science fiction & fantasy

On the SF/F genre and a-holes

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Shaun Duke raises a good point about the Hugo Award puppyfail:

Politics certainly figures into it, but, to be frank, most of the folks I know who dislike the puppies feel that way because the puppies are a-holes. We all have conservative friends and acquaintances who aren't a-holes, and we don't seem to have a big problem with them unless they're crazy bigots like VD. We have a problem with a-holes.

Amen. With an amen-caveat that most puppy supporters aren't a-holes and that conservatives don't have any particular stranglehold on being political a-holes. They don't. There are plenty of liberal and moderate a-holes in the world.

If you're a nice person and disagree with me about politics or the Hugos or science fiction or anything else, that's fine. We disagree. But we can still work together and share a drink together and discuss the issues together and enjoy the SF/F genre ... you guessed it, together.

But a-holes, they ruin life for everyone. They're the equivalent of scorched-earth warfare on interpersonal relationships. They burn everything down and dance in the ruins while somehow believing people love watching their pathetic little diarrhetic two-step.

The SF/F genre has long contained a-holes and will contain them long after this year's drama is forgotten. But no one in the genre will forget an a-hole.

And in this year's puppy drama, what people will truly remember are the a-holes.

So people in the SF/F genre, try your best to not be an a-hole.

The Hugo Awards go global in puppy rebuke

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The 2015 Hugo Awards have been announced and the big winner was the science fiction and fantasy genre. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and translated by Ken Liu became the first translated novel to win Best Novel. In the Best Novelette category, the winner is “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and translated by Lia Belt.

Otherwise, the fiction and editing categories were dominated by No Award. Look at the Hugo vote statistics and the rebuke to the puppy slate becomes even clearer. Exactly 5,950 people voted in this year's Hugos. Of those, it appears around a tenth or less consistently voted for the puppy slates.

A tenth. One out of ten. Enough people to game the nominating process but not enough to do anything more.

Except, the puppies did do something. They created a backlash to their antics. They helped Worldcon and the Hugos go global for the first time. They reminded people that our genre cares about the Hugos. And they inspired more people to take part in Hugo voting, a trend that hopefully will last for years to come.

The puppies changed the genre. But not in the way they intended. And they've now revealed in the vote tally how small their movement actually is.

I hope this is the end of all pup-related silliness. I also want to thank the puppies for what they helped accomplish.

The Hugo Awards ceremony drinking game

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The 2015 Hugo Award winners will be announced this Saturday night at 8 pm at Sasquan. Considering the drama of the last few months, the ceremony might be a night to remember.

Thankfully, most of fandom won't be in attendance, which reduces the odds of actual screaming matches. But we can still watch the ceremony live through the convention's UStream. And the great thing about streaming the ceremony is you can drink as much as you want.

So in honor of all the fun Sasquan is about to unleash, here's a little Hugo Awards ceremony drinking game for everyone to enjoy.

Drink every time

  • Someone uses a euphemism for puppies.
  • Someone politely mentions the "controversy" in the SF/F genre
  • David Gerrold makes a joke about being reported to the Spokane Police Department
  • The audience applauds after a Hugo winner's name is announced no matter their political views.
  • Someone you dislike or a story you dislike wins a Hugo.
  • Someone you like or a story you like wins a Hugo.
  • Someone says the genre is big enough and diverse enough to contain many different people and viewpoints.
  • Someone says more people voted for these Hugo winners than have voted in years.
  • No Award is declared a winner.

Take a double shot every time

  • Someone says SF/F stories shouldn't contain political themes or be written in literary styles.
  • Someone mentions how back in the old days we all got along.
  • A Hugo winner announces that their win is indicative of ______.
  • Someone makes a joke playing off the initials for venereal disease.

Drink several shots and rant on social media every time

  • Someone says they don't understand social media or that weird thing called the intra-nets.
  • Someone tries to create a new word to insult those they disagree with.
  • Someone complains about the young kids in the genre who don't know their genre history.
  • Someone says you can't be a true genre fan if you don't read Heinlein
  • Someone talks about how their voice is being censored merely because they were challenged about something they said.

Drink everything in the house/bar and scream

  • If a Hugo winner gives a finger to the camera or curses.
  • A white man says white men in the genre can't get a break these days.
  • A riot breaks out during the ceremony and the Spokane Police Department arrives to restore order to the SF/F genre.
  • David Gerrold is arrested for either causing the riot or on suspicion of being an opinionated troublemaker.

 

 

A "spaceship on the cover" Hugo Award analysis

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I've finally figured it out. The entire puppy Hugo Award drama is about spaceships on the cover of SF novels. To quote puppy ringleader Brad Torgersen:

"The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

Brad's quote set me to wondering how many previous winners of the Hugo Award for Best Novel originally had a spaceship on the cover. My analysis was completed using the original first editions for the winning novels from 1953 to 1979.

Of the five original Hugo winners from the 1950s, only one novel — Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein — featured a spaceship on its first edition. Meanwhile, two of the winners from the '50s — Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and James Blish's A Case of Conscience — featured the abstract and, dare we say, literary covers seen here.

But surely the Hugo winning novels from the 1960s featured more spaceships? Nope. Not a single one of the 11 best novel Hugo winners from that decade featured a spaceship on the covers of their first editions. (Note: There are 11 winners because of a tie in 1966). The three Heinlein novels which won the Hugo in the '60s all originally lacked spaceships, as demonstrated by the first edition of Starship Troopers at right. And many winning novels such as Dune featured almost abstract covers.

The 1970s were actually better for spaceships on covers with two of ten novels featuring them — Gateway by Frederik Pohl and Ringworld by Larry Niven. You can even stretch that to three novels if you count the first edition cover of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, which features the inside view of a giant spaceship. But many covers still featured abstract artistic designs, as seen in the first edition covers for The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm.

From the 1980s onward we actually begin to see more genre novels with obvious SF/F themes on their first-edition covers. But that doesn't change the fact that of the 27 novels which won Hugo Award for Best Novel from 1953 to 1979, only four had spaceships on their cover.

Only four of 27 Hugo Award winning novels with a spaceship cover? Only 14% spaceships? It's a conspiracy! We must do something!

Of course, a spaceship on the cover doesn't indicate a true SF novel any more than the lack of a spaceship cover means the opposite. But Brad Torgersen is the one who implied there is something dishonest about much of today's Hugo Award winning genre fiction. That certain authors are trying to sneak in political and literary novels under the guise of genre fiction.

Which is nonsense. Any objective look at the novels which have won the Hugo Award since 1953 will show a range of stories from pure SF adventure to literary novels to novels with overt political themes.

When the puppies say they want to return the Hugos to how they were in the Golden Age of SF — where a spaceship on the cover meant a damn spaceship on the cover — all I can do is ask:

Where were the spaceships back then?
 

More classic first-edition SF covers

Good thing 1984 wasn't a true science fiction novel because up is down and losing is winning

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Voting has ended for this year's Hugo Awards. However, that doesn't mean the pups' Hugo positioning is anywhere near finished. As a result the genre is currently in a 1984-style doublespeak world where up is down and, most importantly, losing is being redefined as winning.

At least, that's my take of the latest comments from puppydom.

As has been reported at length, the main premise of the puppies' Hugo Award tantrum was that science fiction and fantasy had moved away from from the golden days of old. To quote puppy ringleader Brad Torgersen:

"The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

"There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?"

For Torgersen and the other puppies, the original sin of today's science fiction and fantasy is that it's too political. That SF/F stories are no longer merely good yarns but also include lots of politics and deeper meaning and unsettling literary crap.

Which is completely inane, because genre fiction has always been political. And literary. And pulpy. And every type of story in between.

I mean, does this mean 1984 wasn't a true science fiction novel? Or that the countless other literary and political-themed novels which won the Hugo Award don't belong in our genre?

The answer to these questions should be obvious.

The problem for the puppies is they miscalculated about the outrage arising from their actions. As record numbers of people turned out to vote in the Hugos, the pups realized they'd overreached. It's one thing to organize block voting on a preliminary ballot which few people actually take part in. But not being humiliated by a vote of "No Award" when thousands of people are taking part — that's a much harder accomplishment.

Because of this some of the puppies are now saying that they want "No Award" to win. That this will prove their point about the Hugos. Adam-Troy Castro suspects a conspiracy theory. Others I've heard from wonder if this is part of the pups' long-term plan to destroy the SF/F genre.

I don't believe there's any conspiracy or long-term plan at work here. Instead, the pups are panicked. Their little protest has galvanized the genre against them. If anything, their support in the genre is weaker than it was before they began their Hugo campaign.

They know this. They won't admit it, but they know it.

At least, that's my take on the whining we're hearing from their doghouse.

We won't know the ultimate outcome of all this until the Hugo Awards are announced in a few weeks. But just because the pups say losing is now winning doesn't make is so. And no amount of 1984 doublespeak can change this truth.