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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?"
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?"
See $subject.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
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.
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.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.