(1) BLAME THOSE GUYS SOUTH OF CANADA. T. R. Napper’s “Americans Destroy Science Fiction” was passed along by JJ with the observation, “I find this piece ridiculously clueless about the history of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, and about the actual reasons for the kerpupple and the American domination of the Awards. However, it certainly contains a different point of view, with some very valid points.”
…But let’s rewind a little. When I first started writing a few years back I heard there was this controversy in the genre. That diversity was being blocked, or rolled back, by a conservative praetorian guard of writers. My first thought was to man the barricades: to fight with those fighting for this thing they said was diversity, a concept I’ve always correlated with equity.
I worked in international aid for fifteen years. In that time, friends and colleagues of mine have been shot at, beaten, kidnapped, murdered, blown up, car-jacked, abused, and imprisoned. These horrific things were done to them because they tried to build a school for girls, or they ran a women’s empowerment program, or simply because they had the temerity to stand with the poor against a corrupt and violent social order.
So, you see, social justice, equity, are things I have a passing concern with.
The problem, I soon discovered, is that this debate is not about equity, and sure as hell isn’t about diversity. Rather, it is an inside-the-bubble conversation between two groups of American writers, each attempting to claim victim status. Worse, the boundaries of the discussion almost completely exclude non-Americans, and even within the US context there was little mention of disability, and none of class.
This particular tributary of the American culture wars is little more than tiny elite – the middle and upper-middle class of the most powerful country in the world – debating and defining diversity in the genre as a whole. It boils down to insiders arguing how to make awards more representative of 45% of the population (the middle and upper class) in a country accounting for 4% of the global population (the US).
(2) GAMING ADDICTION. On Real Life Magazine, Tony Tulahwitte, in an article called “Clash Rules Everything Around Me” talks about his love of Clash of Clans and tries to make the case for the positive things about spending all that time gaming.
Clan Prestige kicked me out immediately; Clan Friendship kicked me out for donating weak troops; Clan Love communicated mostly in Arabic. So I stayed awhile in the dead-silent Clan Maturity, left a week later for Clan Corgi Butts, and ended up where I always suspected I belonged: in the Trash Clan.
(3) KEEPS ON GOING. A total of nine NASA missions received extensions this week, including the two in the headline: “New Horizons Receives Mission Extension to Kuiper Belt, Dawn to Remain at Ceres”.
Following its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the Kuiper Belt, known as 2014 MU69. The spacecraft’s planned rendezvous with the ancient object – considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system — is Jan. 1, 2019.
“The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise,” said NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. “We’re excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn’t even discovered when the spacecraft launched.”
Based upon the 2016 Planetary Mission Senior Review Panel report, NASA this week directed nine extended missions to plan for continued operations through fiscal years 2017 and 2018. Final decisions on mission extensions are contingent on the outcome of the annual budget process.
In addition to the extension of the New Horizons mission, NASA determined that the Dawn spacecraft should remain at the dwarf planet Ceres, rather than changing course to the main belt asteroid Adeona.
Green noted that NASA relies on the scientific assessment by the Senior Review Panel in making its decision on which extended mission option to approve. “The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion – the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun — has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona,” he said….
(4) EASTERCON 2012 CHOW. Lawrence Schoen posted “Eating Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky” on Monday —
And there, in that weird moment of existential, Star Trek-related crisis, I was found by a band of SF academics from Oxford who I very tentatively knew, mostly through a common acquaintance with Paul Cornell (who is the Kevin Bacon of the UK SF scene). And like some kind of choir of angels they took me from the windowless confines of the convention hotel, first into the Outside, which I had almost forgotten existed, and then off to a Chinese restaurant with a bunch of other fans.
(5) SMOOTH SEGUE. Here’s where I drop in the Rob James Morgan tweet in response to Delilah S. Dawson’s fears about something literally eating authors.
the last one concerns everyone; worldcon bear attacks are forecast to be up 200% in 2016*
*not an actual statistic
— Rob M. (@RobJamesMorgan) July 6, 2016
(6 FEELS GUIDE TO FANAC. Suvudu’s Matt Staggs recommends a book and podcast discussion: “Therapist Kathleen Smith Talks About ‘The Fangirl Life’ on ‘Beaks & Geeks’”.
In her book The Fangirl Life: A Guide to Feeling All the Feels and Learning How to Deal, Kathleen Smith, a licensed therapist, introduces readers to her own brand of fan-friendly self-help: a unique niche in therapeutic thought where Doctor Who is more important than Doctor Freud, and the feels is very real. This is her first book aimed at fangirls, but Smith has been offering sage advice to female fandom for handling anxiety, relationship troubles, and more for a long time at her site www.fangirltherapy.com.
If you enjoy flailing over badass fictional ladies or speculating endlessly over plot points, but would like to carve more space for the narrative of your own life, this is the book for you. Written by a proud fangirl who is also a licensed therapist, The Fangirl Life is a witty guide to putting your passions to use in your offline life, whether it’s learning how writing fan fiction can be a launching point for greater career endeavors, or how to avoid the myths that fictional romance perpetuates.
(7) T5S. Aaron Pound reviewed Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin for Dreaming of Other Worlds. (Haiku warning!)
Full review: There is a vague and indistinct region in between the genres of fantasy and science fiction. While some books rest comfortably on one side of this division or the other, others are happy to rest in that ambiguous zone between them, maybe from some angles a work of fantasy, and from others a work of science fiction. The Fifth Season is one of those books, with elements that make one think that the story is a pure fantasy, and others that are squarely within the realm of science fiction. Against this backdrop, Jemisin weaves a brutal story of enslavement, oppression, and anger that is at once intensely personal and breathtaking in its scope.
(8) QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Kyra: I consider SFWA to be a one-syllable word, pronounced as spelled.
(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman joined Gene O’Neill for lunch in Las Vegas on Episode 12 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
For the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded in Las Vegas during StokerCon, I headed out to Hash House A Go Go, one of my favorite restaurants—at least in its San Diego incarnation. My breakfast there is always one of my favorite Comic-Con meals. But alas, there turned out to be more than a 90-minute wait that Sunday morning in Vegas, so I moved on to Yard House at the recommendation of my guest, Gene O’Neill, who’d eaten there earlier that weekend.
Gene, with whom I attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, has been nominated 11 times for the Bram Stoker Award, and has won twice, in the categories of Long Fiction and Fiction Collection.
(10) INDIANAPOLIS FANDOM. Tony Schaab wrote a report on InConJunction for ScienceFiction.com.
Dubbed “The Crossroads of the Multiverse,” the small but mighty InConJunction celebrated it’s amazing 36th show this year on July 1-3, 2016, at the Marriott East in Indianapolis, IN. A fan-run convention since the beginning some 30-plus years ago, the show is organized by The Circle of Janus Science Fiction & Fantasy Club. With a heavy focus on sci-fi and fantasy, the show boasts several unique and entertaining aspects, including a fully-functional Bridge Simulator, an expansive Live Auction, a cosplay Masquerade, and specific rooms dedicated to ‘Doctor Who,’ anime, and more.
(11) SEVENTH HELL OF WHO. Not everyone thinks it was bad, however, “’Doctor Who’ Showrunner Steven Moffat Admits Series Seven Was ‘Miserable’”, at ScienceFiction.com.
If you don’t recall, Season Seven of NuWho involved a “monster movie of the week” feel with a series of standalone episodes that built up to the departure of Amy and Rory in the midseason episode ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’, the Doctor’s first adventures with Clara Oswald, and the introduction of John Hurt as the War Doctor. But with important moments like these, how could the season have been so generally bad? Well, it sounds like the pressure of Matt Smith leaving the show and the 50th anniversary got to Moffat a little bit:
“Matt [Smith], who was a friend and ally, was leaving – I couldn’t get him to stay. It felt like everything was blowing up around me. I was staggering into the 50th, with no Doctors contracted to appear in it, battered with endless hate mail about how I hadn’t got William Hartnell back and ‘Sherlock’ series three at the same time. I was pretty miserable by the end of it, and I couldn’t bear to let that be the end.”
(12) THE LOST WORLD. “See Gigantic Prehistoric Monsters Battle Modern Lovers” when the Alex Film Society screens The Lost World (1925) on Sunday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m.
“Imagine a Lost World—millions of years old—and now found by a daring exploring party. Imagine this world still existing as in the beginning of time—with gigantic antediluvian monsters roaming it—ape men—prehistoric men living on it—fighting at every turn for existence—fighting the monsters who would devour them. And it all happens in this tremendous love and adventure drama—and people from your own world were brave enough to encounter hardships and dangers to bring back this story to you. Without doubt the biggest motion picture achievement.”
Featuring some of the biggest stars of the silent era, including Wallace Beery, Bessie Love and Lewis Stone, as well as no less than a dozen different species of dinosaur, our print of The Lost World is a fully restored version from the George Eastman House collection. Famed composer and pianist Alexander Rannie will accompany the film with the musical score that was written for the original release.
(13) CHANGING ICON. In The Hollywood Reporter, Graeme McMillan has the story: “Tony Stark Replaced by Black Woman as Marvel’s Comic Book Iron Man”. The theory is that a brilliant MIT student who built her version of Iron Man armor will replace Tony Stark from Invincible Iron Man #7 onwards.
Williams debuted in Invincible Iron Man No. 7 in March of this year, and will headline a relaunched version of the title later this year as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch. Created by series writer Brian Michael Bendis — who also co-created Miles Morales, the half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man who debuted in 2011 — and artist Mike Deodato, Riri has been shown to be even more resourceful than Stark himself, and just as stubborn.
Williams’ ascension as Iron Man (The title of the series will remain the same, according to Marvel) continues a trend for replacing, or at least adding to, the traditional white male heroes with a more diverse cast over the last few years; in addition to the Miles Morales Spider-Man, Sam Wilson became Marvel’s second black Captain America in 2014, the same year that Jane Foster took over as Thor.
(14) WILL THERE BE A MELTDOWN? Breitbart.com is canvassing the internet hoping to find negative reactions to the Iron Man story. This is a tweet they included in their news item.
https://twitter.com/ira/status/750690368413249536
(15) CAP CLAIMED BY BATTLING BOROUGHS. BBC reports a Marvel will place a statue of Captain America in a Brooklyn park. Naturally, this is causing controversy. For a change, it has nothing to do with Hydra.
The company has commissioned a 13-ft (3.96m) bronze statue which will be housed in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
It will be unveiled at the San Diego Comic Con later this month before being placed in the park from 10 August.
A sketch of the statue released by Marvel shows the character holding his signature shield in the air…..
The figure will also bear the superhero’s quote “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn” – said in the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger.
However, some fans have pointed out the original comic book character was actually from Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
In the comics, the superhero was the son of Irish immigrants – a similar background to that of co-creator Jack Kirby, who was the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants living in the same area.
(16) COMIC STRIP. The eponymous character of The Wizard of Id is attending Wizardcon this week. Today he has a tough decision to make.
(17) NEXT ROGUE ONE TRAILER COMING. UPI says the second Rogue One trailer will premiere in the US on ABC.
According to fansite Making Star Wars, television listings for ABC reveal that they plan on airing a new Star Wars special on July 15 that will also include a new three minute trailer for Rogue One.
The title of the special, Secrets of The Force Awakens, shares the same name as a making of documentary that was included in the blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
(18) JUNO. NASA posted images received from Juno as a time-lapse video of moons orbiting Jupiter.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a unique time-lapse movie of the Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter. The movie begins on June 12th with Juno 10 million miles from Jupiter, and ends on June 29th, 3 million miles distant. The innermost moon is volcanic Io; next in line is the ice-crusted ocean world Europa, followed by massive Ganymede, and finally, heavily cratered Callisto. Galileo observed these moons to change position with respect to Jupiter over the course of a few nights. From this observation he realized that the moons were orbiting mighty Jupiter, a truth that forever changed humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos. Earth was not the center of the Universe. For the first time in history, we look upon these moons as they orbit Jupiter and share in Galileo’s revelation. This is the motion of nature’s harmony.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day mc simon milligan.]
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It is more sophisticated than having no way of describing the idea that while racism takes many forms and is applied in different ways to different kinds of people and that those people have their own histories, culture (and prejudices) that NONETHELESS racism is something that is applied across all of those groups and that, in terms of representation, social privilege and political power there is a collective problem in the extent to which people who are not from a very narrow set of ethnicities are treated.
So yes, Penny Wong is not the same as Adam Goodes and the racism she might have to have faced is not the same as or equivalent to or has anything like the deep and appalling history as that faced by indigenous Australians BUT there are times when noting social progress (or lack of it) that looking at a disparate group collectively MAY MAKE SENSE. That is why we use words and how words can make our thinking more sophisticated.
Does that mean the term is a perfect example of categorisation or that there is nothing problematic about it? No. But even to HAVE that discussion requires having the vocabulary.
So yes, I think it is more sophisticated but more to the point it doesn’t shut out non-Americans.
And that isn’t what is happening in this case.
But maybe today is not the day to have this discussion.
Takei is less happy – he’d rather they make a new character, because this kind of implies that his version of Sulu was closeted, and he doesn’t think anyone would be closeted in the Trek era.
Jeremy Szal: Yeah, asking that the other 96% of the world’s population be included in the awards is far too much to ask. You talk about diversity, but even the mention of including the rest of the world seems to offend you. That’s *exactly* what Tim says in his essay – either we do it The American Way or not at all.
Have you read the history of the Hugo Awards? Have you read the history of science fiction in the U.S., and the history of Worldcon?
Based on the many incorrect things you’ve said and false assumptions you’ve made, I’m betting you haven’t. Why don’t you go do that before presuming to make any more uneducated, ill-informed claims? I’m happy to wait.
How many non-Australian Americans have won an Aurealis Award? None. That’s because the award was created in Australia and designed to recognize fiction written by Australlians — just as the Hugo Awards were started by Americans and intended to recognize American SF writers.
The attendees at Worldcon for many, many years were almost exclusively American, and the Hugos originally went almost exclusively to Americans. In recent decades, American fans have worked very hard to make Worldcon and the Hugos more accessible to non-Americans. In recent decades, airfare prices have become something more accessible to the average person, and science fiction written in other countries has become easier to obtain. In recent decades, communications between countries have become much, much easier. In recent decades, Americans have taken advantage of all those changes to try to make Worldcon more inclusive of the rest of the world.
You’re complaining because something that started in one country has not fully branched out to the rest of the world yet. What’s stopping other countries from doing what Americans have done — creating their own conventions and giving out their own awards? Nothing. In fact, fans in many other countries have done this. How have Americans been shutting them out from doing so? I eagerly await your answer.
I don’t see you complaining that none of the Finnish SF awards go to English-language books. I don’t see you complaining that none of the German SF awards go to English-language books. I don’t see you complaining that none of the Aurealis Awards are going to people from countries other than Australia.
So why do you feel you are so entitled to complain about the Hugo Awards — the SF awards which have done more than any other SF award to reach out and recognize books written by people who aren’t from their home country?… the awards which have done more to try to recognize diversity — on a worldwide basis — than any other SF award?
Can Worldcon and the Hugos do better? Sure. And a lot of Americans have been working very hard to make that happen. Dozens of Americans have worked very hard to help make sure that the Helskinki Worldcon won its bid, and are serving as committee members and volunteers to make it happen. Next year’s convention will be the 10th Worldcon to take place outside of the U.S. in the last 22 years.
How many Contacts have been held outside Australia? That would be zero.
Your unjustified sense of entitlement to criticism is staggering. 😐
Jeremy Szal:
My memory from Australia was that australians were kind of nice, not the type of assholes that would laugh you out of a pub only because of you using an expression that was not common to Australia.
You do know that there are a lot of people here who are part of the conversation and aren’t american? Like me.
I do agree on the puppy debacle being very american, but not because of there not being racists and assholes in the rest of the world. Enough people from other countries are involved. It is mostly because of the way all these acronyms are used and where the fault lines lies.
Cora summed up how I feel. What I dont get is why some Americans here have so much difficulty to accept that there is a different, a Non-American perspective of this mess? JJ bassicly summed up, that the Hugos are a very American thing, created by Americans mainly (but not exclusivly) for Americans. That the controversy is also American as well shouldnt come as no surprise. Its a bit strange for an American to say: NO you DONT Have other views! If you have, then you dont know s*!
Of course there are far rights in Europe (and Australia and everywhere else) as well, but the positions of them differ slightly. _One_ example would be that neither UKIP nor the German AFD nor Wilders (or any other extremist I can think of) use the kind ofchristian rhetoric thats used by some of the rabid puppies. There is no backlash against Atheism here. None. There are other differences, but I dont think there would be a point of writing a thesis on this subject here.
Lets also not forget that the stuff started with the SAD puppies, not Vox Day (who just jumped on the bandwagon). The whole original controversy was about literature for “conservatives” and for “liberals” and what they like to read (“They should read X It would blow their mind!”) and that mindset is completly foreign to me and I guess most Europeans. Maybe (sic!) its that we have more than two partys (in most countries – and yes, you also have more than just two, but we have more than two parties that can acually be part of a goverment) and so dont even expect that you can guess their prefered reading from their voting behavior. Since there are more parties their differences have to be nuanced and so its more difficult to decide in which group a certain political view falls (I didnt mean this condescending, its just a theory I have).
Third: I dont know the politcal leanings of 99% of the authors I read. Those I do know I only know because I read about it on Hugo posts. I never even thought about their presumed political views. The puppy affair creates the impression that American SF readers *do* care about this views. If this impression is justified, I dont know, but you are creating this impression. Perhaps you should know this.
Peer Sylvester: Its a bit strange for an American to say: NO you DONT Have other views! If you have, then you dont know s*!
Who has said this? Quotes and links, please.
Peer Sylvester: The whole original controversy was about literature for “conservatives” and for “liberals” and what they like to read.
And this is why I pointed out how incredibly clueless the post was in Item (1). You don’t really understand what the whole original controversy was about, and yet you are presuming to make authoritative statements about it.
The whole original controversy was about a small group of extremely spoilt selfish children (several of them American, some of them not) with an unjustified sense of entitlement — who decided that they liked the prestige of someone else’s awards and wanted to steal that for themselves.
There aren’t two groups here. There were never two groups. There is just the Puppies, and everyone else — and on a good day, everyone else is disagreeing with each other on just about everything except what a bunch of spoilt, whiny babies the Puppies are.
Please stop presuming to claim that you understand what this is about. Because, clearly, you don’t.
OK:
Should I link it?
To sum up: Every Non-American having the opinion that this is an American centric affair , doesnt understand it!
QED
Peer Sylvester: OK. Should I link it?
How would you respond if I made some incredibly clueless, presumptuous statement about how I knew exactly what was going on with something in German culture and politics and it was completely wrong?
Would you say, “Oh, JJ, you are exactly right!”
Or would you say — as I have — “You don’t live here, you don’t understand our politics and culture, you would do well to educate yourself on what’s really going on instead of pretending that you’re an authority on something when you clearly have no idea what’s going on?”
I’m betting on the latter.
And I’m wondering why you think you are in a far better position to opine on what the Puppy mess is all about when, up above, you admitted that you don’t understand Americans. 🙄
Peer Sylvester: To sum up: Every Non-American having the opinion that this is an American centric affair , doesnt understand it!
Where did I say that this is not an American-centric affair?
It’s always a good idea to understand what is actually being said, before venturing an opinion on what was not said.
JJ, YOU did say its an American affair. On the first post of today I said as much. Jim Henley and others are disputing this. I guess its safe to say that there is no consensus among American commentators on this point. I do write a comment here, answering not only you, but also others. Speaking of exact quotes, I never wrote, that I dont understand Americans. But maybe this got a bit heated up, and I apoligize for my role in that – OK?
The thing is: Once I learned about the puppies last year (IIRC through George Martins blog) I read a lot about it: timelines, blogs -from all sides – and had vivid discussions with other fans on Black Gate and even Monster Hunter Nation. Of course, it might be, that I dont understand a thing despite this. But I do flatter mnyself at thinking that I at least have a grasp what the various sides want – and yes, there are different sides. The “sides” are not only made up of the major players, there are actually fans behind them- and I did leanr that the followers of Vox Day are exactly that (at least the ones I came across), while some of the sad puppie-voters are tend to be more nuanced. I dont say they are right or anything, I just say, that they do have some opinions of their own.
So telling me, that I dont know what Im talking about comes across a little bit condencending, especially if so far your main point was:
Which might be your _perception_, but I am not convinced its the truth.
I hope I was able to bring point across better this time!
@lurkertype. it was Mark Oshiro.
Peer Sylvester: But maybe this got a bit heated up, and I apoligize for my role in that – OK?
I don’t think that things are heated, though you may have that perception. Please understand that I do not have bad feelings toward you; I am just feeling very exasperated, as an American, at what I perceive as being told by a non-American that they know better than Americans what is going on with the Puppy mess. Not everyone involved is American, no — but Worldcon and the Hugo Awards were started in the U.S., they are still predominantly a thing of the U.S., and the Puppy mess is very much an American thing.
(And I really apologize for the use of “American”: I don’t like it, because it ignores the fact that North America is more than just the U.S. However “USian” is unfortunately really not a workable term in discussions.)
We are having an articulate discussion here on File770 — unlike what you see on Puppy blogs, where any dissenting opinion is quickly met with insults and abuse.
That’s one of the reasons why I really like File770 — and I hope that you’ll continue coming around and reading and participating.
Peer Sylvester: Jim Henley and others are disputing this.
I don’t think that they are. They are disputing that your (and Napper’s, and Szal’s) assessment of the situation is correct — as I am. Go back again and read their posts.
Jim Henley: Let’s be clear about a couple of things: 1) It is much, much more important that the Hugo Awards do right by American people of color than by white Europeans.
Jim Henley: Americans talking about American things and building proud traditions like the Hugo Awards without asking you how to do it first.
Those seem to me to be pretty open acknowledgements that this is primarily an American thing.
Peer Sylvester: I… had vivid discussions with other fans on Black Gate and even Monster Hunter Nation.
Seriously? Those are the only places you had “vivid discussions”, and you think you have an accurate idea of what this is all about?
Peer Sylvester: Which might be your _perception_, but I am not convinced its the truth.
Please, please, stick around and have discussions here. I think you will be amazed at the difference you get in perspective.
This was never about “two sides”. The “two sides” thing is Propaganda: it’s the Narrative that the Puppies have pushed to try to justify their incredibly bad behavior.
Because, if there aren’t really two sides, then they’re just being spoilt asshole babies, aren’t they? And they don’t want you to see that.
The Puppy problem certainly seems to be an American thing. Even the non-American puppies seem to be sufficiently Americophiles to move there, perhaps to naturalise.
As a non-American I’m not entirely happy with the (inaccurate paraphrase) ‘Americans created all this, you should be grateful’ idea. When Americans define their movement as being for the World then please don’t be too upset that the World feels it should be allowed a say.
And to perhaps commit the same sin, I think Jeremy’s position largely boils down to ‘don’t try and define my experience with your labels’. Can appreciate that. Don’t think I’d be happy with that either.
JJ:
I do think there are a lot of people of non-american nationality that have a quite clear grasp of the situation. Sometimes even more clear than some americans. I do not think that being american makes one automagically more knowledgeable about the puppy affair.
Of course I know that MHN is not really the best source for having an informed discussion! 🙂 And its not the only site Ive been by far (Do I have to list my all the sites Ive been? I specificly mentioned the two because they have …mmh.. the commentaters that they have. Although I do like Black Gate)
It was not my objective to say that I know better – I just want to point out, that “we” Non-Americans have a different perspective on some things.
Jim Henley:
It was mainly this, that I went against in the earlier comment.
NickPheas: As a non-American I’m not entirely happy with the (inaccurate paraphrase) ‘Americans created all this, you should be grateful’ idea.
I understand what you’re saying, and I agree.
On the other hand, I’m really tired of hearing from people from other countries what a shitty job we’ve done trying to make Worldcon and the Hugos a “world” thing — when no one in any other country has even made a similar effort.
It’s like having the neighbor down the street complain to you that you hardly ever bring them a cake which you’ve baked — when they have never brought you anything, not even a cookie. 😐
Jim Henley: The whole Puppie-controversy is very, very American-centric. Mike dealt with this pretty early in the comment thread. Basically, no.
Peer Sylvester: It was mainly this, that I went against in the earlier comment.
It is certainly not my place to fansplain for Jim Henley. However, the way I understood both his and Mike’s comments, is that people from other countries who perceive this as a simple conflict between liberals and conservatives are missing a huge amount of context — because that’s really not what the Puppy mess is about.
And I am quite serious when I say that I hope you’ll stick around and become a regular participant in this community (a “Filer”). It’s non-Americans like you, and Hampus, and Cora, and Oneiros, and snowcrash, and Soon Lee, and all those lovely Brits and Aussies and Canadians (and all the other wonderful non-American Filers whom I’ve not acknowledged in this post), who hang out here, that make this community so much better for their alternative perspectives. 🙂
But (to play on strained metaphor) if you will call yourself a Community Cafe…
NickPheas: But (to play on strained metaphor) if you will call yourself a Community Cafe…
It’s at this point I will mumble something about “who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly” 😉
I do not worry that much that WorldCon is dominated by american authors. Hell, just having to translate stuff to have in the competition leaves out a lot. Maybe other anglosaxons are more bitter because they have the same language.
I’m a bit skeptic to having a category for best foreign book which is the typical european solution. Should we then have one for best foreign fan or best foreign film too? Best foreign artist?
Why I used ‘American flavoured’ and why I’d point again to a hefty chunk of leading players in Puppydom having ties beyond the US (forgot to add Kate Paulk – Australian who emigrated to US). It is an aspect of the kerfuffle but it isn’t as deep as it seems nor is it a conflict between two US perspectives.
@lurkertype
Mark Oshiro, a number of drunken roller girls, and an ASL interpreter. (If referring to the sign language commonly used locally as “ASL” is not too hegemonic for today’s scroll.)
Jim Henley said:
It is time for Intersectionality 101. Just replace any random category there with “foreign”.
JJ said:
The Hugos were never explicitly about recognizing American works– you’re thinking of the Nebulas. They did wind up focusing on Americans early on, due to the bias in the voting pool that we have all noted, but it was never their stated intent.
The Hugos were never explicitly about recognizing American works
They are, however, about recognizing works in English, which, given the historical realities of science fiction publishing, biases them in favor of American (and English) works.
Yep, and thats OK 🙂
And the voting process enhances the American bias, simply because most people eligble to vote are Americans (Im not sure if that what the reason “Station Eleven” got ignored last year or if it was the puppies). This bias is built in the system – Its something you have to consider, when evaluating the award (imho every award has two goals: Honour the winners and push readers towards worthy reads. For the latter, readers have to know what kind of stories are likely to win the award and if those line up with your taste. Another point the puppies seem to have missed).
JJ:
Don´t worry, Ill stick around. I do like it here. Mike is doing a hell of a job (is this phrase still used? 😉 )and Im reading here for quite some time now. It is one of the few spaces were you actually can read the comments 😉
::tickbox::
Im not sure if that what the reason “Station Eleven” got ignored last year or if it was the puppies
It probably wasn’t the Puppies. If one excises the Puppy picks from the Best Novel category, the most likely replacement finalists would have been Scalzi’s Lock-In and Bennett’s City of Stairs.
The top 15 nominees (excluding the Puppy picks of Chaplain’s War and Trial by Fire) were rounded out by VanderMeer’s Annihilation, Okorafor’s Lagoon, Weir’s The Martian, Hurley’s Mirror Empire, Walton’s My Real Children, and Sanderson’s Words of Radiance. If one excised all five of the Puppy picks from the novel category and replaced them with the next five top nominees, Station Eleven might have been on the list. We won’t ever know for certain. It probably would not have made the list of finalists.
One problem the book may have had is poor distribution. Last year I asked the ubiquitous convention bookdealer Larry Smith about Station Eleven shortly after it won the Clarke Award. Not only had he not heard of the book, it wasn’t available in his distribution chain when he went to look for it.
Hampus:
I’m a bit skeptic to having a category for best foreign book which is the typical european solution. Should we then have one for best foreign fan or best foreign film too? Best foreign artist?
Well, I don’t think we’d have to do that. The Hugos have a centre of gravity, which is prose fiction (typically in English). But they aren’t exclusively focused on that; they take other things into account as well. So the graphic and dramatic awards move away from the centre of gravity in one way, and the fan awards move away from it in another way, and an award for foreign fiction would move away from it in a third way. We don’t need to ensure equal representation for everything.
I think actually this is an ongoing theme; Worldcon and the Hugos, because they try to be more inclusive, come to look exclusive. If they were explicitly for books and nothing else, it wouldn’t be a problem; because they take account of other things, people demand that they cover the whole field of science fiction equally. If they were explicitly American, it wouldn’t be a problem; because they try to reach out to the wider world, people complain that they don’t represent the whole world. If they were only for people who attend conventions, it wouldn’t be a problem; because they try to increase participation, through supporting memberships, people complain that they don’t represent every fan.
I don’t have a problem with any of this; it’s an institution which starts in a certain place and grows outwards, but without forgetting its roots. But to take that perspective you have to think historically. If you think of the Hugos in terms simply of fulfilling a certain function, and ask how well they perform that function – that of representing the whole of science fiction effectively, or something like that – you may well reach a different conclusion.
(That said, we probably shouldn’t have a best foreign book award. Firstly because more awards, at least for large things which take time to read, are a problem when we have to read the stuff; and secondly because it would probably get a rather limited number of nominations, which is a problem in the presence of slates.)
Andrew M: To add a note inspired by your comment, the core identity of the Hugo Awards is that they represent the popular choices of fans. (And at that, fans who join the Worldcon.) So the center of gravity will be placed according to the likes of the voters (the workings of slates excepted). It’s not as if the voters collectively are trying to act as a jury and ought to be judged because they didn’t give a rocket to a book whose greatness only a few people have experienced, or maybe even a great many people experienced (like the Three Body Problem, 2007) in a non-English edition.
Jeremy Szal on July 7, 2016 at 10:10 pm said:
What you seem to want is a juried award that reflects the things that you personally think are personally important to you. I suggest that you set up the Jeremy Szal Awards to be selected solely by you. That way they will be Perfect In Every Possible Way.
The Hugo Awards reflect the opinions of the members of the World Science Fiction Society who choose to participate. They are not a brain scan of every single human being on Earth who has consumed pop-culture SF/F entertainment. The largest group of people who join and participate are generally Americans, in no small part because they are one of the largest groups.
In short, it sounds to me that you’re complaining because there are lots of Americans who join and participate, and would prefer that they just give Worldcon their money but let other people make all of the decisions, especially if they are things you personally want them to pick.
Aaron on July 8, 2016 at 8:06 am said:
Technically, no. Any work in any language is eligible. Works translated into English get an additional eligibility opportunity. However, due to the demographics of the people who join (not necessarily attend) Worldcon, English-language works are almost inevitably all that get considered by the electorate.
@JJ:
Hey, Canadian musical comedy trio The Arrogant Worms have a song about that!
“I am Not American”
Kevin Standlee: As you say, even when the Worldcon has been in countries that speak another language than English, like Germany or The Netherlands, the majority of Hugo voters were still English speakers, and even a good many of the people joining the con from the country were bilingual in English. (There was some Dutch-language programming in The Hague. Don’t know about Heidelberg in 1970.)
The one case I’ve never understood is Nippon 2007 — it was shocking to see zero Japanese-language works nominated given the low numbers needed to make the ballot. There wasn’t even any Japanese-language fiction on the Long List. A couple of Japanese artists showed up on the Long List, that was about it. As we learned from trying to learn details of the convention’s financial losses, it’s very difficult to have a frank dialog across those particular cultural divides so we’ll probably never find out why that happened.
@TYP et al: Thanks. Mark does indeed Read stuff really well. I’d have liked to hear him and the drunken roller girls, and am fascinated to picture what the ASL translation of Tingle’s works would look like. ASL is (pun only somewhat intended) a very graphic and straightforward language. I enjoy watching it even though I only understand a bit and sign even less. Is this online somewhere? OOH, I see it is! Yay YouTube. Boo no ASL.
I would like to thank our non-American Filers who nevertheless understand us and the issues at hand for their support. And wish to cast another eyeroll at people who confuse WSFS and SFWA (one of them has a song and the other doesn’t) and the Hugos and Nebulas. Someone who doesn’t understand that very basic difference has no business discussing the issue. (And the Australians I know can hear and use the term “POC” just fine, thanks.)
Petréa MitchelL: The Hugos were never explicitly about recognizing American works– you’re thinking of the Nebulas. They did wind up focusing on Americans early on, due to the bias in the voting pool that we have all noted, but it was never their stated intent.
No, I was thinking of the Hugos, and I said what I meant. I did not say “that was their stated intent”. They were intended to recognize what Americans were reading, and at the time, the vast majority of SF works to which Americans had access were written by Americans. As Aaron points out:
They are, however, about recognizing works in English, which, given the historical realities of science fiction publishing, biases them in favor of American (and English) works.
I find your constant passive-aggressive attempts to “correct” my posts with your superior SMOFness more than a little juvenile. 🙄
Peer Sylvester: Im not sure if that what the reason “Station Eleven” got ignored last year or if it was the puppies.
Station Eleven certainly didn’t get ignored here. A lot of Filers read it and posted comments of it. Some of them really liked it, some of them found it “meh”. It did get nominated for the Campbell Award.
I enjoyed the book — but I don’t think it got anywhere near my Top 15 novels for the year, and I was a bit surprised when it won the Clarke.
lurkertype: people who confuse WSFS and SFWA (one of them has a song and the other doesn’t)
Oh, for the sake of all that is holy, do not give anyone here ideas about creating a comparably-insidious earworm for WSFS or Worldcon.
I still have “Radio SFWA” doing an endless repeat in my brain. Just seeing Mike’s link to the video started it going again.
@Petrea Mitchell:
I think this is a quarter-turn more cryptic than I can follow after 12 hours at work and the Vyvanse long since worn off. Would you unpack it a little, please?
JJ said:
Is that for me, or Aaron (the person you actually quoted there)?
Jim Henley said:
Intersectionality as a descriptive term: the recognition that prejudice exists in many dimensions.
Intersectionality as an ideal: not using the existence of one prejudice as a way of silencing people who are experiencing a different one.
As it relates to your statement about who more urgently needs recognition from the Hugos: past neglect of non-white sf creators doesn’t mean past neglect of non-American sf creators didn’t also happen, and framing it as the two groups having to fight each other for one indivisible unit of reparation will cause more harm than good.
Petréa Mitchell: Is that for me, or Aaron (the person you actually quoted there)?
Case in point.
@Peer Sylvester:
Thanks for this and further comments elaborating on your original. There’s an interesting discussion to be had here. And I actually am qualified to fansplain what Jim Henley meant, so let me try. 🙂
Your point about religion is a good one, and we can add it to guns (which I called out earlier) on the list of local peculiarities among the revanchists. Let me explain where this kind of thing fits in my Theory of Everything and you can make of it what you will.
My Theory of Everything: We are in the midst of a global counter-revolution of white people against perceived threats to white supremacy and white privilege. This is happening literally everywhere on the globe you find us. #NotAllWhitePeople of course of course, but there is nowhere we are, as a group, covering ourselves in glory. Racism and racialized Islamophobia are the order of the day.
In Britain they go the extra mile and hate the Polacks too. Takes me back to my carefree Pittsburgh youth, that does. One day decades before I was born, my Polish-Catholic grandfather (in training) and my Irish-Baptist grandmother (to be) eloped. When my grandmother told her mother what they had done, the woman beat my grandmother up and threw her out of the house. Fuck you, British people, is what I think I am saying here.
Anyway. Everywhere white people are today, are white people who feel threatened by increased opportunities for racial, cultural, gender/sexual and religious minorities and white people organizing to roll all that back. Different groups do this with different levels of polish and displacement.
In the USA, both gun valorization and conservative Christianity are part and parcel of white supremacy. When we talk about politically conservative evangelical Christianity here we always, always mean white evangelical Christianity. As for guns, in open-carry states black people, including children, have been shot on sight by police for exercising their supposed right to bear arms in public. In “stand your ground” states, black people have been denied recourse to self-defense pleas much stronger than white people have used to escape even prosecution, let alone prison.
For various historical reasons, and by “various” I mean “It was slavery,” in the US both gun rights and right-wing Christianity are strongly marked as white. In Britain, white revanchists seem really into soccer riots and, I don’t know, kippers? I imagine anxious Dutch whites like Wilders have their own cultural hallmarks.
I think the core of our dispute is that you place more emphasis on the cultural hallmarks and I place more emphasis on the common anxiety about the loss of white privilege. Because the Puppies were absolutely, says me, an example of anxious white reaction. (Perhaps after reading this comment, someone at Mad Genius Club will write about being Portuguese again. If one of them turns out to be Polish I will have to grant they have a point.)
And by the way, the flavors of MilSF and “hard science fiction” the Puppies valorize are very much also marked as white things in the context of American fandom. So I look at the Puppies and I see a particular episode of the global white counter-revolution. You look at the Puppies and you see Americans arguing over the sorts of things Americans always argue about. We both have our reasons! I think there is a bit of a trap there, though, in that if “we” don’t argue back, we simply give up that ground to the revanchists.
One other thing occurs to me: it’s possible that non-US fandoms tend to have fewer conservatives proportionally than US fandom. In that case, while you’re used to Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage in public life, you wouldn’t think of them as a presence in your SF lives. That would be one more thing to make the Puppies look different and strange to you, even though, really, they are not.
@Petrea Mitchell:
Ah. Thanks for clarifying. I know perfectly well what intersectionality is, so I figured you must have been making a better argument than the one you turned out to be making after all.
Thats probably a fair asessment 🙂
Im not sure if the “Us vs. Them” rhetoric is such a new phenomenon. Always people have dreamed of a glorified past and told by politicians and agitators that a distinct group is to blame that the present is not as it should be. Take it from a German…
Whats new now is a) the internet b) a lot of changes how gender, race etc. is percieved in the wider public (which, no matter how grim you would think it is, its better than it used to be), c) more possibilities to travel and to mix cultures plus the economy tanked rtecently and there is the threat of internbational terrorism which caused a rise in the aformentioned rhetoric. But I dont think its a new divide/counter-revolution.
I swear I read MILFs first, which puts the puppies into a much different light. 🙂
Peer Sylvester: All guys do, once. So just switch that light off.
@Peer Sylvester: Oh yeaah, white anxiety about privilege loss is a durable phenomenon, with episodic spikes that I think merit the term “counter-revolutions.” In the US we had them in the late 18th Century, successfully destroying Reconstruction in the South and instituting Jim Crow, the explosion of the Northern Klan in the 1920s, the Dixiecrat insurrection in 1948 after Truman integrated the armed forces, the Wallace candidacy and rise of neoconservatism in the late 1960s and early 1970s in response to the civil rights movement, and now this long backlash that gathers force from the GWOT-era rebellion against non-white immigration through large parts of white America completely losing its shit over the election of a black president, culminating in the Trump candidacy and its tacit embrace of the explicitly racist alt-right.
As you note, the pattern isn’t completely different from other historically white countries. The UK had the BUF in the 1930s, the National Front in the 1970s, and now UKIP and the BNP. Germany had, well, yeah. France had Action Francaise and then the Front National and now the Front National again. I am frankly less up on the details of white backlash in Eurozone countries, but I know you’ve had your share.
What’s interesting to me is that this time our counter-reaction is in phase with the rest of the “Western” world. You guys are having consequential anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, status-anxiety backlashes at the same time we are. And this time there’s a lot of cross-pollination among national “alt rights” – e.g. US Islamophobes Pam Geller and Robert Spencer working with anti-Muslim activists in Europe. I agree that it’s partly internet driven, and also by the drop in travel costs. People can afford to go to conferences!
For a long time a lot of us on the progressive side in the US imagined that other countries’ white people were better on race. This was substantially ignorance: we knew little of even what the Canadians got up to with their First Nations population, let alone how White Australia treated their aboriginal peoples or regarded their Asian neighbors. We vaguely knew that ethnic Germans had a troubled relation with their Turkish-immigrant population. A very few people knew about European Danish attitudes toward native Greenlanders. And somehow the actions of European powers in their colonial empires didn’t enter into the calculus at all.
And yet. From the 1920s to the 1950s, prominent African-American intellectuals could reasonably conclude that moving to France meant more freedom. And Canada did welcome escaped slaves. So it seemed like there was something better going on elsewhere.
I now suspect the answer is in Samuel R. Delany’s classic essay, “Racism and Science Fiction.” As with American SF fandom and industry, people of color and other “marked” minorities used to be below the percentage-of-population threshold where they seem like a status threat, but now they are above it. James Baldwin could move to France and feel welcome because he was an oddity, he wasn’t seen as part of a wave. Those days are over and you are becoming us. It’s depressing because you gave us something to aspire to.
Mike Glyer said:
The belief that the Hugos are only intended to recognize English-language works Is pretty widespread. As you have just seen.
Petréa Mitchell: The belief that the Hugos are only intended to recognize English-language works Is pretty widespread. As you have just seen.
I think a lot of people realize, as I do, that they’re not — but that for all practical purposes, as long as the vast majority of the members are primarily English-speaking, works written in a foreign language are not likely to get a look-in, until they’re translated to English.
Logistically, it would be pretty difficult for the Hugos to become a multi-lingual award, since even if non-English works managed to get on the ballot, the vast majority of the members are not going to be able to read them in order to vote for them to win.
@Jim Henley
I couldnt compare Us racism and European racism, because I literally cant. Im white, I havent lived in the US. Like you, I suspect its quite similiar. If anything I would say that because of our social safety net the divide between poor and rich may not be as wide and while many minorities are poor, I guess the numbers are a bit more moderate than in the US. Pure gut feel though.
The one edge I am sure we have though, is that its less lethal here to be a minority – hate crimes notwithstanding, because we have less guns, we have less dead. And we have far less police killings. But thats a whole diffeernt debate and one I suspect were on the same side anyway 😉