Annal:1998 John W. Campbell Award

Forever Peace

Joe Haldeman

• 1998 Campbell 1st
• 1998 Hugo-Novel winner
• 1998 Nebula winner
• Score: 30.48

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by “soldierboys”—indestructible war machines run by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away. Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him, war is indeed hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy —and the genocidal results—are becoming too much to bear. For Julian, it might be worth dying just to stop living. Now he and his lover, Dr. Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery that could literally put the universe back to square one. For Julian, however, the discovery isn’t terrifying. It’s tempting.

Slant

Greg Bear

• 1998 Campbell 2nd
• Score: 8.48

In the sixth decade of the 21st century, the world has been transformed by two things. Nanotechnology has been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment and themselves down to the cellular level. And the study of the mind has brought a revolution in both human psychotherapy and artificial intelligence. It’s a sane and perfect world. Almost.

A man called Jack Giffey is planning to break into the Omphalos, the most secure building in all of separatist Green Idaho. Rumor says that the Omphalos houses the not-quite-dead—the very wealthy deceased who are still alive, their brains connected directly into Thinkers. Data is the great treasure of the new millennium, and Giffey plans to tap into the Omphalos dataflow, to steal the knowledge gathered by the inhabitants of the Omphalos.

Public Defender Mary Choy, now living in Seattle, has been called in on the bizarre suicide (or murder) of a very wealthy, secretive man. His last recordings hint at some terrible guilty secret. Choy would very much like to know what such a man—rich and politically powerful—might have…

Secret Passages

Paul Preuss

• 1998 Campbell 3rd
• Score: 6.48

Secret Passages is the story of a revolutionary physics experiment, set against the colorful background of the island of Crete, legendary home of a great civilization whose buried treasures emerge to complicate the tale. Earthquakes, love, loss, and the mysterious history of the physicist Minakis make this a fascinating and enthralling novel.