6) Double Star by Robert Heinlein. Read it on my Palm Pilot thanks to getting the electronic version at Fictionwise. Of course it’s The Prisoner of Zenda with spaceships, but I was interested to notice just how much of the plot was subsequently ripped off for the Kevin Kline/Sigourney Weaver movie Dave. Also his choice of the Dutch royal family as supreme rulers of the solar system gave me some private amusement given my own occasional contacts with the real Dutch royals. But what really grabbed me was Heinlein’s effortless portrayal of grand political ideas, and indeed an election campaign, as background material to the main story. Compare with Philip K Dick’s Cantata 140 which I recently reviewed for Infinity Plus, with one of the least realistically portrayed election campaigns I have ever encountered in literature. A very good read and worthy Hugo winner.
Hugo Awards
1950s: The Demolished Man (1953) | The Forever Machine (1955) | Double Star (1956) | The Big Time (1958); The Incredible Shrinking Man (1958) | A Case of Conscience (1959)
I just stumbled across this
while ego-surfingby accident, and I’d like to thank you for your kind words, but I think the best story won. Certainly I voted for it. Although the way the shortlist turned out, there was always a fifty percent chance that somebody called Ian was going to walk away with the award…