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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: 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