(1) PAID REVIEW WORTH IT? Jeb Kinnison evaluates Kirkus Reviews’ reception of sf.
So I was leery of spending my publisher’s money to get a Kirkus review done. The review was glowing, but without the coveted star that tends to get notice from other reviewers and purchasing agents. I was interested in how they had treated other genre books, so I did a quick survey.
It appears that in the past, Kirkus assigned reviewers who were less than sympathetic to the book’s genre and intended audience. This review [of GHOST by John Ringo] made me laugh: …
But other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? This is Ringo. His books aren’t likely to be accidentally purchased by people like the reviewer, so the review is useless for deciding which violent testosterone-infused male fantasy adventure book to buy for people who enjoy that sort of thing.
One of the best writers of science fiction and fantasy, Lois McMasters Bujold, never got a starred review from Kirkus. Here’s the summary of their review of middle Miles Vorkosigan in Mirror Dance: “A well-conceived series, solidly plotted and organized, though heavy going in places and, finally, lacking that spark of genuine originality that would blazon it as truly special.” Kind of missing the point, no?
(2) DOCTOR WHO PUN OPPORTUNITY. We ought to be able to do something with a character who is married to River, and whose series will be hstreamed on Amazon Prime beginning in March.
Welp, it wasn’t the longest of national nightmares, but now it appears it is over. Last week, I wrote about how and where you could watch Doctor Who following its abrupt pulling from streaming services on February 1 of this year. But it wasn’t to last, it seems; Amazon announced today via their Twitter that Series 1-8 of the show will be back on their Prime streaming service beginning in March.
#DoctorWho fans, never fear for Doctor Who might have left #Netflix, but will be coming to #PrimeVideo in March. https://t.co/0bwJqXGRdz
— Rachel Hirst (@RachelTheTall) February 23, 2016
(3) WHEN DID YOU FIRST SUSPECT? I got a kick out of Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Ten Signs That You Might Be A Novel’s Character” at Mad Genius Club. Number 10 and the Bonus sign are especially funny.
1- Nothing is ever easy, nor simple. Say you are walking across the street to get a gallon of milk. A rare make of car will almost run you down. The store that sells the milk will be out of milk. You’ll have to walk across the most dangerous area of town to get to the next store.
This means someone is making you terminally interesting….
(4) FROM REJECTION TO ANGRY ROBOT. Peter Tieryas details “My Experience Publishing With Angry Robot” at Fantasy-Faction.
My journey to being a writer almost never happened. With my new book, United States of Japan, coming out, I wanted to reflect on how I got here and what it’s been like working with the fantastic Angry Robot Books.
Perfect Edge
Back in 2009, almost seven years before I joined the robot army, I’d gotten so many short story rejections, I wondered if I was even meant to be a writer. While I’d had a series of short stories published when I was younger, there’d been a gap of about five years where I’d only gotten one piece accepted. I was devastated when I received that issue and found all sorts of typos and formatting errors in my story. What I thought would be a brief moment of victory had been ruined…..
As the decision to publish was made by the whole of Angry Robot and Watkins Media staff, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It took USJ about four months to get to “acquisitions” which is the meeting where they make their choice to “acquire” or not. I got an email from Phil the week of the acquisition meeting telling me when it was going to happen. I could not sleep the night before and kept on hitting refresh on my emails, awaiting final word. The notification came from Phil on March 5, 2015 with a simple subject line: “You’re in.” Even though it was late, I got up and started dancing in what might be better described as an awkward fumbling of my hips.
(5) HOLLYWOOD READIES SF/F MOVIES. News of three different sf/f film projects appears in Deadline’s story “Ava DuVernay Set To Direct Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’; Script By ‘Frozen’s Jennifer Lee”.
EXCLUSIVE: Selma director Ava DuVernay has just been set by Disney to direct A Wrinkle In Time, an adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Medal-winning Madeleine L’Engle fantasy classic novel that has a script by Oscar-winning Frozen writer and co-director Jennifer Lee. Deadline revealed February 8 that DuVernay had been offered this film and was also in the mix at DreamWorks for Intelligent Life, a sci-fi thriller scripted by Colin Trevorrow and his Jurassic World collaborator Derek Connolly. DuVernay now has the offer on that film and is in negotiations on a pic that has 12 Years A Slave Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o attached to a fable about a UN worker in a department designed to represent mankind if there was ever contact with aliens, who falls for a mystery woman who turns out to be one. That film is produced by Frank Marshall, Trevorrow and Big Beach principals Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub.
(6) TRUST & SAFETY. Here’s Twitter’s announcement of the Trust & Safety Council in case you want more info, tweeted February 9. It lists all the members of the Council. (Somebody may have put that in a comment here already.)
As we develop products, policies, and programs, our Trust & Safety Council will help us tap into the expertise and input of organizations at the intersection of these issues more efficiently and quickly. In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices from organizations including:
- Safety advocates, academics, and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet;
- Grassroots advocacy organizations that rely on Twitter to build movements and momentum;
- Community groups with an acute need to prevent abuse, harassment, and bullying, as well as mental health and suicide prevention.
We have more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions joining as inaugural members of the Council. We are thrilled to work with these organizations to ensure that we are enabling everyone, everywhere to express themselves with confidence on Twitter.
(7) AXANAR SUIT DEVELOPMENT. Inverse discusses why “Paramount Must Explain ‘Star Trek’ in Court or Lose Ownership”.
Enter the lawyers. Obviously, they can claim to own Star Trek because they acquired the series from Lucille Ball’s Desilu Productions in the late 1960s. Now they’ve been merged with CBS and that’s how we’re getting both a new TV series and a continuing film franchise. But the Axanar team has a card up its sleeve.
The Paramount lawsuit claims that this infringes upon “thousands of copyrights” and the Axanar team has asked the simple question: “Which ones?” Because Star Trek now exists over several different universes, time periods, and casts, it’s not so simple. The universe is so spread out, it is almost impossible to define what Star Trek actually is. To that end, the burden is on Paramount to explain what Star Trek is — in a legal sense.
(8) CLIFF AMOS OBIT. Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22 after a long battle with heart disease. Bob Roehm wrote a fine appreciation on Facebook:
Louisville fan Cliff Amos passed away February 22. Cliff was the founder of Louisville fandom, creating both the Falls of the Ohio Science Fiction Association (FoSFA) and RiverCon. I first met Cliff around 1970 while he was teaching a free university course in SF at the University of Louisville. We had both separately attended the St. Louis worldcon the year before, but had not met. Seeing an announcement of the Free U. meeting, I began attending the weekly gatherings. A year… or two later, the local fan club was organized and in 1975 Cliff chaired the first RiverCon (combined with DeepSouthCon that year). Cliff continued to head RiverCons for several years and was a regular at Midwestcon and Kubla Khan. He was given the Southern Fandon Confederation Rebel Award in 1979, and also chaired the second NASFiC, NorthAmeriCon, that year. His interests were certainly wide-ranging and eclectic (for example, he once appeared on Tom Snyder’s late night talk show as warlock Solomon Weir), and he will be missed by his many friends both within and without the science fiction community. There will no funeral service or visitation but a memorial wake is being arranged for the near future (probably this coming Sunday); details forthcoming.
(9) GAMBLE OBIT. Australian childrens’ book artist Kim Gamble passed away February 19 at the age of 63.
The much-loved, award-winning artist is known for illustrating the best-selling Tashi books, written by mother and daughter authors Barbara and Anna Fienberg.
Gamble created the lively, elfin boy with the towering curl of hair and gypsy earrings, who looked nothing like the authors initially imagined, more than 20 years ago….
Anna Fienberg called Gamble’s imagination “a magic gift which he shared with the world”….
“Working with Kim was like learning a new way to see. It was perhaps the magical appearance of Tashi that inspired us to go deeper into the mythical land of dragons, witches, giants, ogres … the world lying beneath.”
…Gamble’s favourite book as a child was Moominsummer Madness, by Finnish writer Tove Jansson, and artists he admired included Marc Chagall and Odilon Redon.
When asked about the success of the Tashi series, Gamble said, “It’s very popular because he’s the smallest kid in the class and in every story he’s up against the odds … and he uses his head, he doesn’t fight to get out of the problem. I think kids really just enjoy how cleverness beats brawn.”
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born February 24, 1786 — Wilhelm Grimm, historian and, with his brother Jacob, compiler of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
- Born February 24, 1947 — Edward James Olmos
(11) MORE MARK OSHIRO COMMENTARY. Mark Oshiro updated his Facebook readers about the response to his complaint about sexual harassment at ConQuesT.
3) MidAmeriCon II was the first to make a public statement, which you can find on their Twitter account. I wasn’t expecting a response from them, so I appreciated a very direct message about their commitment to safety for this year’s WorldCon. I *am* going to be at WorldCon, even if some of the people who were responsible at ConQuesT are on staff/the board. WorldCon has become a tradition for me because it was my first introduction to this community, so I will be there and be on programming. Say hello if you like!
4) Chris Gerrib was the first to apologize to me, and I appreciated and accepted the apology. I respect that he did so without being asked to.
5) Yesterday, Kristina Hiner sent me an apology. I am keeping it private because I see no reason to publish it. It is a *very* good apology, and I accepted it, too. I am very thankful for her response, and more so than anyone else, she was the only person I really *wanted* an apology from. I have also informed her that at this point, I actually don’t need each of the complaints followed up on at this point. It seems redundant to me. Everyone knows about the post now, and I don’t need an apology from anyone else. I just wanted someone to inform these people that their behavior was unwelcoming, rude, or hostile. I’ve now done that, so I think the board and ConQuesT can devote time and energy to future conventions instead of last year’s.
Mikki Kendall used the discussion about Oshiro to launch her post “On Bad Cons & How You Kill An Event in Advance”.
I get invited to a lot of cons that have a diversity problem. I also get a lot of requests from cons that claim to want to create anti harassment policies. Aside from my feelings on an expectation that I donate hours of work to strangers for events I have no interest in attending, there’s the sad reality that many small cons are so entrenched on reinventing the wheel they’ve missed the window to do better. Younger fans, fans of color, disabled fans…they don’t have to keep going to cons that aren’t welcoming to be able to connect with other fans. They can go to the big commercial cons, to the smaller cons that do get it & to social media for their community needs. So no, they won’t keep giving cons with bad reps chance after chance. They won’t be patient with serial offenders or the places that enable them. Why should they donate that time & energy to some place that doesn’t want them, that thinks they deserve to be hazed, deserve to be mistreated in order to prove something to bigots?
Bluntly? Most small cons will age out of existence because of bad behavior, because of a focus on the past that prioritizes the social mores of the dead over the actual experiences of the living.
(12) THE LIGHT’S BACK ON. The Wertzone says “Pacific Rim 2 re-greenlit for 2018”.
It was on, off and now back on again. Universal and Legendary Pictures are moving ahead with Pacific Rim 2, probably for a 2018 release date….
This has unfortunately meant that Guillermo Del Toro will be unable to return to direct, having already moved on to other projects. However, Del Toro will still co-write (with Jon Spaihts) and produce the movie. The new director is Steven S. DeKnight, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran who went on to create Spartacus and is currently working on Netflix’s Daredevil. The film will be DeKnight’s directorial debut.
(13) THIS COULD RUIN ANDY WEIR’S SEQUEL. This video argues we can reach relativistic speeds using new technologies.
Imagine getting to Mars in just 3 days… or putting points beyond our solar system within our reach. New propulsion technologies could one day take us to these cosmic destinations making space travel truly interstellar! NASA 360 joins Professor Philip Lubin, University of California Santa Barbara, as he discusses his NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) for energy propulsion for interstellar exploration.
(14) ADMIT IT, YOU DO. Motherboard asks, “Why Do We Feel So Bad When Boston Dynamics’ New Robot Falls Down?”
Even though all the things the engineers do to mess with the robot are done to showcase its ability to correct itself, recover from falls, and persevere in performing tasks, the human tendency to anthropomorphize non-sentient objects is so strong as to override our common-sense knowledge that Atlas is an object incapable of feeling. Engineers commonly kick robots to demonstrate their ability to recover, and it always feels a tiny bit cruel. It’s a strange quirk of the brain—though the tendency is stronger in some people than in others.
(15) A LONG TIME AGO IN DOG YEARS. Some Sad Puppies writing on Facebook are grieved that I have not excerpted Stephanie S.’ “Opening a Moderate Conversation on Fandom with ‘Standback’” atThe Right Geek.
Let’s talk first about what I like to call the “pre-history” of the Sad Puppies. For the past fifteen years (at least), the character of fandom has shifted in a way that many Puppies find very troubling — and by the way, for the vast majority of our number, this has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexuality. A significant number of us are women who accept the precepts of first wave feminism at the very least. A number of us are “people of color.” And a number of us are gay or, at minimum, amenable to leaving gay people alone to live their lives as they see fit. No — what has disturbed the Puppies is the increasingly strident tone that many fans have adopted in support of their favored cultural and political causes. In our perception, the vague “codes of conduct,” the “shit lists,” the pilings on, the endless internet flame-wars, and the non-falsifiable accusations of racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. have all created an environment that is extraordinarily hostile to points of view that don’t hew to a particular left-wing party line. The result? We’ve felt unwelcome and stomped on for what, to our mind, should be recognized as sincere and well-meant differences of opinion.
Over the same time frame, the Puppies have also become concerned about the artistic direction of our field. The “Human Wave” movement, the “Superversive” movement, and the more generalized complaints about “message fic” and “grey goo” that started gaining steam before last year’s Sad Puppies campaign are all flailing attempts by the Puppies to describe the flatness we’ve perceived in many recent award winners — particularly in the shorter fiction categories, where the stylistic sophistication and emotional catharsis beloved by creative writing professors and MFA programs the world over appear to be crowding out more accessible stories with identifiable plots and recognizably science-fictional ideas.
(16) EDIT AND GET CREDIT. Michael J. Martinez singles out for praise and award consideration five editors who worked on his fiction in 2015.
Yes, these are editors I’ve worked with. Each one of them has contributed both to the quality of my work as well as my ever-ongoing education as a writer. They are also lovely humans, which goes a very long way with me.
(17) ANY SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. Radio Times found a very funny site: “Someone is pretending to be the IT guy at Hogwarts and it’s hilarious”.
Let’s be honest: magic is great and everything, but if Hogwarts didn’t have WiFi, we probably wouldn’t be so interested.
A Tumblr account called The Setup Wizard took this premise and ran with it. The blog is the fictionalised account of an American muggle named Jonathan Dart working as Hogwarts’ first IT guy. The somewhat grumpy character is constantly solving problems and handling the struggles of being a Muggle in a magic world.
How is it that the first person in this school I’ve successfully been able to explain network bandwidth to is the 500 year old partially decapitated ghost?
Today I taught a centaur how to use a hands free Bluetooth headset. Apparently he really felt the need to make phone calls while wielding a bow and arrow.
[Thanks to Will R., Michael J. Walsh, Reed Andrus, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
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By the way I must say I find it sad that the Hugo Awards page has linked to “Third Party Recommendation Sites” like Rocket Stack Rank, yet “Sad Puppies” are pointedly omitted.
That seems biased.
Maybe not intentionally, but history repeats itself!
Brian Z: By the way I must say I find it sad that the Hugo Awards page has linked to “Third Party Recommendation Sites” like Rocket Stack Rank, yet “Sad Puppies” are pointedly omitted. That seems biased.
They haven’t linked to Declan Finn’s personal website, either, which would amount to the same thing.
@ JJ
For once, that was funny!
Brian Z. What about A Prisoner of Zenda? Or am I missing the point of your question?
So following last year’s Sad Puppy 3 fiasco that resulted in the Hugo finalists being gamed, this year’s Sad Puppy 4 attempt at a rehabilitated approach has itself been gamed by Declan Finn? #irony
One thing that concerned me last year was that we would see a bunch of competing slates. Thankfully most fans saw sense & agreed that slating (of any flavour) was bad, and we haven’t seen it happen. Long may that continue.
The Hugos also haven’t linked to the Scientology recommendation site. Unless and until the Scientologists or Puppies show that they can recommend things that the Hugo voters won’t rank below no award, I see no reason why they should be linked to.
I think it may be worth asking: just how much, if any, difference is there between the Puppies and the Scientologists? Really.
Xtifr: I think it may be worth asking: just how much, if any, difference is there between the Puppies and the Scientologists? Really.
Well, at least the Scientologists started their own Awards program, since the Hugos weren’t giving awards to the Sad Elrons.
More a question of putting oneself in the shoes of a typical Hugo voter of the mid-fifties to see what they saw in Double Star.
Was doing “such-and-such classic plot – IN SPACE!” with flair and panache so remarkable back then that nobody went, “that’s clever, but hardly original”?
Did those voters feel they were getting special insights not possible without shifting that story in a SF setting, and those are less obvious to us?
The choice of Double Star kinda puzzles me too. Though not as much as They’d Rather Be Right (which won in 1955) puzzles me. Even setting aside the great fantasy novels published in 1954, there were plenty of terrific SF novels. Asimov? Clement?
I smell a conspiracy. Bloc voters strike again!
@ Cheryl S.
I grant you Submission seems like a weird choice, but it isn’t simply someone getting his kicks from skewering French intellectuals, though that’s there. It’s a beautiful novel by someone who thinks deeply about Europe’s future. And there’s a lot of imagined near-future sociology and political science. For example, the author describes a way far-right and other political parties could “hack” France’s elections. These ideas could only be interrogated in a novel set in the future – which is why I decided to nominate it as a “soft science” SF novel.
If there is some reason setting The Goblin Emperor in pseudo-medieval and semi-magical Ruritania brings special insight into the social issues you mentioned, I didn’t see it. Wouldn’t it have been more compelling as a straight-up historical novel?
The Hugos have sometimes rewarded originality in structure or language or concept without a beating heart as you put it, but I agree with you that they shouldn’t any more. Let’s demand both. Why not?
@ Busiek
When did I argue for Nutty Nuggets? I just think you should stop being such a jerk.
It does seem that you are more exacting when it comes to other peoples’ preferences, yes.
Double Star was good, but never as good as the original. A Prisoner of Zenda is one of my all time favourites.
@Hampus. DS is one of the better Prisoner of Zenda remakes, though. I was reminded of both in reading the recent Rhonda Mason novel THE EMPRESS GAME, which also uses, with variations, the Prisoner of Zenda model.
Dumas went there before The Prisoner of Zenda (still waiting for someone to film the sequel, where they have to call the play-actor again) in The Man in the Iron Mask and maybe The Corsican Brothers. Twain, also, in The Prince and the Pauper. But Robert Reynolds was quoted by Brian Z. as saying, “in the field,” so his subsequent remarks have been looking for instances in SF. Twain and Dumas were writing historicals. Not alternate timelines, but tales of intrigue that nestle as well as they may in the actual histories being used as settings.
Does anyone else find it amusing that Brain Z’s argument boils down to saying “The Hugos used to reward science fiction with original ideas. Except for that one. And that one. Okay, that one too. But except for many of the pre-1980s winners, the Hugos used to reward the kind of science fiction I like. No, don’t look at those over there. Just look at this group over here that fits my exact specifications.”
@Brian Z
Heinlein, along with Andre Norton, was my gateway drug into sci-fi. That said:
Double Star obviously has roots in multiple stories that came before. I also can’t recall any aspect that hinged on science to the degree it couldn’t have been set in Ruritania just as easily and absent the science.
Stranger in a Strange Land hinges on no science at all. Here the criteria for it’s Hugo win presumably would be literary originality or challenging social mores. As noted in Grumbles From The Grave though, Stranger was inspired and heavily influenced by Giles Goat Boy. Having read both, Giles probably should have a Hugo in Stranger’s place if those are the criteria. Stranger loses on originality and challenge compared to it’s predecessor. Stranger was by far the better read though and a personal favorite.
On science: two books come immediately to mind from the period sci-fi ‘died’: Sundiver by David Brin and Nightrider by David Mace. Both include appendices explaining the real science and how it influenced the story. A more recent example would be Charles Stross. He abandoned a popular storyline once he realized he couldn’t square causality and FTL. His sci-fi since then has been explicitly set within the limits of known physics. Some good stuff there though I prefer his urban fantasy spy universe.
Horatio Hornblower in space is widely written because it sells well. You see a lot of it for the same reasons you see a million tie in novels. Authors need to eat. Some of it has real merit too. It is not however the be all and end all of modern sci-fi. If it is all you can find I respectfully suggest you hone your Google-Fu and try harder.
Gotta head to work….
Of four Hugo best novel contests prior to the introduction of the nomination phase in 1959, there is one classic, one that was a big deal at the time, one that was fun and well written and one that was downright mediocre.
Mike Glyer has documented that the recommended approach to the early Hugos was to “do a little campaigning to line up a solid bloc of votes.” The winner was quite possibly whoever in the in-crowd was able to get into the spirit and rustle up more votes for, even if it wasn’t objectively the best novel – though it sometimes was, by general acclaim.
By 1959 fans wanted a better system. They chose to shake it up by adding the nominating stage. Some in-crowd favorites still made the short list, but there was a lot based mostly on merit too.
With this system, they consistently chose a challenging, thought-provoking, original, and (sometimes) well-crafted book, from a pretty decent shortlist.
The very few weak winners from the 60s and 70s were all from otherwise excellent SF writers. It looks to me like the sentimental wish to reward an otherwise excellent author got the better of the fans – understandable, they were fans.
The kind of book that won changed over time tracking the changing state of the field and the preferences and tastes of the voters in each decade after that.
In the 80s, fantasy and science fantasy had growing market share, but hard SF never went away. More fantasy crept into the shortlist but hard SF continued to dominate the awards. Gradually fewer fans kept up with hard SF, and as we see on this thread, many fans now don’t like it much or won’t read it at all any more, and in case they do, may appreciate it more for the story than for the ideas.
By the 90s, Horatio Hornblower was winning lots of Hugos, with lots and lots of science fantasy nominated and winning. Still, new top shelf hard SF was also recognized regularly.
By the 2000s, the balance shifted away from SF to mostly fantasy. Brilliant new SF was only occasionally recognized. (And there was that one sentimental Robert Sawyer pick, whatever they were thinking with that one).
In the 2010s, it’s all over the map: a mediocre sentimental pick, a fannish in-crowd favorite, a clever little star trek pastiche, Horatio Hornblower again, and an Asian hard SF novel in translation. It’s chaotic. The voting community is fractured in terms of what they like or what they are even willing to read. It is naturally difficult to agree on what is best anymore. Who knows how this will all turn out. Best not to prejudge.
@Aaron
It reminds me of the TOR boycott. We won’t be buying your books except by these authors.
“We will only purchase what we would have purchased anyway! Ha!”
@Brian Z.:
Actually, what Spinrad meant by “rubber science” was a more complex than handwaving, and it wasn’t about shifting toward social sciences. Spinrad’s argument was that the disciplines of science are not themselves static. As a consciously identified field of study, “physics” has a beginning, and by implication a middle and an end. So “hard science fiction” that assumes scientists a thousand years from now will even be thinking in terms of “physics” as a field of study is inevitably shortsighted. He wanted SF writers to ask how disciplines themselves would mutate and evolve, and how the sets of questons that concerned them would realign. This would inevitably put the writer pretty far afield of “hard science.”
His example of the process, IIRC, was psychopharmacology. The effects of chemicals and plant extracts on human personality and intellection were studied piecemeal for literally thousands of years, but only recently humanity has had the tools and the interest to make it a coherent field of study as such.
The books that won a long time ago are classics! (apart from the ones that aren’t)
None of the books that won recently are classics!
Hey don’t look at me, I nominated a YA paranormal mystery about a Japanese girl and her manga artist biker gang mom and clairvoyant grandmother.
@ Henley, that’s really fascinating. If you ever dig up a reference please pass it on.
Looks like I gotta dig out my hardcopy sometime when I get home.
Sorry to be such a sea lion!
I searched Google Books but that trick didn’t work for exposing the full text. The essay made a huge impression on at the time, but the time was 30 years ago, so.
More on Rubber Science can be found at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_science where it mentions a book the essay can be found in. While out-of-print, copies are available.
It’s amazing how using Google and information commenter mention one can find a way to original sources. From there one could see if a local library has a book or buy a used copy. This would let one read up on a topic of interest and stop being ignorant all at once. Amazing this Information Age we live in.
@ Brian Z.
Oh the corruption of this Age! 🙂
You’re circling back to the argument Hugo voters are voting for the wrong things. Since the Hugo is intended to reflect the tastes of WorldCon voters this is a logical impossibility. Whether the tastes of WorldCon still overlap the tastes of a majority of sci-fi readers is open to debate, the other is not. It is also open to debate whether WorldCon should change it’s selection criteria to match your preferred criteria. Not meant in a confrontational way but if you want to make that change join WorldCon and submit an amendment. Or found an award better reflecting your desires. I’m sure it will be a proud addition to the Hugo, Nebula, Pulitzer, and Nobel for Literature. I envision a statuette of a golden Bill the Cat (assuming you can obtain the IP rights…).
Stoic,
Of course whether the winners reflect the tastes of the Worldcon voters is up for debate. (Here I am, a disgruntled Worldcon voter!)
In the past, the pool of what voters read was unified in comparison with today. Fans might quibble with this or that winner but were basically all on the same page. They could live with The Left Hand of Darkness and they could live with Ringworld, and even the New Wave didn’t tear the field asunder.
But a process starting in the 80s (roughly) and now reaching a peak (as evidenced by some of the reactions here) means that we simply don’t all have an interest in the same kinds of books any more.
So a claim about the type of stories that Worldcon voters like to reward will be ephemeral. It has shifted continuously for decades and will continue to shift in the future.
That’s why I’m wondering if a voting system designed to serve a group of fans who were more or less agreed on the kinds of literature and the kinds of publishers and magazines they preferred can survive in this climate.
OK, I suggested criteria for “Best SFF” that I wondered if people might be able to agree on: work that is innovative, with rigorous attention to worldbuilding and a good story. (It certainly covers both my paranormal manga biker YA and my Gene Wolfe book.) But that’s just a suggestion.
In any case, whether you agree with me or not, the pendulum definitely won’t stop where it is in the mid-2010s.
Brian Z.: The 1964 Hugo voting stats are linked from a post here. Look at those and see revealed the spectrum of voter tastes that has always been present.
Brian Z, I nominated a YA paranormal mystery about a Japanese girl and her manga artist biker gang mom and clairvoyant grandmother.
Sounds interesting. Author and title?
Brian Z on February 29, 2016 at 9:54 am said:
Nuts. By definition, the results of the final vote reflect the aggregate views of the members of Worldcon who voted. They do not necessarily reflect the individual views of any particular person (such as you). That’s how elections go. The only way to have an election where the results are guaranteed to be 100% satisfactory to the electorate is to have an electorate of one person.
Citing your own dissatisfaction with the results of the Hugo Award selection as proof that the winners do not reflect the tastes of the Worldcon voters is similar to claiming that because there are individual Americans who don’t like who won the Presidential race means that the US election system doesn’t reflect the opinions of the US voting public.
I’m about as much of a Worldcon insider as it’s possible to be. Among other things, I administered the Hugo Awards three times. Guess what? Even when I was running the election the results did not 100% reflect my own personal preferences.
Mike, I agree with your comment on that post: no wonder. Faced with such an embarrassment of riches, I wouldn’t have known which of those to vote for either.
Cassy B,
http://www.haikasoru.com/red-girls/
That’s diversity – of a kind – you’re complaining about. It’s stereotypically puppyish, to complain that the variety of SFF that can win the Hugos has diversified. And to assume that it was never diverse.
The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.
Oh, Kevin. I’ve rarely seen any work I’d like to see win so much as make the final ballot. They rarely make the longlist. I’m not worried about my personal preferences.
@Nigel I’ve recently read one of Isaac Asimov’s Hugo Winners’ anthologies from the 1960s. In there, he discusses how the experience of being an SF writer bound fandom together at a time when the Vietnam War was causing political rifts in the wider world.
Today there are constant calls for writers to disassociate themselves from other writers due to their (non-SF real world) political views. There are groups of fans who make liking – or disliking – certain bodies of fiction a mark of tribal affiliation. And, no, that’s not just the Puppies.
So, yes, fandom has fragmented. This is a real phenomenon. And I suspect it’s occurred because SF&F tropes have mainstreamed.
Vivienne Raper: I’ve recently read one of Isaac Asimov’s Hugo Winners’ anthologies from the 1960s. In there, he discusses how the experience of being an SF writer bound fandom together at a time when the Vietnam War was causing political rifts in the wider world.
I’m sorry, but at more or less the same time that Asimov was discussing this issue, there were SF writers arguing the exact opposite–and SF writers declaring flatly that other SF writers ought to be dissociated from for their political views. See some of the discussion involving Stanislaw Lem’s honorary membership in SFWA, in 1974; I’m not going to try to outline that kerfuffle (I suspect there are commenters here who could do a much better job, if they are willing, particularly with appropriate links), but saying that the Vietnam War “bound” fandom together is–kind of a simplification, at best, I’m afraid.
ETA: My point is, whatever the current fragmentation of fandom? It really isn’t all that new. Larger, maybe, but only in the sense that the field is larger . . .
Brian Z.: I suggested criteria for “Best SFF” that I wondered if people might be able to agree on: work that is innovative, with rigorous attention to worldbuilding and a good story. (It certainly covers both my paranormal manga biker YA and my Gene Wolfe book.)
That Gene Wolfe book you keep raving about, while sporting an interesting (but not necessarily novel) concept, is a huge re-tread of noir tropes — to the extent that I’m convinced it’s a trunk novel from decades ago that he dug out and re-worked for publication. Its “worldbuilding” — replete with all those little rancid raisins of sexism scattered throughout — is hardly rigorous or innovative.
Using it as support for your argument is actually undermining your argument.
@ Mike,
On further reflection, I note also that what might seem at first glance to be a divided electorate still had no trouble converging on a short fiction winner, the milSF “No Truce With Kings” later collected in There Will Be War, despite very stiff competition.
Oh, really!?
Via.
@Vivienne Raper
Try widening your reading during any time period in fandom and you’ll find we’ve been doing this since Fandom as a word/concept came to be. I’ve yet to find a time in Fandom someone has pointed me to as everyone got along on whatever topic the speaker/writer picks where another equal/almost equal in the field doesn’t disagree.
Fandom is Not more special than any other self selected group of people. It has all the usual problems groups of people have including we don’t have those problems and we used to be___________. People are people. They bring their outside shit with them. Be it politics, cultural issues, being jerks, whatever.
@Soon Lee Asimov mentions the link you’ve provided in his introduction. I didn’t say they agreed. I said their identity as SF writers was more important.
It is possible for people to have crazy different political views and get on with each other (I mean, that should be kinda obvious, but worth pointing out).
Speaking as someone whose first Worldcon was 1968 (admittedly, I was quite young at the time; I attended with my mother), the idea that the New Wave was less contentious than what’s going on now is simply ridiculous. I can’t tell you the number of times I heard things like “don’t talk about X in front of Y unless you want to start a fight”. Asimov may not have been particularly aware of the tension and dissent (he was a pretty mellow guy, by all reports), but I assure you that others were. (For an example of just how oblivious Dr. A was, see this recent interview with Chip Delany.)
I may have been a kid, but the tension in the air was so thick that even I could see it. Did you see Silverberg’s talk at the start of the Hugo presentations this year? Where he tried to calm everyone down by leading the audience in a chant of “Hare Krishna”? Because that had worked for him during the extremely fraught ’68 Worldcon?
It is true, however, that people were more on the same page back then, at least in the sense of being familiar with the same works. The field was a lot smaller, and thus a lot easier to keep up with. But at the same time, the 10% Sturgeon tells us was worth reading was a lot smaller too. And, by that same token, the standard deviation of quality was a lot smaller too. The highest peaks were a lot more rare, and usually not as high. SF today is better than its ever been. Even though the quantity of crap is also higher than ever! And that’s just talking about what’s published year-to-year. Cumulatively, the effect is far greater. Of course SF is more fragmented now. Nobody could possibly have read it all any more!
On the other hand, fandom is less insular than it used to be. SF has a lot more mainstream acceptance these days. Frankly, I think that’s a good thing! 🙂
As for the idea that only “old fashioned” SF writers do the math: that’s nonsense. Plenty of authors still do the math. The big difference is that with easy access to powerful computers, doing the math is easier than it ever has been. Even back in the ’80s, when SF supposedly had died, Cherryh wrote a simulation to track all the locations and movements of the ships in the Alliance/Union ‘verse, up to the time where FTL was discovered. I can’t imagine trying to do that with a slipstick. Fortunately, I don’t have to! 🙂
Honestly, a lot of the stuff the early SF authors were so proud of working out is stuff that’s trivial by today’s standards. (And let’s not talk about how many might have spent time working out some of the math only because John Campbell forced them to. And how often Campbell’s influence might have ruined, rather than improved, a story.) 🙂
@Vivienne
That’s one hell of a card you’re palming there, trying to pass of rampant homophobia, disenfranchisement of women, religious / racial bigotry, and being a complete arse as being just “political views”
@Brian Z, I do not believe you’re the least bit sorry for being a sea lion. Still, some of us probably discuss books with the Devil. 😉
I grant you Submission seems like a weird choice, but it isn’t simply someone getting his kicks from skewering French intellectuals, though that’s there. It’s a beautiful novel by someone who thinks deeply about Europe’s future. And there’s a lot of imagined near-future sociology and political science. For example, the author describes a way far-right and other political parties could “hack” France’s elections. These ideas could only be interrogated in a novel set in the future – which is why I decided to nominate it as a “soft science” SF novel.
If there is some reason setting The Goblin Emperor in pseudo-medieval and semi-magical Ruritania brings special insight into the social issues you mentioned, I didn’t see it. Wouldn’t it have been more compelling as a straight-up historical novel?
Well, no, those ideas could not only be interrogated in a near future novel. Pontifications and skewering occur all over the place, complete with extrapolations of current trends into the future. I’m pretty sure if you required a novel for that, a bunch of doctoral theses and numerous think pieces would vanish. Which isn’t a bad idea for a short story.
The Goblin Emperor is set in the milieu its author chose for her own reasons. Perhaps to play with a lot of different concepts that couldn’t be addressed so gracefully in the underpinnings of a straight historical novel (race is an important background theme, as is the lot of women used as political pawns), or perhaps just because she thought it would be cool or had a dream one night. Or maybe because she was doing something interesting and needed the broader suspension of disbelief that accompanies SFF.
What makes it stand out for me is the way in which a genuinely kind, deeply thoughtful character is thrust into a position of power and continues being himself on a bigger canvas. The wider plot isn’t new, but that part is uncommon. One of the truisms of this and many other eras is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Addison is subverting that expectation and I think choosing to do so within SFF is what makes that possible.
To make your broader point of the importance of originality in award worthy work, I think you’re being really fluid in the definition of what is original, with it sometimes being one thing and sometimes something entirely different. I also suspect that anything you point out as displaying originality will on examination be proven similar to a host of other works – in space! – by folks who are better read than either of us. And that’s kind of my point, that what you term originality doesn’t really exist except in the eye of the beholder and is largely determined by the depth and scope of previous reading.
That’s not to say there isn’t something intrinsically novel in the work of many writers, but it’s not what you seem to think it is.
Cheryl S.,
You’re dismissing one of the most critically acclaimed and bestselling European novels of 2015 on the basis of some pull quotes. It’s not your cup of tea. Fine. But it’s a “What if” novel about a future in which an Islamic party takes power in France and a Saudi prince buys the Sorbonne. However, if one wanted to argue that it isn’t really science fiction, there’s an understandable case (which I disagree with), since although there’s a lot of politics and social issues there is not a lot of “science,” which is why I said I realize it might seem an odd choice.
If you found The Goblin Emperor to be innovative, then I have no problems listening to why you think so. I was turned off by the sample chapters of Ancillary Justice too, but was later convinced to keep going with it, and ended up liking the novel a lot more than I expected. I still don’t agree it was the Best Novel of the Year (or, according to the File 770 bracket, best novel of the 21st century), but it was an excellent first novel with more depth and skill than was apparent from the early chapters.
I don’t really have any absolute blanket objection to historical type novels with minor fantastic elements or tangential connections to the genre. In 2014, I was very impressed with Nicola Griffiths’ Hild, which had no magic but used an Arthurian-ish setting to investigate social issues that historical fantasy going back to the groundbreaking Mists of Avalon had left out. It was ferociously researched and had a beating heart. A highly original contribution. Perhaps if the author of The Goblin Emperor had similarly upped the ante on her worldbuilding, I would have been more impressed with that too. You are more than entitled to find it highly original and make a case for that. We’re doing what I said I wanted, talking about how challenging and thought-provoking the books are. That’s great news.
Brian Z.: In 2014, I was very impressed with Nicola Griffiths’ Hild, which had no magic but used an Arthurian-ish setting to investigate social issues that historical fantasy going back to the groundbreaking Mists of Avalon had left out. It was ferociously researched and had a beating heart. A highly original contribution.
For those who are deeply interested in such historical investigations, Hild was no doubt a wonderful novel. But after investing a huge amount of time and effort in sticking with it and reading the whole thing, I felt deeply disappointed and rather cheated, as it’s not really an SFF genre novel, and I am mystified why it received so much acclaim as such.
An excellent novel? Certainly. Hugo-worthy? Not a chance in hell, in my opinion — it wasn’t an SFF novel. It was historical fiction.
And lots of the old timey SF authors never bothered. Including or maybe especially the Astounding crowd.