The Age of Empire (Hugo Cinema 1981)

Star Wars was inescapable in fandom.
At the 1981 Worldcon, Paul Cullen
dressed up as Luke Skywalker.
(Image via Fanac.org)

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

The sequel to Star Wars was a cultural juggernaut within fandom, anticipated with such intensity that whole issues of fanzines were dedicated to parsing out casting rumours and speculating about the plot. Most contemporaneous fan reviews hold up well today: “This movie moves so fast, is filled with so many delights for an SF fan, and is so well done that to tell about it is a disservice. See it!” wrote Richard E. Geiss in Science Fiction Review.

But as difficult as it is to believe today, many of the arbiters of ‘higher’ aka ‘mainstream’ culture were dismissive of the sequel. “The Star Wars series, now in unpromising infancy, basically asks us to imagine and believe nothing – its technological sophistication does away with the need for the former, and its camp melding of myths in storyline and characters acknowledges the impossibility of the latter,” Sight & Sound Magazine bemoaned in a scathing unsigned review. Ralph Novak was more succinct, writing for People Magazine “it’s not up to the original.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby opined that the movie was bland, and filled with hot air.

The Hugo best dramatic presentation win for Empire Strikes Back is another instance in which the prescience of science fiction fandom is revealed over time. Unfortunately, the rest of the shortlist in 1981 was remarkably uneven. While Cosmos, Lathe of Heaven, and Empire Strikes Back are excellent nominees, it’s difficult to see merit in either Flash Gordon or the Martian Chronicles.

Given the low quality of two of the finalists, it’s also difficult to explain the omission of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Ken Russel’s Altered States, or the third-season premiere of Blake’s 7.

One of our group called The Martian Chronicles
“the last gasp of the Disco era of science fiction.”
(Image via IMDB) 

The most egregious inclusion of the year is The Martian Chronicles. Airing over three nights on NBC, the TV adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story collection is a meandering hot mess that should have had no place on a Hugo shortlist. Over the course of six hours, director Michael Anderson weaves together elements from the Bradbury stories “Silent Towns,” “Rocket Summer,” “I'll Not Ask for Wine,” “The Settlers,” and “The Watchers” (among others). His apparent need to create a cohesion between the stories not envisioned by the author ends in narrative disarray. Separately, it would be easier to forgive the shaky special effects if it weren’t for the fact that on the other side of the Atlantic Blake’s 7 weren’t doing significantly more interesting model work with fewer resources. The Martian Chronicles scripting is leaden, the acting campy, the plot unengaging. Bradbury himself summed it up best, describing the series as “simply boring.”

A big-budget flop based on a 1930s comic serial, Flash Gordon is somehow even campier and more difficult to sit through than The Martian Chronicles … but it does at least have the benefit of weirdly beautiful production value and a ludicrously great soundtrack by rock legends Queen. Although supporting actors such as Brian Blessed and Timothy Dalton bring a lot to their roles, the nominal star Sam J. Jones is excruciating to watch as he lifelessly enunciates his lines as if sounding them out one-by-one off a teleprompter. It has to be noted that because Flash Gordon is relatively faithful to the source material, the movie is weighed down with painfully regressive attitudes towards gender and race. It has not aged well.

With a slightly campier script and a worse lead
actor, Flash Gordon compares poorly to the 
1974 movie Flesh Gordon.
(Image via IMDB)

The Lathe of Heaven is the hidden gem of this shortlist. It’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel, made on a shoestring PBS budget by avant garde video artist Fred Barzyk. Given that Barzyk had previously directed the somewhat substandard 1973 Hugo Finalist Between Time and Timbuktu, some of our cinema club had gone into the movie with a bit of trepidation. Happily, many of us found it engaging and interesting, thanks to a script that retains much of the philosophical musings of Le Guin’s original, a strong cast, and thoughtful use of locations and other setting elements. The movie can be read as a rebuttal to utopian intellectuals proposing simplistic top-down solutions to all of mankind’s problems, ignoring the experiences of everyday people. It’s a genuinely clever little movie that holds up remarkably well — and probably would have ended up at the top of the ballot for at least one of our cinema club members.

Cosmos was a cultural juggernaut, the significance of which is difficult to appreciate today. Planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s 13-part documentary series tackles the vastness of the universe, mankind’s place in that cosmos, and speculates about what else might be out there. Built in part around Sagan’s own research into the possibility of extrasolar life, the documentary lays out an argument that we might not be alone in the universe. Because Sagan had evident love for science fiction and legitimized fandom’s embracement of these ideas, the documentary was beloved in science fiction circles. Sagan’s book of the same name, released in conjunction with the series, won him a well-deserved Hugo for best related work. But there are a few aspects of the show that have dated oddly; a lot of time is spent with Sagan looking off into space with a quasi-fanatical, beatific smile on his face, which is a bit off-putting. And while some current viewers might find the soundtrack by Vangelis to be oddly outdated and weirdly religious, others will enjoy the synthesizer-driven evangelism of it. At the time, there were complaints that documentaries shouldn’t be in the dramatic presentation category, but to our minds this is a creditable inclusion on the shortlist … and might have been a worthy winner.

The biggest controversy of the Hugo Awards that year, however, was the exclusion of Superman 2 from the shortlist. At the time, Hugo administrators lacked clarity on which year the movie would be eligible in, as it had a small number of showings in 1980, before a wider release in 1981. One of the greatest superhero movies ever made never appeared on a Hugo shortlist, and consequently the awards improved their rules on eligibility.

But even if Superman 2 had been on the ballot, we suspect that the Star Wars sequel would have bested it. Replete with iconic dialogue, memorably great locations, and some snappily edited action sequences, Empire Strikes Back is a movie that has stood the test of time and remains beloved by generations of Star Wars fans. On a purely technical level, The Empire Strikes Back was an impressive feat of cinema, featuring what could arguably be described as the greatest stop-motion sequences ever put to film. However, it does not have the streamlined narrative of the original movie and the plot suffers from a lack of focus. The story has no through-line, and as much as it’s a movie filled with truly great moments, some of us were left feeling that the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Regardless of these slight quibbles, and regardless of what else might have appeared on the shortlist, it’s difficult to argue with The Empire Strikes Back as a winner. With the benefit of hindsight, fans were proven right and the mainstream critics were just … wrong.

Retro Hugo – Best Graphic Story 1944

Last year, there were insufficient nominating ballots for the Retro Hugo – Best Graphic Story, which meant that no awards were presented. This is a shame, as there were certainly more than enough qualifying works published in 1942 that merited recognition.

In the hopes of preventing a repeat this year, we are urging you to seriously consider reading — and hopefully nominating — several first-rate graphic stories that were published in 1943.

Recommended reading:

1. Nelvana of the Northern Lights and the Ice-Beam
2. Plastic Man and The Game Of Death 
3. Tintin and the Secret Of The Unicorn
4. Wonder Woman #5 

Jack Cole’s work on Plastic Man (appearing both in Police Comics and his own comic for the first

It is impossible to overstate
Jack Cole's inventiveness.
(Image via Digital
Comic Book Museum)

time) holds up well and served as an inspiration for others. Even though there have been many comic book characters with the ability to stretch themselves, Cole embraced the artistic possibilities offered by this body shaping with a glee and creativity that has yet to be equalled.

This was a year in which Cole – possibly emboldened by getting his own dedicated Plastic Man title – started playing with text and composition in new ways. In the Game Of Death, a book dedicated to plastic adventures, Cole pushes his character’s form to new limits. His writing is also at its most quotable in this work: “If you should see a man standing on the street and reaching into the top window of a sky-scraper…that’s not astigmatism—it’s Plastic Man!…If you happen upon a gent all bent up like a pretzel…don’t dunk him…it’s Plastic Man! All this and bouncing too, you’ll see when the rubber man and his pal Woozy Winks gamble their lives in—The Game of Death.”

Plastic Man is far and away our top pick for recognition in the 1943 Retro Hugo for best Graphic Story.

Canadian black-and-white classic Nelvana of the Northern Lights continues be first-rate, despite the

Alex Raymond's final year on
Flash Gordon is one of his best.
(Image via ComicArtFans.com)

fact that the stories told that year were more standard superhero fare, rather than the more interesting Inuit-inspired tales of the preceding years. This is a book that modern readers should take a look at not only for its sharp-edged illustrations and its inventive storytelling, but also because it offers readers both the first super-powered female character and the first Indigenous superhero comic book.

The issues published in 1943 find Nelvana assuming a secret identity as an agent of the Canadian Government so that she can fight Nazis. Although more predictable than the previous stories had been, the dynamic art and solid writing makes this series worthy of consideration on your Retro Hugo ballots.

Coming off the publication of the regrettable The Shooting Star, Herge bounced back in 1943 with the publication of The Secret Of The Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure, two graphic novels that are often described as a high point of the series. Although there’s only marginal science fictional or fantastic elements (the submarines in particular), these works might be worthy of recognition.

Still written by the original creative team of William Marsden and Harry G. Peter, Wonder Woman continued to enjoy strong writing and interesting subversions of orthodoxy in 1943. The debut of Wonder Woman's arch-nemesis Doctor Psycho in Wonder Woman #5 is particularly notable as the psychic dwarf is a misogynist whose ambition is to force women out of participation in wartime employment.

Given the wartime employment of women in jobs traditionally held by men, Marston and Peter’s work captured some of the underlying tensions of this social change. This could be one of the reasons Dr. Psycho would prove to be a long-running adversary for Wonder Woman, representing toxic masculinity as a force in opposition to her feminine strength.

There are a couple of high profile contenders for recognition in the early years of comic book history

Doctor Psycho has decided
to boycott Gilette razors.
(Image via comicbookinvest.com)

that you might be surprised we haven’t mentioned yet.

With Wil Eisner in the army in 1943, The Spirit’s adventures were written and illustrated primarily by Lou Fine. These stories are unfortunately not up to the calibre that the series is known for.

And in our opinion, Captain Marvel – the most prominent superhero series of the era – had an off year. Not only was the writing less effervescent than it was in previous years, but after the appalling (but popular) “World’s Mightiest Mistake” story the previous year, the writers seemed to use the exceptionally reactionary sentiment of the age as a racism licence. Stories like “The Voodoo Show Boat,” feature broad and ugly characterizations of African Americans and other visible minorities. “The Battle At The China Wall” depicts Japanese civilians as literal monsters with pointed teeth.

Even when one accounts for American socio-political angst of 1943, with the US’s late and forced entry into the Second World War (Dec 1941) and resulting social upheaval, Captain Marvel Adventures stands out. In previous years – and in subsequent ones – these troubling elements were not as pervasive. The one highlight of the year was issue 28 of Captain Marvel Adventures, in which arch-enemy Doctor Sivana becomes governor of New York.

The Retro Hugo for Best Graphic Story is a category that has suffered neglect in past years due to the difficulty of obtaining relevant works. Thankfully, online archives such as the Digital Comic Book Museum, Comic Book Plus, and Open Culture have made many texts accessible to modern readers. It is our hope that this will lead to an informed and robust debate about these awards.