The top five choices for Asimov’s 31st Annual Readers’ Award Poll are online. There are links that will allow you to read all the finalists.
The winners will be revealed in May.
NOVELLAS
- Choose Poison, Choose Life – Michael Blumlein – October/November 2016
- Where There Is Nothing, There Is God – David Erik Nelson – December 2016
- What We Hold Onto – Jay O’Connell – June 2016
- Lazy Dog Out – Suzanne Palmer – April/May 2016
- Einstein’s Shadow – Allen M. Steele – January 2016
NOVELETTES
- I Married a Monster from Outer Space – Dale Bailey – March 2016
- They Have All One Breath – Karl Bunker – December 2016
- President John F. Kennedy, Astronaut – Sandra McDonald – August 2016
- Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man – Suzanne Palmer– July 2016
- Matilda – Kristine Kathryn Rusch – April/May 2016
SHORT STORIES
- The Mutants Men Don’t See – James Alan Gardner – August 2016
- White Dust – Nathan Hillstrom – January 2016
- All That Robot . . . – Rich Larson – September 2016
- Exceptional Forces – Sean McMullen – February 2016
- Dome on the Prairie – Robert Reed – September 2016
POETRY
- The Ambassador’s Daughter – Megan Arkenberg – October/November 2016
- Your Clone Excels at You – Robert Frazier – August 2016
- After – Herb Kauderer – October/November 2016
- Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman – Ron Koertge – April/May 2016
- The Robot Grows Old – Geoffrey A. Landis – June 2016
- Long Argument, the Longest – Jane Yolen – September 2016
- Nice Touch – Jane Yolen – March 2016
- Old Women of the Wood – Jane Yolen – October/November 2016
COVERS
- Images of the five finalists are available at the site.
[Via SF Site News.]
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Jason: Jeez, guys, take a chill pill. Do I have to put winky smiley things after everything? Yes, the comment expressed my disdain for participation trophies and that general mentality and indicated that you sounded like that but there was nothing “nasty” about it. It wasn’t intended as a mortal blow but a gentle rib. Buck up.
It’s stunning that you would respond to being called out for childish, insulting behavior by engaging in yet more childish, insulting behavior. I’m sure that this will come as a surprise to you, but there is nothing magical about intent; your remark was nasty in presentation, and it was of a piece with the nasty remarks you’ve posted here on File 770 in the past. Grow up.
Jason: I’ll ignore the rest of what you said on the assumption that it was as a result of that misapprehension.
Tell you what. You stop behaving like a poorly-brought-up 10-year-old, and I’ll ignore all the nasty, childish things you’ve said thus far on the assumption that you haven’t been paying enough attention here to realize that behavior which is acceptable on 4chan or Puppy blogs is not widely considered acceptable in this community.
@Jason
Count me as mystified about the requirement of strictures as well. And your references to the center not holding and disintegration. In all seriousness, I don’t know what you mean by that.
There are nine and sixty ways / of selecting “Best of” lays.
(apologies to Kipling)
@Jason
A few thoughts:
1) Diversity in the field: if you are looking backwards to the 60’s and 70’s from the vantage of today you are seeing the product of winnowing. The stories of that day and age seen commonly today are the elite. There was a whole lot of second rate derivative works and authors (the 99% according to Sturgeon’s Law) that have been forgotten because they weren’t able to surpass their time or just weren’t good enough to be memorable past a year or two’s span.
2) Breadth of Field: Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s I lived in a large metropolitan area (well actually several). The only common magazine sources for short stories were Analog, Asimov’s, and Omni. I’d heard of F&SF but never saw one in the wild. There were other sources like Playboy but not dedicated one’s. The anthologies frequently sourced from those magazine’s. Those limited sources (Maybe 250 to 350 non-novel length stories commonly available per year) led to some of the overlap you’re seeing. How many sources do we have now? Of my top five each is from a different source and I haven’t scratched all the options available to read.
3) Fracturing: I think has always been there to a degree. In my experience regular Analog readers weren’t regular Asimov’s readers. Different target audiences even in the same genre. Fracturing may be accelerating now though. I live in a two adult, one teenager household with three different SFF fandoms. I’m more a traditional hard SF fan. My girlfriend is predominately a fantasy fan with a particular joy in urban fantasy. Stepson is a fan of manga and light YA fantasy. We do interchange books but the tropes and conventions of those other sub-genre’s usually don’t interest the other family members not already fans of the sub-genre.
4) The cable TV model: Your analogy might be good. With cable’s growth we saw an explosion of niche programming frequently badly done and badly funded. Some of that still exists because of the niche but a lot of those channels collapsed. We’re now seeing though a growth of the medium through other delivery mechanisms leading to really well done and funded niche works. I think you might see a similar pattern as the Internet brings similar democratization to written works (lukewarm boom, individual bust, overall strengthening of the field).
Sorry to write an essay!!! It didn’t start that way but seems to have finished there.
@Laura
(Trying it from an incognito window . . .)
Okay, you’re right. If you’re not an SFWA member, that column is gone, as is the list of names of the people who nominated each work, but if you are a member of SFWA, you can still see both.
I tend to take a reductive approach to strictures: strictures are the unwritten rules that, if you break them, fans will quit reading your stories, complaining that “this isn’t SF/Fantasy/whatever.” By looking at a lot of what’s written and reading people’s reactions, you can come up with a pretty good idea of what those rules actually are. That doesn’t give you hard and fast boundaries, of course. Breaking a rule might lose you 50% of your audience, or even 90%, but there are few that would lose you over 99%. That doesn’t mean they’re not real and it doesn’t mean they’re not valuable to know, but it does mean that there isn’t a secret committee that sits down and drafts them. 🙂
JJ, at the risk of you deciding to start calling me condescending and other things again, part of being “grown up” is being able to have conversations without flying off the handle at the least thing. But we’ve been through this movie before. After that thread I was prepared to ignore you but you addressed me civilly on this thread at first, so I responded in kind. I never varied from civility myself and, if you think I did, I frankly don’t know how you manage to hold a conversation with anyone but you’re clearly very angry with me now so I think it’s best if we stop here. And if you’re going to react like this every time we talk, just don’t start conversations with me and I won’t start them with you.
Stoic Cynic, I agree on #1 that there is a winnowing effect. That’s not so much what I’m talking about, though. In ye olden days there was plenty of garbage and some lauded works and that’ll be true of today, too. It’s just that it seems to me there was more initial consensus on those lauded works and they lasted longer. I also absolutely agree on #2 about the 70s and 80s. That was a boom time for easily accessible books and relatively accessible magazines but the magazines were scarily few in number. You could pick ’em up in the grocery stores but there were only 3-5 of them, usually. Each had a distinct voice but there weren’t enough. That’s why on the number issues, I think more of the 50s magazine boom as a point of comparison. That’s the sort of short fiction period we’re in now but I’m still not as impressed with today as then in that regard. Also agree on #3 – always has been and, ideally, always will be. The camel’s supposed to carry a lot of stuff and that’s good. I’m just wondering about last straws. The “too much of a good thing” concept. As far as #4, I want to agree. I’ll admit I’d thought of the downside of the cable analogy but not so much of the upsides and you’re right that it has them and that the model may even be sustainable. That would be good.
As far as the “essay” thing, don’t apologize to me, at least. That’s a battle I’m constantly fighting and usually losing. I actually appreciate posts that (a) give me a lot to think about and (b) make my posts look less long. 🙂
Oh sorry, you were on the other page of comments, Aaron, and I forgot to reply, but I was feeling like I’d forgotten something.
Science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s was not nearly as diverse as your glib claim implies.
I fully grant that those four authors were examples (as was the Viet Nam war ad) but perhaps not in the sense you took them. I meant that Niven and Anderson are usually seen as right wing; Delany and Le Guin, left. Niven wrote very spare prose, Anderson both spare and lush but always direct, Delany often dense and complex. Le Guin is hard to peg stylistically in a word but she wouldn’t be confused with any of the others usually. Niven wrote “hard SF”, Le Guin softer, Anderson everything from hard SF to outright fantasy, Delany often had a metafictional component. And this was during a time in which the country was at war and everyone knew it. They had plenty to really fight about and feel genuine venom towards each other. And some did. But mostly they more or less got along and were all esteemed as great. I’m not as huge a fan of any of them as some are, but I love at least some of their work and respect them all, so I used them as examples. Some people are respected that I don’t get and some people I love inordinately so I said names that seemed relatively impersonal to me. You’re apparently talking just quota numbers on gender. Yes, only one of the four examples was female and that may yet be proportionally too large to represent the field at the time. One was a black homosexual and certainly I wasn’t trying to say “25% of SF writers in the 60s were gay African-Americans.” My point was that very very different types of writers were esteemed in the field by many different types of readers at a time that had far more reason to be divisive than this one.
Basically, I was just saying that even in the New Wave/Old Wave wars both Waves were esteemed and won awards alongside each other and, now that I think about it, those four examples are now all Grand Masters together, actually. I’m not as hopeful that that sort of diversity will be reflected in the future (or that we have all that many writers of their caliber, either).
Jason: part of being “grown up” is being able to have conversations without flying off the handle at the least thing.
And here is the problem, Jason. You don’t get to tell other people that they don’t get to consider the ad hominem, insulting things you say as not being insulting, or that it is “the least thing”.
I addressed you civilly on this thread at first, because you behaved civilly on this thread at first. Then you resorted to an ad hominem attack — and were shocked and surprised to be told that it wasn’t acceptable.
Part of being grown up is recognizing that your judgment on what is, or is not, offensive, is not the last word on that — and that a grownup, when told they’re being offensive, steps back and thinks, “Well, I didn’t think that was offensive, but maybe it was in other peoples’ eyes, and I should reconsider my approach.”
Jason: I never varied from civility myself
If you’re unable to recognize that using “You aren’t one of those people who got a lot of trophies for “participation” are you?” to discredit someone else’s opinion is an extremely uncivil thing to say, then I recommend you consider getting some counselling from someone who can help you learn what is acceptable adult behaviour.
I’m absolutely boggled at thinking about what sort of people you usually hang around with, that you would consider that a “civil” thing to say.
I meant that Niven and Anderson are usually seen as right wing; Delany and Le Guin, left.
But that’s not really an indicator of much diversity. It is an indicator of some, but really, it is quite a limited range of options you’re talking about there. You’re also way overstating how much Le Guin and Delany were honored at the time – they got a few awards here and there, but it was much less than you seem to imply. Also, they were the lone examples of their styles getting recognized as well. As I pointed out, it was not until much later that other women and other minority voices were heard, and examples of others writing in their styles are hard to come by.
You’re apparently talking just quota numbers on gender.
No, I’m talking about diversity. Le Guin and Delany are the “go to” that lazy people use now to show that older science fiction had “diversity”. The truth is, their demographic was way underrepresented in science fiction of that era, and as a result, the writing tended to focus on a limited set of themes, characters, and ideas. Niven was just another in a line of science fiction authors who wrote like Niven, Le Guin and Delany’s writing was radically different from the norm for their era. Why do you suppose that is?
at the risk of you deciding to start calling me condescending and other things again, part of being “grown up” is being able to have conversations without flying off the handle at the least thing.
The real point here is that you are continuing to behave like a child, and as a result, you are being treated like one.
I never varied from civility myself
You clearly don’t know what “civility” means if you think you’ve never varied from that in this thread.
JJ: Part of being grown up is recognizing that your judgment on what is, or is not, offensive, is not the last word on that
Nor is yours.
and that a grownup, when told they’re being offensive, steps back and thinks, “Well, I didn’t think that was offensive, but maybe it was in other peoples’ eyes, and I should reconsider my approach.”
Then step back and reconsider your reactions. “Well, I felt insulted but the guy took his time and effort to calmly explain and said he didn’t mean anything by it despite my repeated attacks on his maturity and decency after that so maybe I should just shake hands.”
Aaron: But that’s not really an indicator of much diversity.
Nor is gender, race, or sexual orientation. Especially when considering writers. For people in general, there is religion, height, weight, economic state, hair color, eye color, region of birth and growth, love or fear of rollercoasters and an infinity of other things that make up the incredible complexity of a human being. As a writer, there is an additional infinity of style, word choice, favoring of plot or character or theme, love of short work or lengthy epic, love of metaphor or literalism, interest in science for its own sake or love of fantasy – mundane SF or space opera? Medieval or urban fantasy? And on and on and on. I’m personally not interested in a world where we have a diversity of the first three and a uniformity of as much of the latter as possible. I’m not interested in people being reduced to such a simplicity. You seriously think an African is the same as an African-American? You think a Southern African-American is the same as a Northern? Shouldn’t any person resent being called “black” and numbered as such by white men to show the level of enlightenment of those white men? Now I don’t know if you or anyone here is white or black or male or female or anything and I don’t know what your motivations are so this is not an “ad hominem” attack but I do know a lot of people present as white male and prove how unracist they are by treating everyone non-white as the same and toting them up on their counters. And I know the people, white, black, and everything else who have nothing to eat tonight because of systematized corporate and political dysfunction think it’ll all be solved by more “diverse” science fiction. They’ll dine hearty on the pixels tonight.
You’re also way overstating how much Le Guin and Delany were honored at the time – they got a few awards here and there, but it was much less than you seem to imply. Also, they were the lone examples of their styles getting recognized as well.
What number would be satisfactory? Are you saying the awards they got were a trivial fluke or token recognition? That years later they were made Grand Masters out of a similar fluke or tokenism? Why are you belittling their success? “Oh, you only won four Nebulas and a Hugo in the 60s and 70s, Chip (plus another Hugo in the 80s). Sorry, that’s not good enough. Ms. Le Guin, your two double Nebula and Hugo wins plus another Hugo and Nebula in that timeframe are insufficient. They don’t really think you are good.” And the latter part makes even less sense. Are you saying Delany and Le Guin had the same styles? I made the opposite point. Are you saying Avram Davidson and R.A. Lafferty wrote like Heinlein? Or each other? Or Delany or Le Guin? That Bloch wrote the same sort of stuff as Clarke?
The real point here is that you are continuing to behave like a child, and as a result, you are being treated like one.
You are very right about how you’re attempting to treat me and it’s a measure of my restraint and a demonstration of my civility that I have been so polite to you both despite that.
I’ve enjoyed my time on this subject with Greg and Stoic and some others but it’s clear that you two are now in attack mode rather than “what if” and “perhaps” and “seems to me” mode like the rest of the posts were and, as before, I’ve spent enough time on this attack-and-defense stuff you seem to enjoy so much.
As a final “what if,” if I’m so horrible, how am I able to get along with anyone? And yet you would seem to get along with many others but just not me and a few others. So perhaps you’re fine people and I’m a fine person and we just don’t get along. Let’s leave it at that.
Jason: “Well, I felt insulted but the guy took his time and effort to calmly explain and said he didn’t mean anything by it despite my repeated attacks on his maturity and decency after that so maybe I should just shake hands.”
In other words, I am supposed to give you a pass on your bad behavior, instead of expecting you to recognize that civility entails erring on the side of graciousness and consideration rather than on the side of “suck it up, buttercup, I didn’t mean anything by it”.
As far as you “being a fine person”, at this point, based on my cumulative experience of your behavior on File 770, I have you filed under
Genus: Asshole, Subgenus: Can behave decently on occasion, but has no Emotional Intelligence whatsoever, and no understanding of the First Law Of Holes
But I’m sure that you won’t be offended by that, since it’s “the least little thing”, I haven’t actually “varied from civility”, there was nothing “nasty” about it, it “wasn’t intended as a mortal blow but a gentle rib”, and you will “Buck up”.
@Jason
Jeez, guys, take a chill pill. Do I have to put winky smiley things after everything? Yes, the comment expressed my disdain for participation trophies and that general mentality and indicated that you sounded like that but there was nothing “nasty” about it. It wasn’t intended as a mortal blow but a gentle rib. Buck up. I’ll ignore the rest of what you said on the assumption that it was as a result of that misapprehension. (Careful of being “the boy who called troll” though. If you use it so loosely no one’s going to believe you if a real one shows up.)
Well, that’s a thing.
JJ has already said this better, but: if multiple people point out that something was insulting, then “not my intent” is certainly a good start on an apology or a withdrawal, but only if it’s actually part of an apology or withdrawal. If you instead “explain” that the fault lies in their overreaction, plus bonus condescension about tone and character (“Chill Pill” “Buck Up”) then you’ve doubled-down instead.
I never varied from civility myself
took his time and effort to calmly explain and said he didn’t mean anything by it
Anyone who scrolls up can see that the descent from civility started with your insulting comment to JJ and subsequent double-down. It’s disappointing that you’re trying to recast history when it’s so easily checked. However, what’s really disappointing is that you could have sorted this very easily – just posting “that wasn’t my intent” without the critique on others reactions would very likely have simmered things down nicely.
JJ: Can behave decently on occasion
Thank you! You, too. 🙂
Nor is gender, race, or sexual orientation.
You’re still not understanding where you have gone awry. Citing the existence of four authors and saying “look how much more diverse science fiction was back then” is an argument that simply doesn’t work. Yes, Le Guin existed then, and so did Delany. That’s not evidence of much diversity given that they were almost unique outliers in the field, both in terms of writing style and demographics. Right now, there is at least as much diversity in the field of science fiction as you have cited – I can come up with four currently active authors who have as diverse a range of viewpoints as your four, and then raise you by several others.
What number would be satisfactory?
Well, for your argument to work, it would have to be a number similar to the awards and honors garnered by Anderson and Niven. And not only that, the number of awards and honors bestowed upon authors like Le Guin and Delany would have to be a number that is similar to the awards and honors garnered by authors similar to Niven and Anderson. I am confident that if you do so, you will find that the numbers are not even remotely close. I’ll note that this comparison was thought up by you – as it was you who said they were all winning awards and getting recognized to a similar extent, and this was advanced as evidence of the alleged diversity of the genre back in the “good old days”.
The problem you are having is that you are relying upon personal memory for this point, and it isn’t something for which that is suited. Your perceptions of the state of the genre are not reality – to determine the true state, you’d have to do a lot of work making a much more comprehensive side-by-side comparison than you have done thus far.
You are very right about how you’re attempting to treat me and it’s a measure of my restraint and a demonstration of my civility that I have been so polite to you both despite that.
You have not been polite. You jumped straight to impolite long ago in this thread, long before anyone began treating you like the wayward child you behave as.
Diversity is something of a conundrum for science fiction. If it sees a future where women and men are truly equal, where race matters no more than eye color, where gay people aren’t “queer” anymore, and transsexuals make 100%-perfect physical transitions, then the result isn’t diverse at all. But if it sees a future where those sorts of differences are still the cause of serious conflicts, then it’s almost saying that there must be something material about them, and that discrimination is justified.
I see lots and lots of stories that include minorities, but very few that have anything that sounds like an authentic voice. Those that do, are almost always near-future stories (or even historical fantasies). They’re also likely to come in for criticism from well-meaning folks who object that they’re portraying the minority in a bad light–folks who typically don’t bother to check whether the author is from that minority.
Jemisin told Fireside that there’s a genre of black SF written just for black people, on the theory that white people wouldn’t get it/like it. I wonder if this is part of what she’s talking about.
@Greg
I suspected as much. As far as I know, the public has never been able to see who is making the recommendations. But up until some time earlier this year, we were able to see how many recs each had gotten. Now that column is gone, and the default sort is alpha by title. By adding “&s=total_likes&so=desc” to the url, I can at least see what’s gotten more recommendations.
Laura: By adding “&s=total_likes&so=desc” to the url, I can at least see what’s gotten more recommendations.
Ooh, thanks for that. I’ve bookmarked it for future use.
I kind of agree with not showing counts; I’m able to overlook them in favor of my own tastes, but I’m not sure that everyone can, and I don’t like anything that seems to unfairly influence nominators and voters.
@JJ
Yes, I can definitely see why they removed the counts, and I can’t argue against it. I’m certainly going to follow my own judgement, but it’s nice to start considering things more people recommend and to see where the long tail of only one rec begins.