1971 - Year in SF&F: Reviews

THE WONDER TIMELINE: SF&F RETROSPECTIVE Read other issues here ---------------------------------------------- J. G. Ballard "Vermillion Sands" (coll) © Berkley /Jonathan Cape, 1971 --/ third place sf collection --/ third place sf series --/ wonder award --/ style award --/ emotion award I want to live in Vermillion Sands. I want to wake up in the morning and look out my bedroom window at the hypnotic world J.G. Ballard has created. A collection of short stories, Vermillion Sands is set, mostly, in a Palm Springs-type vacation resort. There are two kinds of people there: the rich and the people who serve the rich. More importantly, though, the resort is a way for Ballard – in these stories – to explore the artistic process via a whole plethora of new technologies, from cloud sculpting to sound jewelry and more. But Ballard is Ballard, so just writing stories about a resort, the people enjoying it or working there, or even the arts, is not enough: each of the stories in Vermillion Sands is also laced with his trademark psychological depth and lyrical subtlety. Sure, the stories might not be as subversively perverse, emotionally enigmatic, psychedelically strange, or horrifically languid as some of his other books and stories, but these light and almost funny tales are still J.G. Ballard – and that means they will always be as a brilliant and elusive as the landscape outside of Vermillion Sands. (review by M. Christian) ---------------------------------------------- Michael Moorcock "The Warlord of the Air" (nv) (Oswald Bastable series) © 1971, DAW Books, Ace Books --/ cool sf novel --/ wonder award --/ adventure award Seminal early steampunk novel, with wonderful airships jumping off the page, and Japanese animation-like action thunders into your ears - with some color and silly plot to boot. ---------------------------------------------- Larry Niven "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" © 1971 All the Myriad Ways, 1971 --/ idea award --/ humor award --/ rare find This essay explores the options available for the Superman to procreate and have sex with a normal human being, and the prospects are not looking good. In most scenarios Superman ends up destroying his partner (even the whole cities), in over-the-top sweet little ways. ---------------------------------------------- Robert Silverberg "The World Inside" (nv) © Nova 1, ed. Harry Harrison, 1970 also in Galaxy, 1970-1971 novel: 1971, Doubleday --novella : 1971 Hugo ("The World Outside") --novel : 1972 Hugo (withdrawn) --novel : 1972 Locus/6 --/ fourth place sf novel --/ wonder award --/ style award Welcome to the year 2381. Things are perfect: very, very perfect. Everyone is happy, everyone is satisfied within the towering blocks of the Urban Monads -- monster monoliths of humanity towering hundreds of floors, and thousands of feet, above the surface of the planet. If there is one rule, one overriding philosophy of the people living in the monads -- beyond their pathological satisfaction with the state of the world and their lives -- it’s “be fruitful and multiply.” Each monad is made up of 25 cities, each existing within their own sections of 40 floors. Urban Monad 116, the setting of Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside, has a population of 800,000 happy, happy people, with the world population at 75 billion people … and climbing. There have been many books about the horrors of overpopulation, most notably, Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, which you might know better as "Soylent Green" when it made it onto the big screen. But The World Inside is unique and powerful: a nightmare dipped in a super-sweet glaze, a hell made of smiles and sex. The residents of Urban Monad 116 -- the musician, the bureaucrat, the rebel, and all the other characters that rotate onto the novel’s stage -- don’t know they are living in a nightmare of bodies, bodies, and more bodies. For them, births -- and huge families -- are not just the norm but the ultimate desire of every citizen. To encourage this population explosion, the male residents roam their tower, falling into every available woman’s bed, each carnal encounter a possibility for -- joy, joy -- even more life. The World Inside is, itself, a seduction. Because the reader follows each character, we first see their world as they see it: a bountiful celebration of humanity, a sensual monolithic rave. But then the glaze, the smiles, and the sex begin to wear thin for both the reader as well as the people of Urban Monad 116 we are following, and the book begins to show the horrifying isolation, the hollow monolith that is their building as well as their life. As with most everything Robert Silverberg has written in this period, The World Inside is a literary treat: vivid and kaleidoscopic, richly textured but also smoothly told. It’s far too easy to read a book like The World Inside and forget the awe-inspiring literary skill and storytelling mastery that’s going on right before your eyes. The World Inside is a book that shouldn’t just be read but re-read and re-read and re-read: once for the pure enjoyment of this unique and powerful story, again to enjoy Silverberg’s magnificent talent as a writer, and yet again to enjoy the story's careful weaving of plot and story and theme. The World Inside is a perfect example of a master storyteller’s craft: a timeless book and an eternal warning of substituting quantity for quality. A bit of trivia: It was nominated for a Hugo in 1972 for best novel, but withdrawn by Silverberg in favor of A Time of Changes, which was also nominated that year. Original stories that make up this novel: A Happy Day in 2381 © Nova 1, ed. Harry Harrison, 1970 In the Beginning © Science Against Man, ed. Anthony Cheetham, 1970 The Throwbacks © Galaxy, Jul 1970 The World Outside © Galaxy, Oct 1970 We Are Well Organized © Galaxy, Dec 1970 All the Way Up, All the Way Down © Galaxy, Jul 1971 Review by author M. Christian ---------------------------------------------- Return to the Wonder Timeline

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