Disguising the World Fantasy Award

Meredith may have just been teasing about having Stephen King replace HPL on the World Fantasy Award but that gave me an idea.

I read someone speculate they are sticking with HPL because they have an inventory of statuettes already made and paid for.

So I wondered if you put a set of designer eyeglasses on HPL, would he look enough like Stephen King that they could claim to have changed the name and still use the Gahan Wilson statuette?

28 thoughts on “Disguising the World Fantasy Award

  1. Good heavens, that thing really is ugly. (The statue, not Stephen King)

    A pair of glasses isn’t going to do it, though. It would need longer hair, a nicer-shaped mouth, and rounded ears rather than pointy boxy ones. If you wanted to link the author with his greatest creation, some chin tentacles would be appropriate as well….

  2. @redheadedfemme

    The hair could probably be added by the same method, but adjusting the mouth might start looking a bit too much like a tribute to It!

  3. I like the bust, but I’m a fan of Gahan Wilson’s work, so I’m slightly biased.

  4. redheadedfemme: Good heavens, that [statue] really is ugly.

    I know, I’ve always thought it would be more appropriate for a Horror Award than a Fantasy Award (but the Bram Stoker Award statue is pretty cool).

    It would be really nice if, when they run out of the stock of statuettes, they’d go with something like Carrie Cuinn’s suggestion of a sea serpent wrapped around the world.

  5. I was half-joking – I do think his work covering a nice spread of genre is award-appropriate, plus he’s got bags of influence and name recognition even from non-fans, but him being alive does sort of pose a problem. For putting him on the award, I mean, not in general – I’m sure he, his family, friends, and fans are very pleased with his continued skill at breathing and moving around and things.

    Re: Current Appearance

    I think its a good grotesque image of Lovecraft, but its not something I’d want to decorate with independent of shiny awardiness and/or awkward racism

  6. Wait, I’ve got it!

    World Fantasy can finance a statue redesign by selling the surplus statues to the Sad and Rabid Puppies who can then use them to start awarding the “H.P. Lovecraft memorial award for best science fiction, fantasy, or horror written by people who are appalling bigots in real life” and stop messing with the Hugos.

    Everybody wins!

  7. Just what did H. P. Lovecraft do to deserve having VD inflicted on him?

    That’s a fate even a dead man doesn’t merit.

  8. @Robert Reynolds

    Wrote stuff like this poem, amongst other things.

    VD doesn’t have a thimbleful of Lovecraft’s talent, though.

  9. Taral: Honestly, with those glasses it looks more like the aged A.E. Van Vogt than anybody else.

  10. @Meredith:

    I still wouldn’t inflict VD on HPL. Hell, I wouldn’t inflict VD on Nathan Bedford Forrest, Lester Maddox, “Bull” Conner and Orville Faubus combined.

    Of course, I’m constrained by the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. You’re in the UK. VD is a blight a more kind and considerate providence would not have inflicted upon humanity. 😉

    Full disclosure:

    I’ve long held that Clark Ashton Smith wrote rings around HPL.

  11. I’m with McJulie on this one: inspirational thinking at its finest!

    And having read VD’s comments on how we English don’t like Jewish people I’m prepared to sacrifice him to the entity with the unspeakable and unspellable name..

  12. @Robert

    You nicked that phrasing from us, actually. 😀 Its part of the English Bill of Rights 1689. (I wouldn’t have a problem inflicting VD on Katie Hopkins, but I’m not sure I want them to meet. They’re as awful as each other and it would just encourage them.)

    Full disclosure: I find Lovecraft unbearably purple at times, but he’s still way more talented than VD.

    *adds Clark Ashton Smith to to-read list*

    @Stevie

    *embarrassed cough* Apparently when I was very small (I don’t remember this at all) I declared emphatic dislike for a certain ethnic group. I’m pretty sure the sum total of my knowledge at the time was that a house I quite liked near my grandmother’s was knocked down to make room for a synagogue. Perhaps that’s where the rumour comes from? They’ve only been surveying small and poorly informed children?

  13. Meredith

    I’m pretty sure that we can absolve you of any ill will; small children tend to be really focussed on what they want. I can recall hauling one small boy off another, and, takng the teaching moment, to explain that he might really hurt him bashing his head on the road, to which he replied that it would be great because then he wouldn’t pinch his toys. At which point I gave up on sweet reason, and reverted to brute force.

    They haven’t surveyed anybody; this is, after all, VD and he’s not exactly into trifling details like the facts. Particularly when those facts are somewhat unwelcome to him; a whole 20 (wow, what a huge number) of Neo-Nazis had a demonstration Saturday in London; they’d hoped to march through a suburb which has around 40% Jewish people, and intimidate them in their homes.

    Their democratic right to protest was upheld by the police so they set up a static demonstration in Whitehall, heart of Government, for an hour, and large number of police officers ensured that they would be perfectly safe, particularly from the counter demonstrators, who really do not take kindly to Neo Nazis…

  14. @Stevie

    I was very annoyed when I heard about where they’d wanted to have that protest. Totally unreasonable request, and I was very glad to hear they’d been put in Whitehall instead. I’m not sure why they bother anymore, they’re always so thoroughly outnumbered by the counterprotestors (and lucky to have police standing inbetween). I’d think their egos wouldn’t stand for it.

    I recall that a European (Spanish?) racing official said awhile back that he didn’t understand why we were all so happy about Lewis Hamilton when we’re all so racist. I wasn’t best pleased about that one, either. We have our share of prejudiced people but I don’t think its more than most.

  15. HPL is dead, VD can’t do anything to him.

    Also, VD is unlikely to actually WIN the award — it’s still supposed to go to the best fiction, not the worst bigot.

  16. @McJulie

    Also, VD is unlikely to actually WIN the award — it’s still supposed to go to the best fiction, not the worst bigot.

    Oh, Lovecraft is perfectly safe, then.

  17. Several of the WFA nominees are available to read for free online:

    Novella:
    – “We Are All Completely Fine(excerpt) by Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
    – “Where the Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Tor.com 11/19/14)
    – “Hollywood North” by Michael Libling (F&SF 11-12/14)
    – “The Mothers of Voorhisville” by Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)
    – “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer ’14)

    Short Fiction:
    – “I Can See Right Through You” by Kelly Link (McSweeney’s 48)
    – “Do You Like to Look at Monsters?” by Scott Nicolay (Fedogan & Bremer)
    – “Death’s Door Café” by Kaaron Warren (Shadows & Tall Trees 2014)
    – “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com, 4/2/14)
    – “The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5-6/14)

  18. I’d sacrifice my first-born on an alter of onyx to have a statuette of HPL, designed by Gahan frickin’ Wilson, but really… Is HPL the BEST (or the most deserving of progenitor status) that fantasy has to offer? I’d put Burroughs, or even Howard ahead of him. Poe being already taken by the mystery people, of course.

  19. I love, lovecraft’s work. I would be willing to have a stab at defending the man on the grounds that so far as I know he never hurt anyone directly, and by virtue of dying in basic poverty himself did not even economically benefit by a racism that he was beginning to outgrow in his latter years. That said, by all means change the award, only an idiot offends people without reasonable cause. Let’s have an image which does not require a defense. (from previous thread)

  20. Their democratic right to protest was upheld by the police so they set up a static demonstration in Whitehall, heart of Government, for an hour, and large number of police officers ensured that they would be perfectly safe, particularly from the counter demonstrators, who really do not take kindly to Neo Nazis…

    And enthusiastically took up a chant of Scum! Scum! Scum!
    When they time came for them to go they were funnelled down to the Underground where the passengers caught on and continued on the ScumScumScum theme, IIRC

  21. …I think the statuettes would have a certain charm decked out in Groucho Marx glasses, actually. That might make them even better suited to McJulie’s purpose.

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