Retro-Hugo Reading (Possibly First of a Series)

Someone who ought to be a trustworthy source tells me that Loncon 3, the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention, will sponsor Retro-Hugo Awards.

And what, you may ask, is a “Retro-Hugo”? (If you know, skip ahead a few paragraphs.)

The Hugo Awards are what SF fans like to think of as their equivalent of the Oscars, though chosen by popular vote of the members of the Worldcon rather than by professionals. (The Nebulas fill the latter niche.)

The Hugos originated in 1953 and have been awarded at every Worldcon since 1955. The Retro-Hugos, invented in 1996 by L.A. Con III, are “what-ifs”. What if Hugos had been part of every World Science Fiction Convention from the beginning? A Worldcon may sponsor them on the 50th, 75th or 100th anniversary of a prior Worldcon that didn’t. Loncon will take place 75 years after the very first Worldcon, held in New York City in 1939. Hence, it is eligible to present the 1939 Retro-Hugos, honoring work published in the preceding year, 1938.

Some pedantic fans dislike the Retro-Hugos, and it’s true that votes cast three-quarters of a century after the fact don’t tell us much about what the hypothetical earlier electorate would have selected. Still, it’s a good gimmick for promoting interest in non-contemporary science fiction and fantasy, as well as a distraction from the Fiscal Cliff.

I’m going to try, then (without promising), to comment on some of the works that will be eligible for the awards in London.

For Best Novel, there is an obvious and probably overwhelming favorite: C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. I can’t imagine that any other work will have a chance at my first place vote, but it wasn’t the only book published in 1938.

One little known but worthy title from that year is At Midnight on the 31st of March by Josephine Young Case. It takes the form of a narrative poem in blank verse, whose theme calls to mind S. M. Stirling. In the middle of a March night, in an unspecified but 1930’s flavored year, the world vanishes from around a hamlet in upstate New York. Roads and towns beyond its boundaries are replaced by unpopulated wilderness, leaving its couple of hundred citizens as the only survivors, so far as they know, of a mysterious catastrophe.

During the next twelve months, the inhabitants of Saugersville labor to survive. The author shows us determination and ingenuity, mixed with flashes of folly, misfortune and despair. To some extent, the poem is a paean to the small town America in which Josephine Young grew up, possibly enhanced by the fact that she didn’t remain there. Her father became chairman of General Electric, and her husband president of Colgate University. She herself was for many years a trustee of Skidmore College.

We never learn what caused Saugersville to separate from the rest of the world. Was it hurled back (or forward) in time? Sideslipped into a parallel universe? Enchanted like Brigadoon? Kidnapped by aliens and deposited on a replica Earth? Spared from the magical destruction of the rest of mankind? And, as the clock strikes midnight on March 31st one year later, one is left to wonder whether the town’s exile will continue or be brought to an end as enigmatic as its beginning.

Blank verse is a rare medium for SF or, since the 19th Century, any other fiction (though there is the example of Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest). Some readers will be uncomfortable with the form, but the lines flow smoothly and without pretense. There is no bombast or sententiousness. When the characters reflect on their circumstances, their thoughts are homely but capable of wider application.

What will become of us? We seem to be
The only human beings left alive.
If there are ever going to be again
Races of men, and cities, governments, –
At least upon this continent, like us,
Americans, – we are their fathers now,
And they depend on us and what we bring.

Mrs. Case undertook no further ventures into fantasy or science fiction. Her other published writings include a novel set in North Africa during World War II the war against the Barbary Pirates [I copied someone else’s mistake], a novella about college life, a biography of her father, and a poetry collection. There is no sign that she was influenced by, or ever encountered, the contemporary parallel to her story, Murray Leinster’s “Sidewise in Time”, or any similar yarn. She is, then, an instance of a non-genre writer who stumbles into our field, and none the worse for that.