THE HUGO WINNERS

Following Volume IV (1985), more winners, 1980-82, in the shorter fiction categories; again, the stories here are all more or less famous. Some of these yarns would stand out in any company. Poul Anderson's masterly, razor-sharp "The Saturn Game" concerns explorers on Iapetus who meet disaster when they entrap themselves in their role-playing fantasy game. John Varley's splendid "The Pusher" has surfaced in several recent collections. And George R.R. Martin's gratifying, horrid "Sandkings" features exotic alien pets that escape to revenge themselves on their sadistic master. The good-to-middling remainder: Barry B. Longyear's "Enemy Mine" (basis of the recent movie) about a human and an alien who hate each other but need each other to survive; Gordon R. Dickson's "Lost Dorsai" (a man who loves soldiering but cannot kill) and "The Cloak and the Staff" (a collaborator with alien conquerors finds the will to resist); George R.R. Martin's "The Way of Cross and Dragon" (hunting heresies on distant worlds); "Grotto of the Dancing Deer," Clifford D. Simak's lonely-immortal variant; and Roger Zelazny's "Unicorn Variations," where the extinction of species on Earth allows mythical beasts to make an appearance. A collector's item.