The 2016 Hugo Finalists · 7:07pm Apr 28th, 2016
Well, the 2016 Hugo Award finalists have been announced. And ... I can't say the list is surprising. Good? I also can't say that. At this point, the only topic of the entire set that seems to have any relevancy at all to the real world is the category for film, which looks to be a four-way battle between Fury Road, The Martian, The Force Awakens, and Age of Ultron.
And ... that's pretty much the only category worth caring about right now. The rest? Well, in case you've missed one of the other nominees, here's one of the standout examples of what's being voted on: Space Raptor Butt Invasion.
Yes. Dinosaur erotica. Cheap, written-in-a-day-or-two, dinosaur erotica.
Why?
Well, you may recall there's been some controversy over the Hugo Awards the last few years. The Hugo Awards had become increasingly isolated and standoffish from their purported goals, turning into more of a personal award handed out between friends that pretended to represent "all fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy" than actually being that (we're talking votes of a hundred total determining things like the "best" novel of the year). Which resulted, unsurprisingly, in the Hugo Awards going into a downward spiral of quality (hence why my local librarians both mocked it and stopped picking up books that were Hugo winners).
People got tired of it, noticed what was going on, and tried to do something about it. And the elitist group that had been using it as their own personal promotion platform dug in their heels. A game of tug-of-war ensued. And name calling. And accusations of sexism, racism ... really, whatever this group of insulars could come up with. And once one party goes that far, well, it's not hard for the other party to decide "The gloves are coming off."
Enter a group calling themselves "The Rabid Puppies." Long story short, after the insular group decided to pour liquid nitrogen over the whole mess by voting in lockstep to ensure that any category that didn't have one of their chosen nominations on it was given "No award" and then twisting the knife by handing out literal butthole awards called Assterisks to those they didn't want at the event, the Rabid group decided that enough was enough.
And now there's a finalist list with Space Raptor Butt Invasion on it, the Hugos are facing a proposed rule change that only lets "Real fans" vote (Gotta represent all of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and the best way to do that is by becoming Manor Farm, right?) ... and, well, you have pretty much what happens when both sides act petty and dig in their heels. Everyone nearby shakes their head and walks away, disgusted. The mask has come off of the Hugos and ... there's not much to look at but a bunch of blatant elitists trying to keep their hands on everything.
So yeah, the Hugo Award is busily making itself as irrelevant as possible.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for an award that actually is attempting to live up to that "all of Sci-Fi and Fantasy" bit, you're still in luck. Dragon Con has announced The Dragon Awards. Which, as a side, is a much better name for a Sci-Fi/Fantasy award. Who wouldn't want to say "I won a dragon?
Anyway, after shouting for years "If you don't like it, go make your own award," it looks like a lot of those disgusted with the behavior of the Hugos over the last decade have finally done just that. No judges. No "real" fans. No social commentary. Just fans—any fans, no requirement to prove anything—voting on what they liked best from the year.
So, 2016 Hugos? With the Dragons announced, I don't really care anymore. After last years abysmal showing of narcissism, elitism, and more than a little racism, pretty much any other award couldn't be worse, and ... Oh hey, here's a new one promising to not do all the things the Hugo has become infamous for.
Now, is there a chance that those same insulars will try and swarm the Dragon Awards en masse and kill it? Sure. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. Assterisks, remember?
But given that it's an award that for the moment is firmly out of their control, I'd bet they'll have a much harder time of it.
So yeah. 2016 Hugos? Congratulations, you got what you wanted. You're irrelevant now. You've convinced me. Posts from your most ardent insulars have convinced me. I, as GRRM so eloquently pointed out, and not a "real" Science Fiction and Fantasy fan. I don't have enough money, and I don't have the "right" ideals.
So ... congratulations insulars. As far as I'm concerned, you've got your sinking ship. Keep it. I've left. The Hugo Award is a fading memory.
I'll vote for the Dragons. Where I, and everyone else who calls themselves a fan for one reason or another, can vote for the things they love.
Goodbye, Manor Farm.
Could have changed when dealing with the Sad Puppies. But nope, just slap them around with a bunch of buzzwords and everything will be fine... Now they have to deal with the Rabid Puppies, who do not give two fucks about being name-called, considering what previous crap they had to deal with. Been a slowly sinking ship that just had some more explosives dumped on it. At least it will be entertaining to watch. Could you please pass the popcorn?
Horizon wrote a much more detailed and anti-rabbid puppy post himself, I'd be curious to see your take on it.
3903331
I think the easiest course of action is to point out that the Wired article he links as a source did so little research on the topic (or rather, didn't care to) that they declared author Sarah Hoyt a man. Mind you, this is an article supporting the side that's accusing the other of racism and sexism. (EDIT: Horizon has pointed out that he only used this article to pull a Beale quote, rather than anything else, so he wasn't drawing conclusions from it).
So yeah.
Take things with a grain of salt.EDIT: With this topic, it's best to take things with a grain of salt from any party, myself included, because there's such a massive deluge of information and misinformation out there, it being a contested PoV, that it's very hard to get an accurate read on things.EDIT:
Note that Horizon also buys (or seems to) into the "white men only" accusation, against despite several of the Sad Puppy leaders being women ... and a number of them not being white. Again, grain of salt.I MISREAD THAT HORRIBLY. He does not, but was instead outlining some of the extreme views of both parties, and I misread it. My apologies to Horizon for the mistake. It was in error, and I apologize for casting a negative light upon his character with my mistake.
Also, impartial groups have pointed out that the Sad Puppy nominations actually contained far more diversity in both authors and characters than the insular nominations ... in fact, if you look at the winners for the last few years, despite cries of diversity, it's not very diverse ... but the winners talk about how diverse things should be (like last year's winner, who shouted "Black lives matter!" over the pulpit).
Overall, Horizon has spent, from the look of it, a lot more time digging into things than I have, though I do disagree with some of his points (he finds File770 far more tolerable than I do, for example).
I'm going to miss your Hugo shenanigans posts. At least I have a new award to follow now, with a rockin' name to boot. I wonder if I'll see the words "Dragon Award Winner" posted on book covers in the future...
Goodbye, Hugo, and good riddance. I had to explain to my friends what the heck a Hugo was, along with what shenanigans have been going on with it lately, and they dismissed the award as obviously irrelevant as well.
3903347
You know, I'm a little upset that I just stepped in to defend you against someone unfairly putting words in your mouth, and here you are doing the exact same thing to me.
You're misreading my article. Here it is in full context:
I am no more saying "Puppies are a right-wing cabal looking for straight-white-man fiction" than I am saying "anti-puppies are SJWs who care more about affirmative action than good storytelling". Both of those are talking about the way that facts were turned into talking points as the debate was dragged into the culture wars.
I'm not wholly innocent of that process; when this erupted last year, you can find our discussion right here on this blog. But after my knee-jerk reaction cleared away I sat down and tried to sift through the facts. I'd have hoped you'd have done the same, but what I see here has me worried.
First of all, I linked to Wired specifically to source the Vox Day quote about burning down the Hugos, so unless you're arguing that he didn't say that, you are really quote-mining here.
Secondly, please source this statement with the actual words you're complaining about in the Wired article, because Hoyt's name is never mentioned, nor Paulk's, nor even the 2016 Puppies -- and nor should they be, as it was written in the wake of last year's mess. There's one line about "the three white men who led this movement," which is correct as it refers to Correia, Torgerson, and Day, who were the only Puppy leaders at the time of publication.
[citation needed]
Because that doesn't actually seem to be the case:
jimchines.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Hugo-Gender-Balance-Total.jpg
(source)
Racially, this tabulation of 2015 nominees found only three non-white authors on the ballot (one of whom, Liu Cixin, wouldn't have gotten on except for the withdrawal of a slate nominee), so the numbers are so low it's hard to make any statistically meaningful statements about diversity.
Character-wise, I'd love to see those statistics.
What rule change is this exactly? 4/6 and EPH are the two under serious consideration, and both of those simply change the way that ballots are tabulated, saying absolutely nothing about who can get involved.
If you think that the requirement of becoming a Worldcon member locks people out from having a say, well, that's a position I'm sympathetic to, but don't pretend like it's some sort of culture-war reprisal against the Puppies when that's literally been the case since the Hugo Awards were founded.
In all seriousness, best of luck with the Dragons. That's a positive step forward, no matter what happens with the Hugos, and it's always good to see more recognition given to creators who wrote something cool.
3903751
Oh, I actually see where I screwed up. I read "evident" not "evidence" which made me think that you were agreeing with the assertion.
I apologize, and will make a correction to the original comment. It was a hasty read, but the fault there is definitely my own.
My point with the Wired article was that the article was unabashedly biased, though a quote from it could easily be accurate. At the time it was published, it declared three men the leader of the Sad Puppy (not sad and rabid) movement, and of the three actually in the sad puppy hotseat, one was Sarah Hoyt (though she was sick for much of the process and wasn't as active as she wanted to be, hence why this year she's again one of the organizers). The author refused to acknowledge this mistake when numerous comments pointed it out, either, likely because it didn't fit the angle of the article. I have not read said article since the initial publication date, in which they made that erroneous mistake.
Now as far as gender goes. The picture you posted is from Jim Hines page, which also posted this in the same article, concerning the same data for the Campbell awards:
jimchines.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Hugo-Gender-Balance.jpg
Which he points out means that it may have just been the year, seeing as the Campbells made similar shifts, and neither the SPs nor the RPs had anything to do with that one. Focusing on just 2015 also ignores that Sad puppy nominees were found on both the 2014 and 2013 ballots as well, ballots which were much more diverse. 2015's ballot was home to more rabids than Sad nominees.
For instance, if you look at the diversity of what was nominated by the Sads, rather than lumping them together, you find some interesting data. For example, this examination of the nominees notes that the SP and the RP had differences, and in once case outright clashed. In fact, for the short story nominations, the gender ration was as follows:
SPs: 75% female, 25% male (more than normal, which has averaged around 50-50 until the late 2000s)
RPs: 40% female, 60% male
The RPs nominations won that ballot, but the point stands. SPs actually nominated a very balanced list of recommendations once their totals were brought forward.
Character-wise, I remember reading the statistics, but as I'm literally cutting into my workday to replay here, you can check it out if you wish. I also saw plenty of rebuttal arguments stating that some characters didn't count since they were secondary or only given X% of the book, so that one was a bit contentious. However, I never got the feeling in reading any of the SP nominations that their recommendations were either presenting or advocating an all-white, all-male cast.
It may have been struck down or not reached the numbers it needed to be seriously considered (thankfully). It was hot on the heels of last years "kerpupple" (that is a fun conjoining) and made the rounds among a few of the more insular individuals, advocating that a system be put in place to restrict voting to pre-approved individuals (something along the lines of needed to "prove" you'd read all materials and associated content before being allowed to purchase the membership). Last I was aware—which was awhile, in the wake of this, I stopped caring much), it was on the list to be considered, but maybe that already happened (with a rejection) or someone with a bit more sense finally put their foot down and it died out.
Anyway, apologies for the misread (will strikethrough) and you've clearly been following this one more closely than I. I finally just stopped caring when the Dragon Awards got announced, as I think they're looking like a much better alternative. The Hugos can go to their space, and the Dragons can fill the void.
This whole deal sounds like the definition of "hot mess" if ever I heard it. At least the world gets a new award with a cool name out of it.
3903839
Thank you for the corrections and the additional data about diversity. I'll take a look at the other link you provided.
Re the rule change, I took a quick skim through last year's WSFS meeting minutes (where they would have needed to pass the rule, for the first of two years, to make the change legitimate). The only two rules submitted and debated that were related to the kerpupple [1] were 4/6 and EPH; the rule change you mention was never actually formally proposed. Thank goodness, too, because it would have been stupid and awful.
I did discover, though, that apparently some wag offered a musical number when debating removing the 5% rule:
Which was probably the most fun I've ever had reading meeting minutes.
--
[1] I can't take credit for this. I don't remember where I first saw it, though.
Well, you know what they say. Don't bet on sinking ships, and all that.
You might normally say in a situation like this that whoever wins, we all lose. But considering we got this out of it, I can't rightly say I regret the existence of the 2016 Hugo Awards:
ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MgIAdnpLL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
3903751
I'm opposed to "diversity". I'm in favor of equal opportunity. That means everybody should be judged on merit, which means the genders, gender preferences, races, etc., should be represented among the nominees in the same proportions as they are among manuscripts originally submitted for publication.
In the case of science fiction, according to 3 slushpile studies I've seen, the ratio of male to female submissions is: 4:1, 4:1, 3.5:1. (That's as expected; SF readers have about a 2:1 male:female ratio, and males in general submit twice as many manuscripts for publication as females.) Anything less than a 3.5:1 ratio of males to females in nominations or awards suggests discrimination against males. The proportion of submissions by people of different ethnicities can't be known, but judging from convention attendance, less than 1% of science fiction readers are noticeably black, so anything more than a 1:100 ratio of wins for "noticeable blacks" is probably discrimination in favor of them. There are probably more Hispanic & Asian SF readers. I couldn't find any studies that counted, but I'd guess all other ethnicities combined would still total under 10% of the SF readership in the US. My off-the-cuff guess is the SF audience in other English-speaking countries is even whiter.
(AFAIK, no non-English work has ever appeared on a Hugo slate. Why has that not been made an issue?)
So an unbiased slate of 5 would usually contain 4 white men and 1 white woman. An all-male, all-white slate of 5 candidates shows less sign of bias than one with 2 women and ethnic diversity.
3908893
I don't have the time for a full discussion of this here, but the short version of the response here would be along the lines of: proportional representation based on current publishing numbers ignores the systemic forces that depress that representation beyond the parity we would expect from the general population. I'd have a hard time believing that there is some inherent aspect of "speculative fiction" which appeals more to people with XY genes or a particular genetic trait which also maps to skin color. It seems more likely to me that, if (for example) men are overrepresented relative to the general population among SFF readers, that that's because stories are selected for which appeal to male interests, serving as a draw to male readers and a deterrent to female readers. Whether this is a bad thing or not is not necessarily self-evident (is it equally bad, for example, that the romance genre draws very few male readers?), but if you take it on principle that it is, then one good way to address it is to have the visible elements of SFF, such as awards, lead those numbers rather than trail them. If the visible SFF is closer to representation parity with the general public than the totality of SFF, it moves the window toward SFF that appeals to everyone. That's the argument to push for diversity as I understand it, which seems reasonable to me even if you disagree with its principles.
Besides, the reductio ad absurdum of your argument would seem to be that, since Samuel Delany won a Hugo and the awards have only been around for 60 years, blacks have been massively overrepresented in SFF awards since the 1960s and no black should win an award for another 40 years. I'm highly suspicious of any argument which punches down like that. (Far more likely, and reasonable, is that blacks represent more than 1% of fandom. As I said, that's an ad absurdum.)
Last year's Hugo winner for Best Novel — the one that the Puppy slates would have kept off the ballot, had Marko Kloos not withdrawn the slate nominee "Lines of Departure" — was Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem", which was first written in Chinese and nominated when it was first published in English translation. It was the first non-originally-English Hugo winner. So, yes, that's definitely on people's radars these days.
3909621
I think the problem is that there is a very large contingent that is using the "diversity" statement as a good-old fashioned excuse for racism.
You pick the best, or at least, that's the stated goal. But is it still the best if we start saying "X% must be Y Gender" or "X% must be Y color?"
In fact, isn't that a bit racist? Or sexist?
And that's part of the issue here. If the awards are truly about the best, then those numbers don't matter. They're never going to be perfectly balanced. Some woman might write an award winning book one year ... but not the next year because she was busy. Does that mean sexism has taken over and the patriarchy is out to get everyone? No, it just means she didn't write a book, or that someone else's book when she did was better.
I used to discuss this with someone (name withheld for their privacy) who would often throw out blanket statements about the Hugos or film like "We need to get white people out and more black people in." And I would bother them by swapping two words, so suddenly it read "We need to get black people out and more white people in." and reposting it right below their's. They would comment that doing that made them "very uncomfortable," to which I replied "Well, if it's uncomfortable that way, what's so different from the other way? And they couldn't answer without incriminating their own behavior, because they were doing a lot of blanket judging based on the color of skin, not merit.
Eh, this got away from the point, which was:
Do we really need to get so worked up over this? All these groups throwing out metrics about "gender" or "skin color" like those are the only things that matter about the competition. Funnily enough, back in the 90s when no one cared, the numbers had a pretty good balance, looking back. Great. So not caring may be the best way to actually balance things out ... unless it's not about that at all (shades of KT Bradford's highly publicized and supported internet campaign challenging the world to, and this is a quote, "Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors" here with that)
On another, more interesting note ... the publishing industry is actually more diverse than national standards by race, but horribly imbalanced by gender—though trash rag The Guardian bent over backward to make it appear otherwise. Here's the breakdown:
78% of all employees in publishing: women. 84% of editors, also women.
Interesting. So if there's a bias in publishing like so many claim, that needs to be fixed by "more women" ... um ... There's not much left to take.
While The Farcian tries to paint a negative picture, comparisons to the US census of population found (surprise) that outside of being mostly women, the book industry is more diverse concerning the color of one's skin (clearly this is important) and one's ancestery, as well has twice the rate of hires of those handicapped.
Just fun food for thought. Fuel for the pyre.
3909621
Yes, I began hearing that argument when numbers in most domains reached the targets they were supposed to reach to prove equal opportunity--20 or 30 years ago, if I recall. I've spent the past 4 months in an English literature class where we spent most of the time talking and reading about diversity and oppression, and the history of that movement is one of making up new goals and new arguments when the old goals are met. The articles written 5-10 years ago were already denouncing equality as "inherently unequal", and beginning to use the word "humanist" negatively.
The problem with this argument is that you can always use it. What are the stop conditions? What is "the parity we expect"? 50% female representation in all fields and genres? Then what you are actually demanding is the social reconstructing of males and females to not have any gender-based or race-based preferences or abilities. You are demanding that 50% of romance readers be men, 50% of Oprah watchers be men, 50% of NFL and Nascar fans be women, 50% of the Marines be women. And that will never happen without genetic engineering.
The theorists of the social justice movement aren't oblivious to this. Some now see humanism, the enlightenment, and rationality as tools of the white male bourgeois. The fact that taking equal opportunity as your goal, and rationality as your method, can indicate a stopping point to the discrimination against white men, is in their opinion the problem with equality and rationality.
Besides which, you are implicitly demanding the destruction of black culture and feminine and masculine cultures. We must dictate that 62% of rap artists and NBA players will be white, and 50% of them female.
Demanding diversity in this fashion leads to the complete elimination of diversity, because it calls for eliminating all differences in preferences, ability, beliefs, and culture in order to achieve equal representation in all fields.
Wait. You believe in "male interests", yet you have a hard time believing that speculative fiction could be a male interest? So you also find it hard to believe that computer science, or math, or physics (things important in science fiction) could be male interests? What would be a male interest?
If you don't believe science fiction could be an inherently male interest, then you have to not believe in male interests. And then you have to not believe that there is any selection for stories that appeal to male interests.
Or is it that only bad things can be male interests? We can admit that men commit more crimes and like violent things like football and hunting, and we can say that women are more sympathetic, kinder, more loving, more moral, and more social. But we can't say men are more logical or mathematically-inclined, because those are good things. Men are only allowed to be better at bad things.
In any case, writers, not readers, are the ones to count. Each writer should have an equal chance. These are awards we're talking about. That means awards should be given on the basis of merit, not in a way calculated to balance a gender or ethnic quota.
Far more likely and reasonable is that blacks represent more than 1% of fandom? Why is that likely? I go to science fiction conventions routinely. I've been to maybe 50? of them. A typical convention has 300 to 600 people, and zero to 5 blacks. That's the data I have. I've found no surveys of fan ethnic demographics. Look around at the next brony convention you're at, and be aware brony conventions are in my experience more ethnically diverse than science fiction conventions. The 2014 State of the Herd survey says bronies are 2% black (sample size > 20,000).
A reasonable evaluation of bias would compute the statistical likelihood of an outcome given the distribution of the original submissions. AFAIK blacks have won 3 print story Hugos so far, out of about 240 awarded, which is not all that improbable.
I would attribute Delaney's wins to bias, not so much racial or gendered (though people were eager at the time to have a black gay SF writer) as literary--he wrote the same kind of symbolic, stylized, badly plotted modernist stuff as Joyce and Pynchon, and it's not plausible to me that he would have attained prominence in the field on the basis of fans actually liking his stuff, yet he was nominated, I think, 9 times. You should go with Octavia Butler instead for your example. She could write stories that people liked for the story.
3909701
3909966
I already noted I'm out of time to discuss this, so I'll leave those statements as their last words, save for one point that I found quite odd:
You know, when I hear people talk about essentialist differences between genders, usually it's along the lines of: men are biologically bigger and evolutionarily designed for running down and hunting prey, women bear and nurture young, etc. So yes, I find it hard to believe that those things you cite are inherently, evolutionarily male interests. (And if they're just male culture interests, well, we're talking about changing culture here, because culture is arbitrary, and arbitrary choices can't be assumed to be optimal.)
To say that something like computer science — which didn't even exist until last century — has a gender-evolutionary bias strikes me as an argument with a really high bar to clear. Unless it's based on that argument about men outscoring women on the math SATs ... and if we take that approach, then given that girls consistently outscore boys on the writing portion of the SAT, achieve better grades, go to college in bigger numbers, etc.: why should we assume that men are better SF writers and thus should be a majority of science fiction awards? Math is a contributing factor, but the field is inherently about words; if this was only ever about merit, then shouldn't the gender who are biologically better at words have floated to the top without outside intervention? If there aren't systemic factors keeping talented female (etc.) writers down, then why aren't all linguistic fields dominated by women (they way they are in editorial positions, which is much closer to what we would expect given the scholastic numbers)?
In short, no matter what angle I look at it from, it sure seems like there are weird disconnects behind the logic of "let's just be blind to diversity issues because there was no problem to begin with".
Well, when America is described as a "melting pot" in which all of the cultural inputs go in and a homogenous blended mix comes out ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I actually don't have strong opinions about that, but one benefit of a melting pot is that everyone is equally invested in the end result, and we have more investment in the things which draw us together than in the subcultures which divide us. Europe seems to have taken a different tack, with a harder-line non-integrationist approach set up to preserve individual cultures, and I hear a lot of right-wing criticism about that. So do we want a homogenous society or a fragmented one? I'm not gonna pretend there's an easy answer to that, but the problems we're discussing now are homogenization problems, and going the other way has big problems of its own.