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.

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

[ravenshrike]

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

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.

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

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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...

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 ...

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.