Rite of Passage

Alexei Panshin may be science fiction's least remembered author of a Nebula-winning novel.

The earliest Nebula award went to Frank Herbert's unforgettable Dune, which is a landmark within the field, and has become even more widely known after being made into a movie (and an upcoming miniseries on the SciFi channel). Delany's Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection won early Nebulas, and are less known, but still widely read and studied. Delany is famous not only for his the distinctive literary stylings of his fiction, but also for being one the first successful black science fiction writers and the first successful gay science fiction writer. Daniel Keyes only wrote one science fiction novel, the 1966 Nebula-winning novel Flowers For Algernon, but this singular work has become a widely-read classic and the source of two films.

Also among the first ten novels to win Nebulas are the very classic novels by very popular authors: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness; Larry Niven's Ringworld; Robert Silverberg's A Time of Changes; Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves; and Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama.

Finally, right in the middle of these, is the winner of 1968's Nebula for best novel: Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage. Many contemporary readers who will have not only heard of but read books by such luminaries as Asimov, Herbert, Le Guin, Delany, Clarke, Niven and Silverberg will scratch their heads if they read the complete list of early Nebula winners and wonder: "Alexei who?"

This is regrettable, because Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage is a unique and though-provoking novel richly deserving of the award it won so long. Fortunately it has been reprinted occasionally and is not likely to be entirely forgotten because of it's Nebula-winning status. But this is still a relatively under-appreciated novel.

Should you read this before you read The Gods Themselves or Ender's Game? Probably not. But it's an engaging, fairly quick read with appeal for a wide audience. The well-read science fiction fan should certainly check it out. Even the less historically-oriented reader would be well-advised to check out Rite of Passage before picking up the latest "Star Trek" or "Star Trek" novelization. They'll be glad they did.