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

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