rather than card-
board stereotypes. Readers unwilling or unable to provide
what the artists demand remain blissfully unaware of some
genuinely superior work. And that is their loss, not that of
the writers. What is most important, any reader who ap-
proaches the principal novels of the year with a quickened
ear, a sensitive eye, and an awakened imagination will realize
that in a few instances at least, the writer deserves the appella-
tion "artist."
The 1968 Nebula nominees demonstrated a wide variety of
styles, types, techniques, and modes. They ranged from the
wildly experimental Stand on Zanzibar to the controlled disci-
pline and form of Panshin's Rite of Passage, the Nebula
winner. Certainly Panshin's first novel had been widely
anticipated; he had, after all, demonstrated both his commit-
ment to science fiction and his undeniable talent in numerous
short stories and his full-length critical analysis, Heinlein in
Dimension. What kind of novel could be expected from this
man, reputed to be a member of the New Wave, who was
at the same time a merciless dissector of Heinlein? The result:
a smooth, competent, professional reworking of tired, wom-
out science fiction characters and devices. One is tempted to
say that Rite of Passage is a mini-splendored thing.
Yet withal, it was the Nebula winner, voted the best science
fiction novel of the year by the members of SFWA. Their
choice was both difficult and easy to understand. Rite of
Passage is, on one hand, banal, at least to this reader. On the
other hand, it is well constructed, smooth, slick, thoroughly
professional. Unquestionably the writers who named Rite of
Passage were responding to the professionalism everywhere
evident in the novel, the tight plotting, the crisp transitions,
the clear statement of a problem that, if minor, was none-
theless intriguing. In the last analysis, the votes for Rite of
Passage were a tribute to the writer from whom Panshin had
learned so much and to whom he owed so much, Robert A.
Heinlein.
Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, the Nebula third-place win-
ner, is another matter indeed. It may be a non-novel or an
antinovel, it may be the ultimate "New Worlds" novel, the
Ulysses or Finnegans Wake of the New Wave, but one can
hardly be indifferent to it. Indeed, Stand on Zanzibar may be
the most important science fiction novel of the last decade.
Unfortunately, it may also be the most difficult. Stand on
Zanzibar requires a patience of eye and ear that many fans
will be unwilling or unable to give. After all, fans don't have
to read McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy or Joyce's Ulysses
to appreciate any of the other Nebula nominees, and none of
the others are even half the length of Zanzibar's 507 pages.
However, those who pay it the attention it deserves, who are
willing to follow Brunner through his maze of characters,
situations, typographical eccentricities, and triple or quadruple
levels of writing will find here both a richness of conception
and depth of execution rarely matched in contemporary fic-
tion. Stand on Zanzibar is no sterile, naturalistic-representa-
tional novel about people whose miseries are merely aching
groins and whose griefs, to quote William Faulkner, grieve
on no universal bones, who write not of the heart but of the
glands.
For all of his dazzling pyrotechniques, Brunner is neither
deliberately  obscure  nor  obtusely  difficult.  To  create his
twenty-first-century world where seven billion humans con-
sume mass-marketed psychedelics  and  otherwise sweat,
struggle, and die, Brunner writes a careful multidimensional
prose. The major clue to understanding the book is, curiously
enough, the seven-page table of contents. Here Brunner
leaves his clues: utilizing styles he calls "context," "the hap-
pening world," "track with closeups," and "continuity," he
builds a multilayered contrapuntal novel. These four fugal
styles interweave continually while each still maintains its
complete artistic integrity. The McLuhanesque quality of the
novel is everywhere evident. The four parts cannot simply
be considered as linear, independent developments, each
telling a simple beginning, middle, and end story. Instead, the
artistic construct becomes a single entity,  an art object-as-
form, a medium whose message is its totality, Brunner
demands sensory involvement on all levels, from the thematic
to the stylistic, as he searches for "retribalization" in the
midst of sterile linearity. All in all, Stand on Zanzibar is a
dexterous performance, at once as facile as a Bach motet
and as gripping as one of the German master's chorales.
One of the most conspicuous, as well as one of the most
interesting,  trends  in  many  of  the  science  fiction  novels
written during the last dozen years is the emergence of the
so-called "soft" sciences as thematic material. Among these
are anthropology, sociology, psychology, semantics, and re-
cently, religion or theology. Once the enemy of knowledge
in such works as Raymond F. Jones's Renaissance, religion
has recently become primary source material, used sympa-
thetically and provocatively by many different sf authors.
Recall, for a moment, A Canticle for Leibowitz, considered
by many critics to be one of the two or three best science
fiction novels ever written. Miller's novel untilizes the struc-
ture, mystique, language, and theology of Roman Catholicism.
Remove the Roman Catholic Church from its pages, and
Canticle is nothing, mere vapidity unredeemable even by
Miller's flashing word magic. Also religiously oriented are
James Blish's A Case of Conscience, Roger Zeiazny's Lord of
Light, Herbert's Dune, and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange
Land, to cite only a few. It matters little whether the religious
constructs and background be Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam,
or pantheism. What is important is that these writers, all
skilled craftsmen, felt impelled to utilize religious themes as
artistic material and to utilize them so profoundly that their
novels would not otherwise be complete. Moreover, each of
these writers has handled the religious symbols as if they
were standard science fiction devices.
Yet the nature of the material has seemingly forced the
writers to consider some genuine problems, problems as real
as violence in Chicago or dangling bodies in Iraq. Suppose,
asks Herbert, we have a genuine avatar, a messiah, a true
manifestation of the Deity who is forced by the incredible
horror of living conditions to choose violence, not love or
charity, as his method of redeeming Arrakis and the Fremen.
So Paul Atreides' internal sufferings, the clash of love with
violence, become a crucial ethical problem that would be
essentially trivial without the religious background against
which the ethics can be weighed.
No author has explored these theological implications as
consistently, or as profoundly, as James Blish. Beginning with
the Hugo-winning A Case of Conscience and continuing with
Doctor Mirabilis, the second book in the trilogy, which has
been published only in England, Blish has pursued the rami-
fications  of evil  as  has no  writer  since  the  late  Charles
Williams. The final volume of Blish's sequence, Black Easter,
another Nebula finalist, is perhaps the most frightening novel
of the year in its implications. Theron Warethe name is
derived from a greatly underestimated novel by Harold
Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware, written fifty years
agois a master of the arcane, a materialistic magician who
has turned the black art of necromancy into an instrument of
personal profit. Simply to see what might happen, this modern
Faust undertakes to let all of the major demons out of hell
for one night, turning them loose on the world with no orders
and no restrictions except that they must return to hell at
dawn. His undertaking is successful beyond belief because
his actions bring Armageddon and the resultant destruction
of the world. What all of the diabolists had not realized, they
are told by the ravening Sabbath Goat, is that God is dead.
When the bounds are loosed, the powers of evil must finally
conquer. End of novel.
Here Blish again asks ancient questions: What is the role
of evil in the world, and by implication or extension, what is
the position of suffering? In addition Blish raises the great
Manichaean problem once more: Is evil creative? If so, what
are its implications for our contemporary society, because
the society of Black Easter is uneasily like that of 1969. And
if evil is creative, perhaps diabolists such as Huysmans' des
Essientes or the Marquis de Sade were right after all to
worship Lucifer. Perhaps Rosemary's baby is real, alive and
well in Manhattan, awaiting His Infernal Kingdom and His
Black Easter.
Some readers may cavil with Blish, maintaining that his
artistic viewpoint is essentially one of fi "tasy rather than
science fiction. That may very well be, but at best it is a
quibble over form or shadow which ignores the substance of
Blish's arguments. Like Ivan, in The Brothers Karamazov,
Blish seems to imply that if God did not exist, everything
is permitted and the doing of evil becomes .virtually a man-
dated "good."
This kind of probing into the depths of man's consciousness
is  impossible  within  the  traditional  science  fiction  novel.
Involvement with scientific gimmickry has too often robbed
science fiction of its humanity. It may be that the inclusion
of theologyand the other "soft" sciencesas viable subject
matter is one step toward the restoration of its human element.
Where fiction loses its ability to concentrate on the human
being, where it no longer informs, entertains, or enhances life,
it becomes simply a mechanical recitation of fantasized fact,
a trap that too much science fiction has fallen into. Theology
may help restore the balance.
First novels have many characteristics. Sometimes they are
so bad that about all that can be said for them is that the
punctuation and spelling display a startling originality. Too
often mainstream writers who attempt a science fiction novel
know almost nothing about the form. George Orwell's 1984
or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World seem to them the
apotheosis of the genre, and their own reading of real science
fiction ended with Carl Claudy's pastiches of H. G. Wells in
the old American Boy magazine. They had fading memories
of the Buck Rogers radio program or the superior draftsman-
ship but inferior plotting of Prince Valiant. The results would
be laughable if they weren't so pitiable. Don't fail to miss
them all.
Often enough a first science fiction novel is written by
someone like Panshin who has obviously learned his trade
well in the rigorous workshops of John W. Campbell, Fred
Pohl, or Ed Ferman. Of course, writing a short story with its
limited vision, singleness of effect, controlled plotting, minimal
characterization, and qualified range is not the same as writ-
ing a novel. Essentially, the problem of the novelist is to
create an entire world, populate it with believable people, and
construct a problem that requires careful, detailed elabora-
tion. Further, he must accomplish this in prose that moves
the story toward its denouement while remaining unobtrusive.
"There are those writers, like Ray Bradbury, whose talents
seem to lead them to the short story as a natural medium.
It is not that Bradbury lacks the artistic vision for the novel;
it is rather that his concepts seize him, shake him, and emerge
explosively after two or three hours of writing into a short
story. Other writers think galactically or epically; no micro-
cosm for them. Their dreams encompass entire worlds, their
characters emerge from ink into reality, and their prose can
be lean, supple, poetic, highly charged with cosmic tensions.
Critics often maintain, with some justification, that it is
more difficult to write a good short story than an average
novel. Perhaps. But when any author masters his trade so well
that his novel is a richly panoplied accomplishment, he
deserves recognition and praise from those who should appre-
ciate the extent of his achievement.
Nineteen sixty-eight produced at least one such novel, John
Boyd's The Last Starship from Earth. It is so good that it
caused Heinlein to break his strongest resolution:, never to
comment in public on anything a colleague has written. He
said, "It is terrific . . . the best anti-utopia, the strongest satire
on trends in our present culture that I have seen since 1984
appeared . . . it belongs up at the top, along with Brave New
World."
Yet despite Heinlein's praise, Boyd's novel had a very
mixed reception. It received a few votes for the Nebula
Award and almost no reviews, even delayed ones, in any of
the science fiction magazines. Why was it ignored? No one
knows for sure, but the sometimes justified xenophobia of
both science fiction writers and fans might have accounted
for part of it. Fans and writers are clannishindeed, have
had clannishness forced upon them by those who think that
science fiction is easy to write or simply Buck Rogers updated.
Thus, uncertainty about Boyd's identity or background might
have caused a certain reluctance to vote for his book. All
anyone knew was that The Last Starship from Earth was a
first novel,  that  it  had  been  picked  up  by the  Doubleday
Science Fiction Book Club as the June-July selection.
All of these suppositions did not alter the fact that The
Last Spaceship was a superior first achievement, better than
most authors' tenth. It is, on the surface, a parallel universe
storythe Pope is a computer, the City of God is on Mt.
Whitney, Lincoln has given "The Johannesburg Address,"
Byron is an eighteenth-century poet, laser science has pro-
duced theological cybernetics, and Hell is a pariah planet.
Beyond the surface, the novel is a virtuoso-performance com-
bining word magic of all kinds, half-buried topical allusions,
thinly veiled references to "reality," and unobtrusive, pene-
trating comments on our society. Its ending is at once so
subtle in execution and yet so bold in concept as to defy
description. Only the theologically ingenious innovation at the
conclusion of A Canticle for Leibowitz has equaled Boyd's
accomplishment at the end of his novel, but the quality of
Canticle must be the standard for comparison. The Last
Starship from Earth did not win any awards, but it will be
winning readers when most of the finalists will be forgotten.
His new novel, The Pollinators of Eden, due from Weybright
& Talley in mid-1969, is sure to get a much wider readership.
If it is anywhere nearly as good as The Last Starship from
Earth, it Will be a strong Nebula contender a year from now.
If 1968 was the year science fiction explored certain devices
and techiques derived from McLuhan, psychology, and the
impact of the mass media, it was also a year in which very
little old-fashioned humor was published. Science fiction has
often been too intensely serious for its own good, too self-
conscious, and too sycophantic. It has usually lacked the
blessed ability to stand outside of itself, take a good look at
the warts and the freckles, and then break into raucous
laughter at the sight. Perhaps the somberness of reality was
reflected in the somberness of the writing, but science fiction
could have used some outrageous spoofs, more rollicking
comedy, or even some gentle self-satire.
Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on
Stanley Kubrick's epic motion picture of the same name,
solved some of the many questions raised by the film itself.
Not eligible for a Nebula nomination, 2001 was in many
ways a better book than the picture really deserved. Flashy,
expensive, and magnificently photographed, Kubrick's movie
had everythingexcept characters who lived, a plot which
made sense, dialogue which sounded human, and action of
any kind. It did have, of course, the mysterious Formica
tabletop upon which everyone grooved, a drag computer for
a hero, the loudest and most distracting sound track of any
film ever made, and unrelieved boredom. After the press
preview before Kubrick eliminated an hour of non-action,
several perceptive critics booed.
There was no booing of Clarke's novel, however. Not only
was it assured of vast sales because of its connection with the
movie, 2001 was snatched up by eager film viewers who
looked for answers to questions raised by the motion picture.
Clarke provided those answers literately, intelligently, and
provocatively. Readers familiar with his earlier Childhood's
End might have expected as much. Fortunately for science
fiction, the tens of thousands of readers attracted to the novel
by the film were treated to serious probing of some profound
questions: What is the nature of man in space? What are
some of the implications of genuine interstellar contact? What
is the mutation beyond man?
These questions are part of the common coinage of science
fiction, to be sure, but Clarke's handling of them insured
many sympathetic readers for science fiction, particularly
among people who would not otherwise know an Apollo cap-
sule from a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic com-
puter, otherwise known as HAL. If only for performing this
service, Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably, the most
valuable novel of the year.
Persistent rumors during the last year or two have told of
a coming sequel to Frank Herbert's Nebula-winning novel,
Dune. Herbert finally confirmed the rumors when he finished
the actual writing in mid-1968. While the continuation of the
story of Paul Muad'Dib as emperor must await 1969 publica-
tion and evaluation, Herbert's  1968 novel, The Santaroga
Barrier, was not one of the Nebula finalists. "The critics may
have subconsciously compared the limited scope of The
Santaroga Barrier with the epic vision of Dune, but The
Santaroga Barrier perhaps deserves more consideration than
it was given. One more variation on Herbert's basic theme,
the necessity for communication, The Santaroga Barrier has
been praised by many college students who are overly aware
of the invidious consequences of the lack of understanding:
alienation, anomy, despair.
One of the principal charges laid against many science
fiction novels is that they are exasperating. Too often they
combine startling ingenuity with shabby characterization, or
complexities of plotting with inanities of style. Some 1968
novels are no exception. What makes them so exasperating
is the realization that they are, on the whole, so good that
there is no reason for their not being superior. What is even
more disappointing, the novels sometimes demonstrate an
unrealized potential. Editors groan when they get a manu-
script embodying an original concept, very badly handled.
The editors, to their credit, usually insist -~at a writer learn
his trade and that his execution be at least half as good as his
imagination, before they will print a single mediocre word.
For that matter, even the very best novels of the past dozen
years too often betray symptoms of this same unrealized
potential, or are marred in one way or another. Stranger in a
Strange Land breaks apart in the middle, Dune has stylistic
lapses, and even A Canticle for Leibowiti, lacks centricity, to
cite only three examples. Mainstream novels, of course, do
not lack flaws, as they too often concentrate on representa-
tional  confessionalism,  replete  with  sexual  aberrations  or
psychological hang-ups.
However, the fact that a science fiction novelor any
other for that matteris flawed should not detract from the
immediacy of its appeal. Students or fans do not really care
whether Stranger in a Strange Land sometimes reads like two
different novels or that Joyce's Ulysses is overly complex. One
writer's forte may be dialogue, another's style, a third's char-
acter or action, and we should appreciate their techniques.
Someday a writer may combine all these elements and the
result may be a great novel, by whatever standards one uses
to define "great." Many writers now active have the ability.
Aldiss, Boyd, Brunner, Delany, Dick, Disch, Ellison, Herbert,
Lafferty, Moorcock, Sturgeon, Zeiazny . . . the list could
include a dozen more . . . all are capable of writing a dis-
tinguished work. To that list perhaps should be added Joanna
Russ, whose Picnic on Paradise is an agonizingly good but
flawed novel. Miss Russ's major accomplishment here is that
she may have created one of the first memorable women in a
very masculine field. Save for Lady Jessica of Dune, there are
few other women of the stature of Alyx, the tough heroine
of Picnic, in the annals of science fiction. Alyx can charm,
antagonize, hate, love, please, anger, and most of all, survive.
A typical woman perhaps? Yes, but Alyx breathes the way
that too many "real" painted dolls do not.
Miss Russ may learn more as her talent matureslearn
how to remove the flaws that make Picnic on Paradise so
enchantingly exasperating. For example, she may learn more
about techniques of plotting, or learn not to depend on too
much willing suspension of disbelief by her readersbut as
she learns she will still have her talent, a vibrant verbal
dexterity. Her words chime with a ring of genuine silver, not
the clunk of the ersatz sandwich coinage spewed out by so
many writers. Miss Russ's promise is measured by the fact
that, for all its flaws, Picnic on Paradise, her first novel, was
a Nebula nominee. How good her second or sixth will be
boggles the imagination.
Robert Silverberg's The Masks of Time was the Nebula
runner-up. It looks to the past and projects that vision to the
future. How will people in the mass behave as they approach
the end of the millennium thirty years from now? he asks.
Much the same as they behaved a thousand years ago, with
fears of the coming of the Antichrist or hopes for the Second
Coming; with riots, depredations, religious intolerance, vast
excesses of lust, rage, and power. Silverberg might have
prefaced his novel, which is both realistic and terrifying, with
Yeats's words, "And what rough beast, its hour come round
at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" The twenty-
first century thus may be the age of the rough beast, the era
of enlightenment, the beginning of the new dark 'ages. The
conditions are here now, Silverberg posits: the superstition,
the ignorance, the susceptibility to vast stimulation through
the Cyclopean eye of the TV monster, the potential for mass
hysteria. Combine these elements and transform "the rough
beast" into a charismatic figure, and you have the makings
of a very provocative novel indeed. The entire book is seen
through the eyes of a dispassionate University of California
at Irvine physics professor, and told in his words. He be-
comes involved with the antihero, Vornan-19, as a jealous
sexual rival, and through the professor's narrow vision, life at
the end of our century lurches to its whimpering conclusion.
Wisely, Silverberg never reveals whether his visitor out of
time is a demonic demiurge, a homo superior from the future
with incredible charm, or simply the personalized extension of
the bastard in all of us. Even though the novel may appear
to be limited by the narrowness of the first-person point of
view which Silverberg adopts, close examination reveals that
he has created a universal micro-world. And as Scott Fitz-
gerald once put it, "Life is much more successfully looked at
from a single window, after all." So with The Masks of Time.
The role of sex in contemporary science fiction has been a
limited one, at best. Formerly magazine editors would not
even suggest that a spaceman ever had to urinate, to say
nothing of wanting to fornicate now and then. Today when
D. H. Lawrence has emancipated all novelists, few science
fiction writers treat sex as anything excep' a biological curi-
osity. Silverberg is a notable exception, tod The Masks of
Time is his best example. To be sure, any treatment of sex
runs the risk of becoming mere titillation, not integral to plot,
character, or action. But by personalizing Vornan-19 as an
object of sexual idealization by both men and women. Silver-
berg makes the sexual conflict an important part of the book.
Thus sex becomes relevant, not prurient or extraneous to the
action or characters. In the end, Silverberg's utilization of
hitherto proscribed materials may be as important to the
future of science fiction as the introduction of the soft sci-
ences as subject matter.
The last two finalists, Lafferty's Past Master and Dick's
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are two more examples
of books being written for a maximum audience. Both require
the reader to extend himself, to stretch his imagination almost
to the breaking point past a willing suspension of disbelief.
The authors lead the reader through worlds of time into
nightmares of anti-utopian vision. To be sure, in Lafferty's
book Sir Thomas More is alive in his Utopia, but faced with
what enemies and what alternatives that extend from More's
original vision? And Dick asks the reader some elemental
questions: When is a human being? Are machines more real
than man if they are worshiped by man, if they are immune
to fallout, and if humans can program their daily moods with
a few simple flicks of a dial?
All of these extrapolations derive from conditions actually
existing in our present society. This ability to indicate the
logical conclusions of what we now do when projected into a
future scene is, of course, at the very heart of science fiction.
Throughout the past thirty years the imagination of science
fiction writers has often, surpassed their ability to incarnate
that imagination into form. Now talent is beginning to catch
up with imagination, and the combination will ultimately
produce novels of distinction, particularly when writers con-
tinue to insist on maximum readers. Refusal to demand more
of the readers means that writers will produce competent,
slick, professional novels that may win a prize or two but will
do nothing to make science fiction into literature. When
writers utilize their imaginations and talents in concert with
the awakened sensitivities of their audience, science fiction-
may well become 'the genuine literature of the future.