The Hugo Awards Kerfuffle...

[Fishbowl Helmet]

There's a lot going round about the Hugos this year, so we might as well have a thread about it. Post links and general discussion about it.

This year's slate of Hugo nominees.

Some four blog posts, an article, and a Tweet (oh my!): Chuck Wendig. io9. Sarah Chorn. Elizabeth Bear. Lee Harris. Alyssa Wong.

To my mind, the io9 headline sums it up perfectly:

"The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They're Only Political."

 

[Brian G Turner]

"The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They're Only Political."

It might be simpler to ask when the awards weren't political - Hugos, Nebulas, and WFC.

Are SFF awards out of touch?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Certainly some awful stuff wins awards.

 

[millymollymo]

Perhaps Chrons should have its own official awards. "This book was worth reading", "This game was fun to play", "This author upset the most forumites because they didn't release a book this year.", "This film confused the most viewers." And..."This SFF award caused the most fuss this year."

Seriously I understand the value of the awards, and not just the genre ones. It's very easy to forget the point of an award. Does it mean that the collection of words in one binding is more important/better/more creative/ more SFF than another?
I am fairly sure it would mess with any author's ability to focus.

It'll get to the point where an author won't want the award because of the tarnished way it may or may not have been selected for the process in the first place. Readers won't want to be seen reading it because of the statement/stigma associated with a title.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm not sure that I see the point of SF awards at all, except to make people aware of good books that might be a bit obscure otherwise. I would be much happier if 10 renowned SFF writers got together every year and just recommended a few books each. It's also worth pointing out that there is something of a gulf between critics who want more variety (including but not solely diversity) and readers and publishers who want more Game of Thrones or more Lord of the Rings, and will reliably pay money for it. Of course, if you'd like to nominate me, I might give them more time...

Anyhow, as far as I can tell, the Hugos have been hijacked by right-wing crackpots and are no longer reliable. Nor, unless they are seriously revamped, will they be championing SF that is anything but backward-looking.

I feel slightly bad about the lack of interest and vague distaste that I have for a lot of SF fandom. It makes me think both that I ought to be more into SFF than I am, and also rather grateful that I'm not. Not to suggest that people who are into it all are crazy or bad, but it's just not quite for me.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

I'm not sure that I see the point of SF awards at all, except to make people aware of good books that might be a bit obscure otherwise. I would be much happier if 10 renowned SFF writers got together every year and just recommended a few books each. It's also worth pointing out that there is something of a gulf between critics who want more variety (including but not solely diversity) and readers and publishers who want more Game of Thrones or more Lord of the Rings, and will reliably pay money for it. Of course, if you'd like to nominate me, I might give them more time...

Anyhow, as far as I can tell, the Hugos have been hijacked by right-wing crackpots and are no longer reliable. Nor, unless they are seriously revamped, will they be championing SF that is anything but backward-looking.

I feel slightly bad about the lack of interest and vague distaste that I have for a lot of SF fandom. It makes me think both that I ought to be more into SFF than I am, and also rather grateful that I'm not. Not to suggest that people who are into it all are crazy or bad, but it's just not quite for me.

It's always struck me as rather myopic that fans of a genre which touts the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who as these great examples of SFF simply fail to catch on to the glaringly obvious messages of tolerance and non-hatred practically dripping from these franchises. And it's not just limited to these franchises, these are the first that come to mind, but it's no less mind-boggling to me. IDIC? Nope. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate? Nope. Celebrate the other and learn from it? Nope. I guess I've just been engaging with the wrong kind of SFF all my life.

 

[MWagner]

Nothing good ever comes from identity politics.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Nothing good ever comes from identity politics.

That's demonstrably false. Civil rights and voting rights for everyone that's not a white, land-owning male has come from identity politics.

 

[J-Sun]

First, as I said on the F&SF board, just so people don't get me wrong, let it be clear that I hate everybody.

Some four blog posts, an article, and a Tweet (oh my!): Chuck Wendig. io9. Sarah Chorn. Elizabeth Bear. Lee Harris. Alyssa Wong.

It's always struck me as rather myopic that fans of a genre which touts the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who as these great examples of SFF simply fail to catch on to the glaringly obvious messages of tolerance and non-hatred practically dripping from these franchises.

Tolerance has to work from multiple vectors ("both ways" for the Manicheans among us) for it to work at all. You can't just say "The Other has to be tolerant of Us". I love the diversity of voices who present an unbiased picture of the event in the links of the first post.

If you'd like to hear the point of view of the guy who, by some lights, more or less started the "Sad Puppy" movement, you can read Larry Correia and for the guy who's running the show this year, you can read Brad R. Torgersen.

(Disclaimer: I read a Correia book due to last year's SP noise and it was pretty bad but mostly readable, though I won't be reading any more. On the other hand, I became a fan of Torgersen - who should have won a Hugo award for "Life Flight" this year but apparently recused himself from his own recommended list - before all this started by reading a series of excellent stories in Analog and then buying and reading a collection (and buying a second one I haven't read yet).)

Anyhow, as far as I can tell, the Hugos have been hijacked by right-wing crackpots and are no longer reliable.

As they say on Slashdot, "You must be new here." The Hugos have been hijacked by right-wing crackpots after having been hijacked by left-wing crackpots and haven't been reliable for 20-30 years. If you look at the novel slate (the short fiction and others are a little more extreme) you see a very popular author in Kevin J. Anderson, a very popular fantasy guy in Jim Butcher (who's not known for being a right-wing crackpot), a woman(!) in Sarah Monette (under her Katherine Addison pseudonym - also not right-wing), a self-published guy (because that's the trendy thing - also not a right-winger, I understand), and a repeat of last year's winner (also a woman, also not right-wing). Three of the nominees are SP (Anderson, Butcher, Kloos), and two are SMOF (Leckie, Monette). And that looks like a pretty damned decent slate to me and is pretty diverse - as opposed to five New New Wave women which is what's counted as diversity by most fans these days, or as opposed to five Correia/Wright/Card/Day/whoever. And the left/Leckie folks should be delighted as it basically guarantees her her second consecutive win.

Re the stuff linked to in the first post, I love how, you know, paying a membership fee and voting according the rules is gaming the system. And how it's just now that these crazy right-wingers have started all this unprovoked lunacy out of the blue. (And how a guy(?) got nominated for a Hugo for editor last year who uses the word "majorly".)

I feel slightly bad about the lack of interest and vague distaste that I have for a lot of SF fandom.

Ditto. I used to have this delusion that every SF writer was some amazing person like Isaac Asimov or Poul Anderson and they could debate and disagree like Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson and that fans just all ran around actually talking about science fiction and loving each other. Even so, I never got to a con and was never a "true" fan. And then there was the internet and the scales fell from my eyes. Never going to a con now.

-- Edit: see? this is one reason I hate the autolinking thing for the tags - Poul Anderson is linked (no forum) and Isaac Asimov isn't (forum) and I can't edit out the Anderson link so I have to manually add a largely pointless Asimov link or it looks weird and destroys my parallelism.

 

[MWagner]

There are three ways a human can be categorized:

As a unique individual.
As a member of a group.
As a member of the common human race.

The second category is in conflict with both the first and the third. Group identity blots out the unique qualities of the individual, and breaks up the human race into camps and factions. It fosters division and strife, and is ultimately something we have to move past. And we can't move past group identity by promoting group identity. Especially when those championing the identities also champion nonsense like 'hierarchies of privilege.' Who has the wisdom to determine where any given person ranks in that hierarchy, given the myriad qualities and backgrounds that make up each of us? Is a poor man of Polish peasant stock higher or lower on the hierarchy ladder than a wealthy woman descended from 20 generations of Indian Brahmins? What about the unique familial and social upbringing that shapes each of us? Should the children of alcoholics be granted some social status distinct from the children of non-alcoholics? How finely do we sift and parse identity in order to determine who should be encouraged and promoted, and who shouldn't? Sorry, I reject that model of politics absolutely.

Giving up group identity is scary. It can make people feel isolated and alone. But it's a necessary step in human evolution, because groups will always be in conflict, and always succumb to the natural tendency to de-humanize the other. I'm confident we will eventually take those steps so that the community we feel a part of is 'everyone.' And a good start is to behave that way ourselves, starting now.

Want to keep gender, race, and sexual orientation out of the Hugos (and SFF fandom in general)? Then keep gender, race, and sexual orientation out of the Hugos. And if you give in to the allure of waving the banner of group identity, don't be surprised when other, often uglier groups emerge to wave their own banners. That's the unpleasant truth of human nature.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think we need a resurgence of satire and wit in SFF. This (supposed) dichotomy between sincerity "issues" fiction and equally determined pulp dumbness would be solved by parody. Comedy allows comment in ways that "serious" SF doesn't, and yet doesn't have to tie its colours to the mast in that obvious way. It challenges the reader to think, without telling them what to think about. In fact, I could recommend a few books by this obscure, yet brilliant, author from the Home Counties...

Never going to a con now

I've been to a few, and I wouldn't go that far. They were perfectly ok (although by day 3 there was something a bit gross about the hotel foodand I was starting to get cabin fever) but I'm just not into it enough, and not quite in that way. I've had the same thing with other hobbies. I play a lot of board games and wargames with friends, but I don't think I'd want to go to a serious tournament for them. To be honest, I prefer steampunk events, because I can sell more books and dress like a Victorian pimp. Living the dream, as they say.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I just get dizzy and lost and zone out and the community loses yet more of its diversity by being unbelievably cliquey.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

It's really simple. If your argument is that diversity is good, you're right. If your argument is that diversity is bad, you're wrong. I don't give a dog's desiccated arsehole who says it. Any argument for less diversity is wrong and bad. Any argument for more diversity is right and good. The sad puppies are just arguing that too many non-white, non-males have been getting the awards lately, so it's time to put things... "right". There's no equal time, there's no both sides of the issue. Anyone arguing for less diversity is simply wrong. We need more diversity, not less.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Hmmm, I'm assuming that's directed for me for daring to say I felt excluded and therefore not part of the community. How anyone can see my comment as anti-diversity is beyond me but just in case, and to be clear to anyone wanting to argue semantics about it...

I'm arguing diversity is good but that an insular, infighting community consigns itself to being undiverse because it limits the people who feel comfortable joining it. Frankly, I couldn't care about the award - it lost any credibility years ago - but I do feel uncomfortable that people want to argue vehemently to me that them and their friends are right, from both sides. On another note, any quorum putting Vox Day forward (if his quoted views are correct) loses all credibility with me - he may be a good editor, I have no idea, but the best across four different versions....?

 

[J-Sun]

Hmmm, I'm assuming that's directed for me for daring to say I felt excluded and therefore not part of the community. How anyone can see my comment as anti-diversity is beyond me
but just in case

I think he was actually completely misunderstanding my point about tolerance for all meaning tolerance for all, but who knows?

It's really simple. If your argument is that diversity is good, you're right. If your argument is that diversity is bad, you're wrong. I don't give a dog's desiccated arsehole who says it. Any argument for less diversity is wrong and bad. Any argument for more diversity is right and good. The sad puppies are just arguing that too many non-white, non-males have been getting the awards lately, so it's time to put things... "right". There's no equal time, there's no both sides of the issue. Anyone arguing for less diversity is simply wrong. We need more diversity, not less.

Larry Correia is Hispanic. Brad Torgersen is a Mormon (and, as I understand, is so opposed to diversity that he's married a woman of some other race). I understand Sarah Hoyt's novel has a gay male protagonist (and, hey, "Sarah" is a woman - and I think Hispanic, too). Many of the SP3 nominees are liberal politically. Etc., etc. And they all say this isn't about "straight white males" and they all say those who oppose them will insist that it is and, hey, I guess they're correct.

On another note, any quorum putting Vox Day forward (if his quoted views are correct) loses all credibility with me - he may be a good editor, I have no idea, but the best across four different versions....?

To be clear, there is an "SP" slate put forward by Brad Torgersen (no Vox Day nominations) and a "Rabid Puppies" slate put forward by Day, himself, which (surprise, surprise) includes all the Day nominations (Torgersen even recused himself from his own ballot but Day naturally has no such modesty) so don't conflate the two though there is a lot of overlap in the two slates.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I collected my thoughts at the blog, but let me also just say that I don't completely reject the SP critique. The Hugos are very cliquey and can be narrow in what they award. But it's not political--it's stylistic. Hugo voters like certain kinds of stories ("clever fun" novels with a snarky/smirky tone not unlike Firefly; literalized science fictional or fantastic metaphors to explore mundane emotional crises in short fiction). They don't vote for epic fantasy any more than they vote for Baen-published military SF. (And the idea that the Hugos are "too literary??" The last time a novel written for a primarily literary fiction audience won was in 2008 (The Yiddish Policemen's Union). Before that it was...never.)

At the same time, literally the worst way I can think of to open up the awards to more kinds of novels and stories is to promote a unified slate of nominees with the express intent of antagonizing other fans based on their political inclinations. And though I particularly dislike this specific example of slate voting (for that reason), I'd also dislike it if it we were talking about a "PC left" slate.

This is supposed to be about individual fans nominating stuff individually, in order to select the collective "best" (really most popular) books/works in a given year. Slate voting may be within the letter of the rules, but it's absolutely, fundamentally contrary to the spirit. And besides, all S/RP may accomplish, in the long-run, is to bring that "PC left" rival slate into existence. Then we're left with the same--highly irritating--"culture war" being fought by the good soldiers of justice and everything holy while those of us who haven't already abandoned ship get apathetic and stop caring.

[If anyone is interested in reading the most thorough, exhaustive and compelling debunking of the assumptions and arguments put forward by S/RP, here it is. WARNING: it's really long.]

That said, it's in the structure of the voting system--being semi-open, as the Hugos are, means the system is there to be exploited. It doesn't take many people to "win out," provided you are organized and committed enough. So in that sense this is on the people who designed the stupid system in the first place. I'm sure there will be rule changes, but nothing that will cut into the profits made from supporting memberships, such as granting lifetime voting rights or making it free to vote.

...and hey...the Locus Awards have better categories and a better nomination system, while the Gemmell's literally have 8 times as many voters, so are the Hugos' days as the preeminent set of awards for SF/F numbered?

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Great piece on this.

 

[alchemist]

It's really simple. If your argument is that diversity is good, you're right. If your argument is that diversity is bad, you're wrong. I don't give a dog's desiccated arsehole who says it. Any argument for less diversity is wrong and bad. Any argument for more diversity is right and good. The sad puppies are just arguing that too many non-white, non-males have been getting the awards lately, so it's time to put things... "right". There's no equal time, there's no both sides of the issue. Anyone arguing for less diversity is simply wrong. We need more diversity, not less.

Diversity is good. Promoting diversity is good. But promoting diversity by railing against "straight white males" (as many in these kerfuffles do) as if they're some homogenous group who must be defeated only serves to alienate straight white males who might actually want to read stuff by authors with different backgrounds.

If you want to promote diversity, include. Don't exclude.

 

[MWagner]

It's really simple. If your argument is that diversity is good, you're right. If your argument is that diversity is bad, you're wrong. I don't give a dog's desiccated arsehole who says it. Any argument for less diversity is wrong and bad. Any argument for more diversity is right and good. The sad puppies are just arguing that too many non-white, non-males have been getting the awards lately, so it's time to put things... "right". There's no equal time, there's no both sides of the issue. Anyone arguing for less diversity is simply wrong. We need more diversity, not less.

Diversity of expression or diversity of identity?

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Let me guess, this is where the thread veers off into the stupidity of the "If you don't tolerate my intolerance, then you're not really tolerant," argument, right? That didn't take long.