The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

and been a finalist for the Hugo, Black Quill, Bram Stoker, and BSFA Awards. Her publication credits number over one hundred and include stories in Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Cricket, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Fantasy Magazine; podcasts Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and PodCastle; and anthologies Best New Fantasy and Best New Romantic Fantasy 2. Her short story collection, Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, is available from Norilana Books. Visit her online at EugieFoster.com.

SFWA DAMON KNIGHT GRAND MASTER

SFWA DAMON KNIGHT GRAND MASTER: JOE HALDEMAN Mark Kreighbaum

The author of twenty novels and five short story collections, Joe Haldeman’s career spans over three and a half decades. His most famous novel, The Forever War, won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best science fiction novel in 1975, and inspired two follow-up novels, Forever Peace (1998) and Forever Free (2000). In total, his writings have won him five Nebulas, five Hugos, three Rhyslings, and a host of other awards as well as numerous nominations. His latest book, Starbound, was published by Ace this January. He teaches writing as an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In one sense, summing up the career of Joe Haldeman to this point is as simple as that paragraph. He has been producing novels, short stories, and poems for over thirty-five years. Many of those works have won awards. He is a teacher.

But to say something deeper about his work is to grapple immediately with his biography. A veteran of the Vietnam War, his earliest works are informed by his experiences and memories as a demolition engineer in that conflict. Much of his best work draws deeply from the insights he learned there, and the wounds he suffered. Many of his stories are overtly about trauma, wounds, and death. But Haldeman’s true concern is not merely a recitation of pain and tragedy, but transcendence over insults to the flesh and spirit.

Nowhere is that more clear than when Haldeman writes about cybernetics. Science fiction has a tradition of imagining the human body transformed by technology. Most stories on the subject treat the topic as a kind of evolution that leads to either utopia or dystopia. Haldeman is nearly unique in exploring not merely the technical aspects of prosthetics and cybernetic enhancements, but the psychological dimensions of what can be described as disfigurement by voluntary mutilation. In some of his stories, this dimension leads to alienation and madness. But he has also shown how they can be tools for overcoming various other forms of deficiency, especially self-doubt and loneliness. For a writer who is so adept at writing about cynicism and cruelty, it is moments of hope and connection that suffuse his most memorable tales.

Joe Haldeman is often described as a “hard s.f.” writer, that is, someone who depends on a scientifically plausible idea to drive the plot of a book. Certainly, with his astronomy degree and background in engineering, he has the capability of delivering a rigorously extrapolated tale and has done so many times. In a recent novel, The Accidental Time Machine, Haldeman wove in a good deal of quantum physics and string theory, for example. So, the label is accurate, although its application to writers of a certain kind of genre fiction can mislead readers into thinking that to such writers, ideas are paramount and characters are only vectors for theories. Certainly, there are a few hard s.f. writers who fit such a stereotype. But the majority are far more interested in how the future will affect human beings. The best of them, like Joe Haldeman, are able to bring true passion and empathy to these stories, so that the clever concept, or ingenious device, become a means for understanding ourselves and others. And a Grand Master is SFWA’s recognition of a writer who is the best of the best.

Beyond his many accomplishments as an author, Joe Haldeman has been a mentor and icon for other SFWAns and to writers in general. He is an avid cyclist, amateur astronomer, painter, musician, and enthusiastic cook. With his wife, Gay, who is his business partner and sometimes collaborator, he makes his home in Florida.

—Mark Kreighbaum

APPRECIATION

The following is a transcript of the speech Connie Willis delivered at the Nebula Awards Banquet, introducing Joe Haldeman.

Tonight it’s my really exciting duty to present the Grand Master of Science Fiction Nebula Award to Joe Haldeman.

It’s obvious why Joe was chosen for this honor. SFWA’s Board of Directors and president and past presidents had more than ample reasons for honoring him.

I mean, he’s won all sorts of awards — Hugos, Nebulas, the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, the Ditmar and the Rhysling and dozens of others, and his novel Forever Peace was the first book to win the Triple Crown — the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Campbell.

His writing has covered the entire gamut of science fiction, from galactic war to time travel to telepathy, from space colonies to immortality to Ernest Hemingway.

His books and short stories — Mindbridge, “None So Blind,” All My Sins Remembered, “Tricentennial,” The Accidental Time Machine, “Graves,” the WORLDS books, “The Hemingway Hoax,” Marsbound — have been both critically acclaimed and bestsellers.

And he hasn’t just written books. He’s done all sorts of other things: screenplays and Star Trek novels and poetry and stage plays and graphic novels. He’s gotten an MFA in creative writing, been an adjunct professor at MIT, fought in Vietnam, served as president of SFWA, and earned a Purple Heart (in Vietnam, not SFWA, although… )

He paints, cooks, writes poems, is an amateur astronomer, and plays the guitar. And poker.

SFWA could have decided to honor him for any — or all — of those reasons. Or maybe they just thought he was cute. I know that’s how they pick the winners on American Idol. And the Nobel Prize winners in Physics.

But I know why I would have voted for him — besides his cuteness, which is, of course, a given.

Here are the reasons I would have voted for Joe to be made a Grand Master:

NUMBER 1: The incredible good sense he demonstrated in marrying Gay. She’s not only been a wife and helpmate to Joe, but also a business manager, typist, publicist, and travel agent. And to everyone else in science fiction, she’s been a dinner organizer, tour guide, translator, nursemaid, altercations-smoother-over, confidante, friend, and the most charming person in science fiction. Good call, Joe.

NUMBER 2: His bike riding. Joe was clearly out in front of all the rest of us on this global climate change,