2015 Hugo Award winners

[darryl]

Originally Posted by meeera

As for "repressed minorities of the day" and wranglings about representation: to me it's pretty simple. Humans consist of a huge variety of different people. Straight nondisabled white cis men are a pretty small minority of our planet's population, so when they make up a majority of fictional heroes, I get bored and turn off. A fiction of ideas and what-ifs is uninteresting to me when it's stuck in one particularly dull version of the past, ignoring the majority of the population almost completely. Unimaginative and backwards-looking is not what I'm looking for in F/SF.

This is where you lose me, I'm afraid. I find it incomprehensible that you can be "bored" and "turn off" a book because it happens to have a "hero" who is straight etc. What I want is a great read, irrespective of the hero or protagonist or any other characters. You can miss out on a lot of good reading if you exclude this class of books from those you read, just as those who confine their reading to this class of books miss out.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by darryl

This is where you lose me, I'm afraid. I find it incomprehensible that you can be "bored" and "turn off" a book because it happens to have a "hero" who is straight etc.

A single book? Of course not. I wrote what I meant: it's when it's book after book after book that I get turned off. I am a fan of variety. I'm happy that I live in Australia, where we don't have a straight-white-man SF monoculture (or perception of same) that Harry refers to, not in fandom or in authors or in our local awards.

I don't actually believe that such a monoculture exists elsewhere, either (though I understand Australia has had particularly good representation of women as fantasy authors compared to elsewhere). If you're seeing a sea of one particular type of person in fandom, you're either not looking at all of fandom, or you're not seeing what's in front of you.

What I want is a great read, irrespective of the hero or protagonist or any other characters. You can miss out on a lot of good reading if you exclude this class of books from those you read, just as those who confine their reading to this class of books miss out.

I don't exclude any particular class of books from my reading. I do, however, think that it's generally not a good idea to exclude particular classes of characters from one's writing. It's as simple as that.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by darryl

This is where you lose me, I'm afraid. I find it incomprehensible that you can be "bored" and "turn off" a book because it happens to have a "hero" who is straight etc. What I want is a great read, irrespective of the hero or protagonist or any other characters. You can miss out on a lot of good reading if you exclude this class of books from those you read, just as those who confine their reading to this class of books miss out.

Many did and do refuse to read books based on 'politics' - Heinlein is a good example. Some read mysteries, some read romances, some Dhalgren. Some love Dickens, some hate him. Mark Twain....

To each his own.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by meeera

...

I don't exclude any particular class of books from my reading. I do, however, think that it's generally not a good idea to exclude particular classes of characters from one's writing. It's as simple as that.

That is totally up to the author AFAIC.

The issue with this Hugo problem is that there were attempts to influence the choices/ballots and winners based on biased social/demographic/etc. preferences not on good writing. IMO.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by meeera

It's a fantasy and science fiction award. As the Puppies well know, having nominated a fair bit of fantasy themselves.

And that story is still in neither of those categories.
It's a forced-outing story. While I don't think it's particularly healthy to stay in the closed for ever and ever, I also think people should only out themselves when they feel ready, and not when they are pushed into that situation.
For that reason alone I reject the premise of that romantic short.

Originally Posted by meeera

The Sad Puppies achieved little when it came to the nominations, so they're not particularly relevant to post-Hugo discussions IMO. It was the Rabid Puppies who swept the nominations.

And F/SF has always contained politics and political messages, of a wide variety of types. People who claim otherwise are betraying their ignorance of the history of the field. I also can do nothing but laugh and shake my head when people whine about 'messages' in fiction, then nominate John C. Wright's stories!

Politics and messages in the genre are fine.
Pushing aside stories and books that do not promote an agenda or highlight the plight of that minority or the struggle of this sexual orientation isn't fine.
Sci-Fi is being read for a variety of reasons by a variety of diverse people. Being beaten over the head with the morality-hammer is probably the least of them.

Originally Posted by meeera

As for "repressed minorities of the day" and wranglings about representation: to me it's pretty simple. Humans consist of a huge variety of different people. Straight nondisabled white cis men are a pretty small minority of our planet's population, so when they make up a majority of fictional heroes, I get bored and turn off. A fiction of ideas and what-ifs is uninteresting to me when it's stuck in one particularly dull version of the past, ignoring the majority of the population almost completely. Unimaginative and backwards-looking is not what I'm looking for in F/SF.

This gay non-disabled white cis man here cares more about the overall story than certain attributes of the characters within that story.
If they do happen to be all "Straight nondisabled white cis men" - then that's fine with me (no one will guilt me out of enjoying LotR, the Star Trek novels, the Witcher books,...).
If they happen to be something other than that - that's fine, too (two of my favourite sci-fi-characters ever are Captain Kathryn Janeway and General Lydia van Dyke).

And - to beat this dead horse again - personally, I don't see what's forward-looking and imaginative about a story about some gay guy being forcibly outed.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by kennyc

The issue with this Hugo problem is that there were attempts to influence the choices/ballots and winners based on biased social/demographic/etc. preferences not on good writing. IMO.

Yep. Which led to a whole lot of No Award results. Onward and upward, to next year!

[HarryT]

I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of the books I read never mention the protagonist's race. It's generally completely irrelevant to the plot.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by ST-One

And that story is still in neither of those categories.
It's a forced-outing story. While I don't think it's particularly healthy to stay in the closed for ever and ever, I also think people should only out themselves when they feel ready, and not when they are pushed into that situation.
For that reason alone I reject the premise of that romantic short.

Sure - and it's perfectly reasonable to not vote for it based on that. I put the Heuvelt story below No Award this year, because it did nothing for me, and one particular aspect of it annoyed me enough that I didn't wish to vote for it. I have no problem with any of that.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by meeera

Yep. Which led to a whole lot of No Award results. Onward and upward, to next year!

Yes, these No Awards denied novellas, which readers seem to enjoy, a win, and Toni Weisskopf, who seems to be held in esteem, to be honoured with and award.

All of this simply out of spite and bloc-voting.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by meeera

Yep. Which led to a whole lot of No Award results. Onward and upward, to next year!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

A single book? Of course not. I wrote what I meant: it's when it's book after book after book that I get turned off. I am a fan of variety. I'm happy that I live in Australia, where we don't have a straight-white-man SF monoculture (or perception of same) that Harry refers to

That's not what I said, meera. I didn't say that SF was a "monoculture", simply that traditionally it has attracted more male readers than female, in the same way that romance has attracted more female readers than male.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by ST-One

Yes, these No Awards denied novellas, which readers seem to enjoy, a win, and Toni Weisskopf, who seems to be held in esteem, to be honoured with and award.

All of this simply out of spite and bloc-voting.

Mileage will vary between voters, but I did have a go at reading everything in the packet. I found all of the novellas dire-to-mediocre, not Hugo material. I chose not to vote for Weisskopf because I have found her work generally not of interest to me, nor did I feel she would have won the category in a competitive, non-slate field. (I felt the same about the Heuvelt story and Mixon's nomination, and voted accordingly.) Looking at io9's post at what the field would have looked like without the slate bloc votes, I suspect like I was correct about that, but we'll never know.

I've spoken with some other voters who said much the same thing.

Attributing everything to "spite" does a disservice, I feel. A lot of fans are far more thoughtful than that.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's not what I said, meera. I didn't say that SF was a "monoculture", simply that traditionally it has attracted more male readers than female, in the same way that romance has attracted more female readers than male.

I actually don't believe they're comparable. Romance is virtually a female monoculture, with >90% (possibly >>90?) women amongst authors and fans (I'm not so sure about readers, but 'fans' in the sense of convention attendees, bloggers, etc etc.) F/SF isn't anywhere near that. So I stand by what I said: if you see FSF fandom as as male as romance is female, you're missing a lot.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by meeera

I actually don't believe they're comparable. Romance is virtually a female monoculture, with >90% (possibly >>90?) women amongst authors and fans (I'm not so sure about readers, but 'fans' in the sense of convention attendees, bloggers, etc etc.) F/SF isn't anywhere near that. So I stand by what I said: if you see FSF fandom as as male as romance is female, you're missing a lot.

Use Urban Fantasy instead then, probably a similar mix to sci-fi slanting more towards the female side for readers and virtually dominated by white female protagonists.

[Rizla]

Anyone read Three-body Problem? I'm about a third of the way through and find it very good. Glad to see the awards chose a worthy winner. Mind you, the protagonist is Chinese. *Gasp*