Re: (Nebula) Nebula Finalists 1981

On 2024-04-29, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

This week's Which Nebula Finalists Have You Read features 1981. I remember
it as a good year for SF but it's obvious I'd stopped following magazines
as voraciously as I did in the 1970s.
>
(Also, was never an F&SF fan for some reason)
>
Which 1981 Nebula Finalist Novels Have You Read?
>
Timescape by Gregory Benford
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
The Orphan by Robert Stallman
The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
>
All but the Tevis.

A good year.  The Wolfe is one of my absolute top Favorites, and the Vinge and
Benford are Favorites.  The Pohl is good (sequel to _Gateway_, a Favorite.)

I would have said I read the Tevis, but this was a time when I bought
anything I read, and the only Tevis I have on my bookshelves is the
much earlier _The Man Who Fell to Earth_ (a much better movie than book IMO.)

Which 1981 Nebula Finalist Novellas Have You Read?
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Unicorn Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas
Dangerous Games by Marta Randall
Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson
The Autopsy by Michael Shea
The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas M. Disch
There Beneath the Silky-Trees and Whelmed in Deeper Gulphs Than
Me by Avram Davidson
>
Only the Charnas (in a fix-up) and the Dickson.

The Randall in its (much) expanded form, the Dickson and the Disch
(I'm surprised you haven't read the Randall novel, James. A good book by
an early female author, from what I remember of it)

Which 1981 Nebula Finalist Novelettes Have You Read?
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The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop
Beatnik Bayou by John Varley
Ginungagap by Michael Swanwick
Strata by Edward Bryant
The Feast of Saint Janis by Michael Swanwick
The Way Station by Stephen King
>
Oddly, all of them. Albeit, I read the Swanwicks over a decade later.

Just the Varley.

Which 1981 Nebula Finalist Short Stories Have You Read?
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Grotto of the Dancing Deer by Clifford D. Simak
Secrets of the Heart by Charles L. Grant
The War Beneath the Tree by Gene Wolfe
Window by Bob Leman
>
Just the Simak and the Wolfe. I'm surprisingly well read in Wolfe,
given that I don't think of myself as a Wolfe reader.

Just the Wolfe.  I've read a lot of Wolfe, but the amount I
adequately understand is much less.

Chris