SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @05:21PM (34 children)
Way back when awards like Hugo and Nebula were created more or less as half publicity, half politics. Scifi was generally regarded as pulpy trash for kids, not real literature, so the publishers and authors and fans put their heads together and created awards to give it all an aura of, at least, respectability, but also some recognition for fine work that exemplified a certain kind of approach to the unknown.
And they mostly succeeded.
Time passed, scifi became more prestigious (or at least less tainted) so the focus of the early fans was lost, while the focus of the publishing houses was not. The publishing houses were motivated to shoehorn anything in that might win a Hugo, because that meant sales. Of course, this diluted the brand by dumping a lot of generic speculative fiction, but at this point the sales issue was less of a factor anyway. Scifi could stand on its own shelves with pride.
Now it has become a temple for the bien-pensant literati to defend from the muddy peasants from whom they'd wrested it, like colonial officers dispossessing a primitive tribe. What they don't realise is that they haven't succeeded in converting the tribe's religion, no matter how much their priests hallowed the temple. They just displaced them.
Another time, another temple.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by meustrus on Wednesday August 22 2018, @06:21PM (33 children)
I'm genuinely curious what the "religion" is that you're saying has been merely "displaced". What do the "muddy peasants" want?
I'm only reading this comment section in the hopes that the anti-SJW crowd around here, by virtue of being more literate than the average anti-SJW, would explain this. Every time this Sad Puppies crap comes up, I get the impression that the "muddy peasants" think that the books written by women don't amount to "real scifi", but what "real scifi" means is left pretty vague, and it is never explained how the Sad Puppies list is any different. Other than being written by people in the same identity group as the Sad Puppies, of course.
In short, what is the case for book Y to win instead of book X written by the novelist-equivalent of a diversity hire, without appealing to some sense of wounded pride about said diversity hire?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:07PM (3 children)
The only real position I've been able to glean from the sad puppy supporters is basically a mimicry of the social vs. hard sciences discrimination that tends to float around here.
A lot of the new sci fi, supposedly especially the stuff written by women, is about character development and society and lacks the "real hard scifi elements". Basically not enough science in the new science fiction seems to be the main complaint. My guess is that is a part of why The Martian was so popular, tons of Macgyver-ish science stuff and some good humor.
I think this whole situation is quite childish of the puppy supporters, they want the same comfortable enjoyable format they grew up with. The irony is pretty appalling, scifi has always been the genre that pushes cultural boundaries and discusses possibilities for humanity's future. Gender and race issues have never featured too terribly much in earlier scifi, partly I think because those early scifi writers wanted to skip past the ugly reality of the present and imagine a future where such trivial matters were no longer even an issue!
Now those issues are being tackled because it is politically OK with most of society to write about them and still sell books. I'm sure not every sad puppy member is a misogynistic racist, but sadly that is the underlying tone of their movement. Once the sad puppies are able to bridge that gap in their prejudice then we can have some discussions about the meritocracy of Hugo Award winners, and a good start would be for them to start separating themselves from the racist human garbage in their midst.
Examples of the bad/stupid/childish behavior
Half savage? I guess that racism just never ends.
Unabashed pulp action? Bleh, that has never been an overly popular scifi genre. Those are the books left out for free, or 10 for $1 type of thing. Like romance novels they are terribly cliche and fit a niche, but will likely never get any award without some truly deeper story behind the blam blam fizz pop weeoooo fwoosh action.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:53PM
Blarg, here I go posting without reading all the comments again. You pretty much pre-hit all the points I made.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:09PM
Identity politics and collectivism have no future. To the extent that sci-fi metaphorically deals with current social ills, the emotionally infantile SJW contingent is that current social ill. The only social issue that desperately needs addressing could well be done so in a tome titled "Sanctimonious Twats in Space". That is the hard science!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:48PM
So we're here at the Traditional Italian Food Awards competition, and a bunch of illegal aliens stormed the gates and elected a taco as the winner of the italian Food Awards competition, and somehow the "problem" is the people who got stormed didn't lay back and think of England enough; Victim blaming at its finest.
Its really no different than voting "Taylor Swift's 22" the winner at a "Greatful Dead Awards Show". What kind of shitty person would do that, to begin with, and why?
... romance novel in space.
Anyone who wanted shitty romance novels HAD shitty romance novels. For awhile there was sci fi as an interesting intellectual adventure. Now progress means we no longer have a choice; shitty romance novels for all and attack anyone who doesn't like them because thats "diversity" and thats why "diversity" is great, LOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:22PM (24 children)
You have to ask why a "diversity hire" [urbandictionary.com] shouldn't get recognition? Human societies respect and reward achievement, not immutable characteristics, identity politics or virtue signaling literary bourgeoisie. After years of turning their noses at sci-fi, the leftist literati are now going to dictate to the audience what good science fiction is? No!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:33PM (22 children)
"leftist literati"
heh, crazy bastard confirmed
perhaps you have not heard but racism and sexism are pretty massive topics across the whole planet, only recently have they begun to be addressed in popular culture like scifi writing
i do not recall ever reading a book because it won a hugo award, maybe you are just a sheep bleating for your misogynerd masters ;)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:51PM (19 children)
Maybe I'm joining two ideas that aren't meant to be combined, but from our readership here, I imagine that the logic could go
A) Science Fiction
B) Racism and sexism are sociology things, i.e. "soft science" because they concern feelings, not measurable physical numbers like rock density
C) We want harder science like physics, orbital mechanics, genetic engineering, etc.
That apparently all (literally) of these "soft sci fi" books are being written by women is just sort of a happy coincidence of the whole "women are more empathetic" sociology stereotype. And that white males are less likely to spend time worrying about discrimination because it rarely affects them directly.
And 2) some of us read books to escape reality, not be constantly reminded that the world is a shithole.
Not that I'd consider myself right-wing in general. But hey.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:55PM
Whoops, guess my eyes skipped over an important word.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:52PM (17 children)
Note the extreme political bias involved in recent years, extreme far left perspective is the only perspective allowed.
No one really complains much about "Starship Troopers" or plenty of other fairly soft Heinlein novels. Its when the only sociology allowed is strictly limited to Marxist, that the topic becomes a parody of itself.
How do you write GOOD left wing propaganda in a sci fi theme? Well, apparently, you can't. Thats kinda the problem.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:29PM (7 children)
Pffft, you are the alt-right poster child of SN so you don't get an opinion here. You ARE the problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:54PM (4 children)
In Venezuela it's cheaper to wipe your ass on banknotes than buy toilet paper. This isn't some dystopian fiction, it's socialism in action. Do you defend the indefensible or resort to name calling and then claim VLM shouldn't get to express his opinion? Why haven't the far-left all emigrated to Venezuela?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:17AM (2 children)
Cause you're an idiot?
I can't prevent VLM from expressing an opinion and I wouldn't, but I will gladly point out his lame shit any day. As for you, if you can't even use a dictionary don't bother forming opinions, just go puke that shit straight into the toilet.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:20PM (1 child)
Your two posts are mutually exclusive. Which is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @08:38PM
Oh ho, NOW you care about hypocrisy??? You fuckers are something else.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 23 2018, @12:15PM
Those are the only argumentative weapons the left has; almost seems unfair to take those away. Its great optics for "ourguys" when the general public sees the oppositions best remaining debating tools are weak grade school playground level.
I mean, seriously, Marxism and socialism is so discredited the supporters are struggling with little left than calling the opponents "poopy heads". I, uh, think we've won, LOL.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 23 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)
But he does, despite your later statement acknowledging that you can't actually stop him from stating it. We all get an opinion. That's what this site is all about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:33PM
No shit sherlock, dont take the hyperbole too seriously.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:26AM (5 children)
You're calling the militaristic novel Starship Troopers soft? No way! Even if you mean it's not hard SF, not full of science, I don't agree. Yeah, sure, there's harder, more detailed and logical SF out there. And what science Starship Troopers has is obviously bent towards making the whole idea of space paratroopers at least slightly plausible, when WWI and WWII amply demonstrated that paratroop drops can be suicidally stupid. With what we have and know today, it's even more improbable. Send in the drones, not fragile, precious humans. And further, every military officer knows space, as in Earth orbit, is a fantastic place to park all kinds of weaponry, which is why we have treaties forbidding it Seems far more sensible for the humans to stay on their ships and rain down destruction from the safety of orbit.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 23 2018, @12:11PM (4 children)
The remainder of your comment seems to agree its a VERY lightly skinned WWII paratrooper story.
Not that there's anything wrong with WWII paratrooper stories; its just not SF. A WWII paratrooper story thinly reset into the year 3000 is merely military fiction or more likely fantasy. And even that is not necessarily a bad book, but it is not SF.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:18PM (1 child)
A science fiction version of the story would explain why spaceparatroopers were still viable, regardless of how well the explanation stands up to scrutiny.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 24 2018, @05:45PM
Agree and extend that having read the book you'd think the argument is you need brains on site high IQ to require infantry instead of "nuke it from orbit just to be sure" so naturally the outcome of all the battles I recall from the book resemble the outcome of an artillery barrage.
You can replace massed charges with mortars and drones and missiles; delta force will never be replaced, etc.
Its a good book and I liked it, but theres no getting around the issue that he wanted to write a book about WWII era US Marine Corps paratrooper operations, so he EXTREMELY thinly skinned it. And because he did an excellent job he gets a free pass a lot. But its still not SF. You just can't plagiarize "Band of Brothers" and copy and paste in a space suit helmet and "now its good sci fi".
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 23 2018, @05:50PM (1 child)
"Hard" science seems to really mean just engineering, stuff like rocket science, astronomy, physics, chemistry, mechanics, and maybe a dash of biology, particularly in the direction of cyborgs. Steampunk is that taken to the extreme, and then washed out to ignore the insurmountable problem that steam power is relatively weak. SF stories can have behavioral science, political science, marketing, language, and history, but most works skip that. It's really fantastical how well we communicate with the aliens we encounter in SF stories. One of the best STNG episodes was Darmok, possibly because its theme was communication, and that is a rare story line in SF. Usually, it's let us skip the boring difficulties so we can get down to cases. At the other extreme is how frequent autocracies are in SF, like the Empire in Star Wars, as if despite all this incredible scientific advance, we've gone nowhere in advancing the means of governing ourselves, even are still stuck in the backward methods of the Middle Ages, when despite the invention of democracy in classical antiquity centuries before, Europeans were busy sucking up to The Man, in the form of a king and his nobility. Even crazier is stories with advanced alien societies that are organized in such a backward way.
So, yes, Starship Troopers is hard science, but very narrow. It tries to address the engineering needs of the idea of paratrooping in from space-- need a spacesuit, check, needs to be armored, the armor needs to be powered, need good communications-- and handwaves away the questions of why a military could need that particular capability, including the larger engineering questions of how a paratroop drop from orbit could work at all in the face of automatic precision weaponry and aliens who've obviously never heard of the Geneva Conventions (no shooting at parachuting people, that's hitting below the belt!) and wouldn't comprehend it let alone subscribe to it. But there are even larger questions of why a society could need or use space borne military, why the author thinks a militaristic society is evidently such a natural progression or state of affairs it need hardly be explained. What is more likely is that should we encounter intelligent aliens, they will be far more advanced than us, and a war with them would make about as much sense as the Aztecs sending troops to Spain to punish the Spanish for trying to overthrow their government. We would be utterly at their mercy. In short, the premises of Heinlein's classic are very, very wrong. But it shouldn't be knocked too hard for that-- futurology is notoriously hard, and being spectacularly wrong is just par for the course. One of the fundamental premises of Asimov's Foundation series is that fantastically far reaching futurology is possible. It fits with the sort of engineering arrogance prevalent in that post WWII era.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday August 24 2018, @06:01PM
There are aspects of your argument that are extremely convincing. Yes I do recall that "everyone" knows about powered armor now, but that was a new idea then.
War is all about logistics, and a counter-example is Afghanistan has enough logistical challenges that its been the graveyard of multiple empires over millennia. So ... 50 really talented dudes from another galaxy arrives, they might waste an entire tank division before we wipe them out, and it costs their parent civilization a hundred trillion bitcoin (corrected for inflation and currency) to make and send those 50 special forces guys to our galaxy and our backyard whereas we can stand up a tank division for maybe a million bitcoin so in the long run...
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:44PM (1 child)
You make a good point, VLM. Why does nobody complain about soft science when the sci fi theme is a veneer over right-wing propaganda? Does the sci fi audience have a double standard for soft propaganda?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 24 2018, @05:48PM
Hard to resist the old "reality has a right wing bias" quote, leading to the insinuation that right-wing sci fi is substantially more believable and realistic and better thought-out.
Consider Ringo's "Live Free or Die" and its subsequent series; it might be ridiculous in its own snarky way, but its less utterly ridiculous than, say, "Avatar the movie".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:36PM
Iain Banks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:07PM
LOL [sf-encyclopedia.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:33PM
Uhh, scifi has dealt with topics like racism and sexism since pretty early on. Do you even read scifi?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:00PM
Looks like my editing was bad. My intent was to challenge you to prove that book X is objectively worse than book Y regardless of whether you think it was written by a "diversity hire". That the author of book X meets the Urban Dictionary definition, especially its negative connotations, is not to be assumed true.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:25PM (3 children)
It is a very tired and rehashed debate. If you have honestly not heard the argument, Eric Raymond wrote fairly extensively and precisely about it when it first happened. Most relevant articles here [ibiblio.org] and here [ibiblio.org].
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 22 2018, @11:31PM (2 children)
Informative. But I happen to profoundly disagree with ESR's definition of SF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 23 2018, @08:18AM (1 child)
Oh, you are a tease...
You've left me, as someone who hasn't read any SF for over 50 years or so, wondering what your objections are to ESR's definition, and how do you define it? You might be absolutely correct in your views, but I don't know in any detail what your views are.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:11PM
Read some Ursula K LeGuinn (RIP) Some of her stories are really challenging the fact there is a clear line between Fantasy and SciFi. The Sci is brought in by a vigorous yet gentile handwaving, but the characters as so relatable.
Maybe there's something heroic about some of them, but only just enough heroism to justify their 'character' trait (ie inclusion in the plot/story).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford