On Rereading The Best of the Nebulas Edited by Ben Bova; Part One

Having a strong urge to get back to my literary roots, I picked up the weighty tome The Best of the Nebulas and began to read. As Bova, the editor, explains in the introduction, these stories were selected by members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association was then known) from the stories that had won the organization’s Nebula Awards from 1965 through 1985. In other words, these stories were considered the best of the best. And wonderful stories they are, too – every one of them. I wondered, in fact, as I have wondered in the past, why there has not been a follow-up volume in the decades since this one.

Be that as it may, the stories in this anthology are representative of some of my earliest encounters with so-called new wave science fiction writers; Harlan Ellison has three stories herein, and Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delaney have two each. I remember searching for science fiction at the local library in Seattle shortly after resolving to become a writer (during my one year of college in California) and coming across a shelf with several Nebula Awards volumes. I devoured them, of course, and craved more, eagerly pouncing upon each new edition as it came out.

The first year of the Nebulas, 1965, was a very fine year for short fiction; three stories from that year made the cut. The book starts out with Roger Zelazny’s novelette “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.” It is incomparable as a lean yet poetic action-adventure story set on a fantasy Venus. A team sets out on Venus’s ocean on a huge special fishing rig to try to bring in a gigantic sea creature. The title is from the Book of Job in the Bible. In Chapter 41 God is describing the monstrous leviathan to Job: “Who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible round about.” And: “Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.” The story would already be amazing as a mere adventure, but Zelazny also populates it with well-rounded complex characters and tells it in a unique minimalist style that somehow still allows for intricate world-building.

Following this is Harlan Ellison’s classic tale of civil disobedience in an ultra-efficient, well-organized, intensely scheduled future: “‘Repent, Harlequin,’ Said the Tiktokman,” which manages to be humorous and tragic all at the same time.

In the novella “He Who Shapes,” Roger Zelazny is more elaborate and less Hemingwayesque. Several times he allows the protagonist, Render, to digress into lengthy discourses on psychology in the guise of speaking into a microphone preparing for a lecture. The story posits a near future in which elite psychiatrists called Shapers enter the dreams of their patients and manipulate them in ways that will help cure their patients of their psychoses. A woman blind from birth approaches Render and requests that he familiarize her with the sense of sight, but she is strong-willed and Render has difficulty maintaining control. I have read this story several times since first encountering it in the sixties, and I have had more difficulty with it than with my favorite Zelazny tales such as “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth,” “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” and of course the classic novels This Immortal and Lord of Light. Nevertheless it is a fine story and worthy of its award.

Then follow two stories with sexual themes: “Aye, and Gomorrah…” by Samuel R. Delaney and “Passengers” by Robert Silverberg. In “Aye, and Gomorrah…” it has been discovered that radiation in space can intensely damage the sexual organs; as a result, before candidates can become Spacers they are neutered. This leads to the rise of a class of deviants known as frelks who are sexually attracted to the neutered Spacers. In “Passengers,” disembodied aliens have invaded Earth, and at random moments they possess Earth people and then engage in sexual and other self-destructive practices. Both stories are emblematic of the so-called new wave of stories dealing with significant social issues that were erupting at the time, and both are well-written, succinct, and devastating.

I have mixed feelings about the next story, the novella “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock. It is also a new wave story; it never would have been published in the fifties or even the early sixties. In it, a man time-travels from (then) present day England back to Palestine about a year before Jesus was to be crucified. There’s no explanation about how the time machine could not only pinpoint the era so accurately but also somehow get the man from England to the Middle East. Be that as it may, as Moorcock in the introduction states: “I was interested in the social and psychological processes which turn people into demagogues and/or myths. I’ve no religious background and no particular religious or anti-religious axe to grind.” The time traveler finds the family of Jesus but discovers that the adult Jesus has severe birth defects and the mind of a child. He resolves to take Jesus’ place in his ministry and eventually dies on the cross in his stead. As the protagonist gradually shifts from time traveler to prophet, Moorcock disperses here and there quotes from the King James Version of the gospels; however, the Biblical passages are, of course, not comprehensive, and only a select few are chosen that ostensibly confirm Moorcock’s version of the events. Fair enough, but there are enough gaps in the internal logic that make it somewhat difficult for me to suspend disbelief, as one must do when one reads science fiction or fantasy. Still, the story is an audacious and interesting attempt to deal with a complex and difficult subject.

The story “When It Changed” by Joanna Russ was cutting-edge when it first appeared in Harlan Ellison’s groundbreaking anthology Again Dangerous Visions, and it still packs a powerful punch. Many generations ago on a far planet called Whileaway, a plague killed off all the men, leaving the women to survive and create a society for themselves. Now after hundreds of years men from Earth have returned, and instead of appreciating how well the women have adapted and thrived, they are condescending and paternalistic. The women realize that their world will inevitably change. Although the men repeatedly say that sexual equality has been re-established on Earth, the women doubt that this is so, and there is a strong sense of grief at the story’s ending.

(To be continued.)

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Published on February 17, 2024 08:34
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