The Hugo & Nebula Novel Project: 1956

1956

Hugo Winner: Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein

Nebula Winner: None Awarded

Thank goodness we're past the last winner and I can start enjoying the winners again.  

The Hugo and Nebula Novel Project #2: 1955

1955

Hugo Winner: They'd Rather Be Right

Nebula Winner: None Awarded

Hey, remember when I started this project and I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about working my way through the winners over the years?  This book almost derailed the entire thing.

They'd Rather Be Right (serialized in 1954 in Astounding Science Fiction, published as a novel in 1957), written by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, may be one of the oddest examples of an award winner you'll run across.  Usually, you can make some justification for a book or movie wining an award, based on other people having different tastes or wanting to make a point with their votes or some such reasoning.  But with this book...jeez, it's just not good and everyone seems to agree on this.  It's a mystery all over the place why this middling piece of early '50s psychobabble won the award and it's universally regarded as the worst novel to win the Hugo.

The book's problems (and a short plot description involves scientists creating a supercomputer that can improve people's minds to the point where they suddenly are immortal and telepathic and the effect this has on society, and that's about all you need to know about that plot) can be boiled down to:

• Stock characters that are wooden to the point of being useful only for making furniture out of.

• Dialogue that is less conversation than diatribe.

• The worst excesses of '40s and '50s science fiction's obsession with psychiatry being able to solve the world's problem.  Even Asimov could barely pull it off with psychohistory, and these guys are not Asimov.

• Writing of male and female characters that is sexist towards both sides, which is almost a neat trick.

Really, it's just plain a bad novel and took me forever to get through.  It's completely out of print and should probably stay that way.

Random Technobabble: Not technobabble this time around, just an example of the terrible writing:

"Then a broken, almost sobbing, sigh escaped him, inadvertently. 'There is nothing so terrible as a mob of enraged human beings,' he murmured."

What Should Have Won in 1955:  Still no runner-ups in 1955 for the Hugo voting, but almost anything else published that year should have won.   Leaving aside the fantasy novels (1955 was the year The Magician's Nephew and Return of the King came out), there's a bevy of good choices:

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney

• Earthlight, Arthur C. Clarke

• October Country, Ray Bradbury

Any of those could have won and no one would say boo.  This is a terrible, terrible winner and I'm glad I never have to deal with it again.

My Hugo Novel Rankings So Far:

1. The Demolished Man (1953)
2. They'd Rather be Right (1955)

Next Time: The 1956 winner, Robert Heinlen's The Double Star.

The Hugo and Nebula Novel Project: 1953

Hugo Winner: The Demolished Man

Nebula Winner: None Awarded

Welcome to the inaugural entry to the Hugo and Nebula Novel Project, where I’ll be reading every novel that has won the Best Novel award.  I thought it would be more interesting to do both awards and compare and contrast (though there are of course a few years where the same novel won both) than just don one or the other.  In the early going there will be only Hugo winners as the Nebulas came a bit later.

First, a bit of background on the awards.  The Hugo Award for Best Novel, awarded since 1953, is voted on by attendees of the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and is the fan award; attendees vote before the convention and the awards are then presented at Worldcon. Throughout this project I’ll also be talking about the other nominees, but in the early years those were not recorded so we can leave that aside.  The Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded since 1966, is voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and so is more of a trade award.  (Interestingly, the nomination process for both awards doesn’t provide guidance as to what they consider science fiction so you get a nice range of types over the years).

Our novel for this entry is Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man (1953), which was originally anthologized in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952 before being published as a stand-alone novel.  Bester was primarily a short story and comics writer, publishing only three science fiction novels (He also published a non-genre novel titled Who He? in 1953).  Interestingly, after Stars his science fiction work mostly dropped off until the mid-70s as he focused on magazine work, writing interviews and travel stories.

The Demolished Man takes place in 2301, where Ben Reich, industry magnate, has his back to the wall as he is being pressed by rival magnate Craye D'Courtney.  Reich has been having nightly nightmares of a Man With No Face and to both save his own sanity and to win this industry war determines that he must murder D’Courtney and remove his rival permanently.  This would be a simple thing for a man of his talents except that this world of 2301 has a guild of telepaths knowns as Espers (or “peepers”) who can anticipate murderous intent and intercept such intentions before the murder occurs (similar to the psychics in the excellent 2002 movie Minority Report), to the extent that there hasn’t been a murder on Earth in 70 years.

Reich’s main rival in trying to get away with the murder is an Esper and police detective named Lincoln Powell; full of himself, arrogant to a point and convinced he’s the nicest person on Earth.  Yeah, not my favorite lead character in a novel ever, Powell basically pulls the Bond route of pretending he knows what he’s doing as he stumbles from lead to lead, almost always two steps behind Reich.  Toss in a completely random character habit of lying when he doesn’t need to, leading to the nickname of Dishonest Abe, and we’re set for a lead composed of character traits and not a character.

Then, about three quarters of the way through the book, things get purely weird.  So far, we’ve had a straightforward mystery novel in a futuristic setting but then we get into my least favorite part of 1950’s-era science fiction: insane amounts of psychological mumbo jumbo, usually applied to some completely different field.  In this case, it’s split personalities, trying to deconstruct the killer inside his own mind to find out what happens plot-moving mumbo jumbo so we feel like we’ve reached a plot resolution when it’s really just an excuse to sneer at 20th Century incarceration.  Toss in some random 50’s sci-fi female characters that exist only in relation to the male characters and then that D’Courtney’s daughter Barbara spends most of the novel regressed to a childhood state due to shock (and yes, that plot reads as unintentionally pervy as you think) and this novel suffers more than a bit for being dated.

Would I recommend it?  Overall, probabaly; it’s still fairly well written despite the dated aspects and parts of it are fun.  I just wouldn’t run for the bookstore to pick up a copy.

Random Technobabble:  Tuesday afternoon, Reich left Monarch Tower early and dropped in at the Century Audio-bookstore on Sheridan Place.  It specialized mostly in piezo-electric crystal recordings...tiny jewels mounted in elegant settings.  The latest vogue was brooch-operas for M’lady. (“She Shall Have Music Wherever She Goes.”) Century also had shelves of obsolete printed books.

What Should Have Won in 1953:  No idea.  At this point the Hugo voting didn’t reveal the runner-ups.

My Hugo Novel Rankings So Far:

#1: The Demolished Man

Next Time: The 1955 winner, Mark Clifton and Frank Riley’s They'd Rather Be Right.