Why the Retro Hugos Have Value

I originally posted this on my personal blog, but I decided to repost it here at Retro Science Fiction Reviews, because I know that some people who follow this blog, don't follow my personal blog. And since followers of this blog are likely to be interested in vintage speculative fiction in general and the Retro Hugos in particular, I figure that this is of interest to all readers of this blog.

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This is not the post I wanted to write. I had been planning to review The Old Guard, which I finally got around to watching, and maybe write a quick con report about the virtual 2020 NASFIC.

However, the fallout from CoNZealand continues to suck all oxygen out of the room.  The good thing is that the con coms of the upcoming Worldcons DisCon III and Chicon and as well as those bidding for future Worldcons have learned from some of the problems at CoNZealand. The bad thing is that they haven't necessarily learned the right lessons.

The Memphis Worldcon bid for 2023 has posted a statement about their commitment to diversity and inclusion, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, they also felt the need to let us know in that statement that they don't intend to hold the 1948 Retro Hugos, if their bid wins. The full statement is here and a detailed discussion may be found at File 770. There also are two proposals by David Wallace and Camestros Felapton, which would basically result in a Retro Hugos light (only one or two categories per year at the discretion of a given Worldcon).

Now I do have some sympathy for the reluctance of Worldcons to hold Retro Hugos, because the Retro Hugos mean a lot of work and extra expenses and the participation could be better. We should maybe also rethink whether the Retro Hugos really need a trophy with an elaborate base and a dedicated ceremony, since the winners are all dead (though one 1945 Retro Hugo winner, the Best Dramatic Presentation co-winner The Canterville Ghost, still has a surviving castmember, Margaret O'Brien, now 82 years old) and descendants often aren't present to accept the award either.

However, I don't see the need to make a decision about the Retro Hugos now, since no one expected a statement three years before the con. CoNZealand didn't announce that they were going to hold the 1945 Retro Hugos until late 2019, a few months before the con. And because the 1946 Retro Hugos were already held in 1996, there won't be any Retro Hugos until 2022 anyway, so there really was no need to make a statement now. And there was certainly no need to make a statement regarding the 1948 Retro Hugos in the context of a statement on diversity and inclusion, since that implies that the Retro Hugos and an interest in older SFF in general are considered so offensive now that they violate the ideals of diversity and inclusion. And yes, this was maybe not the intention, but that's how it comes across.

Besides, most of the criticism of CoNZealand focussed on the 2020 Hugo ceremony. I have already written thousands of words about the 2020 Hugo ceremony and linked to other people's takes on it and the short version is, "Yes, the criticism of the 2020 Hugo ceremony and host George R.R. Martin is absolutely justified, because the ceremony was a disaster."

A lot of the criticism focussed on Martin's and Robert Silverberg's endless reminiscing about "the good old days" and particularly the drinking game worthy frequency with which Martin mentioned John W. Campbell. Again, those criticisms are absolutely justified, because a current year Hugo ceremony is no place to reminisce endlessly about events that happened before many of the finalists were even born.

However, somehow the criticism of the 2020 Hugo ceremony has become conflated with the 1945 Retro Hugos, where the winners included John W. Campbell and the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Leigh Brackett, Margaret Brundage, Clifford D. Simak, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Superman, The Canterville Ghost and Curse of the Cat People (as well as the fanzine Voice of the Imagi-Nation, which some people also have problems with). Of course, there was nothing wrong with the 1945 Retro Hugo ceremony (and it was much shorter than the regular one) except for some technical issues and that it had to share a timeslot with the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, leaving the Sir Julius Vogel Award winners feel shafted. However, many complaints about the 1945 Retro Hugo winners focussed solely on the wins for Campbell and Cthulhu (and sometimes Voice of the Imagi-Nation), but completely ignored all other winners. The overwhelming majority of those complaining were also people who had paid zero attention to the Retro Hugos before, who didn't bother to nominate and probably didn't bother to vote either, who never discussed the finalists or tried to boost finalists they find less objectionable than Campbell and Cthulhu. Again, I have already discussed all this in great detail here and here.

Now no one is obliged to care about the Retro Hugos. However, if you didn't nominate and vote, you don't get complain about the results. I also understand the frustration that Retro Hugo voters keep voting for familiar names like John W. Campbell and weak early stories by future stars of the genre over better works, because I share it. However, unlike many other folks, I didn't complain, but decided to do something about it, so I started the Retro Hugo Recommendation Spreadsheet and Retro Science Fiction Reviews to help potential Retro Hugo nominators and voters make more informed choices. Because I believe that it's better to try and fix something than destroy or abolish something that some people enjoy.

And while I understand why Worldcons are reluctant to give out Retro Hugos due to the work and expense involved, I really don't understand the intense hatred they engender in some fans. There are a lot of things going on at Worldcons that I personally don't care about, but that doesn't mean I want to take those things away from the people who do enjoy them. I simply focus on the things that give me joy and ignore the rest.

However, the current campaign against the Retro Hugos is part of a larger trend to dismiss the past of our genre as racist, sexist and irrelevant. Also witness the recent debate about the SFF canon, what it is and whether it is relevant with contributions by John Scalzi (here and here), Nina Allan, Camestros Felapton (here and here), the Hugo Book Club, Font Folly, Steve Davidson, Doris V. Sutherland, Aidan Moher and others. The canon discussion is mostly civil (and the only uncivil are the usual idiots I haven't linked here) and also makes a lot of good points, such as that there is no one fixed SFF canon, but that individual people have different works which are important to them, that canons can be abused as a form of gatekeeping, that it's not necessary to read classic SFF works, unless you enjoy them or want to write an academic work about SFF. However, pretty much everybody who is interested in older SFF has experienced hostility about this interest, even if we don't go around and tell people that they're not "real fans" (TM), unless they have read the entire output of Heinlein, Asimov, Lovecraft, etc... (and in that case, I wouldn't be a "real fan" (TM) either). Witness Jason Sanford saying that the Retro Hugo voters are "a small group of people stuck in the past giving today’s genre the middle finger", never mind that most Retro Hugo voters are Hugo voters as well. Or the person who called me a Nazi on Twitter for tweeting about the Retro Hugo winners, until I blocked them.

As I said before, no one has to care about older SFF and no one has to read it, if they don't want to. But attacking people for being interested in older SFF and enjoying the Retro Hugos is not okay. Nor is everybody who's interested in older SFF a reactionary fascist, even if received wisdom claims that the SFF of the golden age was all racist and sexist stories about straight white American men in space, lorded over by the twin spectres of Campbell and Lovecraft.

There is just one problem: The received wisdom is wrong. Because the golden age (intended here as a designation for a specific time period, not a value judgment) was more than just Campbell and Astounding.  It was also a lot more diverse than most people think, as I explained in a three part post last year.

True, John W. Campbell did have an outsized influence on science fiction of the 1940s due to a combination of genuine skill as an editor, an eye for promising writers and knowledge of what the audience he cultivated wanted to read as well as the stroke of luck that Astounding Science Fiction had the considerable financial clout of the Street & Smith publishing empire behind it, allowing Campbell to pay better than his competitors and on acceptance, whereas the father of Robert E. Howard had to pester Weird Tales for missing payments until 1942, six years after Howard committed suicide. And because Astounding was the highest paying SFF mag, he pretty much got the first right of refusal for every science fiction story written between 1937 and 1950, unless the author managed to sell it to the even better paying so-called "slicks" or really didn't get along with Campbell. Would Campbell's influence have been as great, if he had wound up as editor of - say - Startling Stories or Thrilling Wonder Stories? I doubt it.

Campbell's influence was further exarcerbated by anthologists who reprinted a lot more stories from Astounding than from other magazines. For example, The Great Science Fiction Stories anthologies edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg often have a significant overlap with the Retro Hugo finalists for the respective year and mainly collect stories from Astounding with a few other magazines thrown in. However, Asimov was part of Campbell's stable of writers, shared Campbell's vision of science fiction to a certain degree (though he was known to subvert it on occasion) and supported the myth that Campbell saved science fiction from rayguns and bug-eyed monsters and made it respectable. And having read some of a letters a very young Isaac Asimov wrote to various science fiction magazines during the 1930s, often to complain about the horror of their being women in those stories, it's clear that making science fiction respectable and getting rid of all of those bug-eyed monsters and women in brass bikinis was important to him. Meanwhile, Asimov is on record for disliking Weird Tales, which he called "a hoary old institution". The choices he made for the anthologies he edited obviously reflect his biases.

Talking of Weird Tales, there is quite a lot of scholarship about the magazine and its writers - however, most of that scholarship focusses solely on H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and their overlapping circles. However, if you flips through an actual issue of Weird Tales - a lot easier thanks to the magic of the Internet Archive, since physical issues can cost hundreds of dollars - you'll quickly see that there was a lot more to the "unique magazine" than just Lovecraft and Howard, Cthulhu and Conan. In fact, the Lovecraftian horror stories and early sword and sorcery are in the minority in the actual magazine, outnumbered by gothic horror, ghost stories, occult investigators and proto-urban fantasy. Weird Tales' most popular author was not Lovecraft or Howard but Seabury Quinn, whose stories about the occult detective Jules de Grandin and his partner Doctor Trowbridge repeatedly saved Weird Tales from the brink of bankruptcy. Personally, I don't quite get the popularity of the Jules de Grandin stories - Manly Wade Wellman's John Thunstone and Judge Pursuivant stories are much better examples of the occult detective genre - though the not so subtle hints that Jules de Grandin and Doctor Trowbridge are more than just good friends are certainly interesting. If you look at an actual issue of Weird Tales, you'll also note how many women writers and readers the magazine had and how little is known about them. Would we know more about Allison V. Harding, one of the ten most prolific contributors to Weird Tales, if Robert Weinberg had not dismissed her stories "as fillers that just take up space"?

But just as Weird Tales was more than just Conan and Cthulhu, Campbellian science fiction with its competent white male protagonists and its focus on "hard" science (which often turns out to be nonsense upon closer examination) was only one strand of SFF in the 1940s. There was a whole galaxy beyond Campbellian science fiction and even Campbell published a lot of non-Campbellian stories such as the City cycle by Clifford D. Simak, "No Woman Born" and "Judgment Night" by C.L. Moore or "The Children's Hour" by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, all of which are excellent. However, the stories found in Weird Tales, Planet Stories, Amazing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories, Super Science Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, etc... are often more interesting than those published in Astounding. Not to mention the stories and novels published beyond the confines of the American pulp magazine market. But stories not published in Astounding are more likely to be forgotten because of the prevalent narrative that Astounding was the best magazine of the era. And indeed, I came across a lot of great stories in the course of the Retro Reviews project that have never been reprinted at all, while a stinker like "Deadline" by Cleve Cartmill (a story even its author disliked) did rack up several reprints and translations over the years, even though the only thing of interest about that story is the handy primer on how to build an atom bomb that is hidden inside a page of bad technobabble.

Another issue - and one that should surprise absolutely no one - is that women authors are more likely to be forgotten than men. Not that there aren't plenty of men who are forgotten as well - who is still familiar with Emil Petaja, Carl Jacobi, Nelson S. Bond or Albert de Pina (very likely one of the few Latinx SFF authors of the era) these days? However, the only women SFF writers of the golden age who are still remembered nowadays are C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett and even their works are not always easy to find. For example, Leigh Brackett's Shadow Over Mars, this year's Retro Hugo winner for Best Novel, is out of print. And a lot of C.L. Moore's collaborations with Henry Kuttner have been reprinted under his name alone. Meanwhile, other women SFF writers active during the golden age like Margaret St. Clair, Allison V. Harding, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Dorothy Quick, Alice-Mary Schnirring, Greye La Spina, Leslie F. Stone, Mona Farnsworth, Clare Winger Harris, Jane Rice, Lilith Lorraine (one of the few indigenous writers of early SFF), Ruth Washburn, etc... are barely remembered at all, even if some of them were popular authors during their lifetime. Some of these women are so obscure that we don't know anything about them at all - all we have are the stories they wrote in the scanned pages of yellowing pulp magazines.

Every twenty years or so, we seem to be experiencing a surge of women and writers of colour entering the genre, making a splash, winning awards and generating headlines like "Women and people of colour are writing SFF now". But then, those women and writers of colour are pushed out, ignored and forgotten, until the next batch comes along. Witness how the golden age became the realm of Campbellian white dude science fiction and how Weird Tales, the most woman-friendly magazine of the era, was reduced to Conan and Cthulhu, Howard and Lovecraft with everybody else forgotten. Witness how the women writers of the silver age were dismissed as "little housewives writing domestic stories set in galactic suburbia" by those who came after them. Witness how the Cyberpunks consigned the feminist SFF of the 1970s to the memory hole as boring and irrelevant. Witness how women writers of epic fantasy of the 1970s and 1980s are forgotten and ignored, while Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist and Terry Brooks are still considered important voices. Witness how the SFF community managed to completely ignore the many women writing urban fantasy, romantic space opera, paranormal romance, time travel romance and YA SFF to great success in the 1990s and 2000s, while celebrating men writing singularity fiction and New British Space Opera? Do today's champions of "The past is irrelevant, the golden age is now" honestly believe that it will be different this time around? Because I'm pretty sure it won't be.

And that's why reading older SFF is important. Because if you actually read the stuff, you'll quickly see that pretty much every bit of received wisdom - the golden age was all Campbell and competent white dudes in space and everything before was crap, the SFF of the late 1950s/early 1960s was just boring domestic galactic suburbia stuff until the New Wave came along, the science fiction of the 1970s was boring and irrelevant and only the cyberpunks made the genre relevant again, women and writers of colour did not write SFF before 1965/1990/2010/insert date here - is wrong. And that the genre was a lot more complex, a lot more diverse and a lot more interesting than than the one-note received wisdom narratives imply.

If you dive into old SFF, you'll find great stories that have been forgotten and classics who have experienced a visit from the suck fairy. You'll find trends and whole subgenres cropping up decades before they had a name (and not just obvious suspects like sword and sorcery either, but also a lot of urban fantasy and military SF years before they became subgenres), you'll find stories that are decades ahead of or behind their time. You'll also find that writers and fans seventy-five or fifty years ago were already discussing a lot of the issues we are still discussing today, albeit in different terms than we would use today.

There are discussions about sexism, racism and diversity - often phrased with cringeworthy clumsiness, but nonetheless present. You had people like a fan writer named Harold Wakefield unearthing "forgotten fantasists" in the pages of the fanzine The Acolyte (and how frustrated would Harold Wakefield be, if he knew that we still have to do the same thing today?). There are strong female characters to be found in the stories of the golden age and some of them even pass the Bechdel test. There are characters of colour, quite a few in fact. There are interracial relationships, which either pass unremarked or where the story makes an explicit point that banning interracial relationships is wrong (Robert E. Howard of all people addressed the issue repeatedly in his Kull stories and at one point literally had Kull smash miscegenation laws with his battle axe). There are sex scenes, some of them quite frank. There are references to drug use. There are subtle and not so subtle hints that some people are gay and that there's nothing wrong with that. There are even transgender characters, either coded in magical sex change stories such as "Adept's Gambit" by Fritz Leiber, which will be denied its chance at Retro Hugo glory by the decision of the Memphis Worldcon bid, or addressed outright like in the 1962 story "Roberta" by Margaret St. Clair, which I reviewed for Galactic Journey last year.  There also are a lot of explicitly anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist stories, many of them published in that bastion of Socialism and anti-colonialism Planet Stories. To reduce the golden age to just Campbellian science fiction and Lovecraftian horror is to deny the existence of all of those other stories.

Steve J. Wright, comrade-in-arms on the Retro Reviews project, makes some very similar points to mine in this great post on his blog. He also wonders whether our efforts to make the Retro Hugos better and unearth all of the interesting stuff that was going on beyond Campbellian science fiction are futile, since the Retro Hugo voters keep voting for familiar names like Campbell and Heinlein or those truly dreadful Buck Rogers comics anyway. However, as Steve also notes, we have been making some headway. There was a radio drama on the Best Dramatic Presentation ballot and several more on the longlist. The Best Related Work category likely wouldn't have existed without the Retro Hugo Recommendation Spreadsheet and the work done by Steve, N. and others to track down potential nominees. I also doubt that nigh forgotten writers like Allison V. Harding and Dorothy Quick would have made the longlist, if not for our efforts. Ditto for Babette Rosmond, editor of The Shadow and Doc Savage, who just missed the Best Editor ballot. And talking of editors, should we make a push to put John W. Campbell's long suffering editorial assistant Kay Tarrant on the ballot for future Retro Hugos, in case they still exist? And I hope they will, because frankly, it's frustrating to have the whole project cut short, just as we were making headway, because some people who never paid any attention don't like the results.

Besides, as Steve also says, just giving up would mean abandoning the history of our genre to the reactionary fans and to the received wisdom that Campbell was the greatest editor of the 1940s and that Campbellian science fiction ruled. Because the reactionaries are not giving up. Retro Hugos or not, they're still here and they're still pushing their version of what the gilded past of our genre was like. And if no one counters them, that narrative will be the only one there is.

In his post on the Retro Hugo debate, Camestros Felapton points out that the Far Right of our genre - various offshots of the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns as well as some established Lovecraft and Campbell fanatics - are actively trying to claim the pulp era for their movement. They can't quite agree which parts of the pulp era to claim for their own - some of them favour Campbellian science fiction and some of them hate Campbell with the same passion as their political opposites - however, their idea of what pulp SFF was like is highly reductionist and sometimes downright wrong. Hence, you get such howlers that sword and sorcery was a quintessentially masculine genre and that women can't write it (they grudgingly admit the existence of C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry, but declare her "not really sword and sorcery") and that hardly any women were reading Weird Tales, even though the letter columns indicate a high percentage of female readers (ETA: Angeline B. Adams takes a detailed look at the women who wrote to Weird Tales and quotes from their letters). You get claims that SFF of the pulp era was steeped in Christian values, which again is very wrong. You do find stories wherein Christianity plays a role and is explicitly addressed such as Leigh Brackett's "The Veil of Astellar", C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories, C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and Ross Rocklynne's "Intruders from the Stars" (which was a lot more entertaining than it has any right to be), but such stories are in the minority. Finally, you also get people claiming that golden age science fiction was all apolitical fun with no political or social messages at all, which is complete nonsense, whether it's the "genocide is good" messaging of "Arena" by Fredric Brown or the fact that many of Leigh Brackett's protagonists are literal social justice warriors.

Now other people may disagree, but I for one am not willing to abandon the past of our genre to the dominant narrative that it was just straight white American men being competent in space and straight white men being incompetent in the face of Lovecraftian horrors nor am I willing to let the reactionary forces continue to dominate the discussion about vintage SFF.

Do we need Retro Hugos to discuss, reappraise and honour vintage SFF? Not necessarily, but they are a useful vehicle to raise the profile of worthy older works which may have been overlooked. Plus, the intense focus on a single year is a good thing, because ideally it makes you look beyond the usual suspects and the stories and authors you have loved for ages.

However, Retro Hugos or not, I am going to continue discussing vintage SFF. Because I enjoy it and I'd rather talk about a story that no one has talked about in seventy or eighty years than offer the umpteenth hot take on Network Effect or Harrow the Ninth or The City We Became to the world, even though I liked all of those books, too.

ETA: Hampus Eckerman also shares his thoughts on the Retro Hugos and why they have value.

Some Thoughts on the 1945 Retro Hugo Winners

The winners of the 1945 Retro Hugos have been announced as well as the winners of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. The indefatigable Nicholas Whyte also shares some additional information about the Retro Hugos as well as the full voting and nominations breakdown. Also check out the comments at File 770, where there is a lively discussion going on.
So let's take a look at the individual categories:

 

Best Novel

 

Shadow Over Mars a.k.a. The Nemesis from Terra by Leigh Brackett wins Best Novel. I'm really happy about this, because Leigh Brackett is one of the greats of our genre and was never recognised by the Hugos in her lifetime, though she did win a posthumous Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo for The Empire Strikes Back.

That said, I had expected that Sirius by Olaf Stapledon would win, because it is better known. But I guess Stapledon is too Marmite to win. I'm a bit surprised that The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater finished in last place, because it is a charming story - unlike the tedious Winged Man.

 

Best Novella

 

"Killdozer" by Theodore Sturgeon wins Best Novella. This isn't a big surprise, because "Killdozer" is the best known story nominated, though it's not the best story, because "The Jewel of Bas" by Leigh Brackett and "A God Named Kroo" by Henry Kuttner were both better. However, the Retro Hugos are still often determined by name recognition and nostalgia and the efforts of myself and others to change this have only met with mixed success.

That said, it's a pity that "A God Named Kroo" only barely beat "No Award", coming in fifth after the unreadable "Trog" and the Van Vogt novella I didn't get around to reviewing, because I can only tolerate so much Van Vogt.

 

Best Novelette

 

The 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Novelette goes to "City" by Clifford D. Simak. This isn't a huge surprise, because the City cycle is well regarded, still in print and Clifford D. Simak was one of the best writers of the Golden Age. "City" is a pretty good story, too, though not the best City story of 1944 or even the best City novelette, because "Census", which didn't make the ballot, is better.

That said, this was not the category I wanted to see Simak win. In fact, I was hoping that C.L. Moore, either with or without Henry Kuttner, would win Best Novelette, because both "No Woman Born" (which finished second) and "The Children's Hour" (which finished unfairly in sixth place) are great stories.

Though I'm glad that "Arena" by Fredric Brown with its "Genocide is good" message didn't win, because I feared that it might.

Best Short Story

 

The winner of the 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Short Story is "I, Rocket" by Ray Bradbury. I have to confess that this win surprised me, because not only was "I, Rocket" not the best story on the ballot - it's a fine story, but "Desertion" by Clifford D. Simak is much better - it's not even the best Ray Bradbury story of 1944, because both "The Lake" (which is a classic that has been reprinted lots of times) and the vastly underrated "Morgue Ship" are better. I also have no idea why Retro Hugo voters nominated "I, Rocket" over "The Lake", though I have no illusions that anybody except me nominated "Morgue Ship". I'm a bit surprised that "Far Centaurus" by A.E. van Vogt finished in last place, because this is the one van Vogt story on the ballot that's actually good.

 

Best Series

 

The Retro Hugo for Best Series goes to the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth (via whose stories the mythos qualified seven years after Lovecraft's death) and many, many others.

There were some complaints about the renown racist H.P. Lovecraft winning a Retro Hugo in 2020. And while I didn't put the Cthulhu Mythos in first or even second place - my number one was Captain Future who was one of my entry drugs into science fiction - I'm not surprised that it won. Because of all the nominated series, the Cthulhu Mythos is the only one which is still going strong - 83 years after the death of the original author. Also, I don't view this solely as a win for H.P. Lovecraft, but for everybody who ever wrote a story in the world he created. And this includes authors as diverse as Victor LaValle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ruthanna Emrys, Matt Ruff, Neil Gaiman, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber and many, many others, some of whom would have horrified Lovecraft.

So while Lovecraft was undoubtedly a racist, he also created a universe in which many writers have played over the years, often subverting Lovecraft's ideas. So I think we should view this as a vote for the universe and everybody who ever wrote in it in the past ninety year. Cthulhu is an icon - more than the Shadow or Doc Savage, who are damned iconic in themselves - and has his own plush toy, so doesn't he deserve a Hugo?

 

Best Related Work

 

The winner of the 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Related Work is "The Science-Fiction Field" by Leigh Brackett. I'm happy that the Retro Hugos have recognised Leigh Brackett not once but twice this year, but I'm still surprised that it won, because "The Science Fiction Field" is probably the most elusive Retro Hugo finalist of 1945.

The essay was originally published in Writer's Digest and isn't available online anywhere. The best way to get it is via Windy City Pulp Stories No. 13, which reprinted it a few years ago. I suspect that the publisher of Windy City Pulp Stories was very surprised about the sudden uptick in interest in his magazine.

That said, it is an interesting essay that offers insight both into Leigh Brackett's writing process and the SFF field as it was in 1944. Who would have guessed that Planet Stories was considered one of the more scientifically accurate publications? There's also a nice jab against John W. Campbell, whom Brackett famously didn't get along with, as well as another jab against Weird Tales and their infamously bad payment practice.

 

Best Graphic Story or Comic

 

The winner of the 1945 Retro Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story is the Superman comic “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk” by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

This is one case where I have no idea what the Retro Hugo voters were thinking. Yes, Superman is an iconic character beloved by many and even Mr. Mxyztplk is apparently a popular character, but have the voters looked at the actual comic? For while it's not as bad as the racist Wonder Woman comic which won last year (and if you voted for that one, don't complain about Campbell and Cthulhu?) it's no more than competent.

My first choice was Flash Gordon, because Alex Raymond was probably the best artist working during the Golden Age and this would have been our last chance to honour him. Instead, the to Flash Gordon strips finished last, even lower than Buck Rogers, which was really, really bad.

Looking at the nominations, it seems as if us Mandrake fans need to settle on one story and we might lift Mandrake and Lothar (who was the first black comic hero 30 years before Black Panther) on the ballot next time. And if the Phantom fans would like to rally to the cause as well, we might still get the full Defenders of the Earth on the ballot.

 

Best Dramatic Presentation Short

 

We have two winners in the Best Dramatic Presentation category, The Curse of the Cat People and The Canterville Ghost. Both are fine winners and were my number one and two choices in this category. The Canterville Ghost is only the only Retro Hugo finalist, where someone involved with the production is still alive, namely former child actress Margaret O'Brien, then seven years old. The actress who played the little girl in The Curse of the Cat People unfortunately passed away a few years ago.

 

Best Editor

 

The winner of the 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Editor is John W. Campbell, which is not exactly a surprise, even though it did cause some wailing and gnashing of teeth, how people can still vote for Campbell after his name was removed from the Not-a-Hugo for Best New Writer, which is now known as the Astounding Award?

But while I agree that it's not a good idea to name an award for the best new writer of 2020 after a (very problematic) man who died almost fifty years ago, Campbell was the leading figure in the field in the 1940s. And Astounding Science Fiction is still considered the best magazine of the era, even though I for one found that other magazines offered more consistent quality than Astounding, which when it was good, was very good indeed, but which was also truly dreadful, when it was bad.

And indeed, I ranked Dorothy McIlwraith of Weird Tales, W. Scott Peacock of Planet Stories and Raymond Palmer of Amazing Stories above Campbell. Nonetheless, for better or worse, Campbell was one of the most influential figures of our genre, which is why people keep voting for him.

I also suspect that the wins for the Cthulhu Mythos and Campbell prompted the slightly cringeworthy intro by the CoNZealand chairs, in which they talk about how these are works of their time, which may be reactionary today.

 

Best Professional Artist

 

The winner of the 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Professional Artist is Margaret Brundage. Now this is one win I'm thrilled about, because Margaret Brundage was not just one of the very few woman artists working during the Golden Age, but also created some absolutely iconic covers for Weird Tales. Margaret Brundage was the first person to picture Conan and Jirel of Joiry (who wears armour rather than lingerie in the story) and who gave us Puritan executions in haute couture gowns (not actually a Solomon Kane cover, though I always assumed it was) as well as the highest selling Weird Tales cover ever. She was also a political radical, taught black children and she was very likely LGBTQ. It's long overdue that the Hugos recognise her work.

 

Best Fanzine

 

The 1945 Retro Hugo winner for Best Fanzine is Voice of the Imagi-Nation, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas. This win prompted another round of wailing and gnashing of teeth, because Forrest J. Ackerman was a sexual harrasser. I didn't vote for it either - not just because I prefer to vote for people who are not sexual harrassers, but also because I don't find Voice of the Imagi-Nation very good. There were definitely better fanzines out there in 1944, which were not edited by sexual harrassers.

However, people should also note that Ackerman wasn't even on the ballot for Best Fan Writer this year, a category he used to dominate at the Retro Hugos.

Which brings us to...

 

Best Fan Writer

 

The 1945 Best Fan Writer Hugo goes to Fritz Leiber for his contributions to the Lovecraft fanzine The Acolyte. This is the one win where I really think that my Retro Hugo Recommendation Spreadsheet made a difference. Because if I hadn't found a Fritz Leiber short story, an critical essay about Lovecraft and a poem about the Gray Mouser in The Acolyte, following a trail from ISFDB, and had put his name on the spreadsheet, I doubt that many people would have been aware that Leiber was even eligible.

If we take a look at the full nomination data, I see a couple of other places where the spreadsheet and Retro Reviews had an impact. Would Allison V. Harding have made the novelette longlist with two stories, if I hadn't enjoyed "Ride the EL to Doom" so much and shouted about it to the world?

Which brings me to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, which is really just focussed on three winners - Campbell, Cthulhu and Ackerman. And yes, I'm not happy with those wins either.

However, after a few years of complaining about bad Retro Hugo finalists and winners, I decided to do something about it. And so I created the spreadsheet and started Retro Reviews to make it easier for voters/nominators to make informed choices and point them at good works that might otherwise be overlooked. I had a lot of fun, too, and discovered stories I might never have read otherwise. It wasn’t just me either. N helped to track down elusive dramatic presentation and related work finalists. Steve J. Wright, Paul Fraser, Don Briago and others reviewed lots of stories, novels and whole magazines.

So in short, several of us got together to put the information out there about what is eligible (obviously not Dave Langford nine years before he was born), what is worth checking out and shared our thoughts on the finalists. And yes, I wish more people would have looked at our work before voting/nominating, because if you look at the nomination data, you'll see lots of examples of nominations for people and works, which are flat out ineligible. If the voters and nominators don’t pay attention to this in sufficient numbers, there’s little we can do about it.

As for the people complaining about Retro Hugos for Campbell, Cthulhu and Forrest J. Ackerman, did you nominate and vote? Did you point out better choices? Did you point people to unjustly forgotten authors/editors/fan writers? If not, then don’t complain.

Retro Review: "The Winged Man" by E. Mayne Hull and A.E. van Vogt

"The Winged Man" is a novel by E. Mayne Hull and A.E. van Vogt. It was first serialised in the May and June 1944 issues of Astounding Science Fiction and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here and here. There is also a paperback version, which has apparently been expanded from the magazine version. However, I don't have the paperback, so this review is based on the magazine version alone.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

"The Winged Man" opens in the present day, i.e. 1944, aboard the US Navy submarine Sea Serpent in the Pacific. The Sea Serpent is currently above water and one night, First Officer William Kenlon chances to observe a very large bird flying past. There is only one problem: The Sea Serpent is more than one thousand two hundred miles from the nearest atoll, so where does the bird come from? Furthermore, the bird Kenlon saw is considerably larger than an albatross, the largest bird who could fly more than a thousand miles.

Kenlon discusses this mystery with the Sea Serpent's third officer, one Lieutenant Dan Tedders, who almost never sleeps. However, he is asleep when Kenlon rouses him to annoy him with questions about the exact position of the Sea Serpent (which any officer worth his salt could have determined himself). And since this is a story published in Astounding, that conversation is full of infodumps and clumsy "As you know, Bob…" dialogue about albatrosses and the size of the Pacific.

After the infodump, Kenlon decides to take another look outside. The moon breaks through the clouds and Kenlon chances to see the bird again. Only that it isn't a bird. It's a man with wings.

Shortly thereafter, Tedders shows up to apologise and technobabble some more about what Kenlon might have seen. Lucky for the reader, Kenlon and Tedders are interrupted before they can launch into another infodump, because the winged man has landed aboard the Sea Serpent and is attaching something to its hull. Kenlon and the winged man fight, before the winged man takes off into the night.

Now we're in for another endless round of technobabble and infodumping, while Kenlon attempts to remove the device the winged man has attached to the hull. Alas, the device cannot be removed. Though the radio operator of the Sea Serpent is fairly that it's not a bomb, but some kind of radio device.

Kenlon and submarine commander Jones-Gordon decide to capture the winged man, for otherwise they would never be believed. They succeed, too, but not before the winged man has attached a second device to the hull of the Sea Serpent. The devices cannot be removed and emit a light so bright that the bones of the crewmen aboard the Sea Serpent become visible (I had flashbacks of The Day After at this point, though the device is not a nuclear weapon).

Interrogating the winged man proves to be difficult, for he speaks a language no one aboard can identify, let alone understand. Finally, they begin to communicate via drawings in a notebook.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Sea Serpent suffers various misadventures. One man drowns as Kenlon and several other crewmen fall into the sea. Later, they spot a bleak grey shoreline on the horizon, even though there shouldn't be any land in more than a thousand miles. An attempt to explore the mysterious landmass causes two more crewmen to die, when they sink into quicksand.

Kenlon, who has a knack for languages, tries to learn the winged man's language and teach him English. The effort is successful enough that they can communicate. The winged man, whose name is Nemmo, informs Kenlon that the Sea Serpent has been brought a million years into the future via the strange devices Nemmo attached to the hull. It's amazing that no one aboard the submarine noticed this before Nemmo told them. You'd think they would at least notice that they have lost contact with their command and that no new orders are coming in.

The land is uninhabitable due to "water that fell from space" and created the treacherous quicksand. The winged people were genetically engineered to survive under the new conditions, as were their sworn enemies, a race of amphibious humans, while the regular human died out. The winged people live in a floating metal city in the sky, the amphibian men live in metal citadel under the sea. The two races have been at war for a long time now. Somehow, Nemmo's people managed to bring a WWII submarine into the far future. They want the Sea Serpent to destroy the citadel of their amphibian enemies, then they will return them to their own time.

Commander Jones-Gordon has no intention of helping the winged people. The US Navy will not be drawn into a private war in the far future. And besides, the only hostile act – kidnapping the Sea Serpent and her crew – was committed by the winged people.

The Sea Serpent finally reaches the island city of the winged people. Kenlon spots other craft in the water around the island. He asks Nemmo about this. Nemmo tells him that other winged people have been sent through time to bring back war machines to defeat their amphibian enemies. However, the amphibians have not been idle either and drag Commander Jones-Gordon down into the sea. Thus ends part one.

Part two begins with Kenlon, now senior officer aboard the Sea Serpent, staring at the spot where Jones-Gordon was dragged into the depths. Kenlon initially wants to go after Jones-Gordon and his kidnappers with the submarine, but quickly realises that's futile, because Commander Jones-Gordon is surely dead by now, while the amphibians are headed for their underwater city. Kenlon plans to head there as well, catch up with the kidnappers/murderers of Commander Jones-Gordon and torpedo them. However, Nemmo claims not to know the coordinates of the undersea city. Only the council of the winged people knows the exact location.

Kenlon's interrogation of Nemmo is interrupted by a delegation from one of the other ships the winged people have brought through time. This delegation consists entirely of women, who are escorting a political figure called the Sessa Clen to her wedding. Their ship comes from ten thousand years in the future. Luckily, the commander, a woman named Dorilee, speaks English that Kenlon can understand (though it is very unlikely that the English language will remain even remotely understandable even a thousand years into the future, let alone ten) and also implies that Americans are the only civilised people of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, Dorilee and her squad of Joannas are the only female characters in the story so far and they only appear partway into part two.
Kenlon is quite smitten with Dorilee, while Dorilee infodumps all over him. She explains how her own flying ship works (magnetism), gives him a rundown on the other ships the winged people abducted and also informs Kenlon that Nemmo has been in constant contact with the other winged people. Then Dorilee abruptly decides to take command of the Sea Serpent, because she believes that only a submarine can carry out the winged people's mission. Kenlon pulls his gun on Dorilee who takes him out with some paralysing crystals.

"A woman was about to capture a fully armed, fully manned United States submarine", a desperate and paralysed Kenlon muses, while at least this reader cheered Dorilee on, because she is a lot more interesting than the rather dull and bland Kenlon.

Meanwhile, Kenlon is still standing like a statue in his own control room, while musing about the humiliation he just experienced and how this will disgrace him in the eyes of the crew. He is also furious that Dorilee doesn't even seem to care about the mortal wound she dealt to Kenlon's honour, because women just cannot understand such things. At this point, my eyes rolled so hard that I almost sprained them.

But Van Vogt and his wife E. Mayne Hull are not yet done with the casual sexism. For when Dorilee, who apparently also likes infodumping to people who can't answer, informs Kenlon that they need to return to their own time quickly, for otherwise the Sessa Clen whom they are escorting to her marriage will be replaced by her sister, Kenlon muses that a woman on her way to her wedding is more tigress than human being. At this point, my view of Kenlon changed from "bland nonentity, who unfortunately happens to be the protagonist" to "sexist jerk".

By now, the second and third officer, who were both up on deck, realise what is going on. The second officer tries to retake the control room, only to fall to the paralysing crystals. Third officer Tedders, however, is manning the Sea Serpent's anti-aircraft gun and will not stand down. Dorilee now gives Kenlon a device that neutralises the paralysing effect and tell him to order Tedders to stand down. Kenlon, fearing bloodshed, does so.

Once Dorilee and her Joannas have taken over the Sea Serpent, they are eager to set off and destroy the underwater city. However, the winged people are no more willing to give her the coordinates than they were willing to give them to give them to Kenlon. For it turns out that the council of the winged people is still undecided on the plan to destroy the stronghold of their enemies. This is a problem, because the council is supposed to be omniscient. And so the council demand to see Kenlon first. They do not ask to see Dorilee, at least not now. But then, Van Vogt and Hull have been referring to the winged people as the "winged men" throughout. Apparently, sexism is still a thing one million years in the future.

Kenlon is taken to the city of the winged people and now Van Vogt and Hull finally remember that where there are winged men, there will be winged women as well. None of them get any lines – all we get are some descriptions of Kenlon ogling them, before he decides to ogle the flying city instead.

But before Kenlon gets to meet the council, he first finds his consciousness transferred into the body of a winged being. Kenlon experiences the wonders of flight and joins in with the winged people sunbathing, singing and dancing high above the clouds that now envelop the Earth. But before Kenlon can actually talk to anybody, he suddenly finds himself underwater swimming, his consciousness suddenly transferred into the body of an amphibian person. The amphibians are on a shark hunt with Kenlon along for the ride. And then, once the shark has been captured and killed, Kenlon finds himself taken to the underwater city. He notes that the amphibians are all busily working, whereas the winged people prefer to flit about, while singing and dancing. Kenlon also learns a little about the main problem facing the amphibians – more and more of their number are succumbing to the lure of the sea and deserting the city – and meets an amphibian woman. This one even gets a few lines, mostly to berate the amphibian menfolk for their fascination with the sea and to inform us that women who take to the sea can never return to the city. Whether in the air or under water, sexism is clearly alive and well in the year 999999 A.D.

This positively psychelic cover dates from 1970.

The scenes of Kenlon experiencing the joys of flying and swimming are nigh hallucinatory. In fact, it is striking how many scenes there are in golden age SFF that read like transcripts of drug trips. I always assumed the association of SFF and drugs was mainly a product of the New Wave, but it was already a thing in the 1930s and 1940s.

Just before Kenlon is returned to his own body, he witnesses several amphibians dragging the limp body of Commander Jones-Gordon through an airlock into the underwater city and announcing that he will be easy enough to revive. So Jones-Gordon is alive after all.

However, Kenlon doesn't have time to muse about this, before the council of the winged people asks him to decide which of the two humanoid species on this far future Earth – the amphibians or the winged people – should survive. For both species believe that the Earth is not big enough for both of them and are planning to destroy the other. The amphibians have the better chance, because they have powerful tractor beams that are slowly dragging the flying city into the sea. However, the winged people have Kenlon and a submarine.

There is no real reason why this weighty decision should fall to Kenlon other than that he is the protagonist and currently in command (at least in theory) of the lone vessel that can destroy the underwater city. The council of the winged people also make it very clear that they don't want an alliance with Dorilee and her all-women troop of Joannas (who actually are in command of the Sea Serpent), for only Kenlon can resolve their dilemma. Gee, I wonder why.

Once the council of the winged men have said their piece, they return Kenlon to the Sea Serpent where a furious Dorilee is waiting for him. Turns out that Kenlon has been gone for three days, not a few hours as he initially assumed. It also turns out that Dorilee did not get the amazing drug trip of flying with the winged people and swimming with the amphibians, when she was questioned by the council. Instead, she was merely taken to a room with what sounds like a primitive computer.

Dorilee is eager to attack the undersea city, so they can all return to their own times. Kenlon, however, does not want to attack the city, because that would mean killing Commander Jones-Gordon. Of course, Kenlon doesn't even particularly like the man, but he still feels dutybound to rescue him. Furthermore, Kenlon finds that he does not want to exterminate an entire species, even though his commanders are planning to do the same thing to the Japanese.

It is depressing that by the standards of Astounding Science Fiction in 1944, a character realising that genocide is bad is a step forward. After all, in Fredric Brown's "Arena", published in the same year, genocide was the solution to the protagonist's dilemma. It's also disturbing how many science fiction stories published in 1944, mainly in Astounding, but also elsewhere, feature two species so different and hostile to each other that the universe/galaxy/solar system/planet is only big enough for one of them. Yes, I know it was in the middle of World War II, but fanzines from the same era often contain musing about how science fiction can bring about a better and peaceful world for everybody, so why were the prozines so genocidal?

An interesting collage style cover from 1967.

However, Dorilee is still bound on destroying the undersea city and the amphibians. The hatches are closed and the engines start up. However, Dorilee and her Joannas have made a fatal mistake. They use the Diesel engines not the electrical motors. And the Diesel engines require so much oxygen that they quickly exhaust the entire submarine's air supply. One by one, the Joannas pass out. Kenlon, however, was lucky enough to grab an oxygen tank just in time. He disarms the Joannas, strips them nude, because they might have weapons or shields hidden in their underwear (yes, honestly, that's the reason given in the story) and locks them in the torpedo room. However, Kenlon has regained his honour and standing in the eyes of his crew and that clearly matters more than the fact that he just stripped and groped more than forty women.

No sooner has Kenlon regained control of the Sea Serpent that the amphibians return Commander Jones-Gordon. It turns out that Jones-Gordon made a deal with the amphibians. They will return the Sea Serpent to its own time, if Jones-Gordon destroys the city of the winged people, using the warheads from the torpedoes as bombs and the submarine's onboard sea plane to launch them. Kenlon wants nothing to do with this, after all he has just come to the conclusion that genocide is bad.

Luckily, Kenlon speaks the language of the winged people and Jones-Gordon does not. And so he tells the winged people to seize Jones-Gordon and himself. Then he sets course for the undersea city and fires torpedoes into the city's central computer a.k.a. "council" and the tractor beam emitter, while leaving ninety-five percent of the city intact. This way, the amphibians no longer pose a threat to the winged people.

Jones-Gordon forgives Kenlon for his mutiny and the Sea Serpent is returned to 1944 – without Nemmo and the Joannas, of course.

The striking minimalist cover of The Winged Man dates from 1967.

Short fiction rather than novels was the beating heart of the science fiction genre during the golden age. As a result, the novel category at the Retro Hugos is often full of left-field finalist. However, pickings were truly slim in 1944 for The Winged Man to make the Retro Hugo ballot. For the novel is, to put it politely, not very good.

For starters, it's much too long. There is no reason that this story needs to be novel-length. It would have worked just as well as a novella or even novelette. But as it is, The Winged Man feels padded. A large portion of the novel is being taken up by Kenlon musing about his commander, whom he dislikes because Jones-Gordon is too rigid and unimaginative, Kenlon nursing his wounded masculinity, after Dorilee takes over his ship, and Kenlon wondering whether to commit genocide and how to extract himself and his ship from the dilemma in which they find themselves. As a result, we spend an awful lot of time in the head of Kenlon, who's simply not a very likeable character. He's dull, bland and a raging sexist.

The same description could also apply to the novel as a whole. For while pulp science fiction can be many things, it rarely is boring. The Winged Man, however, is just dull. For large stretches of the story, very little happens. And even if something happens, it isn't particularly exciting. Even action scenes are dull. What little happens is also quite often confusing. There were several moments where I thought, "Wait a minute, what just happened? Did I miss something?" The pacing of the novel is simply off.

This German cover from 1967 mimics the popular war pulps of the era, but it is an accurate illustration of the story.

Submarines were a popular subject for pulp fiction from the 1930s well into the 1950s and beyond, not just in the US but in Germany as well. As a result, I have read my share of submarine adventures and none of them manage to make life and battle aboard a submarine as dull as The Winged Man. For SFF stories about submarines published in 1944 alone, "Undersea Guardians" by Ray Bradbury is much better than this turkey.

But while part I is merely dull, part II is so suffused with glaring sexism that it's hard to imagine that The Winged Man was co-written by (and in the magazine version, solely credited to) a woman, E. Mayne Hull, A.E. van Vogt's first wife. I forgive Hull and Van Vogt for not including any women in the first part, because there were no women on submarines of any nation during World War II. However, the treatment of Dorilee and her Joannas in part II is unforgivable. Yes, the idea of an all-women military unit was revolutionary in 1944 (and there are still plenty of people in the SFF genre today who have issues with the idea of women soldiers). And to be fair, Dorilee isn't particularly likeable – after all, she does commandeer the Sea Serpent after taking out her crew, though she doesn't want to kill anybody, if she doesn't have to. She is also fully willing to commit genocide, but then so is Commander Jones-Gordon.

However, Kenlon's blatant dismissal of Dorilee's motives grates. Yes, it's only a wedding, but Kenlon himself admits that he has no idea how weddings work and what they mean in the future world from whence Dorilee hails. It's well possible that the failure of the bride to appear at her wedding might mean summary execution for the bride and her retinue. It might mean that the bride's home country is bombed into submission – after all, it's clearly a political wedding. We don't know the consequences of the bride missing her wedding and neither does Kenlon. Nonetheless, he is convinced that the Sessa Clen, the woman Dorilee serves, is merely a bridezilla willing to do whatever it takes to get her perfect wedding.

The fact that Dorilee and her Joannas are defeated by their lack of knowledge about how WWII submarines work grates as well, even though the text makes it clear that the reason for their ignorance is the fact that the technology is so old that any knowledge they have about it is spotty. Nonetheless, there is an unpleasant undertone of "women are just too stupid to understand science" here, especially since oh so superior Kenlon manages to stay conscious, because he knows how his own submarine works.

Not only is the tagline on this 1980 cover wrong, since the Sea Serpent travels one million years into the future rather than thirty thousand, nothing about this cover is accurate. I assume the woman is Dorilee, even though she does not wear a bathing suit in the novel itself. And why are the men dressed like extras from Battlestar Galactica, when they would be wearing Navy uniforms?

But the most annoying thing is being treated to pages upon pages of Kenlon nursing his wounded masculinity and worrying that the crew will no longer respect him, now he has been beaten by a woman (Dude, I'm pretty sure the crew can't stand you anyway, because you're an insufferable prick). And then we get Kenlon whining that Dorilee will never understand how she has humiliated him, because she is just a woman. Never mind that Dorilee is a military commander as well and therefore Kenlon's equal and would probably understand his worries about losing the respect of his subordinates. Most likely, it simply never occurs to her that the fact that she is a woman would be a problem for Kenlon. And don't even get me started on Kenlon personally stripping every single Joanna aboard naked. But he doesn't do it because he enjoys it (yeah, I bet he doesn't), but because the Joannas might have hidden weapons or shields in their underwear. Honestly, the supposed hero of this story gropes and strips more than forty unconscious women. I cannot imagine such a scene flying anywhere in modern SFF.

All of the above could be blamed on the fact that the POV character of the novel just happens to be a sexist jerk. However, the sexism in The Winged Man is not just in Kenlon's head – no, the whole novel is suffused with casual sexism. It begins with the fact that the two species competing for dominance on the Earth of the far future are referred to as the winged men and the fishmen throughout the novel. And while we do meet females of both species, the winged women never get any lines at all and the lone amphibian woman only gets to nag the menfolk for being too enamoured with the sea. Finally, there is the fact that it is Kenlon of all people who is asked to make the final decision about the fate of the winged people and the amphibians. Not Dorilee or Commander Jones-Gordon or the Sessa Clen or any of the people aboard the other ships that have been abducted into the future, but Kenlon, whose only distinguishing qualities are that he is an annoying jerk who happens to be the protagonist.

Talking of which, I also find it extremely unlikely that a WWII submarine, even a particularly advanced one, is the mightiest weapon to be found in one million years. That's like claiming the Wilhelm Bauer, the most advanced submarine of its time (which - though still powered by both diesel engines and electrical motors - was a lot less likely to accidentally suffocate its crew than the Sea Serpent) built in the last days of WWII, was the mightiest weapon in all of creation. Yes, if you want to destroy an underwater city, a submarine is a good bet. And while the military usefulness of submarines will eventually decline – though I suspect that the aircraft carriers the Americans love so much will be gone before submarines – grabbing a nuclear submarine with nuclear warheads from a couple of decades later would have been much more effective. And yes, Van Vogt and Hull had no way of knowing this. But claiming that a WWII submarine is the most mightiest weapon of all time is extreme even for John W. Campbell's well known superiority complex.

This 1977 cover shows both the Sea Serpent and the citadel of the winged people.

So far, I have been very harsh on The Winged Man and frankly, the novel deserves it, because it really is not very good. However, there were some aspects about the story that I liked, so let's focus upon them: For starters, I like the fact that genocide is not the answer in this novel. Yes, I know that "Genocide is bad" is a low bar to clear, but there are 1944 SFF stories (as well as many later ones) which fail to clear even that low bar ("Arena", cough). I also like that Commander Jones-Gordon is initially unwilling to get involved in the conflict between the winged people and the amphibians, because it's not the US Navy's job to get involved in other people's wars. Of course, Jones-Gordon still goes fully genocidal at the end and the US would get involved in other people's wars plenty of times over the next seven decades, but by 1944 standards "Genocide is bad" and "We keep out of other people's conflicts that we neither understand nor do they have anything to do with us" are remarkably progressive statements.

Another thing I liked about The Winged Man is that the plot largely makes sense and is free of the random plot twists every 800 words or so that Van Vogt was so fond of. I suspect that this is the influence of E. Mayne Hull.

Of the many covers "The Winged Man" has had over the years, this Dutch cover from 1974 is probably my favourite.

I also liked some of the worldbuilding details such as the fact that the winged people's numbering system has a base of nine rather than ten. The descriptions of the citadels of the winged people and the amphibians respectively are suitably alien and yet make perfect sense for the beings that inhabit them. Van Vogt and Hull also at least considered the biological implications of the humanoid beings they introduce, e.g. the winged men have hollow bones to allow them to fly and the amphibians are bigger than regular humans and have gills.

However, the few good aspects don't make up for the fact that The Winged Man is a slog and simply not a good novel. If not for the fact that there are still many fans who like Van Vogt's work, I doubt it would have made the Retro Hugo ballot. Cause it's just not Hugo-worthy in my opinion (unlike Van Vogt's much better "Far Centaurus"). If it wins, I shall be very cross, especially since both Shadow Over Mars and Sirius are much better.

Retro Review: "The Children's Hour" by Lawrence O'Donnell a.k.a. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

Astounding had some good covers in 1944. This is not one of them.

"The Children's Hour" is a novelette by Lawrence O'Donnell, one of the many pen names of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. It was first published in the March 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

The protagonist of "The Children's Hour" is a soldier named Sergeant James Lessing. Lessing has a problem, for during a psychological experiment to use hypnosis to desensitize soldiers against pain, hunger and other hardship (Am I the only one who finds this slightly sinister?), Lieutenant Dyke, the psychologist running the program, noticed that three months of Lessing's life were simply missing, hidden behind an impenetrable hypnotic block. Lessing, on the other hand, does have memories of those months, memories of a perfectly mundane civilian life as an advertising executive in New York City.

Nowadays, a soldier with three months of his life missing and a hypnotic block in his mind conjures up sinister scenarios along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate. However, the novel version of The Manchurian Candidate was not published until 1959, fifteen years after "The Children's Hour". And even though "The Children's Hour" was written at the height of World War II, it is the product of a more innocent time not yet affected by Cold War paranoia. And so the novelette goes into a completely different direction.

The story catches up with Lessing as he is about to see Lieutenant Dyke for the decisive session, the one where Dyke will finally break through the barrier in Lessing's mind. Dyke hypnotises Lessing and asks him to go back to the summer of 1941.

At first Dyke sees a shadow and gets the first lines of a poem, "The Children's Hour" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem is not identified in the story itself. Kuttner and Moore obviously assumed that their readers would recognise it. And since the poem was frequently taught in American schools in the first half of the 20^th century, the average Astounding reader of 1944 probably did recognise it. I have to admit that I had to look it up, even though I do own The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and wrote a paper on "Evangeline" at university.

As a matter of fact, the story is full of literary allusions – not just to Wordsworth, but also to Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland, James Branch Cabell and H.G. Wells – that make me wonder whether a contemporary reader in 1944 was expected to recognise them all without Google at his disposal. Coincidentally, it also belies complaints from certain quarters that science fiction and fantasy used to be simple, plain good fun, but now everything is so political and literary. Because here we have an SFF story full of literary references in 1944.

But though the literary references enrich the story, "The Children's Hour" also works without them. In fact, I am now reminded of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, another work full of literary references (reading it as an adult after watching the 1985 movie when I was way too young for it, I was stunned how many references there were) that was a genuine mega-bestseller in the 1980s and was read and enjoyed by lots of people who didn't get the references at all, but just read the novel as an exciting historical mystery.

Gradually, Lessing remembers that he met someone at a drinking fountain in the park that summer. At first, he has problems recalling that person, then he gets another line of verse – this time a quote from Romeo and Juliet – and finally remembers.

The person Lessing met in the park was a woman named Clarissa. Clarissa made Lessing see the world anew, as if he were a child again, and Lessing was very much in love with her. However, there was someone standing between them. Shadowy guardians, who had snatched Clarissa away and taken Lessing's memory. Lessing also remembers that Clarissa had an aunt, an aunt who disapproved of him. However, he cannot remember what that aunt looked like or what she said to him on the last day he saw Clarissa. All he remembers is Clarissa and her tears.

Gradually, Dyke and Lessing unearth more buried memories, such as the first time when Lessing noticed something off about Clarissa, when she suddenly vanished in a vortex of pulsating concentric rings, while they were witnessing a car accident near Central Park, only to reappear a moment later.
Strange things keep happening. The next time, it's not Clarissa who vanishes, but a pavilion in Central Park, where they want to take shelter from a sudden rain shower. Due to being caught out in the rain, Clarissa develops a fever and Lessing does not see her for a few weeks. During these few weeks without Clarissa, life become dull and drained of colour to him. But then Clarissa is sufficiently recovered that Lessing can visit her again in her strange windowless apartment that is filled with mirrors.

Lessing is completely in love with Clarissa by now and they begin making marriage plans. But then, Clarissa begins to slip away. Lessing blames her aunt for keeping them apart. Then, one day he tries to visit Clarissa at her apartment, but no one answers the door, even though he can see a shadowy figure – the aunt – moving around inside. Lessing gets angry and breaks down the door, only to find the apartment empty.

And suddenly, Lessing sees Clarissa enveloped by a golden shimmer and begins to fall through a portal of mirrors, until he is suddenly somewhere else. Two men armed with strange weapons threaten him, protecting a group of women, one of whom is Clarissa. The armed men are as surprised to see Lessing as he is surprised to see them. Only Clarissa isn't surprised. She smiles at Lessing and tells him that he doesn't have to bother explaining where he came from, because they would only forget anyway. One of the guards attacks Lessing with a whip and suddenly he is back in the real world, lying flat on his face outside Clarissa's apartment. He chalks the whole episode up to bumping his head, while he tried to break down the door.

However, Lessing's adventure in the mirror world was so vivid that he plans to talk to Clarissa about it, forcing his way past her aunt by any means necessary. He comes to the apartment again, but this time the door is open and the only person at home is Clarissa, who is standing there in a shower of golden stars. Lessing, who is rather erudite, is immediately reminded of the antique myth of Danae, locked away in a tower from all men, only for Zeus to transform himself into a golden rain and impregnate her.

Lessing comes to the conclusion that the strange occurrences surrounding Clarissa must mean that she is being courted by a godlike being just like Zeus once courted Danae. Lessing also muses whether the Greek legends have a basis in experiences like his own with Clarissa. However, he cannot tell Clarissa what is going on, because she does not seem to be aware of what is happening and he has no idea how Clarissa will react, once she learns the truth. However, Lessing plans to open her eyes, before his supernatural rival comes to claim his bride, so that Clarissa can choose freely. Whatever else you think about Lessing, you have to admire his guts, considering he believes that he is about to go up against a god.

The next evening, Lessing takes Clarissa dancing at a seedy nightclub. He is determined not to get drunk, but a mix of alcohol, drugs (marihuana is namechecked) and the intoxication of love make him decide to take Clarissa away from New York City, away the aunt who keeps her imprisoned and his godlike rival. So they get into Lessing's car and drive along the Hudson River.

It's interesting that neither Lessing nor Dyke nor the authors sees anything wrong with Lessing driving, while drunk (and the story makes it very clear that he is at the very least drunk, if not high as well). Considering how strong the taboo against drunk driving and the respective laws are today, I have to admit that I found that scene jarring. Investigations reveal that New Jersey, just across the river from where "The Children's Hour" is set, had a law against drunk driving as early as 1906. The state of New York followed in 1910. So Lessing's drunken ride along the Hudson River was no more legal in 1944 than it would be today.

In the end, Lessing and Clarissa's drunken flight is for naught anyway, because the powers guiding Clarissa's life force them back via traffic jams, road closures and Lessing suddenly realising he is going the wrong way (Uhm, are you certain that's not just because you're drunk?). The golden rain appears again to envelop Clarissa and Lessing suddenly finds himself in a forest, watching a procession of sombre figures in black hooded cloaks. One of them is Clarissa, who is oddly, deliriously happy. Lessing tries to approach her, but before he can, a person in a red hooded cloak embraces her. Lessing cannot see that person's face, just a golden glow, and assumes it's his divine rival. Then the world starts spinning again and he is suddenly back in his car, double-parked (Lessing really is intent on violating traffic laws, is he?) outside Clarissa's apartment. Clarissa bids him good night and tells him to phone her in the morning.

However, it's Clarissa who calls Lessing and asks him to come at once. She seems upset and point blank asks him, if they did something wrong last night, because she had a feeling that they did, only that she cannot remember. Now Lessing tells her everything, all the strange occurrences surrounding her and that he has the feeling that someone is guiding Clarissa towards something.

Clarissa tells Lessing that she never really noticed before how she was being guarded and guided, but that she cannot unsee it now. She also tells him a fairy tale she heard from her aunt, about a princess who grew up among the blind in the woods, never opening her eyes, even though she can see, because the sun would still be too bright for her. Clarissa has no idea how the fairy tale ends, but she knows that she is the princess. She also tells Lessing that the powers have always protected her. Lessing is doubtful about their true intentions, but Clarissa insists that they are benevolent and that of course, the powers will let them get married.

But then, one of the guardians – the unseen aunt – appears and tells Clarissa quite clearly that there will be no marriage and no future with Lessing. Clarissa cries, while Lessing is paralysed as the aunt tears them apart. A voice tells Lessing that he has served his purpose and shall now forget, which he promptly does, until Dyke recovered his missing memories.

However, "The Children's Hour" is still a story published in Astounding and so Dyke now takes over to deliver the solution to the mystery, complete with the requisite technobabble, including equations. Dyke theorises that Clarissa is a young human superior. As adults, human superior are so highly developed that ordinary humans cannot even perceive them, just as Lessing could never truly see Clarissa's aunt. Meanwhile, human superior children are about as developed as ordinary human adults. And that is what Clarissa was, a human superior child come out to play in the world, a four-dimensional being in a three-dimensional world. Once she has become mature enough, she was returned to her own people, while Lessing had his memories wiped.

However, Dyke also has another, more likely theory. After all, both Lessing and Clarissa were caught in the rainstorm in Central Park. Clarissa fell ill, developed a fever and experienced delirium. But maybe Lessing fell ill as well and simply imagined all the strange things that happened afterwards.

Lessing decides to settle the question once and for all. He will go back to the apartment and pay Clarissa a visit. After all, she might be waiting for him. Dyke does not think that this is a good idea, but goes along with it. So Lessing heads for Clarissa's apartment and rings the doorbell.

The door opens and Lessing sees the mirrors, but he can no longer see Clarissa. She is an adult now, to evolved for him to even perceive. Lessing briefly grasps the truth. Clarissa is not just homo superior, but a multi-dimensional being existing in many worlds and places at once. Those were the visions of other Clarissa's in other worlds that Lessing saw. Once all of these different Clarissas have developed, they will combine to form the full, adult Clarissa. This is exactly what happened and not only can Lessing no longer even perceive Clarissa, to her he is merely a child's toy, a plaything to be put away for more adult pursuits.

The story ends with Lessing getting into a taxi (at least, he's not driving drunk or high this time) and asking the driver where to find a good nightclub. He has forgotten everything once more and this time, the memory block is complete, which is probably for the best.

This 1959 anthology credits "The Children's Hour" only to Kuttner, even though Moore likely wrote the bulk of it.

"The Children's Hour" is a very beautiful and very strange story. Not a lot happens, the bulk of this very long (likely close to the novella borderline of 17500 words) novelette consists of two men sitting in a psychologist's office, while we are treated to a long flashback of one of the two's doomed romance with a superior being. And while there is a mystery to solve, there is no huge world-threatening menace involved. Lessing was hypnotised and had part of his memories taken not for some sinister purpose to sabotage the war (and it's very clear that the story is set during WWII, even if the war never impinges on the narrative except via brief mentions of military ranks, barracks and marching soldiers), but to protect him from a truth to great for him to understand.

Even though "The Children's Hour" is a love story between an adult man and what is essentially a child, it manages not to be skeevy. For starters, Lessing has no idea that Clarissa is a child, even if she does seem childlike at times, as Dyke points out. Furthermore, Clarissa appears to Lessing as a woman of his own age. Physically, they are similarly developed, even if Clarissa will evolve and Lessing will not. Finally, there is also no indication that Lessing and Clarissa ever had sex – mostly they just walk hand in hand through the parks of New York City. Of course, there is very little in the way of sex in golden age science fiction in general and in Astounding in particular. However, in C.L. Moore's earlier Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories, it's very clear that both Northwest Smith and Jirel have sex at times, even if the scenes are vague and the sex only alluded to. There is nothing along those lines in "The Children's Hour" and I also suspect that if Lessing and Clarissa's romance had ever threatened to go beyond handholding in public parks, Clarissa's unseen guardians would have intervened – just as they did when Lessing attempted to elope with Clarissa.

I have no idea what is going on on the cover of this French Kuttner/Moore anthology. It looks like Kuttner and Moore in bed with a buddhe statue, stunned that a naked black woman has just appeared on the floor of their appartment

A lot of people have claimed that with Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's collaborations, it's difficult to tell who was responsible for which parts. And reprint anthologies and collections have frequently attributed their collaborative stories to Kuttner alone. However, I have never had any problems telling Kuttner's and Moore's contributions apart, because their solo writing styles are quite different. And the dreamlike quality that suffuses the entire story, particularly the flashback scenes of Lessing and Clarissa, is highly reminiscent of C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories of the 1930s. After all, both Jirel and Northwest Smith spent more time exploring strange worlds and having nigh psychedelic experiences than swinging swords and firing blasters, something which regularly exasperates those who prefer their SFF with a large dose of fighting action. But fighting action is not something that C.L. Moore delivers. However, she could create otherworldly landscapes and moods like few other writers of the era. At times, the story feels almost psychedelic, like a drug-fuelled dream. Steve J. Wright calls it a 1940s fairy tale in his review.

Because the rest of the story is so dreamlike, the infodump towards the end, complete with equations, sticks out like a sore thumb. I strongly suspect that Kuttner wrote that part, if only because Moore's infodumps sound very different as can be seen in "No Woman Born". I also don't think the story really needs the infodump and that it would have worked just as well, if the mystery of Clarissa's true nature had remained vague. But Astounding editor John W. Campbell liked his infodumps and since he paid well and upon acceptance, his writers obliged him.

Another anthology, which contains "The Children's Hour", even though there are no aliens in the story, nor did it appear in Analog.

Talking of which, "The Children's Hour" is yet another highly atypical Astounding story. In his review, Paul Fraser says that while he was reading "The Children's Hour", he kept wondering what this story was doing in a 1940s issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Frankly, I had the same reaction. Because while the other atypical Astounding stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project such as e.g. the City stories by Clifford D. Simak are still very much golden age science fiction stories, "The Children's Hour" doesn't feel like a story of the 1940s at all and certainly not like a science fiction story, technobabble infodump complete with equations notwithstanding.

I know that I say this a lot, but I'm very surprised that Campbell bought and published this novelette, because it is so very much not the sort of thing you'd expect to find in Astounding, even if the character who cracks the mystery is a psychologist who uncovers hidden memories, a subject Campbell had a keen interest in. However, "The Children's Hour" is very much the anti-Astounding story, if there is such a thing. Once again, the mood is bittersweet and melancholic, which is remarkably common for Astounding in the 1940s (see also the City stories or Moore's own "No Woman Born"). There is a mystery to solve here, but science and technology do not help to solve it, even if Dyke throws around some equations towards the end. Never mind that Dyke's efforts have been for naught, because Lessing has his memories wiped again at the end and most likely that pesky meddler Dyke will receive a visit from a shadowy presence as well. Nor are the humans triumphant or superior in this story. To superior multi-dimensional beings like Clarissa's "aunt", humans are little more than children, to be used to socialise and educate their own young. And yes, Dyke and Lessing refer to the adults of Clarissa's species as homo superior, a popular concept in Astounding during the golden age, which eventually found its way into the Marvel comics of the 1960s and beyond. But we have no way of knowing if they really are human, since Lessing cannot even perceive the adults of the species. And while the adult beings are not malevolent, unlike Alexander, the homo superior baby and psychopath in training from Kuttner and Moore's "When the Bough Breaks", they are simply so far above humanity that they barely show any interest in us at all, except as playthings for their kids.

Maybe "The Children's Hour" was left over from Unknown Worlds, Astounding's fantasy-focussed sister magazine, which fell victim to WWII paper rationing the year before. This might also explain why the technobabble infodump feels so tacked on, because it was retrofitted to turn into a science fiction story for Astounding.

However, if I had read "The Children's Hour" blind, I would have assumed it was either a fantasy story from an early 1930s issue of Weird Tales (and of course, Kuttner and Moore both got their start writing for the unique magazine) or a New Wave story from the 1960s. The fact that "The Children's Hour" is either fifteen years behind its time or twenty to twenty-five years ahead of it may also be the reason why the story is not particularly well known. Adventures Fantastic points out in their review that it has only been reprinted a handful of times over the past seventy-five years. It does not show up in either Moore's or Kuttner's Best of collection. Nor was it included in Isaac Asimov's and Martin H. Greenberg's anthology The Great SF Stories Vol. 6 – 1944, probably because they already included "When the Bough Breaks" and "No Woman Born" and felt that "The Children's Hour" would be one Kuttner/Moore story too many. Even though I vastly prefer "The Children's Hour" to "When the Bough Breaks" and will have a hard time deciding whether to rank "No Woman Born" or "The Children's Hour" in first place on my Retro Hugo ballot, because they're both very good, if very different stories. That said, 1944 readers seem to have liked the story, even it is highly atypical, and voted it in first place of Astounding's reader poll for the March issue.

"The Children's Hour" is a beautiful, almost dreamlike fantasy romance. I'm not sure if Retro Hugo voters will go for this story over the better known "No Woman Born", "City" or "The Big and the Little", but do I hope that it will do well, because it is story that deserves more recognition.