Big Worldcon Is Watching (Hugo Cinema 1984)

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

L.A. Con II, the 42nd Worldcon, was the largest World Science Fiction Convention of all time up to that point, with more than 8,000 fans in attendance (to this day, only the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, China has eclipsed that number). Science fiction cinema was bigger than ever. The Hugo Awards were bigger than ever. But in 1984, the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation was still considered a second-tier award.

Star Wars producer Lawrence Kasdan
accepted the Hugo Award in person.
(Image via Fanac Fan History)

“We will now proceed with the minor awards: Best Dramatic Presentation,” Toastmaster Robert Bloch quipped as he introduced the nominees: Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes, special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm, early hacking movie Wargames, blockbuster Return of the Jedi, and Oscar Best Picture contender The Right Stuff.

It’s an uneven shortlist that reveals both a tension between the populism and the insularity to which the award was often prone. As they had often throughout the history of the award, nominators almost inevitably included the top-grossing science fiction movie of the year on the ballot … and Return of the Jedi’s whopping $250-million haul had almost doubled the revenue of any other movie in 1983. In contrast, voters also platformed lesser works made by favourite creators with deep ties to the Worldcon community.

The weakest movie on the shortlist is Brainstorm, the sophomore (and final) directorial effort by special effects genius Douglas Trumbull. The story of a scientist (played by Christopher Walken) experimenting with methods for recording and interpreting brainwaves. At times a parable about how the military industrial complex coopts new technologies, at times a portrait of obsession as the scientist tries to recapture bits of his past, Brainstorm’s own EEG readings would be scattershot. Although Trumbull is a master of crafting individual images, his ability to weave a coherent narrative is lacking, and the movie never coalesces into something meaningful or engaging.

Something Wicked This Way Comes eked onto the Hugo Award shortlist, earning only seven votes at the nominating stage. Based on a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury, it portrays a small town through the eyes of two children, while a mysterious carnival undermines the lives of the adults around them. It’s mostly a creditable production, though overlong and often errs on the side of whimsy. Of note, the carnival leader Mr. Dark is played by Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, who imbues the role with a magnetic charm. The main problem with the movie is that it’s overlong; there’s enough here for an excellent half-hour episode of Twilight Zone, but not enough to sustain a two-hour feature. Although Bradbury himself would later list it as one of the best adaptations of his works, we were often left wondering if his works should be adapted at all; he’s a master of evocative language and internal dialogue, which rarely translates well into cinematic formats. 

A young Jonathan Pryce is possibly the best thing
about Something Wicked This Way Comes. 
(Image via IMDB)

Based on the 1979 novel by Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff is a historical drama-cum-mockumentary that explores the origins of the American space program. Though not technically science fiction, it’s genre-adjacent enough to be considered for the Hugos. The movie leans into the romanticism of the space race, and presents a mostly sanctified and sanitized version of the astronauts and test pilots at the core of the story. It’s a narrative that’s become part of the national mythology, but much like the Tom Wolfe novel it's based on, the movie is overlong and a bit bloated. Most of the first half hour has little impact on the second half of the story. These quibbles aside, it’s an impressive bit of filmmaking and storytelling, and one can see how it almost unseated Star Wars for the Hugo. It’s interesting to note that a remake of The Right Stuff released just four years ago is completely unavailable for viewing on any platform due to streaming service shenanigans. Sadly, until libraries have the statutory right to preserve and openly share these works, this trend will continue.

Hugo voters should be given credit for their foresight in nominating the first mainstream movie about computer hacking, Wargames. Starring future Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick at the very beginning of their storied careers, it’s a tightly plotted technothriller about a high school student who starts communicating with the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence computer system … and accidentally almost starts a nuclear war. The slow tension build feels natural, the characters have depth — and the gender representation is significantly better than most entries on this list, as Ally Sheedy’s character has agency and motivation. Moreover, the warning about nuclear war and the fallibility of automated systems still resonates today. This prescient movie holds up better today than many of its contemporaries. Of the dozen people who watched this as part of our cinema club, all but one of us would have selected Wargames as the movie most worthy of the Hugo that year.

It would be difficult to argue that Return of the Jedi lives up to the standards set by the previous two movies. Star Wars has always been a franchise steeped in nostalgia, but Return of the Jedi is the first installment that looks to the past of the franchise itself; returning to Tattooine, returning to a Death Star, returning to secret familial bonds as a plot twist. It’s an uneven effort where the parts that work (the heist-sequence to begin the movie, the confrontation in the throne room) really work, but the parts that don’t (the damned Ewoks) are really leaden, leaving some viewers to suspect contempt for the audience. But 1984 was a year when Star Wars fandom was at its height, and there would be no stopping the juggernaut — with 28 nominating votes, it was by far the leader in the nominating stage. The movie’s producer Howard Kazanjian was actually present to accept the Hugo Award — so at least the fan support was appreciated.

Set in New York ten years after socialism's triumph,
Born In Flames argues that no revolution is complete
without feminist emancipation. It's genuinely great.
(Image via NewFest)

Despite the fact that this was a pretty good year for the Hugos, there were still several excellent works omitted that are worth highlighting. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女) might have warranted consideration. Lizzie Borden’s intersectional feminist socialist semi-utopian Born In Flames would have been worth a nomination. It should also be noted that Canadian horror director had two of his greatest movies hit the cinemas in 1983: the Marshall McLuhan-inspired Videodrome, and the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone. Any of these would have been better choices than Brainstorm.

Possibly the most influential work of science fiction that year was the television miniseries The Day After. Directed by multiple Hugo-finalist Nicholas Meyer, The Day After chronicles the lead-up to, and immediate aftermath of a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Heavily promoted by ABC television, it was watched by an estimated 100 million Americans when first broadcast. Despite the fact that it soft-pedaled the actual toll of such a conflict, it was grim enough that it helped convince policymakers to begin talks on a nuclear arms limitation treaty. Given the movie’s influence on policymakers and on the population at large, and that academic tomes have been published on its cultural impact, it’s somewhat surprising that The Day After only received three nominating votes. 

The TV series V introduces Dana, the leader of
 a race of lizard people who bring fascism
wrapped in the American flag.
(Image via Washington Post

Another work that has aged remarkably well in many ways is the television mini-series V. Depicting the arrival of alien Visitors, and their subsequent take-over of the world, V would spawn several spin-offs of much lesser quality. The original remains prescient as a metaphor for the creeping tide of fascism and the way fascists wrap themselves in a nation’s myths while owing no allegiance to the broader public. Only two people had the show on their nominating ballots.

In the 1980s, Star Wars reigned supreme, and Hugo Award voters seemed bound to recognize the franchise at almost every opportunity. As a populist award, it’s often tied to the most populist forms of entertainment. It’s a pretty good year for Best Dramatic Presentation, even though looking back, some of us might wish for more.

NOTE: This blog post would not have been possible without the assistance of Mike Glyer and PJ Evans, who were able to provide Hugo nominating statistics that were otherwise unavailable.

The Unthinkable War

Nuclear war is usually described as “unthinkable.”

Jacobsen's book makes for grim
— but engaging — reading. 
(Image via Amazon)

Despite this, science fiction authors and fans have spent an awful lot of time thinking about this potential ending to humankind. By some accounts (such as Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev watching The Day After) the consumption of science fiction has helped stave off the threat of nuclear war by forcing people to think about what will actually transpire after the bombs go off.

There’s a long history of depicting nuclear war in SF. Decades before the Trinity test launched the real-world atomic age, genre fans were reading works like H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free (1914) or Cleve Cartmill’s Deadline (1944). But Hugo voters have usually eschewed celebrating such works. Leigh Brackett’s Long Tomorrow and Wilson Tucker’s Long Loud Silence -- two of the earliest works that attempted to grapple with just how awful nuclear war might be -- may have gotten close to winning Hugos, but neither of them took home the prize.

With the more recent increase in international conflict, decline in democracy, and erratic leadership at the reins of superpower governments, the threat of nuclear annihilation is more present than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Annie Jacobsen’s new book Nuclear War: A Scenario is therefore quite timely. It should be strongly considered for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

The book’s chapters alternate between a second-by-second speculative account of how a nuclear war might be experienced and chapters that provide history lessons about nuclear weapons, academic research, and military planning.

A national security journalist who has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Jacobsen approaches the subject through meticulous research. The scenarios she paints are informed by recently declassified documents and dozens of interviews. The interviees include scientists who worked on early iterations of atomic testing, high-level military leaders, policymakers, and politicians.

By Jacobsen’s account — and the accounts of several of her interviewees, such as former STRATCOM commander Gen. Robert Kehler — it could all be over in as little as 72 minutes. America’s “launch-on-warning” policy, Russia’s flawed surveillance systems, uncertainty over third-party actors, and a multi-polar world with complex threat assessment all lead to a precarious nuclear position.

The narrative scenario features a single missile sent by North Korea targeting the United States, which — in accordance with American policy — prompts a disproportionate retaliation of more than 80 nuclear weapons in return. With missiles flying the circumpolar route from North America to the Korean peninsula, they end up going over Russia and being mistaken for provocation. By the end of an hour and a half, five billion people are dead.

Much like the BBC SF horror Threads, each detail is presented with gripping and grim misery.

BBC's Threads grapples with the aftermath of a 
limited nuclear strike. Jacobsen suggests that there
is no such thing as "limited" nuclear war, and
that there are no rules in a nuclear conflict.
(Image via BBC) 

Jacobsen never provides any ideas about how to avoid the ugly future she lays out as a real possibility, and perhaps the book might have been strengthened by a call to arms. Is nuclear disarmament the answer? It seems unlikely in a world where countries such as Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have atomic stockpiles. Does she think the temperament of leaders and their willingness to navigate complex nuclear quandaries should be more of a factor in electoral politics? The book ends on a fairly bleak note with little in the way of hope.

It’s interesting that, despite careful research methods, the sources she was able to interview for the book are — with a handful of exceptions — American, and this leads to some biases in the work.

In fact, it is a flawed book in multiple ways. The prose is overblown and occasionally pompous. The descriptions of the extent of each atomic bomb’s devastation is sometimes repetitive. And the scenario that Jacobsen imagines almost entirely absolves her fictional American decision-makers, preferring instead to place the blame for the nuclear war on more irrational leaders of other countries. But perhaps this was the hand of an editor looking for a US audience. These criticisms aside, the work unveils a believable and perilous instability within the systems governing nuclear decision making. This helps make the book a compelling read.

Nuclear war isn’t the happiest subject in science fiction, but it is part of our genre. Consequently, this book is as Hugo-eligible as non-fiction about spaceflight (The Right Stuff, best dramatic presentation finalist 1984), evolution (After Man, best related work finalist 1982), and planetary sciences (Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, best dramatic presentation finalist 1981).

For all its flaws, the research and timeliness of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario make it one of the most important science fiction-related works of 2024. 

Marooned in the Undying Lands

Not too long ago, we lived at Francis Fukayama’s “End of History.”

It’s difficult to convey to younger SFF fans —
say those under the age of 40 — the degree to
which fears of Soviet domination once preoccupied
the public imagination, or the degree to which many
were convinced that democracy had
triumphed once and for all. 
(Image via CNN)

As risible or foolish as the idea seems now, in the early 1990s there was a near-consensus within the chattering classes that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union had ushered in the final triumph of American-style liberal democracy. According to those who subscribed to this theory, the Last Great Battle had been fought — and won. Social evolution had completed its mission; we had arrived at its pinnacle. The story of history had reached its resolution and now all that was left was to sail into the west.

With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, it seems redundant to say that the Cold War was no Last Great Battle, and of course there was no White Ship and no Undying Lands.

There’s an obvious malaise to the idea that we have nothing left to achieve, or evolve into. If history is over, all that’s left is stagnation and of stasis. If the Last Great Battle has been fought, there are no more stories left to tell.

This idea of finality is ingrained into much of now-mainstream popular culture. Over the past few years, too many major SFF media franchises are stagnating in a post-eschatological malaise, seemingly afraid to venture into truly new territories. With little narrative momentum left, they seem marooned in the Undying Lands. They want their Last Great Battle, but don't have the integrity to accept the implied End of History.

It’s easy to think of examples: Star Wars, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Babylon 5, and more. In each, the evil empire has been defeated, good has triumphed, and history has ended.

Franchises with some degree of narrative integrity allow the story to be over in a dignified manner, and to avoid attempts to monetize the goodwill and nostalgia of fans. However, some are compelled by the mandates of corporate profit-seeking to endlessly create new instalments in their narrative universe — and have all struggled to define what’s next.

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings may have been
released after 9/11, but principal filming on all
three movies had all occurred from 1999 to 2000.
It is the product of an End-Of-History mindset.
(Image via Entertainment Weekly)

One approach that several franchises have taken to avoid the End of History hurting revenues is to plumb the mythologies of their narrative universe through a series of prequels. Unsurprisingly, the relevance of these works diminishes over time and can even dilute the original narrative. For example, the Last Great Battle of Westeros in the television series Game of Thrones neither lived up to the hype nor left room for grand adventures afterwards. This has left HBO with little more than prequels on its production roster.

This is not a new phenomenon. John Christopher returned to his Tripods Trilogy — which ends with a Last Great Battle — to write a prequel in 1988. Once Katniss Everdeen had won her Last Great Battle, all that was left was a Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Battlestar Galactica went back to Caprica. And of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the less said the better.

Possibly the apotheosis of this trend has been Amazon Prime’s How Galadriel Got Her Groove Back The Rings of Power, a prequel of little interest to anyone other than the most hard-core fans.

But prequelization isn’t the only way that franchises attempt to deal with the End of History problem. The early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are generally regarded as creatively their most successful — in large part because they were building up to a universe-shaping showdown with their ultimate foe Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. To their credit, the decision makers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have largely avoided the siren’s call of nostalgic prequelization, instead trying to continue as if the Last Great Battle hasn’t changed anything. The results have been mixed.

In the 1990s, no popular narrative embraced Francis Fukuyama’s ideas as wholeheartedly as Star Trek did; The Next Generation presented the American-analogue United Federation of Planets as the pinnacle of civilization; want had been conquered, social problems resolved, and now Jean-Luc and friends would act as emissaries of an idealized human society. But in a post-End-of-History world, this vision of Star Trek no longer makes sense. Since then with the possible exception of Deep Space Nine, the franchise has struggled to advance a coherent vision of what comes next; between stuck-in-the-past prequels (Enterprise, Strange New Worlds) nostalgic revisiting of past lore (Picard, Lower Decks) the franchise has often been treading water. 

The theory of an “End of History” has an obvious appeal; people tend to understand the world through a framework of narrative … and that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Perhaps it’s time to allow some of these franchises a dignified ending.