The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

by Kevin J. Anderson

  SFWA

  DAMON

  KNIGHT

  GRAND

  MASTER

  SFWA DAMON KNIGHT

  GRAND MASTER:

  JOE HALDEMAN

  Mark Kreighbaum

  The author of twenty novels and five short story collections, Joe Haldeman’s career spans over three and a half decades. His most famous novel, The Forever War, won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best science fiction novel in 1975, and inspired two follow-up novels, Forever Peace (1998) and Forever Free (2000). In total, his writings have won him five Nebulas, five Hugos, three Rhyslings, and a host of other awards as well as numerous nominations. His latest book, Starbound, was published by Ace this January. He teaches writing as an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  In one sense, summing up the career of Joe Haldeman to this point is as simple as that paragraph. He has been producing novels, short stories, and poems for over thirty-five years. Many of those works have won awards. He is a teacher.

  But to say something deeper about his work is to grapple immediately with his biography. A veteran of the Vietnam War, his earliest works are informed by his experiences and memories as a demolition engineer in that conflict. Much of his best work draws deeply from the insights he learned there, and the wounds he suffered. Many of his stories are overtly about trauma, wounds, and death. But Haldeman’s true concern is not merely a recitation of pain and tragedy, but transcendence over insults to the flesh and spirit.

  Nowhere is that more clear than when Haldeman writes about cybernetics. Science fiction has a tradition of imagining the human body transformed by technology. Most stories on the subject treat the topic as a kind of evolution that leads to either utopia or dystopia. Haldeman is nearly unique in exploring not merely the technical aspects of prosthetics and cybernetic enhancements, but the psychological dimensions of what can be described as disfigurement by voluntary mutilation. In some of his stories, this dimension leads to alienation and madness. But he has also shown how they can be tools for overcoming various other forms of deficiency, especially self-doubt and loneliness. For a writer who is so adept at writing about cynicism and cruelty, it is moments of hope and connection that suffuse his most memorable tales.

  Joe Haldeman is often described as a “hard s.f.” writer, that is, someone who depends on a scientifically plausible idea to drive the plot of a book. Certainly, with his astronomy degree and background in engineering, he has the capability of delivering a rigorously extrapolated tale and has done so many times. In a recent novel, The Accidental Time Machine, Haldeman wove in a good deal of quantum physics and string theory, for example. So, the label is accurate, although its application to writers of a certain kind of genre fiction can mislead readers into thinking that to such writers, ideas are paramount and characters are only vectors for theories. Certainly, there are a few hard s.f. writers who fit such a stereotype. But the majority are far more interested in how the future will affect human beings. The best of them, like Joe Haldeman, are able to bring true passion and empathy to these stories, so that the clever concept, or ingenious device, become a means for understanding ourselves and others. And a Grand Master is SFWA’s recognition of a writer who is the best of the best.

  Beyond his many accomplishments as an author, Joe Haldeman has been a mentor and icon for other SFWAns and to writers in general. He is an avid cyclist, amateur astronomer, painter, musician, and enthusiastic cook. With his wife, Gay, who is his business partner and sometimes collaborator, he makes his home in Florida.

  —Mark Kreighbaum

  APPRECIATION

  The following is a transcript of the speech Connie Willis delivered at the Nebula Awards Banquet, introducing Joe Haldeman.

  Tonight it’s my really exciting duty to present the Grand Master of Science Fiction Nebula Award to Joe Haldeman.

  It’s obvious why Joe was chosen for this honor. SFWA’s Board of Directors and president and past presidents had more than ample reasons for honoring him.

  I mean, he’s won all sorts of awards – Hugos, Nebulas, the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, the Ditmar and the Rhysling and dozens of others, and his novel Forever Peace was the first book to win the Triple Crown – the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Campbell.

  His writing has covered the entire gamut of science fiction, from galactic war to time travel to telepathy, from space colonies to immortality to Ernest Hemingway.

  His books and short stories – Mindbridge, “None So Blind,” All My Sins Remembered, “Tricentennial,” The Accidental Time Machine, “Graves,” the WORLDS books, “The Hemingway Hoax,” Marsbound – have been both critically acclaimed and bestsellers.

  And he hasn’t just written books. He’s done all sorts of other things: screenplays and Star Trek novels and poetry and stage plays and graphic novels. He’s gotten an MFA in creative writing, been an adjunct professor at MIT, fought in Vietnam, served as president of SFWA, and earned a Purple Heart (in Vietnam, not SFWA, although . . . )

  He paints, cooks, writes poems, is an amateur astronomer, and plays the guitar. And poker.

  SFWA could have decided to honor him for any – or all – of those reasons. Or maybe they just thought he was cute. I know that’s how they pick the winners on American Idol. And the Nobel Prize winners in Physics.

  But I know why I would have voted for him – besides his cuteness, which is, of course, a given.

  Here are the reasons I would have voted for Joe to be made a Grand Master:

  NUMBER 1: The incredible good sense he demonstrated in marrying Gay. She’s not only been a wife and helpmate to Joe, but also a business manager, typist, publicist, and travel agent. And to everyone else in science fiction, she’s been a dinner organizer, tour guide, translator, nursemaid, altercations-smoother-over, confidante, friend, and the most charming person in science fiction. Good call, Joe.

  NUMBER 2: His bike riding. Joe was clearly out in front of all the rest of us on this global climate change, fossil-fuels-are-killing-our-planet thing. He’s been riding his bike and working in longhand by the light of an oil lamp for years. And even though the war on the environment’s going really well these days, with Joe on our side, it makes me think the planet might just survive after all.

  NUMBER 3: Joe’s teaching. Being a Grand Master isn’t just about writing. It’s about giving back, and over the years Joe has given back an enormous amount. He’s shared his thoughts and his craft with hundreds of students, among them Eileen Gunn, Leslie What, Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Frost, Cynthia Felice, and James Patrick Kelly. He’s taught at Clarion and Clarion West, and for the last twenty-seven years has taught creative writing at MIT.

  His students love him. James Patrick Kelly remembers him as one of the best instructors he ever had, not only for his insights on writing, but for his practical advice and attitude toward the enterprise of writing, from contracts to conventions.

  NUMBER 4: Joe’s consummate professionalism. Joe’s books are meticulously thought out, crafted, and researched. Sheila Williams tells the story of having to call Joe and a new writer on the same day to ask for revisions to their stories in Asimov’s. The new writer had made a glaring historical mistake about the moon landing.

  Joe had possibly made a minor mistake on the technology in his story.

  Joe said he’d check on it and call her back. The new writer ranted, raved, refused to change the error because it was too much work, and besides, nobody remembered the moon landing anyway, and then hung up on her. Joe called back a few hours later to say, “I’m sorry it took so long. I couldn’t find it in MIT’s library, so I had to ride my bike into Boston to the library there.”

  Which, as Sheila says, is why he’s Joe Haldeman and why the new writer never sold another story to Asimov’s.

  NUMBER 5: The Forever War. (You were wondering when I’d get to that, weren’t you?)

  One of the hardest things for a writer is to write a great book early on in your career, le
t alone a classic. Most writers never recover from it. They either crack up under the pressure and go off to live in the woods, like J.D. Salinger. Or spend the rest of their life living off their fame, like Orson Welles. Or get enormously swelled heads and turn into complete jerks, like . . . oh, thousands I could name.

  Joe didn’t do any of those things. He kept on writing, experimenting with new styles and new subject matter, and producing a lifetime’s worth of wonderful books.

  But it doesn’t change the fact that The Forever War is a classic, a thought-provoking work that uses science fiction to explore the harsh realities of war and the dehumanization and alienation it produces in those who fight it. It’s also a harsh indictment of those who run the war and horrifyingly prophetic in its depiction of the directions warfare will take.

  It may originally have been about Vietnam, but with its underequipped soldiers and cynical, corporatized military, it’s also clearly about Iraq and Blackwater. And wars we haven’t even declared yet.

  Which is why it began being on Top Ten Science Fiction Novels lists from the moment it was written and is still there. It’s the real deal. And all by itself it would qualify Joe to be a Grand Master.

  NUMBER 6: Finally, Joe, deserves this Grand Master Award for the person he is, and also the person he was. This was a kid who wanted to be an astronaut, who rode his bike to the public library, who saved up his paper-route money to buy a telescope, who studied astronomy and chemistry on his own, and read the encyclopedia for fun.

  Kip Russell in the flesh – a true Heinlein hero.

  All that’s lacking is the slide rule.

  Joe, I have something I want to give you. No, not the Grand Master Nebula. Not yet. This is a present from me.

  It’s not a K and E log log decitrig 4081-5 like Kip had in Have Space Suit – Will Travel, but it’s the next best thing. It’s a Pickett N600-ES, the same model of slide rule – excuse me, slipstick – that the NASA astronauts took to the Moon.

  As a kid, you were a teenaged Heinlein hero. And now you’re that Heinlein hero all grown up. And my hero. Our hero. And a Nebula Grand Master of Science Fiction.

  Congratulations!

  —Connie Willis

  A !TANGLED WEB

  JOE HALDEMAN

  FROM THE AUTHOR: I chose this story because I think it’s funny, and there isn’t enough humor in SF anthologies.

  You don’t always know where a story comes from, but in this case I can pinpoint it exactly – August 26, 1981. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena had invited a bunch of science fiction writers to come witness the Voyager 2 flyby of Saturn.

  It was immensely exciting, but there were long periods when nothing was happening. Jerry Pournelle had a cooler full of iced beer in the back of his Jeep, and I was happy to join him for one in the California sun.

  We got to talking about the movie Star Wars, and I expressed admiration for the tavern scene, all those weird aliens drinking impossible stuff, munching on raw meat, and so forth. Jerry said hell, that’s nothing new. Every science fiction writer has done the aliens-in-a-bar scene a dozen times.

  As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. So I went home and did it.

  YOUR SPACEPORT BARS fall into two distinct groups: the ones for the baggage and the ones for the crew. I was baggage, this trip, but didn’t feel like paying the prices that people who space for fun can afford. The Facility Directory listed under “Food and Drink” four establishments: the Hartford Club (inevitably), the Silver Slipper Lounge, Antoine’s, and Slim Joan’s Bar & Grill.

  I went to a currency exchange booth first, assuming that Slim Joan was no better at arithmetic than most bartenders, and cashed in a hundredth share of Hartford stock. Then I took the drop lift down to the bottom level. That the bar’s door was right at the drop-lift exit would be a dead giveaway even if its name had been the Bell, Book, and Candle. Baggage don’t generally like to fall ten stories, no matter how slowly.

  It smelled right, stir-fry and stale beer, and the low lighting suggested economy rather than atmosphere. Slim Joan turned out to be about a hundred thousand grams of transvestite. Well, I hadn’t come for the scenery.

  The clientele seemed evenly mixed between humans and others, most of the aliens being !tang, since this was Morocho III. I’ve got nothing against the company of aliens, but if I was going to spend all next week wrapping my jaws around !tanglish, I preferred to mix my drinking with some human tongue.

  “Speak English?” I asked Slim Joan.

  “Some,” he/she/it growled. “You would drink something?” I’d never heard a Russian-Brooklyn accent before. I ordered a double saki, cold, in Russian, and took it to an empty booth.

  One of the advantages of being a Hartford interpreter is that you can order a drink in a hundred different languages and dialects. Saves money; they figure if you can speak the lingo you can count your change.

  I was freelancing this trip, though, working for a real-estate cartel that wanted to screw the !tang out of a few thousand square kilometers of useless seashore property. It wouldn’t stay useless, of course.

  Morocho III is a real garden of a planet, but most people never see it. The tachyon nexus is down by Morocho I, which we in the trade refer to as “Armpit,” and not many people take the local hop out to III (Armpit’s the stopover on the Earth-Sammler run). Starlodge, Limited was hoping to change that situation.

  I couldn’t help eavesdropping on the !tangs behind me. (I’m not a snoop; it’s a side effect of the hypnotic-induction learning process.) One of them was leaving for Earth today, and the other was full of useless advice. “He” – they have seven singular pronoun classes, depending on the individual’s age and estrous condition – was telling “her” never to make any reference to human body odor, no matter how vile it may be. He should also have told her not to breathe on anyone. One of the byproducts of their metabolism is butyl nitrite, which smells like wellaged socks and makes humans get all faint and cross-eyed.

  I’ve worked with !tangs a few times before, and they’re some of my favorite people. Very serious, very honest, and their logic is closer to human logic than most. But they are strange-looking. Imagine a perambulating haystack with an elephant’s trunk protruding. They have two arms under the pile of yellow hair, but it’s impolite to take them out in public unless one is engaged in physical work. They do have sex in public, constantly, but it takes a zoologist with a magnifying glass to tell when.

  He wanted her to bring back some Kentucky bourbon and Swiss chocolate. Their metabolisms part company with ours over protein and fats, but they love our carbohydrates and alcohol. The alcohol has a psychedelic effect on them, and sugar leaves them plastered.

  A human walked in and stood blinking in the half-light. I recognized him and shrank back into the booth. Too late.

  He strode over and stuck out his hand. “Dick Navarro!”

  “Hello, Pete.” I shook his hand once. “What brings you here? Hartford business?” Pete was also an interpreter.

  —“Oh no,” he said in Arabic. —“Only journeying.”

  —“Knock it off,” I said in Serbian. —“Isn’t your native language English?” I added in Greek.

  “Sure it is. Yours?”

  “English or Spanish. Have a seat.”

  I smacked my lips twice at Slim Joan, and she came over with a menu. “To be eating you want?”

  “Nyet,” he said. “Vodka.” I told her I’d take another.

  “So what are you doing here?” Pete asked.

  “Business.”

  “Hartford?”

  “Nope.”

  “Secret.”

  “That’s right.” Actually they hadn’t said anything about its being secret. But I knew Peter Lafitte. He wasn’t just passing through.

  We both sat silently for a minute, listening to the !tangs. We had to smile when he explained to her how to decide which public bathroom to use when. . . . “This was important to humans,” he said. Slim Joan came with the drinks and Pete pa
id for both, a bad sign.

  “How did that Spica business finally turn out?” he asked.

  “Badly.” Lafitte and I worked together on a partition-of-rights hearing on Spica IV, with the Confederación actually bucking Hartford over an alien-rights problem. “I couldn’t get the humans to understand that the minerals had souls, and I couldn’t get the natives to believe that refining the minerals didn’t affect their spiritual status. It came to a show of force, and the natives backed down. I wouldn’t like to be there in twenty years, though.”

  “Yeah. I was glad to be recalled. Arcturus all over.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell them.” Arcturus wasn’t a regular stop any more, not since a ship landed and found every human artistically dismembered. “You’re just sightseeing?”

  “This has always been one of my favorite planets.”

  “Nothing to do.”

  “Not for you city boys. The fishing is great, though.”

  Ah ha. “Ocean fishing?”

  “Best in the Confederación.”

  “I might give it a try. Where do you get a boat?”

  He smiled and looked directly at me. “Little coastal village, Pa’an!al.”

  Smack in the middle of the tribal territory I’d be dickering for. I dutifully repeated the information into my ring.

  I changed the subject and we talked about nothing for a while. Then I excused myself, saying I was time-lagging and had to get some sleep. Which was true enough, since the shuttle had stayed on Armpit time, and I was eight hours out of phase with III. But I bounced straight into the Hartford courier’s office.

  The courier on duty was Estelle Dorring, whom I knew slightly. I cut short the pleasantries. “How long to get a message to Earth?”