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The Hugo Awards, 6: 1960, Starship Troopers

Posted 06-15-2009 at 08:03 AM by chexmix
Updated 06-17-2009 at 12:17 PM by chexmix

... and so we come to Heinlein again (and not for the last time, either), and a book that has come to be known as "controversial," Starship Troopers.

Given what I'd read about this novel, and my mixed feelings about some of Heinlein's work (and especially the really doctrinaire stuff), I expected to be utterly revolted by Starship Troopers. And it didn't happen.

There is actually plenty to like about this book: the narrator, Johnny Rico, is a likable enough...

chexmix

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The Hugo Award Novels, 5: 1959, A Case of Conscience

Posted 06-07-2009 at 12:15 PM by chexmix
Updated 06-17-2009 at 12:18 PM by chexmix

After visiting again with The Demolished Man, I knew that I was at least as excited about re-reading novels I'd already hit as I was about reading ones I knew nothing about. Case in point, the Hugo Winner for 1959, James Blish's A Case of Conscience.

I know that I read this as a teenager. I can even remember the cover of the paperback: Father Ramon Ruiz Sanchez looking contemplative, standing next to one of the dinosaur-like "Lithians" who holds a small vase. That's really...

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The Hugo Award Novels, 4: 1958, The Big Time

Posted 05-10-2009 at 09:52 AM by chexmix
Updated 06-17-2009 at 12:21 PM by chexmix

The Hugos for fiction skipped a[nother] year in 1957, when only magazine awards were given. And so we come to 1958, and Fritz Leiber, and the short novel The Big Time, another one I managed to miss as a younger person.

It seems rather unfair to gripe that The Big Time comes off a bit stagy, since it is difficult to escape the sense that Leiber meant it that way. He was the son of a Shakespearean actor & appeared in a few films himself, and the theatre is a kind of low-level background...

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The Hugo Award Novels, 3: 1956, Double Star

Posted 05-07-2009 at 12:41 PM by chexmix
Updated 06-17-2009 at 12:22 PM by chexmix

... and so we come to Robert A. Heinlein. His novel Double Star won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1956.

I had no idea what to expect from this one outside my experience of other Heinlein works. I'd never read it before. Unfortunately, my experience of other Heinlein books has been a mixed bag ...

... but maybe many, or even most people can say that. RAH was and is a controversial figure. And I'd guess that that is how he wanted it -- my impression is that on some...

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The Hugo Award Novels, 2: 1955, They'd Rather Be Right

Posted 05-07-2009 at 11:46 AM by chexmix
Updated 06-17-2009 at 12:23 PM by chexmix

This entry is going to be a bit of a placeholder for now, since it is difficult to find a copy of the 1955 winner for best novel, Mark Clifton and Frank Riley's They'd Rather Be Right.

The little buzz I have come across is that this is typically considered the worst novel to have won a Hugo ... which at least partially explains its scarcity.

The Boston Public Library has a copy, but I will have to go there to read it.

It's only an impression, but this...

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