Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (511 page)

The Center’s space also displays the permanent John W. Campbell Memorial Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award trophies as well as samples of the trophies that the winners take home.

KU’s Watson Library is the main campus library, and its collection circulates. Watson houses thousands of SF-related books and magazines, including a nearly complete collection of
Astounding/Analog
,
Galaxy
,
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, and more, dating from the 1940s through the present. Like most major lending libraries, Watson can acquire almost any volume within 24 hours. Watson also makes a diversity of materials digitally available to users with appropriate access. All holdings are searchable via the library‘s website (www.lib.ku.edu/).

Grand Master James Gunn

In recognition of Gunn’s wide and ever-growing influence on SF, SFWA honored him as Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master during the 2007 Nebula Awards Weekend. This is the highest honor in the field, given for lifetime achievement.

Gunn’s prior awards include the 1976 Pilgrim Award given by SFRA for lifetime achievement in SF scholarship; the 1976 World SF Convention Special Award for his book,
Alternate Worlds
; the 1983 Hugo Award for
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction
; and the 1992 Eaton Award for lifetime achievement as an SF scholar.

During the 2007 Nebula Awards ceremony, SFWA then-President Robin Wayne Bailey asked the audience of SF authors and other professionals how many were former students of Gunn. A significant percentage of the room stood.

In his comments during that ceremony, John Kessel noted that Gunn’s “career has represented, in some ways, the main thread of the development of science fiction. As a boy, he shook hands with H. G. Wells. In the late 1940s he sold fiction to John W. Campbell, and throughout the 1950s he was a regular in Horace Gold’s
Galaxy
, becoming a mainstay of the movement toward ‘sociological SF.‘ He was one of the first people ever to study SF in the academy, writing an M.A. thesis on SF.“

Gunn’s course on SF literature was also one of the first ever offered at a university.

Saving the World Through Science Fiction

In recent years, Gunn has signed his correspondence with the phrase, “Let‘s save the world through science fiction.“ He explained this in his Grand Master acceptance speech:

It’s hyperbole, of course: I’m not sure the world is in danger of destruction, though it may be, and if it is I’m not sure anyone or anything can save it. But I think we need to try, not in any specific way but in the spreading of SF’s capabilities as far as we can. From my earliest contacts with SF I recognized qualities that I did not find in other kinds of fiction: a realization of the continuity of existence from the remote past to the distant future, the relationship of present decisions and actions to the futures we and our descendants will inhabit, a recognition of mutual humanity that emphasizes species concerns above those of individuals or tribes or nations, a willingness to work together for a better world, and general good will. H.G. Wells said that the world was in a race between education and catastrophe, and called for an “open conspiracy“ of people of good will to create a better world. I think SF is a major part of that education, and we all can help by introducing more people into its charms and values, particularly young people.

He went on to say:

I think we all have the responsibility to care and to act upon our caring, because of what science fiction has done for us and because of the power science fiction shares with us, to give back to the culture that gave us birth, to share what we have with others, particularly the young who are most capable of being transformed, to save the world if we can. Not to pay back, but to pay forward, as Heinlein urged. I‘m not sure we can do it. I‘m not sure the world is capable of being saved, and I‘m not sure we are the ones to save it. But I think we should try.

In large part because of James Gunn, SF is now a legitimate field of study, and his tireless work at KU in building the Center’s programs ensures that future generations will reap the rewards of his efforts.

Pay it forward.

* * * *

Christopher McKitterick
’s short work has appeared in
Analog
,
Artemis
,
Captain Proton
,
Extrapolation
,
Mythic Circle
,
Ruins: Extraterrestrial
,
Sentinels: In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke
,
Synergy SF
,
Tomorrow SF
,
Visual Journeys
, and elsewhere, and he was honored to edit the special science fiction issue of
World Literature Today
. Chris recently finished a far-future novel,
Empire Ship
, and his first novel,
Transcendence
, was published in November by Hadley Rille Books. He is Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction (http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter) and lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he teaches writing and SF, restores old vehicles, and watches the sky.

(1945– )

A major part of the military SF resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, Elizabeth Moon draws heavily on her own military experiences (as a Marine officer in Vietnam, at a time when women were a rarity in the military) as well as her experience as a rider, fencer, and photographer in her work. While military themes are common in her writing, the tone of her work varies a lot, from the somber story here to the lighthearted (though with serious undertones) romp of the foxhunting-in-space of
Hunting Party
(1993) and its sequels. She’s probably best known for her
Paksenarrion
series, and for the
Planet Pirates
series she co-wrote with Anne McCaffrey.

A Texas native, Moon earned degrees in history and biology from Rice University before joining the Marines in 1968, where she worked on early computers. She married Richard Sloan Moon, a former classmate who was serving in the Army, and they moved back to a small town in Texas after finishing their enlistments. Moon’s first paid writing was a county newspaper column in the early 1980s. She made her first fiction sale in 1986—”ABCs in Zero-G,” to
Analog—
and her first novel,
The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter
, came out the next year. Since then she’s written prolifically, primarily in long form (although a collection of shorter work,
Lunar Activity
, came out in 1990).
The Speed of Dark (2003) won a Nebula for best novel, and Moon was awarded the 2007 Robert A. Heinlein Award.

Moon is one of several SF writers who are trained in emergency medical services. She and her husband live in Texas with their son.

First published in
Women at War
, December 1995

Ereza stood in the shadows at the back of the concert hall. She had promised to be silent, to be motionless; interrupting the final rehearsal would, she had been told, cause untold damage.

Damage. She had survived the bombing of her barracks; she had survived being buried in the rubble for two days, the amputation of an arm, the loss of friends and all her gear, and they thought interrupting a rehearsal caused damage? Had it not been her twin onstage, she might have said something. But for Arlashi, she would ignore such narrow-minded silliness, and do as she was told.

She had seen concerts, of course; she had even attended the first one in which Arlashi soloed. This was somewhat different. From the clear central dome the muted light of a rainy day lay over the rows of seats, dulling the rich colors of the upholstery. The stage, by contrast, looked almost garish under its warm-toned lights. Musicians out of uniform wore all sorts of odd clothes; it looked as if someone had collected rabble from a street fair and handed them instruments. Ereza had expected them to wear the kinds of things Arlashi wore, casual but elegant; here, Arlashi looked almost too formal in purple jersey and gray slacks. Instead of attentive silence before the music, she could hear scuffing feet, coughs and cleared throats, vague mutters. The conductor leaned down, pointing out something to Arlashi on the music; she pointed back; their heads finally moved in unison.

The conductor moved back to his podium, and tapped it with his baton. “From measure 60,” he said. Pages rustled, though most of the musicians seemed to be on the right one. Silence, then a last throat-clearing, then silence again. Ereza shifted her weight to the other leg. Her stump ached savagely for a moment, then eased. Arla, she could see, was poised, her eyes on the conductor.

His hand moved; music began. Ereza listened for the bits she knew, from having heard Arla practice them at home. Arla had tried to explain, but it made no sense, not like real things. Music was either pretty or not; it either made her feel like laughing, or crying, or jumping around. You couldn’t say, as with artillery, what would work and what wouldn’t. This wasn’t one she knew without a program. It sounded pretty enough, serene as a spring evening in the garden. Arla’s right arm moved back and forth, the fingers of her left hand shifting up and down. Ereza watched her, relaxing into the sweetness of the music. This was the new cello, one of only four wooden cellos on the planet, made of wood from Scavel, part of the reparations payment imposed after the Third Insurrection. Cravor’s World, rich in military capacity, had far too few trees to waste one on a musical instrument. Ereza couldn’t hear the difference between it and the others Arla had played, but she knew Arla thought it important.

Her reverie shattered as something went drastically wrong with the music. She couldn’t tell what, but Arla’s red face and the conductor’s posture suggested who had caused the problem. Other instruments had straggled to a halt gracelessly, leaving silence for the conductor’s comment.

“Miss Fennaris!” Ereza was glad he wasn’t her commanding officer; she’d heard that tone, and felt a pang of sympathy for Arla. Somehow she’d thought musicians were more lenient than soldiers.

“So sorry,” Arla said. Her voice wavered; Ereza could tell she was fighting back tears. Poor dear; she hadn’t ever learned toughness. Behind her twin, two others leaned together, murmuring. Across the stage, someone standing behind a group of drums leaned forward and fiddled with something on the side of one of them.

“From measure 82,” said the conductor, this time not looking at Arla. Arla had the stubborn, withdrawn expression that Ereza knew well; she wasn’t going to admit anything was wrong, or share what was bothering her. Well, musicians were different, like all artists. It would go into her art, that’s what everyone said.

Ereza had no idea what measure 82 was, but she did recognize the honeyed sweetness of the opening phrase. Quickly, it became less sweet, brooding, as summer afternoons could thicken into menacing storms. She felt breathless, and did not know why. Arla’s face gave no clue, her expression almost sullen. Her fingers flickered up and down the neck of the cello, and reminded Ereza of the last time she’d played “Flight-test” with her twin, last leave. Before the reopening of hostilities, before some long-buried agent put a bomb in the barracks and cost her her arm. Arla had won, she remembered, those quick fingers as nimble on the controls as on her instrument.

Suddenly the impending storm broke; the orchestra was off at full speed and volume, Arla’s cello nearly drowned in a tumult of sound. Ereza watched, wondering why it didn’t sound pretty any more. Surely you could make something stormy that was also good to listen to. Besides, she wanted to hear Arla, not all these other people. Arla was leaning into her bowing; Ereza knew what that would mean at home. But the cello couldn’t dominate this group, not by sheer volume. The chaos grew and grew, very much like a summer storm, and exploded in a series of crashes; the man with the drums was banging away on them.

The music changed again, leaving chaos behind. Arla, she noted, had a moment to rest, and wiped her sweaty face. She had a softer expression now, and gazed at the other string players, across from her. Ereza wondered what she thought at times like this. Was she thinking ahead to her own next move? Listening to the music itself? What?

Brasses blared, a wall of sound that seemed to sweep the lighter strings off the stage. Ereza liked horns as a rule, but these seemed pushy and arrogant, not merely jubilant. She saw Arla’s arm move, and the cello answered the horns like a reproving voice. The brasses stuttered and fell silent, while the cello sang on. Now Arla’s face matched the music, serenity and grace. Other sections returned, but the cello this time rose over them, collecting them into a seamless web of harmony.

When the conductor cut off the final chord, Ereza realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out with a whoof. She would be able to tell Arla how much it meant to listen to her and mean it. She was no musical expert, and knew it, but she could see why her sister was considered an important cultural resource. Not for the first time, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that it had been her less-talented right arm lost to trauma. When her new prosthesis came in, she’d be able to retrain for combat; even without it, there were many things she could do in the military. But the thought of Arla without an arm was obscene.

The rehearsal continued to a length which bored Ereza and numbed her ears. She could hear no difference between the first and fifth repetition of something, even though the conductor, furious with first the woodwinds and then the violas, threw a tantrum about it and explained in detail what he wanted. Arla caused no more trouble—in fact, the conductor threw her a joke once, at which half the cello section burst out laughing. Ereza didn’t catch it. At the end, he dismissed the orchestra, and told Arla to stay. She nodded, and carried her cello over to its case; the conductor made notes on his papers and shuffled through them. While the others straggled offstage, she wiped the cello with a cloth and put the bow neatly into its slot, then closed the case and latched it.

Ereza wondered if she should leave now, but she had no idea where Arla would go next, and she wanted to talk to her. She waited, watching the conductor’s back, the other musicians, Arla’s care with her instrument. Finally all the others had gone, and the conductor turned to Arla.

“Miss Fennaris, I know this is a difficult time for you—” In just such a tone had Ereza’s first flight officer reamed her out for failing to check one of the electronic subsystems in her ship. Her own difficult time had been a messy love affair; she wondered why Arla wasn’t past that. Arla wisely said nothing. “You are the soloist, and that’s quite a responsibility under the circumstances—” Arla nodded, while Ereza wondered again what circumstances. “We have to know you will be able to perform; this is not a trivial performance.”

“I will,” Arla said. She had been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes to the conductor’s face—and past them, to Ereza, standing in the shadows. She turned white, as if she’d lost all her blood, and staggered.

“What—?” The conductor swung around, then, and saw that single figure in the gloom at the back of the hall. “Who’s there! Come down here, damn you!”

Ereza shrugged to herself as she came toward the lighted stage. She did not quite limp, though the knee still argued about downward slopes. She watched her footing, with glances to Arla who now stood panting like someone who had run a race. What ailed the child—did she think her sister was a ghost? Surely they’d told her things were coming along. The conductor, glaring and huffing, she ignored. She’d had permission, from the mousy little person at the front door, and she had not made one sound during rehearsal. “Who told you you could barge in here—!” the conductor began. Ereza gave him her best smile, as she saw recognition hit. She and Arla weren’t identical, but the family resemblance was strong enough.

“I’m Ereza Fennaris, Arla’s sister. I asked out front, and they said she was in rehearsal, but if I didn’t interrupt—”

“You just did.” He was still angry, but adjusting to what he already knew. Wounded veteran, another daughter of a powerful family, his soloist’s twin sister…there were limits to what he could do. To her, at least; she hoped he wouldn’t use this as an excuse to bully Arla.

She smiled up at her sister. “Hello again, Arlashi! You didn’t come to see me, so I came to see you.”

“Is she why—did you see her back there when you—?” the conductor had turned away from Ereza to her sister.

“No.” Arla drew a long breath. “I did not see her until she came nearer. I haven’t seen her since—”

“Sacred Name of God! Artists!” The conductor threw his baton to the floor and glared from one to the other. “A concert tomorrow night, and you had to come now!” That for Ereza. “Your own sister wounded, and you haven’t seen her?” That for Arla. He picked up his baton and pointed it at her. “You thought it would go away, maybe? You thought you could put it directly into the music, poof, without seeing her?”

“I thought—if I could get through the concert—”

“Well, you can’t. You showed us that, by God.” He whirled and pointed his finger at Ereza. “You—get up here! I can’t be talking in two directions.”

Ereza stifled an impulse to giggle. He acted as if he had real authority; she could just see him trying that tone on a platoon commander and finding out that he didn’t. She picked her way to a set of small steps up from the floor of the hall, and made her way across the stage, past the empty chairs. Arla stared at her, still breathing too fast. She would faint if she kept that up, silly twit.

“What a mess!” the conductor was saying. “And what an ugly thing that is—is that the best our technology can do for you?” He was staring at her temporary prosthesis, with its metal rods and clips.

“Tactful, aren’t you?” She wasn’t exactly angry, not yet, but she was moving into a mood where anger would be easy. He would have to realize that while he could bully Arlashi, he couldn’t bully her. If being blown apart, buried for a day, and reassembled with bits missing hadn’t crushed her, no mere musician could.

“This is not about tact,” the conductor said. “Not that I’d expect you to be aware of that…arriving on the eve of this concert to upset my soloist, for instance, is hardly an expression of great tact.”

Ereza resisted an urge to argue. “This is a temporary prosthesis,” she said, holding it up. “Right now, as you can imagine, they’re short-handed; it’s going to take longer than it would have once to get the permanent one. However, it gives me some practice in using one.”

“I should imagine.” He glared at her. “Now sit down and be quiet. I have something to say to your sister.”

“If you’re planning to scold her, don’t bother. She’s about to faint—”

“I am not,” Arla said. She had gone from pale to a dull red that clashed with her purple tunic.

“You have no rights here,” said the conductor to Ereza.

“You’re just upsetting her—and I’ll have to see her later. But for now—” He made a movement with his hands, tossing her the problem, and walked offstage. From that distance, he got the last word in. “Miss Fennaris—the cellist Miss Fennaris—see me in my office this afternoon at fourteen-twenty.”

“You want lights?” asked a distant voice from somewhere overhead.

“No,” said Arla, still not looking at Ereza. “Cut ‘em.” The brilliant stage lighting disappeared; Arla’s dark clothes melted into the gloom onstage, leaving her face—older, sadder—to float above it. “Damn you, Ereza—why did you have to come now?”

Ereza couldn’t think of anything to say. That was not what she’d imagined Arla saying. Anger and disappointment struggled; what finally came out was, “Why didn’t you come to see me? I kept expecting you.…was it just this concert?” She could—almost—understand that preparing for a major appearance might keep her too busy to visit the hospital.

“No. Not…exactly.” Arla looked past her. “It was—I couldn’t practice without thinking about it. Your hand. My hand. If I’d seen you, I couldn’t have gone on making music. I should have—after I beat you at Flight-test I should have enlisted. If I’d been there—”

“You’d have been asleep, like the rest of us. It wasn’t slow reflexes that did it, Arlashi, it was a bomb. While we slept. Surely they told you that.” But Arla’s face had that stubborn expression again. Ereza tried again. “Look—what you’re feeling—I do understand that. When I woke up and found Reia’d been killed, and Aristide, I hated myself for living. You wish I hadn’t been hurt, and because you’re not a soldier—”

“Don’t start that!” Arla shifted, and a music stand went over with a clatter. “Dammit!” She crouched and gathered the music in shaking hands, then stabbed the stand upright. “If I get this out of order, Kiel will—”

Ereza felt a trickle of anger. “It’s only sheets of paper—surely this Kiel can put it back in order. It’s not like…what do you mean ‘Don’t start that’?”

“That ‘you’re not a soldier’ rigmarole. I know perfectly well I’m not, and you are. Everyone in the family is, except me, and I know how you all feel about it.”

“Nonsense.” They had had this out before; Ereza thought she’d finally got through, but apparently Arla still worried. Typical of the civilian mind, she thought, to fret about what couldn’t be helped. “No one blames you; we’re proud of you. Do you think we need another soldier? We’ve told you—”