Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In my youth, readers of science fiction books knew “Hugo Award” on the cover meant “Good Book;” but over the last 30 years or so, it’s come to mean “Politically Correct Book” in which politically correct characters express politically correct opinions only slightly related to science fiction. Look, the reason I read escapist literature is to escape the relentless political correctness of modern life, I don’t want it in my science fiction. Others must agree: sales of science fiction books have plummeted.
Science fiction writer Larry Correia (author of the awesome Monster Hunter, International series) made fun of the trend, saying “Boring message fiction is the leading cause of puppy-related sadness.” He claimed conservative authors and conservative opinions were ruthlessly supressed by the SF publishing industry. A group of writers calling themselves “Sad Puppies” urged science fiction readers to nominate stories for the Hugo award based on character, plot, action, and writing, not the sex or color of the writer or the political correctness of the story. It turned into a massive brawl between the Establishment Gatekeepers Protecting Cronies and the Insurrectionist Outsiders Seeking Change (oddly like this year’s Presidential primaries).
Science fiction writer Dave Freeer commenting at website Mad Genius Club about this year’s Hugo award nominations:
“. . . my support for World Con and the Hugos is rather like one’s support for cousin Hugo who has turned into a hopeless drunk, in the process of losing everything because of his life choices. You remember him as a nice guy, once. Funny, compassionate, full of promise and potential, rather than the vicious drunk and petty thief he is now. For the sake of what he once was, you still try and help him, even though you know it’s probably fruitless and he’ll probably steal from you too. But eventually, you just have to walk away, because he has to want to change. And I’m not seeing that.”
Yep. Sounds right to me, in both Hugo nominations and Presidential primaries. If Bernie and Trump get shafted at the convention by the Establishment Gatekeepers, I suspect an awful lot of Americans will give up and walk away.
Joe Doakes
And from more than just sci-fi and politics.
But more on that later today and/or next week.
I started reading that series (MHI) just because of his stance. Turns out the books were great as a bonus.
The Sad Puppies have acted outrageously – they’ve suggested that people buy memberships to WorldCon, nominate books that they like, and vote for the authors they like.
TPTBs were so outraged at that, and at the fact that non-approved works won all the nominations in many categories, that they campaigned for people to vote “No Award”.
And, of course, the SJWs voted in lock-step, resulting in no award being presented in a number of categories.
http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/
One thing about SF that no one talks about is that SF writers are different today than they were in SF’s Golden Age. In those days, before the cultural revolution of the 60s, SF writers were pulp writers, mostly male, churning out genre fiction for a few cents per word. It is not by accident that it is called ‘space opera.’ Some writers would rewrite westerns as SF and try to resell them.
These days, most magazine SF is written by academics and housewives with otherwise decorative MFA’s.
My short list of SF writers:
Gene Wolfe
John Crowley
Jack Vance
Robert Reed
Connie Willis
And I am going to include John Cheever, because he wrote magical realism before it had that name and he was one of the best writers (in the short form) that this country has ever produced.
The final paragraph of Cheever’s “Goodbye, My Brother”:
Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming–Diana and Helen–and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.”
It’s frikkin’ poetry. I’m serious, it scans in anapests (mostly).
Sorry, for ‘anapests’ read ‘dactyls.’ Got off on the wrong foot!
BG: ” It is not by accident that it is called ‘space opera.’ Some writers would rewrite westerns as SF and try to resell them.
Gene Roddenberry for instance wrote episodes for “Boots And Saddles, The Virginian, and Have Gun – Will Travel” in the 50s. In fact some of the Have Gun – Will Travel episodes were transplanted into the original Star Trek series – watch some of the HG-WT episodes on netflix and you will recognize ST stories.
The key to understanding SF as literature is that it is only ever about our world, in the present.
The problem I have with the Sad Puppies’ opponents is that they are cultural totalitarians. The problem I have with the Sad Puppies themselves isn’t political, it is literary. They still seem to be writing horse opera with the cowboys wearing spacesuits. Some of it is damn good story telling (and some of it is cliched krep).
On one level Owen Wister’s The Virginian is horse opera. Taciturn cowboy, pretty young schoolmarm, bad guy, and a shoot out in the town’s main street. On another level the Virginian himself represents the New America of the West, and the schoolmarm represents the old America centered on the East coast. The bad guy represents a commercial, corrupting force which only the Old America and the New America, each using its unique qualities, can defeat by acting together. It is rare to find SF that has as much literary quality as The Virginian. Nothing Heinlein wrote even approaches it.
Okay, you can add Vernor Vinge to my list. But not for anything he has written in the 21st century. His best work is behind him, but I would love it if he proved me wrong. Greg Bear is bearable 🙂
I WRITE fiction. Truth is stranger.