Why Is Science Fiction Snubbed By Literary Awards? (galacticbrain.com)

Slashdot reader bowman9991 quotes an essay from GalacticBrain: Science fiction authors have long been outcasts from the literary world, critics using the worst examples of the genre as ammunition against it. Unfortunately though, at times even science fiction authors themselves can turn on their own kind: "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space," mocked Margaret Atwood, one of her many attempts to convince people that she is not a science fiction author, even though one of her most famous novels, A Handmaid's Tale, is exactly that...

Considered by the literary establishment, and frequently by non-SF award-giving institutions, to be trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction, it's no surprise that very few works of science fiction have won major literary awards... Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the award-winning (not "literary" awards obviously) Mars novels, [in 2009] hit out at the literary establishment, accusing the Man Booker judges of "ignorance" in neglecting science fiction, which he declared was "the best British literature of our time".
The article ends with a simple question. "Will science fiction authors ever escape the publication ghetto?"

Comments

Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Zontar The Mindless]

See $subject.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[ColdWetDog]

Ursula LeGuin doesn't write "trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction" so no it doesn't count.

The fact that the vast majority of SF writers don't do that either seems to have eluded some of 'those' literary aficionados but I've always had a hard time separating them from audio enthusiasts or serious wine freaks. Their critiques sound remarkably similar. And make about as much sense.

Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Zocalo]

Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.

You know, that sounds a lot like Miller from James S. A. Corey's Expanse series:
Alcoholic - check
PTSD - well, he's certainly traumatised and suffering from stress, especially in the latter books...
Fibromyalgia - check (born in low G, so can't readily visit relatively high-G worlds like Earth)
Some form of repression/abuse - check (divorced, belter, cop everyone at the precinct looks down on...)
Run down apartment - check
Small American town - well, it *is* Sci-Fi, so does a small asteroid town count?

Don't recall seeing any of the series on the Mann Booker lists though...

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because those books are the pulpy trash their talking about. Don't get me wrong, I love the series, but "fine" writing it is not. Some SF you read and it really sticks with you, some is like an action movie, of which this is a great example. We can have both and we can love both. Best thing you can do is post reviews of your own, and follow others who post reviews. That's how I usually find what I'm reading next.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Z00L00K]

With quite a collection in my bookshelves I'd say that the range of personalities and human limitations presented are quite wide in Science Fiction.

The early Science Fiction with Alfred Bester, Christopher Anvil, Robert Heinlein, James White and Isaac Asimov was quite wide-spread and was covering a wide range of ideas about society, human behavior ideas and social experiments in an environment that gave them freedom to place their own rules to their experiments. But in the end it was about how to look at humanity. Many of the stories were presented with many facets at the same time so it may have been hard to draw conclusions from them.

Maybe the people handing out awards are unable to handle multi-faceted stories? Or maybe they are put of by people actually being successful despite their problems?

Re: Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like the Expanse to me

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[polgair]

Well, I think they are not the same thing. That's like going to a math conference and get disappointed that they don't hand out research awards for results found in mechanical engineering papers

Let's talk about two bodies of work that ought to be about the same type of people, but actually yield very different results. Let's compare James Salter's first two books, The Hunters and Cassada with The Expanse series.

James Salter's first two books draws from his experience as a late joiner to the American Army Aircorps, of which he graduated in 1945. The first book, Hunters, draws from his experience as a fighter pilot in the Korean War. It's about a guy who really wants to be successful as a fighter pilot. Throughout the book, while I the reader is constantly rooting for him, he is awash in self doubt. I don't think my efforts for rooting for him are in vain, but the character took awile for me to get to liking. Cassada on the other hand is about a guy who I imediately draw a liking to, but his charm does not extend to many of his cohorts within the book. I'm often surprised by what happens, how my heart strings get tugged with and it almost seems like disappointment hits both the characters and me in waves where I would least expect it.

But I read the Expanse series, and immediately the tropes jump out. As a novel where one co-author did the world building for an MMO game first, and then play tested it using D20 modern characters, the mechanics of this world seemed pre-ordained, the characters already seemed like they were a bit more sure of themselves and the people writing/playing them had a good idea on how they were going to react given a circumstance, as role player tend to have a habit of playing slightly different takes on the same theme most of the time. I open this book and come to feelings of simulteously being somewhere new, and having been there before, all at once. I remember a pair of adidas that I really liked playing basketball in when I was in my teens and in my late 20s it was re-released. The shoe felt similar, but better constructed. The Expanse feels no different.

Literary fiction toys with the literary fiction making process whilst in the guise of putting together a tale. The reader here does the work of deconstructing the process. The literary protaganist may be the center of the plot, but he/she/it isn't really driving it. Most of the time they aren't even all that likable in the beginning. I read literary fiction and examine how and why things are done while I anticipate what happens from page to page.

In commercial fiction, the main characters do most of the work for the reader. There's less playing around in style. Characters that drive the book are immediately likable. I don't really have to wonder about the why or the how. Most commercial fiction borrow important techniques from literary fiction from years past, and some sci fi writers read their literary fiction contemporaries (it's obvious that Neal Stephenson borrows from David Foster Wallace). So if I pay attention and keep up with my literary world stuff, the sci fi stuff will use dramatic techniques and plot devices that trickle down.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Zocalo]

That's the point though, isn't it? There *is* no clear cut "recipe" for what makes a winning book (SF or otherwise) in the eyes of the non-genre specific literary awards. The character of Miller ticks all the boxes listed by the OP (which *are* generally applicable to the winners), but the writing is definitely not up to the standard of some of those that do win the awards (and yes, I've read quite a few of them, including classics and more recent examples), on the flip side there are some winners where none of the antagonists or protagonists even come close to ticking those boxes, yet the writing and premise are definitely of an exceptional standard. When you get right down to it, what wins the awards is the aggregate personal opinions of the judges based on their moods and outlook while they were reading the particular book under review - give them the same book under different conditions and you'll likely get different winners.

Personally, I find well written Sci-Fi (or fantasy) to be just as good, if not better, than many other forms of fiction for addressing a given topic. The author has complete control over the setting and history necessary to create an ideal stage for the topic that is the real subject of the story, which is a degree of latitude that historic and contemporary fiction writers usually don't have. Case in point: look at how well many of Terry Pratchett's later works (someone else in the genre who got some serious literary nods!) subtly address and explore contemporary issues like politics, prejudice, religion, finance, terrorism, war, and so on, without any of the distractions that a more traditional setting might entail.

You're absolutely right on the ability to have and enjoy both pulp and heavier writing, and I use the same techniques myself. Sure, you can look down the awards lists and check out a few of the shortlisted titles that you think might be of interest based on the premise, and you'll likely find a few titles and authors you really like that way, but it's not really enough. The most fruitful way I've found for finding new authors (and musicians) I like is to look at the "people who bought this also bought..." recommendations for books and music I already own on places like Amazon, then reading the user reviews where those links take me.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[KingBenny]

Ah ... A.E. Van Voght, LeGuin, Tanith Lee, Roger Zelazny, David Eddings, Jack Vance ...
what the fuck is a dean koontz anyway ? some psycho who can't get his head past mars?
i have to admit, when the shy A-grade was still alive, before they killed it i devoured books but i refused to read anything but science fiction and fantasy, i read lord of the rings in a few days when i was nine or ... (eight?) .. but thats like disney compared to what came after and before isnt it
popular enough to get a film but the best i can remember is like a moral compass bigger than the bible and gedanken experimente(r?-n?) worthy of an Einstein
so, let them eat cake
and awards ... i dont care
maybe thats the reason why i quit reading .... real sci-fi is dead like the qubit as biggie stood to hip-hop ?
NO THAT WAS RAP, MAN ... hip hop got no singin' on it :D

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Science Fiction has that scary "Science" in it, and it comes even before the "Fiction" bit. It's anathema to the artsy-fartsy gang. These people tend to dominate literature prizes, as they dominate most non-science fields (like homeopathy and anti-vax).

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.

Ironically, in the quintessential example of the novel you described (except for the small american town part), the main character is a travelling salesman who turns into a cockroach...

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[surd1618]

The biggest problem with SF is that it is male-centric. I think that exploration of the male psyche is neat and all, but when the author is totally unaware of the other dimensions of human existence, I get bored really quick. I loved golden-era SF when I was 12, but now most of it reads like a parody of a Victorian-era psychoanalytical session ( Here's a good example, Common Time by James Blish).
But the real issue I have is that SF in general is either an elaborate dance around the actual present-day or "normal-life" issues that it is addressing, or it is stories about ideas, and Nabokov said that the worst stories are about ideas. Anyone who likes SF and hasn't read female writers is missing out big-time on the things that really matter: explorations of the interactions between (non-cardboard cutout) characters and technology and technologically advanced cultures.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[michael_wojcik]

LeGuin has also complained (in print) about the SF "ghetto" - I think there might be a piece on it in The Language of the Night. The literary-prize establishment letting the occasional exemplar in doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

Of course, many readers, critics, and academics do acknowledge the quality and literary merit (leaving aside for a moment the questions of ontology and aesthetics those raise) of the better sort of science fiction. The prize-awarding types may be slow to catch up, but catch up they eventually will. Many fantasy genres are well-represented by major prizes; Midnight's Children won not only the Booker but the "Booker of Bookers", for example, while Beloved won a Pulitzer (and was short-listed for the National) and undoubtedly contributed to Morrison's Nobel. "Hard" SF probably faces a certain amount of resistance from typical prize committees due to Snowian two-cultures prejudice, but I don't see that lasting.

That said, of course it's important for prominent authors like Robinson and LeGuin to raise the issue. In too many sectors of the art world self-appointed awards committees hold entirely undeserved power as taste-makers, and pointing out their omissions and missteps benefits artists and audiences alike.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[david_thornley]

Campbell wrote a trilogy (The Black Star Passes, something I don't remember, and Invaders from the Infinite) that mentioned a woman early in the first book and then there was a reference to a bachelor's pad later in the first book. Aside from that, there was not a hint that humans have two sexes. Some of the characters' fathers were minor characters, but there was no hint that any of them might have had mothers. You're very unlikely to find more male-centric books.

Re:Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[MercTech]

I'm firmly convinced that most main stream literary critics still have a VHS recorder that is flashing "12:00" because they can't understand "that techie shit". It would be ridiculous to ask someone who can't follow science at a 9th grade level to review SCIENCE fiction.

Re: Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, she doesn't count, being an authoresse, writeresse .

It is sad not that literature prises are not given to teenager fodder trash like SciFi; it is sad that they are given to still worse trash , like minority writers writing about hot sjw causes.

Neither is really literature. ULG was trying at both.

Re: Ursula LeGuin doesn't count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scifi has bo science in it, at all. Many a prominent writer like a van voht were a veritable white trash from nowhere, as far as it gets from Science; many other were crackpots like Ron Hubbard .

Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper appreciation of science fiction requires an educated mindset that can properly appreciate science as well as hopefully look forward in the face of existential crisis.

Most people just aren't there. They prefer stories about people that alternately backstab and fall in love with one another.

That's just how the cookie crumbles.

Re:Mass appeal

[rudy_wayne]

In the same vein, no comedy has every won an Oscar for best film. Because the people who make that decision are pretentious, pseudo-intelectual snobs who think that comedy is beneath them.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. The Artist win best picture and it's classified as a comedy drama.

Re:Mass appeal

[ravenshrike]

It's a comedy/drama about a pretentious pseudo-intellectual snob. The line is blurred.

Re:Mass appeal

[HornWumpus]

Only true with a very narrow definition of comedy.

Cuckoo's nest? (Drama comedy)

Annie Hall? Fair enough, not funny. But supposed Romantic Comedy.

I agree though, Borat was robbed.

Re:Mass appeal

[Doctor Morbius]

Annie Hall won best picture.

Re:Mass appeal

[drsquare]

Literary awards aren't given out for mass appeal though.

Re:Mass appeal

[JaredOfEuropa]

Proper appreciation of SF requires actually reading some. Back in high school we got quite a bit of schooling in (Dutch) literature; the textbooks did briefly cover SF but you could tell that the authors hadn't read any. Their description of SF boiled down to a very small handful of notable works, the rest being rockets, chemicals and talking squid. The teachers (language majors mostly) likewise hadn't read any. Critics of literature and the guys who nominate books for literary awards probably don't read a lot of SF either, so they don't know the subgenres, which works to pick up and which ones to avoid... so even if they do read an SF book or two, they are likely not going to be much impressed.

Re:Mass appeal

[war4peace]

Taking things a but further... if no SF is receiving a literary award, why would it fucking matter?
There's SF-specific awards being handed out there, e.g. Nebula et. al., genres are being kept separate and I think this is best for everyone.
Wondering why no SF gained literary awards is like wondering why no non-SF gained any Nebula awards.

I personally couldn't care less. SF is bashed? So be it. It's still pretty much the only genre I ever buy in form of books (with very, very few exceptions).

Re:Mass appeal

[chipschap]

Critics of literature and the guys who nominate books for literary awards probably don't read a lot of SF either

They also, as far as I can tell, generally don't have much of a clue about science and math either. This works into why they rave over Jonathan Franzen publishing a novel every ten years or so and praising it to the heavens, rather than even considering sci-fi which may have concepts well beyond the critics' understanding.

I remember once seeing a complaint from an author about the New York Times weekly book review section, to the effect: "The New York Times likes young women poets who killed themselves."

Re:Mass appeal

[tomhath]

Proper appreciation of science fiction requires an educated mindset that can properly appreciate science as well as hopefully look forward in the face of existential crisis.

Hey, that's some pretty good science fiction you just wrote. But fiction nonetheless.

Re:Mass appeal

[St.Creed]

I agree though, Borat was robbed.

It wasn't that good. I liked it in parts, not so much in others. But it wasn't very good. IMO Bruno was better. Especially with the OJ baby, the Harrison Ford interview and the tv focus group. The bicycle was... pretty bad though.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Anie Hall wasn't funny. It was a straight up drama, not sure why it got the 'comedy' nominator.

Re:Mass appeal

[swb]

Allen's comedy isn't slapstick or a comedy of errors, it's intellectual nature allows it to kind of transcend a strict genre label.

He's done pictures like "Interiors" which were strict dramas, but most of his films had at least a strong comic element to them even if the underlying dramatic element was strong enough that they could also be considered dramas.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree though, Borat was robbed.

Borat? WTF? What about Mel Brooks? Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, hell, even Space Balls.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you don't count Birdman (2014), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Forrest Gump (1994), and that's just the ones I can remember.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

It Happened One Night won big.

Re:Mass appeal

[ChrisMaple]

Cuckoo's Nest is vicious. That allows the critics to ignore the comedic elements. Pure comedy, like the great Bringing Up Baby, would never be seriously considered for an Academy Best Picture Award.

Re:Mass appeal

[dbIII]

Critics of literature and the guys who nominate books for literary awards probably don't read a lot of SF either, so they don't know the subgenres, which works to pick up and which ones to avoid

A good example of this is the English Literature acadmemic who had written an "ironic" steampunk Swift retelling (Lilliput with steam - not that there is anything wrong with that) who tore into Greg Egan for writing a novel where the aliens very apparently far too alien and there was far too much science in the fiction (the aliens were learning about relativity from observing their very extreme environment). It just did not fit the reviewers idea of cowboys in space (or other minor changes to the world we know - like his tweaks to Swift to put it in a new setting) that the reviewer thought of as science fiction.

Re:Mass appeal

[MichaelSmith]

But Incandescence was a pretty poor novel as Egan novels go. It doesn't compare to Permutation City or Diaspora.

His most literary novel would be Teranesia.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Allen's comedy isn't slapstick or a comedy of errors, it's intellectual nature allows it to kind of transcend a strict genre label.

Yeah, like "funny".

Re:Mass appeal

[argStyopa]

I'm not sure a "they don't like what I like because I'm so much smarter than them" is really going to persuade anyone but the choir.

Re:Mass appeal

[Reziac]

"rather than even considering sci-fi which may have concepts well beyond the critics' understanding."

This has been my observation as well. You won't see many people of average or lower intelligence reading SF. And I'll never forget one such average-IQ person's evaluation of a SF book she didn't understand.

Her: "It's stupid."
Me: "Why?"
Her: "It just is."

Re:Mass appeal

[bill_tvm]

"Shakespear in love" won in 1999.

Re:Mass appeal

[david_thornley]

Science fiction settings are often open to appreciation without knowledge of science. Most people don't understand the science behind what we've got, and it's usually a good idea to describe a future society without going into the science involved, rather than have characters or asides pointing out the mechanics. This applies especially when the science would be bogus. If an author wants FTL starships, that's cool, but any attempt to justify them scientifically is going to be lame at best.

An educated mindset will contribute to the understanding of all literature.

Re:Mass appeal

[dbIII]

Perhaps but I'd say very different instead of "pretty poor novel". The others are often about exploring new ideas while Incandescence and the Clockwork Rocket series are about exploring established ideas from a different perspective.

Re:Mass appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

"...genres are being kept separate and I think this is best for everyone."

I disagree. Example, in the early 1970's and before there was some, to me, interesting electronic music. Not to be confused with electronica (120 beats a minute, etc.) that arrived around the late 1980's.
Electronic music in the sense that the primary source of sound was generated electronically.
Examples would be Michael Sterns, Keven Braheny's first recordings (on cassette, impossible to find), Steve Roach, interpreters of Classical music Tomita and Wendy/Walter Carlos. Many more. Some of this music was dramatic, loud, symphonic.
Record Stores didn't quite know where to put that music.
Then Brian Eno put out Discreet Music, followed up later with Ambient Music. He's apologized for inspiring New Age Music. Other factors--there were many-- were the rise of synthesizers based on keyboards--the mighty Serge Synthesizer used patch cords.
Record Stores were happy--they now had a bona fide genre. Except that sturm and drang, drama, loud crescendos or startling passes were not part of New Age Music.
After that, if you made music generated electronically the market place only accepted 'nice,' quiet music.
I like genres. Well, I have never read a romance novel. The downside is they give us limited choices and eclipse things that violate the required and the not-allowed within each genre.

Re:Mass appeal

[war4peace]

Couple differences here:

1. I was referring to literature, not music.
1. The definition of a "genre" is really elastic and won't match theory in most cases. Most people would say "this is SF!" even for books which are purely Fantasy.

I'm very confused now...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Or, as Margaret Atwood put it more bluntly and infamously: "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space."

So Sad Puppies were actually right?

Re:I'm very confused now...

[MightyMartian]

And yet Atwood is no stranger to speculative fiction, which is generally lumped in with SF. How is Handmaiden's Tale not SF?

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Anonymous Coward]

> How is Handmaiden's Tale not SF?

No science?

Re:I'm very confused now...

[MightyMartian]

It's speculative, involves a nuclear war and widespread infertility because of it. As I said, speculative fiction has usually been lumped in with science fiction, or at least viewed as a sort of sibling genre.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[mvdwege]

It's also unfair to Margaret Atwood, as she retracted that statement later. She is now fully onboard with regarding Science Fiction as Literary genre.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, science fiction IMHO is a subset of speculative fiction.

It's a stupid term anyhow, since all fiction is by nature speculative - I think they just wanted to lump all stories that take place in the future (or alternate pasts) in with SF.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[AK Marc]

It's SF, but not SciFi. SF stands for both SciFi and Speculative Fiction at the same time, and are getting more likely mixed on the shelves. SF includes fantasy, and all sorts of things. "pure" SciFi is different, but these days, SF is the grouping they go into, and that group is mostly ignored.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Eunuchswear]

> How is Handmaiden's Tale not SF?

No science?

Where's the science in most Heinlein?

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Anonymous Coward]

talking squids in outer space."

Well, therein lies your problem.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read "most" Heinlein, but what I did read involved aliens, space travel, alternate timelines, and other far-out concepts well beyond "what if Christian fundamentalists started a civil war."

And it's very possible Heinlein wrote books I wouldn't classify as SF.

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Eunuchswear]

Like I said. Where's the science?

Saying "space travel" when I ask about science makes about as much sense as saying "bus travel". Neither of them happens without science, but stories about bus travel aren't stories about science.

P.S. Heinlein wrote stories about "what if Christian fundamentalists started a civil war."

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't think anyone's ever come up with a solid definition of what "science fiction" is, but it typically involves some imaginary technology, not something as mundane as buses. The key for me is the exploration of a kind-bending "what if?"

I opined to a friend once that the difference between science fiction and fantasy is:

SF: "Given the laws of physics, imagine what's possible."

Fantasy: "Given that anything is possible, imagine what's possible."

Re:I'm very confused now...

[Hognoxious]

If Trump gets elected it might not be fiction.

[takes a puff on his ePipe and strokes his beard - which he had before hipsters even existed - and looks very smug]

Oryx and Crake is certainly SF, and what's more it has pigs in it.

Snobbery

[Kohath]

Literary awards are snobbish. Quality in literature is subjective, so awards go to people that award-givers want to award.

Isn't this obvious?

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

You beat me to that point, but I will expand by asking why one needs an award to feel accomplished? If you are able to leverage writing talent into an otherwise successful career, then who cares what a stuffy panel full of tensile-textile-tallywhacker-totes think?

Re:Snobbery

[Dutch Gun]

It's partly that, perhaps, but I think it's also something more. I think that science fiction demand something unique of a reader that other genres do not. It requires a larger leap of imagination in order to allow the author to create an entire world, and quite possibly a new society to go along with it, with different rules and conventions. They insist that a read be able to take that leap and make that world their own for the duration of the story.

Sadly, I think this is a leap too far for many people, who consider "playing make-believe", even in literary form, beneath them, somehow childish or undignified. It pulls you out of your comfortable knowledge of the world and everything in it, and forces you to relearn the universe and its rules again, which may be an uncomfortable process for some. And this is perhaps even more true for fantasy than science fiction, because at least science fiction can still take place in our own universe where the same physical laws still apply, however speculative it is with future technology.

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like the books you have to read in school.
Some of the old ones are reasonble.
If it's anything modern, it's usually "by pretentious snobs, for pretentious snobs". I'm only glad that most children still have the common sense to not fall for such rubbish.
And then sometimes a politician to top it off manages to force some true bottom-of-the-barrel writing into it (for any Germans out there, I am referring to the book "Gestern war heute" - it had the questionable honour of being the only book I've ever seen pupils burn once the exams were over, and the only case where despite objecting on principle I could only agree with the sentiment).

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, having been subjected to several teachers into the stuff many years ago (and a number of friends since), "Quality Literature" typically eskews plot, fun and excitement in favour of deeply person journeys in unpleasant subjects and psychological waffle the "blurs the boundaries between (typically unspecified) genres" or similar bollocks. Literary awards seem to reward this style.

As a result I (possibly unfairly) tend to shun books with literary pretentions in favour of those that look like they might be a good escapist read. Usually that means a mix of fantasy and science fiction.

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we should create our own literature awards, with hookers and blackjack!.

Re:Snobbery

[ChrisMaple]

If the dust jacket uses the words "insightful", "moving," or "poignant", run away and don't look back.

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent "insightful"

Re:Snobbery

[someone1234]

Free advertising, better place in the bookstore.

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

"eskews"?

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is obvious. This is why I never bother with "award winning" anything. It is always the snobs propping up their snob friends. Doesn't matter the industry... it is all just self congratulatory masturbation.

As a matter of fact, if something has won an "award" that is just a sign telling me to steer clear.

Re:Snobbery

[Agronomist Cowherd]

From context, "eschews". I don't think I've ever heard it spoken; I thought it was pronounced "ess-shoes", but I suppose the "ch" could be a hard "ch" so "eskews" could be correctly phonetic. Or it could be wrong twice. Either way I don't think it made the post hard to understand.

Re:Snobbery

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I think this is a leap too far for many people, who consider "playing make-believe", even in literary form, beneath them, somehow childish or undignified.

All fiction is "make-believe." The problem with SCIENCE fiction is that it is too often focused on the science to make it a compelling, interesting piece of literature. In short, your preferred genre does not contain that many truly excellent examples of literary quality, despite your fetishizing of a particular way of playing make believe as the "one true way" of "playing make-believe."

It's really that simple.

Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Nova Express]

Due to the Social Justice Warrior influx, the genre's awards are no longer given on merit, but rather on meeting the proper criteria of political, ethnic and gender correctness.

If you question this turn of events, expect to find yourself expelled from Worldcon for voicing anti-Social Justice Warrior thoughts.

Before the SJW invasion, the Hugo Award used to mean something, and the best of science fiction was gaining increased literary respect. Neither of those are true anymore.

And if SF awards have become meaningless, this designation applies doubly to literary awards. Quick, name the last ten winners of the National Book Award for Fiction. Outside a small circle of literary devotees, no one knows or cares.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as I saw the words "Science Fiction" in the headline, I knew some Professional Victim would crawl out to whine about the "SJWs," and how unjust it all was, and how he was a hurt victim!

Looks like I was right.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The submitter's question was why is sci-fi ignored by the mainstream crowd.

2. Sci-fi and a lot of "geekdom" in general does have a misogyny problem.

3. The solution is to address the misogyny, not to force everything into the 50/50 balance a lot of SJW want. If your book is about space marines and 90% of the characters are male, that's not misogyny... it's life. If the book were then to only refer to and treat women as sex objects, submissive servants, etc. That's misogyny. Too many people confuse omission for exclusion and both for derision and/or subjugation.

4. Regardless, you can write good sci-fi in the constraints laid out by the SJW. I quite like the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie. And I know it's one of the series that people point to as an example of the Hugo's "selling out" but everyone I know who's read it (male and female) likes it. She just had this misfortune to right a good book* right at the time this became a touchpoint.

* Yes "good" is very, very subjective when reviewing literature.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

3. The solution is to address the misogyny, not to force everything into the 50/50 balance a lot of SJW want

Why can't women be space marines?!?!?!

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[TechyImmigrant]

3. The solution is to address the misogyny, not to force everything into the 50/50 balance a lot of SJW want

Why can't women be space marines?!?!?!

Because they don't have the means to get into space. Low Earth orbit is attainable for both sexes though.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for proving my point. I never said they couldn't be or shouldn't be, I just said it didn't have to be an even 50/50 split and you bowed up. My example was 90/10 which reflects current reality. In this day in age, most women don't want to be marines or soldiers period. That may change in the future and you can find a lot of literature that reflects a culture where it does.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

> Professional Victim

You're trying to use words that describe SJWs but you're not even doing it right, nowhere he claimed to be a victim.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

As someone who really wants there to be good SF, can you please shut up? I mean I personally think the awards often go to by far the wrong place and the whole "literary SF" thing is in many cases a bunch of bull. However, when you get frothing lunatics spewing rants about SJW all over the place it just makes people switch off to both the messenger and the message.

In other words, if you like the status quo, you're doing a very good job at maintaining it.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Making a word bold won't make your claim less silly. Please provide proof.

4. WTF? No one claims it's not possible. Authors should be free to do what they want.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[ravenshrike]

That's not entirely true. While the SJW infiltration that started in the late noughts certainly didn't help matters, the Hugos had been struggling for relevancy as an award since the late 80's. This is because they basically shun YA Sci-fi and the thought of bringing in new readers. The average age at Worldcon has to hover at least between 40 and 50 if not higher.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Zak3056]

If your book is about space marines and 90% of the characters are male, that's not misogyny... it's life. If the book were then to only refer to and treat women as sex objects, submissive servants, etc. That's misogyny.

I'll grant the characters are probably misogynistic, but that would not necessarily make the story or the author misogynistic.

Regardless, you can write good sci-fi in the constraints laid out by the SJW.

This, right here, is the problem. Who the hell is ANYONE for whatever reason to lay out constraints? "Hey, the writing was superb, and the story was great, but in chapter 5 someone said something the thought police don't agree with, so no award for you."

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to say keep up the SJW talk if you want. Don't let them try to shut you up or bully you. "SJW" is the clearest, most meaningful term we currently have for these people. Don't worry about their manipulative whining about it.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the above. Can't you see that we are the real victims here? We are entitled to justice! When you see someone who doesn't agree, let the whole world know that that person is an SJW! Scan every single article on Slashdot and everything everywhere else, and if you feel like you are a victim, speak out against the SJWs! It doesn't matter what the article is about! IT MUST BE YOUR ONE TASK IN LIFE TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE SJWs!

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[ceoyoyo]

According to Heinlein they can, but there aren't many of them because they're too busy being pilot-officers. Something about special aptitude that makes them too valuable to be grunts.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

Who the hell is ANYONE for whatever reason to lay out constraints?

ANYONE can lay out whatever constraints THEY like. It's called FREE speech. Can I stop capitalising now? You don't have to adhere to their constraints if you don't want to. Of course if those people are the ones dishing out an award you want, well, then you have to suck it up.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... SJW is simply a term to describe people who act a certain way (W) for certain reasons (SJ). Try not to panic when you see it.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

There was no SJW infilitration or cabal. Never mind that "SJW" means "someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit". All that happened is a bunch of people with dubious tastes happened to be the only ones who could be arsed to actually nominate and vote. As such it was about the most pathetic "conspiracy" in the history of the world ever because it turned out that the criteria for being conspired against were more or less "too lazy to voice an opinion".

So crappy sci-fi got given awards, because some people you disagree with bothered to vote and nominate.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reading science fiction novels since my early childhood, so about 40 years now, and cannot confirm at all that sci-fi has a misogyny problem. If at all, I'd wager that sci-fi has always been slightly more progressive in that respect than other genres. Are you sure you're not talking about Hollywood science fiction movies instead?

Re: Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[nastyphil]

> Why can't women be space marines

Private Vasquez and Corporal Dietrich say they can.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep using that word....I don't think it means what you think it means....

"Misogyny" is hatred, contempt, or prejudice against women. Showing women in subservient roles is none of these things (and is historically accurate, and is also a popular theme in entertainment targeted specifically AT women!).

Same is true when women are depicted primarily as being valued for their appearance, or being pursued for sex. "Sex objects," as you say. Lusting for women is pretty much the opposite of hating them.

Stories where men actively beat women (against their will) would be misogynistic. Or stories where all women are depicted as dishonest or incompetent would qualify.

Words have meanings. We do our language a disservice when we heap all kinds of unrelated meanings on top of them.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[lucasnate1]

Most women don't want to be whores either, and yet there are more female whores than male whores. I do not think most men want to be soldiers. I think society tries to force people into roles they don't want. For a woman it's a thing of beauty, for a man it's a thing of murder.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[geek]

Who the hell is ANYONE for whatever reason to lay out constraints?

ANYONE can lay out whatever constraints THEY like. It's called FREE speech. Can I stop capitalising now? You don't have to adhere to their constraints if you don't want to. Of course if those people are the ones dishing out an award you want, well, then you have to suck it up.

Constraints.... free speech. You are obviously a fucking moron

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[joboss]

I think Science Fiction is also a bit flooded. I find Science Fiction one of the most easily enjoyable things and it's relatively easier to write Science Fiction in some ways versus Comedy which is genuinely hard regardless of the theme or setting. There's probably a few people fed up with too much Science Fiction.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[cheesybagel]

Same reason men can't be amazons.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Marines (fighters) physically need Power (speed and strength). Simply, women do not have the same physical power. Sure, same skill, but power is always a multiplier that 99.9999 women will not have.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[dbIII]

Due to the Social Justice Warrior influx [battleswarmblog.com], the genre's awards are no longer given on merit, but rather on meeting the proper criteria of political, ethnic and gender correctness.

It appeared to me some people writing small press Military Science Fiction who would not have been able to be published if they were attempting to write mainstream Military Fiction were just a bit pissed off that they were not getting the awards but some women were.
Hornblower in Space with a magic cat gets somewhere but most other Military Fiction cut and pasted into space is far more dismal than that. Those guys can't write the next Sharpe or Flashman whether it is in space or not. Once they can do something as good they will deserve awards, and IMHO they should try to write something good instead of just trying to game the system with that "slate" - a fucking how to vote card instead of what is supposed to happen with people rating the works they like more than the ones they don't.
The blame the SJW shit is just an act of attempting to blame others for their own lack of success. If people write stuff on social justice or political themes and the majority of people like it more than others then they should get an award - Rand who is the darling of these "puppies" did exactly that didn't she?

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[ChrisMaple]

You profoundly ignorant of the motives leading to both prostitution and soldiering.

Most women who become prostitutes are either tricked/coerced into the field by a pimp, or become prostitutes due to financial desperation.

Soldiers, at least in the US, are led either by a feeling of patriotic duty or an estimate that the military is a wise career choice. Psychopaths, if recognized, are rejected.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[rubycodez]

But plenty of great literary works have a misogyny problem, treating women as sex objects, submissive, etc. This is because most of the time, in most of the places in the world, women are treated as sex objects, submissive, etc. Claiming "misogyny problem" for science fiction is therefore just a straw man, a smokescreen.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Zak3056]

You sound like one of those people who say that something isn't censorship because only the government can violate the first amendment.

Yes, bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct--the best kind of correct--when you say that stating "you can't say that" is indeed part and parcel of free speech. That doesn't change that these thought police are hell bent on gutting the notion of what free speech actually is. Being an asshole is protected speech. It's not in any way socially valuable, but we protect that speech (or at least we USED to) because protecting it protects speech that truly is valuable.

The past: "I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Today: "YOU MISOGYNIST BASTARD, YOUR MICROAGGRESSIONS HAVE GIVEN ME PTSD."

I know which world I prefer(ed) living in.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind that "SJW" means "someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit"

So basically it shares the same definition of 'racist' and 'misogynist' as commonly used today:

• Never mind that "racist" means "someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit"
• Never mind that "misogynist" means "someone I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit"

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[lucasnate1]

"Most women who becomes prostitutes are tricked" - and what is "patriotic duty" if not a trick?

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[ravenshrike]

When the Nebulas, an award by sci fi authors for excellence(unlike the Hugos) in the field of Sci-Fi/Fantasy gives the award to a story like "If you were a dinosaur my love" there's a problem with SJW infiltration. It's not sci-fi, it's not fantasy, and since it's nothing but someone's personal twisted revenge porn they're daydreaming about with no effect on the real world it doesn't even qualify as speculative fiction. Even that idiotic rain story from the following year was at least spec fic.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

Constraints.... free speech. You are obviously a fucking moron

Ah yes, it's speech you don't like, therefore it should not be free.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

I'm not going to defend either of the stories. The dinosaur one was bad and not sci-fi. The idiotic rain one was idiotic. If you cared enough, you could dig up the review I wrote about it from the depth of slashdot.

When the Nebulas, an award by sci fi authors for excellence(unlike the Hugos) in the field of Sci-Fi/Fantasy gives the award to a story like "If you were a dinosaur my love" there's a problem with SJW infiltration.

Nope it's not "SJW" infiltration, and by ranting and raving (seriously, SJW is an idiotic term, it is used to mean so many things, all it means is "person I don't like and by the way I'm a fuckwit") you miss the more important point.

The Nebulas are not done by some shadowy cabal, they are done by the SFWA, i.e. an award by authors for authors. The trouble with sci-fi is the current staggering lack of science in it. It has been glomed on to by nonscientist writers who seem to not care much for the actual science, or at least don't know remotely enough about it to write sensibly about it. The problem with modern sci-fi is not some stupid "SJW infiltration" (seriously that just makes you sound like a frothing-mouthed loon), it's the disappearance of actual scientists from it. This is as much to do with the relative collapse of the other markets (those authors gotta eat) as it is anything else.

The problem with that is the replace science with woo and don't seem to value the strong, speculative element. And so they don't award for it. And apparently the fans actually for a large part like this. For example, Kim Stanley Robinson seems popular, though when I tried reading one of his books, it was clear he didn't have the slightest grasp about a number of topics he was writing about.

If the puppies did anything they proved hat there is not in fact a silent majority who agrees with them, the majority in fact disagrees.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[MichaelSmith]

Kim Stanley Robinson seems popular, though when I tried reading one of his books, it was clear he didn't have the slightest grasp about a number of topics he was writing about

I'd be interested in an example of this. I can think of some bad science in Aurora and 2312 but elsewhere it is quite solid. There is more solid science in the Mars Trilogy than many comparable books which feature terraforming.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[farrellj]

If the "Sick Puppies" were any more predictable, their last name would be Trump! What makes them even more funny is that they really have no idea about how the Hugo Awards or the WSFS works.

ttyl
          Farrell

p.s. And their names also makes them open to ad homonym attacks!

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconding that there was no SJW infiltration. In my case, I just stopped being a 14 year old and got sick of sexist garbage and started reading science fiction that wasn't trash. Also, society stopped being quite so shitty in a lot of ways, and so most writers (as part of society) stopped writing so much garbage.

I'm sorry there aren't enough giant-boobed women on the covers of sci-fi novels to suit your tastes these days, but if you look I guarantee you can still find them.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[dwillden]

It actually started much earlier. I usually point to Wizards of the Coast as a recognizable onset point. They mandated the 50/50 mix back in the late 80's in order to be published by them.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[yndrd1984]

Sci-fi and a lot of "geekdom" in general does have a misogyny problem.

No, "geekdom" has social-skills issues. A poorly done romantic overture isn't misogyny, it's just another clumsy social interaction. And it doesn't help the kind of people who take things literally that we have so many rules that are taboo to talk about - from "male sexuality is always seen as being dangerous, even if she has more control over the situation than you do" to "people will judge your behavior towards women more harshly".

If your book is about space marines and 90% of the characters are male, that's not misogyny... it's life. If the book were then to only refer to and treat women as sex objects, submissive servants, etc. That's misogyny.

No, that's also (in some cases) life. Or are we banning "The Stepford Wives" now? Or is it just positive or neutral portrayals of those subjects?

Too many people confuse omission for exclusion and both for derision and/or subjugation.

Exactly. Just like some people confuse portrayals or exploration of subjugation with endorsement of it. Or endorsement of ideas that they don't like with evil.

Regardless, you can write good sci-fi in the constraints laid out by the SJW.

You can write good sci-fi without aliens, too. The question should be "Why should fictional entertainment, especially a genre often used as an exploration of ideas, be forced to exclude ideas that one particular group has political issues with?". What's next, communism sucks therefore Star Trek shouldn't be allowed to show a money-free future?

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that too. Good response to a little bit of life's nastiness.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Your date seems pretty early, so I actually looked it up. Wizards of the Coast was founded in 1990.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[serviscope_minor]

I'd be interested in an example of this. I can think of some bad science in Aurora and 2312 but elsewhere it is quite solid. There is more solid science in the Mars Trilogy than many comparable books which feature terraforming.

Aurora was the one I was primarily thinking of. I've generally avoided him because his stuff ends up annoying me for being oviously wrong in places. A friend got Aurora for me though so I had a crack at it.

I skipped over the Mars Trilogy ones. So, you reckon they're better? I might give them a go then.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[painandgreed]

3. The solution is to address the misogyny, not to force everything into the 50/50 balance a lot of SJW want

Why can't women be space marines?!?!?!

Because the Emperor made the gene seeds so they only meld with male DNA.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[david_thornley]

Soldiers don't necessarily need physical strength, in an environment where that is supplied by machines. Even currently, while strength is useful, it isn't as important as it used to be.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[david_thornley]

I exercise free speech. This means that I can put whatever constraints I want on my writing. This also means that other people can't put significant constraints on me.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[david_thornley]

It's hard to write really good fiction in any genre. If there's more science fiction out there than you can read, you can try to read more of what you really like.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[david_thornley]

"SJW" is clear and meaningful? I've seen it used for all sorts of things, including people who are genuinely concerned about clear injustices and people who make up stupid rules about not offending people. At this point it seems to mean "person I don't like and can't be bothered to complain about intelligibly".

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[MichaelSmith]

The Mars Trilogy was the height of Robinson's career. Its primarily character focused and it is quite optimistic about the technical challenges and risks of colonization. But there are few real clangers. Few obvious plot holes. The purpose of the plot is to keep the characters doing stuff when in reality they would be more likely to be dying early deaths due to radiation and accidents.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are a useless twit.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[yndrd1984]

And you have no argument whatsoever (useless), but can't restrain yourself from replying anyway (twit).

So we both think the other is a useless twit, but only one of us can back up their claim. :)

Do you need

[Anonymous Coward]

a stamp of approval to enjoy a story?

Very simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most of it is, frankly, rubbish. And I say this as someone who's read tons of it. It's just juvenile nonsense, most of it.

Re:Very simple

[ColdWetDog]

Because most of it is, frankly, rubbish. And I say this as someone who's read tons of it. It's just juvenile nonsense, most of it.

Like most of everything else? That's the problem - finding stuff that's halfway well written in a subject you find entertaining.

Life is hard!

Re: Very simple

[Entrope]

Please survey any of the genres of recent books that get much space on the shelves at libraries or bookstores and let us know which genres are predominantly fine literature.

Because romance novels, thrillers, and "Moron's Guides" to the Obvious sure ain't.

Re: Very simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Biography -- the lives of real people. Within that one can choose to read about adventurers, sports people, business types, teachers, radicals, educators, etc. The only thing worth reading about.

Re:Very simple

[ChrisMaple]

Sturgeon's Law.

Re: Very simple

[ChrisMaple]

You have a valid point, but the general subject of this discussion is fiction.

Biographies, unless they are dishonestly selective, seldom have the steadily growing and consistent theme of great fiction.

Fiction is more important than history because it shows things not as they are, but as they could be.

Do literary awards matter?

[Ambassador Kosh]

Do these awards even matter? My understanding is that science-fiction sells pretty well.

Before you buy a book do you check to see if it has won awards? Do you even care?

It certainly seems that amazon doesn't use awards when recommending books that would interest me.

I understand that people want to receive recognition but in the end does it actually matter? It seems to me that just like other award ceremonies they just matter less and less. Kind of like when the Oscars don't represent the actual movies that people really liked they stop mattering to people.

In the end read what you want and let computer algorithms figure out what you are more likely to want to read and ignore the silly awards.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[ColdWetDog]

Amazon uses (presumably) links to what sells and what other people have purchased that might fit your interests. Works not all that well.

Awards, like Hugo / Nebula / Pulitzer don't necessarily mean that the book is interesting or relevant but do tend to reflect some higher level of decent writing. I often think that the awards ought to go to the editor more often than not.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[Zontar The Mindless]

I often think that the awards ought to go to the editor more often than not.

Any decent writer knows that a good editor is worth his weight in gold.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[SeattleLawGuy]

Do these awards even matter? My understanding is that science-fiction sells pretty well.

They matter, just not as much (from a business perspective) as sales.

Awards help drive sales. They give something to add to the blurb on the back of the book, they give the author a credential on their resume for any article they ever want to write, they make it MUCH more likely the author will be allowed to teach creative writing at a top school if she wants to, etc...

A sizable set of the people they drive sales to are also people with significant disposable income and a lot of friends who also read books that win awards. So selling just one of them to people in that group helps word-of-mouth.

And finally, the award helps shift literary norms. So if you want your kid to be able to even HAVE a college class on science fiction, or to be able to discuss science fiction there and have her professors not talk down at her for it, it's a big deal to be able to move that needle. It is also important just as a general way to fight again anti-intellectualism, because the best kinds of intellectualism are all about the marketplace of ideas that aren't incredibly stupid, and there are DEFINITELY some parts of sci-fi that can add to that marketplace meaningfully.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[BadDreamer]

Before I buy a book, I find out it exists. I usually do that through articles, blogs and the like - and they tend to favor books which won awards.

So no, I do not directly check that. I do not care. But I will probably not find out a book is worth reading unless it has won an award, or is from an author who has previously won one. There are exceptions, but they are not that many.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which just enhances the parent's point. Movies have editing awards, why not novels? Not just SF, either.. All books benefit from a good editor.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[ravenshrike]

The big 5 TradPub sci-fi/fantasy sector has been floundering pretty hard the last few years. It doesn't help that they're complete morons about their e-book policies. Including indie and small o mid publishers and the outlook is much better. Not great ,but still pretty good.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[dwillden]

Because to win such an award the author's would have to release the pre-edited dreck and the final copy to show how great a job the editor did. With movies the judges can look at the script and then look at the final product to see how effective the editors were in translating the script into the visual medium accurately and effectively.

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[PMuse]

Old cold-war joke:
Two Soviet tank generals meet in Paris. One turns to the other and says, "So. Who won the air war?"

Re:Do literary awards matter?

[mink]

There are Hugos for editing.
From the Hugo Award web site:
"Best Editor (Long Form): This is the first of the person categories, so the Award is given for the work that person has done in the year of eligibility. To be eligible the person must have edited at least 4 novel-length (i.e. 40,000 words or more) books devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy in the year of eligibility that are not anthologies or collections.
Best Editor (Short Form): To be eligible the person must have edited at least four anthologies, collections or magazine issues devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy, at least one of which must have been published in the year of eligibility."

...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugo and Nebula awards don't count nowadays O_O ?

The Hugo / Nebula award winners and nominated books are usually fantastic reads and I can't name these awards as anything else than extremely prestigious!

Signed: AC on /. since 2000

Meaningless

[Sir Foxx]

Who cares about awards? I've never understood why any consumer of literature, movies, etc cares about awards that mean nothing, are arbitrary and contribute nothing to the consumers enjoyment of whatever it is they are referring to. Just enjoy what you enjoy and don't waste any effort on meaningless things such as awards.

Re:Meaningless

[godrik]

Well, awards are mostly there to reach a wider audience. Books with awards are often more prominently set in book stores, they are discussed in talk shows, and in radio shows.

Look at movies, I usually don't watch American comedies. I usually find them of too low quality to be of interest to me. But I usually will watch and enjoy action movies even if the typical quality is no better than the American comedies. But when I hear of an American comedy that won some kid of award, it indicates me that this one is better than average. So maybe I'll enjoy it.

Re:Meaningless

[david_thornley]

A book with an award in a field you care about is likely to be better than a book in that field without an award. Authors with several awards tend to be better than authors with few or no awards. I sometimes read a book just because it's won an award, in the hope of finding more books I like.

Lot of sci-fi is bad writing with good ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, lots of sci-fi is written with the focus of communicating some good ideas (say, the structure of the human brain and the power of language as in Snow Crash, as well as the logical progression of American society to corporate fiefdoms) via weak narratives and poor prose. I couldn't get through A Fire Upon the Deep and barely got through Ringworld or Dune in part because of the poor writing. If your work can't communicate the idea, it's probably not a good work, despite all the good ideas. An example of well written sci-fi would be something like Enders Game or the Expanse series, though it's still pretty pulpy in some respects.

Re:Lot of sci-fi is bad writing with good ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

lol what do you consider well written?!

Re:Lot of sci-fi is bad writing with good ideas

[ChrisMaple]

Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970,[1] as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.[2] (wikipedia). Your opinion of Ringworld as being poorly written is not widely held. I found it compelling and intelligible, and of the hundreds of SF novels I have read it is one of perhaps 20 that I can remember many details and most of the plot.

Sci Fi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the real SciFi has been associated with tennage boys and young men.
That in itself makes it a SJW target.
And then there are some movies associated with that type of fiction....
While bookstores lump SciFi and Fantasy together, so do the Literary awards judges.
To be inclusive of other neglected genres, lets not be too specific.
No awards for Harlequin Romances, associated with teenage girls and young/old women... this includes 50 Shades...
No awards for murder mysteries, comedy or otherwse..... graphic novels included...
No awards for westerns, with hero or heroine....
No awards for gangster tales, crime novels.

OOPS! I forgot - some of these do get awards based on sales.

Of course, to be fair, the writing/plot/attention-to-detals in any of these genres may be good, bad, boring or mediocre.
But people buy them, so they will be written.
( when Tolkeins son and Herberts son tried to continue, it was evident they could not write for poop)

If they literary judges weren't so anal about intellectual stuff ( HUTA ), then these should get awards:
Asmov - I, Robot and the Foundation Series.
Herbert - Dune.... only Dune.
Clark - 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles.

Disclaimer - I like a cheesy novel...

Re:Sci Fi?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is also pretty decent.

Re:Sci Fi?

[MichaelSmith]

Yes one of only three of four really good Heinlein books, with the rest being pulp.

Re:Sci Fi?

[rickyslashdot]

Anybody want to comment on the late Anne McCaffrey (soft scifi, fantasy) or David Brin (hard scifi) - BOTH of which often feature female leads in their stories.

Most readers want familiar concepts

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, fiction reading is for entertainment. I think most readers want familiar material that they can easily relate to. This isn't say "dumb" or even "simple", that just want to enjoy the plot in a framework they're used to. When you start throwing in new words, new concepts, etc. it actually distracts from the story for a lot of people. I think this is one of the reasons _modern_ history (from the industrial revolution on) books stay dominate in non-fiction. It's very easy for most people to relate to.

With that said there is a lot of crap in sci-fiction and it's difficult to wade through it all to find the gems. I don't if publishing standards are lower for sci-fi or the editors just aren't as good (or existent) but one trend I've noticed a lot of writers starting to use is repeating the same basic statements, ideas and concepts over and over. It's almost like they have to turn in a 1500 word easy and it's due in 1 hour. It drives me nuts. And even good authors (I understand that's subjective) can be guilty of it. I loved Ian Douglas' Heritage Trilogy but the Star Carrier series is almost unreadable for the reason I mentioned above. (I honestly think he's just phoning it in now because they're his most recent works and they get progressively worse).

Syfy Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Syfy, with its archetypal B-movie (perhaps, C-movie) flicks has imprinted this idea on the public. Science fiction=bug-eyed monsters, and worse. It's hard to cast-off this stereotype.

Because 99% of it Sucks at Being Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same problem Chick-Lit, romance, horror, western, mystery, and all the other genres have.

They entertain their intended audience, but they're seldom great works of art.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Re:Because 99% of it Sucks at Being Literature

[careysub]

And yet the western has Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian. Horror has Lovecraft, who was admired by the 20th Century's greatest writer Jorge Luis Borges (yes, my opinion, but I am hardly alone on this). Fantasy has many great works, LOTR, Earthsea, etc. (also Borges himself, but he gets the "Spanish language" exemption I mention in my other post on this thread below). Science Fiction has The Book of the New Sun. Mystery writing has actually become broadly accepted by critics in recent years (Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, etc.). Great literature is definitely to be found in these genres.

Re:Because 99% of it Sucks at Being Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very simple once you distance yourself from your favourites and look at the field of literature as a whole. Sci-fi lovers, and maybe as a sci-fi lover I'm guilty of this too, perceive literature as ‘sci-fi’, maybe one or two other things that register on their radar, and ‘the rest’. And then we wonder why not at least 30% of the awards are handed to sci-fi authors.
But there are hundreds of genres, and genres within genres, and works that blur the lines or without a definable genre, and there's a limited number of awards. Which is good if the awards are to mean anything. Most literature, including most sci-fi, is utter tripe, but even from the small fraction that's good awards only bless a select few. So looking at it that way I guess we should be surprised that so many sci-fi books have gotten awards.

What is a good book?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only award winning novels I have read are Nebula and Hugo awarded. I wish I had the patience of wading through some of the "controversial" scenes for those "really good books" have sometimes gotten their rewards from. I can't be bothered to draw out a flip board with a matrix of Roman and Greek mythology to read and understand some of those 20th century modern classics. So what is left? What is a good book to read?

Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[ImJacksDad]

...and very little sci-fi comes anywhere near competitive by those standards. From my own bookshelves, LeGuin, maybe Samuel R. Delaney, maybe Octavia Butler... currently - China Mieville...? But even those we consider Giants of the Field - Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke - were good SCIENCE FICTION writers, but not great WRITERS... Kim Stanley Robinson is the perfect example of this. The Mars trilogy is great when judged against other sci-fi works but even he cannot really believe it bests the best of contemporary non-sci-fi fiction...

Re:Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[nyet]

No mention of Iain M. Banks.

Very sad.

Re:Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[dbIII]

He didn't write much SF but George Turner fits mainly because he shifted from the mainstream to SF at an advanced age.
He stirred a few people up by noting that most SF is definitely crap (but so is a lot of writing in general). The MilSciFi types should take a look at "Yesterday's Men (1983)" to see how it's done from the perspective of someone with combat experience. While Hornblower in Space with a magic cat may entertain it is possible to do better and be less derivative. Around his best is The Sea and Summer / Drowning Towers (1988)

Re:Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[MichaelSmith]

Turner may have been good but he was too damn depressing to read, let alone enjoy.

Re:Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[ray-auch]

No mention of Iain M. Banks.

Did you mean Iain Banks the great writer who made the Time's list of top 50 British post-war writers ( http://www.goodreads.com/topic... ) or Iain _M_ Banks the SciFi writer who never got acknowledged outside of SciFi awards?

[ Yes I do know. Proves the article's point really - best way for great SciFi writers to get recognised seems to be to write "mainstream" fiction under another name... ]

Re:Literary Awards Use Literary Rules...

[dbIII]

You have something there, given that one of his themes was that immortality would really suck and some of his settings were in a world immediately after massive depopulation.
I did enjoy his works but I was very active and happy at the time so that's probably why I didn't see them as depressing to read. I actually found the bit about the efforts of English speakers of the future attempting to understand the last Scotsman funny instead of the obvious depressing issue of the populations of entire nations lost.

everything is an offshoot of F&SF

[boojumbadger]

If their characters don't actually exist in this world it must be a parallel dimension and so SF. If they are writing about real people putting words in their mouths it is pure fantasy. The activities they write about might actually occur (historical fiction) but the means and motivations are pure speculation.

Re:everything is an offshoot of F&SF

[ChrisMaple]

It takes a mistaken understanding to try to destroy the distinction between science fiction and other forms of fiction. Any tale includes aspects not literally true, and by your analysis all tales would be SF just because something didn't really happen. Not so. Science fiction explicitly includes some plausible technology not in existence at the time of writing and not known by the author to be impossible; and that technology is necessary to some aspect of the plot. (Alternately, the story may take place under substantially different physical conditions [an alien planet] and those conditions are relevant to the plot.) (A rarer alternative to this posits the absence of a present technology and plays with the consequences of that absence.)

This is made clearer by considering stories set far in the future. The characters don't actually exist, but that by itself doesn't make those stories science fiction.

Fantasy has elements known to be impossible within the context of current knowledge. Magic and the power of wishing are fantasy. Unassisted human mental telepathy is fantasy, although other story aspects may lift the tale considered as a whole out of the realm of fantasy.

Re:everything is an offshoot of F&SF

[ray-auch]

Science fiction explicitly includes some plausible technology not in existence at the time of writing and not known by the author to be impossible; and that technology is necessary to some aspect of the plot. (Alternately, the story may take place under substantially different physical conditions [an alien planet] and those conditions are relevant to the plot.) (A rarer alternative to this posits the absence of a present technology and plays with the consequences of that absence.)

This is made clearer by considering stories set far in the future. The characters don't actually exist, but that by itself doesn't make those stories science fiction.

Fantasy has elements known to be impossible within the context of current knowledge. Magic and the power of wishing are fantasy.

So who was it who said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - a SciFi author or a Fantasy author ?

Which genre is, just for one example, Dr Who - the technology central to the plot being known to be impossible within the context of current knowledge?

Re:everything is an offshoot of F&SF

[boojumbadger]

If you consider stories set in the far future you don't have to consider the characters because the setting itself doesn't exist. You can't have a story set in the future that isn't F or SF.

I could just as easily argue that Star Trek wasn't science fiction because the science fictional devices it used were just in place to comment on the zeitgeist of the day and to drive it forward in a specific direction -- a morality play, if you will.

CS Lewis and Tolkien were not Fantasy writers they were Christian propagandists.

Labels are an inexact means of description they always narrow the essence of what they are applied to. This is why so-called mainstream writers who write stories that are on the face of it SF loudly disclaim the obvious.

The things authors think they are putting into their works are not always the things the readers take from it.

Re:everything is an offshoot of F&SF

[david_thornley]

It would be difficult to make sure with any given story, but I'm fairly sure I've seen science fiction where all the technology is either current or impossible. I'm defining "impossible" here as against the currently understood laws of physics.

Why would they want to escape the ghetto?

[frank_adrian314159]

They make a lot more money churning out series than they ever would with a single "literary" novel. The critics in their Sci-Fi ghetto are a lot more sympathetic than any literary critic would be. They look better off constrained by their genre.

All science fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

is crap. That's why it never wins any awards. Stupid books like the Foundation series, Dune, Old Man's War, Ender's Game, The Forever War, Starship Troopers, and the like deserve to not ever win any awards, mainly because the authors are going to vote for Donald Trump. The authors are also child porn producers, and they hate black people. They also think it is wrong for people to be rich, and they want to steal money from the one percenters and give that money to the poor.

Not sure

[nospam007]

The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel prize 1907)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Booker 1981, uses an SF-nal element (telepathy).
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Pulitzer 2007, is post-apocalyptic and thus firmly SF.
The Glass Bead Game aka Magister Ludi, Hermann Hesse, Nobel 1946 (a work set about four centuries from now, centering on a game of intellect.)
Slaughterhouse Five
1984
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Solaris ...

Re:Not sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have a good point, a lot of people confuse "hard" sci-fi with sci fi. However...

- Nobel prizes in literature are awarded to an author for the body of their work and never for a specific book.
- Slaughterhouse Five received good press but no established awards (and lost both the Nebula and Hugo for that matter).
- 1984 no established awards
- Brave New World no established awards (and actually panned a bit on initial release)
- Solaris no established awards (but Lem was an eastern block writer so politics did come into play)

Of the novels you listed only Fahrenheit 451 received any "mainstream" accolades and Bradbury already had popular appeal outside the book (he's in that group with Asimov, Sagan and von Braun who brought science into the mainstream).

Re: Not sure

[coldsalmon]

It's simple really: if it's written well enough, it's not called science fiction.

Re:Not sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Sci-Fi does not equate to in the future. Star Wars is not science fiction, Dune is. The setting itself isn't what defines the genre.

Genre is as genre does

[Frank Burly]

Literary critics want their work to be relevant to society at large or to their discipline, so they praise books that address contemporary issues or the issue of writing as writing. Science Fiction and Fantasy are seldom about contemporary issues and seldom concerned with dissecting the conventions of the novel. A Handmaid's Tale is socially relevant and the prose is great, so it has praise heaped upon it. Implied Spaces has interesting ideas with scant social relevance, invisible prose—and space ogres, so it won't get any attention in English class.

Add to this Sturgeons law, and the fact that genre conventions make a lot of non-crap genre fiction look like a paint-by-numbers exercise, and the answer to the question posed is (predictably) NO.

Who cares though? People read books they've heard about, and talk about books they've read. Nobody talks about who won the Booker Prize in 1977.

Re:Genre is as genre does

[Anonymous Coward]

Relevant to society at large - are they ( literary critcs ) f-ing retarded?
Men on the moon, satellites, medical and computer advances from the space program... all written about in Science Ficton.
"Society at large" for literary critics refers to the 'feel-good opinion', and not reality.
Society at large is more affected by computers, satellites, and medicine than these literary as$es think. Or maybe they think
their cellphones, computers and internet/tv access comes from magic. Guess what!? NO!
Nor does their car, toilet, heating/AC, batteries, dildoes, hot tubs or George Foreman Grill....
Without the ideas being written about, even badly written, our age would not have had all of the dreamers (geeks), tinkerers (nerds) and
and backyard rocket builders (dorks). Admittedly, there would have been some, but not as many.
I do apologize for the rant, but the critics are simply 'special', as in 'they should wear helmets to protect their working neuron' special.
BTW - I also think Shakespeare was into 'naughty humor'. For a reason.

Re:Genre is as genre does

[david_thornley]

Lots of science fiction and fantasy is about contemporary issues, translated into another setting where we can take a look at them from a different angle.

Snobs.

[SvnLyrBrto]

It's the same reason science fiction rarely wins oscars and is lumped in with fantasy when it's acknowledged as a genre at all. Same reason, for that matter that comedy doesn't win book or movie awards, and for television the Emmys shuffles comedy to its own category away from the "serious" programming and doesn't acknowledge SciFi at all. It's the same reason that the "technical" Oscars and Emmys are shuffled off to their own non-broadcast semi-ceremonies. Hell, it's the very same reason the Spielberg was ignored by the academy until Schindler's List, in spite of the undeniable awesomeness of Jaws, ET, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The people making the decisions are pretentious stuck-up snobs with overly inflated opinions of their own fabulousness. And genres such as SciFi, comedy, adventure, and the like are not "serious" enough to be rewarded more than very rarely, and then only begrudgingly by those people.

Re:Snobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the anti-snobs win.
The Planet of the Apes got a Best Costume Design Oscar Nomination for the ape costumes.
When someone involved in making 2001: A Space Odyssey inquired to someone on the nominating committee why 2001 was not nominated for the ape-men costumes, they received a reply along the lines of, "Those were actors in costumes?"

It's a matter of limited perspective

[hyades1]

Too often, scenery-chewing melodrama is what earns cinema and literary awards. And the best science fiction often requires some knowledge of science, so it receives short shrift from judges who couldn't pass a Grade 10 math exam.

Sci-Fi writers Lives Matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon to be followed by Cosplayers Lives Matter...

Why? Here's a thought.

[ClickOnThis]

Perhaps SciFi is poo-pooed by literary types because it too easily supports Deus ex machina as a device for plot development.

Discuss.

Re:Why? Here's a thought.

[Oligonicella]

Oh please. DeM exists in all genres of literature. SciFi no more supports it than English literature or modern: Oliver Twist, Lord of the Flies,

Re:Why? Here's a thought.

[ClickOnThis]

Oh please. DeM exists in all genres of literature.

Well, almost all, and in varying degrees. For example. you won't often see DeM used in a spy or crime novel.

SciFi no more supports it than English literature or modern:

I have to disagree. SciFi allows for more use of DeM because the genre introduces fantastic or futuristic situations and technologies that suspend judgement. Introducing DeM into historical or contemporary contexts requires more of a stretch of faith.

Oliver Twist, Lord of the Flies,

Neither of which contain any examples of DeM. (Dream sequences and improbable but possible events don't count.) You'd be better off citing examples of Shakespere's plays that contain ghosts and/or witches.

Re:Why? Here's a thought.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Lord of the Flies not have one? The main coflict of the story is unresolved when a naval officer shows up to take everyone home.

Re:Why? Here's a thought.

[david_thornley]

For example. you won't often see DeM used in a spy or crime novel.

In, say, Golden Era mysteries, there was always a person of great perception who'd come in and straighten everything out. Some examples would be Lord Peter WImsey, Miss Jane Marple, or Sir Henry Merrivale.

IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

SF is pooh-poohed for 2 reasons:

1. The vast majority is literary trash.

2. Literary types never studied science, do not know about science, do not care about science, and have no idealistic feelings about science or technology. That all ended with Jules Verne.

a Lem alone

[epine]

Read Stanislaw Lem's Microworlds. He variously suffers from elitism, spurned-author petulance, and a predilection for Hegelian phraseology, but he offers up real ideas where few ideas roam.

Here's a bit from his essay Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case — With Exceptions:

Probably the pressure of trivial literature has crushed many highly talented writers with the result that today they deliver the products that keep highbrow readers away from science fiction. This process brings about a negative selection of authors and readers: for even those writers who can write good things produce banalities wholesale: the banality repels intelligent readers away from science fiction; as they form a small majority in fandom the "silent majority" dominates the market, and the evolution into higher spheres cannot occur.

Therefore, in science fiction, a vicious circle of cause and effect coupled together keeps the existing state of science fiction intact and going.

Another essay which I thought had some real substance: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans

Here is a fragment from my own notes, concerning an essay I wasn't able to later pin point:

[Lem] makes some rather complex arguments that separating the good from the bad is a lot harder than it looks, but the critic must first identify the correct mode of parsing a work, should it deserve one.

He also points out that the working critic with the skills to properly perform this work are ever in short supply.

With some of Dick, Le Guin, or Vonnegut I do feel like challenged to identify the correct mode of parsing the work. Vonnegut never settles for just a single dark layer.

I feel the extra depth sometimes with Gibson, Clarke, Niven, to name a few that I've liked, but I also perceive the banality, too. Gibson makes it up with tone, Clarke with his natural ability as a raconteur, and Niven with his larger-than-life extrapolations. Talent 3, genre 0.

A major problem with SF is often that our little pinprick of a blue marble is so often beaten to a bloody pulp by the Total Plot Device Holodeck, which constitutes 90% of SF's dark energy.

aside from the wooden writing,

[Anonymous Coward]

the contrived plots and juvenile stories and constant deus ex machina, no clue
oh, forgot the paper thin characters, and the silly stuff: http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

Poor quality writing

[radarskiy]

A lot of SF is just poorly written. As much of the readership also has poor writing skills and they are interested in other things this is easily forgiven with the genre, but that is no reason for others to lower their standards to our level.

The major writers like Asimov acknowledged that the were poor writers. The problem today is writers that have no self-awareness of what they are actually making and instead see an SJW bogeyman behind every tree.

Why Is Science Fiction Snubbed By Literary Awards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's mindless pablum for nerds.

seems obvious

[Gravis Zero]

"fuck you, nerds", that's why! ;)

Doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good sci-fi has fallen under SJW inclusive crap lately.

Reading the 'years best science fiction' series from 1 to current. it really really shows in the last few years. no sci. lots of feels.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[mink]

Coward.
I may be biased in that I know the editor of "Years Best Science Fiction" on a personal level. I disagree with you. It would be unreasonable to expect his editing style from 1984 to be unchanged in 2016. Perhaps you are seeing changes in the editors views or what material he has been given and suggested by colleagues in what is making the final cut rather than any conspiracy of SJWs.

I think you are too quick to call out the SJW boogieman and blame everything on that.

"Feels" as you call them have always been in Sci-Fi. I find it funny that all the people who deride things like "feels" are the ones who whine loudest about "my feels".

Re:Doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who the editors are or what their views are.
Excuse it however you like. I'm still skipping a lot of storys in the later books. Because they're not good.

Get partway into them and "ugh, this is crap. not sci-fi. not fantasy. not interesting. not good writing. years best my ass." NEXT!

The last few years of the series i've seen MAYBE 2 storys in each that hit 'wow, that was good'.
Guess what didn't get bought in hardcopy for my collection.

Fantasy is also Shut Out

[careysub]

Peter S. Beagle and Ursula K. LeGuin have each written a number of superb essays on the clear discrimination of English speaking critics (at least) against science fiction and fantasy -- which strongly overlap (although hard SF and sword-and-sorcery fans often disagree with this).

A good resource on this is Beagle's The Secret History of Fantasy which contains an nice forward by Beagle about this, as well as an excellent essay by LeGuin and David Hartwell on the subject. I can't lay my hands on his best essay on this at the moment though.

It wasn't always this way. Fantasy and science fiction literature from the 19th century and before are well regarded ("The Faerie Queene", "Frankenstein", for two random examples). Fantasy literature, if written in Spanish ("magic realism"), is adored by English speaking critics.

Part of this can be traced to one extremely influential critic - Edmund Wilson - who hated fantasy literature in all forms with an undying poison pen passion. He had a very restrictive notion of what constituted "literature" and most of English speaking criticism has absorbed his personal preferences as core principles of literature. Wilson dominated U.S. criticism for about 50 years, until 1972, which has yet to recover from his opinions.

Popular SF Doesn't Align With Agenda

[LeftCoastThinker]

As someone who has been a voracious reader of SF for 40 years and dabbled in SF authorship, this remains a problem for the genre. The reality is that many of the literary awards are looking to push a certain agenda, rather than to reward the most moving, innovative, well written pieces that they review. SF, on the other hand, is looking to engage the reader and capture their imagination. To show the reader new worlds, new races and, often, eschew social and moral norms. This flies in the face of the world view and objectives of most of the critics out there, who think that they are both intellectually and morally superior to the rest of the world, and thus you have the snub of most SF content.

For my money, Amazon should create it's own awards ceremony with cash payouts, considering the volume of books that it clears, and instead of the crusty, bitter old critics who have never created anything in their lives, they should use a combination of lottery/volunteer judges who are also known, active authors, certified purchase reviews and volume sold to give out awards. Literature has always been about bringing new ideas to the masses, but if your novel is neither popular, nor well received by the public, you have failed as an author, regardless of the content of your work.

Re:Popular SF Doesn't Align With Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

To show the reader new worlds, new races and, often, eschew social and moral norms.

Urm no. Science-fiction, it's in the goddamn name, has to have an element of science. That's it. No new worlds, races, or weird norms required. Or are you telling me e.g. Cryptonomicon is not science-fiction?

Re:Popular SF Doesn't Align With Agenda

[LeftCoastThinker]

Not really. Not having read it I checked Wikipedia, and it is classified historical fiction and/or a Technothriller. Many also confuse fantasy novels with SF. The truth is that the examples I listed above are just that, examples. They are neither an exhaustive nor exclusive list of themes. Novels are fiction, and as such can blend content and themes such that it is difficult to classify each novel exclusively in one category. However, it is easy to point to certain works as exemplars of SF, such as Assimovs Foundation series and say that that is definitively SF.

By your definition any novel that contains science is a SF novel. That falls apart with some simple investigation. What about the Detective novels that use CSI style forensics to solve crimes, or thrillers like most of the Tom Clancy novels which use intricate details about science and technology in their fundamental plots? That is clearly not SF, but by your definition it would be because there is a lot of science in the book. I could go on but I think you get the point. SF as a genre typically has as some part of its basic plot a significant shift in the technological level of the setting (or some theme or device) versus society at the time of its authorship.

Re:Popular SF Doesn't Align With Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon should create it's own awards ceremony with cash payouts [...] use a combination of lottery/volunteer judges who are also known, active authors, certified purchase reviews and volume sold to give out awards.

Yep, the authors of Twilight and Hunger Games are destitute and sure deserve at least a bit of money for their contributions to high-quality literature.

Re:Popular SF Doesn't Align With Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is that many of the literary awards are looking to push a certain agenda, rather than to reward the most moving, innovative, well written pieces that they review.

I'd argue that at least for Hugo this seems to not be the case. Just a few years back, a chinese novel "Three-Body Problem" was awarded as the winner. Having read it, I'd say that it doesn't really push any agenda, doesn't really have any engaging characters, and is not very well written overall. That is, I wouldn't say it has very much literary merit in the sense people in this discussion have been trying to lay it out.

However, what that novel has is an incredibly engaging mystery and original concept, even if quite outlandish. I just kind of trashed the book, but I might just have given it the Hugo myself, if I were to choose. So I'd say the case is exactly the opposite. No agenda, political decision or quotas. The award was won by a honest, good, old-fashioned SF novel.

Movies the same

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me on a Berlin Festival a few years ago, when they showed a Ghibli Myiazaki movie. Half of the critics back then went out instantly because it was an animated movie.
The movie btw. later won the Berlin Festival nevertheless.

'Cuz this...

[jddj]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8...

What do they study in school?

[qeveren]

THAT is literature. Everything else is plebeian trash, because it isn't what they were taught.

It's the Two Cultures problem

[Applehu Akbar]

As noted by CP Snow years ago, academic science and academic lit are two completely separate cultures, even when they share the same set of university campuses. Because one element of the literary culture is fearing science and its applications, any literature that shows appreciation for what science does and valorizes characters who act in its realm is despised. When the literary culture does speculate about science, you get snobby old religious charlatans like Aldous Huxley ("Science is against nature") who in his dotage evolved into a New Age charlatan with a similar set of viewpoints.

IS everyone really this ignorant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there no mention of Theodore Sturgeon and Sturgeon's Law (c1951) which addressed this point 65 year ago?

Incidentally, Margaret Attwood is pretentious bore - and I say this as a Canadian.

Discontinuity of thought

[petes_PoV]

Considered by the literary establishment, and frequently by non-SF award-giving institutions, to be trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction,

The "establishment" scorn SF because it is about ideas, whereas mainstream fiction is about relationships.

Books about ideas require the reader to think, while books about relationships require that the readers feel. Thinking is much harder.

Re:Discontinuity of thought

[dbIII]

The "establishment" scorn a lot of things.
Phillip K. Dick's novel "Confessions of a Crap Artist" 1959 (published 1975) is one of the best mainstream novels I've read but at the time the changes of point of view to different characters spooked the publishers. In the Science Fiction genre he was able to make it through the scorn and get his work published.

Re:Discontinuity of thought

[ChrisMaple]

I don't think your distinction is universally true, but you've pointed out a trend that deserves serious consideration. Political fiction and some adventure fiction are about ideas, are they mainstream?

Kurt Vonnegut

[Salo2112]

Good God, man. Read The Sirens of Titan.

Slaughterhouse 5...

[joelja]

Lost the 1970 Hugo and nebula awards to Left Hand of Darkness.

Both are significant works that have enormous cultural and stylistic impacts and pioneered new sub genres of fiction. When science fiction breaks new ground as in any other genere it can take time to come to terms with the consequences of that.

Because of science fiction fans

[lucasnate1]

Have any of you ever been in a convention? In most of the conventions in my country (Israel), I was surrounded by teenagers with communication problems and the whole place smelled like a huge armpit. Besides, fan lectures was low level, and most content was not deep science fiction, but garbage like "Buffy", "Doctor Who", i.e.they prefer movies and tv shows which are more space opera over actual scifi literature. I tried reading recent science fiction, and much of the characterization seems to be flat to me, with emphasis being either on world-building/technology (in the good case) or on shoving a political view (usually either libertarianism or leftism).

You want to know why science fiction is snubbed by literary people, because most of the good science fiction is not called science fiction, "Brave New World" is a shining classical example of this. Dostoyevsky's and Bulgakov's works had elements of fantasy but are not classified as fantasy for the same reason, they are much deeper than harry potter or whatever nerd escape fantasy that's popular with kids today. On one hand, it is sad to see that science fiction books need to hide it in order to succeed. On the other, maybe it makes sense not to characterize a book by its setting. If we don't call "Moby Dick" a "sailor fiction" story, why should we call "Foundation" a "science fiction" story?

Re:Because of science fiction fans

[lucasnate1]

p.s. I'm also an amateur scifi writer, if anyone's interested in reading something for free, let me know p:

Because... Asshats!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I was a lit major, and we had great SciFi classes, but this is without a doubt the exception. (Also, they mostly concentrated on books which are absolutely SciFi but which are found mis-filed in general literature. Atwood, Orwell, Bradbury etc.). See, if SciFi is "bad" then anything SciFi that is "good" just gets re-categorized as general literature. But that is without a doubt the exception.) Why? So that asshats in group a) can pretend to be superior to the (possibly equally asshatted) people in group b). It's just like anything else in life; People just love to pretend they are better than other people, and the way to do that is through exclusion. It's not limited to SciFi and Fantasy; even Leonard Cohen (who is, for those only familiar with his music, a fantastic poet and novelist - quite possibly our generation's Shakespeare or Donne) are taboo in many asshat-led college lit courses because he has had the unbelievable gall to turn his poetry into music. But it's all just posturing, posing, asshattery. Plenty of great SciFi is also great Literature (Stand on Zanzibar, anyone? anyone?). Enjoy your SciFi, and the next time an asshat tells you that it isn't literature, simply tell them, plainly, what asshats they are.

Authors goals

[kqc7011]

As Larry Coreia states, the first goal of a author should be "get paid". If you were a author what would you rather have, the sales numbers equal to 50 Shades of Grey or the sales numbers from the last National Book Award winner? What percentage of /. readers can name the last National Book Award winner? What percentage of /. readers can name half a dozen different S.F. books that they consider good reading?

Re:Authors goals

[ChrisMaple]

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.
Mickey Spillane

Herman Hesse.

[nastyphil]

- was awarded the Nobel prize for literature exactly 70 years ago. The Glass Bead Game, his magnum opus, is most definitely SciFi.

C.P. Snow - The Two Cultures

[Anonymous Coward]

The Two Cultures is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

linky

Literary awards are given by the humanities, Science-fiction is written by the sciences. There's your answer.

High school English teachers who rely on awards

[tepples]

Until you hit a high school English teacher who assigns a book report: "you can pick whichever book you want, so long as it's won award X, Y, or Z, and no other student requested the book first."

Genre Fiction

[kamapuaa]

Not many Westerns or Fantasy Novels or Mysteries have won the Nobel Prize for literature. Such novels are specifically designed to appeal to a subculture, and are not generally interesting for people who aren't already fans of the genre.

Likewise, I think most fans of Science-Fiction don't read much in the realm of mainstream fiction. For such readers, there are Hugos and Asimovs and plenty of awards/top 10 lists for Science Fiction, and any other genre fiction you can think of. It's not even like the Oscars, which receive a good amount of attention even from people who don't watch many movies, where it would make sense that sci-fi fans want their genre to receive the attention as well. Only people who read fiction regularly care about the NY Times "10 notable books of 2016" list.

So what's really being argued? That people who read general fiction should enjoy science fiction more? Of course there is good science fiction, and I would say this is generally acknowledged, but generally speaking it is less intelligent, ridden with cliche, and is designed to appeal to young men. There is nothing wrong with a fun read, just as there is nothing wrong with a fun special-effect heavy super-hero movie, but pretending genre fiction is on the same intellectual level as fiction is simply untrue.

I also think that the ability of the literature press to praise certain works of sci-fi shows that it's not a wholesale rejection of the genre.

And sorry for a lack of political correctness, but seriously is Kim Stanley Robinson really commenting? He is just a wonderful example of how even a relatively successful sci-fi author can write on about the level of a 12 year old. Everything about the book is embarrassing. If he wasn't writing about spaceships on Mars nobody would buy a single copy of his crap. That includes the science - even if you like all the rockets and so forth, all the info on geo-engineering is complete nonsense. Of course serious authors who use sci-fi tropes would want to distane themselves from an author like him.

Someone still reads "Literature?"

[Zan Lynx]

I wasn't aware that anyone read "literature" these days. I don't. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and some romance, sure. But boring, depressing stories about the "human condition" that try extra hard to use metaphor? Nope. No one reads that junk.

So who cares about these irrelevant literary awards?

Because they don't Grock it.

[sycodon]

Your average literary nerd/professor/author are mostly people who have a hard time with toasters and can absolutely not get their VCR to stop flashing 12:00. And yes, they still have a VCR.

Re:Because they don't Grock it.

[michael_wojcik]

This claim is idiotic, both because it's wildly untrue and because literary awards aren't bestowed by "average literary nerd/professor/author[s]".

Re:Because they don't Grock it.

[sycodon]

Is your VCR flashing 12:00?

Re:Because they don't Grock it.

[Anonymous Coward]

VCRs are so 20th Century. :-P

I hope they do not go into mainstream anything..

[SadButResolved]

The story of the "Traveling Pants of Twilight vampires of the sun, the space opera" has me throwing up mentally.

Who cares?

[Cyryathorn]

Oh no! A snooty club won't have me as a member! Why should I care?

"Genre" fiction vs "literature"

[j-beda]

I think what needs to happen is that people need to grow in their understanding that "literature" is just a genre of fiction, with no real claim to superiority over any other genre such as "romance", "western", or "science fiction". The Man Booker Prizes may claim to "honour fiction on a global basis", but really they only honour a particular genre of fiction, with a particular set of story structure, tropes, and other defining characteristics.

Top novels in any genre can often stretch or even break these types of "genre rules", and be praised for doing so. It is possible for a novel to be objectively categorized in more than one genre at a time but there are HUGE pre-conceived expectations for any novel based upon how that novel or author is "marketed" or perceived. Thus you have authors like Atwood working hard to maintain their status in the "literature" genre, and distancing themselves from the perceived ghetto of other genres.

Each genre (including "literature") is mostly made up of lesser quality works. 90% of everything is crap. But even if you look at the non-crap of each of these genres - aspects of each of these novels will continue to maintain some of the characteristics of their genre - and that can be challenging for a reader who is dismissive of the genre as a whole. Thus if a "literature" reader thinks (or suspects) a work is "science-fiction" they are probably more likely to think less of it when encountering features that are "science-fictionish" - and this goes both ways. A reader of a "historical romance" novel who generally dislikes "literature" may be put off by aspects of the novel that seem "literary".

So who cares? Well, I think society suffered when one genre is elevated in prestige or "value" over all others. If Chris is made to feel "lesser" because they enjoy science fiction, and Pat is looked down upon because they like romance novels, and Robin uses their love of "literature" to belittle others, good things do not follow. While there is little direct governmental support for fiction prizes, there is a pretty big media push for a number of "literature prizes" in comparison to other genres that tend to give such prizes more "value" in the eyes of the public.

Oh! Oh! I know this one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sturgeon's Law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

No go do something important

Sod the Awards

[mchall]

They really are unimportant. The hubris of "literature" and literary awards is that some "intellectuals" set themselves up as the arbiters of what is "worthy of consideration". It is a far better thing to go to your book shop (new and used) or library and browse until you find something that grabs your heart and/or imagination. Build up the library that speaks to you.

Great Vonnegut Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

`My first novel, Player Piano, was about people and machines and how, as often happens, machines got the better of it. I woke up the next morning to find I was now stored in a drawer called `Science Fiction`and have been a soreheaded occupant of that drawer ever since, particularly since critics often mistake the drawer for a urinal.`` ...I might be a little off on that, I typed it from memory. It was that good.

Re:Great Vonnegut Quote

[Mybrid]

I also believe he sued to get "Farenheight 451" re-classified from science fiction to literature. He lost.

Mars Trilogy

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not surprised that the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) never received a literary award. It's a simply dreadful story. While Red Mars is not too bad, but the time you get to Green Mars you are beaten over the head repeatedly with the themes the author wants you to face. The whole series is a meta-allegory for the author's environmentalism movement, which is a bit absurd in the context of the planet Mars, which has no environment to speak of.

VoxDay is why

[lactose99]

When you have idiots like Vox Day trying to take over genre awards like the Hugo sci-fi almost deserves the bad press it gets, and I say this as a sci-fi fan.

Ask Neal Stephenson

[PMuse]

This question of literary respect was put to Neal Stephenson here on /. a dozen years ago (God, I'm old!). On this, as on all things, his take is worth reading. He begins:

To set it up, a brief anecdote: a while back, I went to a writers' conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we'd exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me "And where do you teach?" just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another "And which distro do you use?"

I was taken aback. "I don't teach anywhere," I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. "Then what do you do?"

"I'm...a writer," I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

"Yes, but what do you do?"

All genre

[MarkDeich]

All genre works (not just Science Fiction) are snubbed by literary awards. It's only about labelling. If a genre novel gets labelled as "literary" it can also get a literary award...

doesn't acknowledge our mortality

[micahraleigh]

Science fiction writers don't understand we are mortal, individual free agents who can make our own individual choices and die by them.

Look at the Star Trek episode where holograms are campaigning for equal rights.

Look at the Alien movie where a robot becomes a Catholic.

Consider all the cases where a person is considered to have become immortal because their carcasses have been ejected into the sun or whatever.

These writers are people fundamentally do NOT understand life other than a half inch of appearance on the surface.

I exempt Star Wars from all of this, but ... the rest of it is almost entirely garbage.

Re:doesn't acknowledge our mortality

[david_thornley]

Science fiction writers don't understand we are mortal, individual free agents who can make our own individual choices and die by them.

You have just described approximately every Heinlein main character (Lazarus Long stretched the "mortal" thing), as well as a lot of other characters (Heinlein rather specialized in such characters). Holograms campaigning for equal rights: are they people or are they not? They seem to be making their own choices.

Re:doesn't acknowledge our mortality

[micahraleigh]

"Holograms campaigning for equal rights: are they people or are they not? They seem to be making their own choices."

Passing a true Turing test will always be SCIENCE FICTION, and as long as that difference can be demonstrated, subjects and objects should be treated differently.

L. Ron Hubbard

[neoRUR]

How come L. Ron Hubbard never won an award? Battlefield Earth and Dianetics ?? Major awards there...

Critics - didn't they die of starvations yet?

[RockDoctor]

Really, who - apart from other critics - cares a dried spit about the opinion of critics. go to the bookshelf, read the blurb on the back, decide if the book appeals to you, then go and read what appeals to you.

If you feel like kicking the beggar in the street by the door, with an empty cup and a sign saying "overblown ego and inflated self-opinion to support," feel free. It's only a critic on it's way to extinction.

To simplfy things:

[BlytheBowman]

Looks like the people who is in charge of these awards are a bunch of rich, snobbish, ignorant, heartless people with their heads so far up their asses they can see through their own mouths. They probaly would call the police on the homeless just for being within eye sight of their high and mighty selves. Am I accurate on this? Frankly, I don't give a shit what those kinds of people sink, and the sooner a yacht packed full of them capsizes and they get eaten by sharks (I bet the meat of their bones are quite exquisite, heh heh), the better.

Fuck the snobs

[BlytheBowman]

Looks like the people who is in charge of these awards are a bunch of rich, snobbish, ignorant, heartless people with their heads so far up their asses they can see through their own mouths. They probaly would call the police on the homeless just for being within eye sight of their high and mighty selves. Am I accurate on this? Frankly, I don't give a shit what those kinds of people think, and the sooner a yacht packed full of them capsizes and they get eaten by sharks (I bet the meat on their bones are quite exquisite, heh heh), the better.

Even authors diss science fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

The New York Times Book Review has an author interview section, and a regular question is "What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?"

There's pretty much a standard answer to this question, excerpts below.

I’m not a fan of science fiction — life on earth is mysterious and terrifying enough.

I have never been drawn to science fiction or fantasy. In fact, I can say with some certainty that I have never read a fantasy novel. (This author claims 1984 is his favorite novel).

I haven’t been interested in very many science fiction novels.

I’m not a science-fiction fan. If the story is steeped in a believable projection of the future, maybe. But not usually my cup of tea.

The literary trappings and moralizing of science fiction I find insufficiently compelling. Very possibly I am missing out on important genres. But it’s too late to change my conservatism.

I am confident that my streak of never having read a work of science fiction will remain intact.

Today, I leave my science fiction and fantasy for the movie theater and stick to books about history, policy, biography. I seek true stories that inspire. ...it has been many years since I’ve read fantasy or science fiction.

Chicken & The Egg Problem

[Mybrid]

This does seem to be a chicken and the egg problem. Which came first: literary critics ignoring science fiction or science fiction ignoring literary critics? As Gordon Dickinson said in Dorsai!, "I respect those people's opinions whose opinions I respect." Or perhaps you prefer the more poignant Piers Anthony version in Xanth, "Worthless people's opinion are worthless."

I think the science fiction readers and the literary critics have a mutual appreciation of ignoring the other.

The snobbery and the hubris of literature is best represented by William Shakespeare. Harold Bloom went on PBS with Charlie Rose and exclaimed that Shakespeare was the most moral person ever. He also said the bard was the most prophetic about human nature, the future of mankind will always be predicted by Shakespeare. So there you have it. Shakespeare has the 411, has the goods, on human nature. Science fiction is an affront speculating on human nature to literary critic sensibilities fixed on William Shakespeare being the end all be all. The likes of Harold Bloom look down on those of us who exclaim, "Everything I learned about life I learned from Star Trek."

Literature is just William Shakespeare worship.

As for me? I found Shakespeare to be morally bankrupt and human nature decrepit. The world is not a broken record on some endless skipping loop, which is the sum total of all of Shakespeare wisdom.

My own personal credo comes from Frank Herbert's, "The God Makers":

Which is better?
A good eye,
A good neighbor,
A good wife,
Or the understanding of consequences?

It is none of these. But rather being a warm and sensitive person that understands the price of individual dignity and the worth of human fellowship. This is best.

literary critics are assholes. That's why.

[Anonymous Coward]

I once was in a literature class where the bitch, er, uhb, 'professor' claimed "science fiction was crap, not worthy of the name, 'literature'".

I asked if if Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was literature? Yes, Yes it is proclaimed She.

I asked if Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues beneath the Sea was literature. Yes, once again She of all knowledge proclaimed.

Then I asked about 1984, She tired of my questions, asked what my point was. I replied that clearly some works of science fiction ARE Literature, but that she clearly was too ignorant to understand that her prejudice was making her think wrongly. then I dropped her class and CLEP'd out of it.

For a new novel (1963) Robbe-Grillet

[Anonymous Coward]

Also known as For a new novel, "(Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previously-published theoretical writings concerning the novel." * by Alain Robbe-Grillet
In these essays he critiques the modern (pre-1964) novel. I've only read the first few essays. (As someone who writes, unpublished, for my and a few friends entertainment, I seriously don't want to contaminate my writing with a theoretical approach).** But, one thing I do think he said was how an author over 200 years ago wrote (a) novel(s) and thus started the aspect of the protagonist having an interior psychological dialogue and insight which changes that person. And for a novel to be considered a serious work, it must still have that.
Anyway, Sturgeon's law applies to everything, and O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law also applies to Sturgeon: "Murphy [and Sturgeon] was an optimist."

*Source: Wikipedia, the source of all, sometimes accurate information

The obvious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, since Science Fiction is really about the 'Human Condition', the perfectionist, SJW Master Race Crowd can't appreciate it because it cuts too close to home.

Two thoughts:

[DarthVain]

First, I read the article on FB the other day, is Slashdot mining it for stories now? At any rate my first impression was simply that there is a general lack of understanding and oversimplification of what "Science Fiction" is. Generally speaking it is given a set genre that *everything* falls into. It is actually a very large and broad category of genres. Atwood's words about rocket ships and the like I think was her trying to indicate that her work doesn't fall into the same type of work that might be commonly associated with the science fiction name. I've read an awful lot of science fiction of all types, and there are a lot of differences. Some of which are high art, others perhaps more guilty pulp. Comparing say "hard" science fiction to "space opera" science fiction is foolish, they are just too different. Heck even space opera could be divided into original and derivative works (i.e. star wars, star trek, etc...). I've found that many of my favorites, and most of the more highly acclaimed (with a few epic exceptions, Dune for example) pieces of science fiction, particularly older works (there does seem to be a lot more modern "trash" which folks like Atwood would want to distance themselves from), but some modern examples, take a singular theme or idea, and then expand on that until a "final" conclusion. Usually a "what if" type of thought experiment, such as the possible effect of clones on society, or instantaneous travel for a civilization etc...

Second, the awards specific to science fiction have been severely messed up for many years now with infighting and political garbage, not only among writers, but critics, and fans... So I could see that whole morass lending itself to the general problem of science fiction authors not really feeling appreciated all the time (other than simply getting paid for sales etc...). However awards do probably have some influence on that as well. One last thought is that certain types of science fiction do lend themselves very well (and indeed started out as) to political discourse. Which by their very nature can be divisive and cause conflict for people of all types (readers, critics, authors, etc...) and if they are left or right leaning, or whatever political stripe they might happen to be or even on certain polarizing topics. Indeed, if one were to lump most authors into a group it would be pretty leftish, whereas within the science fiction field there is also a larger number or folks that are of the right political spectrum, or explore it in a satirical sense. Stories of dystopian futures for example. "WE" regarded as the first in that class was written by a Russian in very much a form of political dissent.

So in summary, as a genre "science fiction" is an oversimplification of a complex group of genres, many of which due to they very nature cause political conflict amoungst it's readership making any kind of awards difficult and complex to determine as recent history has shown.

most sci-fi authors write badly

[0111 1110]

This seems obvious to me, but I haven't seen it mentioned here. Most science fiction authors cannot create elegant and beautiful prose. So no they don't deserve awards for writing elegant and beautiful prose.

Iain Banks and Neal Stephenson are really the only examples I can think of. Nearly everyone else just writes simple and mostly uninteresting prose and a lot of popular science fiction authors are worse than that. Most have trouble composing sentences that don't strike one as clumsy constructions. Some have interesting plots and interesting characters but it just doesn't have the poetic beauty of truly great writing.

I think it also needs to be mentioned that not everyone can actually recognize beautiful writing for what it is. They can't see it. I'm not sure why. To those people there just isn't any difference. I guess it's sort of like being a non-native speaker. Others just don't care if the writing is beautiful or not.

Science fiction is my favorite sort of fiction, but I recognize that almost none of it, deserves a literary award.

Awards, and clubs, and stuff

[O'Bunny]

The point of winning awards, at least from (I think) Rob Sawyer's view in an interview/article some while back, is that the author makes more money because the work will stay in print longer.

And I believe that it was in Playgrounds of the Mind that Larry Niven who argued that SF wasn't a ghetto; it cost the people in it a substantial amount of money to belong (reduced sales), it's tough to get into (have to know your science), and some other stuff. Therefore it was a high-end country club...