The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

Novelette by Roger Zelazny

WINNER: First Ever Nebula Award, 1965

First let me say that I love Zelazny, and I love his writing style. The most pleasurable thing about this story, and much of his work is in how it is written. All the subtle little jokes, the humor, the sarcasm, the repetition of metaphors and the willingness to take them a step farther than most writers would go. Particularly in this era of his writing, Zelazny could write a 10 page essay describing a salad and I'd probably give it a 3/5 on style alone.

But I like this one more than that hypothetical salad story, although the writing is especially good here, even for Zelazny.

Carl Davits is a baitman. This means he is hired to sail around on a ship the size of 10 football fields and bait the ends of a line shot out to catch the sort of thing you need a ship that size to catch. And they have to attach the bait once the line is already in the water, it would snap off otherwise. So he gets triple hazard pay.

The target is a huge reptile called Ichthyform Leviosaurus levianthus, or Ikky for short. The title of the story comes from a description of the biblical Leviathan by the way. And if Davits can overcome his fear, his rabbit-instincts, and his drinking problem, he might be able to redeem all his past failures by being the first to ever catch one.

But the real hazard on this fishing trip is his ex, Jean Luharich, who owns a giant cosmetics company, and the entire expedition. (The use of the monster hunt to sell cosmetics is a pretty funny running theme.) They both remain attracted to each other, but antagonistic and I can't help but wonder if their no doubt explosive breakup was related to the same fear which destroyed the other aspects of Davits' life.

I love the way Carl's attraction to Jean is described throughout. He likes the shape of her knees, her diving suit is tight enough it makes him want to look away... and look back again. I should give an example of one of my favorite descriptions before I wrap this up, so here is a poetic-and-then-backhanded description of Jean:

Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in nature, fine teeth.

And later:

She shook her end of the rainbow.

Anyway, I love the writing, I quite like the character development and setting, and things actually happen in this story. But it isn't Zelazny's best. 4.5 out of 5 baitmen never manage to keep something they catch.

2009 Nebula Award Nominees

Short Story:

Spar by Kij Johnson: 4

Bridesicle by Will McIntosh: 4

Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela by Saladin Ahmed: 3.5

Going Deep by James Patrick Kelly: 3

Non-Zero Probabilities by N.K. Jemisin: 1.5

I Remember the Future by Michael A. Burstein: SHUNNED

Novelette:

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster: 5

The Gambler by Paolo Bacigalupi: 4.5

A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky: 4.5

Divining Light by Ted Kosmatka: 4

I Needs Must Part, The Policeman Said by Richard Bowes: 3

Vinegar Peace, or the Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage by Michael Bishop: 1

Novella:

The God Engines by John Scalzi: 4.5

Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow: 4.5

Sublimation Angels by Jason Sanford: 3.5

Arkfall by Carolyn Ives Gilman: 3.5

Act One by Nancy Kress: 3

The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker: Impossible to get for under $100

All stories ranked in order of my preference. Winners in bold. In cases where two stories had the same score, I preferred the one higher on the list. But my general guideline is that I'd be happy with anything that scored 4 or higher winning a Nebula, and anything 3.5 or lower winning would be a disappointment. While I would vote for Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest, I would be perfectly content with the awards process to see Divining Light win.

In particular, I hugely prefer Spar to Bridsicle in the short story category, just barely not enough for different ratings, I prefer The Gambler over Memory of Wind significantly, although Sinner, Baker, ... makes that decision moot, but God Engines and Shambling are very close in the Novella category. I have decided I prefer Scalzi in this case, but only by a hair, and on average I'm a bigger fan of James Morrow than John Scalzi.

Turns out I pretty much called them, with the exception of Novellas where I was unable to even read the winning story. I'd love to see the voting numbers for runners up placing and how close I was on the runners up.

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast

Novelette by Eugie Foster

WINNER: 2009 Nebula Award

Originally Published in Interzone #220

Read for Escape Pod by Lawrence Santoro

Text free online at Apex Books

Starts off as a bizarre fantasy setting that leaves you with a bit of confusion about how gender works in this society, then moves into a unique variation on dystopian SF before an absolutely perfect, shocking, ending. The setting in itself is enough to maintain interest and just exploring that and the implication of the masks would be plenty interesting. The expected musing on identity is present and better handled than typical of a story about masks, and most importantly, not the entire point of the story. And I just can't get over how much I love the ending.

Revealing much of anything would ruin things, but the story is about a society where citizens change masks each day, and with the masks change their entire personalities and lives. They live as the masks. There was some debate online over whether the characters were human or not. I take the minority position that they are in fact human. Given the level of engineering implied by the story (medical, neurological and technological), I have no trouble believing that the obvious changes from our current biology and psychology would be possible to engineer into the species and that the history we get in the story indicates a society that might do such a thing. By Occam's Razor and the lack of anything indicating otherwise I assume human, and I just like the implications of the story even better given that assumption.

I keep wanting to get away from talking about the narrators of podcast versions of stories, especially when dealing with things like the Nebulas where not all nominees were podcast and I'm comparing them. But Mr. Santoro did an amazing job with the narration in this, and properly I should be calling it voice acting. The story doesn't really need anything to be added to it by the reader, but Santoro does it anyway. He expresses anger, fear, lust, confusion and switches from one emotion to another as easily as changing a mask. Particularly notable: he makes great use of stutters in the speech of the main character. Hesitations and repeats covey much more than you'd think.

This story hit me hard even on the third consecutive re-read, and I've loaned the CD I burned of the podcast to several friends. I can't recommend it highly enough. 5 masks out of 5.

Spar

Short Story by Kij Johnson

WINNER: 2009 Nebula Award

Published in Clarkesworld

Podcast by Kate Baker

Vulgar, horrible, beautiful. An astronaut crashes into an alien ship. It rescues her. But it is a tiny ship and the alien is amoeboid. So they have constant sex with varying degrees of consent until they are rescued and can stop occupying the same space. The whole terrifying thing is a metaphor for a bad relationship, or maybe she just projects her feelings for her boyfriend who left her onto the alien. Maybe it isn't even intelligent. It is her sex toy/houseplant, and she is its. By the time they ever get anywhere, the thing will be her whole world.

This is like reading a detailed account of psychological breakdown under torture. But I liked it. The language was vivid and the horror of being in such a close space, with no contact, no communication, and this thing was very well done. And I love the title. 4 Ins out of 5.