Nebula Award Stories 3

Nebula Awards Showcases #3

by Roger Zelazny (Editor), J.G. Ballard (Contributor), Harlan Ellison (Contributor)

Contents

7 • Introduction (Nebula Award Stories No. 3) • (1968) • essay by Roger Zelazny
9 • The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D • [Vermilion Sands] • (1967) • shortstory by J. G. Ballard
27 • Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes • (1967) • novelette by Harlan Ellison
49 • Mirror of Ice • (1967) • shortstory by Gary Wright
60 • Aye, and Gomorrah • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany (aka Aye, and Gomorrah . . .)
71 • Gonna Roll the Bones • (1967) • novelette by Fritz Leiber
95 • Behold the Man • (1966) • novella by Michael Moorcock
146 • Weyr Search • [Dragonriders of Pern] • (1967) • novella by Anne McCaffrey
204 • Afterword (Nebula Award Stories No. 3) • (1968) • essay by Roger Zelazny
206 • Nebula Awards 1967 • essay by uncredited
206 • Roll of Honour (Nebula Award Stories No. 3) • essay by uncredited
206 • 1966 Nebula Awards • essay by uncredited
207 • 1965 Nebula Awards • essay by uncredited

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American fantasy and science fiction writer known for his short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966), and the novel Lord of Light (1967).

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third annual anthology that collected the Nebula Award winning stories as voted on by the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America. The stories were published in the turbulent year of 1967. Editor Roger Zelazny (who himself had two novelettes on the ballot, as well as his novel Lord of Light), presents the three short fiction winners, as well as four of the runners-up. The short story winner was Aye, and Gomorrah... by Samuel R. Delany from Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology. Delany won over another of his own stories, Driftglass, and he also won the award for best novel that year, The Einstein Intersection. There are two short story runners-up included (which for some reason don't seem to have been on the final version of the ballot), The Cloud Sculptures of Coral-D by J.G. Ballard and Mirror of Ice by Gary Wright. (I was unfamiliar with Wright, but assume he wasn't the same guy who was the musician with Spooky Tooth.) The best novelette winner was Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber, also from Ellison's seminal anthology, which ironically won over Ellison's story Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, also included here. The winner of the best novella award was Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, and the volume finishes off with runner-up Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey, first of her beloved Pern stories. Zelazny had a rich list to pick from in the list of runners-up; it was a great year for the field.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is perhaps my favorite SF anthology of all time: pretty much solid gold. Despite the fact that I last saw a copy 40 years ago, I look at the table of contents and immediately recall every story in considerable detail. Anne McCaffrey contributes her first episode of Dragonriders; she spent most of her life writing sequels. Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man is a brilliantly provocative time-travel piece where the guy goes back to the first century A.D. to meet Jesus, and finds he has to become Him. Fritz Leiber's Gonna Roll the Bones is the best dicing-with-the-Devil story ever written. J.G. Ballard's Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D and Samuel R. Delaney's Aye, and Gomorrah are elegantly incomprehensible. Well, the New Wave was just getting started.

But my favorite was Harlan Ellison's Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes. Maggie, a beautiful, imperious call-girl with a weak heart, is in Vegas. She's just had a falling-out with her client, a minor Mob figure. He wanted her to do something that even she wasn't prepared to offer. (What was it? I'm still wondering).

"You pig, Nuncio!" she spits, and then she takes all his money as he watches helplessly (he is in love with her, there is nothing he can do). She goes down to the casino and buys a basket of silver dollars. Then she stands in front of the old-fashion silver dollar slot machine, feeding in the coins and pulling the handle and hating Nuncio and herself and her life and the whole world. Suddenly, her heart gives out, and she collapses dead on the floor. But her hatred is so strong that her lovely, evil spirit finds its way into the machine.

A few weeks later, a loser named Kostner is standing in front of the same machine. He thinks he's just blown everything he had at the blackjack table. Now, to his surprise, he puts his hand in his pocket and finds a silver dollar. He puts it in the slot and pulls the handle.

I won't tell you what happens next, except to say that Ellison does not waste his terrific intro. If you like classic SF, you should check out this book.

[notgettingenough · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading this to see whether Manny's bright 16 year old's eye or Paul Bryant's jaundiced 20 year old's was right.

Blow by blow as I plough through it, so more to come....

1) Ballard: Paul 1 Manny 0

Paul is so right. A dreary story and I fail to see what is sf about it. I hope it is true that this does not represent Ballard as his finest.

2) Ellison: Paul .5 Manny .25

I'm afraid the only reason this one perked me up was because it came after 1). Much better written, but unfortunately that is no great compliment.

3) Wilson: Paul 1 Manny -.25 (for conveniently ignoring this in his review.)

What the fuck. The printer got something wrong here. A section of Sports Illustrated smack bang in the middle of a sf book. At least that issue of SI was improved by whatever SF story was accidentally included.

Manny's in trouble so far. Will he recover??? Stay tuned.

Over a year later I pick this up again.

4) Delany: Paul .25 Manny .75

I think Paul's a bit negative on this one, I quite liked it.

5) Leiber: Paul -.50 Manny 1

I don't understand why Paul missed this one. It's a odd gambling story, stylishly written.

6) Moorcock: Paul 1 Manny 2

This deserves more enthusiasm Paul! Probably the pick of the bunch, a completely impossible story is made utterly convincing. I think I prefer it to Pullman's quite nice account of Jesus.

7) McCaffrey: Paul 2 Manny 1.5

I'm completely with Paul on this. It's fantasy getting a gig in science fiction because what? It's set on another planet? I only had to look at 3 pages to see it has all the things I hate about fantasy. Medieval period complete with dragons, scullery maids, cheese-making, castles, a map of course. Ballads - short lines and stanzas. Records. High Reaches. Bronze Rider. The Hold has a lord. Apostrophes in weird places in names like F'lar and F'nor. Groan.

On the other hand, apparently this is the first appearance of a series that went on and one and on, so I guess Manny has to get some marks for appreciating that, even though he was altogether too polite about it.

Somewhat bleary-eyed I've just done the math. A draw?! I make it 5.25 point each and I promise you this is a complete accident.

Still, overall I'm with Paul, the book has not added sufficiently to my life's reading to have made it worth while. Sorry, Manny! If only you'd given it to me about the time you read it and I was going through my Heinlein period...

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this collection of Nebula Award winning and short-listed stories but most of them didn't stand the test of time. A couple were good but most fell flat.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

As requested by Manny


J.G. Ballard. The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D.

Well, I am a fan of JG's short stories, but I could do without his Vermilion Sands stuff. This is where languorous meets comatose.

Harlan Ellison. Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.

If there is one sf author who seems to be permanently fixated at the age of 16 it's Harlan. His amplifier is always turned up to 11. My brain hurts. His stuff is obvious and flimsy most of the time, like here.

Gary Wright. Mirror of Ice.

"The Stuka is a 20km bobsleigh run, in which the sleds are powered, and the risks are high. " - a horrible subgenre - sf meets sport. No!

Samuel R. Delany. Aye, and Gomorrah.

This won the Nebula and the Hugo and is extremely 60s, all about how debauched and alternative "spacers" are. It was okay.

Michael Moorcock. Behold the Man.

Guy travels back in time to seek the truth about Jesus. Being a quondam theology student I could dig this one. Jesus as revolutionary love hippy. Yeah.

Anne McCaffrey. Weyr Search.

Fantasy - get this stuff out of SF please.


****

Overall, a pretty wretched collection.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a better than average collection of major stories by established science fiction writers. Moorcock's story was later expanded into a novel, McCaffrey's into a career.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Contains the stories:

The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D by J.G. Ballard
Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes by Harlan Ellison
Mirror of Ice by Gary Wright
Aye, and Gomorrah... by Samuel R. Delany
Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber
Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey - 2/5 - Dragons! Riders! Threads! Unfortunate Apostrophes! This is where it all started...

[Nicole (bookwyrm)]

At this point, I am just reading the Nebula- (or Hugo-) Award-Winning Stories. I will make notes on them as I read them.

Aye, and Gomorrah... by Samuel R. Delany ~ Nebula Award for best short story
A short story that on the surface deals with one possible way of getting around (one of) the dangers of space. It also has some sexual and societal implications that are still relevant today. I like it in that it makes me think, though I have no real interest in learning more about the characters presented. The characters seem to be there solely for the purpose of presenting the situation. Definitely a plot-driven story, not a character-driven one. (This was by far my favorite story of the three I read.)

Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber ~ Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novelette
I'm not a fan. Maybe because I don't know the flow of a craps table, maybe because I didn't connect with the characters, but this one was a struggle to get through. In a sense it's a morality tale, and has a bit of "religion saves the day" feel, but I didn't particularly care if the main character redeemed himself or not.

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock ~ Nebula Award for best novella
Interesting idea, though I didn't really enjoy the story. It was crafted well, and the idea behind it is a fun thought-experiment, but I didn't connect with any of the characters or the motivation.

Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey ~ Hugo Award for best novella
I've read this before, and decided not to re-read it this time. It's enjoyable, but in many ways is a product of its era. I've mostly decided that I'm going to leave a lot of McCaffrey's work as pleasant memories with no need to revisit them.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/265528.html[return][return]The cover image on my edition seems to show a reclining female figure behind a much smaller spectral cyclist, above whose head an equally spectral top hat appears to be levitating. The artist's name is unknown.[return][return]It ties into my fascination with Roger Zelazny, who had won two of five Nebula awards the previous year, and was only thirty; and as Zelazny himself writes in one of the introductions here, "Consider the fact that everything a man writes is really only a part of one big story, to be ended by the end of his writing life. Consider that, as so many have said, everything a man writes is, basically, autobiographical... I tell you these things because every writer who has ever lived is unique."[return][return]Zelazny seems to have taken the job of editing this collection seriously, and though his introductions are as mere postscripts to those of Harlan Ellison in the near-contemporaneous Dangerous Visions, they do give evidence of his commitment to the project, including lengthy quotations from Antoine de Saint-Exup

[Chloe Glynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The average of ideas in this collection I'd rate at three-stars. Ballard's sculptors are no more substantial than their clouds. Wright's cold adrenaline masculinity is something of a future's Jack London sports report. Moorcock's Christ is exhausting, a wandering through my own forty days of desert. Delaney's Nebula-crowned short story, "Aye... and Gomorrah," wins at revealing something, but I would need someone else's analysis to really get it and it might churn my stomach.

Where this book earns its four stars is the prose. Zelazny's introductions elevate these works from a collection to a community and a commentary. What a time and place to have personally known each author and spoken from a literary heart to the excellence of their works. His introduction to Harlan Ellison I found especially pointed, the rawness of autobiography is inescapable in the hard living Las Vegas of "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes." Calling out the lyric blues of Fritz Leiber, "Gonna Roll the Bones" plays out an apocalyptic-neon, desperate-glory night. Again, the ideas are "just fine" as far as sci-fi goes. It is their putting the words together that lingers, lingers.

[Perry Middlemiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthology of the Nebula short fiction winners from 1968, covering stories first published in 1967. You would be hard-pressed to get a better year of winners than those of this year. Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…” and Leiber’s “Gonna Roll the Bones” are innovative, lively and among the best short fiction from either author; Leiber also won the Hugo Award, and both were published in Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology. Ellison himself is represented by “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes”, a story nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards and which, for once with this author, matches literary pyrotechnics with story and content. Moorcock’s Behold the Man deservedly won a major award here, though probably a year late as it was originally published in 1966 in the UK. Of the others, Ballard’s “Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” and Wright’s “Mirror of Ice” are also very good, with the only average work being McCaffrey’s Weyr Search. A good year of winners which has resulted in a wonderful anthology. If you want to get an idea of where sf was at in the mid-1960s this is a good place to start. R: 4.0/5.0

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book opens with J.G. Ballard's "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D", a fine Vermilion Sands story: moody, atmospheric, gorgeously written, if slight of content. There are better stories in Ballard's Vermilion Sands collection, which is well-worth seeking out -- especially if you're new to Ballard, or to land-coral, sonic statues and the eccentric habitués of Vermilion Sands, a future seaside resort in picturesque decline.

"Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" is a solid Harlan Ellison "down & out in Las Vegas" tale: the protagonist drops his literal last dollar into a slot-machine and hits the jackpot -- three blue eyes across, instead of three cherries. Then he hits the jackpot again -- and again. Someone in there likes him... A nicely-done urban fantasy, with a nasty twist.

Then-new writer Gary Wright has faded so far from view that he doesn't even rate an entry in the current Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, but I think you'll like his "Mirror of Ice", a gripping story of future toboggan-races on suicidally-steep courses. The nameless viewpoint racer is making 'one last run', and it's a dilly. Fine straight-ahead sports-adventure writing -- hasn't aged a bit. I wonder what became of Wright?

Samuel R. Delany won the short-story Nebula for "Aye, and Gomorrah..." -- he also took home the novel award that year for The Einstein Intersection. Delany's spacers have had... unusual surgical adaptations -- "loose, swinging meat" -- and troll for Earthbound frelks -- space-groupies -- on their time off. "Gomorrah" has resonances I missed back in the 60s, but it's a fine, memorable story on any level.

"Gonna Roll the Bones" is my favorite Fritz Leiber: it's unbelievably good, maybe the best fantasy novellette ever written -- more than deserving of the 1967 Nebula it won. If you've been reading SF for awhile, you'll remember this one -- it's another gambling story, which develops into a deal with the devil. Joe Slattermill, Mr. Guts the cat, the Big Gambler, Lottie the dice girl, whose "long, skinny white-gloved arm... snaked out like an albino cobra" -- are unforgettable. What a story! The SFnal apotheosis of the American tall tale. Michael Swanwick writes that "Gonna Roll the Bones" is "a story so good it makes my teeth ache with jealousy." If you've somehow missed "Bones", well -- here's your chance, and the rest of the book is gravy. I've read this story countless times, and it gets me every time. And -- it has the best last line in the history of SF. Trust me.

I remember bouncing off Michael Moorcock's "Behold the Man" way back when, and I read it this time mostly out of a sense of duty, Nebula-winner or no. Moorcock just doesn't write to my taste -- most of the time, anyway. The plot here is simple enough: time-traveller Glogauer is stranded in Judea, 29 AD. He's rescued by John the Baptist and the Essenes, and... well, let's say he develops a serious Messiah-complex.

"Behold" is certainly well-written and researched, and has a socko finish, but I just don't care about religion -- or Mr. Glogauer, or his neurotic girlfriend. "Behold" is written in a self-consciously 'literary' style, which put me off, too. Anyway, editor Zelazny asks us to "read [Behold] very carefully, please" -- but life is short. Hell with it.

But do give it a try -- tastes differ. Anyway, who do you trust -- me, or the Nebula voters?

I must confess to being underwhelmed with Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern series, but "Weyr Seach" is where it all began, and it is interesting to see the setup of the SFnal premises for the series. Her fans will enjoy "Search" , but 'mild pleasure' is the best I can say after rereading this one.

My 2001 review: https://www.sfsite.com/09b/na112.htm

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

7 stories:

** The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D (1967) • J. G. Ballard
* Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes (1967) Harlan Ellison
** Mirror of Ice (1967) Gary Wright
**** Aye, and Gomorrah ... (1967) Samuel R. Delany
***** Gonna Roll the Bones (1967) Fritz Leiber
*** Behold the Man (1966) Michael Moorcock
**** Weyr Search (1967) Anne McCaffrey

[Karen Eichler · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were Nebula Award winners and nominees, but they are also a little weird! I think, at least with this batch from 1967, the Nebula Awards look at authors who are pushing out of the mainstream. There are seven short stories in this collection from J. G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Gary Wright, Samuel R. Delany, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Anne McCaffrey. The ones that stuck with me were Moorcock's "Behold the Man", a Biblical time traveling story; and Wright's "Mirror of Ice" because it really gives you the feeling of speed and movement and danger. I probably won't be diving back into these, which is why it's only three stars, but it does make me more interested in the authors.

[Palwascha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one isn't by Harlan Ellison as stated here but Robert Zelazny.