295 thoughts on “World Fantasy Award To Abandon Lovecraft Bust”

1. Lovecraft had a lot of unfortunately nasty beliefs, although toward the end of his short life he had begun to moderate and even liberalize a bit. But you can be absolutely sure that fifty years or a century from now, his work will still be widely read and enjoyed,

   I don’t think anyone’s objecting to that idea.

   But being widely read and enjoyed does not mean that his face must be an award for the fantasy genre. If so, then what about those other fantasy authors who are also widely read and enjoyed?

   Mention DeCamp’s name today at an SF convention, or more ironically, at a gathering of young fantasy and SF writers, and people respond with “WHO???”

   Because when people mention a name one is unfamiliar with, it’s regular practice to respond in all caps with multiple punctuation marks.

   But at an SF convention? If you specify younger readers/writers, maybe, but at an SF convention in general, I think a lot of people will remember de Camp, for his (unappealing to me but successful) work on the Howard CONAN oeuvre that made Conan a hugely-known character, for the Compleat Enchanter stories and more.

   It’s not like he’s fully out of print, even.

2. and the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.

   The ones by Fritz Leiber?

   WHO???

3. Kurt Busiek: But if the award had been a bust of Cthulhu, I doubt many people would be complaining.

   I am now trying to imagine a bust of Cthulhu, designed by Gahan Wilson. It is . . . surprisingly easy, even for me.

   (And I suspect you’re right, re: people complaining.)

   Kurt Busiek, again: The ones by Fritz Leiber?

   Oh, [expletive deleted]. I have got to stop posting without double-checking my memory! Thanks for the quick catch.

4. Not by Wilson, but busts of Cthulhu aren’t that hard to find:

   http://www.3demonic.com/images/cthulhu02.jpg

   Yeah, that’d be an award to conjure with.

5. The average SF convention will definitely contain people who grew up reading The Incomplete Enchanter, Lest Darkness Fall . . . and the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.

   Just a note: de Camp didn’t write the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. Fritz Lieber did. But I agree as to the larger point that the typical attendee at a SFF con or a typical SFF writer is likely to have heard of de Camp, and many will be quite familiar with his work.

6. Kurt Busiek: Not by Wilson, but busts of Cthulhu aren’t that hard to find:

   Eek! I think I’d be afraid to share a house with that! Those eyes!

7. Aaron: Just a note: de Camp didn’t write the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. Fritz Lieber did.

   Yup. Already noted. (Blushes with embarrassment, digs toe in dirt and tries to look elsewhere . . . I really do know better, I swear. Thanks for the second-catch.)

8. Lovecraft has the enormous reputational advantage of encouraging people to write using his themes, concepts, and character names during his lifetime, and his work the current advantage of being in the public domain and thus widely available to read inexpensively.

9. I suspect most geeky youngsters would recognise and understand “Lovecraftian” and “Cthulhu”, but perhaps not so many would have actually read much of his work. Not that it matters much either way; the approval of the young as a group is not required to enjoy a story.

   I owned a Lil Cthulhu vinyl model (with tiny screaming victims included) long before it occurred to me to read any of Lovecraft’s works.

   ETA: And I played WoW with the very subtle homage Old Gods bosses. First one that appeared in-game? C’thun. See? Super subtle. Bet you wouldn’t have guessed.

   @RedWombat

   I can do ten minutes on the Problem of Susan, War Is Ugly When Anyone Fights You Sexist Ass, and Why Caspian Is An Idiot at the drop of a hat. But I think I ranted my rant for the day already.

   Perhaps not today, but I wouldn’t mind reading it sometime. 🙂

   (I pretty much bounced off the Narnia books – I finished TLtWatW and liked it just fine, but didn’t have the urge to read any of the others. I do like reading people’s opinions of them, though, positive or negative.)

   @KBK

   De Camp recentlyish came up very favourably when we were discussing possible options for the Retro Hugo. I’m quite looking forward to reading his work as nomination prep. 🙂

   @Kurt Busiek

   My take on the problem with the bust is the same as yours.

10. Any Discordian trademark on, well, anything has probably lapsed, because all that business of putting “TM” on things and talking to the government is pretty aneristic. (The government can be pretty chaotic, but bureaucratic forms have, at least, the form of order rather than chaos.)

    An apple isn’t a bad idea, come to think–they’ve been used to symbolize so much over the millennia that they could carry this weight without much trouble.

11. First of all the term “racist” is an anachronism here, as it is used to criticize under a modern point of view a man and a society of the old pre-WW2 times. But, most important, it is irrelevant. The statuette is not supposed to honour or dishonour his political beliefs. The statuette is supposed to honour his writing genius, his central place in the world’s history of literature, his status as the father of the fantasy genre. In two words: why are you telling me if he was or he was not a racist? (if we can call his views so, which I doubt, and if these views are bad) Who said you that I care? I don’t honour him because of his political beliefs, but because he is a great writer and the father of fantasy. Of course the fantasy community honours its father; the opposite, this direspectful demolishion of his idol by his own children, is sacrilegious.

    The only racist thing in the conflict here is not HPL but the racism of the pc’s liberals against literature and art. They judge literature (and everything in fact) according the personal (real or supposed) political beliefs of the writer.

    Political corectness is a cancer of the modern society, a cancer of course that the anti-modernist, traditionalist (these are the right words) indeed HPL himself would criticized! Alas, now I’m coming to support the contrary point of mine and take the part of the opposed ones: Yes, that’s what HPL really deserves. Yes, it’s a honour for HPL to be persecuted in these decadent and barbaric modern times we live. Long live HPL! Your mythos with live forever and with strange aeons arise!

12. On the “bad wordsmith” criticism, I’ve said that several times and stand by it. Thing is, Lovecraft made that work for him in an odd way.

    To me, Lovecraft’s stories read like the scribblings of madmen who are trying desperately to exorcise the memory of the horrible thing they’ve just witnessed by pouring it out onto pages. The information cannot/should not be lost, but it can be bound in paper and ink so that they can safely forget it. And since that’s the major thrust of so many of the stories, it works in a way that better wordcraft might not.

    There’s a difference between well-written and evocative, and I place Lovecraft on the latter side. I don’t mean that no work can be both, only that this is a prime example of how the two qualities can be separated.

13. It’s always funny, these halfwits and shambling deltas who claim to be standing for tradition. The ur-rule for an honor is that it honors the recipient. That is the tradition in two words—honors honor. If recipients of the World Fantasy Award increasingly feel dishonored by the statuette, the statuette must be replaced, and nobody who understands either honor or tradition—or who will ever be worthy of a non-Puppy-generated honor—would ever disagree with this.

14. From here:
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php

    1932 as a noun, 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from French racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1871) and racialist (1917), both often used early 20c. in a British or South African context. In the U.S., race hatred, race prejudice had been used, and, especially in 19c. political contexts, negrophobia.

    Interesting.
    The word “racist” itself pretty much squeaks by as contemporary, since Lovecraft dies in ’37, but clearly the concept was alive and kicking much earlier.
    No surprise.

15. The only racist thing in the conflict here is not HPL but the racism of the pc’s liberals against literature and art.

    You dimwitted racist apologists would be funny if you weren’t so tedious.

16. Nick Mamatas on November 9, 2015 at 7:06 pm said:
    It’s always funny, these halfwits and shambling deltas who claim to be standing for tradition. The ur-rule for an honor is that it honors the recipient. That is the tradition in two words—honors honor. If recipients of the World Fantasy Award increasingly feel dishonored by the statuette, the statuette must be replaced, and nobody who understands either honor or tradition—or who will ever be worthy of a non-Puppy-generated honor—would ever disagree with this.

    Yep, concise and exactly the point.
    On the most fundamental level it is simple politeness.
    As people have pointed out, no one is censoring his work, they just do not necessarily see him as the continuing face of fantasy.
    And I think that listening to, you know, people who have actually won the thing makes more sense than paying much attention to random culture warrior blather.
    For example, I really liked these suggestions for dealing with the current statuette.
    https://www.facebook.com/rick.bowes2/posts/10153215534276398?pnref=story

17. Disrespectful demolition of his idol! Dear me! He’s an idol now?

    Could swear there was something about destroying idols in some old book or other…it’s on the tip of my tongue…

    Well, memory fades. But I’m sure it was only bad people who demolished idols. Good people like idols, right? Buff them up nice and shiny?

18. Pheidias Bourlas:

    Lovecraft was definitely not the father of the the fantasy genre. You claim to talk about “traditions” but have no knowledge of Clark Ashton Smith? Of Lord Dunsany? You’d better read up before coming with such spurious claims.

    And you think we would be foremost interested in if you care about if he is racist. Talk about narcissism. If any persons opinions are more interesting than others, it is the receivers of the award. If they feel discomfort, then it is time to change the design of the award.

19. Pheidias Bourlas: The statuette is not supposed to honour or dishonour his political beliefs. The statuette is supposed to honour his writing genius, his central place in the world’s history of literature, his status as the father of the fantasy genre.

    No, the statuette is supposed to honor the recipients, who’ve produced ostensibly the best Fantasy works of the year. Lovecraft hasn’t been in the running for that for at least 80 years.

    As far as “father of the fantasy genre”? The fantasy genre has numerous fathers AND mothers, and there’s no reason why the statue should represent only one of them.

    But hey, nice try, even if all of your “facts” are incorrect.

20. It is my belief that the trolls loose 1d3 of sanity every time they read a blogpost of Beales. It is their lack of willpower that compels them to continue reading there anyhow.

    And when they come here, they are quite mad. It is funny that they still have almost 0% in cthulhu mythos. Of course, they often have puppy mythos instead.

21. Kurt Busiek: To parallel the Hugo, I like the idea of the big fake gem. It’s simple and striking, the setting could be interestingly varied from year to year, and even the gem itself could be different colors and textures, just always the same size and shape.

    I love that idea… but. A lot of years, getting a decent, affordable Hugo base has been a real struggle, and some years they were real duds. A set statuette has the advantage of economies of volume, plus recognizability. I don’t think a big gemstone is going to be as recognizable year after year with different settings the way that the Hugo rocket is.

22. Kurt Busiek: “Same world, different dragon.”
    — The world-weary sigh of knights errant throughout history.

    “Not my fantasy world, not my dragons.”
    — The world-weary sigh of disgruntled Fantasy fans throughout history.

23. Isn’t there room for a civil discussion here? Alaya Dawn Johnson could say my wish is for young adult readers to feel comfortable with their sexuality, so I’m not happy to accept the Andre Norton Award. Sofia Samatar and Wesley Chu might well have felt displeased with an award named after the man who systematically obstructed stories about people of color. Poe of course was appallingly racist. That Man guy amassed his fortune from military contracts selling the fruits of slavery, and that Booker guy practically owned Guiana and most everyone in it. The Nobels were war profiteers. Pulitzer exploited child labor. They named the Walt Whitman Award after someone who opposed giving blacks the vote.

    I have no idea where Jeffro gets off calling the decision “completely asinine,” but I see why there are different points of view, even if refraining from “honoring” people by photographing them being handed items that offend them seems like a no-brainer.

24. There is a perfectly good discussion going on here, despite the attempts of a bunch of racists to disrupt it.

    Tone trolling is bad enough; putting hypothetical words in the mouths of actual living writers who have said nothing of the kind is offensive.

    Thanks for the impressive example of how demands for “civility” are used to silence people who are saying things the demander dislikes.

25. Vicki: Perhaps I should have quoted a bit from Mamatas as his was the bit that prompted my reply, but I was reluctant to repeat the insults.

    I’m putting no words in anyone’s mouth. I’ve said they are giving YA stories about gay relationships an award named after someone who thought such YA fiction shouldn’t be published, stories about people of color awards named after people who opposed them or worse. I don’t presume to suppose I know what anyone thinks about it.

26. Brian Z, the issue under discussion is the shape of the award, not its name. The WFA was nicknamed the Howie, or perhaps the Howard (see Nick Mamatas, above–far above, not the more recent comment that I believe you are referring to here), but I’m pretty sure it was never officially called that, and the problem that’s getting the reaction is that it’s a physical representation of the man. The only award you name that is a bust of the author is, I think, the Edgar–which is also officially named after Poe, due to his close association with the detective story. You want to argue about Poe’s racism being extreme for the 1830s? Disqualifying him as the “father” of detective fiction? Go ahead and add that to the conversation–I’m sure some Poe readers who know more about his life and fiction than I do will be willing to discuss the matter. But the other awards aren’t relevant.

27. Brian Z: In the unlikely event that you’re actually concerned about those other awards, then go ahead and lobby and work to get them changed. You know, like Older and the others did with the World Fantasy award. Or would you rather just suggest that because you believe some other awards are problematic that the World Fantasy Award board shouldn’t change the physical shape of their award?

28. Mary Frances, those are all interesting points. I’d say a name associates the award with the person even more strongly than a bust, which is just a thing that goes on your shelf, not on your c.v. and your book covers, if you see what I mean.

    The question of what can be considered “extreme” is hard for me to wrap my head around. Without being a Poe scholar, those were the times that saw the abolition of slavery across most of the world except where Poe was. Edgar Allen Poe and Frederick Douglass, say, were equally products of the same time and place. You are right, someone here more immersed in Poe studies might add something.

    Who should qualify as “father of” is a good question. I don’t know that I can answer it. I’m not sure it’s the right question. The “Edgar” works well for mystery as much for the colorful circumstances of his death as for anyone knowing his detective stories chapter and verse. “Campbell” is simply because he famously cultivated some very good new writers. When I stopped for a minute to think why we name things things (which helped prompt these comments), the colonial reverberations of the names “Man” and “Booker” were the most unsettling – and I don’t see them giving those up.

29. Meridith,

    Everybody read tLtWatW first which is a mistake since it is neither first chonologically or best story.

    Top to bottom is the chronological order and the nunbers indicate my opinion of best to worst:

    4 The Magician’s Nephew
    5 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
    3 A Horse and His Boy
    6 Prince Caspian
    1/2 Voyage of the Dawntreader
    2/1 The Silver Chair
    7 The Last Battle

30. I’m putting no words in anyone’s mouth.

    Meanwhile: Alaya Dawn Johnson could say my wish is for young adult readers to feel comfortable with their sexuality, so I’m not happy to accept the Andre Norton Award.

    And…so what? Has she done so? You’re just playing an abstract game. If Johnson feels honored by the Norton, then the Norton is fine. If she does not, and other people do not, and many many other people declare that they do not, then the name should be changed.

    But it is extremely silly to complaint that potentially everyone could complain about everything when in practice almost nobody complains about anything.

31. Nick: But it’s an excellent excuse to complain about people actually doing something about a problem when there ARE complaints, you see.
    I suppose I shouldn’t volunteer at my local food pantry any more, right Brian? After all, there are people starving to death in Sudan….

32. Well, I’m not only not a Poe scholar, I’m not even a 19th century Americanist, but the discussions of Poe’s racism rest on three poles, so far as I can tell.

    First, he was a southerner–raised in Richmond, lived in Baltimore. That’s pretty thin, and pretty unanswerable–do we assume that everyone who lived in Virginia in the 1820s-1830s was racist, or do we look for evidence about individuals? I think we’re better off looking for evidence. Evidence: Insufficient.

    Second, the depiction of “savage black men” in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), Poe’s only novel. The servant in “The Gold Bug” is sometimes brought up too, but I think that’s a fairly positive version of the “clownish servant” stereotype, actually–racist by modern standards only. The mutineers in Pym and the novel’s discussion of “savages” are much more overt. But extreme for sensational fiction, in 1838, in the aftermath of Haitian revolution and when the slave trade is at its height? It’s a pretty common trope for the time period, and the novel itself is–weird, and atypical for Poe. If anyone knows more than I do about this, I hope they’ll speak up, but for now–Evidence: Mixed.

    Third, the fact that in 1829 Poe “sold” a slave on behalf of his aunt and future mother-in-law, Maria Clemm–the record is unclear, in that he seems to have “leased” the slave to a black freedman rather than selling him outright. Did this mean that Poe approved of slavery and disapproved of abolition? Again, the record seems ambiguous, at best–and there doesn’t seem to any hint that Poe was acting as anything other than an agent for a woman who was at that time the only member of his family who was willing to take him in out of poverty. I don’t think anyone every argued that Poe was an abolitionist, in any case. Evidence: still Mixed, but I’m slightly more uncomfortable with this point than the other.

    So, was Poe’s racism enough that an African American mystery writer ought to be disturbed by receiving the Edgar? I honestly don’t know. I can only say that none of them seem to have been, yet. In my opinion, it’s as big a waste of time to tell people they ought to be offended by something as to tell them that they shouldn’t be; when writers start protesting the Edgar, I’ll revisit the issue. If that ever happens, I suspect that I’ll also believe that Poe’s really strong association with the detective story is something that needs to be taken into consideration, too.

    Finally, while you may feel that the name of the award is the problem, the writers who are protesting the Lovecraft statuette don’t seem to feel that way; every account I’ve read focuses on people being disturbed at the thought of having to live with an actual statue of Lovecraft in a place of honor in their homes. This may be in part because the WFA isn’t technically called the Lovecraft, so what goes on resumes and book covers is “World Fantasy Award Winner.” But I tend to take people at their word when they say they mostly don’t want to live with this statuette of a racist man staring at them. I don’t know how I’d feel in their place, but I think they’re being honest about their own emotions–and that’s what the WFA is responding to.

33. Nick,

    I agree with you in the case of the Howie – I can’t see any particular reason for the Lovecraft image to be handed out every year for the rest of time. It isn’t as iconic as the rocket ship. Fine, retire it, makes sense. But an awful lot of people are objecting. Why not consider their case, such as it is.

    So of course it is abstract – it’s a thought experiment. I can offer no personal examples since unlike Sofia Samatar or China Miéville I’m not not a writer up for awards. Please consider my remark prefaced with “I can imagine how…” I can imagine how there could be objections worth taking seriously, given Poe’s writings, Norton’s remarks, etc.

34. The issue with the hypothetical is a simple one—you’re assigning attitudes to people who do not possess them. As far as the issue with Poe, he’s a 19th century figure. Not only have social attitudes changed, the entire frameworks of politics in the United States has changed. Whether slavery of blacks as a legal institution should exist is entirely off the table, for example. Lovecraft’s politics remain salient today.

    Norton’s attitudes toward homosexuality are much harder to pin down. They’re absent from her fiction, and the only thing I’ve seen as far as public comments are a thirty-year-old interview that decries explicit incest scenes in books for young readers. The last I heard of her views on sex was related to me by a young writer I used to date who knew Norton in her final years. According to her, Norton’s personal advice was “Be sure to have sex with many people, as often as you can, while you are still young and beautiful.”

    Good advice, I say!

35. I really like the HPL writing and mythos but the award is not my favorite sculpture.

    It would be neat to have the award be inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki — something with children and a fantastic creature side-by-side with some details of the base/setting that could be customized by sites – though that could be expensive I know.

    Maybe an empty mirror frame with different creatures on each side to show reality and imagination side by side.

36. Mary Frances, thanks for delving deeper into Poe and Pym, it is very helpful. I’ve seen many object to Poe’s alleged racism. I’m not sure which genre writers might have sympathy with those objections, I’ve just seem them expressed online.

    You are right about those creepy eyes. Maybe we should compromise by replacing it with a bust of Cthulhu.

37. The issue with the hypothetical is a simple one—you’re assigning attitudes to people who do not possess them.

    Nick, I agree with one caveat: objections or unease regarding Norton, Poe, etc. have been articulated multiple times (they can be easily found online). The hypothetical is not whether they have the potential to cause offense – they do. The hypothetical is how individuals may respond, which impacts authors nominated, longlisted, submitted for, etc., various awards. Regular fans might feel they have a stake too. (See: controversies over mascots, costumes, and so forth.)

38. You cheated by expanding the issue. The issue is: are nominees and winners of the Andre Norton and Edgar Allan Poe awards actually objecting to the names or statuettes associated with the award? If so, don’t just wave at the Internet, provide links. That someone somewhere is upset that Poe was an anti-abolitionist is a different issue.

39. Depends on what’s the issue and what’s cheating. We’re in agreement about the decision to retire the bust after vocal objections. But your shambling correspondent argued: “the statuette is not supposed to honour or dishonour his political beliefs.” (And Jeffro and various others have riffed on that theme.) I didn’t see the same need as you to dismiss that line of argument out of hand. When do you say “totally understandable – if those eyes were staring at me every day, I’d turn it to face the wall too,” and when do you say, “those were opinions she expressed thirty years ago and doesn’t bring up in her work” or “you have to understand that he was basically just a product of his times.” I don’t have the answers, hence thinking about it.

40. I can hardly take anyone seriously who cannot figure out that an award statuette honors its recipient, not its unknowing, deceased, unconsulted subject.

41. Me? I said it before you did.

42. Actually, I said it in 2011. But no, I was clearly referring to But your shambling correspondent argued: “the statuette is not supposed to honour or dishonour his political beliefs.” (And Jeffro and various others have riffed on that theme.) I.

43. Okay, who stepped on Brian Z’s bridge?

44. Sounds like a disconnect between some objectors who learned about the angry petition being circulated calling Lovecraft a terrible writer etc., and those who know more about the awards, have been following the discussion, and thought a decision was made after careful consideration.

45. So, a disconnect between know-nothings and know-somethings? What else is new? I don’t ever need to take the former group at all seriously.

46. Rev. Bob on November 10, 2015 at 12:41 am said:

    Okay, who stepped on Brian Z’s bridge?

    It is the long foretold brianzeemamatapocalypse

47. Camestros: hush, I’m interested in what he has to say. 😀

48. A question of perhaps tangential interest for mystery fans: other than the perennial Walter Mosley, which African-American writers have been up for the Edgars in the past decade? (I can’t say I follow them as closely as SFF awards.) Frankie Y. Bailey nominated for a critical study in 2009, Attica Locke for First Novel in 2010…

49. I’m not sure how speculating about hypothetical winners of other awards would get us to the heart of people who are upset about the bust being changed, to be honest.

    I’m also somewhat doubtful that a conversation is possible with a group of people who are turning up, making a single comment (that is largely indistinguishable from the comments of the ones who came earlier) and then leaving, without any real signs that they’ve read the comments or intend to come back again.

    Personally, I’d be much more upset about something living on my shelf staring at me than something that got added to my book cover, but I only speak for me. I care about my living environment a lot, and considerably less about what might appear in a bookshop.

50. I see no reason to engage with trolls, drive-by or otherwise.

    Welcoming people to the conversation, sure. Asking them their opinions, listening respectfully if they ever reply. Responding to reasoned discourse.

    I see no reason, however, to rise to troll bait or play their games on their terms.

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