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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 ;)
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?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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?
-- "Hey kids, try this at home!"
I love the HP books, but a Hugo? Look at the previous winners: all are hard sci-fi:
...And Call Me Conrad, by Roger Zelazny; Dune, by Frank Herbert
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
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
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
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
-- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a perl script.
Any suficient advanced magic is indistinguishable
from technology
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.
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
-- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a perl script.
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.
...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....
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.
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.
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. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
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.
#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.)
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:
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 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!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
"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)
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.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
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?
________________
Private Essayist
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).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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.
The Hugo Award is a popularity contest. To quote from the page:
fnord
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.