Nebula Award Stories - 1983 #18 by Robert Silverberg (ed)

Author:Robert Silverberg (ed)
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

Corridors - by Barry N. Malzberg

This dark, bitter, powerful story is not science fiction at all so far as I’m concerned. It’s an out-and-out mainstream piece about a man who happens to be a science fiction writer, written by one who knows whereof he speaks.

If it is not science fiction, why is it in this anthology? The simplest explanation is that it was nominated by the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America for the Nebula in the category of best short story, and ipso facto is eligible for inclusion. That answer is something of a copout, I know, but it happens to be in concurrence with the rules under which I have assembled this book.

Aside from that, I offer the point that it has been the custom in some years to include documentary nonfiction material in the Nebula awards anthologies. Perhaps we can say that this Malzberg story, which is fiction, not a documentary at all, nor the representation of any one particular writer’s life, is serving in lieu of such material in this year’s volume. Again, “Ruthven” is not a thinly disguised version ofX or Y or Z whom we all know. But there, say the members of SFWA, but for the grace of God go I—and that is why it is in this book.

Ruthven used to have plans. Big plans: turn the category around, arrest the decline of science fiction into stereotype and cant, open up the category to new vistas and so on. So forth. Now, however, he is at fifty-four merely trying to hold on; he takes this retraction of ambition, understanding of his condition as the only significant change in his inner life over two decades. The rest of it—inner and outer too—has been replication, disaster, pain, recrimination, self-pity and the like: Ruthven thinks of these old partners of the law firm of his life as brothers. At least, thanks to Replication & Disaster, he has a brief for the game. He knows what he is and what has to be done, and most of the time he can sleep through the night, unlike that period during his forties when 4 A.M. more often than not would see him awake and drinking whiskey, staring at his out-of-print editions in many languages.

The series has helped. Ruthven has at last achieved a modicum of fame in science fiction and for the first time—he would not have believed this ever possible—some financial security. Based originally upon a short novel written for Astounding in late 1963, which he padded for quick paperback the next year, The Sorcerer has proven the capstone of his career. Five or six novels written subsequently at low advances for the same firm went nowhere but: the editor was fired, the firm collapsed, releasing all rights, the editor got divorced, married a subsidiary rights director, got a consultant job with her firm, divorced her, went to a major paperback house as science fiction chief and through a continuing series of coincidences known to

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