Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

by Gardner Dozois

  This holiday yarn about a train visit to Santa is populated by children with crossed, cold eyes, and a flat emotional affect to match their dull unnatural skin tones. It’s kiddies and Kris Kringle in the Land of the Living Dead!

  Perhaps I’m just a reactionary. But I don’t want anyone to make my cartoons real. I embrace the artificiality and otherworldness of animation. But I still want a full-length cartoon to have something to say about real life.

  Such is the case with one of the best films of the year, The Incredibles. Written and directed by Brad Bird, The Incredibles was the filmmaker’s first foray into computer animation, following his brilliant 1999 drawn animation feature, The Iron Giant. When I first heard that one of the great last hopes for traditional animation had gone over to computer graphics, I was dismayed. Would he make his family of forcibly retired superheroes too “realistic”? Not a chance!

  Although Bird made full use of technology’s talent for achieving deeply detailed environments and textures, he never lost sight of the power of out-and-out fantasy. His Parr family, lead by Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) look like plastic action figures and not at all like flesh-and-blood people. But that doesn’t mean that Bird isn’t able to express fully human emotions through his characters.

  In fact, amidst the exciting save-the-world adventure story, this amiable little cartoon says a great deal about the dangers of mediocrity and hero worship, and provides plenty of subtle commentary on family dynamics, gender roles, and countless other aspects of modern life.

  Although Brad Bird seems to have found the perfect way to inject humanity into synthetically produced art, other filmmakers are still feeling their way—especially as they work to have live actors interact with CGI environments and characters.

  One of the most ambitious films to tackle this challenge is Kerry Conran’s Sky Captain and the World ofTomorrow. Conran’s small cast of actors worked almost entirely in a blue-screen environment. Later, some eighty visual effects wizards created the astounding two thousand effects shots that would provide the backdrop and most of the set for the live action.

  Visually, Sky Captain is a remarkable achievement. Conran admits that he “stole” from everything from comic books to B science fiction films to Citizen Kane. The resulting World of Tomorrow is a glowing and ominous art deco wonder. The story is slightly less inspiring. For although Angelina Jolie shines as a cocky, no-nonsense British squadron commander, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow sometimes seem a bit lost in their retro roles and their artificial sets.

  Since Will Smith seemingly has enough swagger to dominate any movie, you might think that he would have an easier time in I, Robot. But he, too, has a tough time holding his own. The CGI robotic lead, Sonny (injected with the voice and on-set performance of actor Alan Tudyk) is actually far and away the most interesting character in the film.

  I, Robot is one of those movies that requires a total disconnect from its literary forebears. If you expect the film to have any resemblance to Isaac Asimov’s important collection of linked stories, or in any way deal with philosophical and psychological conundrums posed by those stories, you are bound to be completely outraged by the movie directed by Alex Proyas and written by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman. However, if you can just watch it as a well-crafted, dumb summer flick, then I, Robot actually entertains—at least until its very limp ending.

  It is hard to be quite that merciful with another summer movie, the Frank Oz/Paul Rudnick remake of the Stepford Wives. The movie is such a mishmash of styles and tones and messages—played, badly, for satiric comedy instead of suspense—that you wonder what anyone involved could have been thinking. The film can’t even decide whether the titular spouses have been replaced by robots or not. A result of filmmaking by committee and focus group, the movie is a complete failure.

  For a more intriguing movie, made up of four short films, I would recommend Robot Stories. Directed and written by Greg Pak, this independent feature hit the film festival circuit in 2002, but didn’t receive limited theatrical release until 2004.

  Although the individual shorts vary in quality and the small budget often shows, this is nonetheless an impressive collection that uses our interactions with robots, holograms, and even toys as a means of exploring our common humanity.

  Indie features are often willing to explore ideas in an uncompromising way that major studio releases are unwilling to match. Such is the case with a first feature, shot on a budget of just seven thousand dollars, which ended up winning the grand jury prize at 2004 Sun-dance, and also received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation prize for science-related film. The movie is called Primer, and it was written, directed, edited, and scored by self-taught filmmaker Shane Carruth—who also stars in one of the two lead roles.

  Primer is the story of two friends—techie nerds who run a secondary business out of a garage—who stumble upon a scientific discovery related to time travel. The film explores the process of innovation and the limits of trust, and its greatest strength might also be its greatest weakness. Carruth refuses to talk down to his audience or sacrifice the reality of his character’s lives. Therefore, his characters speak in jargon, finishing each other’s thoughts from long association.

  If the constant tech-talk fragments don’t drive you insane, you will likely enjoy Primer, despite the ever more confusing time loops and the wholly unsatisfying conclusion.

  The way past and future intersect and how memory and experience inform every aspect of our lives are themes that even a couple of studio-released films were willing to tackle in 2004. And although one was more successful than the other, they both get points for not being the same old, same old.

  The Butterfly Effect’s title comes from the proposition that the flutter of a butterfly in one part of the globe can cause a typhoon half a world away. The feature, written and directed by Eric Bress, is not, however, an examination of chaos theory. Rather, it’s the repeating story of a young man who inherited a talent (or, rather, a curse) to fast-rewind his life in the hopes of making things better. Specifically, young Evan (Ashton Kutcher) wants desperately to save his childhood love, Kayleigh (Amy Smart) from various ruinous fates.

  Butterfly Effect touches on lots of interesting ideas—notably the disastrous impacts of child abuse on the victim and those around them—but it can’t quite keep its story line together. And although Ashton Kutcher is an affable young man, he doesn’t quite have the gravitas to handle the challenging central role of Evan.

  Acting duties are not, however, an issue in one of the finest movies of the year, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film stars Jim Carrey (who, for once, actually plays his character instead of doing his manic shtick) and the equally gifted Kate Winslet. They both give splendid performances in a film that is fully worthy of their performance skills.

  Director Michel Gondry was inspired by the idea of artist friend Pierre Bismuth to send cards to people telling them they’d been erased from someone else’s memory. He shared this idea with friend and collaborator, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and the result is a film about a mismatched (or are they perfect for each other?) couple named Joel and Clementine. What happens when, in the middle of a breakup, they both seek the services of a scientist, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) who maps and expunges memories from the human brain?

  Therein lies the tale.

  Set against Joel’s erasure procedure, viewers get to haunt Joel’s evaporating remembrance, witnessing all that was terrible and enriching in his liaison with the offbeat Clementine.

  The film clearly tells us that memories—even painful ones—are essential to our lives. And relationships—even ones that disintegrate—are treasures worth preserving.

  Low-tech and luminous, seeing Eternal Sunshine is a memory to savor, as well.

  MIKE RESNICK

  Mike Resnick is one of the best-selling authors in science fiction, and one of the most prolific. His many novels include Santiago, The Dark Lady, Stalking
the Unicorn, Birthright: The Book of Man, Paradise, Ivory, Soothsayer, Oracle, Lucifer Jones, Purgatory, Inferno, A Miracle of Rare Design, The Widowmaker, The Soul Eater, A Hunger in the Soul, and The Return of Santiago. His award-winning short fiction has been gathered in the collections Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Turn off the Sun?, An Alien Land, Kirinyaga, A Safari of the Mind, and Hunting the Snark and Other Short Novels. In the last decade or so, he has become almost as prolific as an anthologist, producing, as editor, Inside the Fun-house: 17 SF stories about SF, Whatdunits, More Whatdunits, and Shaggy B.E.M. Stories; a long string of anthologies coedited with Martin H. Greenberg—Alternate Presidents, Alternate Kennedys, Alternate Warriors, Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, Dinosaur Fantastic, By Any Other Fame, Alternate Outlaws, Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (edited with Janis Ian), New Voices in Science Fiction, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, and Women Writing Science Fiction as Men, among others. He won the Hugo Award in 1989 for Kirinyaga. He won another Hugo Award in 1991 for another story in the Kirinyaga series, “The Manumouki,” and another Hugo and Nebula in 1995 for his novella “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge.” His most recent book is a new anthology, I, Alien, and coming up are two new novels, Starship Mutiny and A Gathering of Widowmakers. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  Of “Travels with My Cats,” he says:

  “Every now and then I read a book or see a movie that I remember fondly from my youth. If I encountered them for the first time as an adult, I would probably be quite critical of them—but they carry a lot of my emotional baggage with them. I wanted to be the author, or the cowboy, or the detective, and if that author or hero was a woman, the younger version of me probably fell a little bit in love with her.

  “As an atheist I believe that such immortality as I achieve will not come in Heaven or Hell, but will last only for the time it takes someone to read one of my books or stories after I am dead, that for as long as it takes them to read it I’ll be alive again in some ill-defined and mystical way.

  “I took those two concepts—the fondly remembered books of my youth, and my idiosyncratic notion of immortality—and came up with ‘Travels with My Cats.’ I think it’s one of my best, and I thank the SFFWA membership for agreeing, at least to the extent that it made the final ballot.

  “Writing is a form of immortality. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, it’s comforting to think that long after you’re dead, some vital part of you will be alive again for the length of time that someone picks up one of your books and reads it. I’ve heard other writers say it often enough; I’ve occasionally said it myself.

  “I thought that it might be interesting to write a story about it, not from the writer’s point of view, but rather from the viewpoint of someone who fondly remembers a cherished volume, one that changed his life, or at least made it a little more tolerable, and was written by an author he can never know, someone who died before he was born—as I wish I could have met a couple of authors who had profound influences on me when I was first starting to read.

  “Hence ‘Travels with My Cats.’ I thought this was a pretty good story when I was writing it, and I’m delighted that the membership agrees with me.”

  TRAVELS WITH MY CATS

  MIKE RESNICK

  I found it in the back of a neighbor’s garage. They were retiring and moving to Florida, and they’d put most of their stuff up for sale rather than pay to ship it south.

  I was eleven years old, and I was looking for a Tarzan book, or maybe one of Clarence Mulford’s Hopalong Cassidy epics, or perhaps (if my mother was looking the other way) a forbidden Mickey Spillane novel. I found them, too—and then the real world intruded. They were 50 cents each (and a whole dollar for Kiss Me Deadly), and all I had was a nickel.

  So I rummaged some more, and finally found the only book that was in my price range. It was called Travels with My Cats, and the author was Miss Priscilla Wallace. Not Priscilla, but Miss Priscilla. For years I thought Miss was her first name.

  I thumbed through it, hoping it at least had some photos of half-naked native girls hidden in its pages. There weren’t any pictures at all, just words. I wasn’t surprised; somehow I had known that an author called Miss wasn’t going to plaster naked women all over her book.

  I decided that the book itself felt too fancy and feminine for a boy who was trying out for the Little League later in the day—the letters on the cover were somehow raised above the rest of the surface, the endpapers were an elegant satin, the boards were covered with a russet, velvet-like cloth, and it even had a bookmark, which was a satin ribbon attached to the binding. I was about to put it back when it fell open to a page that said that this was Number 121 of a Limited Printing of 200.

  That put a whole new light on things. My very own limited edition for a nickel—how could I say No? I brought it to the front of the garage, dutifully paid my nickel, and waited for my mother to finish looking (she always looked, never shopped—shopping implied parting with money, and she and my father were Depression kids who never bought what they could rent cheaper, or, better yet, borrow for free).

  That night I was faced with a major decision. I didn’t want to read a book called Travels with My Cats by a woman called Miss, but I’d spent my last nickel on it—well, the last until my allowance came due again next week—and I’d read all my other books so often you could almost see the eyetracks all over them.

  So I picked it up without much enthusiasm, and read the first page, and then the next—and suddenly I was transported to Kenya Colony and Siam and the Amazon. Miss Priscilla Wallace had a way of describing things that made me wish I was there, and when I finished a section I felt like I’d been there.

  There were cities I’d never heard of before, cities with exotic names like Maracaibo and Samarkand and Addis Ababa, some with names like Constantinople that I couldn’t even find on the map.

  Her father had been an explorer, back in the days when there still were explorers. She had taken her first few trips abroad with him, and he had undoubtedly given her a taste for distant lands. (My own father was a typesetter. How I envied her!)

  I had half hoped the African section would be filled with rampaging elephants and man-eating lions, and maybe it was—but that wasn’t the way she saw it. Africa may have been red of tooth and claw, but to her it reflected the gold of the morning sun, and the dark, shadowy places were filled with wonder, not terror.

  She could find beauty anywhere. She would describe two hundred flower sellers lined up along the Seine on a Sunday morning in Paris, or a single frail blossom in the middle of the Gobi Desert, and somehow you knew that each was as wondrous as she said.

  And suddenly I jumped as the alarm clock started buzzing. It was the first time I’d ever stayed up for the entire night. I put the book away, got dressed for school, and hurried home after school so that I could finish it.

  I must have read it six or seven more times that year. I got to the point where I could almost recite parts of it word-for-word. I was in love with those exotic faraway places, and maybe a little bit in love with the author, too. I even wrote her a fan letter addressed to “Miss Priscilla Wallace, Somewhere,” but of course it came back.

  Then, in the fall, I discovered Robert A. Heinlein and Louis L’Amour, and a friend saw Travels with My Cats and teased me about its fancy cover and the fact that it was written by a woman, so I put it on a shelf and over the years I forgot about it.

  I never saw all those wonderful, mysterious places she wrote about. I never did a lot of things. I never made a name for myself. I never got rich and famous. I never married.

  By the time I was forty, I was finally ready to admit that nothing unusual or exciting was ever likely to happen to me. I’d written half of a novel that I was never going to finish or sell, and I’d spent twenty years looking fruitlessly for someone I could love. (That was Step One; Step Two—finding someone who could love me—would probably have been e
ven more difficult, but I never got around to it.)

  I was tired of the city, and of rubbing shoulders with people who had latched onto the happiness and success that had somehow eluded me. I was Midwestern born and bred, and eventually I moved to Wisconsin’s North Woods, where the most exotic cities were small towns like Manitowoc and Minnaqua and Wausau—a far cry from Macau and Marrakech and the other glittering capitals of Priscilla Wallace’s book.

  I worked as a copy editor for one of the local weekly newspapers—the kind where getting the restaurant and real estate ads right was more important than spelling the names in the news stories correctly. It wasn’t the most challenging job in the world, but it was pleasant enough, and I wasn’t looking for any challenges. Youthful dreams of triumph had gone the way of youthful dreams of love and passion; at this late date, I’d settled for tranquility.

  I rented a small house out on a little nameless lake, some fifteen miles out of town. It wasn’t without its share of charm: it had an old-fashioned veranda, with a porch swing that was almost as old as the house. A pier for the boat I didn’t own jutted out into the lake, and there was even a water trough for the original owner’s horses. There was no air-conditioning, but I didn’t really need it—and in the winter I’d sit by the fire, reading the latest paperback thriller.

  It was on a late summer’s night, with just a bit of a Wisconsin chill in the air, as I sat next to the empty fireplace, reading about a rip-roaring gun-blazing car chase through Berlin or Prague or some other city I’ll never see, that I found myself wondering if this was my future : a lonely old man, spending his evenings reading pop fiction by a fireplace, maybe with a blanket over his legs, his only companion a tabby cat. . . .

  And for some reason—probably the notion of the tabby—I remembered Travels with My Cats. I’d never owned a cat, but she had; there had been two of them, and they’d gone everywhere with her.