SON OF KENT STATE

CHEAP TRUTH radical Sue Denim seizes the Dean's Office and issues her list of demands:

The 1985 Nebula Awards will be handed out on May 4, fifteen years to the day from the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio.

Once again the armed might of conservatism faces the radical vision of a new generation, this time across the distance of a ballot. The voices of repression range from the senile babblings of Robert Heinlein to the California vapidity of Larry Niven to the moist-eyed urgency of Kim Stanley Robinson; arrayed against them are William Gibson, Lewis Shiner, and Jack Dann. Can they prevail?

Every year Heinlein cranks out another volume of brain-dead maunderings; every year the sycophants cry "Heinlein is back!"; every year they lie. Even if JOB (Del Rey, $16.95) were a good book, or even a readable book, which I assure you it is not, why would anyone want to give this man a Nebula award? Plenty do, and it's for the same reason they gave Henry Fonda an Oscar for a movie as wretched as ON GOLDEN POND -- because he was no longer dangerous.

Larry Niven IS dangerous, but in a socially approved way -- much like, for instance, an armed National Guardsman at a student riot. "War would be a hopeful sign..." he muses in his latest perfunctory effort, THE INTEGRAL TREES (Del Rey, $3.50). It's touted as "his best since RINGWORLD!" by Heinlein fans everywhere. Even if it were, and it certainly isn't as good as RINGWORLD, is that qualification enough for a Nebula? Should we encourage this sort of thoughtless, derivative work?

As for Kim Stanley Robinson, his overwrought, reactionary, and anti-visionary WILD SHORE (Ace, $2.95) has already been dissected by these hands (CHEAP TRUTH 5). Suffice to say that Robinson's relative youth has nothing to do with his literary politics -- keep in mind that the Guardsmen that pulled the triggers at Kent State were no older than their victims.

But things are not as grim as they might sound. For once, the radicals are not outnumbered -- they match the villains man to man. (And men, you may have noticed, they all are. Where are the visionary women? Why don't we have novels this year from Leigh Kennedy or Pat Cadigan or Pat Murphy? Ask Ron Busch. Ask Terry Carr. Ask everyone you see.)

You've already heard about Gibson's NEUROMANCER (Ace, $2.95), and if you've got any sense you've already read it. This book had half again as many recommendations as its closest competitor to get on the preliminary Nebula ballot, and its brilliant depiction of a credible future has appealled to the sense of wonder in even the most hardened of intellects.

Yet it is also a victory that the other two novels made it on the ballot at all. Shiner's FRONTERA (Baen, $2.95) comes with conscious literary intent (allusions to Lowry, Dick, and Conrad) and decent, stylish prose; its flaws -- a couple of characters left hanging, a technological holy grail that is too powerful for the plot -- are forgiveable in a first novel.

Dann's MAN WHO MELTED (Bluejay, $14.95) took years to find a publisher willing to print it, and no wonder. The raw alienness of his future, with its eerie religions, baffling technologies, and sensual onslaughts, is not for the timid; it's the sort of book a lot of people would rather shoot than listen to.

And these are not the only victories. For once, there is no Connie Willis on the ballot. Bruce Sterling has a story up, Michael Swanwick has two, and Lucius Shepard three; two of the short stories, Shepard's "Salvador" and Zebrowski's "Eichmann Variations" are blatantly offensive and full of dangerously free thought.

Political oppression breeds revolution. For every Heinlein that smites a Gibson, thousands more will rise in his place. The SF revolution is crying out for literacy, imagination, and humanity; it needs only a victory in the Nebulas to shatter the giant's terracotta feet. Up against the wall, Heinlein!