The Missing Man - Katherine Maclean
Having picked up a copy of Nebula Award Stories 7 (same charity bookshop) I started by reading the girls... and yes that's plural. The Nebula Awards featured here are for the year 1971, a year when (according to the introduction) 304 SF books were published against 269 the previous years, and the first tower of the World Trade Centre reached its final height. Also SF was gaining academic respectability, most SF magazines were losing circulation, and Apollo astronauts named a lunar crater 'Dune'. The Clarion writing workshop was held for a third year and Vonda N MacIntyre came second in the first New American Library annual prize contest.
There are 11 stories in the collection and (at least) 4 of them are by women. There always has to be some doubt when identifying women writers because sometimes the men turn out to be women writing under pseudonyms. And I can bring that up because some of Katherine Maclean's early stories were published under men's names.
I've noticed that quite a lot of the TV shows from the seventies are somewhat abbreviated compared to their modern counterparts. These days I suspect there would be a lot more scenes filmed and a lot fewer assumed with a line of dialogue (for proof -- there aren't many half-hour episodes of anything except sit-coms)
There's some evidence of that compression in these stories too. It doesn't really surprise that successful novellas were very often turned into novels -- there's always plenty of room for more without it becoming padded.
Joanna Russ's story 'Poor Man, Beggar Man' is somewhat more of a historical tale with ghosts (and the editor's introduction tackles why some of the stories are in an SF anthology with the kind of happy dismissal of complaint that would lead to epic fail wars now -- glorying in the genre's infinite variety is not entirely fashionable). Alexander is plagued by a ghost who leads him to the famous quote about weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. The story would never make a favourites list for me, and Roxanne won't win any strong female character awards.
Doris Pitkin Buck wrote 'The Giberel'. A post-apocalyptic tale which touches on a few ideas I've met elsewhere in sixties/seventies era stories. There's a deliberate obscurity that I suspect would not win any fans now - frex which of the two kinds of people are human, or most human, or becoming human, or... The lead characters are female, and in amongst the world-building is a story that made me worry about what would happen.
Kate Wilhelm wrote 'The Encounter'. Her introductory paragraphs make a point that while she is married to Damon Knight her 'individuality is as distinctive as her writing'. She also, apparently, appeared on the ballot four times, which was a record at that time. (She didn't win a Nebula however). Her story features three women, although almost entirely through the eyes of a man whose judgement of others is continually questioned. Again I'm not sure any science fiction magazine would be able to take this story today... it being, maybe, a little bit horror and mostly a dissection of a man's character. Again it has a seventies style... which is harder to read and tends to slip from current events to the main character's various memories without so much as a line break of guidance. The ending is not open, but it does beg a few questions... and I wasn't entirely convinced by the slip back to Korea, as a source for his coldness, so as to make his fate deserved. I suspect if I was writing the story for myself I would have been happier to make the outcome an inevitable part of his journey (and possibly the writer did the same and was edited). It's a readable story that is a little rushed in the climax but has some very nice subtle character.
So to the nebula winning novella - The Missing Man. Which has only passing appearances by women, could do with the expansion I hope it got when it turned into a novel, and is the best of the girl stories. Seriously, it page turns, and has a wonderful moral uncertainty that I'm pretty certain is meant -- opportunistic terrorism by a kid who is fighting against a society that has a deal of freedom for those who can find jobs but requires people to pay to have their ability to have children restored. The title is also multiply meaningful, which I always like (and, okay, tend to like when my own titles turn out that way) -- the top layer being that the opportunity for terrorism arises when a group of outcast kids find themselves in possession of a grieving 'computer man' whose job is to predict the tiniest flaws in systems that can make, for example, an undersea city explode, and they (or more precisely one smart revolutionary) use his drugged ramblings in a cunning plan to turn the city on itself. It's a story with deep world-building (the kind that happens organically and grows around you until you're deep enough in to wonder who you'd be) and lots of neat ideas, and enough action that it would make a really neat movie. (Although it only has two disasters and no ticking clock at the end...) It's a story that hasn't aged badly (yes the mobile TV screens people have instead of books would be more like ipads, but they are not jarringly unlike ipads) It's a story that might even get published as SF now. And I really enjoyed it. Including that the lead character, George, is not the smartest man in the room, or the toughest, or the prettiest -- indeed no one looking at him would assume he would ever have a job (in a world where that means never having children or a place within most of the communities available). His 'handler', Ahmed, is a 'friend' from childhood, who sometimes has to be deliberately misled, and who becomes more likeable as the relationship unfolds but also more complicated. And it's a story which ends with an interesting philosophical position that is still relevant now, possibly more relevant. Liked it a lot.
There are 11 stories in the collection and (at least) 4 of them are by women. There always has to be some doubt when identifying women writers because sometimes the men turn out to be women writing under pseudonyms. And I can bring that up because some of Katherine Maclean's early stories were published under men's names.
I've noticed that quite a lot of the TV shows from the seventies are somewhat abbreviated compared to their modern counterparts. These days I suspect there would be a lot more scenes filmed and a lot fewer assumed with a line of dialogue (for proof -- there aren't many half-hour episodes of anything except sit-coms)
There's some evidence of that compression in these stories too. It doesn't really surprise that successful novellas were very often turned into novels -- there's always plenty of room for more without it becoming padded.
Joanna Russ's story 'Poor Man, Beggar Man' is somewhat more of a historical tale with ghosts (and the editor's introduction tackles why some of the stories are in an SF anthology with the kind of happy dismissal of complaint that would lead to epic fail wars now -- glorying in the genre's infinite variety is not entirely fashionable). Alexander is plagued by a ghost who leads him to the famous quote about weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. The story would never make a favourites list for me, and Roxanne won't win any strong female character awards.
Doris Pitkin Buck wrote 'The Giberel'. A post-apocalyptic tale which touches on a few ideas I've met elsewhere in sixties/seventies era stories. There's a deliberate obscurity that I suspect would not win any fans now - frex which of the two kinds of people are human, or most human, or becoming human, or... The lead characters are female, and in amongst the world-building is a story that made me worry about what would happen.
Kate Wilhelm wrote 'The Encounter'. Her introductory paragraphs make a point that while she is married to Damon Knight her 'individuality is as distinctive as her writing'. She also, apparently, appeared on the ballot four times, which was a record at that time. (She didn't win a Nebula however). Her story features three women, although almost entirely through the eyes of a man whose judgement of others is continually questioned. Again I'm not sure any science fiction magazine would be able to take this story today... it being, maybe, a little bit horror and mostly a dissection of a man's character. Again it has a seventies style... which is harder to read and tends to slip from current events to the main character's various memories without so much as a line break of guidance. The ending is not open, but it does beg a few questions... and I wasn't entirely convinced by the slip back to Korea, as a source for his coldness, so as to make his fate deserved. I suspect if I was writing the story for myself I would have been happier to make the outcome an inevitable part of his journey (and possibly the writer did the same and was edited). It's a readable story that is a little rushed in the climax but has some very nice subtle character.
So to the nebula winning novella - The Missing Man. Which has only passing appearances by women, could do with the expansion I hope it got when it turned into a novel, and is the best of the girl stories. Seriously, it page turns, and has a wonderful moral uncertainty that I'm pretty certain is meant -- opportunistic terrorism by a kid who is fighting against a society that has a deal of freedom for those who can find jobs but requires people to pay to have their ability to have children restored. The title is also multiply meaningful, which I always like (and, okay, tend to like when my own titles turn out that way) -- the top layer being that the opportunity for terrorism arises when a group of outcast kids find themselves in possession of a grieving 'computer man' whose job is to predict the tiniest flaws in systems that can make, for example, an undersea city explode, and they (or more precisely one smart revolutionary) use his drugged ramblings in a cunning plan to turn the city on itself. It's a story with deep world-building (the kind that happens organically and grows around you until you're deep enough in to wonder who you'd be) and lots of neat ideas, and enough action that it would make a really neat movie. (Although it only has two disasters and no ticking clock at the end...) It's a story that hasn't aged badly (yes the mobile TV screens people have instead of books would be more like ipads, but they are not jarringly unlike ipads) It's a story that might even get published as SF now. And I really enjoyed it. Including that the lead character, George, is not the smartest man in the room, or the toughest, or the prettiest -- indeed no one looking at him would assume he would ever have a job (in a world where that means never having children or a place within most of the communities available). His 'handler', Ahmed, is a 'friend' from childhood, who sometimes has to be deliberately misled, and who becomes more likeable as the relationship unfolds but also more complicated. And it's a story which ends with an interesting philosophical position that is still relevant now, possibly more relevant. Liked it a lot.