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

[JoshuaZ]

What is your objection precisely? Are you arguing that the Vorkosigan Saga is not sci-fi? Are you are arguing that The Obelisk Gate is not scifi? Are you arguing that The Expanse is not scifi? No? So what is your argument other than that things won which you didn't want to win, or possible being uncomfortable with the fact that many woman won?

Re:DNW

[DuckDodgers]

Hugo Award winning novel Dune has magic - the spice allows the user to see the future. Hugo Award winning novel The Left Hand of Magic has... magic. Then there's winner Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2001.

Are you serious?

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

[DuckDodgers]

I would disagree with that, but it doesn't matter. Other Hugo winners have magic. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The Graveyard Book. Redshirts is pure fantasy. Three of the five nominees last year were fantasy: The Fifth Age (which one), The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut's Windlass, and Uprooted.

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

[arth1]

Jemisin's work, although probably well written and compelling (I have not read the book), is absolutely not science fiction.

I would not dismiss it for that, but her previous book, The Fifth Season, I tried to write, but tossed it away halfway through as just being literally terrible, in my opinion. To me, it read like formula writing at its worst.

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.

Re:DNW

[DuckDodgers]

The Guild Navigators used the spice to plot ship courses instead of computer calculations or even manual calculations. I don't care how you label it, that's magic to see the future.

But again, The Goblin Reservation all of the way back in the 1970s was a nominee with magic. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has magic. The Hugos have magic, get over.

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?

[JoshuaZ]

This narration is simply inaccurate as a glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies. In fact, the first attempt by the Sad Puppies was to nominate Monster Hunter Legion. I quote from its description on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Hunter-Legion-Larry-Correia/dp/1451639066:

. A conference in Vegas becomes a showdown between Owen Pitt and the staff of Monster Hunter International with an ancient god, one that could turn Sin City into a literal hell on earth.

Yeah, ancient gods are so so sci-fi. Moving on, when Torgensen ran the Sad Puppies he explicitly said that it was because "popular" works were being passed over in favor of "literary" works or works with political messages http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-hugo-awards-were-always-political-now-theyre-only-1695721604. Note that that doesn't say anything about whether it is fantasy or scifi. The Rabid Puppies meanwhile explicitly tried to be more extreme and to deliberately nominate "right-wing" sci-fi or simply ruin the Hugos. As Vox Day https://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/ said:

“I wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were,” he told me before the winners were announced. “All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt.”

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. And that's just in the Best Novel category. Similar remarks apply to the other categories.

Re:Haven't these awards been taken over?

[PopeRatzo]

All of the authors who won (except the movies) were women.

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

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.

the last of the classic masters

[Anonymous Coward]

Best Related Work: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 by Ursula K Le Guin

It's nice to see that Le Guin is still at it. She is among the last of the "classic" sci-fi and fantasy masters left alive, after Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Heinlein, JRR Tolkien, and the other greats of that era have passed away.

To be sure there are many fantastic modern authors, but Le Guin's work stands head and shoulders above most who have come since. JK Rowling? You are no Ursula Le Guin.

Ghostbusters bested Rogue One and Stranger Things

[bigjocker]

That's right, the Ghostbuster remake got more votes than Rogue One and Stranger Things in the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category:

1.- Arrival,
2.- Deadpool,
3.- Ghostbusters,
4.- Hidden Figures,
5.- Rogue One,
6.- Stranger Things season one.

I mean, WTF.

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.

Let's not forget that the Nebula Awards abide

[Babel-17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers." Writers, not the fans, though of course writers can be considered fans as well.

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

[TheLongshot]

What does it matter when none of those three really deserved to win? IMO, Arrival was the most deserving and it won.

I wondered about the voting.

[John.Banister]

First I looked here, and learned that one has to join a Worldcon. Then I looked here and learned that minimum price of entry is $50. The money is apparently the only requirement. I also read this about the voting system. Any member can nominate five works for every category. The six of these nominees in each category with the most nominations are the ones voted on to win via instant runoff voting. So if you feel frustrated about the resulting choices, consider that this is how they got that way, and also, it never hurts to remember that Sturgeon's Law applies as well to opinions as it does everywhere else.

Since everyone will have a different opinion about what is crap, what would probably work better than having an award system is something like what Booklamp attempted to be. Perhaps a search tool for book related social media could help.

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!