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In Science Fiction, some awards have become almost meaningless as they came to be dominated by interests other than the pure enjoyment of a truly good story. The Hugo Awards, for example, have descended into a left/right catfight. They have become as meaningless as a Nobel Peace Prize.
Some, like yours truly, have entirely stopped reading about awards after getting burned once too many times and rely almost entirely on word of mouth or serendipity to find new authors and worthwhile books.
Our recent discussion of "The winners of the 2018 Hugo Awards" brought the idea (from bzipitidoo) that perhaps Soylent News could do a better job of pointing out new works of Science Fiction that could be of interest to soylentils and janrinok supported the idea, going so far as offering a kidney to the best author. (I think he's British, so he might have meant a kidney pie. [Not true, but funny])
Mind you, we would need to separate Science Fiction from Sci-Fi, Fantasy and other genres that have been mishmashed into one by most publishers and awards organizations.
So what do you think? What is the best new author/book in Science Fiction?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 24 2018, @12:36AM (7 children)
Come on America! You're all grown up now, why can there only be two of anything over there?
All your friends have lots of political parties, and any number of different points of view, but you guys can only ever muster two.
I believe in you, I know you can do better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @01:07AM
Sorry, Zombie, but that just isn't going to happen ... especially in the current political climate. We have to be able to blame someone, and it's always easier to point the finger at one enemy.
If we are in power, then they are the opposition - the obstructionists! If they are in power then we are the oppressed - the resistance!
We've always been at war with Eurasia ... or was it Eastasia? See how confusing that can be?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday August 24 2018, @02:27AM (1 child)
Electoral math means things eventually collapse to two parties. But we currently have a crapload of warring factions in the runup to what increasingly looks like a hot civil war to thin it back to a couple of survivors.
On the "Progressive" side you have Socialists, Democratic Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Modern Liberals, Feminists (in both the TERF and non TERF flavor), Environmentalists and Idiotarian Libertarians, Social Gospel Pseudo Christians, Muslims, just to start off. Not to mention the whole rainbow of racial and gender identity activists battling for dominance.
On the "Right" you have old line Liberals (known by that name everywhere except the U.S.), Mainline Conservatives, Paleo-Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives, Anti-Idiotarian Libertarians, Objectivists, the Alt-Light, Alt-Right, NRx, Reactionaries, TEA Partiers, Christians, etc. And with every "Fuck White People" tweet a growing White racial identity trying to figure out why it needs to exist.
Then ya get fringe factions that can't even be plotted anywhere near the Left-Right line. For example we got both real and ironic Nazis who oppose the Progs but, by definition, can't be on "the Right". Neither fish nor fowl. Now add in about a third of the country that doesn't really know or care what they believe politically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @03:55AM
Muslims and Christians are a political class now? Put down the pipe you've had too much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday August 24 2018, @02:59AM (2 children)
The US has had more than two major parties in the past, more than once in fact, but it seems to always eventually devolve into a two-party system. I think this is generally attributed to a tendency of the "first past the post" voting system employed, and is called Duverger's Law [wikipedia.org]. Basically, the idea is that plurality voting (first past the post, e.g. "you only vote for one candidate") discourages the existence of more parties because voting for anything but the biggest two ends up being a wasted vote. People defensively vote for one of the candidates that seem most likely to win, because anything else unlikely to matter, which makes it that much harder for a third party to rise.
To be fair to the early Americans that set these systems up originally, it's one of those things that seems like a good idea until hindsight and new information becomes available. Plurality voting seems like a fair, natural choice, because it works fine at smaller scales (small groups, one-off votes, etc.) where the potential flaws don't matter as much, and it's simple to implement and understand. One person, one vote; easy. They didn't have the benefit of access to decades of election data, so it probably seemed like an obvious choice with few or no negatives.
In theory it's still possible to fix the problem. However, that fix is to change the voting system entirely, which would require the two incumbent parties to agree on a change that's generally known to have the potential to weaken their political power. In other words, not bloody likely.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 24 2018, @03:35AM (1 child)
I'm always told "it's first past the post", but the UK has FPtP also, and currently has 8 parties in parliament, so I don't buy it.
According to Wikipedia, the US has had two parties since the Civil War, and has never had three parties or more for more than a few years.
You're exactly right about changing the system, too many people make too much money from the status quo for it to change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @09:00AM
Many US voters seem more religious-minded about their party affiliations too.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday August 24 2018, @05:54PM
Primarily, it's because we don't have the parliamentary system [wikipedia.org] here in the US.
What's more, unlike most western democracies, members of the legislative branch of government may not serve in the Executive branch at the same time they are serving in our legislative branch. There is no such thing as a "shadow cabinet" [wikipedia.org] here. In fact, for our Federal/National government, the only elective positions in our executive branch are that of President and Vice President. All other members of the Executive branch are either political appointees or civil servants.
Where you are (please correct me if I'm wrong here), most likely the party (or coalition of parties) which achieve a majority in the legislative branch form an executive branch from the members of the majority. This is *not* the case in the US. Also, the "winner-take-all" system we have (at all levels of government -- we have at least three in most places) generally precludes multi-party coalitions and the wide range of political voices seen in parliamentary systems.
Rightly or wrongly, that's the system we have at the national level. And that same system is, overwhelmingly, duplicated at state and local levels.
If we wish to change that, we need have such changes approved by 2/3 of each house of our legislative branch (note that the 535 folks included there are the ones that benefit most from the current system) and 3/4 of state legislatures.
Which is why, at least until 30 years ago or so, the major political parties in the US (the Republican and Democratic parties) maintained "big tent" [wikipedia.org] policies and platforms.
That's changed pretty radically for the Republican party in the last generation or so. They are now the party of big business, restrictive social policies and white people. This has allowed them to be much more successful at multiple levels of government, as they no longer need to make a broad constituency happy.
The Democratic party is *also* the party of big business. But they have attempted to be inclusive of non-religious, less restrictive social policies and a broad range of ethnic and religious groups. This has fragmented their message, especially at the state and local levels.
It's a good deal more complicated than that, but those are the basics. What's really needed are elected representatives who care more about the good of the United States than about retaining their own power and influence. I'm not holding my breath.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr