'Nebula Award Stories Four' first was published in hardback in December, 1969. This Pocket Books mass market paperback edition (230 pp) was published in January 1971. The cover art is by Paul Lehr.
I have learned through experience that these 'Nebula Award' compilations, particularly those issued during the New Wave era, contain a lot of duds. So it is with this compilation, which features stories first published in 1968 and 1969 in anthologies such as Orbit, and magazines like Galaxy.
Reflecting the political tumult of the late 60s, in his Introduction, editor Anderson remarks on the conflict within the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) over two petitions that sought signatures: one for the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and one against it. Anderson apparently was pro-involvement, but maintained goodwill with his other SFWA colleagues..........
This edition of 'Nebula' includes a Foreward from one Willis E. McNelly, a professor in the English Department at Cal State Fullerton. Back in the late 60s offering a course in sci-fi was the height of hipness for English Department faculty (well, almost as hip as a course in Afro-American Studies or Latino Studies). McNelly assures the reader that sci-fi, as showcased in the Nebula Award Stories collections, is gaining ground as a Legitimate Genre of Literature:
Indeed, if the editors of the Saturday Review or The New York Times Review of Books had read some of the Nebula nominee novels published during 1968, they might have discovered that the gap between so-called mainstream fiction and first-rate science fiction is narrowing.........even the case hardened iconoclasts who occupy the pages of the New Yorker might be unable to detect the gap at all. For example, John Barth's Giles Goat Boy is science fiction, but no reviewer bothered to mention that fact. Barth's McLuhanesque Lost in the Fun House was also science fiction - a non-novel, perhaps, or even an anti-novel, or a non-book, a piece of mclunacy, but science fiction nonetheless- a fact ignored by every reviewer who tried to make conventional, representational mainstream sense out of Barth's fragmented vision.
(Claiming that 'fabulist' or 'unconventional' novels by authors like Barth, Barthelme, Vonnegut, and Pynchon represented science fiction, and by so doing bestowed upon the genre greater legitimacy as a Literary Endeavor, was a much-employed maneuver by the New Wave community.)
Anyways, enough about tiffs in the world of Highbrow Literature......how do the stories in compilation Number Four stack up ?
My capsule reviews of the contents:
Mother to the World, by Richard Wilson: Martin Rolfe, aged forty-two, is healthy, smart, and virile, and ready to repopulate the planet in the aftermath of World War Three. However, the Last Woman on Earth is a twenty-four year-old, mentally retarded housemaid named Cissy...........
While its 'provocative' nature has considerably lessened in the 51 years since it saw print in Orbit 3, this story remains a legitimate Nebula awardee for best novelette 1968. It is written in a straightforward style (devoid of New Wave affectations) and has an ending that avoids contrivance, while endeavoring to deliver a humanistic message.
The Dance of the Changer and the Three, by Terry Carr: the planet Loarr is home to aliens composed of energy, who communicate via stylized movements and flashing colors. Three such aliens embark on an existential quest, which an observing Earthman cannot fully understand.
Carr plainly intended this story, with its 'far-out' aliens, as a rebuttal to those critics of sci-fi that claimed that the genre was all about space squids lusting for human females. Unfortunately, 'The Dance' is too overwritten, and too underplotted, to be anything other than yet another New Wave tale that tried too hard to say something Profound.......... and wound up saying nothing much at all.
The Planners, by Kate Wilhelm: at a primate research facility in inland Florida, psychologist Dr. Darin researches a method for imparting enhanced intelligence to chimps. There is hope that the method can be used to aid humans.
This story won the 1968 Nebula for best Short Story, but it hasn't aged well (aside from describing human and animal experiments that would be considered cruel and unethical by contemporary standards). As with her other stories from this era, Wilhelm adopts the New Wave affectation of inserting text passages - that represent the personal fantasies of the lead character - into the narrative without demarcating these passages by use of italics, or offsetting with asterisks. Accordingly, it is left to the reader to sort what is 'real' from what is 'unreal'. This experimental approach to prose isn't helped by an underwhelming denouement that revolves around coming to terms with a loveless marriage......a favorite neurosis of the late 1960s !
Sword Game, by H. H. Hollis: satirical tale of a nerdy, disheveled Professor of Mathematics who finds a nubile coed willing to sleep with him. After a while, this palls, and the Professor schemes of a way to get rid of her.
This story has little, if any, merit as a sci-fi tale, but it is a telling symbol of the wish-fulfillment sought by the membership of the SFWA who, in 1968, were non-Woke, middle-aged white men consumed with the knowledge that the Sexual Revolution was raging all around them, and they were too old and hapless to fully indulge in its lubricious joys............
The Listeners, by James E. Gunn: a melodrama set in the near future about MacDonald, the project director of a program that uses an upgraded version of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to scan the galaxy for transmissions originating from alien civilizations. MacDonald's Latina wife Maria has taken to relying on sleeping pills to fall asleep; this is alarming. The story's major point seems to be that any human endeavor, if it is noble enough, is legitimate.
This story has a rather pedestrian plot, which revolves around the bureaucratic and managerial aspects of maintaining a scientific endeavor of questionable worth. In order to impute a Literary Quality to his story, Gunn regularly inserts italicized excerpts from famous poems and plays and novels in their native Spanish, German, Italian, and Latin; the story has a two-page Appendix which provides English translations. I finished reading 'The Listeners' thinking that the text devoted to these quotations could have been deleted, in order to free up space to try and give the narrative a more impactful outcome.
Dragonrider, by Anne McCaffrey: somewhat awkwardly, in order to fill out the page count for this anthology, it incorporates part two of McCaffrey's novel (which won the 1968 Nebula for Best Novella). Part One, which was the novella 'Weyr Search', was published in Nebula Award Stories Three (Pocket Books, 1968). My thoughts on the whole 'Dragonriders of Pern' series are posted here.
In Memorium: this curious little Appendix contains small-font, half-page obituaries devoted to those science fiction writers who died in 1968 - 1969. Some of the more recognizable names include Anthony Boucher, Rosel George Brown, Groff Conklin, and Mervyn Peake. Some of these essays provide interesting little insights, often into the mindset of the obituary composer. For example, in his essay on Aaron Wyn, the publisher of Ace Books, Donald Wollheim states:
He was a man to be respected, of high intelligence, undoubted literary quality within strict limits, but always a tough, opinionated businessman for whom few ever acquired a warm affection.
Wolheim plainly detested Wynn, and this was Wollheim's chance to get in a posthumous dig !
Summing everything up, the blunt reality is that only the McCaffrey and Wilson entries have stood the test of time in the 50+ years since the publication of 'Nebula Award Stories Four'. I can't recommend this anthology to anyone, save those who are particularly drawn to the New Wave era and its content.
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