On the Hugo Award hijacking

[Rindan]

@tully_monster

No sci-fi elements at all? Really?

You have stripped all four of those quotes so wildly out of context it isn’t even funny. Maybe my memory is wildly off but:

Selkie Stories Are For Losers: You are quoting from a part where they relay a fictional story, or at least strongly implied fictional story. This is like someone telling about Homer’s The Odyssey inside of a fictional story and declaring the entire story myth.

If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love: The entire piece of a stream of concision poetry and is posing the hypothetical. It would be like saying, “I will love you until the stars die” is a piece of sci-fi.

The Ink Readers of Doi Saket: It is talking about a non-super natural event. It is like if you had a fiction story and it recounted how someone felt at church, and called that sci-fi because someone felt a spiritual feeling.

The Water That Falls On You: This slips in as the only legitimate piece of sci-fi or fantasy in the short story section, but just barely. It is much closer to magical realism. The fantasy piece is almost incidental to the actual story.

@tully_monster

I think for people who complain that none of these works are “real” science fiction or fantasy, the problem is that they simply aren’t their definition of science fiction or fantasy.

Uh yes, that is exactly the complaint. You are saying that like someone is denying it. I prefer my sci-fi and fantasy to have coherent world building. None of the above short story nominees of 2014 had anything even vaguely resembling sci-fi or fantasy world building, much less coherent sci-fi or fantasy world building. People like different things. That is okay. You lean towards literary fiction with elements of magic; I like strong world building and plot driven stories, the more grounded the better. We can like different things.

@tully_monster

But that’s my point. The genre is expanding, and so is its readership, and, well, our standards are higher. It’s no longer a club for little boys who hate books that don’t involve wizards and dragons and robots, even if they decide to let in an occasional girl in a magnanimous display of tokenism (as long as she toes the line).

Strong world building and ground plot driven fiction is not for “little boys”. Little girls, men, women, and everyone in-between can enjoy those things too. I’m sorry you are too cool enjoy enjoy exploring coherent new worlds through fiction, but the assertion that anyone who enjoys a solid plot is must be a little boy is kind of a shit opinion on par with only boys like math.

Have you even read any of the books or short stories nominated this year? Hell, did you read the winner from last year? I hate to burst your bubble, but the winner of the Hugo last year, Ancillary Justice, was a meticulous piece of world building utterly devoid literary appeal. It is solidly in the “wizards and dragons and robots” category. What it did show is that you can open the genre without ignoring the elements that make it unique. Ann Lecke, coming from a clearly unique point of view that sci-fi needs more of, built a world of “wizards and dragons and robots” that thoroughly destroyed tokenism and did one of the best jobs at building a coherent human but alien culture that I have ever seen.

The opening of sci-fi and greater inclusion doesn’t mean that sci-fi has to become magical realism and a subgenere of literary fiction. It means that women and gay folks get to jump on space ships and go explore the universe too.

@tully_monster

It’s going to become more challenging, and self-serving masturbatory exercises like those on the slates (and a few that were removed by their authors, knowing how transparent their motives apparently were) will soon be a thing of the past. Even if this manages to kill the Hugos, it’s too late. Sorry about that.

I can’t speak for everything on that was nominated, but you clearly have not read most of it. If you think that Goodnight Stars, a story written by a queer socialist lady, is a sexist diatribe for “little boys”, you have been navel gazing too much.

[lolipop_jones]

@moors71

This was a reaction to the non-scifi fantasy trash the Hugos have been nominating for years

Preach it!!

I’m old enough to remember when I could go to the SF shelf in my bookstore or library and find (mostly) original science fiction. Not StarWars/StarTrek/superhero spinoffs. Not another formulaic Tolkien or Rowling clone. Not zombies, vampires, zombies and vampires, or vampires and zombies.

Off my lawn, right this instant!!

[peemlives]

Way to go against the grain, person who joined 3 hours ago!

[peemlives]

A Sound of Thunder, only briefly had a thunder sound in it. Try again, Bradbury.

[manybellsdown]

@Skeptic

But, have the Hugo’s ever really been representative?

Well I don’t know what flavor of not-white-male author this group finds most concerning, but Lois McMaster Bujold and Connie Willis have been dominating the Hugos for years. Bujold has more best novel awards than anyone but Heinlein.

[Bass]

@churba

A smaller group within a small group pick the book they like the best, or at least dislike the least, out of all the books that were nominated.

Sounds like a student council race or homecoming king and queen. Is the issue protecting the Hugo’s “legacy” or a lame voting system?

[OtherMichael]

@moors71

The problem has been the “literary” types have often simply chosen political agenda stories,

You mean, like the ones that “political literary” type George R. R. Martin posted at length about?

@moors71

The whole thing is a demonstration how when one side, who has had a monopoly, is overthrown by the opposite side

You mean white men writing old-fashioned Campbellian screeds being overthrown by non-white non-men writing post-1950s works? Or the inverse? Where was this monopoly of yours? Off in the LARPing room yiffing with the furries?

[enso]

@moors71

This was a reaction to the non-scifi fantasy trash the Hugos have been nominating for years. I simply ignore them. The problem has been the “literary” types have often simply chosen political agenda stories, and the reverse being done is somehow bad.

Welcome trolley-who-created-this-account-just-to-comment. I hope you stay and participate in our BBS in good faith. Now go report back to your masters that you have done their bidding and Beale will give you a hug.

[enso]

@torgo

I knew nothing of the Sad Puppies until yesterday nor do I pay attention to the Hugos. What I know is this: Jim Butcher is on this list, and if you’re against Jim Butcher, then I’m against you.

Butcher is a hack like Dan Brown but they added some real candidates to the list because when they’ve failed to do so before (see last year), the trollies were unable to influence things. They’re camouflage for Beale and Wright, among others.

(The Dresden Files are nearly unreadable, predictable pap that serves the lowest common denominator of Fantasy readers with comfortable stories that challenge nothing. Good airplane reading, I guess.)

[enso]

@Rindan

Hell, did you read the winner from last year? I hate to burst your bubble, but the winner of the Hugo last year, Ancillary Justice, was a meticulous piece of world building devoid of utterly literary appeal.

Don’t worry. Folks are going to continue to read her since this slate has guaranteed here a win for her sequel too.

[enso]

And John Wright just had one of his stories removed from the ballot. sheds a tear

Sasquan Replaces Two Ineligible Nominees on Hugo Ballot

[shaddack]

@albill

The Dresden Files are nearly unreadable, predictable pap that serves the lowest common denominator of Fantasy readers with comfortable stories that challenge nothing.

Does everything have to challenge something or be political to deserve being classified as a good fun? Do only the activism (and the “right” kind of activism, to add) things deserve being rewarded?

[enso]

@shaddack

Does everything have to challenge something or be political to deserve being classified as a good fun? Do only the activism (and the “right” kind of activism, to add) things deserve being rewarded?

No but if it isn’t interesting or challenging, it needs to be at least well crafted through the art of writing. The Dresden Files is none of these. It is badly written, predictable shite. I worked my way through the first three books because people kept talking about how wonderful they were/are. They aren’t. They’re just kind of boring and crap, like a Louie Lamour Western or the Davinci Code.

By the way, you’re buying into the rabid puppies bullshit (based on your questions). The hugos and other awards aren’t overwhelmingly favoring some mythical activist agenda so bringing that into the conversation is a complete derail. I don’t go looking for “activist fiction” (whatever that may be). I go looking for interesting and well written fiction. You can see what I read on Goodreads.

[blueskyman]

I’m saying that the $40 fee to vote is operating as a poll tax. In the past, poll taxes were used to intentionally exclude marginalized groups and minorities. To be fair, it also excludes those who don’t care as much about genre fiction to spend. Taking this poll tax away will allow anyone with the inclination to vote to do so thus making the process more democratic. It should also make the process less susceptible to gaming by a determined well funded group.

[enso]

Requiring payment also means that you know you have a real person, not a sock puppet, since payments are linked to real world names and identities. A free voting is just asking to be gamed.

[OtherMichael]

@blueskyman

It should also make the process less susceptible to gaming by a determined well funded group.

::blink blink::

Megyeri Bridge | Naming poll

 

Yeeeeees, because there’s nothing like removing all barriers to entry to allow a system to be gamed by a determined unfunded group.

[OtherMichael]

Hey, if you’re going to throw somebody under the bus, could it at least be Kevin J. Anderson?

He deserves it for his Dune books alone; then there’s Nemo and that Martian atrocity.

::shudders::

[OtherMichael]

Here’s John Scalzi on the Hugo kerfluffle, back in February:

Likewise, the “taking back” of awards, which in this case is understood
to mean the Hugo Awards almost exclusively — I don’t often hear of
anyone complaining that, say, the Prometheus Award
has been hijacked by awful, nasty people, despite the fact that this
most libertarian of all science fiction and fantasy awards is regularly
won by people who are not even remotely libertarian; shit, Cory
Doctorow’s won it three times and he’s as pinko as they come.

---

UPDATE: some more (April) Scalzi

[enso]

@OtherMichael

Hey, if you’re going to throw somebody under the bus, could it at least be Kevin J. Anderson?

He deserves it for his Dune books alone; then there’s Nemo and that Martian atrocity.

::shudders::

That man does not exist in my universe. The only Dune books were written by Frank Herbert and there were three of them: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune.

[OtherMichael]

I like me some Jules Verne, I like submarines, I thought this could be fun: boy, was I in for a surprise!

The conceit of Nemo was, ultimately, that Jules Verne was a hack whose 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea et alia were romans a clef.

Did I learn my lesson after the Dunes? Did I learn it after Nemo? I read one more book, then gave up.