(1) SPACE, THE INITIAL FRONTIER. In a profile published in the October 17 New Yorker, Julie Phillips reveals why Ursula Le Guin’s name has a space in it.
Her husband’s birth name was Charles LeGuin. They were married in France, and “when they applied for a marriage license, a ‘triumphant bureaucrat’ told Charles his Breton name was ‘spelled wrong’ without a space, so when they married they both took the name Le Guin.”
(2) JUST MISSPELL MY NAME CORRECTLY. By a vote of the members, the Science Fiction Poetry Association has renamed itself the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Although its name has changed, the organization will keep using the initials SFPA.
And nearly every time the poets talk about SFPA in the hearing of old-time fanzine fans you can depend on someone dropping a heavy hint that they’re at risk being mixed up with a pre-existing fan group that uses the same abbreviation. Today it was Andrew Porter chirping in a comment on the announcement —
Not to be confused with the Southern Fandom Press Association, which has been around for more than 40 years…
Unfortunately it’s Porter who is confused, as he seems to have forgotten the apa’s name is the Southern Fandom Press Alliance.
(3) SAMOVAR LAUNCHES. A new sff magazine, Samovar, launched today, featuring “the best of speculative fiction in translation including original stories, reprints, poetry, reviews and more material, as well as printing translations alongside the stories in their original language.” Samovar will be produced as a quarterly, special imprint of Strange Horizons.
“Stories tell us who we are, and let us see who other people are. We already have access to an enormous wealth of speculative fiction in English, but we want to know more” – The Samovar editorial team.
What wondrous fantastical tales are being conjured in Finnish? Who writes the best Nigerian space odysseys? Is Mongolia hiding an epic fantasy author waiting to be discovered? We want to know, and we aim to find out.
For Samovar, writers and translators are of equal importance, and we do our best to shine a spotlight on the talented individuals who pen both the original and the translated version of a story. We hope that in this way we can boost the profile of speculative fiction in translation so that everyone involved receives the recognition they deserve and so we can all continue to enjoy the strange, mind-bending and fantastical fiction of all cultures.
In issue one: two sisters create an imagined world where things that are lost can be found. A despot is forced to see the truth he’s tried to hide from. An academic finds poetry, science fiction and reality beginning to merge. And the Curiosity Rover turns its own sardonic gaze on Mars.
The Samovar editorial team is Laura Friis, Greg West and Sarah Dodd. Their advisory board includes Helen Marshall, Rachel Cordasco and Marian Via Rivera-Womack.
https://twitter.com/samovarmag/status/846365472660635648
(4) TENSION, APPREHENSION, AND DISSENSION. The Atlantic’s Megan Garber asks: What’s the opposite of a “cliffhanger”?
Extended cliffhangers (cliffstayers? cliffhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangers?) have animated some of the most narratively powerful works of television of recent years; they have helped to heighten the tension in shows like Breaking Bad (how low will Walt go?) and Serial (did he do it?) and Quantico (did she do it?) and True Detective (who did it?) and Lost (who are they? where are they?) and, in general, pretty much any sitcom that has ever featured, simmering just below its surface, some will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension.
What’s especially notable about the recent shows that are employing the device, though, is that they’re locating the tension in one (unanswered) question. They’re operating in direct opposition to the way traditional cliffhangers were primarily used: between installments, between episodes, between seasons, in the interstitial spaces that might otherwise find a story’s momentum stalling. Big Little Lies and Riverdale and This Is Us and all the rest are taking the specific narrative logic of “Who shot J.R.?” and flipping it: The tension here exists not necessarily to capture audience interest over a show’s hiatus (although, certainly, there’s a little of that, too), but much more to infuse the content of the show at large with a lurking mystery. Things simmer rather than boil. The cliffhanger is less about one shocking event with one central question, and more about a central mystery that insinuates itself over an entire season (and, sometimes, an entire series).
(5) SLOWER THAN LIGHT COMMUNICATION. This is how social media works: I never heard of Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality until somebody complained about it.
Tho i found out author was a guy at the end…lol in retrospect only a man would ask his readers to nom his fanfic for the hugo awards lolm
— MCU will never be her (earth-616) (@artingkrusca) March 27, 2017
The appeal for a 2016 Hugo nomination was posted by the author in 2015.
First, the following request: I would like any readers who think that HPMOR deserves it sufficiently, and who are attending or supporting the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcon, to next year, nominate Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos. Whether you then actually vote for HPMOR as Best Novel is something I won’t request outright, since I don’t know what other novels will be competing in 2016. After all the nominees are announced, look over what’s there and vote for what you think is best.
I don’t know how many votes he ended up getting but it wasn’t enough to rank among the top 15 works reported by MidAmeriCon II.
(6) FINALLY A GOOD WORD ABOUT THE MOVIES. Book View Café’s Diana Pharoah Francis was both nostalgic and thoughtful after hosting a Lord of the Rings marathon at home.
…Among the SF/F communities, it was this extraordinary vision come to life in a way we had never experienced before. It was not cheesy or all about the CGI. It was about strength, honor, choices, and hope. It was real characters in dreadful situations. The watching of heroes being made and broken beneath weights no one should have to bear. And Aragorn — a king in the making. A soul of strength and doubt and humility.
The movies were inspiring on a lot of fronts. I think it’s appropriate to watch it now in a world that is struggling so hard against itself. With so much fear, and worry and such dire enemies. Who are those enemies? Too many are ourselves. Our fears that turn us into monsters or traitors. Denethor, Gollum, Boromir, the Nazgul — absolute power corrupts. There are those who give up. Those who refuse to fight. Those who lose themselves.
The stories, the movies and the books, are a view into ourselves and what we can hope to be and what we may become — good and bad. It’s a reminder that it’s never a good time to quit in the battle against darkness — in whatever shape it takes….
(7) MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! ON YOUR SHELVES. James Davis Nicoll names “Twenty Core Space Operas Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves”.
“Chosen entirely on the basis of merit,” says James, “with a side-order of not repeating titles that were on the first list.”
(8) TWEETS OF THE DAY ABOUT TWO WEEKS AGO. I felt a disturbance in the force. Just not right away.
Best Series just seems like a handout for white dudes willing to write the same boring book every other year for a couple decades.
— Kilgore Trout is My Copilot (@SFBluestocking) March 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/ApeInWinter/status/841731401108094977
(9) FIVE PLUS TWO. John Scalzi offers “7 Tips for Writing a Bestselling Science Fiction Novel” at Female First. This is my favorite:
Make your universe two questions deep. By which I mean, make it so when someone asks you a question about why/how you created or portrayed the universe, character etc the way you did, you have a smart, cogent answer for it, consistent with the construction of the book. And then when they have a follow-up question, be able to answer that effectively, too. That will make 95% of your readers happy with your worldbuilding (the other 5% are SUPER nerds. Which is fine! For them, say “Oh, I’m glad you asked that. I’m totally going to address that in the sequel.” Try it! It works!).
Strangely enough, none of his seven tips is “Start a fuss with somebody in social media.”
(10) SECOND FIFTH. But as we just witnessed last week, that is part of the Castalia House playbook – which is evidently followed by Rule #2, “Stalk real bestselling writers on their book tours.”
Here’s a video of a jackass asking John Scalzi to sign Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie, and posing an insulting question about John’s Tor book deal. You’ll note the book in John’s hand has not been autographed by Vox Day. When is his book tour?
(11) HOT OFF THE PRESS. Liz Colter (writing as L. D. Colter) has a new book out this week – A Borrowed Hell.
Facing a sad, empty life, July always persevered by looking forward. An unhappy childhood, a litany of failed relationships, and even losing his job–none of it could stop him. But then the foreclosure notice arrives, and July is facing losing the one thing that keeps him grounded–his home.
With pain in his past and now in his future, July gives up and starts down the same road of self-destruction that the rest of his family had followed. It is only when he awakens in a hospital after a violent car accident that things change.
He starts to experience blackouts, which leave him in an alternate reality of empty desert and strange residents. It is a nightmarish world that somehow makes the real world seem that much better. Then he meets a woman that becomes a beacon of light, and his life starts to turn around.
But the blackouts continue, sending him to the alternate reality more often and for longer periods of time. Realizing that he may never escape, July asks the question he’d always been afraid to ask: How can he finally be free? The answer is one he’s not sure he can face.
I can’t resist a droll bio:
Due to a varied work background, Liz can boast a modest degree of knowledge about harnessing, hitching, and working draft horses, canoe expeditioning, and medicine. She’s also worked as a rollerskating waitress and knows more about concrete than you might suspect.
(12) HISTORY MINUS FDR. The LA Times says a bestselling author has a new trilogy on the way.
Charlaine Harris, whose Sookie Stackhouse books inspired the television series “True Blood,” will release the first book in a new trilogy next year.
Harris’ novel “Texoma” will be published in fall 2018 by Saga Press, a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Simon & Schuster, the publisher announced in a news release.
“Texoma” will be a work of speculative fiction that takes place in “an alternate history of a broken America weakened by the Great Depression and the assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
(13) DAMP YANKEES. In New York Magazine’s author interview “Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140: To Save the City, We Had to Drown It”, Robinson discusses why the book is surprisingly optimistic, how his thoughts on the global economy influenced 2140, and how he came up with the time frame for the book.
…[T]here were two goals going on that forced me to choose the date 2140, and those two goals cut against each other. I needed to put it far enough out in the future that I could claim a little bit of physical probability to the height of the sea-level rise of 50 feet, which is quite extreme. A lot of models have it at 15 feet, though some do say 50 feet. So I did have to go out like a 120 years from now.
Cutting against that future scenario, I wanted to talk about the financial situation we’re in, this moment of late capitalism where we can’t afford the changes we need to make in order to survive because it isn’t cost effective. These economic measures need to be revised so that we pay ourselves to do the work to survive as a civilization facing climate change.
I wanted a finance novel that was heavily based on what lessons we learned — or did not learn — from the crash of 2008 and 2009. All science-fiction novels are about the future and about the present at the same time.
(14) WEBCAST. Another Spider-Man trailer will be out tomorrow – here’s a seven-second teaser for it.
[Thanks to Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, Chris Gregory, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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First!
(8) hmmm recent Hugo award winning novels that were each one part of a series:
Ancillary Justice
The Three Body Problem
The Fifth Season
(5) “lol in retrospect only a man would ask his readers to nom his fanfic for the hugo awards lolm” and (8) “Best Series just seems like a handout for white dudes willing to write the same boring book every other year for a couple decades.”
Pfui
John Scalzi handled that Beale fan being a jackass with grace.
All the question accomplished was to show how much Scalzi’s Tor contract bothers Beale. Why Beale’s fans would want to cast a light on his insecurities is a mystery to me.
I feel like Scalzi needs a better class of nemesis.
Pfui
Double pfui. Anyone who thinks all the series writing is coming from white male writers doesn’t know much about current SF/F.
@4: Is “cliffhanger” really being used in that sense by anyone else? ISTM that the writer has forgotten the difference between discrete episodes and the sort of long arc that has become much more current in TV over the last ~30+ years. If I still watched TV I probably wouldn’t mind a mystery that actually moved forward over the arc — unlike (e.g.) Tubb’s Dumarest books, which (until I gave up after ~8) never got one step closer to finding Earth.
@7: still vaguely cute, but I’m surprised he couldn’t find something better than the Tiptree, which IIRC wasn’t well-received by \anyone/ when it came out.
@12: I wonder whether she’s read Turtledove’s Joe Steele; maybe it’s too grimdark for her.
(10) and speaking of Vox’s Scalzi-related angst… If people remember stage whatever of Vox trying to get his goon book back on Amazon, at one point he’d restored the original cover art and reinstated the author name but the book got stuck at Amazon again. Vox announced this was due to evil rogue SJW being evil although what was being reported was an issue with the metadata/book description.
Sure enough, those of us unlucky enough to download the book would find that while on the cover it was Corrosion: The Corroding Empire by Johan Kalsi on the cover, on the inside it said it was by Corrosion by Harry Seldon.
Today, the world’s finest editor managed to sort out what the title and author of the book was and a new version inveigled its way onto my Kindle.
‘Significant revisions have been made’ said Amazon. Ah, if only…
(8): I do actually agree with her first tweet: I would really much rather see a Hugo Award for Best Anthology or Story Collection than Best Series.
(10) John Scalzi handled that rather well. (It makes me wish Mr Beale would go on a book tour, just so I could hand him my copies of The Collapsing Empire and The Fifth Season to sign.)
His answer to the question was also interesting. He must have had a really good lawyer negotiate that contract.
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting first in a scroll and causing a gafia.”
@Chip Hitchcock: I’m surprised he couldn’t find something better than the Tiptree, which IIRC wasn’t well-received by \anyone/ when it came out.
I’m just confused by describing that particular novel as a space opera. I mean, I know it’s one of those rather loosely defined terms that everyone has their own rubric for, but it’s just not a label I would’ve ever thought to put on that book (which btw I liked a lot more than most people did, I think).
(On the other topic, no, I don’t think anyone else uses “cliffhanger” in that way, nor does it make sense to.)
(10) Wonder if he signed with Johan Kalsi.
(5) SLOWER THAN LIGHT COMMUNICATION
The first few chapters of HPatMoR were hilariously clever and dead-on in targeting some of the logical gaps of the Potterverse. But for me it rapidly got tedious and more focused on showing off the author’s philosophical cleverness than telling a good story. If it had tied things up after playing out the initial premise, I’d be able to rec it wholeheartedly.
(4)I think what the author of the piece meant to say, rather than cliffhanger, was “story arc” or perhaps “plot”.
(10) I’m frankly amazed that anyone has actually bought a physical copy of the book. Although I suppose in reality this is exactly the sort of silly bullshit stunt Ted or one of his minions would think was hilarious. And indeed he and his wheezing, camera wielding buddy did. Riiiiiight up until they got schooled on how contracts work.
I liked it. And given the plot involves world-destroying entities and awesome psi powers working across light years, it seemed very space operaish. Space operay. Having the property of being space opera.
(5) I really enjoyed HPMOR, myself (and nominated it).
@Heather, my experience was the opposite of yours — the first few chapters were hilarious, but fairly run-of-the-mill parody. It’s where it goes afterwards that wowed me — not only poking holes in the Rowlingverse, but building on them, and supplying new, powerful answers to the questions that arise. The reimagining of many of the characters is absolutely fantastic (though not, I grant, Harry himself, who can get really repetitive).
It’s in need of some serious polish. There are some long diversions that badly wear out their welcome (OK, we get it, Hogwarts does Ender’s Game, we get it). But for all that, it’s a lot of fun, has lots of fascinating ideas, and has a lot of interesting things to say.
I overstated things when I said I’d never heard of HPMOR — I had forgotten it was a nominee (not a finalist) for a Prometheus Award, which I reported here.
(5) As for begging for Hugo noms, this is actually a case I’m 100% fine with this case. Yudkowsky built up a huge community and fanbase with HPMOR. But it’s a fanbase which probably doesn’t know much/anything about the Hugos.
This is the kind of case that (a) can expose the Hugo Awards to an enthusiastic new audience, and (b) break the book in question out of its own niche, exposing it to new audiences.
I feel HPMOR is in the right space for this to be a win-win for everybody (and I’d say the same of most anything genre and popular, from Night Vale to Twilight), as long as it’s done in good taste (e.g. not “all those other Hugo winners suck,” ::sigh::). And best as I recall, Yudkowsky’s post about this was low-key and fine, IMO.
(And, HPMOR helped me understand some things that fanfic does that “regular” fiction doesn’t. I’m in favor of Hugo-level fanfic!)
10) Scalzi is a class act. And I wish I’d overcome my own anti-social, introverted tendencies and gone to BookPeople yesterday to tell him so. I really hope that encounter didn’t sour him on Austin.
(8) TWEETS OF THE DAY ABOUT TWO WEEKS AGO.
It’s that McCalmont provocative again, isn’t it?
(9) FIVE PLUS TWO.
[sarcasm]And that’s why he’s signed a deal for only $3.4 Million Deal for 13 Books. Call himself a success? Pfft.[/sarcasm]
Not John Khaleesi Mother(!) of Dragons?
14) A Look Back: Here’s How the Trailer for Justice League Was Originally Advertised
(7) I do have many of those. It’s a fine list.
(8) I WISH there was a Best Anthology Hugo! It isn’t all books and magazines. I was sooo wishing that this category existed this year b/c I wanted to nominate “The Starlit Wood” in its awesome entirety.
(10) This, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary persons is being classy. Er, John, not the d-bag. Wonder if that’s the edition with two fives? And how omega do you have to be to go stalking on behalf of some dude you’ve never met who’s having a hissy fit about another guy making a whole lotta money?
(10) SECOND FIFTH.
Scalzi is class here, all the way.
I’m sure that this Puppy posted this video because he thinks it makes him look clever — when in reality, he is utterly clueless that Scalzi totally pwned him here.
It’s always so amusing when Puppies do such a good job of ridiculing themselves, without even realizing that’s what they’ve done.
(3) SAMOVAR LAUNCHES
I’m going to check this out, but there doesn’t seem to be an ebook version available right now?
(8) TWEETS OF THE DAY ABOUT TWO WEEKS AGO
I’m not convinced about the long-term sense of Best Series, but that’s more to do with the practicalities and whether it will get too far away from the tradition of actually reading all the finalists before voting.
I’m not sure “white dudes willing to write the same boring book” will turn out to be accurate though. Here’s the F770 straw-poll results from a few weeks ago.
Thessaly, Jo Walton
Vorkosigan Saga, Lois MM Bujold
The Craft Sequence, Max Gladstone
Memoirs of Lady Trent, Marie Brennan
The Expanse, James SA Corey
Rivers of London, Ben Aaranovitch
Temeraire, Naomi Novik
Fractured Europe, Dave Hutchinson
Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson
World of Five Gods, Lois MM Bujold
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling
The Young Wizards, Diane Duane
Not just dudes, admittedly very white, and I wouldn’t say boring – many of those are authors writing series with interesting and varied installments.
I do find myself increasingly preferring stand-alones, or limited series where the volumes can stand alone, to series that are more of a serial.
OTOH, I think I agree that if there’s to be a permanent new category (not a given) then Anthology would be more interesting – and manageable – than series.
(10) SECOND FIFTH
I was wondering if this was a proper fan of Scalzi just messing with him, but judging from the video comments it seems not. Kudos to Scalzi for just rolling with it.
Also, I’m willing to bet this doesn’t even make the top ten of weirdest things brought to the signing table.
Vox Day devoted a post to it this morning, so it’s at least as authentic as his “self-appointed” customer support staff.
(8) I wasn’t very enthusiastic about a “Best Series” Hugo, and I think this is part of the reason why. The traditional cries of #notallmen aside, it’s most likely to go to well-established writers with well-established readerships – which is to say that it’ll be a de facto Grandmaster award. And the time needed for a writer to become well-established and gain a following means the pool of likely winners is going to skew white and male for some time.
tl;dr: I think Bridget McKinney is right and the best series award is going to go to boring books by white dudes.
Friend of mine forwarded me the link to the latest issue of Finnish Weird: here it is. Worth a look if you are interested in Finns or weirdness. (It is translated, you don’t have to read Finnish.)
My own “Best Series” noms were a positive triumph of non-diversity, but that may be just me. (I figured everyone would be nominating Lois McMaster Bujold, so I left her off my list to show what a free-spirited rebel I am. Oh yeah.)
I wouldn’t count Bujold out just yet. White though, guess so. Which writers of colour am I overlooking? Don’t think Jemisin qualifies this year.
3) Enthusiastic about this “Samovar” initiative, bridging the language gap seems key to me if we really want to read from diverse voices. I guess scouting for good stories will require an extensive network of translators or at least non-anglo speaking fans, especially with the whole world as a target as stated, and not only a few “big languages” such as German, French, Spanish, Russian, or even Chinese or Japanese…
They seem on the good track, though, with texts translated from Hebrew, Chinese, Finnish and Pashto in the first edition. Very good they also include a review section.
My only disappointments are the word count (still very low…), and that more then half of it is devoted to a Lavie Tidhar short story, an excellent writer but who hardly needs support to get visibility on the english speaking scene. Well, I guess you have got to get those kind of things started.
Space operatic?
@rcade: “I feel like Scalzi needs a better class of nemesis.”
Hell, Beale’s not up to my nemesis standards, let alone Scalzi’s. He needs to do some serious leveling up if he wants to get in the game.
@Bonnie: Scalzi “must have had a really good lawyer negotiate that contract.”
His answer didn’t strike me as unusual in any significant way. In fact, it sounded like common sense: if you have a contract, why agree to renegotiate it unless you have something to gain?
I suppose there could exist some scenario where Macmillan starts going under and Scalzi might agree to accept less money for the balance of his contract on the grounds that half a loaf is better than none, but there’s no evidence that any part of that is even close to happening. It’s much more likely that, as the contract nears completion, the publisher might attempt to renegotiate it – or just offer a subsequent contract – with even better terms, to entice him to stick with them instead of going elsewhere.
@JDN: Space operatic? (Ninja’d by Kyra!)
(4) I have to say that I’ve been enjoying Riverdale. It’s a solidly modern take on the classic material, familiar enough to be recognizable but with enough twists to be interesting. I happened to watch the first few episodes “with” an Archie Comics artist (via Twitter), and it was fun to compare notes on the character portrayals and share the Easter eggs we caught.
The two tidbits of info I think are of particular interest for the future of the show are that (a) there are plans to introduce Sabrina and (b) the current central mystery will be solved by the end of the season, rather than continuing into Season Two. I think wrapping the mystery up early is a good decision; it’s served the purpose of introducing us to the setting and the various relationships, so the next season can go its own way without carrying the weight of maintaining suspense over this one event. It’s a small town; there are only so many suspects to consider and so much legwork to be done before the truth comes out.
On the one hand:
10) I’m sure Beale will have a bigly book tour…somewhere. As far as John, he’s a class act. One day I will actually get to meet him properly, the one time I was in the same room with him, he was tired and jet lagged to hell.
On the other hand:
8) yeah. Bridget has a point about series although I tried in my nominations to look beyond the usual suspects in that regard
On the Gripping hand…
Spoiler: This is the next book SFF Audio is going to record a podcast on this weekend…
@Kyra
That’s certainly in the right aria.
@NickPheas
Bujold is the main reason I said the pool would “skew” old white male. Cherryh might be another possibility in a quiet year. (He said, optimistically.) But let’s not have any illusions about what a new Expanse novel, or the next Game of Thrones doorstop if it ever happens, will do to the voting.
That having been said, I’m not actually opposed to a series award. I just don’t think it’s likely to be very interesting or relevant. And of course I’d be very happy to find I was wrong.
(12) Your irregular reminder that Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne’s USSA short stories from Interzone are some kind of wonderful (the Russian revolution happens in Chicago; Eugene Debs is the Trotsky figure, Al Capone is Stalin.) Everything goes downhill from there…
(5) Harry Potter and the Hugo Canvassing; @Standback: I’m not necessarily against calling on one’s fans to nominate one’s works, but I’m reminded of the large discussion that came about in the filk community about how to handle a similar case for the Pegasus award that took place over on tumblr last year.
(Initial call; How the initial response to the call carried a whiff of fan-gating; Response; Response from Will Frank; Response from Seanan McGuire)
Fandom is something much greater than ourselves. I have absolutely nothing against bringing in people to it, in fact I applaud it. I have nothing against drawing attention to the elements of fandom, like the Hugo award. But any such attempts should show consideration to the community that has fostered that element.
(I’m all for critiquing it, but swamping it isn’t critique.)
(7) I did far worse on this one than the last one, only read two, and an additional three authors.
@James Nicoll: And that is all the cause you should need to include the book!
(8) I’m not too worried about the Best Series skewing male, but yes, I imagine it will skew old and white.
But I very much like the idea of a Best Anthology Hugo. Someone not me (I will be at Helsinki, but will be busy with other stuff) should write up a proposal for the Business Meeting.
Diversity in best series: I voted for Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya and it made a small impact in the File770 tally but I’d be a little surprised if it gained enough steam to get onto the shortlist this year, alas. Liu Cixin’s trilogy (Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End) is also eligible and Death’s End seems to have gathered somewhat more buzz than the Dark Forest, but I suspect also not enough.
Otherwise, I went for a look through the best series post compiled by JJ last year and of the names I recognised, very few were authors of colour (like, S. L. Huang was literally the only other one that jumped out) – so it’s not that voters are overlooking a ton of obvious candidates in favour of white authors, but that these writers aren’t writing/publishing as much in this format. Not that that’s a new insight or one that lets anyone off the hook, but there we are…
[space-elevator-stalk]
For Best Series, if it sticks around, my hope is that when Cherryh publishes her Alliance Rising, that’ll be enough to give the title to her Union/Alliance books.
Best Series: Well, as Camestros shows, the series which are doing well in the Hugos right now are not by white dudes. That said, I think the motivation for the award arises largely from the thought (not really borne out by facts) that works in series don’t do well in the Hugos; and when people say this, they are often thinking of a particular kind of series, series of infinite length dealing with the adventures of a particular character or group, which flourish especially, though not exclusively, in well defined genres, epic, urban and military. The writers of these things may not be especially male (lots of women writers in urban fantasy, and epic has Robin Hobb), but they do seem to be largely white. (This may be changing. Ken Liu’s series, for one, isn’t eligible yet, but it will be soon.)
My guess is that the award will not in fact go to that sort of series, but rather to series of the kind that are likely to get Hugos anyway – either short with a clear arc, or consisting of relatively independent volumes – and to authors who were already well placed to get Hugos. If the File 770 straw poll is anything to go by, the prime contenders this year are likely to be Jo Walton and Lois Bujold. Which means on the one hand the award will be able to find deserving works, but on the other may call into doubt the point of having it on top of the existing awards.
Could someone give me the age requirements for the Hugo’s? What is the upper limit for males? Also how white is too white? If a person gets tan during the summer does this reinstate them for consideration?
(7) I’ve read ten, maybe eleven. (I read So Much Norton as a kid I no longer remember all the titles I read — and they were from the library so I can’t check my shelves.)
Best Anthology is already being worked on – it’s part of Kevin Standlee’s plan for eliminating editors.
For Best Series, some causes of the Old White Male Syndrome are easy to diagnose.
It takes years, often many years, for most people (Seanan McGuire excepted) to write a series. So by the time a series is eligible, the author is likely to be at least middle age. (Seanan McGuire, again, excepted.)
SFF publishing skews increasingly more male and very much more white as you go back in time. Which is to say, it’s somewhat less male and much less white now than it’s been before. Since Best Series, by definition, must include older works, it’s not surprising if the series are more white/male than current publishing demographics.
Just my two cents.
One of the problems with a Hugo Best Series Award (which I’m not actually against, mind you) is that it’s not something particularly well suited to a popular vote.
Avid readers who will happily pick up a few new-to-them novels to read over the summer are going to balk at reading several new-to-them series. This would be true even of trilogies, but it’s even more true of the extended series common to SFF. In the likely event that the Vorkosigan Saga gets a nomination this year, is anyone unfamiliar with them really going to read all ~16 books, or even the ~10 Miles books? Or ~6 books for The Expanse, or however many giant doorstoppers will be required if something like A Song Of Fire And Ice or The Stormlight Archives ever gets the nod?
Best case scenario is that many people will refrain from voting if they judge themselves not to have read enough of the works in question. (With known griefers angling to spoil the vote, however, this ideal is almost certain to fail in practice.) Next best would be people reading at least a book or two of any series they don’t know already. Worst case scenario, and the one I worry about, is that it goes to whichever series was most popular before the nominations took place, as people vote for the ones they know and ignore the rest, and quality takes second place to familiarity.
The worst case scenario still isn’t a disaster, exactly, but it’s not the ideal basis for an award.
Cassy B: Though that will depend to a large extent on what kind of series tends to get it. If it goes to series of infinite length, that will favour white males in the way you say. If it tends to go to trilogies, which I don’t find at all improbable, series can qualify in their third year of existence, and new authors won’t be excluded.
This is your brain on pixels.
I don’t think a writer needs until middle age to complete the third book in a series, which is all the award requires. Michael Moorcock, Stephen R. Donaldson and Naomi Novik were in their 30s when they wrote Elric, Covenant and Temeraire, respectively.
I will be surprised if Hugo voters choose Best Series differently than we choose Best Novel. If there was an exceptional desire to honor older greats, I would have expected to see Kim Stanley Robinson do better. (Admittedly that opinion is colored by how fantastic the Mars books were.)
I like the series award because it means the Hugos cover a much larger percentage of the SF/F field. When Barnes & Noble devoted space to new releases in SF/F (sigh), over half of the shelf was books in a series.
‘Tis a shame about the “at least one volume of which was published in 2016” clause (which the 1966 version of this award lacked) because it means I cannot put forward S. Somtow’s Inquisitor books.
@Andrew M My guess is that the award will not in fact go to that sort of series
This is a good point, and a very plausible best-case outcome – that it effectively ends up as a “best second novel” category. I suspect it’ll depend on how the nominations break down.
@Simon Bisson
I’ve enjoyed the USSA stories, but I think there’s a tension between the playful alternate history and the playful use of famous fictional characters that makes both a little less effective.