- The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin won the best novel Hugo. This was a bit of an upset since Naomi Novik's Uprooted seemingly enjoyed a broader fanbase and scored previous wins in the Nebulas and Locus Fantasy awards. On the other hand, The Fifth Season was the only novel not present on any Puppy list, so it's hard not to see this as a political win rather than a joyous celebration of a great story (especially when combined with Jemisin's history with Vox Day). Back on the first hand, though, while I wasn't a fan of the book, I can also recognize it as a well written work that makes for fine award material. I found it to be misery porn (which is emphatically not what I look for out of SF/F), but really well done misery porn. I will admit to being a little surprised at 480 votes putting Seveneves under No Award, which again seems like a political response to its inclusion on the Rabid slate. Then again, I've long since stopped being surprised when Stephenson's work rubs some people the wrong way, which has always been the case (and long before any Puppy controversy) in my anecdotal experience.
- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor takes the best novella award. Again, hard not to see it as a political choice, but it was a decent enough story, even if I found it to be lacking. It was the only finalist not to appear on the Rabid list, though it did get the nod in Sad Puppies. Also of note, No Award did not place in this category, which is fair - it was a strong category.
- "Folding Beijing" by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu wins in best novelette. Yet again, this is the only finalist not to appear on the Rabid list, even if it was on the Sad Puppy list. No Award shows up in the rankings here, beating out the two Castalia House nominees.
- "Cat Pictures Please" by Naomi Kritzer wins the short story award. I can't really argue with that since I voted for it, but once again, it was the only non-Rabid choice, even if it was a Sad Puppy choice. No Award places second. This was a dumpster of a category this year, so this isn't surprising at all.
- The Martian takes home the Long Form Dramatic Presentation award, which was a nice nod to the type of SF that I really enjoy, and Andy Weir got himself a Campbell award for best new SF writer, which is also very cool. I look forward to his next book with great anticipation.
- Once again, the Puppies are trounced. It's the same old story: Action, Reaction. The Sad Puppies seem to have faded from the ire of fandom, but the Rabids remain steadfast in their quest to destroy the Hugos. Or do they? There appears to be a dramatic drop-off from the nominating stage to the voting stage this year, so perhaps there is hope yet for the future of the award. Then again, their divisive tactics have polarized fandom into awarding the types of works I tend to dislike. As usual, my hope for the future is that we can all just calm the fuck down, read some good stories, and celebrate them with the awards. Yeah, politics are inherent in the process, but we shouldn't be able to look at a list and predict the winners without looking at the quality of the work at all, which you could have done with this years awards.
- Last year, I noted that "The notion that voting on the current year gives you the ability to nominate next year is a brilliant one that might actually keep me participating." This year, they apparently voted to revoke that practice, which means I'm much less likely to participate next year (or whenever it takes effect - may not be next year). I'm guessing this was because of Rabid interference this year, but it also feels short-sighted. Also of note, they appear to be pushing the deadline for nominations up from January 31 to December 31, which probably spells doom for any SF/F story released in December. I'd have to look into both of these things more to really figure out how much I like them, but their intention seems to be to decrease participation, which doesn't feel like a great idea. I'm still on the fence about participating next year, but I guess we'll see how things go. The crappy thing about politicization of the awards from my perspective is that I feel like simple celebrations of great writing are being eschewed in favor of virtue signaling (on both sides of the divide). It's become a polarized field, which leaves me in the middle, not really caring about either side and wondering why I'm even participating. As H.P. notes:
So which side "won"? Which side lost? The Rabid Puppies/alt-right/Vox Day and the SJWs both won. That is, the people who wanted to hijack the awards to make it just another venue for their political fight (see the longlist of Best Related Works nominees for a good idea of the relative importance placed on politics versus reading). People who actually love to read and would prefer to think about books first lost. It's probably been a foregone conclusion for many years now, but the Hugo Awards will continue to long decline into irrelevancy.
Well said. Like H.P. I'm just going to go and read a book rather than dwell on it. I'll see you next year, when the Hugo whining begins in earnest.
Hugo Awards 2016: The Results
The Hugo Award winners were announced last night and I'm having a hard time caring all that much. I've played along with the Hugos for the past few years, but unfortunately, that roughly coincides with the rise of Sad/Rabid Puppy movements and by intention or not, the award and seemingly the entire field has become a politicized morass. Of course, this isn't new and this year fared significantly better than last year's disaster, so let's look closer. (Also of note: the full voting breakdown in case you wanted to figure out how instant-runoff voting works.)
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Ben
Vox's intent to make the award "meaningless" is lot like Dogbert proving that Dilbert "has no life" on a hitman contract. Having said that, it's pretty sad that he managed, at least to a certain extent, to accomplish what he set out to do. As H.P. said, those insisting on a political litmus won, thereby making the award *more* about politics, to point that a lot of participants have responded with "what's the point, anymore?", which means Vox won. And the people who just wanted the stories and the writing to be considered on their own merit don't have enough clout, at least not in this arena.
Some of it is situational, of course: this new alt-right movement of destructionists is riding it's peak right now. But, as the preponderance of their more-thoughtful fellow travelers continue to abandon them (you'll note most of the Sad Puppies proponents dropped engagement in the Hugo Awards this past year; many of them citing the involvement of Beale and his trolls), the group will eventually return to "lunatic minority" status. I suspect the same is true of SJWs in the long run; I used to think this group was firmly entrenched on the "Left", but it's been made pretty clear the past year that they are a new entity, of a similar bent as the alt-right, with a different theology.
Mark
It is indeed sad. Part of my frustration is that it wasn't even really necessary. I think the puppies misdiagnosed the problem as mainly political and when they injected their own politics, the political forces did indeed polarize. They claim that was their intent, but it all feels rather pointless, like saying "I'm going to insult this group of people to prove they don't like being insulted." Well, yeah, of course that's going to happen.
SF/F has dealt with these kinds of waves before, and there appears to be a sort of natural progression of core SF values being subverted by newcomers, then stretched to incorporate the best of what the newcomers brought to the table. You see it with Campbell, the Futurians, the New Wave, even Cyberpunk. What's been happening in the past 10 years or so is a renewed interest in turning SF into a more "literary" experience (I'm guessing the mainstreaming of geek culture has a lot to do with this - we're somehow no longer uncool, so now we've got more folks entering our world - I say welcome them and compete, Vox is trying to drive out the invaders). Because of the nature of modern literary fiction, this has a natural left-leaning bent to it that I'm sure frustrates a lot of right or middle leaning folks.
I'd have to look into it more to be sure, but it feels a little like a rehash of the New Wave. Some of this stuff is emphatically not what I want to read, but thems the breaks. The answer is to incorporate what is best in this current movement (i.e. language and prose style, whatever) into stories you want to read. Again, this has happened repeatedly throughout SF. But now, Vox and friends seem to be eschewing that and just whining about it, trying to tear down the works they don't like rather than compete at the same level.
I hope you're right and that this sort of thing is riding its peak right now. This goes for a lot more than just the Hugos, of course. I also wonder if it's a sampling problem. The number of people who are really troublemakers seems ridiculously small for a large number of controversies. To the individuals involved, though, a hundred abusive messages on twitter feels like something huge. There's a temptation to extrapolate those numbers into much larger numbers, but I don't think that's accurate anymore (i.e. it stems from letter writing campaigns of yore which do not directly translate to something like a tweet).
And now I'm babbling and I'm sure I haven't accurately described this whole thing in this comment, but it'll have to do for now.
I've been considering a post (or series of posts) on what I like about SF, because I feel like there's a real disconnect between what I love about SF and what seems in vogue (at least, judging from the last few Hugos)...