The 2017 Hugo Awards (thehugoawards.org)

Dave Knott writes: The Hugo Awards, the most prestigious awards in science fiction, had their 2017 ceremony today, at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland.
The winners are:

Best Novel: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
Best Novella: "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire
Best Novelette: "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon
Best Short Story: "Seasons of Glass and Iron", by Amal El-Mohtar
Best Related Work: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 by Ursula K Le Guin
Best Graphic Story: Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening , written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Arrival , screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a short story by Ted Chiang, directed by Denis Villeneuve
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes , written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, directed by Terry McDonough
Best Series: The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Ada Palmer

This year's slate of nominees, unlike the drama surrounding the 2016 and 2015 Hugos, was less impacted by the ballot-stuffing tactics of the "Rabid Puppies", thanks to a change in the way nominees were voted for this year (including the fact no work could appear in more than one category) in an attempt to avoid tactical slate picks.

Comments

DNW

[arth1]

So, it's official - the Hugo Awards have become the Harlequin Awards, much like Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame has become Pop'n Roll Hall of Fame.

That's well and fine, but it's time to drop the pretense, and make room for an award that celebrates the original art form. This doesn't.

Re:DNW

[arth1]

Anyone who thinks the Hugo award for best novel is not based on merit hasn't actually read Jemisin's work.

Not for lack of trying.
It's just not the genre of book I can get through. Much like if I go to a rock concert, and the opening band is rap or country, I'm not going to stay for the performance. It may be great for those who like this kind of thing, but it's really not what I can like.

There are plenty of female authors that are good, even when they border on too much interpersonal stuff. C.J. Cherryh, Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.)[*] and Andre Norton spring to mind. But they don't come off as just using the genre to either get a message across or to give romance a new veneer; they are universe builders. Their "what if"s are credible. Their work stands on its own without having to anchor it in a specific modern human culture and zeitgeist.
That's the kind of quality I expect from a Hugo winner.

[*]: "Brightness Falls from the Air" is one of the three most cherished novels in all of my book cases.

Re:DNW

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks the Hugo award for best novel is not based on merit hasn't actually read Jemisin's work.

That all depends on how you define merit, and how you apply that to science fiction.

Personally I would have voted for something enjoyably crazy like Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, before I'd vote for some social consciousness ecodrama premised on a world dealing with the impact of climate change (gag).

Re:DNW

[Normal_Deviate]

I used to rely on the Hugo, but I noticed it had stopped being useful before I noticed it was because it switched to, "Best sci-fi not written by the people who had written most of the good sci fi." For me personally, the Hugo going SJW was real loss. Maybe the Dragon Award can fill that role now.

Re:DNW

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you ate too much today. In any case your trollish post doesn't seem to understand that this isn't about gender or skin color. Which clearly matters to you more than writing or story telling ability.

Identity politics is a dead end. Someday you'll see you are the sexist and racist here.

Re:DNW

[ravenshrike]

The stated purpose of the Hugo awards is an award meant to reflect what the majority of sci-fi fans thought was good. The SMOFinati decided to play gatekeepers which means their award is now nothing more then a bunch of sad old people(Average WorldCon attendance age has to be pushing what, 50 years old now?) telling others to get off their lawn.

Haven't these awards been taken over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I heard these awards are more about diversity and virtue signaling than any kind of merit.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. The actual supposed "take over" was by groups trying to push for more actual science fiction - with an emphasis on science - over the more recent "science fiction" where it's less science and more "fantasy set in the future." This got reframed by SJWs since it turned out most of the fantasy-pretending-to-be-scifi were written by women. They pretended it was really an "attack on women" and an "attack on minorities" despite the fact that it was really a push to make science fiction awards be for - well, actual science fiction. And not fantasy-but-with-lasers.

It's official now: the Hugos are meaningless.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Moreover, the idea that the Hugos classically focused on science fiction that was less fantasy is simply not true. "The Graveyard Book" won in 2009, Bujold's "Paladin of Souls" won in 2004, "American Gods" won in 2002, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" won in 2001, and if one looks at nominations rather than winners, fantasy novels have frequently been nominated, going back at least to "Too Many Magicians" in 1967 and Dragonquest in 1972, and Book of Skulls in 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel [wikipedia.org]. And that's just in the Best Novel category. Similar remarks apply to the other categories."

Nominated but did not win. This may be a coincidence or may be that the lack of science in their novels prevented them from winning the Hugo those years.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[arth1]

A person does not have to be right-wing to be opposed to leftist politics.

Nor to equate short-sighted shallow politics with either right or left.
I'm a socialist and feminist (as in equal opportunities and gender blindness), but will call shit when I see it. What the social justice[*] side does here is harming their cause for a quick circle jerk orgasm, harming an artform that has been extremely liberal and forward thinking by forcing pre-digested well-censored crap down the auidences' throats. What good is it killing a genre that brought us so many masterpieces of unfettered thinking?

[*] Whenever anyone speaks of "justice", you can be certain that justice is the farthest thing from their mind. Baser instincts like revenge and egotism are invariably at play.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[arth1]

I remember the good old days, when only men, like James Tiptree, Jr., won Hugo awards.

Great writers like Alice Sheldon and Andre Norton won based on the quality of their work, not the quality of their feminism. When reading their works you didn't get the feeling that this could be written in any setting, and that Sci-Fi or Fantasy was just used as a prop. They didn't just write paint-by-number books with their political message popping up in all kinds of weird contexts where it didn't further their story. They wrote worlds.
Most of today's crowd of writers (to be polite) are narrow-minded formula writers who wouldn't know how to write a world or jump out of the preconceived notion of what they should write. It's as embarrassing as autotune singers.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[elrous0]

Last I heard these awards are more about diversity and virtue signaling than any kind of merit.

The list of winners tells the story. Only two white males on it, and both were paired with women or minorities. The Hugos are about as welcoming to cis white males these days as a Birmingham lunch counter was to blacks in the 1950's. And you can bet it'll be the same next year. Once the SJW cancer sets in, there is no cure.

If an Asminov, Bradbury, or Fredrick Pohl started out today they wouldn't even get published, much less have a chance at winning an award.

Re:Ghostbusters bested Rogue One and Stranger Thin

[Rockoon]

So pushing progressivism for progressivism's sake is still alive and well at the Hugo's, even if it didn't exactly overwhelm the process this time.

When progressivism is the point, you've done it wrong.

bad solution to real problem

[globaljustin]

This whole Hugo Awards flap is so hilarious yet so sad. It's the perfect case of a bad solution to a real problem.

I agree the scifi status quo was sexist, puerile, over-dense, plotless garbage. Something needed to change.

-simultaneously-

I also agree that there has been an over-correction almost as extreme as the original problem!

Both are true.

The original problem was sexist garbage scifi but the solution is not to promote insipid non-scifi fluff.

Description fail

[rossz]

The Hugo is not the most prestigious award for Sci Fi. I would put the Nebula Award way ahead of it. In fact, over the last few years the Hugo Award has become meaningless.

Re:The Hugos Have Always Honored Fantasy

[arth1]

Your comment shows that you don't know much about the Hugo Awards. They have been awarded to works of science fiction and fantasy since their inception in 1953. Go read the WSFS Constitution (the rules for the awards). It makes this crystal clear.

Your comment shows a lack of reading comprehension. Read my post again and tell me where I say anything about fantasy.

It's formula dreck vetted for social acceptability that I object to, whether it's fantasy or science fiction. I want the radical stuff. The "out there" stuff. Ignoring borders. Going out there, because it's speculative fiction, not a party handbook in prose form.

Re:Ghostbusters bested Rogue One and Stranger Thin

[indytx]

Yay! Arrival won! Let's hear it for deus ex machina time travel/knowledge, garbage sci-fi!