Ancient of Days

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When volume thirteen of Universe, Terry Carr’s highly respected annual anthology series, appeared in the summer of 1983, Michael Bishop’s novella “Her Habiline Husband” occupied its lead-off spot and encompassed over a third of the anthology’s total length. Other stories in its line-up were by such science-fiction luminaries as Ian Watson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepard, and Bruce Sterling, but many readers considered Bishop’s novella the stand-out story not only of Universe 13, but of that entire year. This assertion is supported by the fact that the following year “Her Habiline Husband” placed first in the novella category in the readers’ polls of both Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle magazines.

Michael’s fellow writers must have also liked the story. “Her Habiline Husband” was a finalist for the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. But just as had happened a decade earlier when Michael’s “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” and “The White Otters of Childhood” knocked each other out of contention, he had another story (“The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis”) of novella length on the Nebula ballot in 1984, resulting in a likely splitting of the Bishop vote. In any case, neither of his two finalists won the award.

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