23 thoughts on “Retro Hugo Awards 1945 Finalists”

1. I like how he announced some of the Graphic Story entries (.e.,g Buck Rogers) so dramatically. 😀

   I didn’t know Manly Wade Wellman wrote comics.

   Cthulhu Mythos for Best Series is probably a strong contender.

   Is Bradbury’s “I, Rocket” title a nod to “I, Robot” or vice versa? Probably not, but it made me wonder.

2. The 2014 introduction to “I, Rocket” suggests that Bradbury may have been at least somewhat inspired by Eando Binder’s 1939 “I, Robot”?

3. Aha, thanks, @Goobergunch! Makes more sense (I didn’t even stop to think when Asimov’s story was published, BTW – probably post-1945, I dunno).

4. The Wind on the Moon, yay! I really didn’t expect this. Side effect of the small number of voters, I suppose.

5. Yay, The Wind On The Moon!!

6. Doc Savage vs. The Shadow—the epic match we’ve all been waiting for (although Captain Future is waiting in the wings)

7. Good to see that we at last have Related and Series finalists in the Retro-Hugos.

   So I keep saying ‘when will we reach the Golden Age of the novel?’, but I’ve concluded we never will; the golden age of the SF novel, as opposed to short fiction, begins about the same time as the actual Hugos, so won’t show up in the Retro-Hugos. As often, the most interesting nominees this year are coming from outside the house. I had not considered The Wind on the Moon, but yes, it deserves to be there with the others.

8. A very good ballot and I’m really happy to see Best Series and Best Related Work, even though it’s a pity there weren’t enough votes for Best Dramatic Presentation long, especially since there were eligible finalists.

   I also like to think that my Retro Hugo recommendation spreadsheet had an impact, which makes me very happy.

9. Some extremely incomplete notes about tracking down the short fiction finalists:

   I linked “I, Rocket” upthread.
   The three Simak stories are all in City and both Asimov stories are in Foundation.
   The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (Campbell) has “When the Bough Breaks”.
   The Great SF Stories 6 (Asimov/Greenberg) has “Far Centaurus”, “City”, “Arena”, “Huddling Place”, “Desertion”, “When the Bough Breaks”, “Killdozer!”, and “No Woman Born”.
   A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Vol. 1 (Boucher) has “The Children’s Hour”.
   A Treasury of Science Fiction (Conklin) has “No Woman Born”.
   The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1 (Silverberg) has “Arena” and “Huddling Place”.
   “And the Gods Laughed” doesn’t seem to have been anthologized anywhere but it’s in the big NESFA Brown collection, as well as a Wildside 99-cent megapack.

   Novella will be more difficult: “The Changeling”, “A God Named Kroo”, “Intruders from the Stars”, and “Trog” appear to have either no reprints or very obscure reprints. They’re probably on the Internet Archive’s periodicals site though. (I suspect everything here is, but I’d prefer reading them via print/ereader if possible….)

10. Thanks for making these connections!

11. “The Jewel of Bas” is in the Leigh Brackett Science Fiction Masterworks edition. Shadow Over Mars a.k.a. Nemesis from Terra is out of print. The Leigh Brackett article from Writer’s Digest is near impossible to find. I know, cause I tried.

    The Internet Archive has everything that was first published in a pulp magazine.

12. It’s nice to see Leigh Brackett in the list. Even with 21st century sensibilities, it’s hard to find women’s work from this period to nominate.

13. Robert Graves’s “The Golden Fleece”, published in the US as “Hercules, My Shipmate”, is a retelling of the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology. Quite good, actually. His 1949 novel “Seven Days in New Crete”, published in the US as “Watch the North Wind Rise”, is more what we think of as fantasy.

14. Bradbury’s I, Rocket is available for reading for free, no downloads needed, on the Amazing Stories website

15. @Lela E. Buis

    It’s nice to see Leigh Brackett in the list. Even with 21st century sensibilities, it’s hard to find women’s work from this period to nominate.

    For my Retro Science Fiction Reviews project, I reviewed 1944 SFF works by six different women writers. Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore, both of whom are nominated, as well as the somewhat more obscure Allison V. Harding, Dorothy Quick, Alice Mary Schnirring and Dorothy B. Hughes. Dorothy B. Hughes is a well known crime fiction/noir writer, though her only forray into SFF was not all that great. The Harding, Quick and Schnirring stories were good, but little known and also horror rather than science fiction.

16. @Goobergunch: I think the “And the Gods Laughed” was in some Brown collections, like “Arena” and the collection titled “And the Gods Laughed” (which is I think where I read the story).

17. Brackett’s “The Science-Fiction Field” and the Writer’s Digest issue in which it appears are in the public domain (no renewal was filed for them that I’ve found), so if anyone can get a hold of that issue and scan it in, that’s one way to get it out for people to read. (I realize that’s easier said than done at the moment as many libraries are closed.)

    Some of the other magazine issues figuring in the nominations are out of copyright for similar reasons, and some aren’t. I’ve updated my renewals information on all of the magazines mentioned in the nominations (at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html ) to note individual renewals at least as far as 1945 for all these magazines, and will be adding free online listings for Planet Stories and The Acolyte that will include the issues mentioned in the nominations. (Those will go live later today.) I haven’t yet checked the copyright status or online availability of the books.

18. How is The Shadow in any way science fiction or fantasy? I love The Shadow books by Walter Gibson and have read many of them; I’m willing to believe there are ones I haven’t read which contain SFF elements, but I’d be very surprised. The books are crime thrillers firmly set in the real world with real people (people with extraordinary skills, but nothing fantastic) and real gadgets and devices. Some of the seemingly fantastic elements are simply magician’s tricks that Gibson incorporated (he was a professional magician).
    Now, the radio series is a different matter. There, The Shadow’s power to “cloud men’s minds” is clearly a fantasy element, but that was wholly absent from the books.

19. I don’t know whether it is all thinking alike or a reflection of the small number of nominators, but everything I nominated for the Retro Hugos has made it onto the final ballot. For the contemporary ones only a couple of my entries in the dramatic presentation categories made it.

    N.B. There seems to be something awry with the links. scrolling backwards with the previous link only shows the Retro Hugos and scrolling forward with the next link only gives the Hugos.

20. Pingback: Some Thoughts on the Hugo Award Finalists, Part I: The 1945 Retro Hugo Awards | Cora Buhlert

21. I found a reasonably priced copy of the pulp fanzine/con program book in which the Leigh Brackett essay was reprinted on Amazon and bought it. Once the zine arrives, I’ll scan in the essay, so Retro Hugo voters and others can read it.

22. You are awesome Cora!

23. Thanks, Warner. I’ll send Mike the link once I put the essay up.

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