Lucifer’s Hammer would never have gotten it’s Hugo in this environment.
..or ANYTHING Heinlein EVER wrote would be loudly shouted down, under voted and marginalized! I’d say the Big Three would not get awards now.
Strong men, women who wanted strong men, strong women who had male bosses, elitist rich guys who bought the MOON!
My biggest gripe with the printing houses is the overwhelming amount of sword and sorcery, supernatural, and even post apocalyptic stuff that gets grouped in with, what as an old guy I consider, science fiction. And I’m a big Mad Max / walking Dead fan, but poorly done and over done, means I’d vote with the ‘white guy’ contingent.
Just for the tally sheets, I’ve given up on book stores all together. I buy most of my SciFi stuff via BookBub. If it draws a large vacuum, I’m ONLY out .99, or $1.99, not
$5 or $10 at a book store.
Bookstores were selling crap even back in the 80’s. Since they were the only game in town back then, all we could do was complain. Now I never have to go into one of those things and I don’t.
That’s what the folks behind the torching of the Hugos don’t get. The publishers they are protecting don’t have the power to control the market as they once did. And the SF literary world doesn’t have a monopoly on geek culture. If the kinds of books people like to read aren’t published, people will find other things to do with their beer money.
Ok, without delving too much into this. Which alternative award SF label is out there, that i can actually slightly trust ?
The other big award is the Nebula – but that’s like a ‘Publisher’s Choice’ award. You know going in that it isn’t a ‘People’s Choice’ type award.
The publisher Tor is the primary actor in running/guiding the convention the old way. My understanding is that two of their editors are the core of the anti-SP folk.
The publisher Baen (much -much- smaller than Tor) is where a chunk of the authors of SP come from. Baen is also military science fiction-heavy – and one of the specific complaints is over how extensively the entire sub-genre is relegated to sitting award season out entirely.
“Read Baen, avoid Tor” is probably too simplistic. SP nominated some Tor works. Baen does have the first quarter of most of the books released since 1999 available as samples.
There are a variety of lessor awards, but as far as I know they aren’t enough for publishers to note on the cover. The Prometheus being one.
This year’s “slate” wasn’t a bad reading list. The word “slate” is assuming facts not in evidence (I read the works on the reading list, and then proceeded to -not- “Slate vote” based on my personal judgements.)
I expect next year’s reading list to be something like 8 works for each category. They (definitionally) can’t -all- be -awardworthy-. But they can all be close enough.
I dont read military SF, unless its really a chess game. Iain M. Banks i read cover to cover, three times. Presumably i’m SOL and i’ll just dig around goodreads.
I think i can still trust Gardner Dozois, although last couple years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction haven’t been too awesome.
Why wouldn’t you care about the Prometheus award? Just look up the winners? (My comment should not be construed as accepting any of the premises of the Hugo controversy)
Funny you should mention Dozois. I gave up on the Years Best back in the mid nineties. Many of the stories were just terrible and the only possible reason I could figure why he included them is because they had some resonance with the SF of the sixties. In other words, Dozois was an aging hippy and it showed in his tastes.
About 50% of what used to be in ‘Years Best’ fit my taste pretty well, especially as he had a knack of digging out some excellent hard-sf, near future spaceflight stories. He even edited ‘New Space Opera 1 and 2’ which were both rare and good.
I gotta keep an eye on Prometheus awards in the future, some of it looks OK ( but then there is John Scalzi right there in the list )
Scalzi isn’t egregious in shoehorning message into his work, his work is just really pedestrian. With all the awards he’s won you’d think he’s the next coming of Clarke, but he’s not. He’s just very good at self-promotion. Maybe even a genius at it. Writing science fiction… not so much.
Aww, they took it offline. Here’s a description Trigger warning for SJW types.
Somewhat related to this Hugo stuff…
I watched Chappie this week for the first time. I liked it generally as a way to pass time, but it was obvious the director and screenwriter’s attempt for it to be a message film. However, as many critics note, the message is conveyed in a confusing method that ultimately causes it fall flat. When you study the story at all, it doesn’t hold up at all, and has massive holes in the plot. No character seems to have any morals or other social norms that are consistent.
So how does this relate to the Hugo discussion… Well, read the comments, such as IMDB or YouTube. There are some harsh critics to the poor story, poor directing of the film, and poor editing of the films. The response by SJWs to the critics are that they are denouncing the film purely because of its message. The critics are very clear that regardless of the message, the plot is full of holes, the characters are inconsistent and unbelievable, and the “science” is hardly explained or sensible. Yet, despite having sound reasoning backed up by examples, the SJWs dismiss these arguments because “message”.
This seems to be a microcosm of the entire Hugo drama. So long as the message is the right one, the story is great, despite problems with the plot, characters, and inconsistency of the science even accounting for fiction.
Lucifer’s Hammer would never have gotten it’s Hugo in this environment.
..or ANYTHING Heinlein EVER wrote would be loudly shouted down, under voted and marginalized! I’d say the Big Three would not get awards now.
Strong men, women who wanted strong men, strong women who had male bosses, elitist rich guys who bought the MOON!
My biggest gripe with the printing houses is the overwhelming amount of sword and sorcery, supernatural, and even post apocalyptic stuff that gets grouped in with, what as an old guy I consider, science fiction. And I’m a big Mad Max / walking Dead fan, but poorly done and over done, means I’d vote with the ‘white guy’ contingent.
Just for the tally sheets, I’ve given up on book stores all together. I buy most of my SciFi stuff via BookBub. If it draws a large vacuum, I’m ONLY out .99, or $1.99, not
$5 or $10 at a book store.
Bookstores were selling crap even back in the 80’s. Since they were the only game in town back then, all we could do was complain. Now I never have to go into one of those things and I don’t.
That’s what the folks behind the torching of the Hugos don’t get. The publishers they are protecting don’t have the power to control the market as they once did. And the SF literary world doesn’t have a monopoly on geek culture. If the kinds of books people like to read aren’t published, people will find other things to do with their beer money.
Ok, without delving too much into this. Which alternative award SF label is out there, that i can actually slightly trust ?
The other big award is the Nebula – but that’s like a ‘Publisher’s Choice’ award. You know going in that it isn’t a ‘People’s Choice’ type award.
The publisher Tor is the primary actor in running/guiding the convention the old way. My understanding is that two of their editors are the core of the anti-SP folk.
The publisher Baen (much -much- smaller than Tor) is where a chunk of the authors of SP come from. Baen is also military science fiction-heavy – and one of the specific complaints is over how extensively the entire sub-genre is relegated to sitting award season out entirely.
“Read Baen, avoid Tor” is probably too simplistic. SP nominated some Tor works. Baen does have the first quarter of most of the books released since 1999 available as samples.
There are a variety of lessor awards, but as far as I know they aren’t enough for publishers to note on the cover. The Prometheus being one.
This year’s “slate” wasn’t a bad reading list. The word “slate” is assuming facts not in evidence (I read the works on the reading list, and then proceeded to -not- “Slate vote” based on my personal judgements.)
I expect next year’s reading list to be something like 8 works for each category. They (definitionally) can’t -all- be -awardworthy-. But they can all be close enough.
I dont read military SF, unless its really a chess game. Iain M. Banks i read cover to cover, three times. Presumably i’m SOL and i’ll just dig around goodreads.
I think i can still trust Gardner Dozois, although last couple years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction haven’t been too awesome.
Why wouldn’t you care about the Prometheus award? Just look up the winners? (My comment should not be construed as accepting any of the premises of the Hugo controversy)
Funny you should mention Dozois. I gave up on the Years Best back in the mid nineties. Many of the stories were just terrible and the only possible reason I could figure why he included them is because they had some resonance with the SF of the sixties. In other words, Dozois was an aging hippy and it showed in his tastes.
About 50% of what used to be in ‘Years Best’ fit my taste pretty well, especially as he had a knack of digging out some excellent hard-sf, near future spaceflight stories. He even edited ‘New Space Opera 1 and 2’ which were both rare and good.
I gotta keep an eye on Prometheus awards in the future, some of it looks OK ( but then there is John Scalzi right there in the list )
Scalzi isn’t egregious in shoehorning message into his work, his work is just really pedestrian. With all the awards he’s won you’d think he’s the next coming of Clarke, but he’s not. He’s just very good at self-promotion. Maybe even a genius at it. Writing science fiction… not so much.
A new book , about Scalzi.
Aww, they took it offline. Here’s a description Trigger warning for SJW types.
Somewhat related to this Hugo stuff…
I watched Chappie this week for the first time. I liked it generally as a way to pass time, but it was obvious the director and screenwriter’s attempt for it to be a message film. However, as many critics note, the message is conveyed in a confusing method that ultimately causes it fall flat. When you study the story at all, it doesn’t hold up at all, and has massive holes in the plot. No character seems to have any morals or other social norms that are consistent.
So how does this relate to the Hugo discussion… Well, read the comments, such as IMDB or YouTube. There are some harsh critics to the poor story, poor directing of the film, and poor editing of the films. The response by SJWs to the critics are that they are denouncing the film purely because of its message. The critics are very clear that regardless of the message, the plot is full of holes, the characters are inconsistent and unbelievable, and the “science” is hardly explained or sensible. Yet, despite having sound reasoning backed up by examples, the SJWs dismiss these arguments because “message”.
This seems to be a microcosm of the entire Hugo drama. So long as the message is the right one, the story is great, despite problems with the plot, characters, and inconsistency of the science even accounting for fiction.