The Hugos: The Kindergarten Bestest Friend Award

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 28, 2015

I was going to write a big article about the 2015, and the travesty that went down this year with the Hugos.  In fact, I did write not just one, but two articles about it. But I wasn’t happy with either one. In the end, I wasn’t really contributing much, in spite of both of them dwarfing this giant post. And I’m tired of the negativity.

If you don’t know what happened… well, good luck trying to get a straight answer. I’m a little biased, too, so I don’t know if my take on things is any better. I’ll just say… the Hugo is about science fiction and fantasy, and most of the stories bandied about by even the supposedly professional media were far more fantasy than anything else.

I was a voter this year for the Hugos, which was pretty meaningful to me, as the award had been meaningful to me when I was growing up. I haven’t paid too much attention later in life, and found many of the award-winners of recent years to be quite divergent from my tastes. I think the awards have diminished in value and prestige over the years, and there may be kind of a weird causal relationship there. But I think most of the “diminishing” has been because fandom has grown and expanded so much that the convention that it belongs to (WorldCon) is no longer the hub of all things SF/F-related as it once was.

There are people who still care about it and stay involved, and – over the years – have some pretty solid influence over how the Hugos get awarded each year (in spite of downplaying their own influence). They have their tastes and their relationships, and those have influenced their gatekeeping “duties.” That’s group 1. Group 2 was a smaller group that thought the Hugo ought to change, and needed “fixing” to be less hidebound and more reflective of the larger interests of expanded fandom as a whole, and should be big enough that no group should really be in control of it at all. Group 3… I don’t understand as well, but for the most part they seemed interested in making sure that Group 1 didn’t have control of it any longer, even if that meant blowing up the Hugos so it was useless to everyone. Finally, there were people that weren’t really in a “group” but were the ones who either tried to stay above the fray or neutral about it, or in spite of their involvement in WorldCon didn’t really know much about what was going on.

Anyway, certain folks in groups 1-3 wanted to turn it into a holy war, particularly this spring when group 1 discovered that many of the people they’d anointed to be nominees this year didn’t actually make the ballot. By turning things into a holy war, the ends somehow seem to justify the means, and people desperately wanted the “must fight evil!” excuse to justify their extremely nasty, unethical actions. Group 4 just wanted to know why everyone couldn’t just get along. And the media made up their own stories, grabbed popcorn, and watched high profile geeks turn on each other with escalating levels of viciousness.

Feelings were hurt. Careers were hurt. Violence was threatened but fortunately never materialized. Straw men were built and kicked over. The squabbling was some of the nastiest stuff I’ve seen since Junior High. In the end, people were recruited (in some cases, bought and paid for) on multiple sides to help make sure “their side” won. Or just to make sure the other side(s) lost.

In the end, I think the Hugos themselves and the quiet fourth group lost. The Hugos were proven to be little more than a kindergarten “bestest friend” award, and have probably lost whatever legacy prestige they still retained. I really can’t see how anyone can treat them seriously in the future. The “real” fans who took their role in the awards seriously (scattered throughout the factions, but many making up the fourth group) found themselves marginalized.

The second group got kicked to the curb with extreme prejudice (again), the third group managed to achieve a dubious win condition, and the first group stood the next day over the smoldering carnage of the earth they’d scorched and asked, “What have we done?!?!?” Many recognized that while they might have survived the battle, they’d probably lost the war, even as others on their side were cheering that they’d held off the barbarian invasion one more year. Kind of.

And the media got to jeer at the geek civil war.

Bleah. All that negativity. Believe it or not, that’s my highly abbreviated take on what happened.

So… on to better things. Here’s what I was good about the whole experience for me:

First of all… as a Hugo voter, I got a ton of awesome reading material. Too much, really… I spent waaaay more time going through it all this summer than I really had at my disposal. But for the price of admission, it was more than worth it. Yeah, a few entries (from all nominating groups) kinda left me cold. But for the most part, there were some awesome stories.

For my favorites… almost all of the novels were excellent. The actual winner of the “best novel” award (the one where Groups 1 and 3 actually agreed… mainly because group 1 didn’t know that group 3 liked it…), The Three-Body Problem, is well worth reading. My favorite was Skin Game, but I’m a Harry Dresden fan.

Of the other works… I really liked Ms. Marvel, although I couldn’t shake the feeling that the choice of a Muslim-American superhero was more politically motivated, calculated attention-getting move than it would have been two decades ago. Still, regardless of motivations, it was good.

I really, really loved The Plural of Helen of Troy. It’s a story about a city run by… well, effectively “Time Lords,” although they have a different name. But imagine a society where nothing happens without the approval of time-travelers who can go back and change anything they didn’t like. Celebrities of different eras thrust together in apartments. It is a wonderfully brain-twisting mystery where past, present, and future all get munged together.

Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman and Totaled by Kary English were two other stories that really impressed me. The former is sort of military SF with a harsh commentary about the application of the military in today’s global poltical arena. The latter is a “brain in a jar” story that asks some hard questions about the value of human life when life can be extended after the body has died.

There were several other enjoyable works, but those really stood out for me, and I wanted to share.

On top of that, I was introduced to people and authors that I may not have met had I not been involved (even if only up in the nosebleed section). While I’d like to believe it would have happened anyway, being involved served as a catalyst.

I guess you could say it was also pretty educational. While I may have learned more than I really wanted to know about a couple of people whom I previously admired, I got the chance to learn a lot more about the industry, the major players in the field, the history of fandom, and so forth.

I was once again reminded why you should be very skeptical of anything you read on the Internet. Even from (or especially from) supposedly reputable, professional journalism sites. There’s nothing quite as breathtaking as being an eyewitness to the facts, but then seeing completely manufactured, provably invalid falsehoods take wing at the speed of light and take on a life of their own. There’s the old joke, “Who are you gonna believe, me, or your own eyes?” but it’s really not a joke. Gaslighting is a thing, and it works. So… guard your mind. And never assume that the truth must be somewhere “in the middle”  (a common assumption that I make way too often).

And in the end… this tempest in a teapot notwithstanding… I have come to the realization that science fiction & fantasy, as a whole, are doing just fine. Just like the video games biz, we’re encountering challenges and struggles over growth and change. These are healthy problems to have. Just by looking at the sheer volume of material being published now as opposed to when the Hugo awards first became a thing, and that tells you a lot. Fandom is much, much bigger and more diverse, and we have far more outlets to enjoy being together in their shared enthusiasm.

And while Sturgeon’s law still applies, I think the best works of the speculative fiction genres coming out each year are as good as ever, and are obviously more plentiful. While I haven’t been too pleased with some of the award-winning fiction of the last few years, I have come to realize that this was a matter of the taste of the gatekeepers (acting a little like editors), not necessarily indicative of the entire field. There’s a heck of a lot out there, and it is diverse and fun and exciting.

This was neither the first of the fan arguments about the future of the field, and I’m sure it won’t be the last… and sadly, probably not the nastiest, either. SF/F authors are all about making larger-than-life drama, and this was one of them.

I don’t know if I want to be a participant next time like I was this time… particularly for an award that I think has effectively self-destructed… but I might. If nothing else, it’s a relatively cheap way to get to read some of the year’s best SF/F.

 

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