Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 (19 page)

Ben Bova had just been anointed editor of
Analog
in 1971, ten weeks or so after Campbell’s death. Talk about shoes to fill: John W. Campbell is arguably the single most important figure in the SF field who wasn’t a full-time writer, having given up fiction when he took over
Astounding Stories
in 1937, and he remained editor—not missing a single month, more than four hundred issues—until his death. Anyone who took over after that kind of legacy would have to hit the ground running.

Which Bova would do, of course, but first he had the assignment to assemble and notate
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vols. IIA and IIB
, which was unleashed on an eager public in 1973. Why two volumes? Bova says: “My major problem was an embarrassment of riches: there were simply too many stories for a single volume. Larry Ashmead, bless him, agreed that one volume wasn’t enough and opted for a two-volume set.” And aren’t we grateful?

I don’t get much of a chance to talk about books as artifacts here, since my purview is, understandably, their contents, but I will take the time to do so here. These three books are, in whichever format you have them, a handsome set. The hardcovers, trade or book club, are dignified without being stodgy; the paperbacks colorful without crossing over into garish. They fill the hand well, lending a physical mass to the weight of the worlds they contain. When you pick one of these bad boys up, you know you’re holding a book, and not just some overblown summer beach-brick that you grabbed in a hurry at the airport on your way to Aruba. There’s import here, and significance, and enough wonder to shake a stick at, if that’s your idea of a good time. These are books you can be proud to own, and not just because you like the stories.

Having said that, here’s what Vol. II, both parts, has for us, the ten with the most votes first:

Vol. IIA

• 1
  “Who Goes There?” • John W. Campbell Jr.
  
 

• 3
  “With Folded Hands…” • Jack Williamson
  
 

• 4
  “The Time Machine” • H. G. Wells
  
 

• 5
  “Baby Is Three” • Theodore Sturgeon
  
 

• 6
  “Vintage Season” • Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
  
 

• 7
  “The Marching Morons” • C. M. Kornbluth
  
 

• 8
  “Universe” • Robert A. Heinlein
  
 

• 10
  “Nerves” • Lester del Rey
  “Call Me Joe” • Poul Anderson
  …And Then There Were None” • Eric Frank Russell
  “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” • Cordwainer Smith
  
 

(Note: Of the top ten, #2 was to be Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Liebowitz” and #9 was to be Robert Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps.” See text below for the reasons they don’t appear.)

Vol. IIB

 

“The Martian Way” • Isaac Asimov

“Earthman, Come Home” • James Blish

“Rogue Moon” • Algis Budrys

“The Specter General” • Theodore R. Cogswell

“The Machine Stops” • E. M. Forster

“The Midas Plague” • Frederik Pohl

“The Witches of Karres” • James H. Schmitz

“E for Effort” • T. L. Sherred

“In Hiding” • Wilmar H. Shiras [Timothy Paul]

“The Big Front Yard” • Clifford D. Simak

“The Moon Moth” • Jack Vance

 

Looking at these twenty-two great stories, I’m struck by the dismaying thought that entirely too many of the authors herein are no longer the giants they once (deservedly!) were; how many of you reading this are even aware of Sherred, Shiras, and Cogswell, I wonder? How long before Russell and Schmitz—yes, and even Cordwainer Smith, are forgotten, except by us stfnal Old Farts who have little better to do in the twilight of our lives but complain about These Kids Today? And you wonder why I do this….

There are two stories missing from this lineup, two major novellas that were prevented from being present by mere cupidity (if not
stu
-pidity), as editor Bova notes:

“The agents for Walter M. Miller Jr. and Ray Bradbury refused to allow us to use ‘A Canticle for Liebowitz’ and ‘The Fireman’ unless we offered a good deal more money than the standard SFWA formula, which was 25 percent of all monies earned by the book, on a pro rata basis. So we had to drop those two fine stories from the book.”

Bova notes in his introduction to the book that both were, in fact, available elsewhere, but I mourn their loss here. In all seriousness, what better showcase could they have had, what better company could they keep? I weep, on occasion, for the past.

In the #9 spot was a second Heinlein story, which editor Bova omitted for good reason: “For any individual author, I picked the story of his that received the most votes.” Fair enough, if not an easy choice to make.

Once again, a preponderance of Campbellian stories, a baker’s dozen in fact, and including his own best-known story, “Who Goes There?” which has been filmed twice, although you can’t blame Campbell for either of them. A half dozen of the rest came from
Galaxy
(five from Gold’s tenure and one from Pohl’s); a singleton from
Fantasy & Science Fiction
(Budrys’s “Rogue Moon,” that most excellent bridge between traditional and esoteric SF); and a couple of oddballs (sourcewise only; they deserve their place herein)—Forster’s dystopian manifesto, “The Machine Stops” (from the November 1909 issue of the
Oxford and Cambridge Review
), and Wells’s sine qua non classic, “The Time Machine” (serialized in the
New Review
in 1895). Definitely not pulp fiction, but absolutely necessary in any book with the words “Science Fiction” and “Hall of Fame” in the title.

What do I say about these stories that hasn’t been said over and over by critics far more erudite than I? Can I find new ground to plow here, a new edge to sharpen? Is there no comment I can make about the contents of these three books to thrill and engage both the Intellect and the Emotion?

Hell with it. What we have here are four dozen of the best science fiction and fantasy stories ever written. Without doubt, without qualification, I heartily endorse the choices made almost forty years ago by the membership of the still-nascent Science Fiction Writers of America.

Nor would I be alone in that assessment, either. Author, editor, and fellow
Bulletin
columnist Barry Malzberg says:

“I think these anthologies are completely successful and absolutely indispensable…. The contents are magnificent (even if the membership votes were jiggled, as Silverberg hints) and the works are not only historically essential but visionary.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. These books, as conceived by Silverberg and skillfully executed by him and Bova, present to both the SF readership and to those from outside the field the strengths, dimensions, and dynamics of a genre all too often dismissed by those unfamiliar with it. These are the books you hand proudly to your family and friends to help them understand exactly why you’re as passionate about “that crazy Buck Rogers stuff” as you are; why you’ve accumulated all those raggedy-assed paperbacks and dusty old magazines and won’t give them up no matter how your spouse begs you to; why you huddle at parties with the same two or three other people, heads together and dissecting the latest issue of
Asimov’s
or desperately trying to remember some book from your junior high library, you know the one I mean, the one about the star watchers and the Masters—or was it that one about the family of pioneers on Mars?—well, anyway, it had those great drawings inside the covers, remember? Remember?

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
isn’t a culmination; it’s a milepost, a marker along the road. This triptych shines a bright and golden light on our past and illuminates us where we stand, here and now. Revel in it; it’s not only our history, but a legacy as well.

P
eter S. Beagle was born in 1939 and raised in the Bronx, just a few blocks from Woodlawn Cemetery, the inspiration for his first novel,
A Fine and Private Place
. In addition to stories and novels, Peter has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of
The Lord of the Rings
and
The Last Unicorn
, plus the fan-favorite “Sarek” episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. His nonfiction book
I See by My Outfit
, which recounts a 1963 journey across America on motor scooter, is considered a classic of American travel writing; and he is also a gifted poet, lyricist, and singer/ songwriter.

His latest story collection,
The Line Between
, includes this long-awaited coda story to
The Last Unicorn
, “Two Hearts,” about which Peter writes:

 

I
blame Connor Cochran for the existence of “Two Hearts.” It’s true that I wrote it, but he’s the fellow who tricked me into doing so, however much he might swear it was an accident.

For decades, friends and fans have asked me to write a sequel to
The Last Unicorn.
This is understandable. But I have always refused, which, I think, is also understandable.
The Last Unicorn
was a one-shot, meant from the beginning as a kind of spoof/tribute to the classic European fairy tale, an homage to such beloved influences of mine as James Stephens, Lord Dunsany, T. H. White, and James Thurber. Writing it was a nightmare of seemingly endless labor, the kind of thing a young man tackles. As I was no longer that young man, writing a sequel was clearly out of the question.

And then Connor Cochran suggested that I write a special story as a bonus gift to go out to the first buyers of the audiobook version of
The Last Unicorn
that we’d just completed, and wheedled me into going along by assuring me that I needn’t bring back a single one of the original cast—only the world of the novel, nothing more. At first I said no, but I was intrigued by the idea of having a limited-edition hardcover…and what really did me in was the dangerous part of my imagination that can’t resist a challenge regarding words and stories. I can be lured into writing something I’ve never tried before just because I’ve never done it—like the time I wrote a libretto for an opera based on my story “Come Lady Death.”

So I started to wonder if I actually could reenter the unicorn’s world…at which point Sooz came into my head and the story just happened. It flowed. It was the exact opposite of my experience writing
The Last Unicorn.
I locked onto her voice, the voice of this nine-and-a-half-year-old girl who was telling the story from the first sentence, and I just followed her. It was one of the very rare occasions where I felt from beginning to end that I knew what I was doing.

 

M
y brother Wilfrid keeps saying it’s not fair that it should all have happened to me. Me being a girl, and a baby, and too stupid to lace up my own sandals properly. But I think it’s fair. I think everything happened exactly the way it should have done. Except for the sad parts, and maybe those too.

I’m Sooz, and I am nine years old. Ten next month, on the anniversary of the day the griffin came. Wilfrid says it was because of me, that the griffin heard that the ugliest baby in the world had just been born, and it was going to eat me, but I was too ugly, even for a griffin. So it nested in the Midwood (we call it that, but its real name is the Midnight Wood, because of the darkness under the trees), and stayed to eat our sheep and our goats. Griffins do that if they like a place.

But it didn’t ever eat children, not until this year.

I only saw it once—I mean, once before—rising up above the trees one night, like a second moon. Only there wasn’t a moon, then. There was nothing in the whole world but the griffin, golden feathers all blazing on its lion’s body and eagle’s wings, with its great front claws like teeth, and that monstrous beak that looked so huge for its head…. Wilfrid says I screamed for three days, but he’s lying, and I didn’t hide in the root cellar like he says either, I slept in the barn those two nights, with our dog Malka. Because I knew Malka wouldn’t let anything get me.

I mean my parents wouldn’t have, either, not if they could have stopped it. It’s just that Malka is the biggest, fiercest dog in the whole village, and she’s not afraid of anything. And after the griffin took Jehane, the blacksmith’s little girl, you couldn’t help seeing how frightened my father was, running back and forth with the other men, trying to organize some sort of patrol, so people could always tell when the griffin was coming. I know he was frightened for me and my mother, and doing everything he could to protect us, but it didn’t make me feel any safer, and Malka did.

But nobody knew what to do, anyway. Not my father, nobody. It was bad enough when the griffin was only taking the sheep, because almost everyone here sells wool or cheese or sheepskin things to make a living. But once it took Jehane, early last spring, that changed everything. We sent messengers to the king—three of them—and each time the king sent someone back to us with them. The first time, it was one knight, all by himself. His name was Douros, and he gave me an apple. He rode away into the Midwood, singing, to look for the griffin, and we never saw him again.

The second time—after the griffin took Louli, the boy who worked for the miller—the king sent five knights together. One of them did come back, but he died before he could tell anyone what happened.

The third time an entire squadron came. That’s what my father said, anyway. I don’t know how many soldiers there are in a squadron, but it was a lot, and they were all over the village for two days, pitching their tents everywhere, stabling their horses in every barn, and boasting in the tavern how they’d soon take care of that griffin for us poor peasants. They had musicians playing when they marched into the Midwood—I remember that, and I remember when the music stopped, and the sounds we heard afterward.

After that, the village didn’t send to the king anymore. We didn’t want more of his men to die, and besides they weren’t any help. So from then on all the children were hurried indoors when the sun went down, and the griffin woke from its day’s rest to hunt again. We couldn’t play together, or run errands or watch the flocks for our parents, or even sleep near open windows, for fear of the griffin. There was nothing for me to do but read books I already knew by heart, and complain to my mother and father, who were too tired from watching after Wilfrid and me to bother with us. They were guarding the other children too, turn and turn about with the other families—and our sheep, and our goats—so they were always tired, as well as frightened, and we were all angry with each other most of the time. It was the same for everybody.

And then the griffin took Felicitas.

Felicitas couldn’t talk, but she was my best friend, always, since we were little. I always understood what she wanted to say, and she understood me, better than anyone, and we played in a special way that I won’t ever play with anyone else. Her family thought she was a waste of food, because no boy would marry a dumb girl, so they let her eat with us most of the time. Wilfrid used to make fun of the whispery quack that was the one sound she could make, but I hit him with a rock, and after that he didn’t do it anymore.

I didn’t see it happen, but I still see it in my head. She knew not to go out, but she was always just so happy coming to us in the evening. And nobody at her house would have noticed her being gone. None of them ever noticed Felicitas.

The day I learned Felicitas was gone, that was the day I set off to see the king myself.

Well, the same night, actually—because there wasn’t any chance of getting away from my house or the village in daylight. I don’t know what I’d have done, really, except that my Uncle Ambrose was carting a load of sheepskins to market in Hagsgate, and you have to start long before sunup to be there by the time the market opens. Uncle Ambrose is my best uncle, but I knew I couldn’t ask him to take me to the king—he’d have gone straight to my mother instead, and told her to give me sulphur and molasses and put me to bed with a mustard plaster. He gives his horse sulphur and molasses, even.

So I went to bed early that night, and I waited until everyone was asleep. I wanted to leave a note on my pillow, but I kept writing things and then tearing the notes up and throwing them in the fireplace, and I was afraid of somebody waking, or Uncle Ambrose leaving without me. Finally I just wrote, I will come home soon. I didn’t take any clothes with me, or anything else, except a bit of cheese, because I thought the king must live somewhere near Hagsgate, which is the only big town I’ve ever seen. My mother and father were snoring in their room, but Wilfrid had fallen asleep right in front of the hearth, and they always leave him there when he does. If you rouse him to go to his own bed, he comes up fighting and crying. I don’t know why.

I stood and looked down at him for the longest time. Wilfrid doesn’t look nearly so mean when he’s sleeping. My mother had banked the coals to make sure there’d be a fire for tomorrow’s bread, and my father’s moleskin trews were hanging there to dry, because he’d had to wade into the stockpond that afternoon to rescue a lamb. I moved them a little bit, so they wouldn’t burn. I wound the clock—Wilfrid’s supposed to do that every night, but he always forgets—and I thought how they’d all be hearing it ticking in the morning while they were looking everywhere for me, too frightened to eat any breakfast, and I turned to go back to my room.

But then I turned around again, and I climbed out of the kitchen window, because our front door squeaks so. I was afraid that Malka might wake in the barn and right away know I was up to something, because I can’t ever fool Malka, only she didn’t, and then I held my breath almost the whole way as I ran to Uncle Ambrose’s house and scrambled right into his cart with the sheepskins. It was a cold night, but under that pile of sheepskins it was hot and nasty-smelling, and there wasn’t anything to do but lie still and wait for Uncle Ambrose. So I mostly thought about Felicitas, to keep from feeling so bad about leaving home and everyone. That was bad enough—I never really lost anybody close before, not forever—but anyway it was different.

I don’t know when Uncle Ambrose finally came, because I dozed off in the cart, and didn’t wake until there was this jolt and a rattle and the sort of floppy grumble a horse makes when he’s been waked up and doesn’t like it—and we were off for Hagsgate. The half-moon was setting early, but I could see the village bumping by, not looking silvery in the light, but small and dull, no color to anything. And all the same I almost began to cry, because it already seemed so far away, though we hadn’t even passed the stockpond yet, and I felt as though I’d never see it again. I would have climbed back out of the cart right then, if I hadn’t known better.

Because the griffin was still up and hunting. I couldn’t see it, of course, under the sheepskins (and I had my eyes shut, anyway), but its wings made a sound like a lot of knives being sharpened all together, and sometimes it gave a cry that was dreadful because it was so soft and gentle, and even a little sad and scared, as though it were imitating the sound Felicitas might have made when it took her. I burrowed deep down as I could, and tried to sleep again, but I couldn’t.

Which was just as well, because I didn’t want to ride all the way into Hagsgate, where Uncle Ambrose was bound to find me when he unloaded his sheepskins in the marketplace. So when I didn’t hear the griffin anymore (they won’t hunt far from their nests, if they don’t have to), I put my head out over the tailboard of the cart and watched the stars going out, one by one, as the sky grew lighter. The dawn breeze came up as the moon went down.

When the cart stopped jouncing and shaking so much, I knew we must have turned onto the King’s Highway, and when I could hear cows munching and talking softly to each other, I dropped into the road. I stood there for a little, brushing off lint and wool bits, and watching Uncle Ambrose’s cart rolling on away from me. I hadn’t ever been this far from home by myself. Or so lonely. The breeze brushed dry grass against my ankles, and I didn’t have any idea which way to go.

I didn’t even know the king’s name—I’d never heard anyone call him anything but the king. I knew he didn’t live in Hagsgate, but in a big castle somewhere nearby, only nearby’s one thing when you’re riding in a cart and different when you’re walking. And I kept thinking about my family waking up and looking for me, and the cows’ grazing sounds made me hungry, and I’d eaten all my cheese in the cart. I wished I had a penny with me—not to buy anything with, but only to toss up and let it tell me if I should turn left or right. I tried it with flat stones, but I never could find them after they came down. Finally I started off going left, not for any reason, but only because I have a little silver ring on my left hand that my mother gave me. There was a sort of path that way too, and I thought maybe I could walk around Hagsgate and then I’d think about what to do after that. I’m a good walker. I can walk anywhere, if you give me time.

Only it’s easier on a real road. The path gave out after awhile, and I had to push my way through trees growing too close together, and then through so many brambly vines that my hair was full of stickers and my arms were all stinging and bleeding. I was tired and sweating, and almost crying—almost—and whenever I sat down to rest bugs and things kept crawling over me. Then I heard running water nearby, and that made me thirsty right away, so I tried to get down to the sound. I had to crawl most of the way, scratching my knees and elbows up something awful.

It wasn’t much of a stream—in some places the water came up barely above my ankles—but I was so glad to see it I practically hugged and kissed it, flopping down with my face buried in it, the way I do with Malka’s smelly old fur. And I drank until I couldn’t hold any more, and then I sat on a stone and let the tiny fish tickle my nice cold feet, and felt the sun on my shoulders, and I didn’t think about griffins or kings or my family or anything.

I only looked up when I heard the horses whickering a little way upstream. They were playing with the water, the way horses do, blowing bubbles like children. Plain old livery-stable horses, one brownish, one grayish. The gray’s rider was out of the saddle, peering at the horse’s left forefoot. I couldn’t get a good look—they both had on plain cloaks, dark green, and trews so worn you couldn’t make out the color—so I didn’t know that one was a woman until I heard her voice. A nice voice, low, like Silky Joan, the lady my mother won’t ever let me ask about, but with something rough in it too, as though she could scream like a hawk if she wanted to. She was saying, “There’s no stone I can see. Maybe a thorn?”

The other rider, the one on the brown horse, answered her, “Or a bruise. Let me see.”

That voice was lighter and younger-sounding than the woman’s voice, but I already knew he was a man, because he was so tall. He got down off the brown horse and the woman moved aside to let him pick up her horse’s foot. Before he did that, he put his hands on the horse’s head, one on each side, and he said something to it that I couldn’t quite hear. And the horse said something back. Not like a neigh, or a whinny, or any of the sounds horses make, but like one person talking to another. I can’t say it any better than that. The tall man bent down then, and he took hold of the foot and looked at it for a long time, and the horse didn’t move or switch its tail or anything.

“A stone splinter,” the man said after a while. “It’s very small, but it’s worked itself deep into the hoof, and there’s an ulcer brewing. I can’t think why I didn’t notice it straightaway.”

“Well,” the woman said. She touched his shoulder. “You can’t notice everything.”

The tall man seemed angry with himself, the way my father gets when he’s forgotten to close the pasture gate properly, and our neighbor’s black ram gets in and fights with our poor old Brimstone. He said, “I can. I’m supposed to.” Then he turned his back to the horse and bent over that forefoot, the way our blacksmith does, and he went to work on it.

I couldn’t see what he was doing, not exactly. He didn’t have any picks or pries, like the blacksmith, and all I’m sure of is that I think he was singing to the horse. But I’m not sure it was proper singing. It sounded more like the little made-up rhymes that really small children chant to themselves when they’re playing in the dirt, all alone. No tune, just up and down, dee-dah, dee-dah, dee…boring even for a horse, I’d have thought. He kept doing it for a long time, still bending with that hoof in his hand. All at once he stopped singing and stood up, holding something that glinted in the sun the way the stream did, and he showed it to the horse, first thing. “There,” he said, “there, that’s what it was. It’s all right now.”