AWARD WINNERS OF 1965 PART TWO

 

This post covers the award winning novels from genres such as science fiction and mystery as well as the prestigious French literary prize, The Priz Goncourt.

The Hugo Award:

The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber, Tom Doherty Associates, 1964, 311 pp

The Wanderer earned Fritz Leiber his second Hugo Award. He won the first time in 1958 with The Big Time. I liked this one a good deal better.

An eclipse of the moon turns out to include the arrival of a rogue planet, four times the diameter of the moon and giving off a bloody and golden light. Humans name it The Wanderer. Once the planet consumes the moon, tidal surges and massive earthquakes make Earth a terror.

In addition to the apocalyptic horror of it all, I thought Leiber did a great job of showing the effects on various people around our planet as tides roll into cities and submerge the streets, as ships at sea try to navigate, as a group of flying saucer buffs come up against the space program, and as an astronaut on the moon is captured by the alien planet.

It took me a while to get used to all the characters and the shifts between their stories, but overall I enjoyed the book as a wild tale. I am discovering that it pays off to read older sci fi. I always think about how it influenced the sci fi of today. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Octavia Butler's work, The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin. I bet they all read this one when they were growing up.

The Edgar Award:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre, Coward-McCann Inc, 1963, 256 pp

This was the #1 bestseller in 1964. The Edgar Award is for mysteries and sometimes thrillers. The movie starring Richard Burton came out in 1965 and has since been included in The Criterion Collection, as seen at the top of this page. My review of the book is here. It is sobering to post this today, just one day after the great John le Carre passed away.

The Nebula Award:

Dune, Frank Herbert, Ace Books, 1965, 473 pp

This award was given for the first time in 1965. I read the book for a reading group in 2018. My review is here. I have not read any of the sequels but I might see the movie version coming out in 2021. The book went on to tie for the Hugo Award in 1966.

The Prix Goncourt:

The Bond, Jaques Borel, Doubleday & Company, 1968, 479 pp (originally published by Editions Gallimard, 1965, translated from the French by Norman Denny)

The Prix Goncourt is known as the premier French literary award, probably comparable to the Pulitzer Prize in the US. It has been awarding French novelists since 1867! I decided to add it to My Big Fat Reading Project whenever I can find an English translation of the winner for the year, which one usually can these days but not so much in earlier years. I found a library copy.

The Bond is an autobiographical novel about a man's rather tortured but undeniably close relationship with his mother. Borel includes a vast amount of detail; in fact one reference I found on Britannica.com described the writing style as Proustian or Joycean. For a while I felt I might not made it through such dense and introspective prose but finally I just gave myself over to it. 

The son in the story was perhaps overly attached to his mother. You find out why as you read. Borel had kept a diary since the age of 14 and drew from it to write the book. 

He portrays France from the post WWI years through WWII and the German occupation, his life in Paris as a child and adult through to the death of his mother. Thus he gives a 20th century personal history of French life during years when France was quite different than it is now. I found this fascinating.

I got plenty of insight into what it takes to write about one's own life. Since I am attempting to do that, it was useful. Having read most of Simone de Beauvior's memoirs, which cover the same time period, I could compare the two. Borel studied at the Sorbonne, as did she. In fact Beauvoir won this prize herself for The Mandarins in 1954, a book which I have read.

THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM

The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Tor Books, 2014, 390 pp (originally published in China, 2006, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu)

 

 

Wow! If you are not into science fiction you can skip this review but I say wow! I read it as the November selection for my project to read one book a month from my last 12 TBR lists. The first of the Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy, the novel won the Hugo award in 2016 and was the first by a Chinese author to do so.

 

The story opens in 1967 when the Red Guards of the People's Liberation Party, formed at the beginning of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, have splintered into factions bent on killing each other. Astrophysicist Ye Wenjie watches her mother denounce her physicist father, watches her father killed by four young Red Guards, watches her mother go mad, finds her other closest confidant dead in the woman's apartment, and becomes numb.

This first chapter provides a succinct history of the beginnings of Communist China. Ye Wenjie goes on to become the leader of a group of scientists determined to make contact with an alien civilization in outer space and request their aid for an Earth gone insane.

Despite being full of hard science and math, I had little trouble reading such a complex story. It address the problems we face now: a world on the brink of the collapse of civilization compounded by an increasing discrediting of science. Even the scientists attempting to carry out their bold plan are in conflict.

Later in the story we learn about the alien civilization from their point of view. They are on their way to Earth! It seems that their arrival will possibly save the planet but will destroy humanity.

Wild, crazy, though not improbable. The tale told in this novel shot my mind into outer space and gave me much to ponder, because we have all the daily disasters and annoyances but what if there was a bigger picture? If so, is mankind as a whole capable of the intelligence and decency required to save itself as a species? If not, is there truly a species or a greater power out there who cares? Since I think about this almost every day, I was completely involved in the story.

I want to, but I don't want to, peek ahead and see what conclusion this author comes to. I think it would clear my mind more just to keep reading the trilogy to the end. Earlier this year I read the full Broken Earth trilogy by N K Jemisin and felt a fragile sense of hope. Hope. That factor can get a Black man elected as POTUS, can keep migrants coming here, can get me up in the morning and through my days. I am curious to see where Cixin Liu stands.

The day after I finished the book, NASA's InSight Lander touched down safely on Mars. As I watched the live streaming video of that I wondered, where will we all end up?

(The Three-Body Problem is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

WAY STATION

Way Station, Clifford D Simak, Doubleday & Company, 1963, 182 pp

 

 

I think this especially hot summer has affected my brain. I have turned into a fan of short novels. Way Station was just right for a hot day and evening. It was barely past the page count for a novella and while it posed several intriguing ideas it moved right along.

 

Clifford D Simak made his living as a journalist for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, but he loved science fiction and wrote it on the side. He began publishing stories in the sci fi zines in 1931. After Way Station was serialized in a magazine in 1963, it was published in book form and won for Simak his first Hugo Award in 1964.

Enoch Wallace fought in and survived the Civil War, then returned to the family farm in Wisconsin. When the story opens he is still there and is 124 years old. Because shortly after the war he was visited by an alien from space and offered the job of keeper of a way station, an interstellar transfer stop for sapient species traveling the starways.

Enoch accepted, his parents having died and left their only child the farm. His house was fitted up by aliens and as long as he stayed inside he did not age. He met all manner of beings who left him gifts and reading material. He came to believe that these alien creatures existed on a higher plane than mankind. Being afraid for the way the world was heading for another war, he developed a purpose to somehow bring Earth into the interstellar community and thus prevent his home planet from destroying mankind.

When a US government agent comes snooping around, the Way Station is in danger of being compromised. It is a fabulous tale full of unexpected developments and strange creatures. The mid-20th century trope of aliens keeping watch on mankind, waiting for humans to reach a higher consciousness is in full form here. And why not, with nuclear annihilation being the worst fear in those times.

In fact, a friend of mine who is a UFO researcher still believes that! I need to ask him if he ever read Way Station.

 

This book completes my reading of the award winning books on the 1964 list of My Big Fat Reading Project:

Pulitzer Prize: no award was given that year due to the prize's advisory board finding not one novel worthy of the prize.

Newbery Award: It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville

Caldecott Medal Award: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

National Book Award: The Centaur by John Updike

Edgar Award: The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

 

(Way Station is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)