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U.K. SF Writers Dominate Hugos
gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that For the first time in its 63-year history, all the writers nominated for the prestigious Hugo award for the best novel are British." From the article: "Mr Stross says that what an author writes is a reflection of his society, and currently US genre writers are mirroring the 'deep trauma' that 9/11 wrought on America. 'What we write tends to reflect our perceptions of the world around us,' he says, 'and if it's an uncertain world full of shadows it's no surprise you get wish fulfilment or a bit downbeat.'"
Hey, I live in Ecuador, and I've always looked for sci-fi written originally in Spanish, but darned if I can find much. What authors write in other languages, and do they ever get Hugo awards?
On a side note, a friend of mine for a very long time didn't know that Octivia E. Butler was a woman. I haven't told him yet that she's also African-American.
"the British style 'apples bananas and grapes are fruit'."
Since when did commas in lists go out of vogue? The English I learnt (in England, and I'm only 30) definitely had commas. The way I learnt is different to both of the examples you gave: "apples, bananas and grapes are fruit." There are situations where a comma precedes an "and", but not in lists.
Talking of jarring and the word "and", I find this applies to American numbers. Take 104 for instance: en-US = "one hundred four"; en-GB = "one hundred and four". The American one there isn't consistent, but does seem to be the most common in American circles.
i think the issue is not that it is weird grammar, but that it is PROPER grammar! we've been deprived of it so long and don't use it ourselves we don't recognize it when we see it.
Some years ago, there was in the city of York, a society of magicians. Seems, at least to me, that this writer and his editor need to read the proper use of commas.
Somebody does. Rule of thumb: The number of commas between the subject of a sentence and its verb must be either zero or an even number.
If you absolutely insist on adding commas to the sentence, which is probably better without them, it would be:
"Some years ago, there was, in the city of York, a society of magicians. "
Then again, some American conventions are strange as well; like inserting a comma before 'and' in a list, such as 'apples, bananas, and grapes are fruit' compared to the British style 'apples bananas and grapes are fruit'.
As an American, I learned that both are acceptable. However, I prefer the comma, as it adds the potential for an additional shading of meaning with reduced ambiguity, e.g.
"Food combinations that go well together are rice and beans, steak and potatoes, and liver and onions." (note the potential confusion from omission of the last comma)
Does the author imply that Britain's last 10 years were somehow better than US' years? These are the people who are much more used to terrorist attacks and now don't even question cameras on every street corner. I am sure in proportion to their population they have lost many more lives to terrorism than us. Stop looking for excuses!
Paint yourself into a corner, burn the bridges!, and you will feel the liberty of a man who has nothing to lose!
Except that, in fact, the solid majority of those casting nominating ballots were Americans. You do the math.
The use of a "serial" comma (AKA Oxford comma, Harvard comma) is common in American English, but can be found in British English and International English as well (the latter being derived mostly from British English I think). I believe it is more the context of the writing, rather than the nationality of the writer, that influences the usage of commas, quotes, etc. I suspect more formal writing, e.g. scientific articles, is a context where the serial comma is used to avoid any possible ambiguity.
Pity the Anglophone who strives in vain for "official" English when the French, Japanese, and a host of other peoples are able to speak/write with a measure of lingual orthodoxy by virtue of government run Academies that codify and manage their respective languages. As for myself, I use BBC News as my standard reference for correct English usage. If anyone is keen on writing in alignment with some form of "proper" English, I suggest using BBC News as a standard reference. After all, they report for the entire world, and not just the UK. It is logical and is as close as I've come to any meaningful standard for the English language. Just my twopence...
I'm surprised that you posted this as an AC. You obviously have thought this through quite a bit. Personally I don't agree with your broad characterization of Slashdot as a vehicle for the "cultural elites" (for one thing, a much larger than average chunk of the Slashdot population are died in the wool libertarians), but if you want to change the Slashdot dynamic, why not post under a member name?
You make a solid point about the failure of cultural elites to adapt to the end of the Cold War, but I think you take it a bit far. Clinton cut and ran in Somalia, but he also pushed NATO into action in Serbia and assisted Croatia in booting the Serbs from Krajina. The Fukuyama "end of history" argument lost credence as soon as the first aircraft hit the tower, and nobody in the mainstream American Left would argue that the 9/11 attacks didn't profoundly alter our reality as a nation.
I also agree with your statement about the stupidity of being post-modern and ironic in a world where there is a very real conflict of worldviews. Hell, anyone who joins the volunteer military understands that being tragically cool is a farce, and I support America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines for putting themselves on the line for a belief in their country.
But one of the persistent threads I've encountered in discussion after discussion is that supporters of the Bush approach to fighting terrorists can't seem to separate the desire and intention to fight terrorists from the techniques used to do so. The failure of cultural elites to recognize that war is sometimes necessary is matched by the failure of many of their detractors to see that just because war is necessary doesn't mean that it has to be fought in the particular manner our President has selected.
It is no secret that the top military brass were very reticent about going into Iraq, in part because they'd spent the entire decade of the 1990s policing the world. The Bosnia mission, still one of the American military's most underappreciated successes, had been ongoing since 1995. We had the lessons of the Somalia and Haiti missions behind us. Many of the generals had been on the ground as junior officers in Vietnam. These guys knew their jobs inside and out and were part of the most professional and experienced "peacetime" military we'd ever fielded. But when Gen. Shinseki told Congress we'd need several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq, Rumsfeld at best ignored him, and at worst hastened his departure.
Beyond the notion of whether there was any meaningful linkage between Saddam and al Quaeda, the difficult issues of how to handle the reconstruction, security, and political reconstitution of Iraq didn't spring up unforseen after the invasion began. Most of them had been planned for by the Pentagon, by experienced NGOs, and by other well-informed and nonpartisan entitites. That the White House chose to ignore that wealth of expertise to me betrays something beyond "knowing yourself," something that strays into a very dangerous hubris.
The culture war analysis only takes you so far. Cultural elites may not understand Middle America, but that still doesn't really have anything to do with the essential recklessness and lack of sophistication displayed by the Administration in its post-9/11 response.
For example, President Bush referred to the 9/11 attacks as a new Pearl Harbor attack, when it patently was not even remotely like Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack on Pearl was a purely military move designed to wipe out the US Pacific Fleet, while the 9/11 attacks were symbolic attacks designed to cripple us economically, cause panic, and serve as a propaganda tool for the cause of militant Islam.
We have done very little under the Bush Administration to t
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
A couple of years ago I started trying to read all the Hugo winning novels, got half way (including some I previously read.) Since I realized what I wrote above, I've picked up the Nebula list and because of some overlap I'm about halfway through that list. (I'm not going in any particular order.)
There are too many British actors on Battlestar Galactica.
Well, that's probably because there are a lot of bad guys in Battlestar Galactica...
Actually, I'm not sure that was intended to be 'funny'. (Spoiler follows for those who haven't seen the first hour of the new Battlestar Galactica mini-series); I noticed that they had an English guy play the unheroic self-preserving computer geek who inadvertantly lets the Cylons into the defence computer.
Yep, there's always a 'British' actor with the required accent (whether they're a good actor or not takes second place to the accent) willing to take the part of the bad guy. They did it in Firefly too, though I found myself warming to the character forced to be the English/British (*) baddie in the middle of a strange western-in-space mythologisation of America's past.
Truth be told, I watch just over an hour of Battlestar Galactica, then didn't bother with the rest. Well-made or not, I wasn't interested in seeing a very militaristic reflection of America's paranoia on terrorism (and make no bones about it, Battlestar Galactica is very much the Earth-representing-America school of sci-fi); I'm not American, and I don't have a repressed desire to indulge my military side.
It wasn't especially badly made, and it looked like they were taking things more seriously than the original series... but in truth, I wasn't interested in watching it.
Simple fact is, most sci-fi on TV in Britain is American, about America and designed to American tastes. Of course, that's the largest target audience, and I'm sure the American producers are interested in reflecting their own society; that's understandable. However, it's also understandable that most TV sci-fi doesn't appeal to me for the same reason (oh yeah, that and the fact it's cliched and cheesey).
As for Dr. Who... I know you were joking, but the new Dr. Who really won't appeal to your average American viewer. They tried it with the 1996 TV-movie, diluted the concept and it still didn't get the viewing figures needed. In short, if you could make a 'Doctor Who' that mainstream America would watch, it wouldn't be Doctor Who.
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