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The Hugo Awards 2016 and beyond

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    Captain MarcusCaptain Marcus now arrives the hour of actionRegistered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    His later books are mostly shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

    Well, I mean.

    Some people happen to really like their bizarre space sex fantasies interspersed with ridiculous socio-political musings.

    Don't tell me he wrote something worse than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

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    Solomaxwell6Solomaxwell6 Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Bogart wrote: »
    His later books are mostly shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

    Well, I mean.

    Some people happen to really like their bizarre space sex fantasies interspersed with ridiculous socio-political musings.

    The important thing is you've found a way to feel superior to both.

    It's not like the books aren't irredeemable, nor is that all they contain.

    For Us, the Living (which was actually an early Heinlein, not a late one) is literally about a guy who takes two pages to die and be brought to the future, and then the entire rest of the book is a future lady explaining a "perfect" economic and political system. No explanation about why he's brought to the future instead of dying normally or anything, it's just a shitty plot device so he can write a hundred page lecture.

    Other ones, like I Will Fear No Evil, aren't quite as terrible... but they're still pretty bad.

    Solomaxwell6 on
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    BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
    Reading a book and thinking its shitty isn't an attempt to feel superior to something ffs.

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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    edited August 2015
    So. Hugos. Because that is still what this thread is about. Any wild and crazy predictions or last-minute wagers anyone wants to make as Sasquan gets underway?

    I for one would like to see Wesley Chu take the NotAHugo (Campbell Award for Best New Writer), and I don't think GRRM is wrong in saying the winner of the Campbell will likely set the tone for the rest of the awards.

    tapeslinger on
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    SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Bogart wrote: »
    Reading a book and thinking its shitty isn't an attempt to feel superior to something ffs.

    Sure, but that's not what i took umbrige at.

    Posting a reduction of a book to an absurdity just to make a throwaway ad hom attack on its readers?

    Yeah, Heinlein is on my shelf. It also has room for Richard Morgan, Peter Watts, Scalzi, Ann Leckie, and Paulo Bacigulapi.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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    V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    Reading a book and thinking its shitty isn't an attempt to feel superior to something ffs.

    Well

    It's a happy side benefit.

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    Solomaxwell6Solomaxwell6 Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Bogart wrote: »
    Reading a book and thinking its shitty isn't an attempt to feel superior to something ffs.

    Sure, but that's not what i took umbrige at.

    Posting a reduction of a book to an absurdity just to make a throwaway ad hom attack on its readers?

    Yeah, Heinlein is on my shelf. It also has room for Richard Morgan, Peter Watts, Scalzi, Ann Leckie, and Paulo Bacigulapi.

    Cool story.

    I didn't make any kind of generalization about his readers. Fun fact: I have Heinlein on my shelf, too. There's a reason I know enough about his books to be able to talk about them here.

    And you know what? About half of his books are totally irredeemable mixes of erotica mixed with nonsensical political soapbox. He had his share of good novels. He deserved the Hugos he won. He also had his share of Farnham's Freeholds with its bizarre incest fantasies and racist screed (possibly ironic? no one really knows). There's a reason most of his novels besides Starship Troopers, Stranger, and possibly Moon have fallen into obscurity.

    Solomaxwell6 on
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    Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    His juveniles where good, dated, but good.

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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    htmhtm Registered User regular
    So. Hugos. Because that is still what this thread is about. Any wild and crazy predictions or last-minute wagers anyone wants to make as Sasquan gets underway?

    I for one would like to see Wesley Chu take the NotAHugo (Campbell Award for Best New Writer), and I don't think GRRM is wrong in saying the winner of the Campbell will likely set the tone for the rest of the awards.

    I'm hoping Leckie wins best novel. She's really good, and the puppies really hate her.

    That being said, I don't really have any idea what will happen. I have a strong but mostly intuitive belief that there's more anti-puppies than puppies. Given the furor the puppies caused, I think it would be naive to believe that the anti-puppy side didn't also make some sort of bloc-vote organization push among themselves. So I'm tentatively optimistic that the winners/non-winners will definitively show that the SMOFs struck back.

    How that translates into specific awards, I'm not sure except that if Ancillary Sword or The Goblin Emperor take best novel, then the puppies will have had a bad night.

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    htmhtm Registered User regular
    I didn't make any kind of generalization about his readers. Fun fact: I have Heinlein on my shelf, too. There's a reason I know enough about his books to be able to talk about them here.

    Yes, this.

    One of my favorite quotes of recent memory is from Leigh Alexander:
    For me, 'that thing you like is kinda troubling' is never a reason to shame people for what they like, just a plea to consume intelligently

    So yeah, may you all consume intelligently. I won't judge.

    (unless you really love Heinlein's Lazarus Long books)

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    DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    So awards and Hugo's and things.

    An interesting article appears!

    Best chart:
    women%20and%20sf%20stats%20graphic.png

    Blue line is female members of SFWA, that is professional Sci-fi writing women eligible for Hugo noms and the red is the Hugo noms for that year.

    So actually close to tracking between writing women and awards they were nominated for...until the late 90's where it cratered and we're just in the middle of it getting back to roughly parity.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
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    hsuhsu Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    SFWA membership is a poor way to represent SF writers due to a couple of big problems. The first being that you don't need to be an active writer in order to sustain your membership, and the second being that you only need a few paid magazine articles to meet initial membership requirements.

    You see this in the few SFWA spats that become public - they are invariably arguments between active novelists vs the far larger majority of inactive magazine writers.

    Instead of SFWA, let's look at actual submissions to a publisher, in this case Tor UK. The first 6 months of 2013, out of 503 novel submissions, only 32% came from women. The number is worse when you look at straight up sci fi novels, where only 22% of submissions were from women. However, both of these numbers from Tor UK are pretty close to what the actual Hugo nominee percentages are for women.
    http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2013/07/10/sexism-in-genre-publishing-a-publishers-perspective

    While this is just one data point, from one publisher, in one region, it pretty much highlights the problems with using the SFWA, as Tor's active submissions numbers match up with the Hugo nominee list far better than SFWA's membership numbers.

    hsu on
    iTNdmYl.png
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    DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    This year is the most I've every heard about the hugos other than seeing a graphic on a book cover.

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    I like to ART
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    DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    SFWA membership is a poor way to represent SF writers due to a couple of big problems. The first being that you don't need to be an active writer in order to sustain your membership, and the second being that you only need a few paid magazine articles to meet initial membership requirements.

    You see this in the few SFWA spats that become public - they are invariably arguments between active novelists vs the far larger majority of inactive magazine writers.

    Instead of SFWA, let's look at actual submissions to a publisher, in this case Tor UK. The first 6 months of 2013, out of 503 novel submissions, only 32% came from women. The number is worse when you look at straight up sci fi novels, where only 22% of submissions were from women. However, both of these numbers from Tor UK are pretty close to what the actual Hugo nominee percentages are for women.
    http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2013/07/10/sexism-in-genre-publishing-a-publishers-perspective

    While this is just one data point, from one publisher, in one region, it pretty much highlights the problems with using the SFWA, as Tor's active submissions numbers match up with the Hugo nominee list far better than SFWA's membership numbers.

    I think that's a point worth considering but your analysis would include the effect of the strong tendency in the industry by agents and editors to push women authors away from pure Sci-Fi. The nice thing about SFWA numbers is that those who successfully publish once but are later diverted towards other fields are captured. Of course, since it's a percentage based measurement if the number of women and men who fall off the publishing wagon are equal this effect would net out to zero impact.

    I'd also question what those numbers do with authors whose gender is not disclosed.

    Really the more numbers and facts that we are presented with the better on this issue but I don't see anyway to slice things that supports the puppies narrative.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
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    ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular

    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    This is more true, IMO, in novels than it is in short fiction
    but this is absolutely an issue.

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    redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    This is more true, IMO, in novels than it is in short fiction
    but this is absolutely an issue.

    To what degree should, "in sci-fi" be applied to that?

    Like I thought there where more women in other genres and non genre fiction.

    They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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    Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    redx wrote: »
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    This is more true, IMO, in novels than it is in short fiction
    but this is absolutely an issue.

    To what degree should, "in sci-fi" be applied to that?

    Like I thought there where more women in other genres and non genre fiction.

    It depends on the genre, yeah.

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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    It's absolutely genre-dependent
    my statement is patently untrue in, say, the Romance genre
    but true pretty much everywhere else

    There's a thing about representation which many people don't really absorb, is that a presence of around 17-33% women appears to be "parity" of women/men in ratio, and a grouping of 50/50 appears to be "overwhelmingly" female.

    This is obviously not correct, to believe these ratios in this way, but it's a presumption which is ingrained via media patterns. It's why shows and books and so on can get by with "female" representation by having one character who might as well be wearing a bow on her head.

    Short fiction has slightly better parity but also pays less and has a lower barrier to entry (and there are still countless markets where parity is not happening)

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    redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    I realize that, to a point. But that's kinda a big spread. 1:2 to 1:8. Not great or anything, but I'm guessing there is a lot more... slack in young adult fiction or general novels(guessing frankly fantasy?) than in scifi.

    Meh, this line of thought could well be based largely in bias. I am routinely impressed by the works of the... Like... 4-5 female sci-fi authors I can actually think of off the top of my head.

    In other areas, I wouldn't say my experience with female writers is worse than their male counterparts on average, but I wouldn't say it is better.

    They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    but generally, women have to be exceptional to be noteworthy, at least in SF and fantasy, for a lot of people who claim that they "don't pay attention" to it.
    whereas I think there's a lot more variety to be had in terms of male authors because they can be successful in their own way instead of having to claw their way up from the bottom.

    It's complicated and by no means an all-or-nothing scenario, but it's troubling to me, at least

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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    but yeah, in short, the canine claims that SF is getting colonized by rabid feminization is laughable at best

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    redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    but generally, women have to be exceptional to be noteworthy, at least in SF and fantasy, for a lot of people who claim that they "don't pay attention" to it.
    whereas I think there's a lot more variety to be had in terms of male authors because they can be successful in their own way instead of having to claw their way up from the bottom.

    It's complicated and by no means an all-or-nothing scenario, but it's troubling to me, at least

    I agree with those thing you just said.

    They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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    shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    SFWA membership is a poor way to represent SF writers due to a couple of big problems. The first being that you don't need to be an active writer in order to sustain your membership, and the second being that you only need a few paid magazine articles to meet initial membership requirements.

    You see this in the few SFWA spats that become public - they are invariably arguments between active novelists vs the far larger majority of inactive magazine writers.

    Instead of SFWA, let's look at actual submissions to a publisher, in this case Tor UK. The first 6 months of 2013, out of 503 novel submissions, only 32% came from women. The number is worse when you look at straight up sci fi novels, where only 22% of submissions were from women. However, both of these numbers from Tor UK are pretty close to what the actual Hugo nominee percentages are for women.
    http://www.torbooks.co.uk/blog/2013/07/10/sexism-in-genre-publishing-a-publishers-perspective

    While this is just one data point, from one publisher, in one region, it pretty much highlights the problems with using the SFWA, as Tor's active submissions numbers match up with the Hugo nominee list far better than SFWA's membership numbers.

    None of this explains the cratering in the nomination numbers.

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    QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    This is something I've noticed in the military when it comes to Sailor of the Quarter/Year/Whatever. Despite women making up a smaller ratio it's routine for them to fill at least one of the three openings. And on the boards I've sat almost all the women usually have a ton of accomplishments outside of work. Many of the men do too but there are also several who are just there because their division had to send someone. But nearly every woman I've evaluated at a board stepped forward because they were competitive and wanted the recognition.

    And inevitably there are complaints about the women only making it because they're women and getting preferential treatment and it's some of the most childish behavior.

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    Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User, Moderator mod
    Quid wrote: »
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    There's also the possibility that as women often face a more difficult time getting published, that when a woman does get published she's likely to be better than the average man getting published. Basically, if a woman wasn't already better than average, she wouldn't get published.

    This is something I've noticed in the military when it comes to Sailor of the Quarter/Year/Whatever.
    Wait, wait. This is off-topic, but do they ACTUALLY call it Sailor of the Year? :D

    8i1dt37buh2m.png
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    AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
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    Knuckle DraggerKnuckle Dragger Explosive Ovine Disposal Registered User regular
    Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.

    - John Stuart Mill
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    Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    And the puppies wonder why the rest of fandom wont nominate them for Hugo's.

    Not only is that not funny, but its shit writing and bad satire.

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    Yeah, so many of the comments I saw on Twitter about this were essentially, "No wonder they have to stuff the ballot box."

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    hsuhsu Registered User regular
    All this ranting and raving, yet I don't see anyone actually, you know, voting. From my read here, I'm assuming that tapeslinger and I were the only voters, with htm going to trouble of getting a membership, yet not cast a vote.

    iTNdmYl.png
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    htmhtm Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    All this ranting and raving, yet I don't see anyone actually, you know, voting. From my read here, I'm assuming that tapeslinger and I were the only voters, with htm going to trouble of getting a membership, yet not cast a vote.

    I voted! Didn't get the sticker, though. I suspect valiance did, too, since he posted his reviews of many of the works.

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    ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    All this ranting and raving, yet I don't see anyone actually, you know, voting. From my read here, I'm assuming that tapeslinger and I were the only voters, with htm going to trouble of getting a membership, yet not cast a vote.

    I bought a membership and voted.

    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    Votes were set at the beginning of the month, so anyone planning to participate now requires a time machine.

    I think it's important to hear from both sides, here, and, actually, I think nonvoters haven't invalidated their positions by not voting. In a populist contest which has little to no meaning outside of the award itself, not voting isn't exactly the equivalent of letting Bush the lesser have another term via inertia.

    These discussions within fandom are important precisely because until now, the broader reaches of fandom haven't been having them at all.

    I mean, quick show of hands here, how many people in this thread had no idea that they could in fact directly interface with the Hugos at all, much less nominate and vote for them, before this year

    The one thing pups have said which is not entirely untrue is that the awards have been a much smaller and tighter affair within fandom before the doors got blown off. I am excited to see what I hope is a much broader segment of fandom nominating and voting, going forward in 2016 and beyond.

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    DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Votes were set at the beginning of the month, so anyone planning to participate now requires a time machine.

    Isn't there in person voting at the con itself which is happening basically now?

    So teleporter, not time machine.

    As for myself, I considered voting this year but didn't manage to read enough of the nominated works that I thought it would be honest participation.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
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    tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    Votes were set at the beginning of the month, so anyone planning to participate now requires a time machine.

    Isn't there in person voting at the con itself which is happening basically now?

    So teleporter, not time machine.

    As for myself, I considered voting this year but didn't manage to read enough of the nominated works that I thought it would be honest participation.

    Oh, yeah, I meant online specifically but you're correct, there is on site voting. I'm actually curious how many folks have availed themselves of that option this year.

    I know my future-roommate for Viable Paradise in October did her site selection vote in person because she tweeted it

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    hsuhsu Registered User regular
    I think it's important to hear from both sides, here, and, actually, I think nonvoters haven't invalidated their positions by not voting. In a populist contest which has little to no meaning outside of the award itself, not voting isn't exactly the equivalent of letting Bush the lesser have another term via inertia.
    Certain arguments are pretty pointless when you have absolutely no stake in the outcome. Like arguing who the executive committee can or cannot ban is pointless when you're not attending the convention.

    And complaining about the makeup of the nominees is pretty pointless when you're not actually voting to change it. It's not like there's some barrier to entry here - you could've participated, to try to change the nominees.

    The cats out of the bag though - that's the big thing that happened this year. Next year will be 4-5 slates of nominees.

    iTNdmYl.png
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    htmhtm Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    And complaining about the makeup of the nominees is pretty pointless when you're not actually voting to change it. It's not like there's some barrier to entry here - you could've participated, to try to change the nominees.
    I think that leaving the Hugo nomination process to the people who are invested enough in the WorldCon organization to actually attend WorldCon is the decent thing to do. Since I've never participated in a WorldCon before, it frankly never occurred to me that I had any right to participate in the Hugo nominations.

    And since I still won't be attending a WorldCon, I now find it puzzling (but generous of WorldCon) that I've been allowed to vote in the Hugos.
    The cats out of the bag though - that's the big thing that happened this year. Next year will be 4-5 slates of nominees.
    Indeed. The cycle of backlash and counter-backlash will really get going after this year. Contra many in this thread, I think that the WorldCon old-school outnumber the puppies and that after two or three years of their slates losing out, the puppies will give up. In other words, this year will be the first and last time that the puppies dominate the nominations.

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    Solomaxwell6Solomaxwell6 Registered User regular
    hsu wrote: »
    I think it's important to hear from both sides, here, and, actually, I think nonvoters haven't invalidated their positions by not voting. In a populist contest which has little to no meaning outside of the award itself, not voting isn't exactly the equivalent of letting Bush the lesser have another term via inertia.
    Certain arguments are pretty pointless when you have absolutely no stake in the outcome. Like arguing who the executive committee can or cannot ban is pointless when you're not attending the convention.

    And complaining about the makeup of the nominees is pretty pointless when you're not actually voting to change it. It's not like there's some barrier to entry here - you could've participated, to try to change the nominees.

    The cats out of the bag though - that's the big thing that happened this year. Next year will be 4-5 slates of nominees.

    I'm invested in the winner of the Hugos for a few reasons. I like to use the nominations and winners to guide reading choices. If I see a book has been nominated for a Hugo, I know that a good number of people think it's worth reading, and that influences whether or not I might pick it up. I also like to see talent rewarded. If there's some hotshot new author who puts out a fantastic first book, it'd be good to see them get a Campbell award to encourage publishers to pick that author up. Puppygate is disappointing to me because it damages the credibility of the Hugos and because it rewards the type of fiction that I don't really want to read.

    So I think it's worth discussing and paying attention to.

    That doesn't mean I think it's worth also paying $40 for and also taking the time to read the nominees to cast an informed vote (yes, including the slate nominees, and including other books in the Dresden series so I can properly appreciate Skin Game).

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    shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    hsu wrote: »
    I think it's important to hear from both sides, here, and, actually, I think nonvoters haven't invalidated their positions by not voting. In a populist contest which has little to no meaning outside of the award itself, not voting isn't exactly the equivalent of letting Bush the lesser have another term via inertia.
    Certain arguments are pretty pointless when you have absolutely no stake in the outcome. Like arguing who the executive committee can or cannot ban is pointless when you're not attending the convention.

    Except one neither needs to vote, nor attend to be invested in the outcome.

    Like, the entire backlash to all this bullshit literally proves exactly that. People only bother because they are invested in the outcome.

    So ... maybe try a different tack for arguing why people should just ignore this mysoginistic hateful bullshit? Like, I don't dude. You seem awfully invested in trying to get other people to not care about this issue.

    shryke on
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