SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:11PM (2 children)
You're confusing sci-fi fans who're pissed off that their genre has been stolen out from under them with people who give a shit about identity politics.
But has their genre really been stolen out from under them? Or are they just fading out? I honestly don't know.
What I'm getting at is: are these old-style sci-fi fans (the ones who liked reading about things like the Heechee, or societies on the Moon with line marriages, or novels postulating the creation of a space elevator or geosynchronous satellites, or novels about sandworms on a desert planet and the feudalistic spacefaring society that battles over control of the "melange" produced by these worms) being pushed aside by a small minority of people pushing identity politics, or are they dying out, and being replaced by new sci-fi (or "sci-fi") fans who want to read stories about identity politics in a near-future setting? Heinlein's most famous books came out in the early 60s after all, which is over a half-century ago. His fans from that time are literally dying out. Other "classic" sci-fi stuff dates from the 60s and 70s largely--Clarke, Pohl, Asimov, etc. I like a lot of this kind of sci-fi too, but most of it came out either before I was born or when I was much too young to read it.
Now, take a look at the sci-fi movies that are popular now, and also novels: there isn't much optimistic sci-fi about humans traveling around in spaceships (with really cool corridors [denofgeek.com]), but instead we have a bunch of dystopian sci-fi set in the near-future on Earth, as epitomized by "The Hunger Games", or worse, "The Walking Dead" (which I'm convinced is an accurate portrayal of our future in this particular universe).
It'd be interesting to see the sales numbers for these Hugo-award winning books. Are they truly popular now? If so, then the award is working the way it's supposed to. Or are some other, very different ("harder") sci-fi novels far more popular? With the way sci-fi has gone these days, I wouldn't be surprised if it really is the former.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:32AM
Based on your list above, I would recommend some Hal Clement novels. Some of the hardest of hard SF. Apart from obvious gimmicks like an FTL drive everything is accurate.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday August 18 2017, @03:17AM
Good point.
I've read the scientists-as-rational-supermen spec-fic of the Gernsbeck/Campbell days (well before my time, but available in reprints), as well as that of the the overlapping periods of space-colonies-and-near-human-alien-cultures, the stream-of-consciousness-meets-human-potential-movement, the cyberpunk-if-this-goes-on-inhuman-alien-cultures, the urban-fantasy-collapsing-society-military-fantasies, distopia-societal-issues-and-deconstruction-of-established-tropes periods, and the fiercely nostalgic backlashes to all of these.
Among them, I have read towering works of genius, fascinating series, and lots and lots of pulp, some of which was fun, and some of which I can't believe I read, much less enjoyed.
All I know is this:
I may not like all of it, but, as long as I am around, I will still be reading it, pushing it, and defending it.