38 thoughts on “1943 Retrospective Hugo Award Finalists”

1. Uh … why aren’t there nominees for Best Graphic Presentation in the Retro Hugos? I mean, I literally read in excess 100 comics from that year over the past few months and I can tell you for certain that there was genuinely amazing work that deserved recognition.

   This is genuinely ludicrous if the category got omitted because there weren’t enough nominating ballots. Like … seriously.

2. Oh, “The Mimic”! I remember that creepy little tale.

3. Congrats to the finalists. I’m unfamiliar with a lot of these works.

   Also, I’m a bad fan. I didn’t realize some of those Heinlein items I’m familiar with were published under pseudonyms. I’m not even sure I was aware he had pseudonyms. ::blush::

4. Oh, yeah. Heinlein was so prolific at his peak that he had two pseudonyms he used regularly – Anson McDonald and Lyle Monroe (in addition to his real name), and a lot of his best work came out under the McDonald name.

5. Andrew: He was prolific, and if I recall from the Patterson bio he also had ideas about branding the kind of fiction that came out under his real name which led to some stories going under a pseudonym.

6. @OGH: Yes, as I recall, he used Caleb Saunders for more fantasy-tinged stuff (McDonald and Heinlein were the names that he used in Astounding just because Campbell needed his stuff and didn’t like having one author with multiple stories in one issue (if I recall correctly)).

7. Bok, Finlay and Brundage — that’ll be a tough one …

   No Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form? I’m guessing everything was just too short?

8. I’ll have to see Bambi now. Does it actually have any fantastic elements other than having the animals talk to one another?

   Contrast this with The WInd in the Willows, where the god Pan appears in one chapter.

9. And of the dramatic presentations, all but the Jungle Book were under the 90 minute cut-off point. That one is less than 20% over the cut-off point, so I presume the administrators moved it into the category that had the rest of the nominations.

10. Yeah, I couldn’t find five definitely-SFnal productions of 90 minutes or over… actually, I couldn’t think of anything in the Dramatic Presentations categories that really appealed to me, so I left them blank. (Pace Ivan Bromke, I did fill out the Graphic Story category… but, evidently, there weren’t enough people like me.)

11. Someone noted on Twitter that the glaring omission is THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C. S. Lewis. I’ll add that while I love Stapledon, DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT is hardly a work I would have expected to see nominated.

    Having only one DP category makes sense. I seem to remember a couple of years ago, one of the Short Form DPs was actually longer than one of the Long Form DPs.

12. @Kendall: not only was Heinlein so prolific that he needed to use pseudonyms, IIRC he actually lost a favorite-author ballot to one of his own pseudoynyms (1940’s Astounding — he came in 2nd to “Anson MacDonald”).

13. The decade of the 1940’s, especially the first half, was not a great time for cinematic sf. However, while science fiction would have to wait for the 1950’s to get its due in movie theaters, a few noteworthy fantasy films came out in the years immediately following World War II. (I’m really hoping they have Retro-Hugos four years from now, as I look forward to seeing It’s a Wonderful Life, A Matter of Life and Death, and La belle et la bête on the long form DP ballot.)

14. “Goldfish Bowl” is one of those stories that I haven’t read in decades, yet think about every few months, at least. I couldn’t have told you what it was called, and half-convinced myself that its title was Creation Took Eight Days. (for obvious reasons, if you’ve read it)

15. As an aside, I Married a Witch was on Turner Classic Movies just a few days ago, and I DVRed it on my computer, all unaware. Mmmmm Veronica Lake.

16. @Kevin Hogan: If I recall correctly “Creation had 8 Days” was Heinlein’s title for the story.

    P.S. And checking ISFDB I see that at least one of the foreign publications of the stories used that name (in translation).

17. “As an aside, I Married a Witch was on Turner Classic Movies just a few days ago, and I DVRed it on my computer, all unaware.”

    For those who missed it, it will be on again on May 6, and sometime in June.

18. It’s been interesting to watch the birth of the Golden Age as reflected in the Retro-Hugos. In 1938 I felt it hadn’t really started; in 1940 it definitely had (Heinlein, Asimov and Bradbury all among the finalists), but had not fully reached the world of novels. Has it done so now? The Heinlein suggests it has, but apart from that we have Macardle and Wright who seem definitely to be coming from outside the house, Smith and Stapledon who are from a previous generation, and Siodmak – I’m not sure: the story seems to be considered SF, and is so by content, but was published in a general magazine covering adventure, crime, romance and horror, and the author is mainly associated with horror.

19. And yes, the absence of graphics is weird. Various possibilities were certainly being discussed beforehand. Perhaps there were a hundred nominees each with two votes?

20. Hello! This afternoon I spent some time searching the Internet Archive and hit some pulpy pay dirt.

    I was able to track down all but one of the Retro 1943 Hugo short fiction nominees (short story, novelette, and novella) plus two of the novels, in the originally published pulp-magazine versions, at the Internet Archive site (archive.org).

    You can read each of the relevant issues of Astounding Science Fiction, Planet Stories, and Unknown Worlds onscreen, or download most of them in PDF, Kindle, or ePub formats.

    I’m new here, and not sure of the protocol. Would it be acceptable for me to post the links here, or should I e-mail the info to someone else so they can post them? Or is this information only interesting to vintage-era publishing nerds like me? 🙂

    – Carla H.

21. Carla, I did a Where To Find The 2018 Hugo Finalists Online For Free, but didn’t feel up to another huge round of work after that for a post for the 1943 Finalists. But I know that Mike would be thrilled to have you do one for that.

    If you feel up to it, you can format a post in Word, perhaps using my post as formatting guide. Or, if you want, you can e-mail what you’ve got to JJ File770 (all one word) at Gmail (dot) com, and I’ll do it for you.

22. There’s already a links post for the Retros here. I dropped a link to it into a couple of places, but apparently not here where it would have been most useful – sorry about that.

23. Response to JJ’s post:

    If you feel up to it, you can format a post in Word, perhaps using my post as formatting guide. Or, if you want, you can e-mail what you’ve got to JJ File770 (all one word) at Gmail (dot) com, and I’ll do it for you.

    Thank you, JJ! I sent you a formatted Word doc via e-mail. Since you know the File 770 community better than I do, I’ll defer to your judgment in terms of the most appropriate place to post the links.

    – Carla H.

24. Response to Mark’s comment:

    There’s already a links post for the Retros here. I dropped a link to it into a couple of places, but apparently not here where it would have been most useful – sorry about that.

    Hi Mark! I did post a comment there, but it hasn’t appeared yet. Since I’ve never posted there — or anywhere on Blogspot for that matter — it’s probably in the moderation queue.
    – Carla H.

25. Hi all,

    I’ve done a big long list of the anthologies and collections in which the short fiction can be found – Novellas here and Novelettes and Short Stories here. Hope it is useful.

26. Carla – just saw your comment. That’s very good news, and I’ll try to update my posts – if you see this sooner, can you send your links to nicholas dot whyte at gmail dot com?

    Thanks!

27. Thanks to Carla I’ve had to split my post into three – and NB I found a source for the one remaining short fiction finalist. So the fruits of our joint labours are here (Novellas and two Novels), here (Novelettes) and here (Short Stories).

28. Thank you! I’m updating my post with Carla and Nicholas’ additional finds here.

29. Thanks for all your work, Nicholas, Carla and Kat.

    BTW, I just realized that I must have read the Fritz Leiber short story finalist “The Sunken Land” at some point, because I have one of the Lankhmar collections it’s included in. Though I’ll have to reread it.

30. Margaret Brundage had exactly one cover in 1942 (WEIRD TALES, July 1942), not comparable to her work of the 1930’s, and this got her on the Pro-Artist ballot.

31. “Margaret Brundage had exactly one cover in 1942 (WEIRD TALES, July 1942), not comparable to her work of the 1930’s, and this got her on the Pro-Artist ballot.”

    As we have seen in the past, it’s all about name recognition. Clifford Simak won the Retro Hugo a few years ago for a story that was reprinted only once in a British anthology. Kelly Freas won one for Pro Artist a year in which he had one qualifying work. I think there have been instances of people who had enough nominations to make the ballot, but were not eligible at all.

32. Leo Doroschenko: Margaret Brundage had exactly one cover in 1942

    That’s the only professional publication that year of which we’re aware. But while the curators of ISFDB have certainly managed to compile an extensive historical record, it’s entirely possible that there are lesser-known publications which have been lost to time — especially given that particular point in time.

33. JJ: “[The 7/42 cover of WEIRD TALES is] the only professional publication that year of which we’re aware. But while the curators of ISFDB have certainly managed to compile an extensive historical record, it’s entirely possible that there are lesser-known publications which have been lost to time — especially given that particular point in time.”

    I checked THE ALLURING ART OF MARGARET BRUNDAGE (Vanguard Publishing, 2013) and found no mention of any other art done for f/sf publications during that year.

34. Leo Doroschenko: I checked THE ALLURING ART OF MARGARET BRUNDAGE (Vanguard Publishing, 2013) and found no mention of any other art done for f/sf publications during that year.

    Given that the expert, Brundage herself, died in 1976, what do you suppose they used as their reference list? I’ve tried finding out in Google Books, but they don’t have a preview available. The Amazon description says “Weird Tales historian Robert Weinberg, First-Fandom member / Shasta publisher Melvin Korshak, and Men’s Adventure Magazines: In Postwar America co-author George Hagenauer” were involved — but I’d lay money on ISFDB’s Weird Tales credits being complete, anyway.

35. JJ: I’m getting confused. Your first letter says “the curators of ISFDB have certainly managed to compile an extensive historical record, it’s entirely possible that there are lesser-known publications which have been lost to time — especially given that particular point in time.” So there may be some 1942 genre work of which we are not aware. Your second letter says that you’d “lay money on ISFDB’s Weird Tales credits being complete, anyway.” And neither that or the Brundage book (though it shows her non-fantastic art) mention any additional sf/ f artwork in 1942. Either way, it seems she made the short list based on one cover and her reputation for earlier covers.

    On the other hand, that same year, J. Allen St. John had five covers (and numerous interior illustrations) for AMAZING/ FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Yet he is not that well known to modern fandom so he doesn’t make the short list.

36. Leo Doroschenko: I’m getting confused. Your first letter says… Your second letter says

    Weird Tales is hardly an obscure title. I can absolutely believe that ISFDB is quite accurate with its records on that magazine.

    Sure, Brundage clearly made the list based on name recognition and/or career publications. As Evelyn has pointed out, Kelly Freas won a Retro Hugo in 2001 for a year in which he had published only one cover. Did you also post objections then?

37. JJ: Kelly Freas being retro-Hugo nominated for one cover. In 2001, I was not on-line/ didn’t have a computer but I did gripe about it to my fannish friends.

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