Tuesday, August 12, 2008

My Discouraging Hugo Second Thoughts

I'm slowly catching up on all my feeds -- I lost a couple of days in Anaheim and on the plane, and then had a lazy weekend, so I've gotten behind on all of my electronic communications -- and running through everyone else's thoughts about the Hugo winners.

(I'm not going to start gratuitously insulting the idiots out there, though there are many of them. Actually, I'm amused that the idiots this year -- at least the ones I've seen -- are fantasy-loving idiots, unlike the usual squadron of SF Triumphant Hugo Complainers. Perhaps we're entering a new era of rotation in illegitimate complaints? Perhaps next year the big squabble will be about whether enough Belgians have been honored?)

What I intended to post about, before I got sidetracked there, were my predictions and how badly wrong I was this year. Looking at the list of winners again a couple of days later, my problem was that I was insufficiently cynical -- I know, it's hard to believe that phrase could ever be used to describe me, but it's true.

Let's look again the ones I got wrong, and I will demonstrate:

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang for That Weird Mid-length Kind of Story That No One Can Spell Correctly -- Hugo voters clearly have a tropism for the same names, and I should remember that.

“Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear for The Dying (Alas!) Short Story -- no one can resist Bear. It's useless to try.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher for Loosely Related Book -- How did I miss that this is a book steeped in the purest essence of faanishness? It was the obvious cynical choice.

Stardust for Dramatic and Too Long -- Neil Gaiman. See? That was all I needed to know.

Doctor Who: "Blink" for Dramatic and Too Short -- Actually, this one cynicism wouldn't have helped me with. I thought I was being exceptionally cynical, actually, picking the bisexual time-traveling bad boy.

Gordon Van Gelder as Editor of the Hobbits -- He won last year. Add to Hugo voters' usual patterns, stir and decant.

David G. Hartwell as Editor of the Frost Giants -- He's not young, and a past winner. Why did I expect Hugo voters to pick someone new? They hardly ever do.

Stephan Martiniere as Artist Wot Gets Paid -- Another one of the very few categories where cynicism wouldn't have helped.

Mary Robinette Kowal as Campbell Is Not a Hugo Tiara Power Go! -- She's gotten very active in SFWA recently (and quite successful, as far as I can see) and everybody likes her. So, if the cynical view is that Hugos are purely a popularity contest among BNFs and associated pros, then she was the obvious choice.


See? It's clear that I would have done much better with my predictions if I had been able to completely ignore the actual merits and abilities of all of the nominees and focus my attention, laser-like, on the most trivial and pointless facts. I must remember that for next year.

4 comments:

Ran said...

I can't help but wonder if the fantasy-loving idiots remark refers to my forum, Westeros.org (I'm Ran there), seeing as Larry linked it in his post at OF Blog of the Fallen.... :P

I won't say those who took the line of there being a bias against fantasy are idiots; I do think they (we, really) can get a bit myopic in regards to our favorite sort of literature.

It is interesting from a sociological and historical perspective to see how the persecution complex of fans of particular subgenres grow in apparent proportion to the popularity of that subgenre in relation to other subgenres. AS far as I know, the fantasy branch of SF/F is doing rather better, sales and readership wise, and yet one seems to find more and more people who are upset that it's not taken "seriously".

This reminds me of an article I read somewhere or other, discussing the idea that readers and writers of SF are driven by crisis, and that a typical crisis is the "disrespect of the genre" and, closely related to it, "the end of the genre." It's like a part of some common heritage that defines the culture...


Re: Elizabeth Bear, it seems to me the cynic vote would be for Mike Resnick's story based on the name recognition factor. After 40 or so short stories, that she got to the final ballot only after publishing in one of the "big three" print magazines is pleasing in its cynical way, but it didn't inspire confidence that she could actually win. Bear seemed, if anything, surprised by it I think (if I'm reading her reaction at Tor.com right).

Andrew Wheeler said...

Balerion: To be serious, if only for a moment, Bear and Martiniere are the two awards this year that no amount of cynicism could have expected.

Maybe, some year, a majority of the categories will be that way!

To your first point, I am using "idiot" here to mean "someone with whom I won't bother to even argue, since that person is clearly badly informed, pugnatious, and has a strong case of fan entitlement to boot." They might be quite intelligent in other contexts, but they all tend to start from the premise that any award that doesn't immediately and slavishly confirm their prejudices is either corrupt or stupid. (And there are plenty of them: the anti-Rowling folks, the anti-Sawyer coterie, and so on. You can't swing a cat in SFF without hitting someone with a gudge.)

Kathryn Cramer said...

David Hartwell is Old. Old. Old. He should have been content with one Hugo.

Oh, come on Andy. This is only his second Hugo win. Ever. This is the second blog post I've read that seems to assume that he is a perennial Hugo winner and that's just not the case.

Andrew Wheeler said...

Kathryn: It's nothing to do with David -- who is a fine editor and a very worthy recipient of the Hugo -- but with the Hugo voters.

They tend to find a favorite and then vote it into the ground -- need I mention how NYRSF keeps getting trampled by Locus?

It's probably too early to detect a real streak...but I was trying to be as cynical as possible.

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