Status Updates From Nebula Award Stories 5

A boy loves his dog.

I feared Suvin's essay about SF works so hard to be high-toned and academic, it might lose coherence: "Whatever else it might also be, SF is the literature of cognitive estrangement. Okay, say you're right and this is true here beyond what any fiction offers... ultimately an interesting analysis.

Le Guin's story, "Nine Lives" (1969), is set on a distant mining planet. The 12 characters are racially diverse. She addresses issues with a cadre of cloned people, which are complex and compelling. Great story, though she gets a few things wrong about the future. A UK so very democratic that the powerful suffer to save the poor? Ireland depopulated from unbridled overpopulation? Uranium?

I read the intro, checked out the last pages, the first paragraph of Panshin's piece. I stalled in "A Boy and His Dog." So I will say it's disgusting and someone will tell me I am being too sensitive, and I will counter that boys have been saying this shit forever. Yadda yada yada. And then I will note it's supposed to be 2024, and that the world Ellison describes is supposed to have existed since 2007. Whoops

A Boy And His Dog (Ellison): 4.5/5. Gripping and dark but ultimately satisfying on a deep level. A paradoxically depraved and humane parable about the dangers of repression. Full review will expand.