This Tor Double has the distinction of containing two stories which were both nominated for the Hugo for Best Novella in 1984. Zahn beat out Bear for the rocket, as well as works by Hilbert Schenk, Joseph H. Delaney, and David R. Palmer. Bear wouldn’t go away empty-handed, however, since his story “Blood Music” won the Hugo for Best Novelette that same year (beating out works by Kim Stanley Robinson, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, and Ian Watson). Published in November of 1988, the cover for Hardfought was painted by Tony Roberts. The cover for Cascade Point was painted by Tim White.

Cascade Point was originally published in Analog in December, 1983. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella. The story placed second in the Locus poll and the Analog Readers Poll.

Pall Durrikan is the captain on a interstellar cargo ship. Although he and his crew mostly moves cargo between planets, they also take on passengers to help cover costs and turn a profit. In order to make the trip between distant stars, they must navigate through “cascade points,” essentially jumps in hyperspace. Because of the psychological issues the occur…seeing a cascade of images of yourself that appear real…anyone who isn’t required to be awake during the jump is given sedatives to keep them asleep. On more upscale spaceships, an autopilot is installed, but the Aura Dancer, Durrikan’s ship, doesn’t have one of those, so Durrikan, or one of his crew, must stay awake during the jumps.

Early in the novella, Zahn explains that there are eight passengers on the Aura Dancer, but he only really introduces two of them, Rik Bradley and Dr. Hammerfield Lanton. Lanton is a psychiatrist who is treating Bradley for mental illness bordering wit dissociative personality issues. Since Lanton and Bradley are the only passengers introduced, it is clear that they will become important later in the story. Zahn’s decision not to introduce the other characters indicates that the human factor will be less important to the story than the technical issues that will be faced.

Despite this, and Zahn’s focus in on the narrator-Captain, he makes it clear that there is more going on the ship that the Captain sees. Alana is building a relationship with Bradley, although it mostly occurs outside the main narrator, the Captain sharing it with the reader through his perceptions of Alana. Similarly, although Lanton describes his treatment of Bradley during the Cascade Points, the reader never experiences that treatment directly. The other passengers, and most of the crew, are even less germane to the story and barely register.

Cascade Point is a puzzle story. Zahn has set up the rules for his universe and then tweaks them to make things go awry. He hints at the puzzle early in the story with references to ships that have gone missing during their jumps between stars. When the crew of the Aura Dancer finds themselves in a strange place, the puzzle begins to offer a solution. For the reader, the issue is that Zahn has created the situation and holds all the cards. He can make changes to the rules under the guise that the characters have an incomplete understanding of the way their universe works. Cascade points are used, but not entirely understood. Ming metal is known to impact the passage through cascade points, but only in an imperfect way.

The story does include several interesting ideas, including Lanton’s attempt to use the cascade points, which some believe to show images of the individual in alternative timelines, to treat Bradley’s neurosis, although Durrikan questions the concept and isn’t particularly happy about the idea of Bradley and Lanton remaining awake throughout the jumps. Unfortunately, told from Durrikan’s point of view, Zahn is limited in how far he can follow up any of those subplots, focusing only on how they impact the Aura Dancer and the fate of the passengers and crew overall. While the mysteries that crop up about the cascade points are interesting, it feels like there is a lot more happening that the reader isn’t privy to.

Hardfought was originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in February, 1983. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Award, winning the latter. It placed fifth in the Locus poll and second in the Science Fiction Chronicle Readers Poll.

John W. Campbell, Jr. was quoted as asking his writers to “Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man.” In Hardfought, Greg Bear not only responds to Campbell’s challenge with the creation of the Senexi, an ancient star-faring race, but also with the creation of humans, who bear little resemblance to our own race. Layering these two creations under a lexicon which Bear does not offer to define, but the reader must learn from context, Hardfought provides a hard science fiction story which rewards the careful reader and is likely to leave the casual reader perplexed.

Bear flips back and forth between two protagonists in the story, the Senexi Aryz and a human Prufrax, although it isn’t entirely clear she is human except that Bear has applied that name to her. Her way of thinking and acting certainly feels as alien as anything Bear describes for Aryz. It is clear that the two cultures are at war with each other, but the details of the war, as well as Aryz and Prufrax’s roles in the battle are esoteric.

As with much science fiction, the patient reader is rewarded. It becomes clear that part of the reason for the war is that although the two races are different enough that they should be fighting over the same pieces of real estate, one of the issues is that they come from very different periods in the universe’s evolution. The Senexi are an ancient race, dating to practically moments after the creation of the universe. The Humans are a later race, evolving billions of years after the Senexi. The battle between the two sides is (partly) a generational issue. But even that is too simple an explanation for what is happening between the races.

In addition to the reasons for the war, Bear explores the psychology of the two races. The Senexi have a sort of brood mind with the soldiers like Aryz filling the role of a “branch ind,” clearly based on, but not entirely analogous to the society of bees on earth. The branch inds view themselves as completely expendable, but at the same time they take pride in their roles and seek to serve the brood as successfully as possible.

The humans, as seen by Prufrax, are not the individuals that we usually associate with humans and she seems to be almost a construct who is regenerated to fight as needed, her memories flashing back throughout the story. It is only slowly that her true situation comes to light and causes the reader to reëvaluate the entire story.

Bear is known as a writer of hard science fiction, and Hardfought certainly falls into that category, but it is also reminiscent of the sort of mind-bending concepts that can be found in the works of Samuel R. Delany or Gene Wolfe. Like those authors, and more than other works by Bear, Hardfought is a story which takes on deeper meaning the more time the reader gives to it, both in the reading and in the thinking about it.

While Bear (and other hard science fiction authors) often invents new science to allow himself to explore the worlds he has created, in Hardfought, Bear creates new civilizations and vocabulary, and trusts the reader to be able to figure everything out from context rather than attempting to explain what he is doing and what is happening.

The two hard science fiction stories in this volume of the Tor Doubles series both come from the same tradition, but they arrive in very different places. Zahn’s story is more traditional, and offers the reader its own twists and turns, while Bear’s tale is a much more complex and challenging exploration of the ethics of warfare and civilization.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.