Yet again the Hugo Awards are causing the internets to explode. This time there are rumours that Brad Torgersen’s “Sad Puppies” slate has managed to get three out of the five nominations for Best Novel, and there are even rumours of complete sweeps of some of the short fiction categories.
The war of words is getting increasingly bitter even before the announcement of the actual nominations. The Sad Puppies face accusations of dedication to white male dominance of the genre and ruining The Hugos for everyone else, while the Sad Puppies themselves accuse their opponents of being a clique of elitist gatekeepers. Too many people are cherry-picking the worst statements by the “other side” in order to prove the righteousness of their cause. Neither side is exactly covering themselves in glory.
They certainly champion different styles of SF; socially-aware works with literary ambitions versus commercial action-adventure stories. The extremely polarised reactions to last years winner of Best Novel, Ann Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice” shows where the faultlines lie. But shouldn’t SF be a big enough tent to accommodate many different kinds of fiction?
The whole thing leaves me conflicted. I’ve never had much time for the right-libertarian world-view of much American hard-SF, and have always preferred the more socially-aware works from the likes of Charlie Stross or the late, great Iain Banks. But the left-wing sub-tribe of SF has lost a lot of moral high ground in the past twelve months, first with the Jonathan Ross fiasco, and then with ugly Requires Hate affair. There are people I once respected I now regard with suspicion.
But whatever your own position, do read Abi Sutherland’s heartfelt post on why block voting and politicisation is against the spirit of the whole thing.
Much like the similar culture wars in the computer gaming world and elsewhere, the whole thing gains its energy from the uncompromisingly tribal nature of US politics. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon. I blame Karl Rove, who for the sake of winning a couple of elections was prepared to poison the body politic for a generation. Sadly it’s polluted a lot of UK internet discourse as well. It’s difficult to imagine how any of this can make much sense to the rest of the world.
But ultimately something like the Hugo Awards should not be the exclusive property of any one narrow tribe, which is why I find some of the comments I’ve read from Teresa Nielsen-Hayden and others so disappointing.
The Hugo Awards are supposed to represent the best the the world of science fiction has to offer. If it devolves into a highly politicised contest with semi-organised block voting it risks turning into the Eurovision Song Contest, which as any music fan will tell you is an entertaining circus in its own right but has absolutely no relevance to the wider music world.
Due to the contentious nature of the issue I’m temorarily disabling comments while feelings on the subject are still running high.
