Ranking the Nebula Award short fiction winners (1960s)

The Nebula is one of the biggest awards dedicated to science fiction today. It was proposed by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) in 1965 to recognize excellence within the genres of science fiction and fantasy. It has a long-lasting tradition of promoting some of the best SFF novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories.

Inspired by the Hugos series from the YouTube channel Secret Sauce of Storycraft, I decided to do my own version in written format, focusing on the Nebula instead Hugos, and on short stories instead of novels. That is, I’m changing it a little bit, so it doesn’t look obvious I copied it.

Whitney, if she ever reads this post.

Check out Whitney’s Hugo playlist! It’s great.

1960s Nebula Awards

 Shall we start from the beginning? 

Let’s rank the winners of the Nebula Awards for short fiction in the sixties, that is, starting from 1961 up until 1970. (I can see many of you rolling your eyes at the ’61-’70 frame choice. But that’s how decades work! Sorry, not sorry.)

My criteria for the ranking will be purely my own entertainment. With novels we can point to metrics like ‘legacy’ or ‘importance to the genre as a whole,’ but very few short stories have this impact alone. So let me judge them with current eyes, regardless of their weight at the time they were written.

This decade has only five winners in the years of 1965, when it all started, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. There was no winner in 1970, despite a long list of acclaimed nominated stories! It is said that, during the award ceremony, Isaac Asimov ignored the “no award” line in the card and announced the second place, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe, as the winner. It caused a real commotion.

Without further ado, let’s jump right at it. From best to worst, here’s my ranking of the winners of the Nebula Awards in the category of short fiction in the 1960s.

#1. 1965 - “REPENT, HARLEQUIN!” SAID THE TICKTOCKMAN

No kidding, I would be terrified of being inside Harlan Ellison’s head, but if I ever had the opportunity to visit it, I could never say no. His mind is incredibly different from mine, but the ideas he poured into his stories are so gripping and provocative! I cannot avoid being curious about his thought process.

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said The Ticktockman is a masterpiece. The story demands your attention from the very first paragraph. It is told frantically, chaotically, with no regards to structure or linearity.

The narrative style contrasts with the strict world the tale portrays. We are thrown into an authoritarian regime in which punctuality is a requirement, delays are punishable by law, and it can literally cost your life.

Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late. It becomes a sin. Then a crime.

The Ticktockman—or Time Master, as he prefers it—is a being (an automaton, perhaps?) who manages people’s time, subtracting from their lives the same number of seconds they are late for any activity.

We follow the subversive Harlequin, a character as chaotic as the narrator, whose life mission is to make everyone late. He is over 63 years in debt to the Ticktockman.

It gave me Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker’s vibes.

It is short. It is wise. You should read it!

How appropriate that the very first award ever given would be my favorite of the decade!

#2. 1968 - THE PLANNERS

The only woman awarded best short fiction in this decade, Kate Wilhelm brings a literary touch to science fiction in The Planners. Provocative and impending, this story has the best quotes among this winners’ batch.

A questionable experiment with animals, a morally gray scientist, and a run-of-the-mill lab routine are combined to explore the hypocrisy hidden in everyday life. Dr. Darin runs a controversial experiment to improve intelligence in monkeys. He’s in a dead-bedroom marriage, and his justification for cheating instead of breaking off with his wife is an act of microagression that many perpertate but never admit to it.

He knew why he didn’t break it off. Pity. The most corrosive emotion endogenous to man. She was the product of the doll school that taught that the trip down the aisle was the end, the fulfillment of a maiden’s dreams; shocked and horrified to learn that it was another beginning, some of them never recovered.

The Planners tackles sensitive subjects with the care and precision that many other authors try to avoid. It is told from the perspective of a flawed character who has resigned to being complacent, both in his career and personal life.

“But you can always console yourself that your motives were pure, that it was all for Science, can’t you, Dr. Darin?”

It sure stands the test of time. A worthy winner of the Nebula.

Wilhelm’s style reminded me of Emily St John Mandel. I read Sea of Tranquility and really liked it. It, together with The Planners, made me realize that maybe I should try more literary science fiction written by women. 

#3. 1966 - THE SECRET PLACE

In 1966, the Nebula Award for short fiction was given posthumously. Richard McKenna started writing science fiction in the late 1950s, and he left a few stories unpublished when he passed in 1964. The Secret Place was one of those. It makes for a bittersweet tale.

This is the story of a war memory, but the troubled background is contrasted by magical moments and an unusual bond.

A distinguished geology professor is asked by his kid what he did at the war. He does not share his secrets with his son, only with us, the readers. Memories about the end of the war, about a peculiar woman with two different personalities, about strange occurrences when searching for mines on an empty field.

“And that, kids, is how I met your mother.”

True to Nebula’s mission, this story is not categorized as science fiction. It has magical realism all over it. It is extremely well written and evocative, but “not what I’m here for,” you know what I mean? That’s why it places third in this ranking.

The next two, despite falling within the SF genre, I did not like.

#4. 1969 - PASSENGERS

The premise of Passengers, by Robert Silverberg, is quite interesting: aliens hijacking the body of humans to use (or abuse) them however they wanted. Any human can receive a passenger at any time, unannounced, and be completely surrendered to the passenger’s will. Society must adapt to this new reality, and, basically, people choose to ignore those with passengers and live life as normal as they can. They don’t talk about it, they don’t interact with the ones possessed by aliens, they cannot be punished by whatever happens when they have a passenger… Intriguing, is it not?

Yet, this idea is completely lost on the plot. A 38 years-old man has a strong impression that he slept with a 20-something-years-old woman, when they both had passengers. He then becomes obsessed with her.

And… that’s it. Such a waste of potential! Still, it is a story that is easy to read.

The ending was supposed to be provoking, because he goes on to be hijacked by a passenger and leaves the woman alone to sleep with a guy. But it is 2026, and this ‘twist’ is not as vexing as it probably was in the sixties.

#5. 1967 - AYE, AND GOMORRAH…

Talking about not as vexing as it once was…

Aye, and Gomorrah… by Samuel R. Delany does NOT stand the test of time.

It was first published in an anthology titled Dangerous Visions, and it portrays a proto-cyberpunk world with lunar bases, body modifications, and sex freaks.

We meet two groups of people: the sexless, androgynous Spacers, and self-described pervert Frelks. The short fiction is about an encounter between a Spacer and a Frelk, in which the latter invites/hires the first for a night of casual sex.

I’ll leave the details of what happens next for you to find out. The story is available online.

This story must have been scandalous in 1967. But looking at it with hindsight, other cyberpunk stories made it better, and the taboo is not as urgent nowadays.

You may think I’m being harsh, but this is not my impression alone. The author himself wrote an afterword in 1994 and remarked that “I’m not sure how the change in status of homosexuality, sadomasochism, and the like have changed the way we read the story today. Ask me about what the story is now, however, and I’ll probably say it’s somehow about the desire for desire.”

So, I placed it last among this decade’s Nebula winners for short fiction.

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That’s it for today folks!

If you’ve read these stories, let me know how you would rank them in the comments below. If you haven’t, did any of these catch your attention?

See you next post,

Ra

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Carla Ra is a scientist by day, sci-fi writer by night.

You can check out her FREE stories here.