INTRODUCTION This book is more than a collection of science fiction stories. Of course, it is mainly that, and rightly so. After all, we have here the fourth annual set of Nebula Award winners and as many runners-up on the final ballot as could be fitted in. But in view of the growing acceptance of science fiction as a valid literary form, it seems time to offer some history and com- mentary besides. So widely are the assumptions and conventions of that form disseminated these days, that nobody feels surprised or puzzled when they are used by someone as respectable as, say, John Hersey. At the same time, their regular users are more and more adopting techniques which, if not yet abso- lutely contemporary (being associated with such names as Joyce, Kafka, Capek, DOS Passes), are light-years in advance of cut-and-dried pulp narration. Most science fiction has also preserved its own traditional virtues. It still tells stories, wherein things happen. It remains more interested in the glamour and mystery of existence, the survival and triumph and tragedy of heroes and thinkers, than in the neuroses of some sniveling fagot. And pace Will McNelly, I don't believe "hard" science is on the way out of it. The impressive terminology always did include plenty of gobbledygook. If anything, we get more genuine science and technology now, from writers like Hal Clement, Joseph Martino, and Larry Niven, than ever before. This combination of new skills and old values has com- pletely revitalized a field which, a decade or so back, had decayed to a frighteningly low proportion of stories not flat, imitative, or idiotic. I don't know what brought on the change. It wasn't just the many talented new writers, though obviously they're responsible for a lot. Quite a few old-timers suddenly caught fire again. Whatever the cause, heightened quality is earning us a wider, more discriminating audience. The rewards go well beyond such benefits for the writer 'as decent income and expenses-paid trips to symposia in Brazil. Mainly, he's getting across. We still have a long way to fare, but it looks like an excit- ing journey ahead. Among reasons for optimism is our organization. Science Fiction Writers of America. Let's be blunt, the typical writers' groupand I include some of the most prominentis a farce. The vitality of science fiction is reflected in the virility of SFWA. It has won, or created, genuine benefits for its membership, such as improvements in the contracts of several publishers and the increasingly prestigious Nebula awards. The year 1968 was almost as stressful for SFWA as it was for mankind in general. Not only did we suffer a Year of the Jackpotsee the obituary sectionbut for a while, political disagreements threatened to tear us apart. Two opposing groups were collecting signatures and contributions for two opposing statements on the Vietnam War, to be published as advertisements in some of the magazines. I happened to spearhead one of these, which involved me in a blizzard of correspondence with SFWA members as well as officers. Practically without exception, every letter I got from any sidemore than two sides exist, you knowwas both patriotic in tone and humane in spirit. The statements appeared simultaneously, and I haven't heard of any friend- ships that they broke. The experience gives me a bit of hope for our poor flayed world. Science fiction people obviously can't save it by themselves. But are they perhaps representa- tive of a larger community of people who'd rather think than scream? Let's turn from the writers to what they write, a subject doubtless more interesting to readers. I don't agree with every- thing that Will McNelly has to say about the year in novels; neither, probably, will you; and it is obvious that a substantial plurality of SFWA's professional writers won't, since their votes bestowed the Nebula on a book that leaves him cool but that they (and 1) think is a credit to the award. And so what's wrong with a little controversy? Professor McNelly's remarks are well worth your attention, both for their own sake and as a strong assault on those Berlin Walls of categori- zation which have for too long kept the various literary forms artificially isolated from each other. The year in magazines can be summarized quite briefly, since this whole book is itself a commentary upon that. Analog offered the mixture as before: stories running heavily to ideation, interesting fact articles, and provocative sometimes deliberately infuriatingeditorials. Or was it really quite .the old blend? John Campbell has never stopped pioneering. He has, however, recognized that even a science fiction audience is basically conservative and newness must be sneaked in. For example, you don't see much about "psi" any more; it's simply there, as Anne McCaffrey's yarn bears wit- ness. Analog also enjoyed a gratifying rise in circulation. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction continued in its own tradition, quite a different one except for Isaac Asimov's column. It was especially noteworthy how many stories here bore immediate relevance to our real, mid- twentieth-century world. Editor Edward Ferman also en- couraged the continued development of such comparatively new writers as Bruce McAllister, K. M. O'Donnell, and Josephine Saxton, who rewarded him with fine contributions. Amazing and Fantastic had their problems, including a midstream change of editors, but nonetheless published a good deal of fresh and worthwhile material. Under Harry Harrison, book reviews came to be handled by such as Fritz Leiber and James Blish; the anthropologist Leon Stover began a series of regular reports from the frontiers of his science; and besides old hands, we got extremely promising recruits like Robert Taylor and James Tiptree, Jr. When Barry Malzberg took command, he proved especially sympathetic to experimental writing: which is not the same thing as amateurish writing. But Frederik Pohl was unquestionably the innovator of the year. He was not content with good solid periodicals like Galaxywhich regularly includes articles by Willy Leyand //which has thrice in a row taken the annual Hugo Award for best magazine, bestowed through vote of fans rather than writers. He also launched two new, at present irregular, publications. One is called Worlds of Fantasy and is devoted to precisely what the title implies. If you don't like space- ships but do like Tolkien or Lovecraft, this is probably for you. The other is International Science Fiction, featuring stories from places as remote as Japan and the Soviet Union. I hope both of these will become firmly established. Everyone would benefit. When he ran the two head-on Vietnam declarations, Fred PoM and his publisher did not go out and spend the five hundred dollars they had collected. Instead, they announced that it would be paid out in prizes for the best ideas they received on what the United States might actually do about the situation. Response was large and imaginative. After win- nowing, it was turned over to a professional study group which in turn may well call some of the suggestions to the attention of the government. Again, this does not mean that science fictioneers can bail out the human race. But it does mean that, far from being escapists, they are uncommonly aware of and concerned about reality. In addition, Galaxy Publishing Corporation instituted its own awards, cash, for the best stories it has printed within a year. These are determined by a poll of subscribers, em- ploying standard statistical methods of sampling and valida- tion. It is interesting that none of the winners (first was Clifford Simak's novel Goblin Reservation) made the final Nebula ballot. I suspect this indicates not so much a failure of either system as it does the diversity of science fiction. In fact, the range is so very healthily wide that what's going on in Britain today is often too much for me, even though I consider myself to have catholic tastes. Rather than scold what I seldom understand, I asked one of that country's most distinguished writers in our field to comment on it. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Aldiss: "New Worlds: totters from strength to strength. The appear- ance of every issue is a triumph of hope over economics; the persistence of the editor, Michael Moorcock, who is now also publisher, is perhaps a triumph over himself. "New Worlds is no longer a magazine but a cause: thrown away the magazine, kept the courage. The November 1968 issue contained only stories by new authorsthey were being given a chance to speak before the magazine sank forever. In December, the magazine bobbed up again, with stories by such Nebula winners as.Delany, Moorcock, and Aldiss. Disch and Bill Butler were also present, and there was an article on Andy Warhol. So the vessel still floats, despite severe trouble with distributors during the year, when Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was running. Of course, a hefty Arts Council grant (now extended into 1969) helps buoyancy. "Subject matter in the stories is sometimes thin, inexpertise sometimes shows below the wish to set convention at nought; but what matters most is the attitude of questioning: the good hard look at what is going on, the wish to interpret without falsifying. "English science fiction has never been too greatly sub- jected to the enervating pressures of pulp markets. Moorcock's New Worlds merely uses its liberty to the full; it's for writers and not for publishers (under either system, readers, as readers must, fend for themselves). Writers respond to this policy by writing freelyand sometimes for free, if necessary. This dedication finds an echo in the staff, and more than an echo in the editor himself. Moorcock, as he ascends into legend, begins to look like a Gerald Scarfe portrait of the French philosopher Rene Descartes. "Many of Moorcock's contributors are AmericanZeiazny, Disch, Sladek, Spinrad, Leiber, Zoline, Jacobs, et al. The typical New Worlds story is pretty cool, has connections with the attitudes of the 'underground,' and shares little in com- mon with the American New Wave, which is characterized by heavier breathing. It is against nothing but mediocrity: which is why it has aroused so much anger here and there." I take special pleasure in having Brian's remarks because one of my great regrets in editing this book was that there turned out to be no way of including his novelette Total Environment. Look for it elsewhere, together with the other fine runners-up. If 1968 had more than its share of catastro- phes, it also had some very special gloriesamong them the return of the Pueblo crew, Apollo 8's Christmas journey around the moon . . . and, not altogether bathos in the present context, a great deal of first-class science fiction. Pout Anderson FOREWORD The Science Fiction Novel in 1968 by Willis E. McNelly Professor of English, California State College, Fullerton The Wandering Jew is alive and an activist in Berkeley. Seven billion human beings are trying to stand on Zanzibar; there is conflict in Utopia; puberty rites in space end with the death of a planet; the Apocalypse will come either with Black Magic or with the approaching Millennium. Electric sheep graze, unmolested by fallout, and all is not well on Paradise. These visions of the futuresome might term them night- mareswith their extensions, extrapolations, and involve- ments are the subject matter of the best science fiction novels published during 1968. Seven of them were the Nebula finalistsl the eighth was a superior work overlooked in the voting.2 Together they continue a trend begun some years ago, demonstrating again the growth of the novel as the most representative, if not the most distinctive, form for the presentation of science fiction. Thirty-five novels were listed on the preliminary ballot used by the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to nominate candidates for 1968 Nebula Award. They were a diverse lot, including a few fantasies, dozens of spanner and grommet stories, some high jinks in time, and several serious explorations of certain new views of the hell man continually shapes for himself. It was, in general, a good year for the i James Blish, Black Easter, Doubleday; John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, Doubleday; Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Doubleday; R. A. Lafferty, Past Master, Ace; Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage, Ace; Joanna Russ, Picnic on Paradise, Ace; Robert Silverberg, The Masks of Time, Ballantine. 2 John Boyd, The Last Starship from Earth, Weybright & Talley. science fiction novel, although space operas, by and large, are not really worth considering seriously. They are mostly good adventure stories, told, as usual, with a maximum of action and dialogue, a minimum of characterization, and a general banality of style: "Starwolf, whispered the void . . ." They end up as half of an Ace double, thud and blunder among the stars. The serious works, like the Nebula finalists, sometimes show great originality. Indeed, if the editors of the Saturday Review or The New York Review of Books had read some of the Nebula nominee novels published during 1968, they might have discovered that the gap between so-called main- stream fiction and first-rate science fiction is narrowing. In fact, there are times when the difference disappears com- pletely, so completely that 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 Earth's Giles Goat Boy is science fiction, but no reviewer bothered to mention the fact. Earth's McLuhanesque Lost in the Fun House was also science fictiona non-novel, perhaps, or even an anti- novel, or a non-book, a piece of mclunacy, but science fiction nonethelessa fact ignored by every reviewer who tried to make conventional, representational mainstream sense out of Earth's fragmented vision. Good as the Nebula nominees were, they did not produce a science fiction novel in a class with Frank Herbert's Dune, Alfred Hester's The Demolished Man, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, or Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Yet the general quality of the better novels is certainly above that of any year within recent memory. To be sure, even among the finalists there were certain failures, but the failures were often failures of excess and were not due to lack of imagination, paucity of conception, or lapses of style. The outstanding feature of the finalists was how much involvement or response they demand of the readers. The best novels, such as James Blish's Black Easter, Robert Silver- berg's The Masks of Time, John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, oi John Boyd's The Last Starship from Earth, were written for what might be called a "maximum" audience. The authors all seem to have realized that creative writing requires cre- ative reading. Thus they are no longer content to spoonfeed space pablum to adolescents. Instead, the authors have written up to their readers, not down to them. Consequently, the passive reader is forced, by every device in the writer's arsenal, to become involved, to read between the lines, behind the lines, and under the lines. The stories are often told by indirection, suggestion, allusion. The characters begin to assume a life as independent human beings, rather than card- board stereotypes. Readers unwilling or unable to provide what the artists demand remain blissfully unaware of some genuinely superior work. And that is their loss, not that of the writers. What is most important, any reader who ap- proaches the principal novels of the year with a quickened ear, a sensitive eye, and an awakened imagination will realize that in a few instances at least, the writer deserves the appella- tion "artist." The 1968 Nebula nominees demonstrated a wide variety of styles, types, techniques, and modes. They ranged from the wildly experimental Stand on Zanzibar to the controlled disci- pline and form of Panshin's Rite of Passage, the Nebula winner. Certainly Panshin's first novel had been widely anticipated; he had, after all, demonstrated both his commit- ment to science fiction and his undeniable talent in numerous short stories and his full-length critical analysis, Heinlein in Dimension. What kind of novel could be expected from this man, reputed to be a member of the New Wave, who was at the same time a merciless dissector of Heinlein? The result: a smooth, competent, professional reworking of tired, wom- out science fiction characters and devices. One is tempted to say that Rite of Passage is a mini-splendored thing. Yet withal, it was the Nebula winner, voted the best science fiction novel of the year by the members of SFWA. Their choice was both difficult and easy to understand. Rite of Passage is, on one hand, banal, at least to this reader. On the other hand, it is well constructed, smooth, slick, thoroughly professional. Unquestionably the writers who named Rite of Passage were responding to the professionalism everywhere evident in the novel, the tight plotting, the crisp transitions, the clear statement of a problem that, if minor, was none- theless intriguing. In the last analysis, the votes for Rite of Passage were a tribute to the writer from whom Panshin had learned so much and to whom he owed so much, Robert A. Heinlein. Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, the Nebula third-place win- ner, is another matter indeed. It may be a non-novel or an antinovel, it may be the ultimate "New Worlds" novel, the Ulysses or Finnegans Wake of the New Wave, but one can hardly be indifferent to it. Indeed, Stand on Zanzibar may be the most important science fiction novel of the last decade. Unfortunately, it may also be the most difficult. Stand on Zanzibar requires a patience of eye and ear that many fans will be unwilling or unable to give. After all, fans don't have to read McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy or Joyce's Ulysses to appreciate any of the other Nebula nominees, and none of the others are even half the length of Zanzibar's 507 pages. However, those who pay it the attention it deserves, who are willing to follow Brunner through his maze of characters, situations, typographical eccentricities, and triple or quadruple levels of writing will find here both a richness of conception and depth of execution rarely matched in contemporary fic- tion. Stand on Zanzibar is no sterile, naturalistic-representa- tional novel about people whose miseries are merely aching groins and whose griefs, to quote William Faulkner, grieve on no universal bones, who write not of the heart but of the glands. For all of his dazzling pyrotechniques, Brunner is neither deliberately obscure nor obtusely difficult. To create his twenty-first-century world where seven billion humans con- sume mass-marketed psychedelics and otherwise sweat, struggle, and die, Brunner writes a careful multidimensional prose. The major clue to understanding the book is, curiously enough, the seven-page table of contents. Here Brunner leaves his clues: utilizing styles he calls "context," "the hap- pening world," "track with closeups," and "continuity," he builds a multilayered contrapuntal novel. These four fugal styles interweave continually while each still maintains its complete artistic integrity. The McLuhanesque quality of the novel is everywhere evident. The four parts cannot simply be considered as linear, independent developments, each telling a simple beginning, middle, and end story. Instead, the artistic construct becomes a single entity, an art object-as- form, a medium whose message is its totality, Brunner demands sensory involvement on all levels, from the thematic to the stylistic, as he searches for "retribalization" in the midst of sterile linearity. All in all, Stand on Zanzibar is a dexterous performance, at once as facile as a Bach motet and as gripping as one of the German master's chorales. One of the most conspicuous, as well as one of the most interesting, trends in many of the science fiction novels written during the last dozen years is the emergence of the so-called "soft" sciences as thematic material. Among these are anthropology, sociology, psychology, semantics, and re- cently, religion or theology. Once the enemy of knowledge in such works as Raymond F. Jones's Renaissance, religion has recently become primary source material, used sympa- thetically and provocatively by many different sf authors. Recall, for a moment, A Canticle for Leibowitz, considered by many critics to be one of the two or three best science fiction novels ever written. Miller's novel untilizes the struc- ture, mystique, language, and theology of Roman Catholicism. Remove the Roman Catholic Church from its pages, and Canticle is nothing, mere vapidity unredeemable even by Miller's flashing word magic. Also religiously oriented are James Blish's A Case of Conscience, Roger Zeiazny's Lord of Light, Herbert's Dune, and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, to cite only a few. It matters little whether the religious constructs and background be Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, or pantheism. What is important is that these writers, all skilled craftsmen, felt impelled to utilize religious themes as artistic material and to utilize them so profoundly that their novels would not otherwise be complete. Moreover, each of these writers has handled the religious symbols as if they were standard science fiction devices. Yet the nature of the material has seemingly forced the writers to consider some genuine problems, problems as real as violence in Chicago or dangling bodies in Iraq. Suppose, asks Herbert, we have a genuine avatar, a messiah, a true manifestation of the Deity who is forced by the incredible horror of living conditions to choose violence, not love or charity, as his method of redeeming Arrakis and the Fremen. So Paul Atreides' internal sufferings, the clash of love with violence, become a crucial ethical problem that would be essentially trivial without the religious background against which the ethics can be weighed. No author has explored these theological implications as consistently, or as profoundly, as James Blish. Beginning with the Hugo-winning A Case of Conscience and continuing with Doctor Mirabilis, the second book in the trilogy, which has been published only in England, Blish has pursued the rami- fications of evil as has no writer since the late Charles Williams. The final volume of Blish's sequence, Black Easter, another Nebula finalist, is perhaps the most frightening novel of the year in its implications. Theron Warethe name is derived from a greatly underestimated novel by Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware, written fifty years agois a master of the arcane, a materialistic magician who has turned the black art of necromancy into an instrument of personal profit. Simply to see what might happen, this modern Faust undertakes to let all of the major demons out of hell for one night, turning them loose on the world with no orders and no restrictions except that they must return to hell at dawn. His undertaking is successful beyond belief because his actions bring Armageddon and the resultant destruction of the world. What all of the diabolists had not realized, they are told by the ravening Sabbath Goat, is that God is dead. When the bounds are loosed, the powers of evil must finally conquer. End of novel. Here Blish again asks ancient questions: What is the role of evil in the world, and by implication or extension, what is the position of suffering? In addition Blish raises the great Manichaean problem once more: Is evil creative? If so, what are its implications for our contemporary society, because the society of Black Easter is uneasily like that of 1969. And if evil is creative, perhaps diabolists such as Huysmans' des Essientes or the Marquis de Sade were right after all to worship Lucifer. Perhaps Rosemary's baby is real, alive and well in Manhattan, awaiting His Infernal Kingdom and His Black Easter. Some readers may cavil with Blish, maintaining that his artistic viewpoint is essentially one of fi "tasy rather than science fiction. That may very well be, but at best it is a quibble over form or shadow which ignores the substance of Blish's arguments. Like Ivan, in The Brothers Karamazov, Blish seems to imply that if God did not exist, everything is permitted and the doing of evil becomes .virtually a man- dated "good." This kind of probing into the depths of man's consciousness is impossible within the traditional science fiction novel. Involvement with scientific gimmickry has too often robbed science fiction of its humanity. It may be that the inclusion of theologyand the other "soft" sciencesas viable subject matter is one step toward the restoration of its human element. Where fiction loses its ability to concentrate on the human being, where it no longer informs, entertains, or enhances life, it becomes simply a mechanical recitation of fantasized fact, a trap that too much science fiction has fallen into. Theology may help restore the balance. First novels have many characteristics. Sometimes they are so bad that about all that can be said for them is that the punctuation and spelling display a startling originality. Too often mainstream writers who attempt a science fiction novel know almost nothing about the form. George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World seem to them the apotheosis of the genre, and their own reading of real science fiction ended with Carl Claudy's pastiches of H. G. Wells in the old American Boy magazine. They had fading memories of the Buck Rogers radio program or the superior draftsman- ship but inferior plotting of Prince Valiant. The results would be laughable if they weren't so pitiable. Don't fail to miss them all. Often enough a first science fiction novel is written by someone like Panshin who has obviously learned his trade well in the rigorous workshops of John W. Campbell, Fred Pohl, or Ed Ferman. Of course, writing a short story with its limited vision, singleness of effect, controlled plotting, minimal characterization, and qualified range is not the same as writ- ing a novel. Essentially, the problem of the novelist is to create an entire world, populate it with believable people, and construct a problem that requires careful, detailed elabora- tion. Further, he must accomplish this in prose that moves the story toward its denouement while remaining unobtrusive. "There are those writers, like Ray Bradbury, whose talents seem to lead them to the short story as a natural medium. It is not that Bradbury lacks the artistic vision for the novel; it is rather that his concepts seize him, shake him, and emerge explosively after two or three hours of writing into a short story. Other writers think galactically or epically; no micro- cosm for them. Their dreams encompass entire worlds, their characters emerge from ink into reality, and their prose can be lean, supple, poetic, highly charged with cosmic tensions. Critics often maintain, with some justification, that it is more difficult to write a good short story than an average novel. Perhaps. But when any author masters his trade so well that his novel is a richly panoplied accomplishment, he deserves recognition and praise from those who should appre- ciate the extent of his achievement. Nineteen sixty-eight produced at least one such novel, John Boyd's The Last Starship from Earth. It is so good that it caused Heinlein to break his strongest resolution:, never to comment in public on anything a colleague has written. He said, "It is terrific . . . the best anti-utopia, the strongest satire on trends in our present culture that I have seen since 1984 appeared . . . it belongs up at the top, along with Brave New World." Yet despite Heinlein's praise, Boyd's novel had a very mixed reception. It received a few votes for the Nebula Award and almost no reviews, even delayed ones, in any of the science fiction magazines. Why was it ignored? No one knows for sure, but the sometimes justified xenophobia of both science fiction writers and fans might have accounted for part of it. Fans and writers are clannishindeed, have had clannishness forced upon them by those who think that science fiction is easy to write or simply Buck Rogers updated. Thus, uncertainty about Boyd's identity or background might have caused a certain reluctance to vote for his book. All anyone knew was that The Last Starship from Earth was a first novel, that it had been picked up by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club as the June-July selection. All of these suppositions did not alter the fact that The Last Spaceship was a superior first achievement, better than most authors' tenth. It is, on the surface, a parallel universe storythe Pope is a computer, the City of God is on Mt. Whitney, Lincoln has given "The Johannesburg Address," Byron is an eighteenth-century poet, laser science has pro- duced theological cybernetics, and Hell is a pariah planet. Beyond the surface, the novel is a virtuoso-performance com- bining word magic of all kinds, half-buried topical allusions, thinly veiled references to "reality," and unobtrusive, pene- trating comments on our society. Its ending is at once so subtle in execution and yet so bold in concept as to defy description. Only the theologically ingenious innovation at the conclusion of A Canticle for Leibowitz has equaled Boyd's accomplishment at the end of his novel, but the quality of Canticle must be the standard for comparison. The Last Starship from Earth did not win any awards, but it will be winning readers when most of the finalists will be forgotten. His new novel, The Pollinators of Eden, due from Weybright & Talley in mid-1969, is sure to get a much wider readership. If it is anywhere nearly as good as The Last Starship from Earth, it Will be a strong Nebula contender a year from now. If 1968 was the year science fiction explored certain devices and techiques derived from McLuhan, psychology, and the impact of the mass media, it was also a year in which very little old-fashioned humor was published. Science fiction has often been too intensely serious for its own good, too self- conscious, and too sycophantic. It has usually lacked the blessed ability to stand outside of itself, take a good look at the warts and the freckles, and then break into raucous laughter at the sight. Perhaps the somberness of reality was reflected in the somberness of the writing, but science fiction could have used some outrageous spoofs, more rollicking comedy, or even some gentle self-satire. Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on Stanley Kubrick's epic motion picture of the same name, solved some of the many questions raised by the film itself. Not eligible for a Nebula nomination, 2001 was in many ways a better book than the picture really deserved. Flashy, expensive, and magnificently photographed, Kubrick's movie had everythingexcept characters who lived, a plot which made sense, dialogue which sounded human, and action of any kind. It did have, of course, the mysterious Formica tabletop upon which everyone grooved, a drag computer for a hero, the loudest and most distracting sound track of any film ever made, and unrelieved boredom. After the press preview before Kubrick eliminated an hour of non-action, several perceptive critics booed. There was no booing of Clarke's novel, however. Not only was it assured of vast sales because of its connection with the movie, 2001 was snatched up by eager film viewers who looked for answers to questions raised by the motion picture. Clarke provided those answers literately, intelligently, and provocatively. Readers familiar with his earlier Childhood's End might have expected as much. Fortunately for science fiction, the tens of thousands of readers attracted to the novel by the film were treated to serious probing of some profound questions: What is the nature of man in space? What are some of the implications of genuine interstellar contact? What is the mutation beyond man? These questions are part of the common coinage of science fiction, to be sure, but Clarke's handling of them insured many sympathetic readers for science fiction, particularly among people who would not otherwise know an Apollo cap- sule from a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic com- puter, otherwise known as HAL. If only for performing this service, Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably, the most valuable novel of the year. Persistent rumors during the last year or two have told of a coming sequel to Frank Herbert's Nebula-winning novel, Dune. Herbert finally confirmed the rumors when he finished the actual writing in mid-1968. While the continuation of the story of Paul Muad'Dib as emperor must await 1969 publica- tion and evaluation, Herbert's 1968 novel, The Santaroga Barrier, was not one of the Nebula finalists. "The critics may have subconsciously compared the limited scope of The Santaroga Barrier with the epic vision of Dune, but The Santaroga Barrier perhaps deserves more consideration than it was given. One more variation on Herbert's basic theme, the necessity for communication, The Santaroga Barrier has been praised by many college students who are overly aware of the invidious consequences of the lack of understanding: alienation, anomy, despair. One of the principal charges laid against many science fiction novels is that they are exasperating. Too often they combine startling ingenuity with shabby characterization, or complexities of plotting with inanities of style. Some 1968 novels are no exception. What makes them so exasperating is the realization that they are, on the whole, so good that there is no reason for their not being superior. What is even more disappointing, the novels sometimes demonstrate an unrealized potential. Editors groan when they get a manu- script embodying an original concept, very badly handled. The editors, to their credit, usually insist -~at a writer learn his trade and that his execution be at least half as good as his imagination, before they will print a single mediocre word. For that matter, even the very best novels of the past dozen years too often betray symptoms of this same unrealized potential, or are marred in one way or another. Stranger in a Strange Land breaks apart in the middle, Dune has stylistic lapses, and even A Canticle for Leibowiti, lacks centricity, to cite only three examples. Mainstream novels, of course, do not lack flaws, as they too often concentrate on representa- tional confessionalism, replete with sexual aberrations or psychological hang-ups. However, the fact that a science fiction novelor any other for that matteris flawed should not detract from the immediacy of its appeal. Students or fans do not really care whether Stranger in a Strange Land sometimes reads like two different novels or that Joyce's Ulysses is overly complex. One writer's forte may be dialogue, another's style, a third's char- acter or action, and we should appreciate their techniques. Someday a writer may combine all these elements and the result may be a great novel, by whatever standards one uses to define "great." Many writers now active have the ability. Aldiss, Boyd, Brunner, Delany, Dick, Disch, Ellison, Herbert, Lafferty, Moorcock, Sturgeon, Zeiazny . . . the list could include a dozen more . . . all are capable of writing a dis- tinguished work. To that list perhaps should be added Joanna Russ, whose Picnic on Paradise is an agonizingly good but flawed novel. Miss Russ's major accomplishment here is that she may have created one of the first memorable women in a very masculine field. Save for Lady Jessica of Dune, there are few other women of the stature of Alyx, the tough heroine of Picnic, in the annals of science fiction. Alyx can charm, antagonize, hate, love, please, anger, and most of all, survive. A typical woman perhaps? Yes, but Alyx breathes the way that too many "real" painted dolls do not. Miss Russ may learn more as her talent matureslearn how to remove the flaws that make Picnic on Paradise so enchantingly exasperating. For example, she may learn more about techniques of plotting, or learn not to depend on too much willing suspension of disbelief by her readersbut as she learns she will still have her talent, a vibrant verbal dexterity. Her words chime with a ring of genuine silver, not the clunk of the ersatz sandwich coinage spewed out by so many writers. Miss Russ's promise is measured by the fact that, for all its flaws, Picnic on Paradise, her first novel, was a Nebula nominee. How good her second or sixth will be boggles the imagination. Robert Silverberg's The Masks of Time was the Nebula runner-up. It looks to the past and projects that vision to the future. How will people in the mass behave as they approach the end of the millennium thirty years from now? he asks. Much the same as they behaved a thousand years ago, with fears of the coming of the Antichrist or hopes for the Second Coming; with riots, depredations, religious intolerance, vast excesses of lust, rage, and power. Silverberg might have prefaced his novel, which is both realistic and terrifying, with Yeats's words, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" The twenty- first century thus may be the age of the rough beast, the era of enlightenment, the beginning of the new dark 'ages. The conditions are here now, Silverberg posits: the superstition, the ignorance, the susceptibility to vast stimulation through the Cyclopean eye of the TV monster, the potential for mass hysteria. Combine these elements and transform "the rough beast" into a charismatic figure, and you have the makings of a very provocative novel indeed. The entire book is seen through the eyes of a dispassionate University of California at Irvine physics professor, and told in his words. He be- comes involved with the antihero, Vornan-19, as a jealous sexual rival, and through the professor's narrow vision, life at the end of our century lurches to its whimpering conclusion. Wisely, Silverberg never reveals whether his visitor out of time is a demonic demiurge, a homo superior from the future with incredible charm, or simply the personalized extension of the bastard in all of us. Even though the novel may appear to be limited by the narrowness of the first-person point of view which Silverberg adopts, close examination reveals that he has created a universal micro-world. And as Scott Fitz- gerald once put it, "Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all." So with The Masks of Time. The role of sex in contemporary science fiction has been a limited one, at best. Formerly magazine editors would not even suggest that a spaceman ever had to urinate, to say nothing of wanting to fornicate now and then. Today when D. H. Lawrence has emancipated all novelists, few science fiction writers treat sex as anything excep' a biological curi- osity. Silverberg is a notable exception, tod The Masks of Time is his best example. To be sure, any treatment of sex runs the risk of becoming mere titillation, not integral to plot, character, or action. But by personalizing Vornan-19 as an object of sexual idealization by both men and women. Silver- berg makes the sexual conflict an important part of the book. Thus sex becomes relevant, not prurient or extraneous to the action or characters. In the end, Silverberg's utilization of hitherto proscribed materials may be as important to the future of science fiction as the introduction of the soft sci- ences as subject matter. The last two finalists, Lafferty's Past Master and Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are two more examples of books being written for a maximum audience. Both require the reader to extend himself, to stretch his imagination almost to the breaking point past a willing suspension of disbelief. The authors lead the reader through worlds of time into nightmares of anti-utopian vision. To be sure, in Lafferty's book Sir Thomas More is alive in his Utopia, but faced with what enemies and what alternatives that extend from More's original vision? And Dick asks the reader some elemental questions: When is a human being? Are machines more real than man if they are worshiped by man, if they are immune to fallout, and if humans can program their daily moods with a few simple flicks of a dial? All of these extrapolations derive from conditions actually existing in our present society. This ability to indicate the logical conclusions of what we now do when projected into a future scene is, of course, at the very heart of science fiction. Throughout the past thirty years the imagination of science fiction writers has often, surpassed their ability to incarnate that imagination into form. Now talent is beginning to catch up with imagination, and the combination will ultimately produce novels of distinction, particularly when writers con- tinue to insist on maximum readers. Refusal to demand more of the readers means that writers will produce competent, slick, professional novels that may win a prize or two but will do nothing to make science fiction into literature. When writers utilize their imaginations and talents in concert with the awakened sensitivities of their audience, science fiction- may well become 'the genuine literature of the future.