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Author: Steven H Silver

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Persistence of Vision, by John Varley

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Persistence of Vision, by John Varley

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Cover by Jim Burns
Cover by Jim Burns

Cover by Selinas Blanch
Cover by Selinas Blanch

Cover by Stéphane Dumont
Cover by Stéphane Dumont

The Prix Apollo was founded in 1972 and presented in France for the best book published in French during the preceding year. The first winner was Roger Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead. The award was suspended following the presentation of the 1991 award. Only five times in the awards nineteen year history did it go to works originally published in French, including 1988, when it was presented to an entire series of 36 books written by Georges-Jean Arnaud. Although technically an award for a novel, in 1980, the award was given to John Varley’s collection The Persistence of Vision.

It isn’t entirely clear what the Prix Apollo was presented for. Varley’s debut collection, The Persistence of Vision was published by The Dial Press/James Wade in 1978 and contained nine short stories, published between 1975 and 1978. The collection wasn’t translated into French until 1979, which is why it was eligible for the Prix Apollo in 1980. However, the nine stories were published in two separate volumes in French. One volume, Dans le palais des rois martiens, contained five stories, including French translations of “The Phantom of Kansas,” “Air Raid,” “Retrograde Summer,” “The Black Hole Passes,” and the titular story, “In the Hall of the Martian Kings.” The second volume, Persistance de la vision, contained the remaining four stories, translations of “In the Bowl,” “Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance,” “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank,” and “the titular story, “The Persistence of Vision.” It is possible that the Prix Apollo was given for the complete text of the original anthology, but also conceivable that it was only given to the volume which bears the name in French.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Scientifriction #11, edited by Mike Glyer

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Scientifriction #11, edited by Mike Glyer

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Scientifriction #11
Scientifriction #11

The Fan Activity Achievement Awards, or FAAN Awards were founded in 1976 by Moshe Feder and Arnie Katz. Created to highlight writing in fandom, they differed from the Fan Hugos in that they were voted on specifically by fanzine fans. The original awards were presented at various convention. Following the 1980 awards, the awards were on hiatus until 1994 and have been presented each year since, with the exception of 1996. Mike Glyer won the last of the original run of FAAN Awards for Best Fanzine, Single Issue for Scientifriction #11. The first winner was Outworld #21/22, edited by Bill and Joan Bowers. The category was not revived after the hiatus, being replaced by the Best Fanzine category.

While Mike Glyer’s File 770 can be considered a newszine of the science fiction fannish community, his zine Scientifriction could be seen as an opinion related work, although it contained far more than simply opinion pieces. In issue 11, Glyer opened up with an inside-baseball discussion of a proposal to add a Non-North American zone to the then current three zone rotation for Worldcons. At the time the Worldcon would rotate between the Eastern US, the Western US, and the Central US, with foreign worldcons being allowed to bid for any year. The proposal would have added a fourth zone, limiting when foreign worldcons could be held, but ensuring one would be held every fourth year. The proposal raised quite a bit of debate, including the opinion that the change would actually further cement worldcon as a US event.

Glyer also published his own article on the game Hell is High, which he would later rework for the second issue of my own fanzine, Argentus, published 23 years later. Glyer’s description of the game mechanics, camaraderie, and rivalry make the evenings spent playing Hell Is High sound like a wonderful place and time to have been able to experience.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, by Wayne Barlowe

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, by Wayne Barlowe

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Cover by Wayne Barlowe
Cover by Wayne Barlowe

The Locus Awards were established in 1972 and presented by Locus Magazine based on a poll of its readers. In more recent years, the poll has been opened up to on-line readers, although subscribers’ votes have been given extra weight. At various times the award has been presented at Westercon and, more recently, at a weekend sponsored by Locus at the Science Fiction Museum (now MoPop) in Seattle. The Best Art or Illustrated Book Award was only given in two years, 1979 and 1980 and was won by Ian Summers for Tomorrow and Beyond. In 1994, Locus introduced the Best Art Book Award, which was won by Michael Whelan for The Art of Michael Whelan: Scenes/Vision. The category has been dominated by the Spectrum series, which has won in all except six subsequent years. In 1980. The Locus Poll received 854 responses.

Wayne Douglas Barlowe and Ian Summers have created a catalog of aliens as described in numerous works of science fiction, by authors as diverse as Larry Niven, Ursula Le Guin, and Jack Vance. Each alien is according a two page spread in which the author and artist provide the name of the alien’s race, the author who created them and the work in which they appear and a full page image of the creature. The aliens are also described and frequently Barlowe has illustrated details of their hands, textures, or other things that make each race unique.

The book includes a fold-out centerfold that shows 48 of the aliens more or less at their relative sizes, from the wormlike Mesklinites from Hal Clement’s novel Mission to Gravity to Jack Williamson’s jellyfish-like Medusians from The Legion of Space. Summers admits that in many cases the size comparisons are approximate since the authors often just gave hints about an alien’s size relative to humans, who are also included in the comparison chart.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Novels of 1979

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Novels of 1979

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Cover by Don Maitz
Cover by Don Maitz

Cover by Enrich
Cover by Enrich

Cover by Larry Schwinger
Cover by Larry Schwinger

Taking another break from award winners, here’s a look at novels published in 1979 that did not win any awards.

C.J. Cherryh published Hestia, a stand-alone about an engineer, Sam Merrit, who travels to the title planet to build a damn to help the human colonists.  Upon arrival, Merrit realizes that the dam will not only prove to be the panacea that is sought, but would also destroy the local indigenous species. Cherryh uses the novel to explore personal and ecological responsibility and the sense of entitlement the colonists have.

Jerry Pournelle’s novel Janissearies is the first of the similarly titled trilogy, although it is also set in the wider world of his Co-Dominium universe that began with his novel King David’s Starship. The novel follows a group of American soldiers who have been rescued from an ambush in Africa and given the chance to put their talents to use in a medieval level society among the stars. Although Pournelle’s main character faced mutiny, he wins through in the end, establishing himself as the undisputed leader of the force.

Kindred, Octavia E. Butler’s time travel novel that shuffles Dana, a twentieth century African-American author, between her own time and the antebellum South was published in 1979. The novel offers a look at the sort of compromises Dana must make to survive as a slave as be able to continue to exist in her own time. Butler offers a complex view of slavery and race relations in the novel, partly because of the way she has caused Dana’s own existence and fate to be entwined with that of Rufus, the plantation owner.
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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Donald A. Wollheim

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Donald A. Wollheim

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Donald A. Wollheim
Donald A. Wollheim

The Milford Award was created by Robert Reginald and was first presented in 1980 at the J. Lloyd Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature at the University of California, Riverside. It is presented for lifetime achievement in published and editing. The award recipient is chosen by a jury that was originally chaired by Reginald. Originally, the award was a hand-lettered scroll mounted under glass, although beginning in the award’s second year, it took the form of a bronze plaque mounted on a wood base. The first recipient of the award was Donald A. Wollheim. The award was discounted following 1997. It was won by David Pringle in its final year.

Donald A. Wollheim is one of those people who is seminal to the creation of modern science fiction. From his early days as a fan in New York to his career as an author and eventually as an editor and publisher, he has touched every aspect of the field.

He was born on October 1, 1914 in New York and joined the International Stf Guild in 1934 and joined a variety of New York based clubs. He published several early fanzines and helped organize the 1936 trip by members of the NYB-ISA to Philadelphia to visit the Philly branch in what some have termed the first science fiction convention. The following year he helped found the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, which is still in existence in the 1938, he was one of the founding members of the Futurians, a science fiction club in New York that counted numerous future science fiction authors among its members.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “Songhouse,” by Orson Scott Card

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “Songhouse,” by Orson Scott Card

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Cover by Paul Lehr
Cover by Paul Lehr

Cover by Lucinda Cowell
Cover by Lucinda Cowell

Analog Award was launched in 1979 for works published in the magazine in the preceding year. The award for Best Novelette has been given every year. The first award, presented in 1979, was presented to “Fireship” by Joan D. Vinge, although Orson Scott Card’s “Mikal’s Songbird” was also up for the award. In 1980, Card won the award for the sequel to “Mikal’s Songbird,” “Songhouse,” which appeared in the September, 1979 issue.

“Songhouse” related the story of a young boy over several years, although the passage of time is vague, as he is being trained in the Songhouse on Tew. Ansset Originally came to the Songhouse as an orphan, although the story does mention that he was a kidnap victim, a background feature which is mostly ignored within the confines of this specific novella. The Songhouse trains singers, who use songs, melodies, and harmonies to communicate on a variety of levels. Ansset is early on pegged to be trained for the highest honor of the house, the position of Songbird, and then to be given over to Mikal, the benevolent dictator of the galaxy.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Betty and Ian Ballantine

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Betty and Ian Ballantine

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Betty Ballantine
Betty Ballantine

Betty and Ian Ballantine
Betty and Ian Ballantine

Ian Ballantine
Ian Ballantine

The Balrog Award, often referred to as the coveted Balrog Award*, was created by Jonathan Bacon and first conceived in issue 10/11 of his Fantasy Crossroads fanzine in 1977 and actually announced in the final issue, where he also proposed the Smitty Awards for fantasy poetry. The awards were presented for the first time at Fool-Con II at the Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas on April 1, 1979. The awards were never taken particularly seriously, even by those who won the award. The final awards were presented in 1985. The first Balrog Special Awards were presented in 1980 to Ian and Betty Ballantine. Special Awards were also presented in 1981, 1983, and 1985.

I wrote the following about Betty Ballantine in 2005 in my fanzine, Argentus, with the aim of having a Worldcon present a Special Committee Award to Ballantine. In 2006, L.A.con IV presented her with such an award.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Stephen King

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Stephen King

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Cover by Alex Gotfryd
Cover by Alex Gotfryd

Stephen King
Stephen King

Cover by Dave Christensen
Cover by Dave Christensen

The World Fantasy Awards are presented during the World Fantasy Convention and are selected by a mix of nominations from members of the convention and a panel of judges. The awards were established in 1975 and presented at the 1st World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island. Traditionally, the awards took the form of a bust of H.P. Lovecraft sculpted by Gahan Wilson, however in recent years the trophy became controversial in light of Lovecraft’s more problematic beliefs. The first Special Convention Award was presented in 1978 to Glenn Lord. Two years later, Stephen King received the award when the convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland.

Stephen King’s first professional sale was the story “The Glass Floor,” which appeared in the Fall 1967 issue of Startling Mystery Stories, edited by Robert A.W. Lowndes. He continued publishing short fiction and his first novel sale was Carrie, which originally was meant to be a short story, but which he lengthened. It was published in 1974 and turned into a movie in 1976, establishing a long-running collaboration between King and Hollywood. To date more than 200 films and television shows have been based on King’s work.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “The Button Molder,” by Fritz Leiber

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “The Button Molder,” by Fritz Leiber

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Cover by Stephen Fabian
Cover by Stephen Fabian

In 1972, the British Fantasy Society began giving out the August Derleth Fantasy Awards for best novel as voted on by their members. A Short Fiction/Short Story category was added the next year, with the first one being won in 1973 by L. Sprague de Camp for his novella The Fallible Fiend. In 1976. The name of the awards was changed to the British Fantasy Award, although the August Derleth Award was still the name for the Best Novel Award. The category has remained part of the awards to the present day, although a re-alignment in 2012 means the awards are now selected by a jury rather than the full membership of the British Fantasy Society. In 1980, Fritz Leiber won the award for his story “The Button Molder,” which was presented at Fantasycon VI in Birmingham.

Leiber opens the story by teasing about how much can happen within a ten second period of time and the appearance of a ghost. His character then goes on a lengthy discussion about his living situation in San Francisco as he finds a new apartment and sets himself up as an author and amateur astronomer, working from his building’s roof. With long ruminations on what it means to be an author and techniques of story-telling, the story feels very autobiographical in nature and it is only the occasional hints back to those important ten seconds that remind the reader this is a story and not an essay about Leiber’s life.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie

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SF Commentary: Tenth Anniversary Edition
SF Commentary: Tenth Anniversary Edition

The Ditmar Awards are named for Australian fan Martin James Ditmar Jenssen. Founded in 1969 as an award to be given by the Australian National Convention, during a discussion about the name for the award, Jenssen offered to pay for the award if it were named the Ditmar. His name was accepted and he wound up paying for the award for more years than he had planned. Ditmar would eventually win the Ditmar Award for best fan artist twice, once in 2002 and again in 2010. The Australian Fanzine Award was one of the Ditmar’s original awards and the first one was won by John Bangsund for Australian SF Review. Bruce Gillespie won his first Ditmar for SF Commentary in 1972 and the ‘zine also won the award in 1973, 1977, 1980, 2002, and 2018. He also won the award in 1986 and 1999 for his ‘zine Metaphysical Review and in 2010 for Steam Engine Time. Rich Horton took a look at SF Commentary as the winner of the 1973 Ditmar Award in his companion series looking at his own Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Bruce Gillespie began publishing SF Commentary in 1969 and by 1979 he was ready to publish issues 55 through 57, although the numbering a count was a little screwy. In January, he published a 68 page combination issue, numbered 55-56 and in November, he published the final issue of the year, 57, which came in at 16 pages.

Combined issue 55/56 opens with an editorial by Gillespie extolling the ten years that he has been publishing the fanzine. The article traces the history of the fanzine, and through it Australian fandom, through the ten years of its existence, including the ill-fated attempt in 1976 to turn the ‘zine into a semi-professional magazine. Toward the end of the article, Gillespie turns his attention away from the zine and fandom and discusses the major events and publications in science fiction over the course of the decade, along with a lengthy bibliography of stories published during that time that he would recommend. The article provides a lengthy and full view of the world of science fiction, as seen from Australia, from 1969 through the beginning of 1979. Gillespie summation of the decade runs for about a third of the article.

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