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The Hugo awards, being the favorite they are with SN readers, are out again!
As posted at The Vox.
The first-ever threepeat of the Hugo Awards — the prestigious, long-running fantasy awards handed out annually at WorldCon — just issued a giant rejection of right-wing gatekeeping in the struggle to diversify the world of science fiction and fantasy writing.
N.K. Jemisin's groundbreaking fantasy series the Broken Earth trilogy has won critical acclaim, been optioned for development as a TV series, and received numerous accolades from the sci-fi and fantasy community. And on August 19, it achieved yet another milestone when Jemisin became the first author in the Hugos' 65-year history to win back-to-back awards for every book in a trilogy. Jemisin won the award for Best Novel three years in a row, starting with The Fifth Season in 2016, The Obelisk Gate in 2017, and now The Stone Sky in 2018.
Meanwhile, The Verge reports:
The 2018 Hugo Awards were held last night at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California. The Hugo award, voted on by members of the fan community, is considered the highest honor for science fiction and fantasy literature.
Like the previous couple of years, women almost completely swept the awards. N.K. Jemisin took home the top honor for The Stone Sky, the third installment of her Broken Earth trilogy. Other winners include Martha Wells for her first Murderbot novella All Systems Red, Suzanne Palmer for her novelette “The Secret Life of Bots,” and Rebecca Roanhorse for her short story “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™.” (Roanhorse also took home the John W. Campbell Jr. Award for Best New Writer.)
Jemisin’s win gives her a history-making hat trick: she’s won the top award for each Broken Earth installment, the first two having been for The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate. It’s a significant achievement, earned for Jemisin’s groundbreaking writing, blending of genres, and outstanding storytelling.
The complete list of nominees can be found in The Verge's story. Additional reporting can be found at the Guardian, on TOR.com, and elsewhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:45PM
When I was a teen, I was happy to assume that if it was published, it must be good. I stuck to the SF/Fantasy genre because that's what I liked. Nothing wrong with regular fiction, I just liked SF/Fantasy more. Also, I wasn't as critical, and at $1.95 to $2.50 in 1980 (I know, paperbacks used to be less than $1, even less than 50 cents in the 1960s), paperbacks did not seem expensive, so even if I didn't like a story, it was no big deal. Several horrible stories and the faster than inflation price hikes of the 1980s cured me of being too accepting. By 1990, a paperback was $4.95, and I shifted from the bookstore to the used bookstore. I moved on to other things in the mid 90s.
I've tried many strategies for winnowing out the crap. Tried sticking to favorite authors and highly regarded authors. Tried best sellers until those Scientology scumbags fooled me. The only reason L. Ron Hubbard's very mediocre stories became #1 best sellers is them buying his books solely to boost his sales numbers. They're not the worst stuff I've ever read, but they're definitely below average. Sound familiar, like those Sad Puppies trying to manipulate the Hugo Awards?
I've been slowly working my way through the Hugo and Nebula Award winners, and it's a pretty mixed bag. For instance, Simmon's Hyperion is good, Fall of Hyperion is okay, but the Endymion stuff, yuck, in much the same way that Star Trek V sucks. Well, only Hyperion won an award. Snow Queen is a decent story, but I wouldn't have voted to award it a Hugo. More recently, Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog is a time travel novel, and I've gotten very tired of those. Time travel (by which we mean, traveling into the past-- we're all always traveling into the future, of course) is such a huge story wrecker. Like with McCaffrey's Pern stuff with those time traveling dragons, I keep asking, why didn't they just jump back in time, over and over, and fix every mistake they ever made? Kill baby Hitler, stop the fall of the Roman Empire (if that's still thought a good idea, which maybe it isn't), and so forth. Authors keep coming up with weak limitations to restrict the power of time travel, but it's not enough. Not too thrilled with FTL travel either, but that one I can live with. FTL travel need not obey General Relativity and require going backwards in time.
Another problem is that SF is especially vulnerable to becoming dated. Lot of 1950s and 1960s stuff takes the pseudoscience of paranormal abilities way too seriously. Arthur C. Clarke even apologized for that in a forward he wrote for his classic work Childhood's End. Going way back to Jules Verne, arguably the first SF author, we have the notion of riding a balloon all the way to the Moon. Back then, people really did not know that the Moon was far, far, far above the Earth's atmosphere. Today we know ballooning to the Moon is ridiculous. Still a lot of fun reads.
Finally, much SF suffers from a massive and deliberate blind spot concerning copyright and ownership. So many stories implicitly or explicitly assume that copyright will still be much the same in the future as it is now. There's the Star Trek episode, "I, Mudd". Hyperion does it. At conventions, I've grilled authors on this issue, and without exception, they all staunchly supported copyright. Mercedes Lackey intimated that I was an idiot. Piers Anthony flatly stated that he does not agree with me on copyright, saying it's the only protection authors have. Cory Doctorow is not among the authors I have quizzed about copyright, but from what I hear, I think he'd understand. I find that very disappointing. I really hoped some authors, particularly those writing in the SF genre, would evince a more enlightened view of copyright. Nope! They can't see past their fear that copyright is their lifeblood and must be protected at all costs, even the cost of making their SF writing ridiculously archaic whenever it touches upon that subject. So, I don't see why I should read such bad SF. Fantasy is more generally afflicted with ownership thinking. Like, seems so many magical items just can't be stolen, or magically won't work as well or even at all for the thieves. For example, the Elfstones of Shannara, the Palantirs in Lord of the Rings as well as in some respects the Rings of Power themselves, the Deathly Hallows in the Harry Potter stories, the white gold ring in the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, the sword Stormbringer in the Elric of Melnibone series, the Orb of Aldur in the Belgariad, and many more. Well, those last two are sentient objects that latch onto special people, but still, a very strong trend. Fits so very well with the stock fantasy government, medieval style monarchy.