"Intoduction and Foreword by Poul Anderson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

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