Harry Potter Wins Hugo

H.I. McDonnough writes "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling has won the Hugo for best novel. I'll refrain from commenting." I read the 2nd and 3rd Harry Potter books last week and they are just wonderful stories. I'm looking forward to reading this one. But a Hugo for SciFi Achievement? I have a hard time calling Potter stories Sci-Fi. But then again, since SF and Fantasy are often so blurred together, it probably is worth it. And anything that can get kids to read (or for that matter, get me to read a dead-tree version of anything) is good by me. And if you haven't read any Harry Potter books, then you aren't qualified to complain ;)

Comments

There is no justice

[sludgely]

Harry Potter was not a sci-fi novel. It was a book dealing with witches and wizards. Witches and wizards have nothing to do with science-fiction. And most of all, Harry Potter books are children's books.

Re:There is no justice

[zebidee]

Oh come on... have you read them?

They aren't childrens books at all.
- They don't have any sex.
- They don't have any violence (well not gruesome violence anyway).
- They don't have any swearing.

Does that define them as children's books? Or are they just really good, timeless stories which appeal to all ages and don't need any of the Hollywood glorification which you get in typical "airport" novels.

This same argument is rolled out every time a graphic novel wins a hugo or a nebula award - "that's not a real book."

Come on - get a grip! They are great books which attract people back to reading - is that really all that bad?

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

I just thought I would throw my two cents into this conversation. Maybe it will inspire future parents or maybe not. When my wife and I had our first child, a lovely baby boy (8lbs, 7oz) we made the conscience decision not to read childrens books to him.

From day 1 each of us would read books/novels/poetry/etc.. something that had literary worth. It was good for all of us. My son Aaron is going into kindergarten this year. Not really to my suprise he can already read/write and spell while 99% of the kids in school hardly know their a,b,c's..

He reads constantly now, give him a stack of books and before he falls asleep I can take two back and start on those.

Re:There is no justice

[Jules Bean]

So what is science fiction, then?

The best definition of science fiction I'm aware of is that science fiction is the genre studying alternative futures, pasts, or presents. "Alternative" in the sense either simply that some things turned out differently (think some of Philip K Dick, or perhaps 'Fatherland'), or, more often, that the laws of physics were slightly different.

Your classic, space-ship atom-blaster science fiction falls squarely within this definition as possible futures. Much great science fiction (Wyndham, Wells, Ballard) deals with alternative presents.

And most fantasy fiction also meets this criteria, IMO: it deals with an alternative present in which magic is possible.

Of course, lots of fantasy fiction is also strongly influenced by the mold of the 'epic' or the 'quest' (Tolkein, Eddings, etc...), but so is some science fiction, and even some plain novels.

Personally, I'm a little doubtful that (any of) the Harry Potters deserved a Hugo, but they *are* well written and enjoyable (IMO), and I don't have an issue with them being classed as science fiction.

Jules

Re:There is no justice

[jjares]

Ok, call me a sissy, but HP4 had so much violence I had to stop reading at times... :-)

Re:There is no justice

[AlecC]

I'll take issue on that. IMO, for something to be Science Fiction, it must be seriously limited in its postulates, which must all be revealed early on. The rest of the story must then be worked out in the context of the given postulates (which may be counter to known science) and the world otherwise as we know it. The problem with magic in the HP books is that the magic has no "engineering" to it. The auther can invent new magic, or strengthen and weaken the magic of one character against another, as suits the plot. The only exception I can think of is Larry Niven's series of magic relates stories, in which he attempts to make a "science" of magic.

The HP books are good - I read and enjoyed all four. But I don't think thay are SF and are hterefore not, IMO, elegible for a Hugo.

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

that means that the hugo is not a serious literature prize

right?

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

They are fantasy, though, aren't they? And therefore eligible for a Hugo, aren't they?

Re:There is no justice

[Earlybird]

Don't try to define science fiction. Don't try!

The only guy who ever did a good job at it is Darko Suvin, the Canadian SF theoretician. He nails it down pretty well, in like five hundred academic essays, but nobody in the field is ever going to say he is right. He talks about cognitive estrangement; that sf is "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment". (Note that my short excerpt of those aforementioned zillions of essays is broad enough to include fantasy; further reading is recommended, especially if you have trouble sleeping at night.)

Some other nice definitions:

• By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision. (Hugo Gernsback)

  A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its speculative scientific content. (Theodore Sturgeon)

  Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings. (Isaac Asimov)

  Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities. (Miriam Allen deFord)

Personally I prefer this definition, offered by John Clute and Peter Nichols in The SF Book of Lists (emphasis mine):

• Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers.

Re:There is no justice

[markbthomas]

As opposed to the Star Trek world, where the writers invent the 'particle-of-the-week' to pose/solve the episode's problem?

As I see it, Science Fiction is stories about fictional science, i.e. science that does not exist, either because it does not exist yet (for example, futuristic stories), or will never exist (psychic abilities, time travel, or magic).

Besides, the Harry Potter books are really well written; props to Joanne.

Re:There is no justice

[Private Essayist]

"Does that define them as children's books? "

No, it's the fact that J.K. Rowling writes them for children that makes them children's books. The fact that some adults can also enjoy the books is beside the point. The target audience is kids. Or have you recently seen kids lining up at the library to hear the latest Stephen King novel read to them?

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Nerd Trek is BAD Science Fiction, at best.

Stargate is much better science fiction - you have a couple of ridiculous premises (ancient human gods are actually parasitic space aliens, some alien race in the distant past scattered stable wormholes around the galaxy), but everything is consistent.

Re:There is no justice

[dopplex]

JK Rowling has stated that she writes the books for herself, not for children. There were complaints that Goblet of Fire was too "dark" for children, and was getting scary. Her response was that she wrote the books for herself, and that they would get darker before the series ended.

Re:There is no justice

[epukinsk]

They are children's books because the language is accessible to children, the issues in question are typically those important to children, and the main characters are what, 14 in this fourth book?

The fact is the books are written from a child's perspective, not an adult's. They don't seem to me a particularly poignant commentary on my life today. They are wonderful, fantastic stories that remind me of childhood in plot, attitude, and morality. (ah... my wizarding days)

-Erik

Re:There is no justice

[Erbo]

Harlan Ellison always maintained that the correct all-encompassing term was "speculative fiction." That covers "science fiction," "fantasy," and a wide range of things. The word "speculative" implies "speculation," that is, it asks the question, "What if...?"

The Harry Potter books ask that question quite clearly: "What if there are real magicians walking among us?" They certainly qualify, although I think most people would classify them as "fantasy."

Still, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the Hugo rules do allow the selection of works of fantasy. And Hugos are voted on by the fans, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has certainly been very popular. Does that put it in the same class with The Dispossessed, or The Forever War, or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, or Neuromancer (to name four previous Hugo winners with which I'm familiar)? Not necessarily, but does it necessarily have to be in the same class?

For the record, I've read all four of the Harry Potter series to date, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Rowling's writing reminds me a lot of Roald Dahl's, in particular. And I know I'm not alone among adult geeks in liking them; I note that the Jargon File now contains the word "muggle." In retrospect, Goblet of Fire (the longest and most complex Harry Potter to date) winning the Hugo seems not only likely, but almost inevitable.

Eric

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are those "ridiculous" premises? More so than the idea that we would have remained ape-like if not for the intervention of a rectangular monolith placed here, and on the Moon, and in Jupiter orbit, by an alien race?...

Re:There is no justice

[damiam]

They aren't childrens books at all.
- They don't have any sex.

Harry's got a crush... that might go somewhere in the next book.

- They don't have any violence (well not gruesome violence anyway).

There's a rather graphic description of the torturing spell, as well as people getting punched and thrown against walls.

- They don't have any swearing.

The 4th book says "hell" and "damn" several times, although you may think those doesn't qualify as swearing.

But you're mostly right- there's no real sex, no really gruesome violence, and no hard-core swearing. But I say they are children's books, because they are about children and are mainly read by children.

Re:There is no justice

[MtViewGuy]

You should have read some of the snide comments on the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire winning the 2001 Hugo for Best Novel. (sigh)

I think people are conveniently forgetting that Hugos can encompass both science fiction and fantasy novels (for the most part). You do have to admit that the fourth Harry Potter novel was a very good read, indeed. :-)

Re:There is no justice

[camusflage]

Or have you recently seen kids lining up at the library to hear the latest Stephen King novel read to them?

I would've been, but then, I started reading his work when I was eight, after having seen "The Shining" on television. I was actually proud of myself when, at age 12, a distant relation who was a librarian said "You shouldn't be reading this book" when she saw me with Updike's "Witches of Eastwick."

Re:There is no justice

[dasunt]

So, Ender's Game was written for children under 10? Ender was young in the novels, and most of the other characters were of simular age.

Just a question.

Re:There is no justice

[epukinsk]

I didn't mean to imply that literature for adults couldn't be written about children, just that in this case (Harry Potter) the issues in question are most relevant to a child's life, as are the plots and the attitudes.

Ender's game, on the other hand asks some very big, very adult questions about things like responsibility and childhood. Yes, childhood is an adult issue. To children there is no childhood, it's just "life". It's not until you become an adult that whether you were allowed to live a childhood matters. I don't remember much of EG, but freedom, genocide, and morality were big, adult issues.

-Erik

Re:There is no justice

[hublan]

"The target audience is kids."

I think that J. R. R. Tolkien's intention with "The Hobbit" was as a childrens' book.

That its main audience is adults, is probably also besides the point.

Re:There is no justice

[nihilogos]

I disagree that the issues are about those relevent to children. There are many parts in the books which are subtle comments on human behaviour, like the Dursley family and the spread of gossip.

And the first bit of Great Expectations was written from a child's perspective.

Re:There is no justice

[tubs]

And I know I'm not alone among adult geeks in liking them

And your not alone in adults liking them either ... My Girfriend (27), Both her brothers (30, 32) and both her sister in laws (30, 33).

Harry Potter manages to span across generations, and hats off to JK Rowling for writing a readable, fun and interesting series of books.

Re:There is no justice

[NoseyNick]

For what it's worth, Terry Pratchett hates his books being labelled "Fantasy".

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

Re:There is no justice

[hey!]

I am a children's literature afficianado, and have been even before I had my own kids to read to. Children's literature can be as profound as adult literature in what it addresses, but it is distinct in its forms and techniques. It's language is always spare and simple, although ideally clever and well crafted -- well suited to developing readers. True children's literature also treats ideas the same way, using certain conventions and formulae well suited to young minds.

I would take exception to the idea that Children's literature is somehow inferior, except it's understandable that many adults cannot appreciate it. Children may be inferior readers to adults in almost every sense but one: the average child has powers of imagination stupendously greater than any adult. When they are imagining what it would be like to fly they actually experience flying in the way no adult can. Children's books are as unsuitable for most adults imaginations as adult shoes are for most children's feet.

The Harry Potter books are strange beasts, since they include many elements familiar from children's books, but they are not used in the same way. The language tends to be more complex than true children's books, requiring a more sophisticated capability for turning words on the page into mental images.

One thing that I have heard is that Rowlings is orienting each novel to the age group of Harry Potter in that novel -- meaning that the latest novel is oriented to fourteen year olds and the last novel will be for seventeen year olds. Thus, properly speaking the Goblet of Fire is juvenile literature, not children's literature. More to the point, the whole series must be viewed as a single work that accompanies the reader from childhood (11 years old) to young adulthood (17 years old). Each books is oriented to the concerns and abilities of the person the young reader is becoming rather than is, which makes them a challenging but satisfying read for the young reader, and accessible to older readers.

The characters in GoF have a much more complicated interior life than they did in earlier installments. It introduces children to the idea of people whose character is ambiguous or conflicted. It gently introduces them to death. It sets the stage for more complex, painful and potentially cathartic stories later in the series. I will be curious to see if Rowling can keep the books kid friendly while essentially creating a fully adult novel by book 7 of the series.

I hope she does, because it will be an unique accomplishment -- a work that spans children's literature and adult literature. One thing about a bridge is that you can cross it both ways.

Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the Hugo is not a serious literature prize, then why would be people be upset?

If the Hugo can be altered or guided to fit your view of SF, why did you not register and vote? Why did so many people vote for Harry Potter? what went so wrong?

Of course, it could always be about how you personally loathe such common recognition and would never succumb to such trvial things or foster your mind and your children's mind on more substantial literature, above the average of common non-MENSA families. How an individual, especially on this "buggy as hell" board (mind you I don't see any example of other people than the Slashdot admininstrators improving or fixing this bugs that are so "obvious" on a full time or even a part time basis, alas, all but suggestions for correction, but no advice on a solution), must make his opinion the definitive and quinessential opinion and angered by the masses who have yet to be veered. We can only hope some of these advanced individuals could see the workings of democracy and mass choice, to realize an opinion to a situation stated after any possibility to change that situation is no more than accursed mumbling, no better than ...well, an individual's opinion of the Hugo awards.

But heaven forbid, that the Hugo is an award voted by fans of the science fiction community (not you of course!), and to give it to a book that children find interesting (not you of course!), as well as adults. That we would assume that such an award would go to some story more adult, more elaborate, more intellectually stimulating, more complex, but instead a majority of those that voted decided to honor something rather simple and well thought out. Perhaps the majority is plain stupid (it sure sounds logical). Or maybe they are stating their opinion which is different than yours. Either way, how dare they offer an award you have no interest in and no influence to change to something you don't like. Perhaps next time, those Hugo folks will consult you first before doing something as preposterious as base their recognition upon majority vote.

Your opinion, after all, is important.
It's on Slashdot.

Re:There is no justice

[epukinsk]

Yes, but gossip and cruelty are not exactly the most complicated issues there are. Most reasonably self-aware people stop being bullies by their mid twenties (I hope?) and well, some people never get over gossip. But Harry Potter looks like The Little Engine That Could compared to Ender's Game.

-Erik

Re:There is no justice

[Cowboy Thirsty]

How do you know that JKR writes them for kids? Dr Seuss just claimed that he wrote good literature that kids as well as adults liked! Further, the target is irrelevant - since the stories are good fantasy, which is a branch of SF, they are winners. (Yes, I've read Heinlein, Asimov, ANderson, etc. as well as Analog.) P.S. Maybe the kids have too much sense to waste time on Stephen King.

This is awesome!

[MissNachos]

My boyfriend and I (or me?) love the Harry Potter books and are glad that the received such an award. When our daughter was born, we started reading Harry Potter to her. We are looking forward to The Order of Phoenix so we can continue. Congrats JK Rowling!

Re:This is awesome!

[The_Rift]

My boyfriend and I love
because you wouldn't say "me love Harry Potter"

Re:This is awesome!

[ClarkEvans]

The first book was very good, could not put the book down. The second was ok, took me a few days to plough through it. But the third book was tedious and I just couldn't finish it. I'm not looking forward to the fourth.

Re:This is awesome!

[kubrick]

I haven't read any of them, but have seen them in bookshops... every book seems to be double the size of the last. Is this a woman who had one good idea and is now flogging any possibility of profit out of it?

Oh yeah, the movie is coming out soon as well :/ I think I'll be seeing Fellowship of the Ring instead...

Re:This is awesome!

[MissNachos]

thank you =)

Im never sure when to use one over the other, and thats a good way to figure it out.

Re:This is awesome!

[ScumBiker]

Oh my god. You guys must live in a hollowed out tree. The H. Potter books are written for *12 year olds*. On the other hand, I still read one of Heinlien's juveniles now and then. But, books like Podkayne of Mars, or The Star Beast. Those books where REAL Sci-Fi, not fantasy crap.

Re:This is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

The subject matter of the Harry Potter Stories might be magic, witches and wizards but they hardly qualify as fantasy in the sense that is usually meant. They have more in common with traditional English public school adventure stories.

Having said that, I think this award is justly deserved.

So what if Harry Potter isn't space opera. The Hugo judges obviously liked it and they're entitled to choose whatever they bloody well want.

In any case it's doing Science Fiction a real service, as much as any other genre if not more so. I read all the Harry Potter books to my kids and they just lapped it up. It encouraged them to try reading "big" books themselves and in fact my seven year old went straight on to read "Ender's Game" all by himself and I'll be starting him off on some Robert Heinlein and Harry Harrison as soon as "Have Space Suit will Travel" and "The Stainless Steel Rat" arrive from Amazon.

And as Rob so rightly said, if you haven't read it then you're hardly qualified to complain.

Re:This is awesome!

[ScumBiker]

The only way that the HP books getting a Hugo are doing SF any favors is the publicity it will draw. I realize I sounded a little (ok, a lot...) sarcastic in my last post. I truly love SF. I pretty much _don't_ like fantasy. Not even TLOTR trilogy. Well, maybe the "The Hobbit", at least I finished it. Anyway, AC, you've picked some great books to pass on to your kid. "The Stainless Steel Rat" series is the one I go back to time and time agian. Right along with "Dune".

I do disagree with the decision that the con goers made, acually voting for the book they did. Maybe there should be two Hugo's, one for SF and one for fantasy.

Re:This is awesome!

[antek9]

If you want to make everyone else laugh, tell 'em yours. Oops, you just did, so, ha ha.

Re:This is awesome!

[tubs]

And the one for "Futureistic Fantasy", oh and "Best supporting Character", what about "Best Editor" and "Best Cover illustration".

Re:This is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid not.

The 'publicity drawn' by the first Star Wars film nearly destroyed Science Fiction. It was really getting good when that fricking space western happened along to crowd the market with lame adventure stories.

I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Hitch]

I don't know about a Hugo, though, either. They're entertaining, original, well written stories (even for a "grown up" book). Many of the books I've read that were intended for a much older audience aren't as well written. So I would definitely think that it deserves awards...but I had always gotten the impression that Hugos were for hard Sci-Fi...am i wrong?

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

You are not wrong. I think that the Harry Potter books are an entertaining series and they should receive awards, but they are definitely NOT science fiction. If popularity is the sole judgement for earning the Hugo, then why hasn't John Grisham recieved one?

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Anonymous Coward]

If popularity is the sole judgement for earning the Hugo, then why hasn't John Grisham recieved one?

Too many lawyers involved...

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Xtifr]

> but I had always gotten the impression that Hugos were for hard Sci-Fi...am i wrong?

Yes, you are wrong.

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Xtifr]

The Hugo is for SF or fantasy. Grisham doesn't write in either genre, and therefore doesn't qualify.

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know the best ever Sci-Fi book award, which was awarded to Asimov's Foundation Series was almost awarded to The Lord of the Rings, another Fantasy book? :o)
Joao

Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself...

[Hitch]

nope....didn't know that. guess I've got a lot to learn about literary awards.

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere near frist.

Who's up for some mindless drivel?

Once upon a time there was a boy, and this boy had special powers. Unfortunately the ATF didn't much like his powers, so they surrounded his house and played bad rock music to try to get him to surrender. When that didn't work, they used tanks to pump his house full of flammible tear-gas then fired thermite grenades into the house until it exploded.

The end.

Moral: Don't drink and drive.

Re:I don't understand

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> When that didn't work, they used tanks to pump his
> house full of flammible tear-gas then fired
> thermite grenades into the house until it exploded.

It's been well established (video and audio tape) that they burned themselves down.

Anyway, you'd think they couldn't keep magic a secret with a school with dozens of kids in it, century after century? Militarize the magic, put it to work for Nasa, bah, what kind of adults let kids go on "adventures"?

Hugo but...

[mirko]

OK, Hugo prizes usually mean good stuff but for God's sake:

How would I accept to give my money to Warner after what they did to Harry Potter's fans?

Re:Hugo but...

[khoward1]

Well.... technically you're only giving money to Warner's if you go to the movie (or buy the merchandise). It's not like they publish the book. Yeah, it's a bit of a justification, but I figured a single mom's entitled to sell out when she gets the chance, so I'll just read J.K. Rowling's books and stay out of the whole Warner's mess.

nice books, but...

[paai]

The Potter books (yes, I read them) are nice enough, although not in the same class as, say,
Lewis' Narnia or Tolkien. But the media offensive
that the publishers have been waging for the last few years, now, THAT deserves a Hugo...

Paai

Must have been a slow year for Sci-Fi

[Big Ryan]

Hmmm. I can see the Harry Potter books winning awards; they are very good, after all. But a Hugo?

So, where were the Sci-Fi authors this year? I've read some great new books this year (Cryptonomicon comes to mind), but none that qualify as Sci-Fi. Is interest in the genre starting to wane or are authors just not cranking out good Sci-Fi stories anymore?

Re:Must have been a slow year for Sci-Fi

[novilio]

The authors are trying...but the publishers are balking. Author friends of mine like Phyllis Eisenstein and David Gerrold, who have numerous SF novels to their credit, are having a hard time getting novels published, and first timers like me apparently have no chance at all, even with solid records in other genres (like computer books) or stale records in short SF. I have a number of very successful computer books to my credit, and was actually on the Hugo final ballot in 1981, but my hard SF novel languishes.

One interesting clue to what's going on: Attend an SF convention and note the preponderance of increasingly gray heads. The crowd I see at cons is the same crowd I saw in 1975--and there's nobody bringing up the rear. I don't see young people buying SF these days, and so the publishers are hardly to be blamed for publishing less of it. My teenage nephew prefers Clive Cussler novels. Not sure why, but it bodes ill for those of us who love idea fiction.

--Jeff Duntemann

Overrated?

[Contact]

I must admit, I gave into the hype and bought the first Harry Potter book. It was... okay, I guess. I was expecting something a lot more complex, though, and I was disappointed - it reminded me more of Enid Blyton than anything else.

When I was a kid, I was reading things like Robert Westall, John Wyndham, Ursula K LeGuin, Diana Wynne Jones... maybe it's just nostalgia, but Harry Potter doesn't seem like it's even in the same league as those old classics.

There are children's authors who deserve a Hugo (Roald Dahl springs to mind, as well as some of those listed above) but I suspect this award was given due to popularity, and the cynical side of my nature suspects that at least part of that popularity is due to their safe, harmless nature.

Re:Overrated?

[greenrd]

and the cynical side of my nature suspects that at least part of that popularity is due to their safe, harmless nature.

Well... you could say that about the first three, maybe. But the Goblet of Fire is much darker towards the end, and probably not suitable for younger children.

Re:Overrated?

[fatbofh]

I must admit, I gave into the hype and bought the first Harry Potter book. It was... okay, I guess. I was expecting something a lot more complex, though, and I was disappointed - it reminded me more of Enid Blyton than anything else.

Yes, the first HP books are written in a fairly simplistic way; but as the series progresses they get more complex, both in terms of the the plot and the language used.

The series doen't get really good, IMO, until book 3 (Prisoner of Azkaban); GoF is really excellent.

I'm still not sure it deserves a Hugo, though, and I'm a Potterphile.

Re:Overrated?

[ajs]

When I was a kid, I was reading things like [...] Ursula K LeGuin

I have to say you were a very advanced "kid". LeGuin is hard reading for most kids. I started with Douglas Adams and Start Trek books, and then dove right into Heinlein short stories at about the age of 12 or so.

Asimov and Clarke were about as deep as I could go, and no offense to those craftsmen, but LeGuin is a diffferent kind of animal. I'd liken her work to Philip K. Dick (Lathe of Heaven was a tribute to Dick, actually) and more recently folks like Johnathan Lethem. All great authors, but not really what I would point your average kid at.

Potter is great stuff, and I associate it (as fantasy) with kids SF like A Wrinkle in Time, which I have no end of respect for.

Re:Overrated?

[khoward1]

Roald Dahl springs to mind? What particular book are you thinking of? "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator"? Well, it involves space, but it's probably the worst story he ever wrote. Nothing else he wrote even comes close to the definition of science fiction. (Well, he did write one futuristic novel about Gremlins in a post-apocalyptic world, but it sank without a trace in the 1940's and has never been republished.) I don't mean to rip on Dahl (full disclosure: I run a website devoted to him), but it annoys me when people lionize the man without realizing that opinions of his work are based more on movies than on the books themselves.

Or maybe I misread you. Are you saying that fantasy writers should get Hugos, but Rowling should not?

Re:Overrated?

[Reality Master 101]

It was... okay, I guess. I was expecting something a lot more complex, though, and I was disappointed - it reminded me more of Enid Blyton than anything else.

A book doesn't bave to appeal to everyone to be a great book.

I suspect this award was given due to popularity, and the cynical side of my nature suspects that at least part of that popularity is due to their safe, harmless nature.

And a book that is popular doesn't automatically mean it's a bad or overrated book. I suspect that most of the bitching about this book is due to its popularity. I've never understood why people feel the need to mock things that are popular. Jealousy that their pet books are not as popular, perhaps?

Re:Overrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoah. Le Guin's earthsea series was aimed squarely at kids.

Re:Overrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's off-topic, I know. To avoid losing karma (even though I've explained economics ON-topic before), I'm posting AC.

A mother raising children is not considered "a worker." She is treated as if she has no input or productivity to contribute to the "real economy".

Sad but true, but for very valid (and mainly mathematical reasons). Economics deals with models and these models only rarely take into account long-term future. Your kid is basically nothing but a risky investment which may or may not pay off.

Without going into a lecture, you are not considered as providing input into the economy for the simple reason that you use resources and there are no tangible, reciprocal results. Yes, your kid'll be the next Einstein or Fermat or whatever, unless you or he get hit by a bus tomorrow, at which time we know the final score is "lots of money in, nothing out".

Ugly, but true, and economics works like this. It's like mathematics, except that in mathematics, where 5 mathematicians will agree on an answer but still not truly accept it as truth, 2 economists can come up with 3 answers and all three will be equally correct.

There is a statistical side to economics. Unfortunately, its shortcomings are quite well-known, thanks to a 70-year experiment using the Cyrillic alphabet.

woof.

(signed, BadDoggie)

Re:Overrated?

[sql*kitten]

I must admit, I gave into the hype and bought the first Harry Potter book. It was... okay, I guess. I was expecting something a lot more complex, though, and I was disappointed - it reminded me more of Enid Blyton than anything else.

Harry Potter is to children now what The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was to my generation. Having read the Philosopher's Stone (so far) I think there's hope for the next generation after all.

The fiction children read is vastly important - the generation that explored near-Earth space had grown up on Sci-Fi. The Victorian explorers had grown up with tales of adventure. It was fiction that got me into travelling for fun, and working in cutting-edge tech. I look forward to great things from today's kids.

Re:Overrated?

[JordanH]

• I have to say you were a very advanced "kid". LeGuin is hard reading for most kids.

I don't know what works the poster was referring to, or what the poster meant by "kid", but LeGuin has a number of books directed at young children. They are very very good. Here's a good reference to them http://www.feministsf.org/femsf/authors/leguin/juv enile.html

As for LeGuin's non-children's works, The Lathe of Heaven wouldn't be a hard read for most kids who enjoy Harry Potter. The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness might require an older teen to appreciate.

Maybe The Wizard of Earthsea or The Word for World is Forest would be appropriate for kids, I'd have to go reread them to be sure. I read those as a young teen myself.

Re:Overrated?

[odaiwai]

The books get darker over time as Harry grows up and is exposed to more and more of the powers behind his parent's death. Goblet of Fire, is very definitely a much darker book than Philosophers/Sorcerer's Stone.

Rowling has also said that Goblet of Fire is the biggest book, and that the remaining three will be shorter.

HAve you read any of your childrood fave reads again? I did it recently with the Narnia books and some Enid Blyton. Narnia has, in some books at least, a very strident religious subtext which you can't ignore. Blyton is a very firm Law'n'Order type. Good read, but I read one of her older books (the Adventure series) rather than anything for younger kids.

dave

Re:Overrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids love Harry Potter though, so why not just let them judge on their own ? After all the sequel only became so popular just because the books got read.

I read them, too and while I think Artemis Fowl funnier for adults I've no problem else and, as a kid, I could quite well decide already by myself what I liked.

The jury has been out there for a while already.

Re:Overrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

>As for LeGuin's non-children's works, The Lathe
>of Heaven wouldn't be a hard read for most kids
>who enjoy Harry Potter.

I'm not buying this. If you had said that it *shouldn't* be a hard read, I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But LeGuin was hard for me
even in college. There's a subtle quality to the
writing that makes it difficult.

Re:Overrated?

[ajs]

I'd forgotten about her children's books. Yes, I was refering to things like The Lathe of Heaven and The Left Hand of Darkness

I've never read any of her stories for younger readers. Should check them out (though I'm a little out of the age range now).

What I'm really hoping for is a resurgance of speculative fiction at all levels from TV's mass-market appeal to children's books to hard-core SF novels. If Harry Potter is the doorway to a younger generation of readers to start demanding quality sotry telling, I say more power to it!

Re:Overrated?

[Ziffy]

It really depends on how much you want to read. I'm a very avid reader, so I've been reading anything I could get my hands on since I was two. My first SF books were E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman series, which I read when I was 5 or 7 or so, and I've read many more since then. I've only read the first Harry Potter book, but they look interesting and I would definitely enjoy reading more.

Re:Overrated?

[Shimmer]

How do you know _Lathe of Heaven_ was a tribute to PKD?

-- Brian

Re:Overrated?

[ajs]

First off, isn't it obvious? Second, she says so in an interview with Bill Moyers on the DVD release of the PBS production.

It's sort of interesting as a Dick tribute. It's like Dick in reverse. Reality is decaying, yes, but the aliens are clued in and trying to help. The main character ends up essentially whole and sane.

Her work is always amazing to me because of its casual brilliance. Little things like the complexity of the relationship between the doctor and the patient in this book. It's a very deep relationship, and yet has simple motivation that just about any reader can understand.....

Re:Overrated?

[Shimmer]

No, it isn't obvious.

I didn't know about the DVD release of the movie. Thanks for the tip.

I don't think you can call the relationship between Orr and Haber a "little thing". They're the two main characters of the book.

-- Brian

publicity stunt

[Ayon Rantz]

I'm guessing the Hugo awards are losing press, so they try to get their name linked to Harry Potter to ride on his wave of popularity. And lo and behold, it's working! :)

Re:publicity stunt

[rosvicl]

The Hugos aren't organized in a way that would make that possible.

Some hundreds of people, who either wanted to attend Worldcon or cared enough to buy a supporting membership, voted for the books, and short stories, and movies, and artists, and editors we thought were best this year. It's an instant-runoff ballot, ranking candidates from one to five, rather than a vote for only one choice, and I'd be surprised if any two ballots had been identical.

If it were a publicity stunt, someone would have arranged for Rowling to send a representative to make a thank-you speech. The con committee is happy to step in when asked--the person who presented the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation also read Ang Lee's thank-you letter to the audience--so it didn't matter whether she knew anyone who was going to be in Philadelphia.

The Harry Potter book really is what enough voters preferred. I didn't vote for it myself--my first choice was Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road--but I have no reason to doubt the honesty of the people who did. Their judgment, perhaps: it's easy to question people whose preferences don't match my own. But not their sincerity.

on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, it was a nice and futuristic date when Time Quake first came out, so I could be comfortable knowing that he's still alive.

He's the one who deserves the Hugo...if he could only write...

What?

[Mzilikazi]

I've read all four of the books, and in my humble opinion, "Goblet of Fire" was the worst of the bunch. Way too much time spent on needless details of the tournament. I felt at times like I was listening to a Brit trying to explain cricket to an American--the Brit keeps going on and on, and the American's eyes start glazing over as he zones out and thinks about baseball.

I really enjoyed the first one, and recommended it to several of my friends. And I'm looking forward to the movie as well (if for no other reason than it has Robbie Coltrane in it, and he's incredible).

I'm also curious about the Hugo award... Have any other children's sci-fi/fantasy novels won the award? I would think that a separate category might be in order. Sigh... I hope that the Hugos and Nebulas don't become like the Grammys, with total sales being the determining factor in who wins. What's next, "Star Trek: The Next Generation #283 wins the Hugo in 2003?"

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugo Awards are voted on by fans. Any one who attends the World Science Fiction Convention, and pays a voting fee will get to voet on the Hugos. So when something wins, it because thats what the fans voted to win.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that's what the kind of people who go to Cons (a small, rather weird segment of the totality of fandom) reads.

I guess....

[ElDuque]

Well this is all well and good I suppose, but if this can win, LOTR should have also.
That has about as much sci-fi in it, and will always be better than Harry Potter.

Re:I guess....

[Jules Bean]

Better how?

Tolkein certainly built a more dramatic and consistent world, paying the most inhuman attention to details (including creating the languages his people spoke...). And LOTR is rather more epic in scope, and takes the good old Wagnerian theme of an immense struggle against an old evil.

On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are more like everyday novels, in that they explore the emotions of the characters and their relationships in a way Tolkein never really bothered to do.

The books are really apples and oranges: I enjoyed them both. I did, in fact, enjoy LOTR more... but I personally enjoy the detail in Tolkein's world which many readers find boring...

I wouldn't be that surprised if, on average, LOTR was more popular with males and Harry Potter with females. (Aha! Cunning controversial point to attract attention to my post)

Jules

Re:I guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are more like everyday novels, in that they explore the emotions of the characters and their relationships in a way Tolkein never really bothered to do.

Well done, you seem to have noticed the point of these books:

LOTR: an attempt to write a modern mythology, using the style of writing found in ancient myth (most notably Norse myth, but there's plenty else in there). Please be aware that myth is not interested in interpersonal relationships or emotion. There's no "bothered to do" about it.

Potter: a modern update of the sort of public-school stories such as Jennings & Darbyshire that were very popular a couple of generations ago.

Re:I guess....

[ElDuque]

Better is a tough word, but I would say that LOTR is better because of the things you listed (epic scope, attention to detail) And Tolkien did somewhat develop the Gollum character, although none of the others really. That's a valid point, but we're talking about a sci-fi award here, where epic scope and attention to detail should carry more weight than intercharacter relationships (not a lot, but a little)

I'm just agreeing with whoever has posted saying it seems like Hugo has tried to latch onto the Harry Potter popularity.......rather than give the Hugo to LOTR in 1954, they didn't give out an award at all, unless I'm reading that list incorrectly, in which case it was given to "They'd Rather be Right" by Mark Clifton. I'm sure that it's not a bad story (I can't claim to have read it), but I'm sure it's no LOTR.

By the way I am male and like LOTR better. Maybe a slashdot poll? The girls would pick CowboyNeal though.

Re:I guess....

[dangermouse]

Oh, come on... nobody finished Lord of the Rings by the end of 1954. ;)

Re:I guess....

[Sycraft-fu]

Ok, well here's something for you to try: Read Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" if you haven't already and compare it to Harry Potter. I say this because in Speaker, it's ALL about the characters and their interations, and Card does a wonderful job (Speaker got a Hugo too). Another book to try and compare it to would be George R.R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones", again a very character based book, but in a fantasy setting this time. At any rate I consider these to be two great books that have a similar focus to Harry Potter so perhaps you'd be interested in seeing how you think they stack up yourself.

Re:I guess....

[SlamMan]

I would like to point out that we're looking at LOTR (which I love, btw) longer after its been finished, while the Harry Potter serires is still a work in progress.

Re:I guess....

[Mandelbrute]

And LOTR is rather more epic in scope, and takes the good old Wagnerian theme of an immense struggle against an old evil.

And a good dose of borrowed Wagnerian plot!

It would have been interesting to see fantasy head down the road of "The Broken Sword" by Poul Andersen which was published at the same time (and has some plot elements and sources in common - they read the same epics, but neither would have even been able to know that the other was working on a novel), but had a lot less window dressing. We've ended up with decades of watered down Tolkein with fluffy elves in books that sell by thickness, with relatively few original peices of work drifting in the flood.

I see Harry Potter as being in a different genre, it's about individuals instead of being an allagory of world war II and about the triumph of an ordinary individual. It's also aimed at a different audience, those that read to be entertained instead of marveling over the consistency of an invented langauge and reading poetry painstakingly created in that langauge.

Re:I guess....

[_damnit_]

Excellent point for comparison. I have not read "Speaker..." but completely enjoyed Martin's books and am about to start the third. Martin's are clearly character driven. The events of Martin's world are revealed through the characters reaction. This sometimes befuddles the reader into becoming attached to characters they otherwise would not relate well to.
I wish I could prattle on about this, but I broke my hand this weekend playing football with the neighborhood kids. It makes typing quite a chore.

Cheers!

Re:I guess....

[Chris Hind]

Please note that LOTR is NOT an allegory of WWII. Apart from the fact that Tolkien completely rejected the idea, we have the following:

- large parts of the history of Middle Earth were written before the war.
- Mussolini is not even remotely similar to Saruman. Mussolini INVENTED fascism; he didn't copy it from Hitler, rather it was the other way around.
- the war in LOTR was won in a completely different manner to the real war
- where are the analogies to Russia and Japan in LOTR?
- where is the analogy to America? Saying that it's the Elves' Blessed Land is wrong, as Elves from there never get involved in the war, whereas I do recall America getting stuck in in WWII, however belatedly.

So our only real points of similarity are these:

- the hobbits are British and Britain was in WWII.
- Sauron is very evil, as was Hitler.

To say that a 1000+ page book is an analogy of WWII based only on those points is a little silly.

Re:I guess....

[haizi_23]

In support of your points, as you said, Tolkein both rejected the idea that his work was allegorical and then he went a step further in the foreword to the edition that I own, saying that he detested allegory in general. He really thought allegory was a cheap literary device.

Re:I guess....

[Mandelbrute]

An allegory doesn't need 1:1 corresponence between characters and events. Take a look at "1984" and the state of the U.S.S.R. at the time it was written.

Tolkein protested that his carefully crafted world was not a reflection of current events (it took him years to write), but his entire theme of a world war against a single enemy and how ordinary individuals can make a decisive difference argues otherwise. He probably belived that the description of a fantasy world and the creation of langauges to specific linguistic rules was the point. People have written papers on this kind of thing (and I, being a sad fanboy that should have been using the library to study, actually read one in the past).

Okily Dokily!

[DEATH AND HATRED]

From The Simpsons...

Ned Flanders reading Harry Potter to his children:

"And Harry Potter and all his friends went to hell for practicing witchcraft!"

Flanders children: Hurray!

Re:Okily Dokily!

[arielb]

I assure you, if they are like typical Christian homeschoolers, they are probably reading The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Re:Okily Dokily!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Turner Diaries by 5th grade.

Tanj

[Pac]

Offtopic but otherwise worth of notice, you just missed the opportunity to use the right expression in this case, "tanj", There Ain't No Justice, the four letter word the substitutes "f**k" in Larry Niven's RingWorld series.

Great books, but way out of the genre

[Gorobei]

I love the HP books, but a Hugo? Look at the previous winners: all are hard sci-fi:

2000 A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
1999 To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
1998 Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
1997 Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1996 The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
1995 Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1994 Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
1992 Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1990 Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
1989 Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh
1988 The Uplift War, by David Brin
1987 Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
1986 Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
1985 Neuromancer, by William Gibson
1984 Startide Rising, by David Brin
1983 Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
1982 Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
1981 The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge
1980 The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke
1979 Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre
1978 Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
1976 The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
1975 The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
1973 The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
1972 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
1971 Ringworld, by Larry Niven
1970 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
1968 Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
1966 ...And Call Me Conrad, by Roger Zelazny; Dune, by Frank Herbert
1965 The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
1964 Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
1963 The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
1962 Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
1960 Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
1959 A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
1958 The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber
1957 No Award
1956 Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
1955 They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton (currently sold as The Forever Machine)
1954 No Award
1953 The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Earlybird]

They're not all hard SF. Stand on Zanzibar, Neuromancer, The Man in the High Castle, A Canticle For Leibowitz, The Demolished Man, Lord of Light, Stranger in a Strange Land etc. -- lots of great soft SF here. I should know; I don't read hard SF. :)

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

The difference is that all previous winners are all science fiction (hard or soft). Harry Potter isn't either hard or soft science fiction. That is why we have this controversy.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[A Big Gnu Thrush]

If you read both HP and the Ender's Game series, you'll notice a lot of similarities between these two examples of juvenile literature. If they can give the HUGO to Card, they can give it to Rowling.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[tigrrl]

Oh come, now. Half the books that are listed here are "sci-fi" *only* in that they are set on another planet or have a spaceship in them. The Harry Potter books are certainly not set in _our_ space-time continuum. None of the Witches I know can actually change someone into a frog or make a broomstick fly through the air.

What they all are, including Goblet of Fire, are well-written, gripping novels set in a reality other than ours.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[juju2112]

Neuromancer isn't hard sci-fi? What exactly are the definitions of hard and soft sci-fi, anyway? I can't think of anything harder than Neuromancer.

-- juju

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Earlybird]

I can't give you a definition. But for me, in hard sf the plot is focused on, and often dependent on, the science of technological inventions, and in which the science plays a larger role than, say, philosophical or social questions/polemics-disguised-as-story.

Orwell's 1984 told of screens that monitored the population; but the science of that technology was not the issue, the idea of freedom restriction was. The brothers Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic [probably my favourite sf novel] was about the life-changing effects of alien junk upon humans wondering about, and struggling with, their place in the universe. Conversely, Clarke's Rendesvouz With Rama was about the novelty of humans exploring alien technology, and Greg Bear's Eon was about the novelty of humans exploring future technology. (I didn't want to mention the Clarke example alone, as Clarke tends to straddle the worlds of hard/soft sf, as in the case of 2001).

Neuromancer is indeed about technology, but not from the science angle; it is about the dehumanizing, life-consuming impact of technology upon society -- as much as Gibson is enamoured with gadgets, if his books are about anything, it is about how we don't get happier by burying ourselves in techno junk -- and as such joins the proud ranks of soft sf.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard Sci-Fi: Anything by Greg Egan ( especially Quarantine, Permutation City, Diaspora) or Stephen Baxter (Ring, Raft, Flux, Vacuum Diagrams)

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Speare]

Asimov's Foundation Trilogy just narrowly beat Tolkien's Lord of the Ring Trilogy in the same year. (I liked both, but I'd say Tolkien was robbed.)

It's not just recently that fantasy and sci-fi have been blended and confused. And to make just two genres is also terribly limiting. Is "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" a fantasy, or a sci-fi, book?

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Tabercil]

Okay... tons of books there but they're not all Hard SF (most yes, but not all). Both Barrayar and The Vor game (but to name a pair) are NOT hard SF, but definately soft SF.

SPOILERS below (albeit generic)

The Vor Game has as its central twist the notion of the central character's (Miles Vorkosigan) multiple identities conflicting with one another... albeit abetted by a clone of himself running around. Multiple identities in conflict is an old staple of fiction (especially true in comic super-heroes) and clones is an idea which only counts as SF since we haven't quite managed to do it in real life - well to any creature more sosphisicated than a sheep ;)

And Barrayar shows a civil war/insurrection/coup (gee, A Tale of Two Cities anyone?) set in the future and having its main "new" idea artificial wombs (or at least to me anyway... it's a notion that the author first brought up long ago in her books).

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[david duncan scott]

As a definition-by-demonstration of hard sci-fi, I offer the Ringworld books. When some of Niven's readers pointed out that his structure was unstable, he didn't blow them off -- he incorporated their calculations in the later books.

Hard science fiction does the math, and breaks the rules with concious effort. Soft science fiction is more relaxed, and more concerned with internal logic than physics. Space opera neither knows no cares (Star Wars, Flash Gordon), making up the rules as it goes along, and then breaking them anyway.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[elmegil]

How could anyone POSSIBLY confuse Harry Potter with Science Fiction? Yes, some forms of Fantasy and some forms of Science Fiction are closer to each other today than they traditionally have been. But Harry Potter simply doesn't fit that mold.

It's ridiculous; obviously the Hugo is becoming a popularity meter like the Oscar.

Please note any raving Potter fans that I also like the books, I have all four and bought the last two as soon as they hit the stands. But that doesn't mean that an award for something completely different ought to be given to Ms. Rowling. Give her the Caldecott medal and whatever Fantasy awards you like....

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Vuarnet]

. Is "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" a fantasy, or a sci-fi, book?
Come on, everybody knows it's a mystery book. Sure, it may have ghosts, time travel, aliens, spaceships, electric monks from another planet, and the bit about the horse, but it's deffinitely a "whodunit" book.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Xtifr]

Generally, the 'hard' in 'hard SF' refers to the science, not the fiction. Neuromancer, albeit a wonderfully written novel, has little or no science backing it. Note that Gibson had barely even seen a computer when he wrote the book. He got away with handwaving and plausible-sounding nonsense because he's a good writer.

For a much more hard take on some of the same themes, try Vernor Vinge's excellent novella, True Names.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Psychotext]

I must say that I am moderately dissapointed not to see Iain M Banks there... having read most of the authors on the list, I would say that his work is at least equal if not better than the others.

Maybe it's because he isn't American? Are his books popular over there?

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[JimPooley]

Actually, Dirk Gently is a recycled Dr. Who plot.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat, but his sales probably aren't that great. None of my local bookstores ever have more than 1 or 2 of his books. Actually, the only book of his that I see frequently is a book he did with Anne McCaffrey, and that is in with the other McCaffrey books.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[flute000]

Hmmm...I was at a panel this weekend at DragonCon that struggled to define several things like Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Dark Fantasy. The definition of SF seems to be "involving 'advanced' technology", whereas Fantasy involves magic or events/persons of a magical nature (wizards, elves, people with odd abilities)...yet "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Thence comes the whole field of borderline fantasy/soft SF.

Perhaps fantasy is just sufficiently advanced SF?

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Anonymous Coward]

Note, however, that many of these books are books that nobody has read. How many of your friends and neighbors read Haldeman's Forever Peace, for instance?

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[odaiwai]

You could probably make an argument that HP is an alternate reality, parallel to ours but with Magic real. Kind of like Tim Powers' Anubis Gates World.

dave

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[TGK]

So are you gonna tell me that Ender's Game was about technology? I'd argue that it's more of a sociological commentary or perhaps an exporation of the child psyche. Many things... but not technology bases sci-fi.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[vm]

So what? You obviously have no idea how the Hugo awards actually work. The award is given by popular vote of WSFS members.

From http://worldcon.org/hugos.html

The distinguishing characteristics of the Hugo Award are that it is sponsored by World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), administered by the committee of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) held that year, and determined by nominations from and a popular vote of the membership of WSFS.

See http://worldcon.org/rules.html for more info.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Earlybird]

No idea. Never read it beyond the first two pages or so, and -- call me prejudiced, but I'm not particularly interested in wading through that turgid, awkward prose.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Davidicus]

er, almost. the foundation trilogy beat out Tolkein's LotR, the one year they gave an award out for best trilogy of all time. They werent actually up for conciteration at the same time for the normal award.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[Psychotext]

That's a real shame... He was recently voted as the most influential science fiction author ever in the uk.

Maybe I should get on his pr team and help him break into the US properly. :-)

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[gorilla]

SF and Mystery are two non-exclusive characteristics. You can have almost any combination of SF and other genre, for example SF & Mystery such as above, SF & Comedy, SF & Romance, SF & Thriller, even SF & historical.

Re:Great books, but way out of the genre

[roguebfl]

I love the HP books, but a Hugo? Look at the previous winners: all are hard sci-fi:

not quite Anne MacCaffer also one a Hugo for Pern Books which are Not 'Hard Sci-Fi'. some argue they aret Sci-fi at all/P

Fantasy and Sci-Fi have always been lumped togethe

[Gezzus Krist]

I don't like it either, but whenever I go to the book story there are Forgotten Realms books in the same section as The Hitchhikers Guide. I think often the rest of the world lumps use all together as geeks. I have some friends who only read fantasy. I kinda get into Spaceships and stuff. I liked Harry Potter, but it's a very different kind of literature than I would call Science Fiction

From the Hugo rules...

[Vulch]

Article 3 - Hugo Awards

...

Section 3.2: General.

3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

With added emphasis by me...

Anthony

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[Ponderoid]

The Hugo awards are voted on by the people who attend or support the World Science Fiction Convention. It's a popularity contest voted on by the fans. Any work that the fans think qualify as SF or fantasy is eligible to be nominated and voted on.

It doesn't cost very much to buy an advance supporting membership. I wish this page for the current Worldcon still had the prices for advance membership posted, but that info was probably removed when the deadlines passed. The prices were probably not too much different than next year's Worldcon. Act now; for just $35 USD, you too will be able to nominate and vote the Hugo for works first published in 2001.

*** Ponderoid

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[blamanj]

or fantasy

and this is reinforced strongly if you actually look at the winners. Note that the film winner is Crouching Tiger.... There's no way that could be construed as science fiction.

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[armb]

> or fantasy

Exactly - the Dramatic Presentation award went to Crouching Toger, Hidden Dragon, and that's not science fiction either.

Hell, "Apollo 13" got a Dramatic Presentation nomination in 1996, and that's neither science fiction or fantasy (which might be why it didn't win, but does show at least some voters are willing to stretch at least some categories).

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely what I was going to point out. Theoretically, any work could be nominated for a Hugo, SF or no, if all the WorldCon attendees voted for it.

And this certainly wasn't an organized effort to gain attention for the awards themselves; it's a people's choice award, not something administered by a select group of people.

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[zaibutsu]

Not only are the awards voted on by fans they also make the rules.

The rules covering the Hugos are determined by the Worldcon business meeting which is open to all attendees who may propose and vote on amendments. Any amendment has to be ratified at next years convention which may be thousands of miles away but that is intended to prevent any local group packing the meeting.

In practice nobody has ever been able to come up with a definition which seperates SF and Fantasy. How, for instance, would you classify 'Jack of Shadows' where magic works in one hemisphere of the planet and Science in the other ?

I voted for the Harry Potter in second place, and I while think it is good enough to get a Hugo, this was a weak year for the novel. Last year I was torn between 'A Deepness in the Sky' and 'Cryptonomicon'.

I think 'Look to Windward ' by Iain M. Banks and the film 'Memento' are eligible next year so I'm going to nominate them if possible.

Re:From the Hugo rules...

[dillon_rinker]

But Cryptonomicon isn't science fiction; it's not even speculative fiction. It's a techno-thriller and historical novel, in the tradition of Dirk Pitt.

There is precedent

[mcoca]

This is not the first time an fantasy work has entered the Hugo awards. IIRC, Lord of the Rings was nominated for the "Best All-Time Novel Series" Hugo that Asimov won with Foundation (Along with Heinlein's Future History).

In A Memoir Asimov himself says he thought that Tolkien would win.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

Re:There is precedent

[dgrb]

And Asimov was right - he should have done. LOTR is a far greater work of imagination and consistency than either Foundation or Heinlein's stuff.

I don't know though, I have a really hard time accepting a fantasy novel as a Hugo winner. I'm not sure what the distinction is that others are making between hard- and soft- SF but Im' sure that LOTR and Harry P are neither.

Wrong Question

[sheriff_p]

Seems to be a lot of debate about the relative merits of Harry Potter here. Which I don't think's the point at all. While I violently disagree with the person who said they aren't in the same league as Narnia and so on ("it's new, so it can't be as good as old stuff, right?" -- you sound like my parents), the issue here is should it have won what is essentially a Science Fiction prize?

Fiction it is, but I see little science... Then again, I know little about the Hugo awards anyway...

Re:Wrong Question

[paai]

Ah, yes "you sound like my parents". The final word in literary criticism.

Admit it. The Potter books have been at the center of a big media spiel. I am glad that I read the
first two before the circus really got underway, so I had the opportunity to form my own opinion.

Paai

Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[Pac]

Any suficient advanced magic is indistinguishable
from technology

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

What he said :)

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[Pac]

He said "Any suficient advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic" :)

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[rgmoore]

While this has been moderated as funny, there is a serious side to this. David Brin, in his essay Science versus Magic makes a point essentially along these lines. His point is that the distinction between magic and technology is not so much their principle of operation as their sociology. Science and Technology (according to Brin) are about sharing ideas, understanding universally operating principles, and developing artifacts that work reliably. Magic, OTOH, is based on non-shared knowledge and forcing the world to work the way that you want it to, not according to reliable principles.

By that logic, you can actually make a very good case that "magic" in Harry Potter is much closer to Brin's idea of technology than his idea of magic. In Potter's world, new discoveries are shared with the rest of the (magical) world though regular publications and (magical) artifacts are mass produced and expected to work reliably. The very idea of a place like Hogwarts, where young witches and wizards are trained in a standardized magical curriculum is specifically against Brin's idea of magic.

IOW, Clarke did have it backward. Sufficiently advanced technology is distinguishable from magic because it operates differently. OTOH, as magic becomes more advanced it starts to look more and more like a technology.

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[jallen02]

To take a fantasy world such as Forgotten Realms as an example.

While magic users are schooled you don't really see magical artifacts, even mundane ones, mass produced. Their way to limit the mass spread of magic is to make it difficult and tedious too learn.

There is less of a "standard" cirriculum and any mage can devise their own magics easily bending reality too their will.

The interesting parallel here is in the "ancient" times of Forgotten realms, the "Netherese" become so good at magic that even the lowliest apprentice could use magic and it truly became a technology by the definition provided in your post. The technology greatly resembles our science today. Everyone could perform mundane magics nearly at will making it very shared common knowledge.

But to a barbarian magic is sorcery, so does what is magic and what is not magic merely depend on ones perception of reality, since culture greatly influence everything. Interesting thoughts anyway.

Jeremy

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[Rogerborg]

Also, any technology distinguishable from magic isn't sufficiently advanced enough.

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[The Fun Guy]

The problem with this comment, IMHO, is that fundamentally, we know what makes electrons move in response to potentials, and how DNA gets transcribed, etc. so sci-fi that builds on this in constructing an imagined advanced technology builds on understanding. With magic, no matter how codified its instruction and application, the fundamental processes by which it works remain, by definition, a mystery.

The latin root of the word "science" is scientia, knowledge; the technology in sci-fi is impressive, but it's basis is understood, in contrast to magic... just as impressive, but it works by, well, magic.

Re:Hugo just inverted Clarke's assumption

[almightyjustin]

Technically, the inverse would be: Any sufficiently advanced technology is distinguishable from magic. You probably want something like the converse: Any magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology.

But no one cares. :)

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

[hammy]

It really annoys me the way book shops etc lump sci-fi and fantasy together. They're two very different genres with different styles and different (admittedly often overlapping) readerships.

Giving a science fiction award like this to a fantasy book just annoys me because it means bookshops are less likely to have distinct fantasy and sci-fi sections...

Please if anyone who runs a bookshop reads this please please please consider having seperate science fiction and fantasy sections, they are different.

Re:Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

[ameoba]

The quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" explains them being classified together. Either way, you're forcing ppl to swallow a lie about the fundamental nature of reality.

You may argue that Sci-Fi, in dealing with technology, is inherrently more plausible, but if the tech's not here, it's no better than a Microsoft press release.

Re:Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

[Jonathan]

Hmm -- In SF "psionic powers" are rather common. That's just another name for magic, if you think about it. If someone did a search and replace on a Harry Potter book and called every example of magic "psionics", nobody would disagree with the SF label, now would they?

Jonathan

Disclaimer: I'm not an HP fan, although I've only read the first book, and according to some here they do get better.

Re:Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

[Xtifr]

While there are plenty of books that easily fit into one or the other category, there are also plenty of books that are almost impossible to distinguish. For example, Zelazny's Lord of Light , and Creatures of Light and Darkness. The former is usually called SF and the latter fantasy, but it's a fine distinction in either case, and the two books are more similar to each other than to much of anything else. Or there's Gene Wolfe's Torturer series -- the first won a World Fantasy Award, but the second made it clear that the series really was SF, and won a Nebula.

Steven Brust's Jhereg series is another where the jury is still out. It seems to be fantasy (although written in a more hard-boiled style than most fantasy), but there are hints here and there that it may turn out to be SF after all. After nine or ten books, it's still not clear. Other examples abound, as many authors seem to enjoy genre-bending.

And finally, as many other people have pointed out, the Hugo is not a science-fiction-only award. It is, and always has been, for science fiction and fantasy, and has been awarded to fantasy stories as far back as 1958.

A Better Choice

[nlaporte]

As a bookseller, I think that Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass is a much better choice, if you want to pick children's books. When I sell it (and the first two, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife) I describe it as being "like Harry Potter, only with depth." The books are much more intricate, thought-provoking, complex, with (gasp!) subplots that seem (gasp!) unrelated at first, until they all come together. Now that is a book that deserves an award.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the Harry Potter books a lot, but they don't have nearly the complexity that a Hugo award winner should.

Re:A Better Choice

[mikewhittaker]

Why does the US version (of a series) always seem to have a different name from the original edition?

The first book in the Pullman trilogy was released as "Northern Lights"; the first book in the Potter "heptalogy" (seven, if JKR sticks to her plan!) was released as "HP and the Philosopher's Stone".

Or were American mediaeval alchemists trying to discover the Sorcerer's Stone ? ;-)

Re:A Better Choice

[CaseyB]

I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences.

Interesting bit from IMDB on the movies:

The title of the source novel in the UK was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and the movie will bear the same title for the UK release. All scenes where the stone is mentioned by name will be filmed/looped accordingly to produce two different versions of the film to adapt to the title.

Re:A Better Choice

[Ed_Moyse]

I absolutely agree. The HP stories are great fun, but Pullman gives the impression that he's really trying to discuss the "fundamental truths" (though it's not surprising if his books are more pedagogical seeing as he used to be a teacher).

Re:A Better Choice

[astr0boy]

I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences.
fuck you, i have ADD an i can understand movies and books at the same level as normal people.

Re:A Better Choice

[Pyrosophy]

As a philosopher, I feel like I should be offended by this, but the philosopher's stone was historically the substance that allowed transmutation of metals, notably lead into gold.

But that doesn't seem very philosophical -- how is wisdom served by increasing the amount of gold around?

So not only am I not offended, but it seems this might actually be a better title -- far more the stone of sorcerors than philosophers!

Pyro

Re:A Better Choice

[Ed_Moyse]

There was a discussion about this on the guardian website here.

Some of the replies are quite interesting (most aren't!). I liked that "The Philospher's Stone" has at least 3 different titles:

As many of you implied it really has to do with the countries' values. For instance here in The Netherlands it is 'HP and the stone of the Wise' Being a wise person is a bigger value then being a philosopher here.
Dorine, Amsterdam the Netherlands

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

ADD is a myth. It's simply the disease-du-jour that lazy people latch onto rather than getting their ass in gear and working hard.

Re:A Better Choice

[Reality Master 101]

I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences.

Or maybe that "philosopher" has a much different connotation in American English rather than British English.

But hey, don't let logic stop you when a perfectly good cynical explanation will do.

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

For a long time science was called "natural philosophy".

Interestingly, we can now transform lead into gold - it's just incredibly expensive (costs much more than the gold's worth) and you need a particle accelerator.

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

That can't possibly be correct. Otherwise, in the US, it would be called "Harry Potter and the stone of the shallow, money-lusting assholes."

Re:A Better Choice

[kubrick]

I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences.
fuck you, i have ADD an i can understand movies and books at the same level as normal people.

That ADD must have stopped you capitalising your words properly, or previewing your post to see that you had misspelled a three-letter word (and).

Re:A Better Choice

[scowling]

Definitely a better choice -- The Amber Spyglass is on the 24-book long list for the 2001 Booker Prize, the most important literary prize in the British Commonwealth (and equivalent to, say, the Pulitzer).

Harry Potter couldn't make that list if V.S. Naipaul wrote one of the books.

Re:A Better Choice

[cornflux]

Why is complexity a good thing? Why should it be rewarded, over other attributes? Why can't fun and simple win the day?

Re:A Better Choice

[Desert Raven]

...but Pullman gives the impression that he's really trying to discuss the "fundamental truths" (though it's not surprising if his books are more pedagogical seeing as he used to be a teacher).

My my, the assumptions we make. It's not him, it's her.

Re:A Better Choice

[ErikZ]

I second that vote! Those books are excellent and I'm surprised that, ugh, Harry Potter, won a Hugo.

Oh, wait; did you see the author of the Harry Potter series? Whoa, hot, young, curvaceous blonde. Maybe she'll bounce up and down in her excitement.

After all the fuss, I went and bought a Harry Potter book. Aimed at a 5th grade reading level, and kind of boring. I'm surprised how popular it was with adults though.

It's embarrasing that Harry Potter now ranks up there with books like Hyperion and Ender's Game.

Re:A Better Choice

[graxrmelg]

...but Pullman gives the impression that he's really trying to discuss the "fundamental truths" (though it's not surprising if his books are more pedagogical seeing as he used to be a teacher).

My my, the assumptions we make. It's not him, it's her.

Philip Pullman is a her? Well, she certainly sounded male when I heard her on the radio a while back, and the interview seemed to think Pullman was male too. Perhaps her parents should have given her a more feminine name. But I guess we'd all better watch our assumptions.

Re:A Better Choice

[graxrmelg]

Or maybe that "philosopher" has a much different connotation in American English rather than British English.

Really? I never knew that Monty Python's Philosophers' Drinking Song was about alchemists. It certainly is a coincidence that all the alchemists seem to have names of people we in the US call "philosophers" -- Kant, Heidegger, Descartes, and so on.

I'm sure that every person on the street in the UK is intimately familiar with the terminology of medieval alchemists, but I think even Americans might be able to handle the phrase "philosopher's stone" if it's explained. Reshooting all scenes in which it's mentioned, rather than just explaining once at the beginning, seems idiotic.

Re:A Better Choice

[Phillip2]

"Or maybe that "philosopher" has a much different connotation in American English rather than British English."

Does the notion of the "philosophers stone" not
exist in the US. Given that it dates back to well before the US was created I thought that it might.

As with a lot of stuff JK Rowling nicked her stuff from real mythology. The philosophers stone was the aim of alchemy, the substance that changed based metals to gold.

Which is of course what it does in the book. I don't understand why they changed the name in the US, except for perhaps a concern that the word "philosopher" would put people off. It seems to me that the US publishers should have more faith in the US population, and of course Rowlings story telling.

Phil

Re:A Better Choice

[Ian Bicking]

I third, or fourth, or whatever that opinion. I haven't read the Amber Spyglass yet, but the first two books have been really great. I also like that they maintain the mystical, adventurous feel of a fantasy novel, while the worlds aren't just arbitrary -- either arbitrarily Tolkien/ADD style, or otherwise cliched like most fantasy.

And while there is a theological bend to the books, I really quite enjoy it -- there's something subtle to it. I'm under the impression there's much more of this in the last book. I reread the Narnia Chronicles a while ago, and the Christian basis of them was just painful -- I'm glad I didn't notice it the first time around. There's something about "Good Christian" art (music, fiction, etc.) that tends to be so tedious, unimaginative, and unchallenging.

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Philip Pullman is a her?

Yes, just like Jane Austen was a huge Yorkshireman with a beard like a rhododendron bush... and Gertrude Perkins was a butler named "Edmund!" ;)

Re:A Better Choice

[elmegil]

While I agree that Pullman definitely would have been a better/more serious choice for something as big as the Hugo award, you have to be JOKING if you think JK Rowling is "Hot" or "Young". Unless you yourself are over 60. Look at the photo of the author here and tell me again how "hot" and "young" she is: http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/ To my eyes she looks like a decent looking over 35 woman, but hot, young, curvaceous? You're insane.

Re:A Better Choice

[Vuarnet]

I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences. Heh, at first I read "the AD&D-afflicted audiences". I thought it was kind of funny... until I gave it a second thought and realized that it's not so far from the truth.

After all, most of the people (that I know of) who like fantasy gaming also like to read all those AD&D-esque novels, or their siblings. The mighty warrior, the old cranky wizard, the bumbling thief... those are almost requisite characters in most fantasy novels nowadays. Not that they're bad per se, but sometimes they get a little bit too alike for my taste.

Seems to me like "Harry Potter" brought something new to the Fantasy readers, or at least to the kids.

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm calling bullshit on this one.

Re:A Better Choice

[TheMidget]

Interestingly, we can now transform lead into gold - it's just incredibly expensive (costs much more than the gold's worth) and you need a particle accelerator.

So, could a large lump of uranium act as a "philosopher's stone"?

Re:A Better Choice

[canadian_right]

If you're 40+, 35 is young and hot.

I've been having a real hard time making the transition from 'young guy' to 'dirty old man', personally.

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's embarrasing that Harry Potter now ranks up there with books like Hyperion and Ender's Game.

Indeed it is. Rowling should be furious that anyone would put her in the same boat as that little Mormon hack Card.

Re:A Better Choice

[astr0boy]

No, actually, I was sitting at my computer reading slashdot when I realised I was almost late for work. In my rush to not get fired I did not preview my post and submitted with little regard for spelling or capitalization.

Re:A Better Choice

[astr0boy]

That is simply not true. It is over diagnosed, but some of us do suffer from it. I stuggle every day to keep up with "normal" people, but this does not stop me from taking a full academic load (mostly AP and college classes), working 25 hours per week, and keeping in shape. I have never once used either ADD or Tourette's Syndrome as an excuse for special treatment in anything, even when such treatment was offered to me. But as I type this I realise I am responding to a troll and will stop ranting now...

Re:A Better Choice

[odaiwai]

There's a quote from Terry Pratchett which explains why British books tend to get simplified or 'translated' for the American market:

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons
with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's *American*
editors.
-- Setting the record straight
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

HTH,
dave

Re:A Better Choice

[ChannelX]

I reread the Narnia Chronicles a while ago, and the Christian basis of them was just painful -- I'm glad I didn't notice it the first time around.

Glad I wasnt the only one. I bought a boxed set and was all jazzed about rereading them and it was *hard* getting thru the first book.

Re:A Better Choice

[ChannelX]

Also funny because some of the references she makes in the books clearly mean something in the UK and not here. but who knows...

Re:A Better Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't use ADD/ADHD as a gratuitous term of abuse.
It makes about as much sense as referring to someone who's indecisive as "schizophrenic", and only ends up alienating people who know the condition, and then miss the real (perhaps valid) point of your posting.
One of our (English!) children has the condition, he was able to read HP (with his medication), AND he doesn't swear! (unlike some of the other replies...)

Re:A Better Choice

[cascadefx]

I think that Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass is a much better choice, if you want to pick children's books. When I sell it (and the first two, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife) I describe it as being "like Harry Potter, only with depth."

I hate to put forth a "me too." But I totally agree.

Pullman's prose is so much better than Rowling's feeble writing. While hers is entertaining, it isn't engrossing. It always seems to me that she doesn't read about the stuff she uses in her stories. Or that, if she does, it is only to populate it with another figure. I much prefer Pullman, who is an obvious fan of the genre and lets you know it with his subtle use of fantasy mainstays.

I guess that is what I miss in Potter, subtlety.

Related to similarities, if anyone has read Gaiman's graphic novel, The Books of Magic, you will also notice some interesting parallels. I think this graphic novel is better than the Potter books (in the writing department, especially). If you haven't read it, pick up a copy. The front of the first issue was coated with glyphs that you could only see after the ink reacted to handling over a period of time. It seemed that they would "technomagically" appear over time. Pretty cool.

Re:A Better Choice

[Vegan Pagan]

She's a smoker and a mom. She's not that hot.

Towards the meaninglessness of awards

[juliao]

What is sci-fi?

Quoting the very man the award was named after:

"By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision." -- Hugo Gernsback, in "Amazing Stories" (April 1926)

What are we doing to proper classification of things? I do know there are no exact lines between parts of reality, but aren't we going a bit too far? Harry Potter books are very nice, but they are definitely not Science Fiction as we know it.

So what does that mean? That the Hugo award doesn't mean anything anymore? What are these people doing? Selecting novels based on popular demand? Maybe next year they'll choose Barbara Cartland...

Re:Towards the meaninglessness of awards

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not understand the Gernsback quote?

How is Edger Allen Poe scientific? Where's the science in 'The Raven'? And what about Verne's
journey to the center of the earth? Not exactly
hard science fiction.

Where's the science in H. G. Wells' "The Magic Shop"?

Re:Towards the meaninglessness of awards

[Anonymous Coward]

And what did Edgar Allan Poe write? I certainly never saw great hard sci-fi stories from him.

Another award made useless

[HardwareLust]

It used to be that I'd buy a book because it won the Hugo (or Nebula) award. Sadly, that will longer be the case starting now. I guess they have decided that it's more profitable to sell the award to the highest bidder than to choose well written or thought provoking material as they always have in the past.

And, yes, I have read them. They do not deserve an award in my opinion, and certainly not a Hugo for christ's sake!

Just one question.

[jotaeleemeese]

Which part of the word ScienceFiction do the Hugo Award jury don't understand?

My bet is Science....

Re:Just one question.

[hearingaid]

It's not a jury.

The Hugos are voted on by fans. Each year, there is a World Science Fiction Convention held somewhere in the world. This year, it was in Philadelphia.

Members of the convention (most of whom are also attendees) are eligible to vote for the Hugos.

The Nebulas have a jury. When the Hugos go wrong (and they do; The Dispossessed is an interesting book, but it's nowhere near as significant as The Shockwave Rider, the Nebula winner that year) it's a matter of mass confusion, not a small, elite group going weird.

Perhaps next year they will give it to American Gods. :)

Re:Just one question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which part of the Hugo rules don't you understand?

My bet is "or fantasy"...

Re:Just one question.

[MtViewGuy]

Perhaps next year they will give it to American Gods. :)

It'll be real interesting to see if Neil Gaiman will be at ConJosé as a nominee, given that American Gods will likely get nominated given Gaiman's major name recognition in the science fiction community.

Re:Just one question.

[kinbote]

When the Hugos go wrong (and they do; The Dispossessed is an interesting book, but it's nowhere near as significant as The Shockwave Rider, the Nebula winner that year)

You seem to have your books confused. The Dispossessed won both the Nebula and the Hugo. Brunner won the 1969 Hugo for Stand on Zanzibar, but has not won a Nebula. Check this site for award lists.

Re:Just one question.

[hearingaid]

yup, yer right. I had thought that Stand had been a double-winner; it was at least nominated for the Nebulas.

oh well. yet another example of why awards are useless. The Shockwave Rider is probably the most influential book of the '70s, in that it, along with the work of Dick, was what created cyberpunk. and it didn't even get nominated for either of the Major Awards. Dickson gets nominations for Dorsai! and Time Storm, and that's it. meanwhile, Card pulls down a nomination every time he puts a book out. (now, he's good, but Dickson is much better.) and Stephenson pulls down a Hugo for Diamond Age, but gets a runner-up for the rather superior Cryptonomicon. Pohl hasn't had a Best Novel Hugo since Gateway.

poor ol' Bob Forward once got nominated for a Campbell Award, and that's been it.

it's just commerce. they're really not any different from the Emmys.

Re:Just one question.

[Kupek]

You're seriously underestimating The Dispossessed. The level of symbolism in that book is amazing, and it gives a very interesting example of an anarchistic society, which is a rarity in any popular piece of literature.

Re:Just one question.

[hearingaid]

I'm not saying The Dispossessed doesn't deserve a nomination; I'm just saying that it doesn't deserve to be put above a book like The Shockwave Rider, which basically laid the foundation for the dominant form of SF through the '80s and much of the '90s - and which didn't even get nominated.

Re:Just one question.

[hearingaid]

Perhaps.

I shouldn't say anything: I really like Gaiman. But I read American Gods, and it was fun, but I would be quite shocked if it were to receive a Hugo (or a World Fantasy award - hey, remember that incident? :)

Not as shocked as I am for Harry Potter, though.

Re:Just one question.

[jotaeleemeese]

The ones I have not read.

Sorrrryyyyyy.

Still the decision is dumb.

New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[tenzig_112]

"And if you haven't read any Harry Potter books, then you aren't qualified to complain ;)"

Given that logic, one cannot make fun of Mary Kate & Ashley Magazine without reading it cover to cover. Yikes.

But the Hugos aren't much to get upset over. Douglas Adams lost the Hugo for "best dramatic presentation" in 1979 to Superman, the Movie. Clearly, the Hugos have their Jethro Tull moments as well.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that logic, one cannot make fun of Mary Kate & Ashley Magazine without reading it cover to cover. Yikes.

You certainly can't take issue with the quality of writing in MK&A magazine without reading some of it. You can take the mickey out of the whole manufactured idea of the twins, but unless you've read the stuff inside you cannot say that it's rubbish. You can say it's likely to be rubbish, or that it's not the sort of thing you'd think of reading, but any definitive literary criticism must first start with reading the text in question.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[smileyy]

I tried reading Mary Kate & Ashley Magazine cover to cover, but the pages kept getting all stuck together...

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Reality Master 101]

Given that logic, one cannot make fun of Mary Kate & Ashley Magazine without reading it cover to cover. Yikes.

I've never read the magazine. Why would I assume that I could make fun of it?

But given YOUR logic, I can go ahead and assume you're a child molestor, right? After all, I haven't met you, but you've indicated that it's OK to make any assumption I want without any evidence. I will notify the FBI immediately.

Of course, we know why you're making both these assumptions: popularity. Anything that is popular must be automatically bad. I picture you in your dank cellar, reading some obscure book, quietly seething that your book is not given the popularity that these "damn Harry Potter books" are given. Yes, it must be a conspiracy. The Hugo panel must have been bought off. Otherwise, why would they continue to ignore your fabulous, underrated book? You go back to reading your book for the 80th time.

Come out of the cellar, man, and just admit your book is a piece of crap. That's why people ignore it.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[franksbiyatch]

That's a pretty hefty response to a joke you obviously didn't get. From a purely clinical point of view, you seem to have some time on your hands and more than your share of bitterness and disapointment in your life. Choose one: a) mid-thirties failure in progress covered in Cheetos powder b) teenage failure in progress covered in Cheetos powder.

We feel your pain.

Flashback 2 years...

Reality Master 101: Mommy, they're making fun of me on Slashdot again. [sounds of soft wimpering]

Reality Master's Mom: Well, why don't you go try to finish writing your book and forget about it?

Reality Master 101: Every time I do, I start masturbating. It's terrible.

Reality Master's Mom: Well, you always were a ridiculous fucktard.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Reality Master 101]

That's a pretty hefty response to a joke you obviously didn't get.

Ah, screw him. It really bugs me when people mock something only because it's popular. You could apply everything you said about me to the original poster, and it would probably be true. You can usually identify people who have personality problems by the things that they feel they have to mock and destroy.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[franksbiyatch]

"to mock and
destroy."

Dude. Having a bit of fun with an award committee that snubbed Doug Adams for being too light 20 years ago and now sees fit to reward something just as light seems less serious than you make it out to be. Aren't we mocking and destroying the original poster more than he (or she) ever intended to mock or destroy Harry P?

btw: I appreciate that your response was more mature than mine. I apologize.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Reality Master 101]

Having a bit of fun with an award committee that snubbed Doug Adams for being too light 20 years ago and now sees fit to reward something just as light seems less serious than you make it out to be.

I was focusing more on his first statement, than his second. Maybe I overreacted, but that's the same attitude that causes people to put up "kill Barney" sites. It's as if kids should not be allowed to have any fun. Yeah, Mary Kate and Ashley magazine is probably not going to appeal to me, but it isn't written for me.

But to his original point, I'm not sure I would have picked HHGTTG as a "dramatic presentation", either.

btw: I appreciate that your response was more mature than mine. I apologize.

I started to write an immature post, but I decided against posting it. :)

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Suppafly]

this should be modded as funny.. it made me laugh..

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[Yet Another Smith]

On the flip-side, even if you have read the HP books, you should also read some of the other Hugo winners before saying this was a good idea.

Best Dramatic Presentation also includes Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Princess Bride, neither of which seems to be in the same genre as Blade Runner or 2001.

Still the Holy Grail of the Hugo awards is the Best Novel, and this clearly is the most out-of-character winner they've had, although Double Star is a bit of a fluff piece, too.

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[LittleGuy]

"And if you haven't read any Harry Potter books, then you aren't qualified to complain ;)"

Given that logic, one cannot make fun of Mary Kate & Ashley Magazine without reading it cover to cover. Yikes.

---
At that point, you'll be screaming in non-stop terror and beyond the point to use humor in order to combat the horror. ;)

Re:New Hugo category: Best Twee Fiction

[darkwhite]

btw: I appreciate that your response was more mature than mine. I apologize.

Oh, you mean the original reply (2248364) by this guy was mature? Give me a break. I'm torn between giving him a flamebait and posting, I think I'll just post. Reality Master needs some sedatives.

Having evidence does not mean reading a book cover to cover (in this case). I'm not trying to hit on Harry Potter books here. You don't need to try some things to know they are bad.

RM, I have news for you: the best things in the world, in literature in particular, are not very popular at all.

Ouch!

[Gorimek]

I had to check out what all the fuss was about and read the first book. While I'm sure it's a good adventure story for six year olds, there is no way in hell it's anywhere close to Hugo quality.

I guess the later books might be better and more complex, but still...

Re:Ouch!

[Phillip2]

"I had to check out what all the fuss was about and read the first book. While I'm sure it's a good adventure story for six year olds, there is no way in hell it's anywhere close to Hugo quality. "

She seems to be going for the "cohort" approach. In book one Harry is 11, and the book is written for an audience of that age. In book four harry is 14, and the audience is likewise treated as if they were older.

The books are getting a much much harder edge as they go one. Book 3 for instance does not have an entirely happy ending and lacks the resolution of the first two, as well as convoluted and taxing plot. Book 4 as I am sure you know features a death, and several rather unpleasant happenings, although I think it meanders a little bit.

Read the other books is my advice. If she carries on as she has started I think Harry Potter may grow into one of the classic serials of this century.

Phil

Interesting that it was the fourth

[melquiades]

...the cynical side of my nature suspects that at least part of that popularity is due to their safe, harmless nature.

You said you've only read the first, which really is pretty harmless. But the award was for the fourth, which is interesting -- the books in the series get progressively more complex, and much darker. There's a lot more death and unfairness in the world, etc. I think it's not an accident that they chose the fourth for the award....

Re:Interesting that it was the fourth

[el borak]

But the award was for the fourth, which is interesting -- the books in the series get progressively more complex, and much darker. There's a lot more death and unfairness in the world, etc. I think it's not an accident that they chose the fourth for the award....

It's certainly true that the forth book is the darkest, however it's also the longest and most tedious. I get the feeling that the author's popularity makes her stuff "hand's off" to editors. And she needs one. That book should have been trimmed by about 40%. Way longer than it should have been. In many ways the worst book of the series. The ideas are getting better but the writing is getting worse.

Re:Interesting that it was the fourth

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the first two, and while they're good enough for me to buy the rest of the stories in trade paperback (so long as the quality improves), but they're not good enough for me to pay hardback prices [and I buy a fair number of hardbacks]. I finished the first two and said "What's all the fuss about?"

Nothing in the first two led me to expect Hugo-quality material; I'm just hoping the Hugo was justified, at least a little. Otherwise it's a WTF moment and I'll lose all respect for the selection and voting process.

On a brighter note, even if they are pulp fantasy, maybe it will encourage more kids (and their parents) to read. Realistically, I suppose, most of 'em are going to wait for the movie...

Re:Interesting that it was the fourth

[Turiya]

I can only disagree. The book is in no way to long. It has been an throughtly intresting read,
and I haven't found any boring passages.

Then again I must admit, that I like long books, anythig smaller than a thousand pages I regard as kind of short story ;)

Re:Interesting that it was the fourth

[el borak]

Sorry, but I found the entire Quidditch Tournament section to be way too long and quite boring. It added essentially nothing to the plot.

Re:Interesting that it was the fourth

[Shimmer]

I have to agree. The 1st and 3rd books were great. The other two were okay. Most of the 4th book turns out to be completely rigged at the end -- a bit of letdown, I'd say.

-- Brian

I didn't know they gave awards for plagarism..!

[Bowie J. Poag]

A Hugo Award, hm? Not bad, considering the entire series is a massive rip-off of a book published back in 1984. There are way too many similarities between earlier books and Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. I also remember seeing some movie on TV not too long ago from the late 80's, that featured a kid playing a wizard-type character named, of all things, "Harry Potter". The whole thing stinks like rotten fish if you ask me.

Re:I didn't know they gave awards for plagarism..!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here's one review that would say otherwise...

Harry Potter and plagiarism?

[tapiwa]

I remember reading somewhere about a woman who was suiing JK Rowling for plagiarism. Seems this woman had published her book(s) a while aga, and although they were not a huge commercial success, the story line, and naming conventions were extremely similar to that in the Harry Potter books.

Does anyone else recall this, and know what happened to the lawsuit???

Re:Harry Potter and plagiarism?

[jedwards]

Nancy Stouffer was the author claiming Harry Potter was based off her work.

Re:Harry Potter and plagiarism?

[khoward1]

You can read about the woman's lawsuit on her official site. Personally, she sounds like a coattail grabbing nutcase to me. If you don't believe me, read this review of the book that she names in her lawsuit. It's nothing like the Harry Potter books. The only similarities are a few character names. Judging by all the emphasis on buying books and licensing on her site, the whole thing is just a scheme to boost the sales of her otherwise crappy books.

Re:Harry Potter and plagiarism?

[davey23sol]

There has been many rumors of lawsuits. This is from a post I put in another thread...

Harry Potter is also amazingly similar to "The Books of Magic," written by Neil Gaiman.

I don't have a URL to send you to, but it's a famous Vertigo mini-series. It's about an orphaned boy who finds out he has amazing talents in magic, and is visited by a number of known D.C. magical rhelm characters (like John Constantine, Death, others) to help him learn about it.

The main character even LOOKS the same as Harry Potter, with the round glasses and such. For a while there was a rumor the Neil Gaiman was going to sue, but he says he thinks that the similarities are just amazing coincidences, as the the two characters were thought up at the same time (early 90s) in approximately the same place (England).

Do they know what sci-fi is?

[juliao]

Well, you can read the definitions here. I wish the jury had read this little page before they voted.

Re:Do they know what sci-fi is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what a Hugo award is?

Here's a clue: it's an award for sci-fi or fantasy.

Re:Do they know what sci-fi is?

[juliao]

Point taken.

I wish I had read that before I posted, but the Hugo Award Rules appear to be non-existant :\

But doesn't the majority of readers associate the Hugo with hard sci-fi? Are they trying to dilute the meaning of award?

Re:Do they know what sci-fi is?

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't the majority of readers associate the Hugo with hard sci-fi

So what? The majority of readers here associate Linux with an OS that's ready for the desktop, but that doesn't make it so.

Are they trying to dilute the meaning of award?

No, it's always been an SF/fantasy award.

Paraphrasing myself ... Re:There is no justice

[jotaeleemeese]

Which part of the word ScienceFiction you don't understand?

My bet is Science ... ;-)

(having said that, the prize is also available for fantasy books, to which HP rightly belongs and as such is a worthy winner).

Re:Paraphrasing myself ... Re:There is no justice

[MaxVlast]

> Which part of the word ScienceFiction
> you don't understand?

This is an off-topic rant, but who else really objects to the incessant shortening and intercapitalization of perfectly adequate word-pairs. The term is "science fiction," not "ScienceFiction." Come on, people!

Re:Paraphrasing myself ... Re:There is no justice

[scotch]

Yeah, ComeOn!!!

Re:Paraphrasing myself ... Re:There is no justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in one of it's earliest usages in the early days of the genere, the term was:

Scientifiction.

Deal with it.

What it was up against.

[jedwards]

Of the other nominees I liked 'calculating god.'
And HP wasn't the only Fantasy novel nominated, 'A Storm of Swords' is the umpteenth installment of a fantasy series.

Re:What it was up against.

[jedwards]

And on a related subject, what are the rules for the 'Dramatic Presentation' presentation prize - because I can't see how Chicken Run qualifies as either Science Fiction or Fantasy (well ... it has talking chickens, but still ....)

Re:What it was up against.

[Anonymous Coward]

A Storm of Swords is the third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin. If you ask me, it was the best of the bunch, and certainly better than Harry Potter.

The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[jensend]

In recent years, science fiction and fantasy (especially childrens' books such as Harry Potter) have failed to come up with anything truly original. No authors have come up with anything which approaches the originality or the epic grandeur shown by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Here's a short bit by Clarke on the matter, published in 1939 but valid today:

Reverie

?All the ideas in science fiction have been used up!?
How often we?ve heard this moan from editors, authors and fans, any one of whom should know better. Even if it were true, which is the last thing it is, it would signify nothing. How long ago do you think the themes of ordinary, mundane fiction were used up? Somewhere in the late Paleolithic, I should say. Which fact has made exactly no difference to the overwhelming outrush of modern masterpieces, four a shilling in the third tray from the left.
No. The existing material is sufficient to provide an infinite number of stories, each individual and each worth reading. Too much stress is laid on new ideas, or ?thought-variants?, on ?novae?. They are all very well in their way ? and it?s a way that leads to strange, delightful regions of fantasy ? but at least as important are characterization and the ability to treat a common- place theme in your own individual style. And for this reason, in spite of all his critics, I maintain that if any could equal Weinbaum, none could surpass him.
If, in addition to its purely literary qualities, a story has a novel idea, so much the better. Notwithstanding the pessimists, there are a million million themes that science fiction has never touched. Even in these days of deepening depression, a few really original plots still lighten our darkness. ?The Smile of the Sphinx? was such a one; going a good deal further back we have ?The Human Termites?, perhaps the best of all its kind before the advent of ?Sinister Barrier?.
As long as science advances, as long as mathematics discovers incredible worlds where twice two would never dream of equaling four: so new ideas will come tumbling into the mind of anyone who will let his thoughts wander, passport in hand, along the borders of Possibility. There are no Customs regulations; anything you see in your travels in those neighboring lands you can bring back with you. But in the country of the Impossible there are many wonders too delicate and too fragile to survive transportation.
Nothing in this world is ever really new, yet everything is in some way different from all that has gone before. At least once in his life even the dullest of us has found himself contemplating with amazement and perhaps with fear, some thought so original and so startling that it seems the creation of an exterior, infinitely more subtle mind. Such thoughts pass through the consciousness so swiftly that they are gone before they can be more than glimpsed, but sometimes like comets trapped at last by a giant sun, they cannot escape and from their stubborn material the mind forges a masterpiece of literature, of philosophy or music. From such fleeting, fragmentary themes are the Symphonies of Sibelius built - perhaps, with the Theory of Relativity and the conquest of space, the greatest achievements of the century before the year 2000.
Even within the limits set by logic, the artist need not starve for lack of material. We may laugh at Fearn, but we must admire the magnificent, if undisciplined, fertility of his mind. In a less ephemeral field, Stapledon has produced enough themes to keep a generation of science fiction authors busy. There is no reason why others should not do the same; few of the really fundamental ideas of fantasy have been properly exploited. Who has ever, in any story, dared to show the true meaning of immortality, with its cessation of progress and evolution, and, above all, its inevitable destruction of Youth? Only Keller, and then more with sympathy than genius. And who has had the courage to point out that, with sufficient scientific powers, reincarnation is possible? What a story that would make!
All around us, in the commonest things we do, lie endless possibilities. So many things might happen, and don?t - but may some day. How odd it would be if someone to whom you were talking on the phone walked into the room and began a conversation with a colleague! Suppose that when you switched off the light last thing at night you found that it had never been on anyway? And what a shock it would be if you woke up to find yourself fast asleep! It would be quite as unsettling as meeting oneself in the street. I have often wondered, too, what would happen if one adopted the extreme solipsist attitude and decided that nothing existed outside one?s mind. An attempt to put such a theory into practice would be extremely interesting. Whether any forces at our command could effect a devoted adherent to this philosophy is doubtful. He could always stop thinking of us, and then we should be in a mess.
At a generous estimate, there have been a dozen fantasy authors with original conceptions. Today I can only think of two, though the pages of UNKNOWN may bring many more to light. The trouble with present-day science fiction, as with a good many other things, is that in striving after the bizarre it misses the obvious. What it needs is not more imagination or even less imagination. It is some imagination.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[jensend]

Oops. The majority of those question marks ought to be quotation marks, this is the fault of problems converting to plaintext.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Paranomos]

This is arrant nonsense. Lois McMaster Bujold writes better than Asimov ever dreamed. George R.R. Martin writes epic dark fantasy, and while he pays homage in interviews to Tolkien I think his work is better. Glen Cook's Black Company series is masterful, original, and gripping. Harry Potter is a wonderful meld of all sorts of different elements. I notice that even Heinlein is not on your list of pioneers.

Frankly, anyone who would dismiss the huge canon of worthwhile work in sf since Clarke just hasn't been reading enough, or doesn't want to enjoy it.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[hearingaid]

In recent years, science fiction and fantasy (especially childrens' books such as Harry Potter) have failed to come up with anything truly original. No authors have come up with anything which approaches the originality or the epic grandeur shown by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.

I will have to violently disagree with this.

Before I begin, I should say that I love both Tolkien and Asimov, grew up reading the Narnia books, and intensely dislike Clarke (except for the rather interesting short story The Billion Names of God, which I think is quite good). Both Tolkien and Asimov get whole bookshelves devoted to them.

I've been reading a lot recently, although only some of it was sf/f. Here's some sf/f authors who are currently publishing that I think are really interesting:

• Pat Cadigan started as just William Gibson with more musical references, but has recently diverged into some really weird, really interesting stuff. I'm now only a third of the way into Fools, but it's repeatedly blowing my mind.
• Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the Mars trilogy, and while I haven't been able to maintain an interest in anything else he's done, that single achievement is more than enough to rate listing with other important contemporary authors.
• Candas Jane Dorsey has only one fantasy book so far, called Black Wine, and if you like dark fantasy at all, it's a must read: possibly the best book of any genre written in the '90s.
• Speaking of dark fantasy, Steven Brust has written some pretty amazing stuff. It's true that he was inspired by Zelazny; it's equally true that he has clearly surpassed his inspiration. Tad Williams is correct.
• And in the realm of lesser lights, Neal Stephenson has written some promising books, especially Cryptonomicon; Frederik Pohl continues to produce good, quality hard sf; and Kathleen Ann Goonan did impress me with Queen City Jazz, although I haven't read anything else by her yet.

No, the real problem is a lack of recognition for these people. Although Robinson did win some awards, there are huge gaps. Generally speaking, in order to make the Hugos, you've got to have commercial success first: and nowhere is this more clear than in the Dramatic Presentation category, where the 1999 awards didn't even mention New Rose Hotel, probably the best cyberpunk movie ever made.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Vuarnet]

To your list of recent good SF authors I'd have to add Peter F. Hamilton. His Reality Disfunction series is some of the best hard sci-fi I've read in the past few years. Consisting of a trilogy (which had to be split into 6 books in order to be marketed in the USA) and a few short stories set in the same universe, they have a level of depth and size I personally find really fascinating.

Of course, that's only my opinion, you know, my 2 fuseodollars' worth.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

In recent years, science fiction and fantasy (especially childrens' books such as Harry Potter) have failed to come up with anything truly original. No authors have come up with anything which approaches the originality or the epic grandeur shown by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.

Please turn your attention to Greg Egan. The best current SF writer if you ask me. Cooool ideas, great science, nice plots. Excellent reading for those who like hard SF. The author is an Australian programmer, he has a cool web site with many of his works available online:
http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/

SF of the finest class. Sense of Wonder included.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[jensend]

Yes, I forgot to include Heimlein. While many somewhat interesting books have been written since the founding of these genres, my main rant is that the new material is not of the truly epic and original quality. What themes are people writing about these days? Can you call these themes original? Do any of them truly draw you into a world like Hobbit-LOTR, Narnia, and Foundation do? The answer (as far as I can see, and I admit I have no authoritative opinion) is a resounding no. Sure, there's plenty that's fun to read, but nothing which truly achieves greatness.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Iain M. Banks and Ken MacCleod? Or China Mieville?

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[canadian_right]

The Mars Trilogy was Ok, but the best books by Kim Stanley Robinson are the 'Coast' series:
The Wild Shore
The Gold Coast
Pacific Edge
Can be read in any order, as they are seperate explorations, in different times and settings of life on the California coast. Listed in order published.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[dinivin]

Funny... I consider Tad Williams to be one of the best fantasy authors I've ever read.

Dinivin

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[jbridges]

Oh please! No new ideas on the modern era of SF writers?

Just look at some of those other recent Hugo winners like Vernor Vinge, or Neal Stephenson, or Joe Haldeman, or William Gibson.

What has changed is the audience.

Look at the huge Star Wars, Star Trek catalog (which keep growing and growing, like a cancer on the SF section).

Look at the increase in Fantasy, with fewer SF titles in the SF/Fantasy section.

Although I really enjoy Lois McMaster Bujold's books, I think they barely fall into the SF catagory.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[mvdwege]

Yay! Another Hamilton fan. If you like his style, you should try his earlier 'Greg Mandel' series, a gritty mix of Cyberpunk/whodunit mysteries:

1. Mindstar Rising (his debut)
2. A Quantum Murder
3. The Nano Flower

Hamilton only made his debut in 1993/1994 IIRC, so that's quite a prolific output, and all of it excellent quality. Nice guy too (I have a signed copy of The Reality Dysfunction.

Two minor nitpicks on your post though:

1. The series is called The Night's Dawn Trilogy. The Reality Dysfunction is merely the first book.
2. Whatever its many qualities, this trilogy is definitely not hard sf, it is better classified as Space Opera. It is however an excellent example in the genre, so if you are into that it is a definite must-read.

Mart

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Junks Jerzey]

In recent years, science fiction and fantasy (especially childrens' books such as Harry Potter) have failed to come up with anything truly original.

Well, duh. These kinds of arguments quickly degenerate into the usual "all books only have seven plots" nonsense, which is balderdash. What matters is that a book has the spark of personal vision. Harry Potter _works_. It's entertaining, the writing flows, and you get pulled into the world. And even though there are cliches--and certainly Rowling recognizes and revels in all the fantasy cliches she uses--this is something thats much fresher than all that Terry Brooks nonsense and the usual "I want to write the Lord of the Rings!" crap. Harry Potter is fresh in the way that all good science fiction and fantasy is fresh.

Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction

[Vuarnet]

Hmm, you're absolutely right on both nitpicks. And I agree, it's deffinitely a must read. Too bad it wont ever be published here in Mexico, EVER. I'll just hafta cross the river into the States to get the final book of the series.

I did like Mindstar Rising, seemed to me like it was very similar to Neuromancer, but in a British setting. I'll just have to get the other two books.

Exactly my meaning

[Ripat]

I've read the first two, and I came to the same conclusion...

Count me in with the rest...

[ColdTap]

Harry Potter never was and will never be sci fi. Either this was an attempt by the Hugo committee to move into mainstream, or just an idiotic blunder. Either way all self-respecting sci-fi authors should pitch their Hugos in the trash.

Childrens books?

[smari]

Bash me if I'm wrong, which I am not, but okey:
1. In HP4, at least two people I can remember the names of, probably closer to five though, are brutally murdered - one of them being a main character (I'm not going to say which one, don't want to piss anyone off).
2. The first book was *NOTHING* compared to the rest. The first book _IS_ a childrens book, okey, but then again, the rest are very dark indeed.
3. In the end of HP4, Harry has to summon his Patronus at one point, and at annother, Lord Voldemort got reincarnated (sorry), which means to me that the last thee books will be them trying to kill him - all out war. What do you say about that?

- On annother front, I'd like to slip in that the Harry Potter books are in fact the second-best set of books I've ever read, the best being HHGTTG. Damnit, I want more books!! =)

Re:Childrens books?

[Chris Hind]

Ever read any of Grimm's fairy tales? Children who are kept out of the sickly saccharine embrace of Disney like death and violence and horror in their books. They're all "children's" books, in the sense that they can be read and understood by children.

Completely ridicu;us, a shame for great sci-fi wri

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a commercial scam! First of all Harry Potter is not even Sci-Fi. Secondly is for young kids, sure it's good for everybody but it's so simple. I read last year's winner, A Deepness in the Sky, it's so incredible, and older winner like Ender books by Orson Scott Card and so many others I still can't imagine putting Harry Potter in this list!!! I'll just forget Hugos about credibility.

Nevertheless,

[uriyan]

Three books went into /dev/null
Seven were lost due to a fire
Nine were left inside a hole
One remains to rule them all

One book that bests them all
One book to grind them,
One book will stay when most are sold,
And in oblivion bind them.

A few misconceptions in the comments

[ckd]

#1: The Hugos are a juried award. Nope; they're a fan award. Anyone who is a member of that year's Worldcon can vote; all it takes is the money to pay for a voting membership. You don't even have to attend.

#2: The Hugos are only for SF. They tend to be given to SF works, but the criteria explicitly include fantasy.

#3: Why didn't <foo> win instead? Hugos are given based on year of first publication, so Lord of the Rings wasn't eligible this year. The movies will be eligible for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo, however.

#4: The plagiarism case. A Washington Post article and a transcript of an online chat with Stouffer give some more details, but I tend to side with the folks who doubt the claims she makes. They were going to make a billion dollars! All my records were lost when my roof collapsed! I talked to the (never-married) editor and his wife! You can't remove IE from Windows without breaking it! (Sorry, that last one was from someone else.)

Re:A few misconceptions in the comments

[davey23sol]

I mentioned this before, but I will again since the threads I mentioned this on got flamebated: there is a much more interesting case of similarities between "The Books of Magic," written my Neil Gaiman, and Harry Potter than what is found in this current plagerism case. I finally found a news story on a Neil Gaiman fan site here (3rd Item down).

The character design of tween Tim Hunter of Books of Magic and Harry Potter is very similiar, right down to round glasses. Gaiman wrote a 4 issue series about an orphaned boy who finds out he has magical powers in the early 90s, and it became a monthly and was only ended recently.

The above article also tells of similarities between Harry Potter and a 1982 book by Diana Wynne.

For a while there were rumors that Gaiman was going to sue, but neither he nor Vertigo care about the similarites. As a matter of fact, according to the above article, they put in some nods to Harry Potter at the end of the series as a kind of joke.

Anyway... if they were to make a case it would be a lot more credible than the case that is current going down. I don't think it really is plagerism... sometimes you get ideas from something, they get all mixed up, and they come out in a new form. This is the stance Gaiman, Wynne, and Vertigo are taking.

Re:A few misconceptions in the comments

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a much more interesting case of similarities between "The Books of Magic," written my Neil Gaiman, and Harry Potter

A case which Neil Gaiman finds totally unconvincing, for the record.

"Back in November I was tracked down by a Scotsman journalist who had noticed the similarities between my Tim Hunter character and Harry Potter, and wanted a story. I disappointed him by explaining that, no, I certainly didn't believe that Rowling had ripped off Books of Magic, that I doubted she'd read it and that it wouldn't matter if she had: I wasn't the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor was Rowling the first to send one to school." - Neil Gaiman, April 2000.

Does Harry Hill know ?

[dingbat_hp]

Nancy K. Stouffer is herself a blatant plagiarism of the original Stouffer, a small blue cat from the Harry Hill show.

Hang on, a blue cat ? Surely that was stolen from the Magic Roundabaout....

Re:Does Harry Hill know ?

[mikewhittaker]

What are the chances of that happening?

Potter Achieves the Impossible

[rossz]

The Harry Potter books are doing something previously thought impossible. They are pulling kids away from the idiot box (t.v.) and getting them to read in droves. This, in itself, deserves special recognition. Although I am a hard science fiction fan, I enjoyed the Harry Potter books and have no problem with the Hugo being awarded for this book.

Re:Potter Achieves the Impossible

[Maserati]

For my money, they can have a Hugo just for making reading cool again.

Re:Potter Achieves the Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then award Rowling the Getting Kids to Read Hugo. Her books have garnered plenty of recognition and awards already. As another poster noted, this is a Jethro Tull moment.

Re:Potter Achieves the Impossible

[ravfladermus]

Well, that's a pretty sad reason to support the books. If kids got away from the TV to read porn mags or books telling them how to make bombs or other inflamatory material would you support it for the same reasons? And what's the difference in reading a fantasy novel and watching a TV show? If Harry Potter was educational and kids got away from the TV to read it I might be impressed. I don't really understand the whole thing about how it's so great because it gets kids away from the TV. If parents are so concerned about their kids watching too much TV and not reading enough, then why don't they get off their OWN too much TV watching @$$es (how many parents just come home from work and sit down in front of the TV?), unplug the TV and tell the kids to read a book (i.e. use some previously unused parenting skills). How about picking out an actual, educational book at the library and telling the kid they have to write a book report on it? I thank God that my parents took the time to actually raise me and teach me to love reading instead of hoping the latest book series like Goosebumps or Harry Potter would come along so they wouldn't have to exert any effort.

~ravfladermus

Re:Potter Achieves the Impossible

[rossz]

what's the difference in reading a fantasy novel and watching a TV show?

If you don't know the difference, then you didn't learn a thing in school. Reading stimulates the brain, even if it is reading for pleasure.

How about picking out an actual, educational book at the library and telling the kid they have to write a book report on it?

Which would have the exact opposite effect desired. You want the kid to realize reading is fun. You want the kid to enjoy reading. Your method would make it the same old, boring chore they are already avoiding in school.

instead of hoping the latest book series like Goosebumps or Harry Potter would come along so they wouldn't have to exert any effort.

What the hell does reading a book for fun have to do with parenting? Absolutely nothing. So why did you bring it up? I can only assume you did so because you are either an idiot or a lunatic.

I am very generous to my daughter when it comes to buying books. I pay for it if it's a real book. She pays for it when it's a Sailor Moon graphic novel since I don't consider that a real book.

I must be doing something right, she scored in the 98 percentile on the latest Stanford Achievement Test.

Re:Potter Achieves the Impossible

[ravfladermus]

If you don't know the difference, then you didn't learn a thing in school. Reading stimulates the brain, even if it is reading for pleasure.

And I say that you can learn more (well, more if you count things that contain real value) off of Discovery, the History Channel, PBS, etc than reading a Harry Potter book.

I admit reading helps out a lot with verbal skills, and if it has some kind of educational value it helps in other ways too. I'm never said that reading wasn't important. And by the way, I have a friend who has an aunt. Certain pain medications make this aunt dream about green dogs. Is that good for her? It's brain activity. =p


Which would have the exact opposite effect desired. You want the kid to realize reading is fun. You want the kid to enjoy reading. Your method would make it the same old, boring chore they are already avoiding in school.

Sometimes we just have to do things we don't want to do..to learn and stuff :P
And there's more that I could say on that but it's too boring.

What the hell does reading a book for fun have to do with parenting? Absolutely nothing. So why did you bring it up? I can only assume you did so because you are either an idiot or a lunatic.

Because I'm tired of parents that don't parent using it as a way to assuage their guilt - and it sure sounds like that from some of the people I'm hearing. Instead of being active in encouraging their kids to read (and I'm not saying that all parents that let their kids read Harry Potter are like this) and when necessary (*GASP*) telling their kids to read, I hear a lot of "OMG My kid is actually reading!!" It almost sounds like it's some kind of rare event to be praised when it should be normal. You might want to note the topic of the thread, it's "Potter Achieves the Impossible." I say that it only achieved what was impossible for the chronically lazy.

I must be doing something right, she scored in the 98 percentile on the latest Stanford Achievement Test.

Really? Do you homeschool? How do you know it's you doing right and not the school she's in? =p

As for all the pathetic attempts to be insulting (which are incredibly interesting considering the writer's feigned maturity)...*cleans its paws*

I myself scored in the 97th percentile on the Verbal section of the SAT, which allowed me to take a special Honors English class.

I graduated from high school with a GPA of 3.5.

I am a member of Phi Eta Sigma, an Honor Society for those who score a 3.5 or above during the first year at a University.

I am a member of Phi Theta Kappa an Honor Society for those who score a 3.5 or above while attending a 2-Year college.

In May, 1999 I was awarded the most Honorary Member award for the University Honors Program, and I was appointed Historian of the University Honors Program. Also during 1999, I was an Honoree of Beta Gamma Sigma a Business Honor Society for those who are in the top 10-15%.

I am currently a member of the University School of Honors.

I have been on the Dean's list every year in college except one and that was because I was on the President's list.

My GPA is currently 3.8.

So I guess I did learn something in school even though I don't show it! I probably am an idiot though and lunatic is a distinct possibility. =D

Anyway.."I must be doing something right"! =p

~ravfladermus

Ugh...

[kypper]

I must ask....

How can an award once received and HOSTED by Issac Asimov even be remotely considered for something like Harry Potter, criteria or not?

Christ, you can't honor the memory of such a great man, can you? You have to go and fuck things up.

On a side note... congrats. ^_^

Scientific base

[marx]

Isn't what you defined just "fiction" though?

As I have understood it, science fiction must always have some component of science in explaining the "fantastical" things which are introduced (hence the "science"). Sure, Lord of the Rings could be science fiction, but then Tolkien would have to explain the magic using some scientific base.

I haven't read the books, but I suspect that with this condition, Star Wars would disqualify. I think though that Star Wars is much closer to Lord of the Rings than Asimov's or Clarke's stuff, so maybe calling Star Wars "fantasy" instead of "science fiction" is not such a bad idea.

The Popular Effect--Are we too biased?

[Gedvondur]

I have read most of the books on the Hugo list posted earlier by some thoughtful gentleman, and while I agree that Harry Potter does not have the metallic tang of hard science fiction, they were good books.

Somewhat simplistic? Yes. However that is not always a bad thing. Just because a book does not require you to go dig out your old science texts to understand does not mean that its not an outstanding piece of writing.

We are occasionally ill served by our distain for anything that the general public likes. Do we "poo poo" Harry Potter because our Mom's liked the book and that kind of dumb guy at work liked it too? Is the negative reaction to a Harry Potter book that I am seeing here a form of intellectual elitism?

Is it that because more than the 'in' Sci-Fi crowd liked and 'got' this book we feel threatened? Are we worried if our favorite geeky things become mainstream, that we will no longer be special? No longer be smart?

We need to understand that just because the mainstream likes something, it does not necessarily make it evil. I am sure that I missed the post comparing Rowling to Gates and her publisher to Microsoft, just as I am sure that its there somewhere.

The Harry Potter books are good. Well written, thoughtful, and fun. Lets just congratulate Rowling, and forget about weather or not her work is "real".

Indeed...

[Pig Hogger]

But a Hugo for SciFi Achievement? I have a hard time calling Potter stories Sci-Fi.

Indeed; what irks me is when bookstores mix together fantasy with science-fiction. Why do they do that? They certainly don't mix detective novels with romance stories!!!!

Re:Indeed...

[Tet]

what irks me is when bookstores mix together fantasy with science-fiction. Why do they do that? They certainly don't mix detective novels with romance stories!!!!

Actually, they do. There's a specialist bookseller on Charing Cross Road in London, that caters exclusively to the Crime, Romance and SF/Fantasy markets. They do, at least, have enough sense to put them in separate parts of the shop, though :-)
As for why SF and fantasy are lumped together, it's almost certainly because they attract the same core market. Yes, there are exceptions, but in general, SF fans like fantasy, and vice versa. I know that's certainly true for me. Fantasy currently dominates my bookshelf by a ratio of about 2:1, but that's mostly because I can't find enough decent SF books. And yes, I'd say I have a large enough bookshelf to be statistically significant (just over 1000 at last count).

While you're at it

[CaseyB]

I had to check out what all the fuss was about and read the first book.

Why not go back and read some of Joanne Rowling's English term papers from grade 5, and then use those to comment on whether the 4th book in the series is worthy of the prize.

Re:reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic is flawed: How would you decide what is a good book and what isn't? By listening to other people? Or reviews? Surely kids should get the chance to develop their own taste in books.
Why would it be bad to read any book? I feel for kids, reading any kind of book can be good (unless the contents might make it inapropriate - no, I don't feel like spelling that one correctly).

BTW: You can not say sci-fi is not literature. One can't judge a whole genre.

Science Fiction VS Fantasy

[Myriad]

Argh, this blurring of what is science fiction and what is fantasy really gets to me sometimes...

Science fiction stories do NOT have to be in space! Fantasy stories do not have to have witches, dragons, goblins, etc... you can have Fantasy in space and Science Fiction in the past.

Case in point: Larry Niven wrote a story about the essence of magic being a natural resource, like oil. Only in this story the resource was running out, and the magic in the world was failing. This is definitely science fiction.(Sorry I forget the title)

On the other hand you see books like the Honor Harrington series by David Webber, which is primarily war-in-space (this type book is often classified as Space Opera, I admit)... but these are essentially fantasy.

The main difference is that in Science Fiction there is some principal element to the story involving science - be it the Ring in Larry Nivens Ringworld, or Thistledown in Greg Bears Eon. Or it can be a theory, such as a change in the laws of physics (al la David Brins The Practice Effect). It need not involve space at all.

Fantasy on the other hand is primarily just a story. There might be science, be it in the form of space ships or anything else, but it is not a primary element to the story itself. Just because your characters ride a rocket doesn't make the story science fiction. If they are riding a rocket that they built, and the story is all about how they did it, then it might be science fiction.
(unless you are the crazy rocket guy, then it could be your obituary)

Anyhow, Harry Potter is fantasy... but as has already been noted, that doesn't prevent it from winning a Hugo. A Hugo can go to a science fiction OR fantasy story.

My congratulations to J.K. Rowling!

Re:Science Fiction VS Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. And sci-fi doesn't have to take place in the future, either (witness Cryptonomicon). Methinks lots of people get hung up on the word "science" in the label. The less-popular term "speculative fiction", while clumsy, is certainly more inclusive and accurate. IMHO, of course.

Re:Science Fiction VS Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

The Niven you are thinking about is "The Magic Goes Away". It is part of a small series. One of my favorite scenes involves the Wizard explaining why his cave is cooler then it is outside. He explains that he has a demon garding the cave entrance that only allows slow moving molocules in and fast moving molacules out. By the way the demons name is Maxwell.

Re:Science Fiction VS Fantasy

[Detritus]

I recently read "The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump" by Harry Turtledove. It isn't great literature, but I thought it was entertaining. The book is part mystery, part fantasy and part science fiction. It is set in Southern California, in an alternate world where magic has taken the place of technology. The hero is an employee of the EPA (Environmental Perfection Agency) who is investigating possible leakage from a toxic spell dump. Like technology, magic produces hazardous waste that must be disposed of properly. Technology still exists, it's just that magic is cheaper and simpler for many tasks. Nuclear weapons have been replaced with megasalamanders. The military has its own secret and sophisticated magic R&D program.

Rules can be found...

[Kraft]

here (I keep getting a fcuking lameness filter abort, if I dont write anything here. Geez)

Also, a review of most of the winning books are here

It matter not the Genre, the award

[Archfeld]

is for SALES. Lets face it the publishers don't honor good writing they HONOR GOOD PROFITABLITY.

Soon, the movie.

[Animats]

The first Harry Potter book is being translated to film with very few changes. That's quite an achievement for an author; often, little more than the title and some of the characters survive.
$200M budget. A fair amount of CG for magic, but most of the sets are real places in England.

Re:Soon, the movie.

[Coryoth]

I always remember Pratchett talking about getting out a possible deal to do a film of Mort because the US distributors wanted him to get rid of the character of Death.

Jedidiah

Re:Soon, the movie.

[JimPooley]

That story is right up there with the one about a rising young BBC executive phoning up Douglas Adams to ask him if he'd ever thought about a radio series based on his Hitch-Hiker books...

Sadly, both these stories are true.

bah

[isorox]

"And if you haven't read any Harry Potter books, then you aren't qualified to complain ;) "

I go the the same university as JK Rowling went to. TPTB are changning (strongly opposed) the name of the Free Tibet room the Harry Potter room. Theres a lot of anger arround the university regarding that.

I wouldnt mind, but We have other alumini that are more worthy! (Thom Yorke from Radiohead for one)

Re:bah

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are an idiot. Exeter University will be much better with a commercially astute Harry Potter room, rather than the 70's political correctness that is the Free Tibet name.

Re:bah

[JimPooley]

I wouldnt mind, but We have other alumini that are more worthy! (Thom Yorke from Radiohead for one)

Well that should increase the numbers of student suicides....

Re:bah

[fishbowl]

What is "political correctness?"

Nobody ever died defending Harry Potter...

No country's borders have been redrawn by a
totalitarian regime due to Harry Potter.

Next you'll be suggesting that we replace the
Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall with a Budweiser
billboard?

Re:bah

[Anonymous Coward]

And what, exactly, has decades of protesting China's occupation of Tibet accomplished?

Re:bah

[fishbowl]

> And what, exactly, has decades of protesting
>China's occupation of Tibet accomplished?

It has created an awareness among many, that the
Chinese government is opressive. There are plenty of people who wouldn't know this, if they
weren't told.

As a result of this awareness, the nation's policies for trade with China have been observed and commented on.

No, it hasn't done much good. China is still an oppressive, totalitarian regime with some policies that are abhorrent to Western sensibilities. But at least the social and political issues are being discussed!

Re:bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Well just to finish this point off, The Free Tibet Room is still named The Free Tibet Room.

Mr Harry Potter and J K Rowling's loss (but not much of one TFTR is not the most obvious and easiest room to find)

And the Suicides ? ... well it is rumored that Creep was written about a particular bad night out at the Lemmi (the University Night Club :)

Relevance?

[R-66Y]

This is neither "news for nerds" OR "stuff that matters".

Re:Relevance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Concidering the number of posts, I think you are outvoted in your opinion.

On reading and Potter

[singularity]

As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.

I suppose I sound really old, but it seems that with television, video games and others, reading is not as important as it used to be.

Harry Potter got kids who had not read a book on their own in years to actually read something. Does the book deserve a Hugo for that? Probably not, but I think that they at least deserve some award (other than the huge financial one that they are going to get from licensing and movies)

I read the first two books (I refuse to buy the third and fourth in hardback), and they are a good read. Not the best ever (I have a difficult time comparing Ender's Game with Harry Potter), but a good read.

I would recommend that everyone read them, even if you pick them up from a library. Get to know what your kids are reading. We talk about watching kids while they are online. The same should go for what they read.

Re:On reading and Potter

[kubrick]

As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.

I suppose I sound really old, but it seems that with television, video games and others, reading is not as important as it used to be.

I'm in my mid-20s... I grew up with television, video games and computers. Yet I still read a lot as a child. Most of the stuff I read was at least 10-15 years old (i.e. written pre-1970), and usually older -- I wasn't sure why then, but I think it is because it gives some perspective on the quality of work that has, after all, been produced for commercial reasons.

I think that most reading these days is not important -- it's just another arm of marketing for the content companies (Disney et. al.) I go to my local bookshop and I see authors like Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson with maybe 1 book each on the shelf being crowded out by literally hundreds of Star Trek or Terry Pratchett novels.

If bland pap is mostly what's being published, isn't it easier to get that from other sources? After all, television specialises in it...

If reading were more widely valued in society, and better books were more easily available, maybe more kids might read that one book that convinces them of the benefits of the medium, and so starts them reading a lot at a young age. Don't just let them be used by a marketing machine in the way these Harry Potter books have done.

Re:On reading and Potter

[dangermouse]

I go to my local bookshop and I see authors like Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson with maybe 1 book each on the shelf being crowded out by literally hundreds of Star Trek or Terry Pratchett novels.

Okay, be fair. Terry Pratchett is prolific as all hell, but lumping his stuff in with the Star Trek novels just because he's written a lot doesn't really work.

Granted, his books do have a tendency to repeat themselves (Terry, man, if I've already read four Discworld books, you don't have to keep explaining the turtle thing). I can't read 'em back to back (I tried... first five books, knocked 'em right out in a couple of weeks). But they're also pretty decently written satire, sometimes very well-written satire. They're not what I'd call "pap".

Granted, he's no Sterling... but who else is? ;)

Re:On reading and Potter

[frknfrk]

even if you pick them up from a library

not likely. i go to the library often and all 15 copies are usually checked out. so i've been catching up on heinlein and asimov -- the kiddies tend to leave them on the shelves.

my true hope is that from this generation of harry potter lovers will come an older, more mature generation of people who broadly enjoy SF and Fantasy books from many authors. and maybe --just maybe-- one of these harry potter readers will eventually write a great story for me to read that would never have been written.

this is one of the great benefits of great film, literature, etc (programming also), the tendency to inspire great works in others. i think that the harry potter series, if nothing else, goes a long way to inspiring an entirely new generation of kids to think about the world in a creative way which they would otherwise have ignored.

Re:On reading and Potter

[chrise123456789]

I read the first two books (I refuse to buy the third and fourth in hardback), and they are a good read. Not the best ever (I have a difficult time comparing Ender's Game with Harry Potter), but a good read.

the third and fourth books (the fourth being the hugo award winner) are leaps and bounds better than the first two. They're much more mature and involved, and very enjoyable.

I can understand not wanting to buy the hardcovers though, they're pretty ridiculously priced.

Re:On reading and Potter

[ethereal]

I'll second that motion.

The funny part is that the first book in a long time to really get kids interested in reading again is often under consideration for being banned in U.S. schools and libraries. Can't have those kids hearing about witches (well, other than on Halloween, of course), even if it may make a huge difference in their future academic life...

Re:On reading and Potter

[kubrick]

Okay, be fair. Terry Pratchett is prolific as all hell, but lumping his stuff in with the Star Trek novels just because he's written a lot doesn't really work.

I was lumping it in because numerically he's the second biggest offender. :) I enjoyed reading the first few books, but they got stale very quickly. He's a good writer, but that doesn't disguise the fact that he's not challenging himself or his readers overly in his choice of work.

Re:On reading and Potter

[cascadefx]

As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.

I hate this argument. Especially since it is partly false. The Harry Potter books are getting kids to read more Harry Potter books. They are not getting them to read. Its not like the books open the world of reading to them, they open the world of Harry Potter to them.

If you think I am insane, just talk to the kids that are reading the books. Most of the middle-schoolers (you have high schoolers reading Harry Potter?) that I have talked to who hated reading before Harry Potter don't touch other books. Instead, they read Harry Potter over and over and can't wait for the next book to come out. Every story about the Potter hysteria covered by the major media backs up my point. Kids are reading the books over and over until the new story comes out and nothing else. Rreading a book several times is no big deal, I have my favorites as well, but reading them that way in the exclusion of everything else but a sequel is not encouraging. Potter fans think reading is boring, but that Harry Potter is cool. There is a disconnect.

When I worked in a bookstore, the same thing happened with the Goosebumps and Animorph books. When kids came in after reading everything that was out in either series, they wouldn't move on to other books. Because they were "boring" or "stupid."

Sure, the kids read, but what did they get from reading one series of books. Nothing!

Books should only be praised for "getting kids to read" if they open up the world of reading to them. If they instead stagnate them into reading only one series, then the accomplishment has less merit for education, but really wins big for marketing.

Re:On reading and Potter

[singularity]

Do I have high school kids reading Harry Potter? Yes.
Do I have kids reading Potter and nothing else? Yes.
Do I have kids that I have talked into reading Ender's Game because of Potter? Yes.

When a child gets done reading Potter, a trusted adult should step in and say "You know, I read Harry Potter and like them too. Since there is not a fifth Potter book, why not try _______. I think you will really like it."

Most of the time it works. Some times it does not. Those are the kids you are talking about.

Anyone who works with children should be reading quite a bit. Part of raising a child (whether you are a teacher, a parent, or a friend) is keeping one step ahead so that as the child develops, you are there to support and encourage. Staying ahead of their reading is part of it.

Re:On reading and Potter

[cascadefx]

Do I have high school kids reading Harry Potter? Yes.
This is sad. I'm sorry.

Do I have kids reading Potter and nothing else? Yes.
This is too bad.

Do I have kids that I have talked into reading Ender's Game because of Potter? Yes.
This proves that you are a teacher worth his salt, then. I just finished Ender's Game this morning before work. A number people have recommended it to me and I finally picked it up while at the bookstore on vacation. It simply blew my mind. This is the sort of fiction that deserves to be read and admired. Truly powerful and thought-provoking stuff.

I agree with the rest of your arguments and I am glad that you use Potter as a "gateway book." Unfortunately, the problem with the "getting kids to read" argument is, besides being false to a great extent, that it promotes such books as good starting points as well. People looking to turn someone on to reading tend to turn to books that "get kids to read" instead of seeking out the best books (which are, coincidentally, not in the media spotlight) for them to start with.

Instead, people turn to mediocrity which can't stand the test of time. They should consult lists of great books for new readers, of the best but little-known books of the year or century, publisher, editor, and critic's picks. They should ask 10 adult friends which books blew their mind at the age of the reader they are shopping for. And you know what? I bet they would find better fair than whatever is the best selling craze du jour.

Along those lines, what are the 10 books that blew the average slashdot reader's mind at the ages 12-14? I'd like to know for when I am asked to pick out a book for a new reader.

Re:On reading and Potter

[guran]

Oh, step down from your high horses, phulease!

Yes, the harry Potter series is heavy marketed. That doesn't automatically make them rubbish.

I'm 30. I read everything from Harry Potter to Tolstoy. Sure, HP is not great litterature, but they are miles ahead of the "market-hype-only" books you make them out to be.

Give kids some credit. Hype alone does not sell these volumes.

Re:On reading and Potter

[cascadefx]

I give kids credit, but they also are subject to market hype.

Two series come to mind:

• Goosebumps
• Animorphs

I've read the Harry Potter books. They are OK at best. A fine quick read with little to no meat. Read Richard Pullman's books instead, they have depth (as has been stated in earlier posts).

Re:On reading and Potter

[guran]

Well, let's not get into a debate about which author or bok is better here, OK?
Sure, Rowling will never get the Nobel prize for litterature, but the HP books are still far ahead of most of the hype-only rubbish.

It will be quite interesting to find out if her trend of moving away from the lightweight adventure of the first two books and towards a more complex and darker story in the later two, will continue.
In the fourth book, there are caracters who cannot simply be classified as "good" or "bad". Thats more complex than one expects from a chilldrens book.

Anyway: You are free to have your own opinion about any book. Just remember that critizising the books that kids *do* read will not make them read the books you'd *like* them to read.

whats that danged quote?

[Beowulf_Boy]

A highly advanced enough civilization would be like magic or something along those lines.

Re:whats that danged quote?

[Jobby]

That would be the thrid of Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws, which were publsihed in Profiles of the Future:

• Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  
• Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is by venturing a little way past them into the impossible.
  
• Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  

This is just a personal observation, but most kids read Harry Potter -- and that's it. Harry Potter doesn't magically turn kids into bookworms, it's just another fad.

Jobby

Re:Kilgore Trout is DEAD!

[Pinball Wizard]

aren't we supposed to go back to 1991 first?

And all the time I thought....

[hachiman]

What that Harry Potter kid needs is a large calibre handgun! I mean, he's got into so many scrapes with monsters, wizards and the like that he needs something that could give him more protection than a spell.

Someone tries to "disarm" you with a spell, shoot them in the leg. Cheif bad wizard killed your friend and taken you wand? Whip out your trusty Desert Eagle and land 7 .44 magnum rounds into his chest from 20 feet. That should stop him. Alternatively, have a forward air controller and an A10 standing by. I'd like to see a wizard that could stand up to a load of Willy Pete with daisy cutter fuses.

Re:And all the time I thought....

[odaiwai]

Yeah, but muggle technology doesn't work in the environs of Hogwarts due to the intense nature of the magical fields.

dave

Re:And all the time I thought....

[hachiman]

And there was me thinking that a simple mechanical device would work.... I thought it was just electrical devices that didn't? You can't tell me that chemical devices wouldn't work either can you? How is the body supposed to work?

I think you'll find that a sawed off 12 guage would do wonders for Harry's protection and it would also work very well in a magical field.

Hachiman

Great books (maybe), but way out of the genre

[Nomikos]

"To Say Nothing of the Dog" (1999) is FAR from hard sci-fi, I was quite dissapointed with it and put it back on the (my - I had ordered it online) shelf after the first 50 pages or so.
But you are right in that the vast majority rates as the good-old-days sci-fi. Children's bedtime stories (even if they are good) on the Hugo list! What happened???

Re:Great books (maybe), but way out of the genre

[jmerelo]

"To Say Nothing of the Dog" (1999) is FAR from hard sci-fi, I was quite dissapointed with it and put it back on
the (my - I had ordered it online) shelf after the first 50 pages or so.
But you are right in that the vast majority rates as the good-old-days sci-fi. Children's bedtime stories (even
if they are good) on the Hugo list! What happened???

I found it quite funny, and well-built. Not as good as the "Doomsday book", but very good anyways. It definitely is _not_ sci-fi; it's rather a time-travel farce.

Re:Great books (maybe), but way out of the genre

[rgmoore]

Children's bedtime stories (even if they are good) on the Hugo list!

Suggesting that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is just a "children's bedtime story" is severely underrates it. This is not some lightweight bit of fluff but a serious work, and it most certainly belongs on the short list of the best fiction of any genre published last year. It's reasonable to question its qualification as a work of science fiction, but in terms of quality of writing it is certainly qualified for consideration.

Did anybody else notice...

[joedoe]

that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won a Hugo for Dramatic Presentation? Yeah, there's hard SF for sure...

joedoe

You have to read the whole series!!

[LostScorp88]

It is totally true that the first book is, for the most part, a simple children's book. However, as you read the rest of the series, the story becomes much more complex and is full of surprises and an unexpected amount of darkness. By the time you get to the fourth (which shouldn't take long - they are so well written that the pages just fly by) I GUARANTEE you will have a very different impression of the series, and you will be as excited for Books 5, 6, and 7 as I am! I agree that the fourth book is the first one worthy of an award. It is really on the level of much of adult fantasy/sci-fi. The series is extremely well-developed and flows smoothly between the four books. The characters get more and more complex as does the plot. You really cannot get a conception of this series unless you read the whole thing.

So was/is the Hobbit

[Hertog]

... According to interviews with J.R.R. Tolkien.
But let me guess... Because they are childrens books, you won't read them...
Heck! You won't read at all... Will you?

Harry Potter vs. Larry

[arktkbear]

I'm surprised slashdot readers haven't picked up on the Larry Potter trademark issue. There's a big lawsuit concerning a woman who wrote Larry Potter books back in the 80s vs. Warner Bros. in which Warner Bros. are sueing her for copyright infringement.. forget that her books were written 10+ years before Harry Potter existed. Check this out for reference: Will the Real Potter Please Stand Up?

Re:Harry Potter vs. Larry

[khoward1]

We did pick up on it. In several places. Don't listen to what the big media outlets say; they're just jumping on the bandwagon. The fact is, Nancy Stouffer's muggles have nothing to do with J.K. Rowling's. Read this if you don't believe me.

Hugo's Are A Popularity Contest

[Ranger]

The Hugo's are voted on by fans who shell out the bucks to vote and those who shell out the bucks to nominate. But you can only buy one vote, your own. Some unscrupulous person(s) tried to subvert that process in 1989 by nominating The Guardsman by P.J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton. The authors of said book whose nomination was hastily withdrawn claimed no knowledge of the sequentially numbered money orders. And as I recall reading at the time suspicion was aroused when all the envelopes had the same postmark showing they originated from the same post office. I don't know remember if any changes were made to the Hugo voting system, but it was interesting to learn how it all works.

not the only one..

[davey23sol]

Harry Potter is also amazingly similar to "The Books of Magic," written by Neil Gaiman.

I don't have a URL to send you to, but it's a famous Vertigo mini-series. It's about an orphaned boy who finds out he has amazing talents in magic, and is visited by a number of known D.C. magical rhelm characters (like John Constantine, Death, others) to help him learn about it.

The main character even LOOKS the same as Harry Potter, with the round glasses and such. For a while there was a rumor the Neil Gaiman was going to sue, but he says he thinks that the similarities are just amazing coincidences, as the the two characters were thought up at the same time (early 90s) in approximately the same place (England).

Re:not the only one..

[Phillip2]

"Harry Potter is also amazingly similar to "The Books of Magic," written by Neil Gaiman. "

As Neil Gaiman lacks almost of all of the talent of Rowling for producing a tightly plotted, funny and moving book however, I think the similarities are pretty irrelevant.

Harry Potter is not novel. Its the way that its wrapped up that makes it good.

Phil

Re:not the only one..

[Coryoth]

You have actually read some of Gaiman's work right?

Jedidiah

Re:not the only one..

[Phillip2]

"You have actually read some of Gaiman's work right? "

Yes. And seen it on the TV. It's okay but to my mind misses the mark.

Phil

Novelette winner online

[Trickster Coyote]

The Hugo award winner for novelette, "Millennium Babies" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, can be read online in its entirity at the Asimov's Science Fiction website.

TC

And it deserves it...

[OSgod]

I consumed all 4 books -- excellent writing -- starting with simple (book 1) to some more detailed (book 4) and longer... These books are truly great.

Are they as deep as some other also rans? No. They are hundreds of times more successful than almost any other book today -- fantasy, sci fi or other.

They inspired me to go back to the classics -- Tolkein. They are in a class all their own.

34 year's old and loving HP.

Has no one else noticed this?

[para_droid]

There has been much fuss made about the alleged 'satanic' magic portrayed in the Harry Potter books, but people seem to have overlooked some less obvious but more controversial points:

Harry and his friends regularly drink 'butterbeer', often in a public house. The adult wizards are present, and it appears to have no intoxicating affects, so one is forced to conclude that, despite the name, like 'ginger beer', it does not contain alcohol. This is until the forth book, when a 'house elf' is found to be drunk on butterbeer. Harry is heard to remark 'it's not very strong'. Not once does any character remark on the strangeness of 11 year olds drinking alcoholic beer. Hermione and Harry were raised by non-wizard families, so if the 'wizarding world' allows its children to become alcoholics, these two would certainly be aware of the cultural taboo and illegality of this. Other difference between wizard and non-wizard ways of thinking are always pointed out, yet this one is not, implying that it is a normal situation in our, real, non-wizard world.

Harry's platonic friend, Hermione, is 14 years old when she begins a relationship with an 18 year old Bulgarian sportsman, Krum. Being a children's book, there are no descriptions of sexuality of any sort, and so some might think their relationship was 'innocent'. However, there are no descriptions of Harry beginning to masturbate either, so are we to assume that by age 14 he has not entered puberty? No, of course Harry masturbates, but such details are left out because they are not appropriate for the readership. Similar omissions must have been made regarding Hermione's sexual encounters, for what 18 year old man would have a 6 month relationship with a 14 year old girl if she did not give sexual pleasure? This situation is not uncommon in modern day Britain. Stand at the gates of any school in the country and you will see many such young slappers meeting their adult boyfriends. But should this activity be portrayed in a children's book, in a favourable light, by a supposedly intelligent, independent girl?

Hermione has slightly protruding front teeth. In order to seduce her older stallion, she uses magic to perform cosmetic surgery on these teeth. Krum is suitably impressed, and Hermione gets her sperm donor. Cheaper and easier than dental work perhaps, but magic is not available in the real world, so again, do we really want to encourage young girls to seek cosmetic surgery, merely to make themselves more successful sluts?

Re:Has no one else noticed this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.. you are way out in left field.

They're european, the kids start drinking before they can walk. Europe doesn't have the alchohol hang ups that the US does (hence no problems with teenage drinking in Europe).

What 18 year-old would wait 6 months? I'm sure plenty would. And anyways, its a novel, so you have to suspend your disbelief a little. ;)

Maybe he was impressed with her magical skills more than how she looked with her fixed teeth.

So according to you every book about a teenage boy has to include an obligatory paragraph to masturbation? umm... ok.

Re:Has no one else noticed this?

[damiam]

Harry and his friends regularly drink 'butterbeer', often in a public house. The adult wizards are present, and it appears to have no intoxicating affects, so one is forced to conclude that, despite the name, like 'ginger beer', it does not contain alcohol. This is until the forth book, when a 'house elf' is found to be drunk on butterbeer. Harry is heard to remark 'it's not very strong'. Not once does any character remark on the strangeness of 11 year olds drinking alcoholic beer.

It never says the beer is alchoholic. Maybe the some chemical/magic used in it affects elves differently from wizards. Or, maybe the kids are served a nonalchoholic version while the elves aren't. Besides, the kids don't drink until they're 13 and have written permission from their parent/guardian.

Harry's platonic friend, Hermione, is 14 years old when she begins a relationship with an 18 year old Bulgarian sportsman, Krum. Being a children's book, there are no descriptions of sexuality of any sort, and so some might think their relationship was 'innocent'.

How do you know it wasn't? They never would have had a chance to meet intimatly anyway. Maybe they just had a mutual crush that never went anywhere.

However, there are no descriptions of Harry beginning to masturbate either, so are we to assume that by age 14 he has not entered puberty? No, of course Harry masturbates, but such details are left out because they are not appropriate for the readership.

It's perfectly normal and rather common for a 14-year-old not to have entered puberty, or at least not to have gotten very far in it. And why do you assume he masturbates? 5% of American teenage boy's don't (yes, I know he's not American but that's the only statistic I have). He could be one of them.

Re:Has no one else noticed this?

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Where the hell are my moderation points when I need them? The above needs to be moderated down as a Troll, and one of the AC's had the right answer and needs to be moderated up.

To repeat the AC's point: European law and attitudes regarding alcohol consumption are different from that in the U.S. It's *legal* and normal to drink beer or wine at age 13 in many European countries, including Germany and France, and I wouldn't be surprised if England was the same. Prohibition and its legacy of restricted-drinking laws are an uniquely American perversion.

I can't believe I'm responding to such an obvious troll...

Defending this choice...

[NovaChild]

I have read nearly every book on the list of Hugo award winning novels, and greatly enjoyed the vast majority of them. I agree that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is not very typical of the group - but it is VERY worthy of the award.

I would not say this of any of the others in the series. Though I highly enjoy them all, the last one is DEFINITELY the best, the most complex, and the most interesting. It is a wonderful work - and it convinced kids from 7 years old and up to read a 700+ page book.

Frankly, this novel is my favorite work of FANTASY, excepting, of course, the Lord of the Rings. J. K. Rowling actually wrote a complex, well-written novel that appeals to children as well as adults (and adolescents.)

Plus, the Hugo people probably know that this work will bring much popularity to fantasy in general, and, through the connection in the mind of the publich with fantasy and SF, increase the popularity of Science Fiction.

Not for too much longer

[phillymjs]

They are pulling kids away from the idiot box (t.v.) and getting them to read in droves.

Well, that will stop once the movie and its probable sequels come out. The kids only read now because there is no alternative. Once the movies are out, then it'll be back to that old Summer Reading technique: Why read the book(s) when you can see the movie(s) based on the books?

Indeed. Why spend hours upon hours of quiet, immersed in a book, when you can sit in a theater for 90 minutes and be treated to deafening digital sound effects? Why use your own imagination, when you can just disconnect your brain and absorb some Hollywood special effects?

Furthermore, the Harry Potter books have become just a stupid fad, like those dumb Tamagotchi things were a couple years ago. Those kids you saw on the news lined up at Barnes & Noble with mommy at midnight to buy the last book, wanted it solely for bragging rights the next day at school. They then most likely blew through the book just so they could brag about being the first of their schoolyard chums to finish it. Reading like that, like a chore that must be finished, is a far cry from the reading for pleasure that most of us know.

~Philly

Re:Not for too much longer

[MtViewGuy]

Wrongo. :-)

What makes the Harry Potter books such fun reads is the very fact the novels have flat-out great scene descriptions, something that really sparks the imagination of readers. That's why I find these novels to be always so re-readable.

Anyway, Pottermania in terms of new books will explode again when the fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, comes out in March 2002. Expect at least a 6.5 to 7 million initial hardback print run worldwide for the English-language versions whenit comes out then.

SF == Speculative Fiction

[Danny Rathjens]

That solves any SciFi vs Fantasy debates, :)

previous winners are all science fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

You could make a strong case for "Man In High Castle" not being Science Fiction.

Re:previous winners are all science fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

how can you say that Man in the High Castle was not SF?

does everything have to be set in outerspace or the future for it to be Sci-Fi?

sure, I'll agree PKD's works aren't really classified as Sci-Fi (well most of his short stories probably are..bot not his novels) but the issues that were dealt with in Man in the High Castle and the setting of what might have been makes it appropriate enough to win a Hugo and I personally think that his Hugo is one of the only deserving ones that have been given.

I still think that either Ubik or Confessions of a Crap Artist should have recieved some award..

Definition of Science Fiction

[Artie FM]

"The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along...The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences."

-- John Campbell, 1966

"'Hard' science fiction ... probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism."

-- Jack Williamson

A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method. To make this definition cover all science fiction (instead of "almost all") it is necessary only to strike out the word "future."

Robert A. Heinlein, 1981

Quotes from http://www.panix.com/~gokce/sf_defn.html

Re:ADD (off-topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

ADD is a myth. It's simply the disease-du-jour that lazy people latch onto rather than getting their ass in gear and working hard.

Sorry, but it's no myth-- as evidenced by the fact that Ritalin and other ADD drugs have an effect on sufferers that they do not have on "normal" people.

Is it actually a "disorder" rather than a condition that falls within normal human variation? The jury is still out.

Is it over-diagnosed and overtreated? Definitely.

Incidentally, your labeling of sufferers as "lazy" is an insult to the people who have to work about twice as hard as you do to learn the same material. Has it occurred to you that frustration with trying hard and always failing might lead to discouragement?

- MFN

I guess it was just a crappy year for SF

[Rat's_ass_donor]

I have no cross-genre issues. But I can't imagine that this could *possibly* approach the quality of, say, Hyperion. Or The Man in the High Castle.

(And no, I haven't read any HP books. I'm assuming that they are similar to Ursula K. LeGuin's "EarthSea" books)

No stigma to label "children's book"

[Von Rex]

Who said anything about children's books being "bad"?

The House at Pooh Corner and the Wind in the Willows are two of the best books I've ever read, and I'd throughly enjoy reading them again even though I'm 33. As you say, they're "good, timeless stories" and they don't have "adult" themes. But they're still children's books. Just like Harry Potter. There's no stigma to it.

Harry Potter pr0n

[roozbeh]

I came to a MSNBC story about Harry Potter pr0n some days ago. You can read it at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/621503.asp

What about the flaws?

[claytronics]

I'm surprised that the fourth book in particular would win a Hugo. In comparison to the third book, it was full of plot holes and tended to meander a bit. It does feel a bit bloated as a book, which she herself admits.

--- BEGIN SPOILER WARNING ---

1) there is the problem with the order of people coming out of the wand (a well-publicized flaw)

2) Prof. "Moody's" assisting of Harry Potter in the first two challenges makes no sense, as they have no bearing on whether he will be the first to touch the cup in the third challenge (only on whether he will win in overall points, which is irrelevant to his purpose)

3) Voldemort's plan is unnecessarily complex. Why not portkey a brick and get Harry to touch that?

--- END SPOILER WARNING ---

Re:What about the flaws?

[rufusdufus]

1) they fixed
2) Fake Moody helped him so he wouldnt be injured and disqualified from continuing to the rigged round.
3) You havent learned a thing in Evil School have you? Dr Evil would be disappointed in you. If your plans are not diabolically complex you've done it wrong. Also, there *is* a point, and that is that certain magical protections were removed inside the maze (Moody's idea) so they could attack Potter with impunity--Remember Hogwarts has lots of enchantments and charms protecting the students, including one prohibiting teleportation.

Re:What about the flaws?

[fenix down]

STILL SPOILERS

#2 does make some sense, since the order you start the maze depends on how many points you have up to that point. I think the real bad thing about that part was the unessecary audience manipulation. It was kind of a cop-out way to drill it in to you to trust Moody. She probably could have gotten rid of that and let the invisible-on-the-stairway scene serve the same purpose. I would say to just let the other character's opinions of him do it, but real little kids might need him to DO something nice to trust him.

Anyway, I agree that the third book was better, though. The handling of the time travel actually might have deserved a Hugo. (she did a better job than First Contact, anyway)

DONE SPOILERS

Publicity

[Cokeboy]

Isn't it entirely possible they gave the Hugo to Harry Potter to build publicity for the Hugo awards. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed all 4 HP books, but I agree it doesn't fall in the Sci-Fi category.

Re: A Better Choice (for the rest of us)

[Krilomir]

The ending of The Amber Spyglass is not for kids at all, and the books are much deeper and thought-provoking than the Harry Potter books. Phillip Pullman's books seem like children's books at first, but that's only the language in which the books are written. You'll realize that they're really intended for adults, especially as you get into this trilogy.

The Harry Potter books are good because everyone can read and understand them, including those who haven't read a book in their whole life. Harry Potter books also don't have any deeper meaning, message or discussion. J.K. Rowling's books are simply well-told stories.

Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass might be the perfect gift for someone who has read all his Harry Potter books though :)

The second death

[Anonymous Coward]

Gehenna! That's where these demonic books and it creators and readers will go shortly. Mmmm... eternal desctruction!

Just out of place

[tom_conte]

Sure, the Harry Potters books are nice, fun, inventive, in a distinctly British kind of way, definitely gravitating somewhere in the Tolkien galaxy. Yes, I could imagine Harry reading The Hobbit. But does Harry relate to the worlds of Neuromancer or Hyperion? I'm not saying Harry Potter does not deserve the Hugo, I'm merely pointing out that he's definitely a bit out of place among the likes of Ender, Case, or David Brin's monk... Er, apes.

Harry Potter subliminally rigged?

[rufusdufus]

I have had weird Hogwarts dreams ever since I read the Harry Potter books 3 months ago. The books arent *that* good but I felt compelled to read them. My sister-in-law says the same thing.
Is it possible that Mrs Rowling (or her nefarious corporate controllers) are putting some sort of subliminal messaging or 'neural linguistic programming' into the book to get readers hooked?

Re:Harry Potter subliminally rigged?

[t_hunger]

What's your definition of a good book? Mine is that I feel compelled to read on... that's why I like Harry Potter.

I read all of them, and I think they are getting better with each volume: Harry is growing up, and so are the books. The Gobblet of Fire is definitly not a kid's book anymore (people die for no reason at all, no happy end, ...), we'll see how the next one will be.
So if you only know the first one, get the last and read that too. That's the one that won the Hugo (well, the category is of course all wrong, but the book is worth an award IMHO), and rightly so. I know some kids that started to read J.R.R. Tolkien and others after Harry Potter, although they said those book were just too think to spend there time on earlier this year. Any book that does that is worth an award!

Regards,
Tobias

Re:Harry Potter subliminally rigged?

[core_dump_0]

Subliminal messages in books? Never heard of that.

Carping

[hwestiii]

If people are going to carp about Harry Potter winning for the novel, they should look down the list of other winners. How about "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" for best film? That should give them a field day.

Without touching the genre issue...

[vocaljess]

I just have to say that the writing in all of the Harry Potter books is not worth such an award. Putting J.K. Rowling up there with such wordsmiths as Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and more demeans the value of the award. Ellison has commented many times that he felt honored to receive the Hugo, but I wonder what he will feel now? The Harry Potter stories are very fun, great for kids, but to be frank are very generic and have stolen elements from every other good work of fantasy ever written. They are formula novels at the very least, and the only extraordinary thing about them is their marketing scheme.

A comic book in novel form

[AppyPappy]

I was terribly unimpressed with Potter. I suppose a kid might enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the Happy Hollisters but the whole thing seemed lifeless at the end.

Now it's a business. Harry Potter stuff. It doesn't get kids to read as much as it gets them to buy stuff. Yeah, we needed that.

I'll save my deads for the Rapping Harry Potter CD and the new book "Harry Potter and the Invisible Trip to the Girls Locker Room".

Re:ADD (off-topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really funny is that ADD is correlated with above-average intelligence. For many kids, they learn much faster than average, but have a hell of a time trying to focus on the mundane tasks of school. The anonymous troll is probably jealous that kids with a "disorder" outperform him when they choose, but most of the time they're too bored to bother.

It's a FAN AWARD!!!

[warpeightbot]

HEY!!!

If you'd bother to go read about the Hugo and how it is given before going ballistic, you'd know that the Hugos are nominated and voted on by the membership of Worldcon.

In other words, the fans did it.

It's a big fat popularity contest, and obviously the folks going to Philcon this year thought that Harry Potter was the best thing out there from last year (which was, admittedly, a horrible year for SF and fantasy in print).

If you want to bitch about it, pony up your $35, join ConJose for this time next year, nominate somebody, and vote your ballot. You don't vote, you got no reason to spam Taco's hard drive with whining.

warpeightbot, member, ConJose, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention
So let it be written, so let it be done.

Some of the other Hugo winner are available free

[Mike McCune]

Fictionwise has several Hugo nominees available for a short time, including the winners for Novella, novelette and short story:

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/freebooks.htm

I agree that the Harry Potter is not the usual hard SciFi that usually wins the Hugo but it is the fans that are voting...

Re:s/RingWorld/Known Space/

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can say is

SMEG OFF!

Word Smiths? LOL

[rufusdufus]

You say Isaac Asimov was a "word smith"? He was a horrible hack, and pretty much admitted it too.
Stolen elements? Fantasy has all been stolen since before the days of the Ring stories...and I'm talking about the Ring of the Nibelung here not Tolkien! Mythology goes back before recorded history, and nearly all of the archetypes and formulas used in stories today come from ancient days.
You said it all when you said "The Harry Potter stoires are very fun"...now how many books written in the past decade can you say that about honestly?

Re:check other categories (short fiction, etc.)

[Xtifr]

Ignoring the fact that several[1] of those novels barely qualify as SF (let alone "hard" SF), you're ignoring the other categories of Hugo, i.e. novella, short story, etc.

Some counterexamples:

1997 best novella: Blood of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin

1995 best original artwork: Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud

1991 best short story: Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson

1991 best dramatic presentation: Edward Scissorhands

1982 best novelette: Unicorn Variation by Roger Zelazny

1971 best novella: Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

1958 best short story: Or All the Seas with Oysters by Avram Davidson

And these are just a sampling of winners that I know to be fantasy. There are many more I suspect may be as well. True, there is a strong tendency to choose SF over fantasy for the Hugos, but it's never been a rule.

[1] To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, Hyperion, The Snow Queen, Dreamsnake, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and Lord of Light are all on the border between SF and Fantasy, and several other entries are clearly soft SF. Note that Larry Niven argues that all time travel tales are fantasy.

Hugo is fan award

[Xtifr]

The Hugo is not given by the publishers. It's a popularity contest, much like the /. polls (and about as scientific).

And if you don't like the results, ask yourself this: why didn't I register and vote?

Re:Hugo is fan award

[Dolly_Llama]

i nominate CowboyNeal for next year's Hugo.

Harry Potter good for a light read

[N3P1u5U17r4]

I just finished the first Harry Potter book and I must say that it was much better than I expected judging by the corny cover pictures. It felt very much like a light version of Ender's Game.

Harry Potter is hardly a literary achievement

[TrollFeeder]

I think it's a big marketing thing. There are lots of better childrens' stories. The only difference is that Harry Potter somehow got a spark early on and picked up a strange momentum, which the marketers wisely jumped on and milked for all it was worth. Maybe the magic stuff does have a kind of allure, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the author could have done a much, much better job with the stories themselves.

I've read all of the Potter books released to date, mostly as light reading for the bus ride when heavier material can't hold my attention. These books just zip by - it's like a cartoon series in novel form. I read them because I kept hearing so much about them - and because once the Christians started being horrified by "the Occult" descriptions, and I saw this Onion article, I couldn't not read them.

But a literary award? The only reason I'd do that would be to piss off the Christians (and it'd almost be worth it...)

They are very cartoony. The four books released so far have an Episode One feel to them, like when the kid yells "now THIS is pod racing!" Harry's arch-enemy is this brat named Draco Malfoy from a family of evil wizards, but he never seems to be a threat. Like Biff in Back to the Future, every scrape ends in Malfoy under the proverbial shitpile moaning "I hate manure". It's like, can't something bad happen to the hero? Shouldn't he have to face some challenge and get a victory he truely earns, rather than simply lucking out because he was born "the One"? Maybe the next three books will get a little darker as he gets older, I dunno.

Hugo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished "The Stars my Destination" and "The Forever Machine" and I can't believe they gave the award to such crap in the 50s.

Nothing new here.

other categories

[Xtifr]

The previous winners for best novel are all (arguably) science fiction, but fantasy stories have won Hugos as far back as 1958.

Drone, I stike at the heart of thee.

[PhilosopherKing]

You sir, are a troll. I wanna feed the troll. Exter University will be much worse off corrupting itself to corporate ideals, rather than upholding the concepts of education, inquiry, and social conscience. There are enough corporate technical colleges (college is used loosely here) to produce all the cookie-cutter worker bees needed. For humanities future we need as many institutions as possible that don't consider thier greatest assets to have a picture, denomination, and security strip.

Refrain from comment? Not likely

[Rocketboy]

Gnu only knows what the Hugo voters were thinking. I'd just like to know what sh!t they were on 'cause that was some nasty stuff and I don't want anywhere near it...

People can relate.

[BrookHarty]

Kids can relate to Harry Potter books. (Ok this has been said in many posts but keep reading..)

When I was teen, I picked up a series called "The Stainless Steel Rat". The book was about a kid who wanted to live outside the system, living in true freedom. (Who hasn't thought about that?) As kid who was very into computers in the early 80's and not many people around with the same hobbies as me, I could relate to the freedom level. Calling BBSs across the USA, writing programs, emailing people, my world was a little different then kids at my school.

The series was about a kid who wanted to become a professional thief. He wanted to live in total freedom. Placed sometime in the future when there was no crime. (Other than parking tickets..)

Here's the summary from "The Stainless Steel rat is born"
This thrilling volume in the saga of James diGriz explores his humble beginnings as a petty criminal on the backward planet of Bit O' Heaven, and his rapid rise to the most wanted man on a dozen worlds. And it contains the never-before-told story of the fabled arch criminal known as The Bishop, who tutored young Jim in the higher arts of crime and gave him his legendary nickname. A rousing, rollicking, often touching tale, A Stainless Steel Rat is Born is a stirring portrait of a man who learned to laugh at the laws that bind ordinary men.

Its not the crime as such that makes the story so attractive, it how people take things at granted, and how 1 man thinking outside of the box can get things done.

Must read for any sci-fi enthusiasts. Check out the information at Harry Harrisons site. He has a link to a full SSR story.

Popularity Contest

[Mr.Mustard]

It's ridiculous; obviously the Hugo is becoming a popularity meter like the Oscar.

The Hugo Award is a popularity contest. To quote from the page:

...and determined by nominations from and a popular vote of the membership of [the World Science Fiction Society].

Re:Popularity Contest

[Ralph Bearpark]

So, the Hugo award winner is decided by a bunch of people that generally like SF. Only this time they decided Harry Potter was better. Sounds fair.

Maybe next year they might be getting worried about their weight (due to their excessive reading of SF books all day) and choose a really excellent Low Fat Diet book to award a Hugo to.

Regards, Ralph.

There were no Larry Potter books

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Potter appeared in some little activity booklets by Stouffer, which received hardly any distribution. They did not appear in the
novel she wrote about the Muggles.

Further, Stouffer's Muggles are post-nuclear-apocalypse doughy babylike post-humans.

Boy, sounds *just* like Harry Potter. Not.

OT:Overrated?

[Reality Master 101]

Economics deals with models and these models only rarely take into account long-term future. Your kid is basically nothing but a risky investment which may or may not pay off.

Actually, there's a less cynical, less romantic and ultimately more logical explanation. Economics deals with the transfer and creation of wealth, as measured by money. The GDP measurements have a very real purpose, and that is knowing how much money to print (very basically). We want the cash supply to roughly track wealth creation.

When I mow my lawn, I am doing necessary work, but I haven't really contributed anything to the economy. When I hire someone to do my work, I am initiating a transfer of wealth from myself to the person I hired. It's the same situation with mothers.

I am the first person to recognize the contributions of woman who care for their children rather than (opinion alert) selfishly throw them into daycare (end opinion), but we shouldn't screw with economic models for the sake of politics and making people feel good.

To avoid losing karma (even though I've explained economics ON-topic before), I'm posting AC.

I've got Karma to spare. :)

Re:OT:Overrated?

[greenrd]

I didn't suggest that we should. I implied that we should call a spade a spade - parenting is hard work, ergo parents are workers.

Re:OT:Overrated?

[Reality Master 101]

I didn't suggest that we should.

Well, you brought economics, economies and economists into the discussion, which seems to imply that you take issue with how economists measure economies.

But if you want to limit the discussion to dictionary definitions of "workers", then your point is somewhat invalid also. When we talk about "workers" in the economy, that implies "paid workers". Otherwise, the whole word becomes meaningless, since by definition everything in life is "work" of some sort, including breathing.

Wot no Culture?

[ShootThemLater]

A Harry Potter novel winning is no big deal for me given that nothing by Iain M. Banks has ever won. Kind-of devalues the award for me...

Some people have no taste :-)

Re:Stephen King, author, dead at 54

[mrbill]

you've been doing this troll so long, shouldnt you adjust it to say "dead at 55" by now?

All a Hugo award means...

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, pay attention. From the linked site:

"The 2001 Hugo Awards, voted by members of the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention..."
Are you getting the picture? This award is based on *popular opinion*, not any objective measure or professional criteria. Of course Harry Potter or Crouching Tiger can win, it only needs to be nominated and voted on by Worldcon members / attendees. Try actually READING the content that is linked to once in a while.

Speaker...

[OSgod]

was excellant -- but the next few books in the series killed it for me. He lost readability.

In the Potter series book 4 was an excellant and logical 4 -- following 3, 2 and 1. It was more complex, more compelling, darker and longer. It sucked you in. It manipulated the reader.

I'd give speaker for the dead a 3 out of 4. HP 4 I'd give a 3.75 out of 4 -- on the same level as a Tolkein especially when viewed in the series.

science fiction isn't just technology...

[Technodummy]

huge society differences can also be science fiction, like Ursula Le Guin's Dispossessed.

I have to agree with this...

[Technodummy]

I know a lot of kids who have never picked up the habit of reading.

I grew up with computers and videos and the rest of it, but I was encouraged to read (whatever I liked) from an early age... once the habit of reading is there, you start to explore other kinds of material

maybe Harry isn't educational in a strict sense, but if he encourages kids to read Asimov or Tolkien down the track, I think he's worth it

Why buy them hardback when you can get softcover?

[SuperKendall]

I refused to buy three and four in hardback as well, I couldn't believe the US publishers were so greedy as to even now still offer three only in hardback - so I bought mine from England for not much more than the cost of the softcover books here, even with shipping!

I'm not sure how the "adult versions" they refer to differ from the normal versions - perhaps a bit extra content?

Like when Jethro Tull won a heavy metal grammy

[Mandelbrute]

It's like when Jethro Tull won the grammy for best heavy metal albumn! (I think it was "Glass Spiders"). Good music but the catagory didn't fit.

With the story and cast there should be an Oscar or two in the upcoming movie - even though it wasn't made in Hollywood.

Re:Like when Jethro Tull won a heavy metal grammy

[jonese_67]

What are you talking about? The flute IS a heavy me'al instrument! At least that's what the full-page ad in Rolling Stone said a month after Jethro Tull won the coveted award.

good stuff, but somewhat overhyped

[danny]

See my review of the first Harry Potter novel.

Danny.

Re:good stuff, but somewhat overhyped

[drivers]

The award wasn't FOR the "first Harry Potter novel."

Agreed. Also Verner Vinge for something different

[FreeUser]

Greg Egan is brilliant, and his Diaspora rates as one of my all time favorites.

Another excellent author, who manages to capture alien worldviews and put together a complex universe of wonder and suprise is Verner Vinge, in particular A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep.

His concept of differing physical laws dependent on location in space (implied indirectly to be a function of the mean gravitational density of the region) is AFAIK quite original. Just as you cannot have supersonic craft underwater, so too can you not have superluminal craft in the slow depths of space (which our Earth happens to be in). Actually you may be able to have supersonic submersibles, but at present it appears to be impractical, and it serves to illustrate the concept that technologies which work great in certain regions of space break down completely in regions which are "deeper."

As for villians, his (human) Emergents are one of the most chilling (un)civilizations I've yet seen described, and his description of transcendent evil in A Fire Upon the Deep has interesting implications (and applications) to the real world, and to real world ethics.

Random Thoughts

[rfisher]

To me, "hard science fiction" is fiction with realistic science/technology in it. For example, almost everything I've read by Arthur C. Clarke qualifies.

The Harry Potter series? Very derivitive, but I try not to hold that against anyone. All great art is derivative to some extent. Personally, Quidditch seems like such an unlikely game (with or without magic) that it detracts from the books. In any case, I've enjoyed them. I also like that the style grows with Harry.

Let the Hugo voters choose whatever they will. Personally, I don't think art is a competition. I'm not ranking all the fiction/authors on my shelf. I just like them all.

Not much of a case

[morven2]

"Wahh! I had characters named almost the same in a crappy book I published ages ago that sank without trace! Waaahhh! I want MONEY!!!!"

Re:reading

[rigau]

I said MOST scifi not ALL. My logic is not flawed. There are books worth reading and books not worth reading. Deciding what makes a good book good, well that is complicated and i never said otherwise. Each person will device their own method.

Surely kids should get the chance to develop their own taste in books. Yeah instead of having stupid awards telling them that Harry Potter is the book to read this year or Amazon saying it is good because it sold the most copies last week.

Why would it be bad to read any book?

This is very much debatable just like there are movies that pretty much seem to make you dumber just to watch them there are books that make you stupider just to read them. However even if that were not the case the simple fact that time is not infinite for human beings and that we must choose what we do shows you that devoting time to reading garbage will take time away from reading good things. This being said i think i will stop reading slashdot for good :P

Comment

[MajorBurrito]

I'll refrain from commenting...

It seems like everyone is surprised that Harry Potter won a Hugo. Why? I think everyone is forgetting that the Hugo is a People's Choice type of award. The books are quite enjoyable to read - I'm not surprised that the people chose to honor it. Now, if it were to win a Nebula Award (chosen by members of SFWA), then I would be stunned...

Now in paperback

[JPMH]

And as of this weekend The Amber Spyglass is now out in paperback (in the UK anyway).

I can't tell you if it's any good -- it's sitting on the table in front of me at the moment, next up to be read -- but the first two were fascinating. Strongly recommended.

Re:Now in paperback

[ghira]

I was _really_ disappointed by the Amber
Spyglass. I thought "Northern Lights"
was superb (with minor flaws that didn't
matter too much). "The Subtle Knife" was
good, but not as good, but book 3 really
really annoyed me. There are astonishing
changes in personality, throwaway one-liners
to completely change the meaning of previous
events ("oh, I was lying when I said X") and
so on.

March 2002??!?

[zzyzx]

Where did you get that information?

Former Potter Skeptic

[ackthpt]

Certainly they are award winning, I'll be amongst the first and many to say that. My first thoughts when I heard all the hype was, "What is all this crap about anyway?" I picked up the books and figured I'd read them (voracious reader that I am, it took a few weeks) and then give the books away to a library or school. Well... I still got 'em. I was absolutely riveted by Goblet of Fire. Clearly Rowling's writing ability improved as she continued and Goblet was very interesting and gripping (although the map from an earlier book is what I would put at the top of my birthday list :)

Harry Potter is Devil Worship

[Bob_Robertson]

While I disagree with that statement, you can get the "facts" over at WorldNetDaily:

"Potter books: Wicked witchcraft? New documentary claims tales lead kids to the occult"

And the "documentary" video, of course.

It is to giggle.

Bob-

New ideas?

[DragonMagic]

Well, one of the other nominees this year for the Hugo Novel was "Calculating God" by Robert J. Sawyer.

Aliens have come to Earth to speak to a paleontologist to find out about Earth's fossil records, to prove the existence of God, who has been present in sentient planets throughout the galaxy.

Pretty original. At least it's not another novel about dinos on an island.

Re:what crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The first Harry Potter book was a shiny little jellybean, but that's it. And it's been downhill ever since. Fomulaic and cliche ridden to be sure but not so your average 8-year-old would notice. Just right for the thundercats and pokemon crowd. Hugo quality? No way.

I am not sure of the argument.

[El Camino SS]

Kids are getting back to reading because of Harry Potter? NO. I wouldn't agree at all. There are a few great works out there that will always get attention, and unlike adult contemporary works, most are timeless because the parents themselves read them as children. I would argue that the real problem is that there are not aenough paresnts with free time to read to their kids, because they want to, and parents need enough imagination and willpower to turn off the TV and get to the library. Harry Potter is great. But a single group of novels are not going to save the publishing industry, or make our kids smarter. Trust me, book stores weren't as common like the library when I was a kid, and now everyone goes to Barnes and Noble all the time. I'll worry about the overall lack of reading when I go to a shopping mall and see less than three bookstores there. Books are everywhere, we just forget that kids are in school, and they peer into them all day, and probably don't want to read after a long day of school.

I'd have liked it at 14 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fantasy/SF reader and was given the first HP novel for my last birthday. I thought it would make nice reading as it seemed so successful (although I usually refrain from reading "endless" series of fantasy).
After finishing the book I found it very lacking. The language was far from advanced and the story quite simple. If I'd read it when I was 14 I'd probably have liked it a lot, but today (at 28) my standards are way higher.
Of course, HP can be seen as the main-stream portal to fantasy, but it still isn't that a good book/series! To read for children, yes. To be read by children, yes. To be read by adults, no! To be read by readers of fantasy/SF, NO!
Excuse me for posting a negative opinion, but the Hugo just made it all too this-is-great-as-so-many-people-read-it-although-n o-real-comparison-with-the-genre-has-been-made!

Re:Why buy them hardback when you can get softcove

[Mister J]

AFAIK the only difference is the cover artwork - they were produced so adults could read them on the train to work without it being obvious...

I belive I am qualified to complain...

[BasicBoomstick]

... Because I have read many other new scifi books that were at best original, and at worst exemplary scifi material. Additiopnally, as was mentioned at the top, Harry Potter is not scifi; it is fantasy, and while libraries/bookstores/etc. may mix the two in shelving, they are really vastly different genres. And hell, if fantasy books are fair candidates for the Hugo, then why not consider good groundbreaking fantasy, eg George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, rather than this kiddie bullshit that, I might note, was designed for kiddies, not an adult audience. And on a final note, as far as groundbreaking goes, just how groundbreaking can a wizard-heavy kiddie fantasy book be?


"i dissaprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." -Voltaire

Re:Why buy them hardback when you can get softcove

[Stormie]

I'm not sure how the "adult versions" they refer to differ from the normal versions - perhaps a bit extra content?

No, it's just a different cover. Seriously. So many adults loved the books but said they were embarrassed to read them on the train or whatever because they looked like kids books. So the printed an edition with fairly dull serious looking covers, for uptight adults to read in public. :-)

From your Amazon link: here is the standard edition, and here is the adult edition.

Why not read one and find out?

[orcus]

Instead of dismissing them w/out even having
read any of them - why not try reading one first?
You might *gasp* actually like it.

Re:Why not read one and find out?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are thousands of books published each year.

It's rather snyde for a bunch of shrill fans to claim we can't have an opinion about any of them without reading them.

Face it, there are better books for some people. The whole world isn't a marketing scheme for one publisher.

Re:Why not read one and find out?

[kubrick]

I just tried reading the first few pages of a friend's copy of the first one. Not for me.

At the moment I'm reading a Joseph Heller book, a history of the Knights Templar and a sociological study of white society in South Africa just prior to the fall of apartheid. Harry can't really compete :)

Of course

[phocuz]

If you say things like 'gaga gogo bla bla' to your kid, and then read it stupid books, of course its going to take some time for it to learn how to speak.

If you, on the other hand, like you did, only read real litterature, the child will learn faster. But then you might get in trouble with moralists and such, you think you corrupt your precious baby and take away its childhood from it.

I am thankful to my parents who taught me to read at an early age, and thanks to computer games i was able to read The Hobbit in english (me being swedish) at the age of 8.

So, my tip for you now is to get the kid into games like monkey island, pirates and other games that teach you how to be a law-abiding citizen. =)

SF

[phocuz]

According to Merriam Webster SF is "fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component".

For me, SF requires some kind of scientific approach to the anomalities. The great difference between sf and fantasy (which, imo, should be subgenres of another genre, yet to be defined) i think is that in fantasy, things just happen. People throw fireballs, and thats it.

Science fiction is not just a book set in space, or 'the dark future', but something more. Dont get me wrong, I love star wars, but it is not SF.
And neither are the Harry potter books. Fantasy yes, not sf. The question then is whether or not the two should be counted as one when handing out prices, or if the two genres should be more well-defined.

Re:SF

[markbthomas]

Well, They do have lessons on magic -- one could infer from that that there is at least some scientific or artistic method involved. ;)

Look at the Competition

[Khyron42]

Having the Hugo Program in front of me, I thought I'd shed some light on why Harry Potter won. The other nominees:

"A Storm of Swords" by George R. R. Martin
"Calculating God" by Robert J. Sawyer
"Midnight Robber" by Nalo Hopkinson
"The Sky Road" by Ken Macleod

Keep in mind that the award is for the "best science fiction or fantasy novel published in 2000." There were some grumblings to the effect that separate categories for each should be established, since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" also beat "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "X-Men" for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Potter books are sci-fi...

[rcharbon]

...also known as "skiffy". As the old saying goes, "if you call it sci-fi, you don't read SF".

Nothing _wrong_ with sci-fi, it just carries a 'less-serious' connotation.

Sick of Potter Marketing BS.

[twitter]

No, I have not read the over hyped Potter books. It's hard enough to find time for decent fiction, let alone inverted fantasy like that. Since the first NYT articles three years ago, these books have given me the creeps like "Tickle me Elmo". There may be something there, but it looks like marketing machine unparalleled since JR Tolkien. I'm not going to pay to look into an empty box.

As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.

Are you happy that Barney is promoting dead tree consumption as well? I'm not. It's better to promote quality reading, rather than publishing interests. You say, "Not the best ever (I have a difficult time comparing Ender's Game with Harry Potter), but a good read." I hope you send people to Ender's Game first.

Re:Sick of Potter Marketing BS.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Of course, there's one little flaw in your rant:

Harry Potter is quality reading. That's why he's so popular; the books are a damn good read, for kids, teens, and adults who aren't too stuck on themselves to read "children's books".

You, sir, appear to be suffering from the common elitist delusion "If it's popular, it can't possibly be good!" Au contraire, if it is wildly, incredibly, unexpectedly popular, there's a good chance that it is good--in a free market, advertising and hype can not counteract the realization that what one is watching or reading is utter crap beyond a certain point. Hype can get me in to see (e.g.) "Lara Croft" the first time--it won't get me to watch it twice, or buy it on video, or to tell my friends it's a good flick.

Books depend on word-of-mouth promotion and repeat buyers (of the same author) more than most other entertainment media. If Harry Potter had sucked little green toads, no one much would have heard of the first book, and there wouldn't have been others. If it had been just another so-so formula series, it wouldn't be grabbing the imaginations of kids who don't normally read!

I didn't start reading the Harry Potter novels because of the hype; in fact, like many here, I was skeptical because of the hype. My daughter liked them, and she thought they were very good, and I read the first one because she said it was very good--and I found out for myself that it was good, and read the rest of the series. Now my mother's reading them, and my dad, and they somehow got my elderly great-aunt interested in reading them, because Mom was so enthusiastic about them.

You can't buy that kind of hype. It's earned.

Re:Sick of Potter Marketing BS.

[Hilary Rosen]

Not all that is marketed is bullshit.

I think the Harry Potter stories are good books. They are enjoyable to read, and make you think. My children aren't ready for them yet, being more interested in Thomas the Tank Engine and anything with pictures of animals respectively, but when they are the HP books will be on the shelf for them to discover.

Re: A Better Choice (for the rest of us)

[cmpalmer]

Ya know, I'm sure this comment will be taken wrong and I will be flamed for saying it, but I think the Pullman books may be a bit too controversial for many young readers. I read them and enjoyed the hell out of them, but I don't think my daughter (who has read the Harry Potter books numerous times) is ready for the theology behind Pullman's books.

I'm not a very religious person (skeptic), but I know a lot of religious people that might severely curtail their children's reading if they have read the Pullman books. I know that literature is a great forum for "dangerous" ideas. The HP phenomena has been a great boost for children's reading around the world, despite an opposition to the occult content of the books. Pullman's portrayal of the Christian God as a dottering old man and Lucifer as an hero/anti-hero was a bit disturbing, particularly for a children's book.

Go ahead and flame me, but I'm saving them for when my kids get older and I'm glad I read them before I gave them to my daughter.

Couldn't agree more...

[freeBill]

...as much as I like Shockwave Rider, The Dispossessed may prove to be one of the great works in all of literature. Certainly it will be one of the most influential in literature, combining (as it does) the utopian novel and the dystopia into a single genre. It is hard to imagine anyone writing a utopian novel in the future without admitting the possibility that the utopia described therein could be corrupted by overzealous supporters.

And the influence may extend into government and into all of our lives. If the so-called "Third Way" so popular in politics throughout the world today continues to grow in governmental influence, The Dispossessed may one day be credited with reviving it. It was popular in the late '40s and early '50s when centrists tried to promote Sweden as the "middle way." It wasn't until after the book's publication that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton began to move their parties to the center.

Re:Couldn't agree more...

[hearingaid]

... The Dispossessed may one day be credited with reviving it. It was popular in the late '40s and early '50s when centrists tried to promote Sweden as the "middle way."

The Dispossessed was popular in the '40s?

It was published in the '70s. :)

Perhaps, a trailing antecedent? ;)

And with respect, the Blairist liberals owe nothing at all to Swedish politics. Clinton probably owes even less: he's really founded on Kennedy; vote for me, I look really good.

On the other hand, let's look at ideas that originated in The Shockwave Rider that have some currency today:

• Infowar;
• Activism using anonymous electronic communications; and
• Broadband.

On the infowar front, it'd be interesting to see a SirCam variant modified to do something similar to the Haflinger worm: i.e., search for Interesting documents.

And note: not only did Shockwave Rider not win, it didn't get nominated. I rest my case.

That said, I really like Worldcons. I've only ever been to one, it was a blast; but I skipped the Hugos. I did sort-of-meet RMS though.

Re:Why buy them hardback when you can get softcove

[The Fun Guy]

The simple anser is, hardcovers last longer, and for a book that you know you want to keep for a while (like, say until your kids get old enough to read and appreciate them), this is important.

I bought Cryptonomicon in softcover, and I wish I'd spent the extra $15 for the hardback edition. The softcover on this thick book curls and cracks terribly, especially after repeated readings of the book. I am definitely *not* someone who folds the covers back... I like to keep my books in good shape, but it's pretty hard when the publisher chooses material so susceptible to deformation. From everything I could see of the Potter books, the softcover versions of them are just as bad as Crytonomicon.

Re:Why buy them hardback when you can get softcove

[adjusting]

I wanted to buy the hardcover version of Cryptonomicon, but I just can't stand the way the pages were all made rough and cut to slightly different sizes. If I wanted my books to look like that, I'd make them myself.

Space!

[SuperKendall]

Even when I like books a lot, I'm still happy to have them in softcover - I simply don't have enough space to keep every book I like in hardcover, or even a lot. I have walls and walls of bookshelves and if all of those were hardcover the house would probably collapse!

Plus, I find a softcover easier to take with me places I like to read - though I'll admit that in the process they tend to get chewed up a bit.

Even at library booksales where the cost difference between softcover and hardcover is negligable, I still get softcover.

Mainly though, even if I liked harcover I'm still rather angry at the publishers that are denying these books to a lot of people that can't afford them, all in order to milk the profits on the hardcover editions. That was why I was more than happy to send my money overseas to a publishing industry that has more sense (vol. four just went into softcover print there in July!)

Science Fiction IS Fantasy (see Venn diagram)

[chartreuse]

A friend of mine told me about visiting a bookstore in England that had the sf and fantasy in a section called "Imaginative Literature," which made him wonder what the rest of the literature there was.

[I had a lot more to say, but Internet Exploiter erased it. I'll add more later today.]

HPotter!

[ddubois]

Cool! Thats' really worth reading!

Cryptonomicon

[melquiades]

I get the feeling that the author's popularity makes her stuff "hand's off" to editors. And she needs one. That book should have been trimmed by about 40%.

As much as I loved the book overall, I sort of felt that way about Cryptonomicon, too. But it was still cool. Sometimes we can forgive verbosity....

testing messages

[Danny Rathjens]

testing messages

new message feature

[Danny Rathjens]

This feature to notify you when someone replies to your comments is really nifty.