Hugo Awards for 2016
The results are now in! This is what is being held up as the best science fiction of the year. Sic Transit Gloria Hugo.
The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin | Best Novel |
Cat Pictures Please Naomi Kritzer | Best Short Story |
Folding Beijing Hao Jingfang | Best Novelette |
Binti Nnedi Okorafor | Best Novella |
Uncanny Magazine Lynne M. Thomas, Michi Trota, Steven Schapansky, … | Best Semiprozine |
The Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition Neil Gaiman, J. H. Williams III | Best Graphic Story |
Mike Glyer | Best Fan Writer |
Jessica Jones Melissa Rosenberg, Scott Reynolds, Michael Rymer, … | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form |
Abigail Larson | Best Professional Artist |
The Martian Ridley Scott, Drew Goddard | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form |
File 770 Mike Glyer | Best Fanzine |
Steve Stiles | Best Fan Artist |
Ellen Datlow | Best Editor, Short Form |
Sheila E. Gilbert | Best Editor, Long Form |
While not official a Hugo award, the award for new writer, the Campbell, was given to Andy Weir for The Martian.
My comment: I wish to remind the reader that the Hugo purports to be the representation of the most popular and most well crafted of science fiction for the given year.
If these works are indeed the most popular among the fans of science fiction, and not merely the most popular among the fans of a political correctness that is bent on etiolating science fiction, then similar results should obtain among the Dragoncon Awards. We shall see.
For four years running, the Sad Puppies and their Rabid Cousins have attempted to place on the ballot, and win the award, based on the merit of the work, not on the political correctness of the author or the author’s work.
For daring to say that the award had been given for upwards of a decade now to less popular, less skillfully written, but more politically correct and more politically connected works, the Sad Puppies were savaged with a reckless disregard for the truth by all the usual suspects in the Guardian, i09, Gawker, and elsewhere in SJW-friendly sites.
In this case, Sheila Gilbert was up against Jerry Pournelle, a legend in the field and the editor of one of the most successful and longest running anthologies in SF; N. K. Jemisin was competing against Jim Butcher and Neal Stephenson. The television show Jessica Jones was up against Grimm, Supernatural, and Dr. Who.
The candidates for best related work included
- Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini (Castalia House)
- “The Story of Moira Greyland” by Moira Greyland (askthebigot.com)
- “Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness (castaliahouse.com)
- “The First Draft of My Appendix N Book” by Jeffro Johnson (jeffro.wordpress.com)
- SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day (Castalia House)
And all these were voted beneath NO AWARD.
In other words, the writings of Moira Greyland, revealing the horrible nature of the pederasty-ring run among the highest circles of the science fiction establishment, and covered up for years, was deemed unworthy of being a work related to science fiction, by these voters.
If that represents the general consensus of the science fiction field, the field has much to answer for. If it does not, then the award is a fraud, and representing nothing but the narrow interests of a WorldCon clique hellbent on excluding all nonconformists to their private cult.
There may be innocent eyes out there in the science fiction world who still regard the Hugo Awards as an honest barometer of science fiction fitness for consumption. Perhaps seeing these results, by themselves and out of context, will not convince the skeptic that rot has set in; perhaps the optimist is not convinced that the rot has reached incurable and unrecoverable levels.
But the weight of the evidence speaks for itself, and more loudly with each year. A time will come when the majority of science fiction fans will realize that political correctness and science fiction cannot coexist.
The saddest thing for me, personally, in all this Sad Puppies sadness is that I working with Jonathan Strahan in the past, and George R.R. Martin, Moshe Feder and Irene Gallo and liked working with them. Neither Strahan nor Martin gave me any bad advice nor made any missteps as editors, nor has Irene Gallo’s art department ever clothed my work with a bad cover. Also, in times past, I read with admiration and delight the work of Neal Gaiman and Kurt Busiek, whose imaginations awed and inspired me.
I have Mr. Martin’s DYING OF THE LIGHT on my bookshelf, which I read in magazine form under the title ‘After the Festival’ a sadly underappreciated work which I thought worthy of a Hugo. But the Hugo is no longer worth a Continental, if you catch my reference. When something is no longer backed by the value it represents, it ceases to represent it.
It is unfortunate that all these talented folk decided to jump into a controversy on the side of the untalented second-raters, to believe libels and to spread them. For whatever reason, these talented folk decided either not looking into the facts was the best course, or acting in reckless disregard for the truth. By this, they act to alienate everyone who thinks, as we of the Evil Legion of Evil think, that conformity should not overrule, override, and exclude imagination.
We think science fiction was meant for better things than serving this season’s fashions in social engineering.
It is as if, from some high, dry safe shore, I looked down into a dark and troubled sea, and there I watched a sinking ship on whose deck drunk revelers and tipplers in masquerade were prancing eccentric jigs, having been told that the rising of the waters to claim them was a sign of affection from the sea, and I hear them cursing the lifeboats, which they scorn and ignite with fire.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
August 21, 2016 @ 1:52 am
