The Hugo Awards

For far too many years now, we have had the various Repellent Puppies doing everything they possible could to keep the Hugo Awards whiter than a Trump Rally, more male than a Catholic seminary and as welcoming to minorities as a UKIP convention. While much has been said about Vox Day, he’s only the most repellent, reeking eruption of the whole festering mass.

Which it is why with great joy that The Hugo Awards this year celebrated, POC, Women and women of colour. In the face of an active campaign to suppress marginalised voices, marginalised work and marginalised stories, we saw those very people and those very stories celebrated. With N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor and Hao Jingfang all winning prestigious categories and “no award” being voted for when a category had been stuffed with Puppy choices (and so many of these books were nothing about celebrating an author - but desperately using these books to slap people who dared to want to see themselves in stories).

We have spent so many posts writing about why this inclusion is important - but we don’t have to repeat them because N.K. Jemisin’s acceptance speech makes it clear why this matters to women, POC and women of colour specifically

This is good news for everyone. Yes, even cishet, white able-bodied men who don’t have enough empathy to care one iota

There is no upper limit to the number of stories there can be out there. This is Speculative Fiction, of every genre of media out there, this is where imagination lives, this is where creativity thrives in all it’s massive, incredible variation. This is what this genre is. Let others have their Literary fiction with carefully crafted elaborate text to sooth the insomnia of the pretentious, we have the huge vistas of human imagination to dance through, wallow in and be amazed and moved by the awesome vastness of this genre.

That is this genre. It is imagination. And even if you think diversity is some evil plot by those nasty nasty social justice warriors, the very idea of limiting the inspiration of this genre should outrage every fan.

No-one is going to stop cishet white, able bodied men writing books or being protagonists in books or TV shows. And I can’t even imagine any possible way that anyone could possibly think this was under threat or that cishet, white, abled bodied men didn’t dominate both as writers and characters to an overwhelming degree (and if you do think that and that the evil minorities be destroying your fiction, then I have a special token I can see you that will totally protect you from our evil ways. I might as well profit from your nasty and you’re clearly disconnected enough from reality that my sales pitch may have a chance). You will still have these stories - we’re not taking your stories, hell we enjoy many of those stories ourselves!

We’re adding to the genre, not taking away. We want more - more characters, more stories, more different stories, more richness, more breadth, more imagination. We want more from this genre and these Hugo Awards have proven that so do many more. Many of us see this genre’s potential and we should all be celebrating any sign that it is reaching for that - that this amazing playground of imagination isn’t building unnecessary walls or driving out inspiration.

The Hugo Awards and Various Repellent Puppies

By now I think everyone’s heard of the Hugos Drama and the issue with the various puppies. In truth there’s not much for us to add - especially since we’ve already spoken about the Hugos last year and the problems insecure, over-privileged cis, straight, white able-bodied men having a hissy fit causes to the genre and marginalised people trying to find some kind of home in speculative fiction. We’ve also talked about how hostile this makes the genre and fandom and how, ultimately, this is why the genre isn’t more inclusive

Thankfully, many many people have spoken up (George R R Martin has almost written a book on the subject) about how utterly wrong the Puppies’ orchestrated campaign to ensure that only cis, straight white men are deemed acceptable awards winners.

A clear indication of motivation

Slate

George R R Martin

Book Smugglers

IO9

Cat Valente

Charlie Stross

John Scalzi

One nominee pulling out of the Hugos because of the Puppy lists inclusion of him

There’s something else that struck me - something beyond even the inclusion, bigotry and exclusion that they champion. After all, if you’re reading this and have read this blog we have already written reams on the damage of erasure, tokenism et al; it hardly needs me to rehash for the Hugos (again).

But it’s also such a terrible way to treat this amazing genre.The agenda of The Puppies - both Sad and Rabid - is so depressingly awful quite aside from inherent bigotry and unexamined privilege that so saturates them - but for their determination to make this genre, this genre which should be so utterly vast, so narrow.

Speculative fiction has, as we’ve said before, the potential to be the most imaginative, unlimited genre out there. Speculative fiction, genre fiction, can reach the furthest extent of our imagination in a way that no other genre can touch. The stories within this genre are gloriously, perfectly limitless in a way no other media can be.

The Hugo Awards, Vox Day and Apologetics for Bigotry

This year the Hugo nominations had many wonderful and talented authors on the slate, including a few who have included marginalised people in their work or are marginalised themselves.

And it also included a novelette by Vox Day.

For those who don’t know, Vox Day is a bigot. It’s not really worth parsing down what kind of bigot he is, because the answer is “yes”. If someone is not straight, cis, white and male, Vox Day will spew his venom on them. He thinks gay people are a “birth defect.” He thinks Black people are inherently less intelligent (and called N. K. Jemisin not fully civilised for “historical reasons”) and, of course, that he thinks there’s no such thing as marital rape. This isn’t an exhaustive list, not even close, but there’s a limit to how nauseous we’re willing to get to write this post and googling Vox Day is going to give us heartburn. Honestly, there are no words to accurately sum up what a terrible human being this man is.

A lot of people have spoken about this and, to a degree, we felt there was no need to add to the discussion - but then the reaction itself, the commentary we’ve seen, including in several social-justice spaces have added to our already churning stomachs. So let’s tackle this.

First of all, why is Vox Day getting this nomination a problem? Ultimately, not everyone can be nominated for a Hugo. It takes a level of support - I know there have been a lot of allegations of vote rigging, internet campaigns et al on behalf of Vox Day and others - but none of these would have worked if there weren’t a sufficient number of people who decided to champion Vox Day. In fact, gaming the system would require active champions of Vox Day and his hateful campaigns because the merely indifferent would not help him get a nomination.

Him being nominated at all sends the message that there is a not-insignificant number of people in the SFF “community” who support the hatred he espouses - and many more who are indifferent or do not consider it important.

That is a toxic message - and a message we have seen reinforced by some of the commentary - even supposedly supportive commentary - on the issue. The amount of dismissal or insulting priorities we’ve seen really add to the message that there are a whole lot of those indifferent people.

Predictably, as we’ve seen with previous bigots on parade, there has been a vocal demand to focus on the quality of the work an author produces. We’ve heard the same for Orson Scott Card, Frank Herbert - in fact, just about any vile person out there. We’re supposed to ignore the author, consider the author’s actions irrelevant and take their work in a vacuum.

Jim C Hines, who is usually much better on these issues, has written a post on the subject that included a section on “separating the authors from their work” and these lines:

“Some authors are assholes. That doesn’t mean they don’t have fans who genuinely like their stuff.”

and he has tweeted:

Call me naïve, but I want the Hugos to be about the best authors, artists, & editors in our field. That’s what I’ll be reading for. (3/5)
— Jim C. Hines (@jimchines) April 20, 2014

I’m not interested in letting anyone turn the Hugos into their personal political statement. I’m interested in celebrating awesomeness (5/5)
— Jim C. Hines (@jimchines) April 20, 2014

John Scalzi has also written two blog posts where he, among other things, wants Vox Day’s work to be judged on the writing, not the bigotry of the author.

“Instead, take a look at the work, read the work, and if you like the work, place it appropriately on your ballot. Because why shouldn’t you? Regardless of how a work got on the ballot (or more accurately in this case, how you think it got onto the ballot), it’s there now. Read the books and stories. If you like them, great. If you don’t, there’s plenty of other excellent work on the ballot for your consideration.”