Time for another round of Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read? This
time we revisit 1974, a year in which I got to read a lot of science
fiction because Richard M. Nixon kept preempting my TV shows. This
year's categories had fewer finalists than 1973, but one more category.

1974 Nebula Finalist Novels

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

1974 Nebula Finalist Novellas

The Death of Dr. Island by Gene Wolfe
Chains of the Sea by Gardner Dozois
Death and Designation Among the Asadi by Michael Bishop
Junction by Jack Dann
The White Otters of Childhood by Michael Bishop

1974 Nebula Finalist Novelettes

Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre
Case and the Dreamer by Theodore Sturgeon
The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison
The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr.

1974 Nebula Finalist Short Stories

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr.
A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad
How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion
by Gene Wolfe
Shark by Edward Bryant
Wings by Vonda N. McIntyre
With Morning Comes Mistfall by George R. R. Martin

1974 Nebula Dramatic Presentations

Soylent Green by Stanley R. Greenberg and Harry Harrison
Catholics by Brian Moore
Steambath by Bruce Jay Friedman
Westworld by Michael Crichton

Of which I have read

1974 Nebula Finalist Novels

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

(I do mean to tackle the Pynchon again)

1974 Nebula Finalist Novellas

The Death of Dr. Island by Gene Wolfe
Chains of the Sea by Gardner Dozois
Death and Designation Among the Asadi by Michael Bishop
The White Otters of Childhood by Michael Bishop

Which 1974 Nebula Finalist Novelettes Have You Read?

Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre
The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison
The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr.

Which 1974 Nebula Finalist Short Stories Have You Read?

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr.
A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad
How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion
by Gene Wolfe
Shark by Edward Bryant
Wings by Vonda N. McIntyre
With Morning Comes Mistfall by George R. R. Martin

(For some reason, I thought the Martin had won)

Which 1974 Nebula Dramatic Presentations Have You Seen?

Soylent Green by Stanley R. Greenberg and Harry Harrison
Westworld by Michael Crichton
--
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James Nicoll wrote:
> Time for another round of Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read? This
> time we revisit 1974, a year in which I got to read a lot of science
> fiction because Richard M. Nixon kept preempting my TV shows. This
> year's categories had fewer finalists than 1973, but one more category.
>
> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>
> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
> The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
> The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

I have read all but the Pynchon. Even if that is the work of genius it
was said to be, this is a weakish year, with only Rama really standing out.
>
>
> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novellas
>
> The Death of Dr. Island by Gene Wolfe
> Chains of the Sea by Gardner Dozois
> Death and Designation Among the Asadi by Michael Bishop
> Junction by Jack Dann
> The White Otters of Childhood by Michael Bishop

I have not read the Dann or the second Bishop. I liked the others,
especially the Wolfe, but it's not an exceptional year.
>
>
> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novelettes
>
> Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre
> Case and the Dreamer by Theodore Sturgeon
> The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison
> The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr.

But this is a very strong list. Great year for novelettes.
>
>
> 1974 Nebula Finalist Short Stories
>
> Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr.
> A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad
> How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion
> by Gene Wolfe
> Shark by Edward Bryant
> Wings by Vonda N. McIntyre
> With Morning Comes Mistfall by George R. R. Martin

I can only recall the first, second and last of these. How I missed the
Wolfe I will never know. The Martin, I thought, was a refreshing change
of direction from some of his other early stories. I thought the
Spinrad was slight, but I do recall it well fifty years later, generally
a sign of a good or horrible story, and it certainly wasn't horrible.

>
>
> 1974 Nebula Dramatic Presentations
>
> Soylent Green by Stanley R. Greenberg and Harry Harrison

I recently saw this for the first time. Not quite as horrible as I was
expecting, but horrible nonetheless.

> Catholics by Brian Moore

This is set in the future, but it's a real stretch to call it SF, in my
view.

William Hyde

William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>
>> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
>> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
>> The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
>> The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>
>I have read all but the Pynchon. Even if that is the work of genius it
>was said to be, this is a weakish year, with only Rama really standing out.

You don't think Man who Folded Himself is a standout? It is one of my
all-time favorites.

Gravity's Rainbow is worth reading but I don't think it is anywhere near
as fun as Crying of Lot 49.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <usn14n$3cg$1@reader1.panix.com>,
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

[big snips]

>1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>
>Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Really kinda surprised this book -- which really marks the beginning
of Creepy Late Heinlein -- actually made the cut. Although I suppose
a lot more of Heinlein's friends and admirers were in SFWA at the
time.

Of course, Asimov's THE GODS THEMSELVES won in '72, so perhaps the
membership was just more into that sort of thing in the early 70s.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

Scott Dorsey wrote:
> William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>> James Nicoll wrote:
>>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>>
>>> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
>>> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
>>> The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
>>> The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
>>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>>
>> I have read all but the Pynchon. Even if that is the work of genius it
>> was said to be, this is a weakish year, with only Rama really standing out.
>
> You don't think Man who Folded Himself is a standout? It is one of my
> all-time favorites.

Tastes differ, I suppose. I liked the book, just didn't like it enough
to nominate it for a Hugo.

William Hyde

Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <usn14n$3cg$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>
> [big snips]
>
>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>
>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>
> Really kinda surprised this book -- which really marks the beginning
> of Creepy Late Heinlein

I thought that started with "I will fear no evil" though there are signs
earlier, of course.

At the time I thought there was a nebula (or more likely Hugo) award
winning book inside TEFL. But mixed in with at least a hundred pages of
lesser material and of course that other stuff.

-- actually made the cut. Although I suppose
> a lot more of Heinlein's friends and admirers were in SFWA at the
> time.

And given his recent health issues, they may have felt that this was
their last chance to nominate him.

I suspect that the overlap between the people who voted "No Award" to
keep Gene Wolfe from a nebula a couple of years earlier and those who
nominated this would be large.

William Hyde

On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:32:07 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
Nicoll) wrote:

>Time for another round of Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read? This
>time we revisit 1974, a year in which I got to read a lot of science
>fiction because Richard M. Nixon kept preempting my TV shows. This
>year's categories had fewer finalists than 1973, but one more category.
>
>1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>
>Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
>Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
>The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
>The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
>Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

I couldn't find the URL of the page with your essay on this topic in
this post. So I did a Google search to assuage my curiosity...

and found

https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/1974/

which states that The Disposessed by Ursula K. LeGuin won the
1974 Nebula Award for Best Novel... and the other finalists were

The Godwhale by T. J. Bass
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
334 by Thomas M. Disch

Presumably you are posting about the awards of the previous
year or the following year, due to an oversight. Since Rendezvous
with Rama, Gravity's Rainbow, and so on were also published in
this reality, the other possibility seems unlikely...

John Savard

On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 23:17:12 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:32:07 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
>Nicoll) wrote:
>
>>Time for another round of Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read? This
>>time we revisit 1974, a year in which I got to read a lot of science
>>fiction because Richard M. Nixon kept preempting my TV shows. This
>>year's categories had fewer finalists than 1973, but one more category.
>>
>>1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>
>>Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
>>Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
>>The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
>>The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
>>Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>
>I couldn't find the URL of the page with your essay on this topic in
>this post. So I did a Google search to assuage my curiosity...
>
>and found
>
>https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/1974/
>
>which states that The Disposessed by Ursula K. LeGuin won the
>1974 Nebula Award for Best Novel... and the other finalists were
>
>The Godwhale by T. J. Bass
>Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
>334 by Thomas M. Disch
>
>Presumably you are posting about the awards of the previous
>year or the following year, due to an oversight. Since Rendezvous
>with Rama, Gravity's Rainbow, and so on were also published in
>this reality, the other possibility seems unlikely...

Indeed, my guess was correct:

https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/1973/

you were writing about the *1973* Nebula Awards finalists.

John Savard

On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 23:19:35 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:

>Indeed, my guess was correct:
>
>https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/1973/
>
>you were writing about the *1973* Nebula Awards finalists.

Further searching makes the error more understandable.

A collection of Nebula Awarld winners and finalists indicated
by its title that the stories it featured were from Nebula
Awards 28.

If it is only recently that the Nebula Awarlds came to
be named by the year in which the stories considered
for awards were published...

then that someone could, after the fact, refer to them
instead by the following year - the one in which they
were _held_, the organizers not having time machines
to allow them to examine all the stories in a given year
within that year instead of after it - is indeed entirely
understandable.

One just has to be unaware that the other naming
convention was chosen as the one to use officially.

John Savard

On 11/03/2024 18.27, William Hyde wrote:
> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> In article <usn14n$3cg$1@reader1.panix.com>,
>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> [big snips]
>>
>>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>>
>>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

>> a lot more of Heinlein's friends and admirers were in SFWA at the
>> time.
>
> And given his recent health issues, they may have felt that this was their last chance to nominate him.
>
> I suspect that the overlap between the people who voted "No Award" to keep Gene Wolfe from a nebula a couple of years earlier and those who nominated this would be large.

Huh? What did they have against Wolfe? His stuff's not my cuppa,
but I wouldn't cross the street to keep him from an award.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding;
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

On 11 Mar 2024 20:53:01 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>James Nicoll wrote:
>>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>>
>>> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
>>> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
>>> The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
>>> The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
>>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>>
>>I have read all but the Pynchon. Even if that is the work of genius it
>>was said to be, this is a weakish year, with only Rama really standing out.
>
>You don't think Man who Folded Himself is a standout? It is one of my
>all-time favorites.
>
>Gravity's Rainbow is worth reading but I don't think it is anywhere near
>as fun as Crying of Lot 49.

Or anywhere near as expensive, when I finally tracked down a copy of
/The Crying of Lot 49/ and saw how ... thin ... it was.

Thinner and higher-priced. Not a good way to compare books, of course,
but still made me suspect that it was some high-level intellectual
thing. /Vineland/ was OK, but not anywhere near /Gravity's Rainbow/,
which I put right up there with /Terra Nostra/.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 11/03/2024 18.27, William Hyde wrote:
>> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> In article <usn14n$3cg$1@reader1.panix.com>,
>>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> [big snips]
>>>
>>>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>>>
>>>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>
>>> a lot more of Heinlein's friends and admirers were in SFWA at the
>>> time.
>>
>> And given his recent health issues, they may have felt that this was
>> their last chance to nominate him.
>>
>> I suspect that the overlap between the people who voted "No Award" to
>> keep Gene Wolfe from a nebula a couple of years earlier and those who
>> nominated this would be large.
>
> Huh? What did they have against Wolfe? His stuff's not my cuppa,
> but I wouldn't cross the street to keep him from an award.

Too New Wave, too successful, published in Orbit. Had they voted for
the stories they liked best, Wolfe would have won. Unless of course
they united on one story, but apparently that wasn't possible. But
they could unite on "No Award".

As has been pointed out, they could have given the award to Laumer, but
as his story was (mildly) New Wave and published in Orbit, perhaps they
regarded him as a traitor despite his solid old-wave output.

They pined for the day when awards went to stories with heroes who
wielded a blaster and a wrench with equal skill and felt that too many
awards were going to New Wave stories in general, and Orbit in particular.

William Hyde

On 2024-03-11, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
> Time for another round of Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read? This
> time we revisit 1974, a year in which I got to read a lot of science
> fiction because Richard M. Nixon kept preempting my TV shows. This
> year's categories had fewer finalists than 1973, but one more category.
>
> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>
> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
> Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
> The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
> The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson
> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Read all, none are Favorites or very close. In terms of understanding,
I pretty completely bounced off of Gravity's Rainbow way back whenever.
Maybe I would have better luck now, but I don't think I'm going to try.

> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novellas
>
> The Death of Dr. Island by Gene Wolfe
> Chains of the Sea by Gardner Dozois
> Death and Designation Among the Asadi by Michael Bishop
> Junction by Jack Dann
> The White Otters of Childhood by Michael Bishop

Read the first 3 but not the Dann or the White Otters.

> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novelettes
>
> Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre
> Case and the Dreamer by Theodore Sturgeon
> The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison
> The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr.

Read all, these were better than the novels.

> 1974 Nebula Finalist Short Stories
>
> Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr.
> A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad
> How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion
> by Gene Wolfe
> Shark by Edward Bryant
> Wings by Vonda N. McIntyre
> With Morning Comes Mistfall by George R. R. Martin

Read the Tiptree, Wolfe, and Martin,

Chris

On 3/12/2024 9:29 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 11/03/2024 18.27, William Hyde wrote:
>> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> In article <usn14n$3cg$1@reader1.panix.com>,
>>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> [big snips]
>>>
>>>> 1974 Nebula Finalist Novels
>>>>
>>>> Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
>
>>> a lot more of Heinlein's friends and admirers were in SFWA at the
>>> time.
>>
>> And given his recent health issues, they may have felt that this was
>> their last chance to nominate him.
>>
>> I suspect that the overlap between the people who voted "No Award" to
>> keep Gene Wolfe from a nebula a couple of years earlier and those who
>> nominated this would be large.
>
> Huh? What did they have against Wolfe? His stuff's not my cuppa,
> but I wouldn't cross the street to keep him from an award.

Apparently it was James Sallis’s “The Creation of Benny Hill” that
particularly infuriated the Old Guard. Here is what Gardner Dozois once
wrote
(https://www.tor.com/2011/02/20/hugo-nominees-1971/comment-page-1/#comment-166772)
about the episode:

> This was the height of the War of the New Wave, and passions
> between the New Wave camp and the conservative Old Guard camp
> were running high. (The same year, Michael Moorcock said in a
> review that the only way SFWA could have found a worse thing
> than RINGWORLD to give the Nebula to was to give it to a comic
> book). The fact that the short story ballot was almost
> completely made up of stuff from ORBIT had outraged the Old
> Guard, particularly James Sallis’s surreal “The Creation of
> Benny Hill”, and they block-voted for No Award as a protest
> against “non-functional word patterns” making the ballot.
> Judy-Lynn del Rey told me as much immediately after the
> banquet, when she was exuberantly gloating about how they’d
> “put ORBIT in its place” with the voting results, and
> actually said “We won!”