On the Hugo Award hijacking

[OtherMichael]

That book looks problematic.

[tully_monster]

Just to clarify: I pulled those brief quotes out of context not because I was cherrypicking, but because I didn’t want to 1) violate copyright law by posting too much of the original text, and 2) ruin the stories for people who, for whatever reason, might not have read them by giving too much of the plot away.

I also did not mean to imply that none of the writers who appeared on the slates might be capable of appealing to someone with a broader definition of genre. And of course there will always be a place for “meticulous world-building utterly devoid literary appeal”[sic]. I am fascinated by world-building, too. Read China Miéville’s Railsea sometime, or Colson Whitehead’s Zone One or Max Brooks’ World War Z, if drawing conclusions about a world based on reader inference and narrative ambiguity isn’t too taxing to your imagination. (Bonus: they’re all male writers, although Colson Whitehead is African-American, so that should help, no?)

No, the attitude that quite clearly came across here from Day, Correia, and company was, “Let’s get this straight. We run the show, and while we’ll tolerate a few works and writers who, in small doses, make us just slightly uncomfortable, we have always defined what kind of work exemplifies these genres, and we will continue to do so.”