VECTOR 60 Journal of the BSFA ; June 1972 oonTenTS The British Science Fiction Association Chairman John Brunner Treasurer: Mrs G.T .Adams 54 Cobden Road Bitterne Park Lead-In 3 Southampton S02 4FT Through A Glass Darkly Publicity/ Roger G.Peyton ...... John Brunner 5 Advertising 131 Gillhurst Road Harborne Science Fiction and the Cinema Birmingham Bl7 8PG ..... Philip Strick 13 Membership Mrs E. A. Vai ton Book Reviews 16 Secretary 25 Yewdale Crescent Chester Song at Twilight, and The Coventry CV2 2FF Fannish Inquisition ’larks. ..... Peter Roberts 21 Company Grahame R. Poole Secretary 23 Russet Rd The Frenzied Living Thing Cheltenham ....Bruce Gillespie 25 Glos. GL51 7LN BSFA News 29 Vector costs 30p. There are no sub­ Edward John Carnell 1919-1972 scriptions in the U.K.; however, .... Harry Harrison membership of the BSFA costs £1.50 Dan Morgan per annum. Ted Tubb Outside the U.K. subscription rates Brian Aldiss 30 are: The Mail Response (letters) 36 U.S.A. & Canada: Single copy 60p; 10 issues ^5»5° Australia: Single copy 60/; 10 issues /A5.5O VECTOR is the official journal of the British Science Fiction (Australian agent: Bruce Gillespie Association. P0 Box 5195AA Melbourne Editors Malcolm Edwards Victoria 3001 75A Harrow View Australia) Harrow All other countries at equivalent rates. Middx HA1 1RF News Editor: Archie Mercer 21 Trenethick Parc Vector 60, June 1972. Helston Copyright (C) Malcolm Edwards, 1972 Cornwall Of the novels, only The Lathe of Heaven has so far appeared in this LEAD-IN country (Gollancz); all the others are available in imported US paper­ back editions with the exception of Margaret and _I, which I've never heard of. Kany of the shorter nieces will of course appear in the AWARD PIKE annual anthology, which will be edited by Lloyd Biggie. Kosinski's You may have seen them listed, else­ Being There is also available, where by now, but on the assumption published by The Bodley Head. that many of you -.-ill not have, here arc the results of the 1971 Nebula The Hugo list is somewhat diff­ Awards, and the final nominees for erent, as follows: the Hugos. First the Nebulae: Novel Novel Dragonquest — Anne McCaffrey 1. A TIKE OF CHANGES — Robert Silver- Jack of Shadows — Roger Zelazny berg Lathe of Heaven — Ursula Le Guin A Time of Changes — Robert Silverberg 2. The Lathe Of Heaven — Ursula K. To Your Scattered Bodies Go — Le Guin Philip Jose Farmer 3. The Devil is Dead — R.A.Lafferty Novella 4. Margaret and I — Kate Vilhelm 5• The Byworlder — Foul Anderson Dread Empire — John Brunner 6. Half Fast Human — T.J.Bass Fourth Profession — Larry Niven Meeting with Medusa — Arthur Clarke Novella Queen of Air and Darkness — Poul Anderson 1. THE MISSING LIAN — Katherine Special Kind of Morning — Gardner McLean Dozois 2. The Infinity Box — Kate Wilhelm Short Story 3. Being There — Jerzy Kosinski 4. The God House — Keith Roberts All the Last Wars at Once — Geo. 5. The Plastic Abyss — Kate Vilhelm Alec Effinger Autumn Land — Clifford Simak Novelette Bear with a Knot in his Tail — Stephen Tall 1. QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS — Poul Inconstant Moon — Larry Niven Anderson Sky — R.A.Lafferty Vaster than Empires and More Slow — 2. Mount Charity — Edgar Pungborn Ursula K.Le Guin 3. Poor Nan, Beggar Man — Joanna Russ Once more many, if not most, of 4. Special Kind of Morning — the nominees in the short fiction Gardner Lozois categories of both awards come from 4. The Encounter — Kate Vilhelm the original anthologies — Orbit, Quark, New Dimensions, Universe, Short Story Protostars — rather than from the magazines. Robert Silverberg's 1. GOOD KLwS FROM THE VATICAN — The u'orld Inside also made the final Robert oilverberg Hugo, ballot for best novel, but was 2. The Last Ghost — Stephen Goldin ’withdrawn by the author. It's nice to see Silverberg winning a Nebula 3• Horse of Air — Gardner Dozois for A Time of Changes, though it 4. Heathen God — George Zebrouski isn't one of his best novels, after 3 having been runner-up in that cate­ fame). No doubt we'll be seeing the gory in 1967, 1968 and 1970, and film in London in due course. It 4th in 1969. SF's answer to Leeds may be a lot longer before we get United I the Russian film of Solaris, direct­ ed by Tarkovsky from the novel by It's probably not too late if you Stanislaw Lem (who, you may remem­ want to have your say in the dispos­ ber, was mentioned in passing in ition of the Hugos to join the LACon. Vector 59). The film doesn't seem UK supporting membership used to to have gone down too well with cost £2.00 — I assume it still does some of the English critics, who — for which you get all the prog­ found it slow, not to say boring. ress reports, plus the programme book, plus the final report which Others were much more impressed, and from the reviews it would appear they swear they're going to produce this year (the same oath has been that the film follows the book reas- onably faithfully, not least in dem­ sworn in the past by other Worldcon anding an effort from the reader/ committees without ever coming to viewer. I look forward very much to anything; still, let's be optimist­ seeing it, but dread the possibility ic and say that it would be a good that someone will seize upon it as thing to have if it comes off), plus the Russian 2001 and promote it as a vote for the Hugo. If you're in­ such, complete with the usual awful terested, you can get details from dubbed American dialogue. the convention's trusty U.K. agent Peter Roberts (87 Rest Town Lane, Bristol BS4 5DZ). If you have a club or society to keep amused, or even if you just like to show films to yourself in the privacy of your own home, a series of films An event which sounds well worth about sf is now available from attending is Speculation III, the Visual Programme Systems Ltd (send third annual one-day conference on enquiries to 21 Great Titohfield St., sf, which takes place at the London W1P 7 AD). There are 5 films University of Birmingham on in the series, all in 16mm and Saturday 24th June, starting at colour, running between 20 and 30 10 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m. You minutes. Poul Anderson discusses should find a flyer advertising plot; Forry Ackerman talks about the conference somewhere in with films; Asimov on the history of sf; this issue. If you can't attend, Harlan Ellison conducting a seminar well, some of the proceedings may on new directions in sf; a John U. appear in a future Vector. But Campbell working lunch, with Harry that isn't settled yet. Admission Harrison and Gordon Dickson. All price is 70p; full-time students of these can be borrowed, at about and pensioners 35p« I was intend­ £5 a throw. ing to try and get in half-price as one of the former (after all, I will be at - college full time next year); locking in the mirror Of course, Vector always needs lately, though, perhaps I'd stand material of all kinds — articles, more chance of passing myself off reviews, that sort of thing — as one of the latter. but one thing I'm particularly short of at present is artwork. Dave Rowe and Andrew Etephenson have kindly provided some for this issue, at rather short notice, but more is needed. So if you do any of that kind of thing, please do Some success at the Cannes Film send some in. Two restrictions: Festival for sf films, I notice. The it must be black-on-white (or v.v.) Jury Prize went to the American film and it must bo done to a full-page of Slaughterhouse Five, directed by size of A4 (tho magazine being photo­ George Roy Hill (of Butch Cassidy graphically reduced from that size). 4 Through a Glass Darkly jonn Brunner Science fiction, it seems to me, is like battle on horseback and inspiring them a mirror — a distorting mirror, admitt­ to rout the enemy before the gates of edly, yet one which like all mirrors re­ Vienna. His navy consists of sailing flects what is set before it: our hopes ships, built of wood. The anonymous and fears, our aspirations and our author seemingly could not conceive of doubts. any major change in the type of warfare he was accustomed to. Although, ostensibly, it deals with the future, when I am writing I am al­ Yet it's highly likely that he may ways conscious of the fact that I am have lived long enough to hear about thinking in the present and by the time Montgolfier's hot-air balloon and even my reader sees what I have written it of Charles's hydrogen balloon, which will belong to his past. Already, in opened up the third dimension to man­ the twenty years or so I've been writing kind. SF, I have seen many, many of my imagin­ There followed the perfection of the ary futures overtaken by events, so that steam-engine, the development of rail­ they belong neither to the future nor to ways, the invention of the electric the past, but to a limbo of unrealisable telegraph... All of a sudden, new dev­ possibilities. ices wTere appearing so thick and fast Yet the commonest raw material for SF that it was no longer tenable to picture is speculation about what's to come, and the future as essentially an unaltered here I am confining myself to that as­ extension of the present.