The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection
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Jodie Foster turns in a marvelous performance as the emotionally crippled scientist obsessed with making contact with alien intelligences, and the movie has much to recommend it, including the fact that it raises issues (although, having raised them, it doesn't then go on to examine them in any really complex way) about the relationship of science and religion that have rarely been raised in any main-line commercial movie-but my admiration for it remained largely theoretical. While actually watching it, I found it faintly dull, although I struggled throughout with the guilty feeling that I somehow ought to be enjoying it more than I actually was.
Gattaca, another earnest, fairly intelligent, serious-minded SF movie, performed poorly at the box office, and didn't arouse much enthusiasm within the genre either-which makes me wonder how much disparity there is between what we say we want in a movie and what we actually do want.
Back in Big-Screen Spectacular territory, Starship Troopers, based (very) loosely on the famous SF novel by Robert A. Heinlein, was another substantial box office success and did arouse a good deal of enthusiasm within the genre, although it also aroused at least as much controversy, with Heinlein fans seeming to be divided about evenly between liking it and loathing it. Several parents that I know, dragged to the theater by their teenage children, have commented that audiences of kids watching Starship Troopers looked as if they were intently playing a video game, bouncing and jerking and bobbing in their seats as if operating an invisible joystick, and Starship Troopers does seem to be more like a video game than a movie in some respects, with both the strengths and the weaknesses of that form. Most of the polemic arguments at the heart of Heinlein's book were lost in translation from one medium to another (although there was much ink spilled over the "fascist" subtext of the film, which may possibly have been the director's hidden sardonic take on the libertarian politics of the original novel, enabling him to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare at the same time by making a big ultraviolent gore-splattered "heroic" war movie whose heros are then slyly identified with the Nazis, so that he can claim the movie "really" delivers an antiwar message instead), but the movie was fastpaced and stylish and intense and violent enough that few viewers really cared. (It was also reasonably intelligent for an ultraviolent action movie of this sort, as long as you ignored questions such as, Why in the world would they be fighting the Bugs mostly with small arms, the equivalent of today's M-16 rifle? As one combat veteran of my acquaintance put it, "We had weapons on the squad level in Vietnam that could have made Bug-flavored mincemeat of those critters, and a squadron of Cobra helicopters could have swept the entire planet clean." You'll also notice that, unlike in Heinlein's novel, the Bugs don't get weapons and technology of their own to fight back with ... )
Not all of the year's Big-Budget, Big-Ticket SF movies were commercial successes, by any mean. Kevin Cosner's Civilization-Struggling-to-Reestablish-itself-After-the-Atomic-War saga, The Postman, was a major disappointment at the box office and may well have been the most critically savaged genre movie of the year, widely panned for being boring and sententious, a filmed love letter from Kevin Cosner to himself, with one critic referring to it mockingly as "Dances with Mailmen"; it's worth noting, though, that the author of the book from which the film was drawn, David Brin, went so far as to take out an ad in a major newspaper defending it, so he apparently thought it had done a reasonable job of translating his novel to the screen-so that may mean that if you liked the book, you might well like the movie too.
Event Horizon looked as if it was going to be a hard-science movie, but instead turned out to be a gruesome, blood-spattered, supernatural horror thriller in deep-space disguise and quickly disappeared from theaters. Batman and Robin, with George Clooney assuming the mask and cowl from Val Kilmer, was a major bomb, and may have sunk the whole Batman franchise.
Deep Rising, which some wag characterized as Alien set on the Titanic, with a giant squidlike creature playing the part of the alien, quickly sank at the box office. Anaconda, another Alien-like movie, with a giant snake standing in for the alien, also quickly slithered out of town. Volcano and Dante's Peak, disaster movies calculated to capitalize on the success of 1996's Twister, fizzled; and Hard Rain, an odd cross between a disaster movie and a crime thriller, with a robbery taking place during a major flood, was a box-office disappointment as well. I'm not sure how Kull the Conqueror, a version of the old Robert E. Howard story, starring Kevin Sorbo, TV's Hercules, did at the box office, but, for what it's worth, it was in town barely long enough for the guy at the candy counter to finish making the popcorn. Somewhat more successful, although more marginal, were the paranoid thriller The Game and a horror movie based on an old story by Donald A. Wollheim, Mimic.
Still on the horizon: a Big-Screen version of the old TV show Lost in Space that plays it seriously rather than for camp laughs; a very big-budget version of Godzilla; a film version of Michael Crichton's novel Sphere; the long-promised new SF movie by Stanley Kubrick; the new Star Trek movie; and the first of the new Star Wars "prequels."
Turning to television, there seemed to be few big new stories here, although SF/ fantasy shows came and went so fast that I was unable even to catch up with a few of them-such as The Visitor and Roar-before they were already gone. Most of them seemed to be no great loss, and I suspect that many of the new shows that are hanging on, such as The Sentinel and Three, will soon be gone as well, and will also be no great loss. Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict seems to be doing better than these shows in the ratings, and may be around for a while, but I don't much like it either.
The big winner this year seemed to be Babylon 5, which not only survived to get the go-ahead for a fifth season that had been seriously in doubt last year, but which struck a deal to get all of its old shows from prior seasons rerun in chronological order on another network, a deal that can only increase its ratings success, probably broadening the audience considerably beyond the present core of devoted B5 fanatics; in fact, initial reports on the ratings of the rerun of the Babylon 5 pilot episode indicate that they were substantial.
So, ironically, Babylon 5 seems to have won-or at least survived-its direct head-to-head battle with its hated rival Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a show with a very similar concept that, with the weight of the mighty Star Trek franchise behind it, was originally expected to crush Babylon 5 easily and sweep it from the airwaves. Not only hasn't that happened, but-also ironically-B5 fans are committed to the series with the kind of devotion and evangelistic fervor and intense enthusiasm that hasn't been seen since the days of the original Star Trek series; I strongly suspect, for instance, that nothing other than a Babylon 5 episode has even a remote chance of winning a Best Dramatic Prentation Hugo for the next few years. I must admit that I myself still don't understand all the enthusiasm for B5, since every time I sample an episode, I'm struck by the mediocre-to-terrible dialogue, the leaden direction, and the wooden acting, but I can't deny that I'm distinctly in the minority here. (B5 fans keep telling me that if only I'd watch enough episodes, I'd learn to like it; but when I was in the army, people told me that if I ate liver and onions enough, I'd learn to like that, too, and it didn't work-so I'm skeptical.)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seems to have shored up its ratings by the addition to the cast of the extremely popular character Worf from the parent show Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it's still not the success, either artistically or in the ratings, that the old show was during its prime period. How it's doing in comparison to Babylon 5, I don't have the figures to determine, but neither show seems in any immediate danger of being canceled. Star Trek: Voyager is still struggling, and appears to be not all that popular even with core Star Trek fans, although the recent addition of a Cute Borg Babe to the cast seems to have helped some in the ratings.
The X-Files remains popular, having reached the point of Cult Coolness, where famous authors are clamoring to write for it, with recent scripts by Celebrity Guest Writers such as William Gibson and Tom Mad
dox and Stephen King. Third Rock from the Sun is also still popular, while Lois and Clark appears to have ended its run. Sliders died a well-deserved death, but, fear not, it has already been resurrected in the Vallhala of Old SF/Fantasy TV Shows, the Sci-Fi Channel. Early Edition and Lost on Earth both died, if anyone really cares, and so far have not even made it on to the Sci-Fi Channel.
Xena: Warrior Princess is more popular than ever, now a bigger hit than its parent show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, a fact that Hercules star Kevin Sorbo has grumbled about in several interviews. Xena is so successful, in fact, that along with recent shows such as Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and La Femme Nikita it seems to be forming a new television subgenre of shows where Beautiful Women Kick Male Butt, a subgenre which, for perhaps the first time in history, is bringing rednecks, college students, lesbians, and postmodernist intellectuals together as the viewing audience for the same TV shows. (So BWI-N4B shows could be a real unifying force in our society. Can a political coalition be far behind?) A legion of cheap-copy clone shows such as The New Adventures of Robin Hood, Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, and The Adventures of Sinbad, are trying to use the Herculesixena formula, but with noticeably less success. At their best, Hercules and Xena remain good cheesy fun, and have the benefit of not taking themselves terribly seriously, although after you watch for a while, the story lines get a bit repetitive; as long as there's enough head-bashing and butt-kicking, though, spiced with a sprinkling of anachronistic postmodern jokes, nobody seems to mind. (I sometimes worry that watching Xena-supposedly from ancient Greece-meet Julius Caesar or point out the direction of the Inn at Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph will really screw up the next generation's sense of history, but friends assure me that only outmoded dinosaurs like me are concerned about historical accuracy; this is postmortemism, where everything is supposed to be jumbled together in a bouillabaisse, the more eclectic the mix the better. Still hope the kids crack a book before settling down to a history exam though ... )
Highlander: The Series has gone markedly downhill in the last couple of seasons, particularly this season, adding a whole slew of extraneous fantasy elements, such as demons, not called for by the initial premise, and it's clear that this series is on its last legs; this was a pretty good Junk Food show in its day, but it shows all the signs of being a tired series, and its day is past. It came as no surprise to me to hear that Highlander is officially scheduled to end this season, with the possibility of Adrian Paul going on to star in at least one new Highlander movie being dangled as consolation to desolate fans. Die-hard Highlander enthusiasts can also console themselves with the information that a Highlander spin-off series is in the works, starring a female immortal this time, the intention reportedly being to produce a show as much like Xena as possible. (How imaginative! Especially as this is a goal no doubt being pursued by a dozen other producers right about now.)
The most popular new Cult Show of the year, though, one which may even be able to rival Xena in popularity, was undoubtedly the animated series South Park, which runs on Comedy Central-already buzzwords and phrases from the show such as "They killed Kenny!" have spread everywhere through the culture, just as "Sock it to me!" and "Wild and Crazy Guys!" did in their days. This show does have some genuinely funny moments in it, but its deliberate grossout humor at its grossest, prides itself not only on being non-PC but on having something to offend everybody-I still can't believe some of the stuff they've gotten away with, like having Jesus Christ reduced to doing a minor cable-access phone-in show, or fighting Satan in a bout carried on Pay for View-and is definitely not for the Easily Offended. There are many satirical fantastic elements here, from a plague of flesh-eating zombies to rampaging clones to a victim of an alien anal probe growing an eighty-foot satellite dish out of his butt. A recent episode satirizing Japanese monster movies featured a one-hundred foot-tall Barbra Streisand stomping on the town.
The 55th World Science Fiction Convention, Lonestarcon2, was held in San Antonio, Texas, from August 28 to September I, and drew an estimated attendance of 4,416, making it the smallest U.S. worldcon in fifteen years, smaller than last year's L.A. worldcon by more than 2,200 people. The 1997 Hugo Awards, presented at Lonestarcon2, were: Best Novel, Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson; Best Novella, "Blood of the Dragon," by George R. R. Martin; Best Novelette, "Bicycle Repairman," by Bruce Sterling; Best Short Story, "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ... " by Connie Willis; Best Nonfiction, Time Chance, by L. Sprague de Camp; Best Professional Editor, Gardner Dozois; Best Professional Artist, Bob Eggleton; Best Dramatic Presentation, Babylon 5: Severed Dreams; Best Semiprozine, Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown; Best Fanzine, Mimosa, edited by Dick and Nicki Lynch; Best Fan Writer, David Langford; Best Fan Artist, William Rotsler; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Michael A. Burstein.
The 1996 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 19, 1997, were: Best Novel, Slow River, by Nicola Griffith; Best Novella, "Da Vinci Rising," by Jack Dann; Best Novelette, "Lifeboat on a Burning Sea," by Bruce Holland Rogers; Best Short Story, "A Birthday," by Esther M. Friesner; plus the Grand Master award to Jack Vance.
The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Twenty-Third Annual World Fantasy Convention in London, England, on November 2, 1997, were: Best Novel, Godmother Night, by Rachel Pollack; Best Novella, "A City in Winter," by Mark Helprin; Best Short Fiction, "Thirteen Phantasms," by James P. Blaylock; Best Collection, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, by Jonathan Lethem; Best Anthology, Starlight I, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden; Best Artist, Moebius; Special Award (Professional), to Michael J. Weldon for The Psychotronic Video Guide; Special Award (Nonprofessional), to Barbara & Christopher Roden for Ash-Tree Press; plus a special convention award to Hugh B. Cave and a Life Achievement Award to Madeleine L'Engle.
The 1997 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America during a banquet at the Warwick Hotel in New York City on June 21, were: Best Novel, The Green Mile, by Stephen King; Best First Novel, Crota, by Owl C,oingback; Best Collection, The Nightmare Factory, by Thomas Ligotti; Best Long Fiction, "The Red Tower," by Thomas Ligotti; Best Short Story, "Metalica," by P. D. Cacek; plus a Life Achievement Award to Ira Levin and to Forrest J. Ackerman. The 1996 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by Fairyland, by Paul J. Mcauley.
The 1996 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Story was won by "The Flowers of Aulit Prison," by Nancy Kress.
The 1996 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter.
The 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award was won by The Calcutta Chromosome, by Amitay Ghosh.
The 1996 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award was won by The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell and "Mountain Ways," by Ursula K. Le Guin (tie), plus a Special Award to Angela Carter.
Dead in 1997 or early 1998 were: Judith Merril, 74, writer, critic, and anthologist, author of The Tomorrow People and the famous story "That Only a Mother," best known for her long-running and extremely influential series of Best of the Year anthologies, which helped shape literary tastes in the field from the early '5Os all the way to the late '60s; William Rotsler, 71, author and artist, Nebula and Hugo-winner, best known as a writer for the novel Patron of the Arts, best known as an artist for the inexhaustible flood of fannish cartoons, donated for free, that filled the genre's fanzines and semiprozines for more than thirty years; George Timer, 80, prominent Australian SF author and critic, sometimes known as "the Grandmaster of Australian Science Fiction," winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, author of such well-known novels as The Drowning Towers, Beloved Son, Genetic Soldier, and The Destiny Makers; William S. Burroughs, 83, experimental novelist of the Beat Generation whose novels such as Nova Express, Naked Lunch, and The Ticket That Exploded were enormously influential both on the New Wave authors of the '60s such as J. G. Ballad and on the later cyberpunk authors of the '80s such as William Gibson, as well as in the artistic community at large; Sam Moskowitz, 76, SF
historian, scholar, and anthologist, as well as an early SF convention fan and organizer, best known for his history of the early days of SF fandom, The Immortal Storm, as well as for his pioneering collections of biographical pieces about SF authors, Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction and Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction,- Donald R. Bensen, 70, editor and anthologist, one-time SF editor at Pyramid, Ballantine, and Dell, editor of two of the most important early fantasy anthologies, The Unknown and The Unknown Five, and who, for those anthologies as well as the long out-of-print fantasy work by writers such as L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, and many others, that he brought back into print as Pyramid editor at a time when almost no fantasy work was being published elsewhere, can be seen as one of the unsung and forgotten progenitors of the whole modern fantasy revival; G. Harry Stine, 69, longtime science columnist for Analog and an engineer who had worked on missile programs at White Sands Proving Grounds, author of nonfiction books such as The Third Industrial Revolution and Living in Space, and who also wrote SF as Lee Correy; H. B. Fyfe, 80, veteran author who wrote mostly for Astounding, author of the classic story "Moonwalk," and many others; Charles V. De Vet, 85, veteran SF writer, best known as the author of the novel Second Came; Donald I. Fine, 75, publisher, founder of Arbor House and Donald I. Fine Books; Kathy Keeton, 58, publisher and editor, founder of the highly influential Omni magazine; Carl Jacobi, 89, veteran pulp writer; Amos Tutola, 77, Nigerian writer whose work drew upon Yoruba folktales, best-known for the book The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Kathy Acker, 49?, performance artist and experimental writer, another strong influence on the cyberpunks as well as on writers such as Lucius Shepard and others; Martin Caidin, 69, thriller writer and occasional SF writer, author of The Long Night and Almost Midnight, best-known for the space thriller Marooned; Mervyn Wall, 88, Irish fantasy writer, author of The Unfortunate Fursey; Owen Barfield, 99, writer, member of the Oxford writers group The Inklings, which included J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis; Elisabeth Gille, 59, French publisher, translator, and writer; William Rushton, 59, British humorist and SF writer; H. R. Percy, 76, Canadian SF writer; Andres Donatovich Sinyavskij, 71, Russian SF writer and critic; Vscvolod Aleksandrovich Revich, 69, Russian SF writer and critic; Tong Enzhong, 62, Chinese SF writer; Alan Harrington, 78, author of The Immortalist; Daniel P. Mannix, 85, author of the children's fantasy The Secret of the Elms; Caroline MacDonald, 48, New Zealand-born author of young-adult fantasy and SF; Mike Baker, 31, horror writer and editor; Lou Stathis, 44, editor, writer, journalist, and critic, former associate editor of Heavy Metal magazine; Terry Nation, 66, British scriptwriter, best known for creating the race of archvillains, the Daleks, on the British TV show Dr. Who; Clyde Tombaugh, 90, well-known astronomer, discoverer of the planet Pluto; James Stewart, 89, world-famous film actor, whose many movies included roles in three well-known fantasy films, Harvey, It's a Wonderful Life, and Bell, Book, and Candle; Burgess Meredith, 88, film and television actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences for his role as The Penguin on the mid-'60s Batman TV series; Paul Edwin Zimmer, 54, author, brother of SF and fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley; Brian Burgess, longtime British fan; Phil Rogers, 72, longtime British fan and organizer; Tom Perry, well-known fan and SF researcher; Ted Pauls, 54, fanzine editor, book dealer, and longtime convention fan; Seth Goldberg, 44, fanzine and convention fan; Billie Lindsay Madle, 78, wife of long-time fan and SF scholar Robert A. Madle; Ingrid Zieruhut, 64, longtime friend and business partner of SF writer Andre Norton, Erin Louisa Card, newborn daughter of SF writer Orson Scott Card; Ruth Eisen Ferman, 88, widow of former F&SF publisher Joseph W. Ferman and mother of current F&SF publisher Edward L. Ferman; Peter Joseph Stampfel II, 84, father of SF editor Peter Stampfel; Jean Brust, 76, mother of SF and fantasy writer Steven Brust; Margaret Aldiss, 64, wife of SF writer Brian Aldiss, and Dorothy Dozois, 82, mother of SF editor Gardner Dozois.