Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
You can't hear the cool accents in writing. I don't get it.
I certainly did. Provided a little chuckle.
I appoligize if I've spelt the name incorrectly, but I purchased the book at some of the acclaim I heard about it, but does it's odd stylictic grammar happen to bother anyone else?
I'll be reading along and all of a sudden the lack of a period after Mr. or, if I quote the first sentence of the book, "Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians." I must be dense, but I had to read it twice to actually understand what Clarke was saying. The sentence structure, the grammar, it all just appears very foreign. Is this a normal British thing? I'm honestly at a loss.
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?
One: Backlash against US dominance in SF&F beforehand.
... or ...
... good thing one of the security gaurds was a fan, but nowadays I'd never even be able to do that [looks like a rocket/mortar]
Two: Backlash against Pacific NW (esp. Seattle and Vancouver) dominance in SF&F beforehand.
maybe they just wrote cooler stuff and filmed all the cool SF&F stuff up in Vancouver so we got shut out of the running?
back in the days of being a SMOF, i took Bill Gibson's Hugo from Australia to Vancouver thru customs
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I read Perdido Street Station and King Rat,I thought they were jus OK.. I hope Stross gets it. I can't beleive Richard Morgan didn't get a nod for Broken Angels.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Bloody, hell. Star Trek goes off the air and Dr. Who comes back to the air. There are too many British actors on Battlestar Galactica. Now the red coats are taking over literature. I guess this is the end of Pax Americana. Where do I surrender?
Did anyone else... read SF Writers Dominate Hugos and then think, oh those Slashdot editors?
Sorry, I'll fix it in CVS. Oh, wait...
Very surprising to me is that amongst all these British nominees, there was not even a nod for Rowling's fifth book in the Harry Potter series (HP & The Order of the Phoenix), given that book #4 in the series was the Hugo Best Novel Winner when it was released in 2001.
Too soon- just wait for next year when the Hugos will be dominated by the only people left to have any hope at all: Islamic Jihadists!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's called the Nebula Awards.
I don't see the problem. There have been years when almost every author was American, and there have been years when almost every author wasn't. Statistically speaking, this isn't that unusual. Maybe it was just a really good year of British writing. I say congratulations to the British, don't sweat it, and maybe we'll do better next year.
We should put together an American version of the Hugos and just ignore them
Oh please, not another Academy Awards... besides, the Hugo people got a point. I'm sick tired of american talks, TV shows, and even a movie about 9/11. Yes, it was shocking, but the world doesn't move around Uncle Sam.
I've paid little attention to where a writer is from, I just revel in the superb work that's being done these days. Yes, China Mieville evokes a bizarre London, but I'm finishing up Singularity Sky from Stross, and it doesn't seem particularly "British". As for Alistair Reynolds, Dan Simmons, George RR Martin, Peter F Hamilton, and many others, as long as they keep producing brilliant works, I'll keep reading.
and look at the result: reality TV shows.
You forgot to put the "Oh, wait..." in that phrase. Anyway it's still funny! Mod up!
I'd rather see American writers focus more time writing things that educate Americans in a global manner. There is already more than enough sci-fi,fiction written from the past 50 years, we don't need anymore startrek potter.
American education literally revolve around European history. I feel like we were only taught Hitler was the greatest leader of all time from highschool. I find myself doing research on the House of Saud and other foreign matters just to keep up on today's news. Who cares about the Hugo award. Shift focus, lets read something else.
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.
That said, I'm a little surprised Alastair Reynolds' "Century Rain" didn't get nominated, as it was also an excellent novel and, perhaps, especially relevant to the /. crowd. I've been meaning to write a review forever (since nobody else has) but I'm lazy, so I just write comments about it hoping someone else will.
My vote is for Charlie Stross .
So why aren't the Brits in the same boat? They're in Iraq as well. If the US is still at war in Iraq (as the US media keeps telling us every day) then so is Great Britain because there are there along with us. So why all the Hugo awards to the Brits if they should be in the middle of an artistic slump?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's not that I'm not ready to see the soldiers doing their thing in Iraq. I was a soldier myself, so I appreciate watching soldiers going about their business without any "analysis" from those doing the filming. Rather, I avoided the film until now because I was so angry at the monumentally stupid way in which the war was approached, from its rationale and build up to the invasion, to the beginnings of the occupation stage, to the large-scale operations in Fallujah and elsewhere.
It is supremely frustrating to see American soldiers doing their jobs with as much humor and professionalism as they can, all the while knowing that the civilian leadership at the top of the pyramid has let them down in a monumental fashion. I experienced something like that on a much smaller scale myself, when my unit left Somalia after not quite three months in country. A few months later, all American forces left Somalia. We had done our job very well, but because the American government had no real plan of action beyond immediate food security operations, a few casualties was all it took to send the global superpower packing.
So every time I see video footage of Americans in Iraq, I think back to Somalia and the way in which our leaders profoundly misunderstood the situation there before, during and after my deployment. I'm not suggesting that we stay in Iraq indefinitely to "make all those sacrifices worth something." I do, however, think that the monumental planning failures at the top of the food chain have done a tremendous disservice to the men and women of the US armed forces.
What does all this have to do with Charlie Stross's comment about the "deep trauma" of America? I think that in different ways Americans have been avoiding complex issues in our movies, our fiction, and our music specifically because we have been more deeply affected by the string of events (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq) than we care to admit even to ourselves. For me, that means avoiding footage of the war. For others the reaction might be keeping minute track of every skirmish and ambush. Some might prefer to ignore the war entirely and pretend it isn't happening.
Those of us who believe wholeheartedly in the manner in which we are fighting Islamic militants don't want to see anything that will shake our convictions. Subversion in the cultural sphere could easily spread to the political.
Those of us who are profoundly disappointed by our leaders' lack of imagination, failure of vision, ignorance of history, and misunderstanding of the ground truth don't want to see more of the same in our entertainments. We want to be comforted that somewhere, even if only in fictional worlds, people with power are capable of making the right choice.
For the majority of the American population, who sit somewhere in the middle, the constant bickering between those who know what to do but can't do it, and those who know what not to do but can't figure out what *to* do is infuriating. We're at a watershed in American history, and people know it, even if they don't articulate it. Decisive, capable heroes, preferably unrelated to the current reality, fit the bill.
A friend of mine once said that everyone remembers the cultural achievements of Athens, but not of Sparta. Why? Because Sparta was a completely militarized society, while Athens was not. Perhaps yet another part of the bill America must pay for our hamfisted approach is that as we become more militarized, the creative and free-thinking aspects of our society become isolated and minimized.
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Ya know, I was deeply affected by the events of 9/11.
Yes, it was a horrible circumstance, but I wonder how soon the laggards will quit obessing about it. Moving on isn't the same as pretending it never happened, I am just saying that there is a time for grieving, and there is a time to move on with life.
I do agree on your points of the knee-jerk reactions.
I don't know how this really deals with Hugo. I don't read much SF, so I am out of the loop.
and are really Americans living in the UK ...
hey, when your skills are in your head like writers are, you can live anywhere you want to.
Arthur C. Clarke, for example, lived in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). Many writers move when they want to, or reside in more than one country.
Besides, does it really matter?
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Agreed. However, I would be interested to know what people think was the best american sci fi. And what scifi people think really demonstrates the effect of 9/11 on genre fiction, because I hadn't noticed it, per se, I just haven't been reading a lot of american sci fi. (except for John C Wright's stuff, which I didn't really care for)
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
...and have for a long time.
We Americans have given a good effort, but....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Too true, nothing as self-servingly inhumane as invoking other people's emotional tragedy to politicize and justify ones beliefs.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
Mind if I mildly insult you and ask WTF?
I don't get the "brothers in arms" thing at all. Or how 9/11 effected anyone. Maybe I'm odd but I found it laughable at best. Lots of people running through the streets screaming like the sky is falling, so could you possiblely explain it to me too?
BTW, I'm English and not far from London but I had the same reaction. The bombings have changed nothing in my life so I don't see how/why Americans all freaked out over a couple of planes hitting some buildings when they're MUCH further then an hours drive away..
Thanks if you answer.
I like muppets.
Well maybe it goes like this: The citizens of the UK were much more resistant to the war in Iraq than the people of the US. The war, without much popular support, does not seem to hinder the arts. The same thing happened in Vietnam. As opposition to the war grew among the people, we had an increase in artistic output, especially in music. So maybe that has something to do with it.
> Too true, nothing as self-servingly inhumane as invoking other people's
> emotional tragedy to politicize and justify ones beliefs.
Yep. Quite apart from the fact that ultimately what people are doing is just publicly feeling sorry for themselves. I guess it's just another example of American emotional incontinence.
Even supposing that this can't be chalked up to pure chance, Stross' comment means nothing. He blames it on 9/11; I could blame it on a decreasing attention span of American writers (so they can't keep a novel together), an inherent anti-Americanism in the nominating process, or one of literally dozens of other possible "reasons." It doesn't make them all true.
Finally, anyone who wants to can find some sort of pattern in the nominees for any given year. (Oh look, none of the nominated authors' names begin with vowels! There must be some anti-vowel force in the universe at this moment...)
This is an interesting occurrence, but it's pointless to try to find a "reason" for it.
I hate the one hundred and twenty character limit for signatures with an all-enveloping, all-destroying, incredible pass
You are blaming reality TV shows on 9/11? Is there nothing that people won't blame on 9/11.
Besides, I really don't think your argument holds up. All sorts of classics were written in the mist and aftermath of war - just look at Walt Whitman, or T.S. Eliot. Art is inspired by life, and when things are difficult, is when it is most inspiring. Conflict doesn't distract from art it puts the difficult questions into sharp relief. It is when we are fat and happy that we are most distracted from the deep issues that make great literature.
I really enjoy the Harry Potter books, and dread the wait for the next and last book in the series.
But lets get real: We're not talking about great literature or ground-breaking fantasy.
That said, I thought book #6 was the best since The Prisoner of Azkaban. A great read, but still not what I'd consider Hugo material.
Stefan
Some of the best American SF was written by counterculturalists during the 1960s and 1970s. With the exception of Gibson, the "go-go 1980s" and science-fictional 1990s produced vastly worse signal:noise in SF. Americans have to pick another reason for our current decline, other than a couple of planebombs hitting buildings here in NYC, as bad as that was.
Maybe a better explanation is the rise of "faith-based" fiction, and undereducated consumers of SF generally? That "science fiction" has become really just "romance with special effects", with no experimental ideas or social "what-ifs". Or maybe American SF has always been marketing for technology, and we're now so saturated with that anyway, without any new ideas about ourselves necessary, that we just don't have to do the fiction anymore.
--
make install -not war
It could also be argued that we are fat and happy even though we're at war. The volunteer military does all the fighting for us, and but for questions of policy, the only people who really feel the impact of the war itself are soldiers and their families. I'd argue that we're disturbed by what is happening, but it's not affecting our day to day lives to any great degree, unlike every other war in which America has been involved.
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It may not be quite what you're looking for, but this may be helpful. Amazon.com has a buried section (why, I don't know, and I can't even remember how I found it) called Libros en español that is nothing but Spanish language books.
There's a section under it called Ciencia ficción y fantasía
I'm not necessarily pitching Amazon.com. Even if you don't want to buy off of Amazon.com because of patent issues, it may give you a good list of titles to look for somewhere else.
Another possiblity is to look specifically at Spanish or Mexican online stores. For example, I was looking for a Spanish language book and couldn't find it in America anywhere. I ended up buying it from Spain at Casa del Libro. Yeah, it cost more to have it shipped here and I had to pay in Euro (not a problem if you charge it on a credit card), but it was just what the doctor ordered. Bookstores in other countries will tend to focus more on authors from that country and authors who write in that country's native language.
Brilliant news for the Kingdom of Fife
Ian Banks stays down the road from me, don't actually know the guy but he's from Fife same as me so he must be a genius !!!!!
You know its the Neo-Copurnicons like you who are comforting our enemies.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
*side note: didnt RTFA.
Appears the person who gave the original quote is (?) British.
He's still a tool though.
That's why the use of 9/11 as a rationale for everything from the USA Patriot Act to the War in Iraq is so absurd. The government stoked the flames of fear and continues to do so to this day.
But there is more to America's reaction that just that. First, being a Londoner, you're familiar with the notion of an enemy reaching out and bombing the crap out of your city. You recognize that taking a hit doesn't mean the end, and that democratic societies are quite resilient.
America's geographic isolation, and the fact that other than a few pesky U-Boats off the Eastern Seaboard and a random Japanese balloon bomb in World War II, we haven't been hit by a foreign enemy since the War of 1812, when you guys came over and torched D.C.
We've been so isolated for so long that we have come to internalize the notion that wars happen in other places, "over there." They certainly don't actually occur here on our soil. Plus, the 9/11 attacks simultaneously targeted the seat of our government, the nerve center of our defenses, and the core of our economic power all at once. From literally out of the blue, we went from a state of relative tranquility to being attacked with a decapitation strike. You must admit, that's not your garden-variety event.
So yes, Americans were a bit freaked out by this. But we're not really as freaked out as we seem, even though our government wants us to be.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I'd mod this up if I had the points.
I can't bring myself to visit the SF & F section of bookstores often these days.
When I do, I'm struck by the large amount of "comfort food" fiction: Either outright fantasy, or fiction nominally set in the future but whose society and technology essentially duplicate that of a familiar and understandable past.
I've quoted this before, but it fits:
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous, and it is amoung the benefits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
Alfred North Whitehead, 1925
" . . . lack of imagination, failure of vision, ignorance of history . . . "
Damn straight.
American politics and culture seem dead set on crawling into the past where everything was swell and things made sense*, and when faced with something scary that might require sacrifice, imagination, and change, a class of professional blowhards, F.U.D. artists, and useful idiots rise to their feet screaming that there is no problem.
We're even losing our nerve when it comes to dealing with opportunities.
Stefan
* Assuming you were middle class, white, and didn't have a goddamn clue or did but didn't care.
So why aren't the Brits in the same boat?
Perhaps it's that America is more physically removed from the rest of the world. America hasn't been bombed or invaded at nearly the same frequency as Great Britain.
Ah, crap, I got sucked in. Must be a slow Friday night at work...
There's several explanations why 9/11 affected everyone so strongly here in America.
First, there's the fact that around 3,000 people all died. That's a hellova lot of people. They weren't soldiers, they weren't in a war zone, they were just average, ordinary people doing their normal daily routine when literally out of the blue, BAM! Dead. 3,000.
Second, Americans don't have the worldwide reputation of being arrogant pricks for nothing. *I'M* and American, and I'm painfully aware that most people here think that this country is invincible. 9/11 demonstrated in spectacular fashion that terrorist attacks were no longer a matter of Middle Eastern towelheads killing each other. (A common American stereotype for illustrative purposes, not my perception personally.)
Third, releated to our perceived invincibility, is the fact that we've never had to deal with this kind of thing before. The last time we were attacked like this was in 1941, and most of the people who were around them are dead now. We don't have an IRA or an ETA. Other than odd wackos here and there, we're not used to mass numbers of people being killed in terrorist attacks. In that sense, we as a country suddenly had to pay the emotional price of being lucky and yes, a bit spoiled.
3,000 people dying isn't laughable, whether those people are American, English, Iraqui, or Martian. Okay, I admit, if someone had stopped to pick up a penny in the middle of the chaos, that would have been kind of funny. As it was, I don't find any humor in people fleeing in fear for their lives from buildings crashing down on top of them. If you watch the tapes, you'll realize that the sky was falling.
I have a pretty thick skin, and I did move on shortly after the attacks. It was easy for me because I didn't know anyone who died in the attacks. I don't particularly enjoy when we have periodic shows and such wallowing in the grief and anguish of that day, and I disagree with the notion that we're somehow a stronger country because of the attacks. Frankly, I find a lot of our actions—the lying, the needless killing, the systematic taking away of our freedoms—since the attacks reprehensible. But I do remember the attacks. There's no denying that to this day, they still do affect me in some ways. And if you don't understand why, I feel sorry for you.
Try needle in the grove by Jeff Noon. Or perhaps feersum enjin (sp?) by Iain M. Banks
To nominate a book for a Hugo award, you need to be a member of this year's World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). This year's Worldcon is in Britain. You do the math.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
seriously, get a grip. Not everything is a direct result of what america wants to believe is the worlds worst tragedy. Hey, if every writer was british, that means there was no asian writers! They must all be traumatised by that big wave thing!
It's just our way of dealing with the decline of the American Empire, just like when the British had to deal with the decline of the British Empire.
We'll get over it, learn Mandarin, and be happy serfs, just give us time.
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I'm a big fan of Stross, really like his style.
And I have to say that I agree with him to a point, Stephenson and Gibson both dwelled on 9/11 to a certain extent. I personally felt Gibson probably did it to excess in "Pattern Recognition". Hell even bloody Dan Brown mentioned it in "Davinci Code", but that by no means is a purely American trait.
Hell, Stross himself did a bit of an allegory of it in "Iron sunrise", weapons of mass destruction, nazi types taking over the unverse, etc. etc. In fact in "sky" he also works in the whole war on terror angle. He does however do it in very subtle ways and never mentions it directly like all good escapisms should.
Have to say though that at the moment, the best Fantasy writers are still American, go psycho-analyse that.
Haven't had an English teacher complain yet. And to me, those commas are in quite natural places for pausing.
As for Asian writers, you may see more fiction in the region that relates to disasters because simply people write about their own time, even when looking towards the future and the past.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Putting commas in place for spoken pauses is a simple rule of thumb that is surprisingly accurate, given that it's wholly incorrect.
The correct use for commas in modern English is in seperating list elements (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and for delimiting non-essential phrases, such as parenthetical asides or prepositional constructions. Note that this implies that non-list commas always appear in pairs, unless the phrase begins or ends the sentence, in which case the closure is assumed.
In spoken English, one often pauses at the boundaries of such phrases, which is what gives rise to the common misconception about comma placement.
I suggest looking for better English teachers. Commas should be used for separation of list items, independent clauses, and appositive phrases. The poster's second phrase contains an appositive, and thus deserves the commas, but his "corrected" line contains none of the aforementioned items.
(For the pedants, yes, I am aware that the list above is not fully comprehensive. I am also aware of the requirement for a coordinating conjunction in one of the above cases, but consider those additional cases to be largely irrelevant to the issue at hand.)
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!
Yup, that's how I first read it, but no, I didn't think "oh those Slashdot editors". Instead I thought, "cool, I'm sick of fantasy stories winning what is supposed to be basically an SF award. Fantasy has it's own awards!
Anyway, I've been losing respect for the Hugos for some time now. The Hugo voters seem to be increasingly insular and out-of-touch. My favorite genre awards right now are the Locus Awards, which usually have more voters than the Hugo and Nebula combined. Plus, they have separate categories for fantasy and SF.
I was skimming the main page, and I (thought I) saw:
"UK: SF Writers dominate Hugos"
Implying (in my mind) that the United Kingdom was somehow upset that the Hugo Awards were biased towards science fiction writers, as opposed to other writers in other genres. Knowing what a Hugo is, made this seem massively funny.
Then I RTFA, and realized it wasn't near that funny.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Does Mr Stross 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!
Please excuse my fellow Briton, I think he stepped out of line. I am a Londoner and understand that 9/11 really was a big deal and not in the least funny, but I really dislike the actions that have occured since this tragedy.
Your government really has preyed on your nations' fears and now it is likely that ours will too post the recent attacks (people who call them the 7/7 attacks are branding them to promote fear). Although i don't agree with all his politics, Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 really brings it all home.
I refuse to give in to this fear mongering and indeed used the London tube network two days after the event.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
Actually, the Hugo Awards are explicitly for both fantasy and SF:
Section 3.3: Categories.
3.3.1: Best Novel. A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more.
3.3.2: Best Novella. A science fiction or fantasy story of between seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) and forty thousand (40,000) words.
Etc etc.
I'm all for the World Fantasy Awards -- I won one in 1987 and I was a judge this year -- but they're not different from the Hugos in that they're for fantasy and the Hugos are "for SF". They're different in that they're a juried award and the Hugos are a popularly-voted one. You're mixing apples, oranges, prosciutto, and turpentine.
"currently US genre writers are mirroring the 'deep trauma' that 9/11 wrought on America."
Bullshit.
They're mirroring the "deep trauma" that being unable to write anything except "Lord of the Rings" ripoffs has inflicted them with.
Enough of this fantasy shit.
If you can't write worth a shit because somebody flew a plane into a building and killed a couple thousand people, then you couldn't write for shit before.
Am I supposed to claim I'm "traumatized" because 150,000 people got killed in the tsunami, or 100,000 Iraqi civilians got blown up by our illustrious warriors (over 1,800 of whom in turn got their asses waxed)? Is that why I can't make a buck?
Where is Thomas Harris - who can write wonderful satire about psychiatrists and cops urning into cannibals - when we need him?
Somebody needs to write a "Catch-22" or "M.A.S.H." or "Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal" about Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
I guess I need to get cracking on my "Transhuman" series of novels - more rabid sex and merciless gunning down of monkeys than anybody has seen since the Marquis de Sade...
I got your "deep trauma" right here, assholes.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Any feedback from any native Great Britainers who might be better at relating the subtilties of "chavs"?
..........FULL STOP.
For a general overview of what happens in British English (aka English English), see the h2g2 style guidelines.
Personally, I would punctuate the above as "Some years ago, there was, in the city of York, a society of Magicians." - and I'm a Brit, and one who tends to be over-zealous when it comes to using commas, colons and periods. Maybe the author was trying to make it difficult to read in the same way that Shakespear is, but he/she should really have read Penny-Arcade if they wanted the likes of me to rate them over Asimov.
looking for better English teachers, and quite another thing to know and describe going about doing it. Then there's the whole, "How am I going to afford a better English teacher," problem. The U.S. education system reeks, and not just the subsidized K-12 part. I currently hold an Associates Degree in CIS, and the English teacher spent the entire course teaching the other students quite low-level things.
Fan voting.... DUH!!!
That sucks. Talk about a great way to help the terrorists play up their acts. It's like free advertising, over and over and over... .
I truly hope the UK doesn't go down the road to stupidity that we here in the States did. I think the years of dealing with IRA attacks probably have helped you all maintain some perspective. Best of luck to you in holding off the fearmongers.
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"Not everything is a direct result of what america wants to believe is the worlds worst tragedy."
You got that right. I am an American, and I think 9/11 was blown, and is being blown way out of proportion. But then I live in the Northwest, so it had no immediate impact. Now when Mt. St. Helens has a burp, that is a different matter entirely. It's very important, but only locally.
The problem was that 9/11 was aimed right at where the elite live and work, the Eastern Corridor. A good hit on LA, right at Media central would also be effective at generating prolonged hysteria. But any small town in the sticks would rate a few days mention in the paper, then silence. We lose 10 times as many as died on 9/11 every year on the highways without a thought.
It's all in the presentation. This is not always a good thing, but still true.
Of course the nominees all rock....
# The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
# Iron Council by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
# Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross (Ace)
# Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
# River of Gods by Ian McDonald (Simon & Schuster)
Yeah, I know, but for years the Hugos were dominated by SF. And they are given at the World Science Fiction Convention. In the early years, I can really only find one unequivacable fantasy story that won a Hugo (Avram Davidson's "All the Seas with Oysters"). And even that's a bit of an odd duck, without any "traditional" fantasy elements. And anyway, fantasy does have it's own separate award.
:)
:)
Congrats on the WFA, though. I sure didn't expect to find a WFA winner/judge posting on slashdot!
I still prefer the Locus awards to the Hugo awards, though. Even though I've personally voted on more Hugo ballots.
Do you mean like if an author is about to write a book, he might think "Oh hang on, there are troops still in Iraq, I won't bother writing."????
Would there have been no reality TV without 11/9? I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Dominate?
all the writers nominated for the prestigious Hugo award for the best novel are British
should not that be
U.K. SF Writers monopolize Hugos
or for a little humor
SLASHDOT PREDICTION; All winners of this years hugos will be from the UK-- because all the nominees are.
Domimate indicates it's not a 100%
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Not everything is a direct result of what america wants to believe is the worlds worst tragedy.
A big part of the problem is that Americans cannot escape the images of the terrorist attacks. It is mentioned constantly. It is near impossible to listen, watch, or read any media without some mention of "nine eleven." Never mind the "war on terror" which is some how related to all but the most mundane news.
American's are living in a culture of fear. It is something foreigners have to experience to understand. It is pervasive. The Americans simply can't tune it out.
American's are
/. (It is 2000. One must not accept responsibility for one's actions.)
Well that was just sloppy. I blame the poor english I read on
Great Britain invaded?
What world are you living in?
A blog about stuff.
America hasn't been bombed or invaded at nearly the same frequency as Great Britain.
I'm quite willing to accept a lower artistic output as the price of not getting bombed and invaded. I can always import my art from Great Britain after all...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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
"We have done very little under the Bush Administration to truly put a lid on nuclear proliferation, and many have even exacerbated it by stepping up development of bunker-buster nukes."
The Bush administration has almost certainly dramatically accelerated proliferation. They've adopted an obvious bifurcated policy in dealing with nations depending on whether they have nukes, or at least they say they have them, or they don't.
North Korea says they have nukes so the Bush administration negotiates with them, and treats them with a hands off policy focused on diplomatic efforts and not much saber rattling.
Iraq has no nukes, though the neocons say they are trying to get them and they get whacked.
Iran has no nukes, though the neocons say they are trying to get them, and the implication is they may well be in line to get whacked one way or another, air strikes on their reactor before it goes online, fomenting revolution thanks to the CIA, or outright invasion if they can gin up a case and get out of the quagmire in Iraq.
Libya has something of a contrived nuclear program, give it up and are showered with benefits. Leads you to think you should start a sham program, just to give it up to see what you can get for it in concessions from the U.S. and U.K.
There is an obvious pattern here a 5 year old can see. If you are on the wrong side of the U.S. the best policy you can pursue is to acquire nukes or at least say you acquired them and fake a good case to support it. If you do you're safe from American aggression. If you don't have nukes and you get on the wrong side of the U.S. chances are you get whacked. Therefor every enemy the U.S. has, has been incentivized to get nukes.
@de_machina
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.)
Honest. It ain't no big thing.
..
Not flaming. Just wishing the modern world were as tough as it thinks it is
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The most disturbing part of all this is not just that nation-states are getting nukes. The ability of rogue actors like bin Laden, et. al. to acquire them is very real. Pakistan, for example, is a known nuclear technology exporter. We all know how tight their borders and civilian control of the military are.
The fact that the Bush Administration just tacitly approved India's nuclear status, and already does so with Pakistan, doesn't make matters any easier. We have essentially opened the floodgates to nuclear arms development by letting the loopholes in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty remain open. We oppose the Comprensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and we've violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Maybe someone ought to dust off the phrase, "No material. No bomb. No nuclear terrorism."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I'd argue that we're disturbed by what is happening, but it's not affecting our day to day lives to any great degree, unlike every other war in which America has been involved.
ummm
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Absolutely. But following that war moment, we were all told to get back to our shopping. Americans haven't been asked to sacrifice in any meaningful way, nor have we had to. Aside from a small segment of the population that is connected to the military in some fashion, there is no direct risk or danger, no rationing, no blackouts, nothing that impacts the flow of our daily lives.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Makes sense, except that Reality TV was already "taking over" in 1999-2000... Big Brother and Survivor, for example, aren't post 9-11 shows. Reality shows aren't a reaction to a terrorist event, they're the result of 100+ channels increasingly making the big three networks obsolete.
(BTW, what everyone bitching about reality TV seems to forget that almost every popular American reality show is based on a prior British reality show. But their TV is better, right?)
Look-- mass market entertainment has always sucked, we just remember the few classics and forget the crap. You think every movie made in the 30's was a masterpiece? There's great TV out there right now if you know where to look (starting with HBO), great movies being made (documentaries, for example, have never been better), great books and songs being written.
Yeah. Thats a bad situation to be in, since your entire nation is at war.. and when the terrorists decide to fight back (they've stated they're going to ..) then the nation is going to be very ill-prepared for it, eh?
Good thing I don't live there any more.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Okay the last time it happened was almost 1000 years ago but yes Great Britain has been regularly invaded by the Normans, the Vikings, the Romans and that's not including the migrations such as the Angles and Saxons, and the Celts.
Big Brother is in fact originally Dutch. As a Dutchman, that makes me so proud (cough).
In life, wherever you have to do somthing really difficult there is always someone in the group with the loser "but it's too hard" mentality. Sometimes it takes more than a few days to get something done. If you think this world situation sucks just wait till the future as the technology to commit widespread chaos becomes more and more accessible and the ability to more to another place in the world becomes easier and easier.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
While American writers go out and glorify their war and try to dehumanize the so called enemy, Brits are actually critising the whole expedition. Now we had the bombs in London, most of the people just want to disengage and leave Iraq to Americans, since it was a mess created by Americans in the first place (by supplying weapons and information to Saddam to oppose Iranians in eighties and so on).
On the other hand, if you hint about the 9/11 and evil empires (War of the Worlds remake, Star Wars 3 etc.) or someone being killed (The Passion of Jesus) for their love of Christian religion (but obviously not Islam), you will get lots of airtime and win lots of awards.
Nebula has been the SWFFA's own dildo for some time and most of the books get nominated/voted only by reading the back cover, at least Hugos are nominated by real fans.
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
And today is the 60th aniversary of Hiroshima. Ah the irony. You Americans sometimes make me sick.
people who call them the 7/7 attacks are branding them to promote fear
Maybe I'm being callous because I don't really live anywhere near London... but when I heard the news, I remember thinking "Well, this is bad, but it's not 9/11". And then having watched the news and found out most of what I needed to know, got back to what I was doing.
If anything, I was more worried about the government using it as an excuse to promote more ways to take away peoples' freedom. In all honesty, it was tragic for the people involved, but to let it dictate how the public go about their lives would have been *exactly* to play into the terrorist's hands.
That 7/7 bullshit doesn't seem to be taking off; most people are just calling them the 'London bombings'.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Don't you dare put me out of line for this. I'm right on target and I ment everything I said. America couldn't careless it threw an A-bomb at the Japanese, why should I care someone threw a plane at them?
I'm not out of line any more then they are, I had a question so I asked it.
I like muppets.
What exactly is the irony in bombing a country (albeit with utterly devestating effects, and consequences) which has declared WAR on your country, and that your nation has reciprocated? You Flamebaiters sometimes make me sick.
He's got a point though. Local-support voting has happened before, if not to the same extent - there are only so many Canadian SF writers writing books. It's unfortunate that some years have a wealth of good nomineees and others don't. For instance, Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis was also far superior to Sawyer's Hominids but, being published in December 2001, it didn't even get a nomination because of the heavyweight competition for that year.
Still, I think Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis is one of the great underestimated books of the last few years, perhaps as a side effect of the disappointment with the hyped-up second Foundation trilogy from the killer Bs a few years earlier. Similarly, Vernor Vinge's book Marooned in Realtime was much better than his later Hugo-winning (and quite good) A Fire upon the Deep but also didn't get properly recognized for its visionary insight until much later. I think that there are some indications that PhC may prove equally prophetic. I also find it highly ironic that Kingsbury's first novel, Courtship Rite, lost out to Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge in 1983. Hopefully, Kingsbury will find time to write a few more good novels so that he can get the recognition he deserves.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
What world are you living in?
The phrase was "bombed OR invaded". I was thinking more of the bombing than the invading, in terms of recent history. I think my point was that Americans are still getting used to the concept of massive indiscriminate bombings on their own soil.
The correct use for commas in modern English is in seperating list elements
Are you sure you're talking about English as opposed to LISP?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Ihad to look that up - Council house is a term for public housing provided for/paid for by the state/government, correvt?
..........FULL STOP.