Black Gate

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

Joanna Russ (1937-2011) was a playwright, critic, and a very important writer of nonfiction and fiction, that latter primarily SF. She was one of the first prominently “out” Lesbians in the SF field, and perhaps the leading feminist voice in the field during much of her lifetime. She was a favorite writer of mine, especially for short fiction such as her Alyx stories (including “The Second Inquisition”), “Nobody’s Home,” “Souls,” “My Boat,” and many more. She also wrote several strong novels, most famously The Female Man. Her best known and most significant extended critical work might be How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Her writing career was hampered late in her life by a long illness. She won the Hugo Award in 1983 for “Souls,” and the Nebula Award in 1973 for “When It Changed.”

In 1972 I began reading SF from the adult section of the library – that’s why it’s my Golden Age, really! – and one thing I discovered there was the Nebula Award anthologies, published each year and featuring the previous years Nebula winners in short fiction, and a few more nominated stories. I read them all out of the library, and eagerly awaited the appearance, in 1973, of Nebula Award Stories 8, edited by Isaac Asimov. The Nebula winner for short story was “When it Changed,” by Joanna Russ. I read it, and I thought, “So, a planet inhabited by women, and the men show up. I’ve seen that before. What’s the big deal?”

…

Read More Read More

Ace edition covers by Gray Morrow

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12″, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

And, indeed, 1972 is when I discovered Science Fiction in the adult section of Nichols Library in Naperville, IL. Mind you, I’d already read and loved The Zero Stone by Andre Norton, and read and kind of liked Robert Silverberg’s Revolt on Alpha C, and read and loved a ton of fantasies such as the Narnia books, The Hobbit, and George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie and At the Back of the North Wind. But I found all those in the children’s section. When I was 12 two things happened. In my seventh grade class we were introduced to a variety of books via a huge set of large folded cards, each of which had a substantial extract from a book. You were supposed to read the extract and answer a quiz about it, but the real motive of the developers was to try to get kids interesting in reading the whole of some of these books.

I read a bunch of things – Exodus by Leon Uris is one I recall – but I quickly realized it was the Science Fiction that lit me up. Books I recall reading because of that class include The Currents of Space, by Isaac Asimov; Against the Fall of Night, by Arthur C. Clarke; The Universe Between, by Alan E. Nourse; Time is the Simplest Thing, by Clifford Simak; and Galactic Derelict, by Andre Norton. And, of course, to find those books I had to go the adult section of the library. Where I quickly also found other stuff by those authors, and then other authors, and perhaps more important, anthologies. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was a revelation. And so were the Nebula anthologies. And Anthony Boucher’s Treasury of Great Science Fiction. So I was hooked forever.

…

Read More Read More