So just to recap, here is the shortlist in the short story category for the Retro Hugos:
- “The Wedge”, Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction 10/44)
- “I, Rocket”, Ray Bradbury (Amazing Stories 5/44)
- “And the Gods Laughed”, Fredric Brown (Planet Stories Spring ’44)
- “Desertion”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 11/44)
- “Huddling Place”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 7/44)
- “Far Centaurus”, A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction 1/44)
Links are to the posts of the individual stories. While I enjoyed all of these stories and will probably reread them at some future date, I didn’t find them all equally good. This is simply my not so humble opinion; your mileage may vary.
“The Wedge” was the weakest of the stories here. In part, I think, that’s because it’s part of a bigger story arc. I suspect it’s on the final ballot in part due to the reputation of the Foundation series and the author. Ditto for the Bradbury minus the series angle. I could say the same about the two Simak stories as the Asimov except that these are in my mind the two strongest tales on the list.
As for the Brown and Van Vogt entries, they are both examples of their author’s best work at this length. I tend to favor the Brown a bit over the Van Vogt, but that might be because it was one of only two stories (the other being “I, Rocket”) that I hadn’t read before and was therefore fresher.
As for which which of the Simak I think was the strongest, that’s a tough call. I would probably go with “Huddling Place”, although I can easily convince myself that “Desertion” is the better of the two. Some I’m going to compromise and declare a tie.
And just a sidenote of possible interest. DAW books began publishing a series of anthologies in somewhere around 1980 (I’m too lazy to look it up) entitled Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories. Each volume collected what Asimov , with the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, considered the best stories of the year. The first volume covered 1939, and the series ran for 24 volumes, with a 25th published by NESFA Press and edited by Robert Silverberg after Asimov’s death. The sixth volume covers 1944, the year of the current Retro Hugos.
That volume contains 13 stories, Eight of them are on the Retro Hugo ballot. One which isn’t is Leigh Brackett’s “The Veil of Astellar”, which should be on the novelette ballot. Don’t get me started. After the Retro Hugos have been awarded, I will probably reread the rest of the stories. I read this book in high school, and I don’t remember some of the stories.
I’ll start on the novellas I haven’t already covered in the next post. The story will be “Killdozer!” by Theodore Sturgeon. That story was revised for book publication, so I’m reading it in, you guessed it, The Great SF Stories 6,
What got me to thinking about future histories was the audiobook of Alastair Reynolds’ latest novel, Halcyon Years. It’s a standalone deep space adventure, although I don’t think it falls into the category of space opera for reasons I won’t get into very deeply in order to avoid spolers. I’ll say this, it’s a clever blend of hardboiled detective and hard science set on a generation ship.
