Retro Hugo report

There's a Worldcon going on, I hear, and the Retro Hugos were awarded last night. I'd joined to vote against the Rabid Puppies, but though they weren't relevant to the Retros, I cast a ballot on that too. Here's my comments, and, if you're keeping score, here are the finalists.

Novel: I only read Slan once, decades ago, and found it readable but ultimately trivial. Still, I don't doubt it would have won at the time, with only Doc Smith as real competition. I dared to vote first for T.H. White.

Novella: Heinlein's "If This Goes On ..." Yeah, I went along with that.

Novelette: I'm hardly surprised that Heinlein won again, and this is the story that represents him in The SF Hall of Fame, but I voted first for "Farewell to the Master", because it's a unique classic.

Short Story: A retrospective award if there ever was one, because nobody would have paid attention to this piece of fluff at the time, and Asimov wasn't a major author until "Nightfall" the following year. Still, I enjoyed this story, and don't mind it winning, although again I went out of field and dared to vote first for Borges.

Graphic Story: A little out of my field. The Spirit and Batman are the only ones I know, and I voted for them in that order.

Dramatic Presentation-Long: Fantasia stands out above all others. No contest.

Dramatic Presentation-Short: Why Pinocchio is short while Fantasia is long I'm not quite sure - while Pinocchio is nominally below the cut-off point, it's well within the grey zone, and they're both features - it still dominates. Disney was the master at the time, and the transformation scene scared me footless as a kid. "A Wild Hare" introduced the great Warner catchphrases ("Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" and "What's up, Doc?") but the cartoon unit was just starting out and it doesn't cohere yet.

Professional Editor: If Disney was the master, so was Campbell. No contest.

Professional Artist: When I think visually of the SF of this period, it's Rogers covers that come to mind, so I voted first for him. But I can't argue with Finlay either.

Fanzine and Fan Writer: Bradbury is by far the most famous now, so of course he won, but in actually he was still a crude beginner. Ackerman was the towering fan then, not the out of touch figure he was in his last years, so I voted first for him.

theatrical review: Julius Caesar

Drove out this evening several miles up the twisty mountain roads to a small, dirt-floored and bug-bestrewn outdoor amphitheater in a state park for a local Shakespeare company's production of Julius Caesar.

In a vaguely contemporary setting with crowd and battle sound effects in the background, it was a solid small-scale production. Cassius and a number of smaller parts (Lucius, Decius, Tintinius, Messala, others) were played by women. I don't mind that at all, and the actress playing Cassius was vividly cast (middle-aged, stocky, stern, and appropriately dressed in a military uniform from the start), but the pronouns were changed for individual references, which made rhythmic hash of Caesar's famous speech. Confusingly, though, groups including cross-cast women were still referred to as "men".

This play really rides on Cassius and Brutus and the relationship between them. The players in these roles were adequate, and that's praise from me. They showed individual character, they spoke their lines with expression, they had reactive interactivity. But they lacked the overwhelming compelling quality that makes great Shakespeare great. The best acting came in some smaller parts: Casca, whose big descriptive speech was both vivid and comic, and Portia, whose pleas to Brutus made for the play's most moving scene.

Brutus was harried and distracted, which probably explains his bad decision-making. Mark Antony was small and peppy, which probably explains his gift for speech-making. Octavian was big and flaccid and looked on the verge of forgetting his lines, which probably explains why he went on to become Emperor. And Caesar looked and dressed like a Mexican drug lord, which probably explains why he got assassinated.