2015 Hugo Award winners

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by 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*

I read it. I thought it was quite good.

However, I did think one aspect, the game world created, was pretty stupid and there was a mass of "found material" in the latter part of the novel that also seemed a bit silly to me.

Overall, I enjoyed it regardless of my complaints.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

*If you think SF fandom has "gone wrong", somehow, then maybe try picking a great book and getting behind it, instead of flooding the ballot with mediocrities and insulting and alienating the neutrals whose votes you need.

I tried to read everything nominated and most was crap. Mediocrity is to high. But even mediocre works does not deserve to win. I even put No Award before the non-puppy upside-down-story.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

This is one thing we agree on. The Hugos haven't been particularly relevant for a number of years.

Really. Care to backup that with some arguments. I have the last maybe 7 years read all nominated novels and shorter work and to me they seem relevant. Very few very good books are missed.

[pdurrant]

One thing this mess has encouraged me to do - take out a supporting membership for next year's worldcon. Next year I'll nominate and vote!

http://www.mac2business.org/events/midamericon-ii/

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm sorry, but it is an election campaign. It always has been. An election is simply "the selection of something by vote". The Hugos are a popularity contest, pure and simple. It's never been about "what's the best book?", but "which book do most people vote for?", which is entirely different. All that's happened here is that people with an agenda have started using social media for campaigning, just as happens in any election. It was inevitable that this was going to happen.

Yes, but popular means you like it. Not just that you vote for it even when you hate it as you say above. So you are totally wrong here.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I thought there was a very slight argument that Wakulla Springs could be considered genre. At least, that's what I told myself when I voted for it.

I consider it to be magic realism because of the talking monkey and the hint that the monsters existed.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by 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.

I am pretty sure it is clear what it is in nearly all the books you read. You just miss anybody mention it if it is what you expect.

[Doonge]

Originally Posted by murg

Before Amazon, Science Fiction was written, was submitted to publishers and for the most part, middle-aged white guys pondered on these and bought what they thought they could sell to the SF audience (primary white straight males). What they could sell in those four bays of shelves that B&N or Borders allocated to SF. So, pretty much established authors and relatively benign newcomers were getting contracts, and frankly boring stuff was happening.

Then along came Amazon, and two things happened. Firstly, any published book could be bought, anywhere. So, a small press that was willing to take a risk on a non-benign author found that they could actually sell their product globally, far beyond the reach of the bookstores that would carry their offerings. And without the dreaded returns to deal with! Oh, joy!

Secondly, anyone could publish anything. Well, pretty much anything.

I kinda agree that thanks to internet (and companies that use it intelligently), the publishers' function (filtering authors so readers don't have to) is more and more decentralized and therefore there's no more "real" gatekeeper so to speak: anyone can write and self-publish their turd, which has its upsides and downsides (one downside is that it's really hard to have visibility amidst the flood, and I'm not sure the money follow the same trend than the number of books published).

You don't have to rely solely on the brand of a publisher, you can rely on a youtuber critic, or goodread reviews, or you can even buy completely randomly etc...

All in all, I think it's a good thing.

But I really don't see "white straight male" banging up together to fight back in the name of racism and homophobia against diversity of books. That's conspirationist / boogeyman.

To begin with, it is in our nature to be slightly "racist". Racist bias is a thing, even amongst (probably particulary amongst, in the same vein some unavowed homosexual politicians shout the harshest against gays) people who shout hard against racism.
But for most people, it is a bias whose influence is really tiny compared to other types of bias we can have, like religion, ideology, and especially class (your socio economic status).
I don't think a typical wealthy publisher who happens to be "white straight male", even a racist one, would fight very hard against taking the money of non-white people more efficiently. I'm not seeing white upperclassmen business owner not delocalizing their business to third world and giving the finger to their lowerclass fellow whities.

Which is why I don't care much if people don't read books because there are white straight males in it. I don't want to lose my time arguing morally, or rationally, because I don't even know the preponderance of their visceral feelings. I myself have my own biases, and I think that diversity means that the market should be left free to satisfy the kinks of everyone.
I am a straight male, I like boobies in movies, and I don't like seeing dicks. My tastes are inherently sexists, there's no need to rationalize it, or make it a moral battleground.

There is no need to fight against "white straight male" book out of revenge ("to balance what happened in the past"), no need to fight for, no need to have diversity in every books. Should we bash asian sci-fi books because they have only asian protagonists? Asian sci-fi movies?

You can see many pictures of a black Jesus in Africa.

When you follow the tastes of a friend, or a personality, you check if their tastes match yours, and if they do you can better trust their future recommendations, for future pleasure. When you follow popularity indicator (like sale number), you can compare your own taste versus popular tastes, and you see if they match. Same goes with specific aggregate, which we name "cliques".
What's important is the usefulness and reliability of your trust in those indicators (your friend's opinion, a popular poll, a clique opinion). For a clique to be useful, it has to be straightforward. A clique that advertises itself as all inclusive but isn't is not straightforward.

[BenG]

You would think that the Puppies would at least nominate the best of the type of SF they like, but some of their nominations were dreadful. Take the John C. Wright stuff. I've read some of his novels that were pretty good, but his nominated works were surprisingly bad.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The whole thing strikes me as ridiculous. Campaigning to support your favoured candidate is an entirely legitimate part of the electoral process. The Hugo awards have always been a popularity contest, not a mark of literary merit.

With respect, I think you're missing the point. The Hugo is supposed to recognize great science-fiction writing. That is not what Sad Puppy (or whatever their name is) is doing. They are more concerned with pushing a political / ideological agenda than they are with good science-fiction writing.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by BenG

You would think that the Puppies would at least nominate the best of the type of SF they like, but some of their nominations were dreadful. Take the John C. Wright stuff. I've read some of his novels that were pretty good, but his nominated works were surprisingly bad.

Are they supporting Wright because he is a self-proclaimed homophobe?

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by 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*

Read it, ranked it third on my ballot after The Goblin Emperor and Ancillary Sword and above No Award. It was good, and good enough to go over No Award but because the characters felt a little flat and while I liked the prologue I felt it took a little too long for it to fit into the rest of the story I thought it placed below the other two works.

I'm eager to read the newly released translation of the sequel The Dark Forest.

Oh and if you ask me very nicely I'll post a photo of my copy of The Three Body Problem autographed by both the author and the translator.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Are they supporting Wright because he is a self-proclaimed homophobe?

While the sad puppies nominated Wright twice (presumably because they like his messages), the main reason why he had so many nominations was because his friend and publisher, Ted Beale, had loaded the rabid puppy slate with stuff he published, including 6 works by Wright, and then encouraged his fans to stick it to the SJWs by getting supporting memberships and voting his slate.

[kennyc]

clearly a case of dog lick dog....

[MikeB1972]

I'd call the puppy thing a great success, not because of the slate, not because of trying to include more mainstream (or whatever term you want to apply) books, but for the simple yardstick that more people voted this year than ever before, it's meant to be a popular award and was in danger of becoming very self-referential and irrelevant to the sci-fi reading public. Now most people know that they can vote if they want, the more people voting the less chance it can get derailed by any small interest group (sad, mad rabid, sjw or whatever), hell if the romance crowd took an interest there is nothing stopping historical-chick-lit completely sweeping the board with the amount of people voting now.