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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The 75th World Science Fiction Convention (commonly known as WorldCon) is being held this weekend in Helsinki, Finland. The convention is where the annual Hugo Awards are presented, and today, the convention announced the latest recipients.
This year, women almost completely swept the Hugo Awards, taking home the top prizes for literature in the science fiction community. That's particularly notable, given how the awards have been increasingly recognizing works from female and minority creators. The trend prompted a counter-movement from two group of fans, the self-described "Sad Puppies," and their alt-right equivalents, the "Rabid Puppies." These groups gamed the awards and forced a slate of nominees onto the Hugo ballot in 2015, prompting widespread backlash within the wider genre community. Another award, the Dragon, faced similar issues earlier this week when several authors asked to pull their nominations over concerns about Puppy interference and the award's integrity.
This year's sweep by female creators seems to be a strong repudiation of anti-diversity groups. 2017 also marked the year the ceremony earned its own award: a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records certified that the Hugos are the longest-running science fiction awards ever.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @02:52PM (4 children)
I liked sci-fi better back in the good ol' 1950s, when characters had lots of casual sex, polyamory, "line marriages", etc. What happened to those days?
(My point here being, I'll bet any classic Heinlein novel was way more socially liberal than whatever these award-winning authors are pumping out today, and his stuff came out in the ultra-conservative 50s.)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:31PM (1 child)
I think those Heinlein books were published in the 60's, not the 50's.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:03PM
You're right, I stand corrected. However, according to the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], Stranger in a Strange Land came out in 1961, which was still some time before the free-love era of the late 60s, and he started exploring these themes as far back as 1939.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:16PM (1 child)
The last one i read that had a more interesting take on social stuff and sex was Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. Came out just a few months ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkaway_(Cory_Doctorow_novel) [wikipedia.org]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:37PM
Sounds pretty interesting. Of course, it's by a man, and an old one at that (he's 46--a Gen Xer) in the eyes of the hipsters, so it's irrelevant to modern sci-fi literature.
Looks like it'd make a good movie; it has everything. Military + mercenaries attacking communes and later war, sex, post-scarcity, open source... But the hipsters will probably hate it.