How I Would Vote Now: 1974 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

The Nominees

The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Protector by Larry Niven

The Actual Results

1. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
2. Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
3. Protector by Larry Niven

• The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
• The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson

How I Would Have Voted

1. Protector by Larry Niven
2. No Award
3. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
4. The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson

Explanation

I really enjoyed Protector. It was a great sci-fi space opera novel, with interesting characters, fun worldbuilding, an intriguing premise, a deep sense of wonder, lots of suspense, and some really unexpected twists and turns. It was also a very good hard SF novel, where the rigorous scientific accuracy actually drove the story and made it even stronger. That can be a very difficult thing to pull off, since in the hands of an unskilled author, the harder the science fiction elements become, the more dry and cerebral the story tends to become as well, but Larry Niven is a very skilled author and he pulled it off quite well in this one. In particular, the long-distance space battle that covered the last hundred pages or so had me thrilled right through to the end.

In contrast, Rendezvous with Rama was the kind of hard SF that tends to bore me. There was nothing wrong or objectionable about the story, but it was kind of slow, and didn’t build up very much suspense, aside from the central premise, which was basically “ooh, an abandoned alien starship—and we get to go inside!” I should probably try to read it again, though, because Arthur C. Clarke is definitely not an unskilled author, and Rama is one of the classics.

Poul Anderson, though… I don’t know what it is, but reading his books is like trying to walk through a brick wall. The parts that I have the most questions about, he doesn’t explain at all, and the aspects of his stories that I care about the last (particularly the worldbuilding elements) he explains in soporific detail. His characters all feel like wooden marionettes, and whenever they move, they seem off or contorted in some way, doing and saying things in ways that I would least expect.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m beginning to think that Poul Anderson just isn’t a very good writer, and his success was mostly due to the good fortune he had to be writing in a time when any book with a rocketship on the cover was guaranteed to be snapped up by hungry science fiction fans. I’ll try a couple more times to read him, but at this point I’m just about ready to give up on this author.

I did not even try to read Time Enough for Love. I’ve been burned enough by Heinlein to know that anything of his that 1) is longer than his juveniles, or 2) has a half-naked (or in this case, fully naked) woman on the cover is guaranteed to turn me off. Time Enough for Love fails both of those counts, so it got a hard skip.

I know that a lot of people love Heinlein, especially the kind of science fiction reader who otherwise aligns with my own reading tastes. But my own experience with Heinlein is all over the map: some of his books, like Farnham’s Freehold and Citizen of the Galaxy, I absolutely loved, and even count as major influences on my own writing. Others, however, like Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I just couldn’t stand at all. With some, like Double Star, I was glued to the page all the way through, while others, like Have Space Suit, Will Travel, never really hooked me at all (if I weren’t listening to that one on audio, I don’t think I ever would have finished it). So at this point, I’ve more or less decided to limit my reading of Heinlein to his juveniles, unless it comes with a strong recommendation.

Which brings me to The Man Who Folded Himself, which is one of the most disgusting Hugo-nominated books I have ever DNFed, and the main reason why I put No Award on the ballot for this year. A better title would be The Man Who Fucked Himself, since that is both more memorable and more accurate to the story. It starts out as a delightful little time travel novel, but soon turns into a homo- / mono-erotic sexual fantasy. I quit just before the money shot, but I am 100% convinced that Gerrold is a pederast, if not an outright pedophile. Disgusting!

In fact, I had such a horrible experience with The Man Who F***ed Himself that I have started a ChatGPT thread specifically for the purpose of screening these Hugo-nominated books for woke and explicit content. If ChatGPT gives me a synopsis that doesn’t pass my smell test, I’m going to pre-emptively skip it, since I don’t want to expose myself to anything like The Man Who F***ed Himself again. Any book that I skip in this way will get ranked below No Award, and I’ll include ChatGPT’s synopsis in the review.

On the plus side, that probably means I’ll get through this How I Would Vote Now blog series a lot faster.