This year’s prestigious Hugo Awards were far more dramatic than usual, and not for any good reason. In case you haven’t been following the hoopla, the long and the short of it is that a group of (white, male) writers who felt that white, male authors’ stories about space marines weren’t getting enough attention through a hissy fit and manipulated the awards to try to get awards for people and stories they deemed more acceptable.
And, it didn’t work: None of the people the self-named “Sad Puppies” put forward won.
Wired has an outstanding article about it: Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, And Why It Matters. You should go read it right now.
Some particularly salient quotes:
“Would sci-fi focus, as it has for much of its history, largely on brave white male engineers with ray guns fighting either a) hideous aliens or b) hideous governments who don’t want them to mine asteroids in space? Or would it continue its embrace of a broader sci-fi: stories about non-traditionally gendered explorers and post-singularity, post-ethnic characters who are sometimes not men and often even have feelings?”
It’s crazy that it’s even an argument.
“Not a single Puppy-endorsed candidate took home a rocket. In the five categories that had only Puppy-provided nominees on the ballot—Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, and Best Editor for Short and for Long Form—voters instead preferred ‘No Award.'”
Honestly, as glad as I am that the rigged votes didn’t result in wins, I feel terrible for those authors. In fact for all the authors on this years’ ballot. It’s hard to know the exact effect of the Sad Puppies’ campaign, and therefore hard to tell which authors had a groundswell of deserved support and how many were picked just because someone didn’t like the other guy (or gal). How terrible that such an incredible award should be tainted. And how sad that so many categories resulted in a “No Award” this year, when I’m sure there are many deserving authors who got either locked out by the manipulated ballot or tainted by the Puppies’ touch.
I sincerely hope the Hugo folks manage to figure out a way to improve the voting process to make this better next year and going forward, but I feel certain that this culture shift (and resulting puppy-pooping) is not going to go away overnight.
M.E. Kinkade 