Hugo Cinema Club: 1960 Gets In The Zone

This blog post is the third in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

Rod Serling believed
that his work would be
forgotten. Six decades
later, it most certainly
has not. 
(Image via NYTimes)

There is a long and storied tradition of the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation being presented in absentia. In fact, the winner being in attendance for the ceremony has by and large been the exception, rather than the rule.

In 1960, for example, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling seems to have been mostly unaware of the award until some two weeks later when a delegation of California-based fans who had just returned from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania visited the CBS offices to hand him a three-pound chrome rocketship on September 22.

The fans — including Bjo and John Trimble, Rick Sneary and Forrest J. Ackerman — were greeted warmly by the television legend, who had also earned his fourth Emmy that summer.

“[Serling] seemed sort of interested and taken by the idea,” Sneary wrote of the award presentation. “But he did not seem at all aware of fandom.”

The show had come close to cancellation just a few months earlier, so the critical praise, the multiple awards, and the resulting second season came as a vindication to the 35-year-old writer-producer.

Interviewed a decade later at Ithaca College about his preoccupations as a writer, Rod Serling talked about his “hunger to be young again, a desperate yearning to go back to where I came from.” This theme was overwhelmingly evident in his Hugo-winning first season of The Twilight Zone.

Whether it’s Gig Young walking through time to visit his childhood in “Walking Distance” (S1E5), or Ida Lupino obsessing over the movies of her youth in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (S1E4), there is an undercurrent of nostalgia that pervades the work.

But interestingly, that nostalgia exists as a counterpoint to the modernity of the series. Watching The Twilight Zone alongside the other four works on that year’s Hugo shortlist, it becomes increasingly clear how far ahead of his time Twilight Zone-creator Rod Serling was. The scripts have a sprightly pace, they’re elegantly constructed parables with very little wasted time, and usually have satisfying narrative arcs. Comparing these episodes to those of Men Into Space (the other full TV season on the ballot) it feels hard to believe that the shows were airing in the same decade, let alone the same year.

There were only 12 episodes of Twilight Zone that were aired in 1959, and therefore eligible for

"Time Enough At Last," possibly
the most iconic episode of the
original Twilight Zone aired
on Nov. 20, 1959. 
(Image via shelf-awareness.com)

consideration in 1960. What is revelatory is realizing how many of those first twelve episodes of Twilight Zone are classics that are well-remembered today. Right from the pilot episode “Where Is Everybody”, the show plays with perception and keeps the viewer off balance. The very next episode, you’ve got a first-rate performance by Ed Wynn in a moralistic parable “One For The Angels” (S1E2) that regularly appears on lists of the great Twilight Zone episodes. Unforgettably, “Time Enough At Last” (S1E8) casts a long enough shadow over pop culture that it has been referenced by Modern Family, Powerpuff Girls, Walking Dead, Family Guy, and multiple times on the Simpsons. Previous Hugo-winner Richard Matheson's deft touch is evident on several of these. 

A few episodes are duds such as “The Lonely” (S1E7), and given the fact that the series was airing in the 1950s, there is a bit too much focus on heteronormative white male lead characters. The Twilight Zone is far from perfect, but it’s clearly the best work on the ballot in 1959.

Other shortlisted works

Allowed to nominate television programs for the first time, Hugo nominators almost entirely ignored the big screen, creating a shortlist with two full seasons, two individual episodes, and one theatrically released movie.

Of the other Hugo-shortlisted works, The World, The Flesh, And The Devil is the stand-out. A post-

Harry Belafonte is objectively
incredible in The World, The
Flesh & The Devil. 
(Image via NostalgiaCentral)

apocalyptic film terrific cast, the movie is notable for having a surprisingly progressive subtext on race. The black protagonist Ralph Burton (played by Harry Belafonte) survives a nuclear attack, and eventually ends up in a violent love triangle with a white man and white woman. The ending — which seems to indicate that they’ve resolved their differences, and are forming a polyamorous triad — is especially surprising considering the movie is seven decades old. The acting is stellar. It’s worth noting that this may be the first Hugo-shortlisted work with a non-white human protagonist.

The full first season of the short-lived TV show Men Into Space made its only appearance on the ballot. Given that it aired two years before Yuri Gagarin made his trip into orbit, the series gets a surprisingly large amount right about spaceflight, including the fact that it’s often very boring. Every time the writers of Men Into Space have a choice between telling an interesting story or providing stilted explanations of engineering, they opt for the latter. Although the series is deeply propagandistic (the end credits seem to list the involvement of every U.S. military office involved in spaceflight) it is refreshingly conciliatory towards the Soviet space program. Several major plot points involve co-operation with the Russians for the greater good of humanity. But by-and-large the series is of only historical interest, rather than something any of us would recommend to modern viewers looking for entertainment.

Murder and the Android, a television movie based on Alfred Bester’s Fondly Farenheit, has the distinction of being the most inaccessible of all professionally released Hugo-shortlisted works. The only extant copy resides in Los Angeles at the Paley Centre For Media, and for reasons ascribed to copyright (and perhaps more accurately copyright chill related to fair use) can only be viewed by those visiting the centre in person. Because of this, it is the one dramatic presentation that the authors of this blog have not watched. But critics of the time were extremely impressed by it, with Frederick Pohl describing it as “almost the only first-rate television play on a science fiction theme.” Perhaps one day, when its copyright term has finally expired, it will become widely available again.

Finally, the ballot included a TV movie adaptation of Henry James’ Turn Of The Screw. Although it was lauded at the time in the mainstream press, and featured Ingrid Bergman in the lead role, for the most part it feels listless and lifeless. Several scenes are melodramatic to the point of being excruciating to watch, but this may be a result of changing attitudes towards more naturalistic acting in the seven decades since the release of the movie. Still, we are glad that Turn Of The Screw didn’t win the Hugo.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would be hard to argue that Hugo voters got it wrong with Best Dramatic Presentation in 1960. The Twilight Zone has the most enduring value work on the shortlist, and it isn’t even close.

Addendum On The Evolving Hugo Rules

The Hugo Banquet at Pittcon.
(Image via Calisphere)

When The Twilight Zone won its first Hugo in 1960, the Hugo Awards remained informal in organization and format. Categories were ad-hoc, the physical trophy had yet to be standardized, nominations and voting eligibility were inconsistent. 

Late at night on September 4, after the Hugo Awards banquet in the grand ballroom of the Penn-Sheraton Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a WSFS business meeting run by L. Sprague de Camp oversaw what is possibly the most significant overhaul of the Hugo Awards that ever occurred. The rocketship trophy that Ben Jackson had designed became the permanent standard, eligibility for nominating and voting on the Hugos became officially linked to membership in the Worldcon, and a committee led by Dirce Archer was struck to establish permanent awards categories.

Prior to 1960, there had never been a category called “Best Dramatic Presentation.” The previous two occasions on which dramatic works had been honoured, they’d been honoured with Hugos for “Best SF or Fantasy Movie” or “Outstanding Movie,” and the categories explicitly excluded television programs. With the standardization of categories later that year, the name “Best Dramatic Presentation” was here to stay.

In many ways, the 1960 Hugos were the last of the early Hugos, with a new chapter for the awards starting in 1961.

The Award For Best Award

By our count, there are currently somewhat in excess of 50 different awards given out regularly every year

What makes people pay attention to
the Hugo Awards? History, process,
& focus. (Photo by Olav Rokne)

for science fiction and fantasy fiction, and another 60 or so defunct awards that were at some point handed out annually. These range from broad-based awards intended to showcase popular works, to regional and national awards, to awards for narrow niches in the genre, to those dedicated to advancing a specific ideology within genre fiction.

There are in fact enough award systems to warrant the effort of analysis to help decide which awards are worth paying attention to. Of course, dichotomous and divisive “success or failure” judgments are less useful than comparing how they’re organized and speculating about what might contribute to a robust and respected award. Examining the growing pains of recently created awards and thinking about why several smaller awards have managed to establish long-term relevance can also be helpful.

In our opinion, there are several major factors that can contribute to an awards system being perceived as having legitimacy: a track record of recognizing works that are broadly accepted as having enduring value; a consistent democratic and transparent process with accountability checks; and having a differentiated mandate that serves some segment of fandom.

The Weight of History

While subjecting awards to a ranking is, well, subjective, Hugo-winning fan writer Mike Glyer made a valiant effort to crowdsource a ranking of the top genre awards last year (though two of the awards listed have since changed their names). This gave fans a way to weigh in on which awards they felt were the most prestigious.

With slight variations, Glyer’s list falls roughly into chronological order by the date of these awards being established. The Hugos are at the top of the list, and that's probably in part because they are old, and have had the time to build a community and recognize more works that people love. In contrast, the Arthur C. Clarke Award jury never had an opportunity to hand out a trophy to the novel Dune.

Over time repetition becomes tradition, and tradition accrues the patina of respectability. However, reading fanzines and Worldcon publications from when the Hugos began in the mid-1950s, one gets a sense that the award did not engender much respect until later — many convention reports of the day limit coverage of the awards to statements such as “Some people won some awards.” In 1955, fan Wallace Weber describes the awards as the “low point of the convention.”

The Power of Process

The lack of respect shown to the Hugos during their early years may have to do with the inconsistent and ad hoc process by which the award was organized. Although always based on a public vote, the rules by which that vote took place varied from year to year, the categories on the ballot seemed to change randomly, and even the eligibility dates were wildly inconsistent.

Although it would be unfair to hold Hugo Awards of the 1950s to the same standards of process as modern awards, examining their stumbles, and how the process has evolved can be instructive.

The much-lamented presentation of the 1955 Hugo for best novel to Mark Clifton and Frank Reily’s

They'd Rather Be Right (AKA
The Forever Machine) would be
unlikely to win under modern
Hugo Awards balloting.
(Image via Wikipedia) 

They’d Rather Be Right actually points to the problems posed by a poorly engineered awards process. At that time, Hugo votes were cast via a write-in ballot and one-stage system. Thus, it was relatively easy for the award to go to a book that was loved by a small-but-enthusiastic group of fans, and to ignore the mainstream opinion. 

The creation of the WSFS constitution in 1963, and the subsequent gradual refinement of a relatively transparent awards voting system that balances participatory engagement with accountability has led to the Hugo process becoming one of the most robust. Although there have been a handful of attempts to subvert the award (such as the 1989 ballot-stuffing incident), these have been largely unsuccessful, which speaks to the quality of the process, and the dedication of WSFS business meeting participants.

Similarly, other recognizable awards have well-defined and robust procedures for selecting winners. The Nebulas, the Locus Award, the Clarke Award, the BSFA Award, are all open and consistent in their process; which engenders trust in the system among those paying attention.

There is a long tradition of inconsistent and ad-hoc processes in awards that have since faded from memory. It will be interesting to see if current attempts to launch new major awards will learn from or be plagued by these same errors of process. In particular, strong communication and clear focus are critical to establishing a long-running award.

Specific Focus

One of the reasons for the Hugo Awards’ survival through several years in which the process was irregular, and the award-winners were inconsistent, may have been that they had a specific mandate that was un-served by other contemporaneous literary awards: they were at the time the only game in town when it came to science fiction awards. Newer awards do not have that luxury; unless they are in some

It seems unlikely that a work 
like The Unincorporated Man
would gain much attention 
from mainstream awards. 
But the Prometheus Award
appeals to a specific niche. 
(Image via Amazon)

way different from the Hugos and Nebulas, they will likely continue to be compared unfavorably to the more established awards.

Perhaps proving the point, several awards have succeeded in part by finding their niche. For more than four decades, the Libertarian Futurist Society has recognized achievement in science fiction (and occasionally fantasy) that conforms to their worldview with the Prometheus Award. Similarly, the Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree) has an almost three-decade history of recognizing works of science fiction that explore an understanding of gender.

These may be narrow, and socio-political, categories, but the fact that the organizers and juries are up-front about their purpose helps them build a community willing to ensure sustainability.

The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall is an excellent book, but appealed to too niche an audience to get Hugo or Nebula consideration. By recognizing The Carhullan Army, the Otherwise Award fulfilled a purpose by helping the book find new audiences.

When starting a new award for science fiction or fantasy, members of the general fannish public will always wonder “why should I pay attention to this award, rather than to the more established awards?” Having a clear mandate helps answer this existential question.

Doing it well

An example of a new award that seems to have been set up for long-term success can be found in the IGNYTE Award. The award was founded in 2020 by editors of FIYAH Magazine to “celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy.” Between this statement and FIYAH Magazine’s mission to promote works by BIPOC creators, the award has a relatively clear mandate (and one that has historically been underserved by existing awards).

Additionally, the award founders provided a clear description of the selection process: a 15-person jury to create a short-list, followed by public voting. Given that this award has been around for less than a year, it’s impossible to say whether that process will be robust and consistent, but they have clearly put thought into the process, and how it will fulfill the award’s mandate.

Conclusion

All awards systems have their structural biases, and the collective biases of the people making the selections. This is unavoidable and obvious in all areas of creative output.

Awards systems are by their very nature political; it is an expression of power dynamics to elevate one work over another, even when those deciding what gets elevated are doing so in good faith. It is therefore important to recognize the difference between suggesting that an award “got it wrong” with a selection, and suggesting that the entire awards system is invalid.

It is easy to find several examples through the years of reactionary awards systems that were created in protest of the decision made by more prominent awards. When they’re created with integrity and honesty about the political motivations, more new awards can add a lot of value to the evolving conversation about genre works.

But when the creators of an award offer little more than a vague declaration that the mainstream awards “are broken,” one has to question the motivation.

The Edges Of A Genre

When Arthur C. Clarke observed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he highlighted a fundamental malaise of science fiction as a genre. This is a discomfort with which the fandom community continues to grapple.

There is a continuum between utterly mimetic and purely fantastical fiction; the difference between

(Image via Wikipedia)

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings is only a matter of degrees. The angst of science fiction is that it lies in a liminal area between that which reflects the real world and that which eschews reality.

There is clearly no “hard line” between what is science fiction and what is fantasy, a fact that Norman Spinrad inartfully grappled with in a now-notorious column in Asimov’s magazine last November.

Genre-based awards are, by definition, bound by an accepted understanding of the genre itself. For the science fiction community, and the Hugo Awards in particular, the existential anxiety of defining these boundaries continues to be both a strength and a weakness.

These days, the Hugo Award is an award for any form of speculative fiction, be it fantasy, science fiction, alternate history or other sub-genre work. In many ways, this inclusive, adaptive approach is a strength. But it does mean that none of the top-five most prestigious literary awards focus squarely on science fiction as a genre.

Fantasy has the World Fantasy Award (WFA), and horror has the Bram Stoker Award — neither of which recognize works of science fiction (beyond the occasional genre-blurring piece). The Arthur C. Clarke Award is more strict about genre delineations, but it is UK-based, and doesn’t have as high a profile as the WFA or the Locus Award. Both Hugos and Nebulas are about as likely to go to a work

Norman Spinrad may
have expressed himself
inelegantly recently.
(Image via Wordbasket)

of science fiction as they are a work of fantasy.

Those who criticize the Hugo Awards for recognizing fantasy works may in part be reacting to the absence of a “pure” science fiction award. However, it is possible for those who yearn for a more narrowly-defined award for science fiction to do so positively.

It’s worth digging into why the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) at the World Science Fiction Convention gives an award formerly known as the “Science Fiction Achievement Awards,” but does not restrict the award to science fiction in the same way the World Fantasy Convention’s World Fantasy Award is restricted to works of fantasy (try saying that sentence ten times fast). Part of the explanation of this oddity may be found in the history of the Hugo Award.

In the 1953 Worldcon Progress Report #3, Will Jenkins writes:

• “At the 11th World Science Fiction in Philadelphia on Labour Day weekend, a new tradition will be established, with the formal awarding of the First Annual Science Fiction Achievement Awards to those writers, editors, artists, and fans whom the members of the convention feel have distinguished themselves during the past year. This is the first time in the history of Science Fiction that such awards have been made to include all fields of Science Fiction endeavor.”

By the repetition of the phrase “science fiction” in describing the award and not once mentioning the word “fantasy,” it might be reasonable to assume that the original intent of the organizers was to focus on science fiction. Certainly in what we’ve read of the discussions of award voting that year, there’s no mention of now-classic works of fantasy that would have been eligible, such as C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This seems to be an assumption that WSFS rules historian Ben Yalow disagrees with, as he writes on the official Hugo Awards website “The Hugo Award ... has always included works of fantasy.” Our disagreement with Yalow's assertion is more of a nitpick than a substantive argument against it.

We find it amusing to think that there might be proponents of Hugo Award Rules

Antonin Scalia was wrong
about the U.S. constitution …
much like the WSFS constitution,
it's a living document.
(Image via Wikipedia)

originalism; a WSFS equivalent of Antonin Scalia if you would. An examination of the evidence will tell you that the Hugos have accepted works of fantasy for more than six decades.

By the time they awarded the second Science Fiction Achievement Awards, the rules written by Nicholas L. Falasca include a note “While the award carries the connotation that only science fictional material will be considered, we hasten to add that fantasy and weird material can be included.” There’s explicit acknowledgment of fantasy, but the list of winners continues to show a strong bias towards what would generally be classed as science fiction (although the fanzine award that year was given to Fantasy Times).

By 1959, when the term “Hugo” began to be used in official documents to describe the awards, and the phrase “science fiction or fantasy” was used throughout the rules, clarifying that these awards include both.

The first 40 years of the Hugo Award winners show a strong bias towards works that would be classed by most readers as falling on the science fiction side of the SF-F spectrum. By our estimate, the first work of pure fantasy to win — or even be shortlisted for — a Hugo Award for fiction was in 1959 with the short story “That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch.

However in recent years, works that would likely be described as fantasy have become more common. This is particularly evident in the short story category where in 2019, the only finalist that falls on the science fiction end of the spectrum was Sarah Gailey’s interactive “STET.”

The World Fantasy Award — which was founded in 1975 as part of the World Fantasy Convention — doesn’t seem to have ever had any controversy about whether or not science fiction should be considered for the award. Looking over the list of shortlisted works, it would be difficult to argue that the World Fantasy Award recognizes science fiction. Although we have been unable to find an online version of the WFA rules, the nominees and winners appear to fit squarely within what most would describe as fantasy. The closest that we could find was the WFA judging panel announcements which mention that: “All forms of fantasy are eligible, e.g. high, epic, dark, contemporary, literary.”

The struggle to define the exact boundary between science fiction and fantasy does not mean that

Last year, the only short story on the
Hugo ballot that could be called
science fiction was Sarah Gailey's
"STET." If you haven't read it yet,
you should do so right now. It's great.
(Image via Goodreads)

there is no difference. Instead, it points to the fact that the edges of a genre aren’t necessarily hard edges, but rather points on a continuum. A work might be more science fictional or less science fictional, more fantastical or less fantastical. Those who suggest that one needs to “take a side” are woefully misguided... but those who suggest that there is no difference between science fiction and fantasy aren’t entirely correct either.

In his column, Spinrad took umbrage with the “evaporating” boundary between science fiction and fantasy. Some of his many critics have claimed that there is no difference between science fiction and fantasy, that any attempt to distinguish between them is futile.

In a well-reasoned response to Spinrad’s column, Alexandra Erin blogged at Uncanny magazine about the impossibility of creating a hard distinction between fantasy and science fiction. She highlighted numerous ways in which works that are generally considered to be science fiction are in fact fantastical, and several instances in which works generally regarded as fantasy are science fictional.

Within our book club, there are widely varying opinions and preferences about fantasy versus science fiction. Some of our book club members believe that a broad, more inclusive set of rules for the Hugos means that the cream rises to the top without putting it through a filter first. Others feel that the increasing prevalence of fantasy on the Hugo ballot makes the award more likely to be redundant, as there are other awards to recognize works of fantasy.

It can be said without privileging one over the other that there is a difference between science fiction and fantasy. Likewise, it’s completely fair for an individual reader to prefer science fiction or fantasy without casting aspersions on the other.

The Hugos have changed with time and with different contingents of Worldcon attendees. In the late 1960s, the definition of science fiction was radically changed as the demographic juggernaut of Baby Boomers began nominating and voting for works that addressed their concerns and tastes. We’re currently undergoing a similar demographic shift with the Hugos, as Millenials come into their Hugo-voting years and redefine the genre again.

Because Hugo nominees are not determined by a judging panel in the style of the WFA and Stoker,

"Oh no, millennials killed
science fiction!" is clearly
a ridiculous claim.
(Image via SassySpoon.com)

they are more affected by demographic shifts, and more prone to mutability of purpose. While this mutability is not necessarily a bad thing, it has left a gap in the ecosystem of genre awards, one that is keenly felt by fans who prefer a more technologically centred version of science fiction.

There is no easy way to address this gap. None of us want to impose more restrictive rules on the Hugo awards, since trying to parse the exact boundaries of the genre would be a fool’s errand. Creating a separate category within the Hugo architecture would likewise be unsatisfying, as there are frankly too many categories already, and more would dilute the importance of the awards.

For now, those who yearn for “pure” science fiction can make do with alternatives like the geographically restricted (not-universal) Arthur C. Clarke Award, sub-genre specific (but less prestigious) awards like the Prometheus Award, or recently created and troubled awards like the Dragon Awards. They can also lobby for the best examples of writing they love to win the Hugo. More people talking about great stories can only be a good thing.

These options may seem like cold comfort to some, but they are all better than — through churlish nostalgia — undermining an existing awards system that works well for a broader spectrum of genre fiction.

----

This is a blog post in part inspired by:
https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/fantasy-versus-science-fiction/
https://www.tor.com/2019/11/06/science-fiction-vs-fantasy-the-choice-is-clear/
https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2019/11/06/does-science-fiction-have-a-purpose/
https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/on-books/

Amy Goldschalger and Avon Eos did a creditable job of trying to define the differences between SF and fantasy: https://www.sfsite.com/columns/amy26.htm