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Understanding the world science fiction convention
- Jiro 3y ago[flagged]
- bigbillheck 3y ago> let social justice stack the awards Going back the last ten years or so which, say, Best Novel winner do you think was undeserving and was only there because of "social justice"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ncallaway 3y agoThe problem wasn’t the voting, the problem was the inexplicable dropping of nominees (literally inexplicable, as they have provided no explanation).
- teddyh 3y agoIt was unexplained, not inexplicable.
- resolutebat 3y ago[flagged]
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago> they're not woke enough The dash of TDS delicately shoved in for good measure was very subtle too.
- progbits 3y agoIs not banning books "woke" now? The word also never appears in the post so your summary is disingenuous.
- DonHopkins 3y ago[flagged]
- resolutebat 3y agoI am precisely none of those things, but if I were, you would be doing a far better job of arguing the case against yourself than I ever could.
- DonHopkins 3y agoThen what's your excuse for whining about how boycotting Uganda for executing homosexuals and Texas and Florida for banning books is too woke for your tastes? Or do you have other justifications for killing gays and banning books and asshole signaling like a Musk stan?
- KittenInABox 3y agoSmall details of note: all world science fiction conventions are run by a bunch of amateurs; this is designed not to be a professional operation. This is supposed to be a passion project by passionate fans to celebrate works they love! In fact, attempts to create a central authority to run these conventions have faced severe resistance, all the way back to Heinlein's involvement in worldcons (to be clear, Heinlein hated the notion of central authorities ruling over how worldcons are run)!
- senkora 3y agoI think HN may be interested in another recent instance of the Hugo awards running into difficulties because of its rules: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies TL;DR: A conservative block of voters swept the nominations for certain categories. At final voting, members voted to not give awards at all in those categories.
- TwentyPosts 3y agoIs there any summary of what happened from the side of the proponents? Given Wikipedia's track record when it comes to certain topics, it'd be very nice to have some points of comparison here.
- gred 3y agohttps://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/ https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-s...
- melagonster 3y agonotice this from article! >Go through our list of nominees for yourself. You’ll find that we have liberals, conservatives, moderates, and question marks who’ve kept their politics to themselves.
- eropple 3y agoOver the years since, I think the primary characteristics you'll find from their slate are either "quickly disavowed the Sad Puppies movement when they found out they were endorsed" or "have in the years since turned out to be just fine with people being pricks in shared spaces."
- Arn_Thor 3y agoYou think it’s biased because it’s using words like “right-wing” and “anti-diversity”? I’ve usually found such terms to be right on the mark, even if some don’t like it pointed out
- p0w3n3d 3y agoFun fact: antipope is not an anti-catholic name, according to the site (https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html) "What sitename do you want?" he asked. I'd been posting on usenet under the alias "AutoPope -- pontifications by email". (If you don't know what the long word means, go look it up.) So I said, "How about autopope.uucp?" "Okay." Hic. Burp. And the next day, I was the somewhat bemused owner of a site called antipope.uucp
- Boogie_Man 3y agoHistorically being an antipope didn't mean that you were anti Catholic, it meant you believed yourself to be the true Pope in opposition to the Pope in Rome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope My fun fact: Some antipopes resided in Avignon France, and a (delicious) wine from that region (allegedly, I'm not a wine guy) is called Châteauneuf-du-Pape (House of the New Pope) for this reason.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago> Châteauneuf-du-Pape That reads more like "[The] Pope's New Castle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teauneuf-du-Pape_AOC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teauneuf-du-Pape_AOC In fact, Avignon was the site of the Apostolic See and indeed, seven canonically-accepted Popes resided there, plus two antipopes. https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/avignon https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/avignon This period also featured Italian antipopes! It was dramatic! https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/western-schism https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/western-schism
- Boogie_Man 3y agoThis is correct, thank you for clarifying! The information was relayed from an intoxicated man to an even more intoxicated man, so I didn't get quite all of it. Time to get reading!
- jameshart 3y agoIt's actually a great example of how we just associate French names with 'fancy'. If you saw a bottle of an alcoholic drink for sale under the name "Pope's Newcastle" you'd be forgiven for assuming it was a down-to-earth real ale. Newcastle United's goalkeeper is called Nick Pope. Perhaps he should go by the name Pape-du-Châteauneuf.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WBrentWilliams 3y agoI've seen more than a few of these kerfuffle happen now. Other commenters have mentioned other times in other directions that the voting has come out weird. All I can say is that while yes, these awards do matter, they don't have to matter as much as you think. At best, all the outcome tells you is what someone else thinks is worth reading. Consider it a starting point. It follows that any given list of nominees is way more important, in terms of gathering a list of books with neat ideas and execution, than a list of winners.
- awithrow 3y agoThey matter as a signal of quality for reading recommendations. As someone who has read many/most of the previous Hugo (and Nebula) winners, it used to be a high quality signal for good sci-fi stories. And, while it's always been a popularity contest at it's core, I can't help feeling some disappointment at seeing it descend into whatever nonsense it has become. So really I guess I miss them as the high quality signal it used to be and it's on me to find new signals
- boznz 3y agoThe world of book writing is an iceberg, and with thousands of works being released a year that not just go unreviewed but unread there is little chance the awards are inclusive of the genre. We are literally only a GPT generation away from the book writing machines of 1984 and as a new author myself this makes me so sad.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> We are literally only a GPT generation away from the book writing machines of 1984 I think we're there already, no? Amazon is being flooded with AI-written novels, including "fun" ones like a guide to foraging mushrooms; Clarkesworld had to stop accepting submissions for awhile due to AI-generated garbage flooding their inboxes.
- fsckboy 3y ago> The world of book writing is an iceberg... and like icebergs while melting, rolls over every now and then, so what was up is down and down is up, and not in a regular way but in a chaotic way
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- PeterStuer 3y agoThis reads like an extremely one sided take with a myopic US west coast moralising slant. The author seems oblivious to the irony of calling something worldcon, then throwing a tantrum if the world does dare not to prostrate to their idiological microbubble.
- falcor84 3y agoYou can say a lot of negative things about it, but it's most definitely not a "micro" bubble. The ideological influence of the US West Coast on the world at large during the past century has been de-facto defining much of the global culture, even if you limit it to just Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. A world that were to shrug off this influence would be, for better or worse, fundamentally different.
- cstross 3y agoNot only am I not Californian, I'm not American: I'm a left-wing Scot living in Edinburgh.
- PeterStuer 3y agoThat's what I deserve for just quickly skimming an article on the trone on my phone. I guess the gratuitous Trump trope succeeded trowing me off a more nuanced reading. Mb.
- donaldihunter 3y agoWhat an odd take. I don't see the moralising or the tantrum, just a take on events that happened and the likely consequences. I don't think you're getting a myopic US west coast viewpoint from a British author.
- abosley 3y ago+1 Stross is decidedly the opposite of the stereotypical US west coast sci-fi author.
- deleted 3y ago
- maire 3y agoThis article answers one of the questions I had about this year's Hugo awards. R. F. Kuang's Babel was on many other lists of top book of the year. I was surprised that it did not even on the nomination list. Now I find out that it was pre-emptively removed from the nomination list before the vote! I am not a big fan of Babel (and posted my issues on Goodreads) but I do want the vote to be fair.
- maire 3y agoI just looked at the votes - and Babel would not have won in any case. It was ranked #7 when it was disqualified. Netflix's Sandman was also disqualified. On Bluesky Neil Gaiman said he was never told why it was disqualified. He also said he was one of four disqualified authors. The lesson learned is do not have a world-wide vote in a country with censorship.
- ianburrell 3y agoPeople are talking about them miscounting nomination votes to eliminate Babel. It is very strange that the #3 position would lose to #7. Like there would have to been no ballots that ranked Babel in lower position. The only thing makes sense is that they disqualified it early and stopped counting votes.
- maire 3y agoAlthough Babel was removed during the final vote count, here is what the interim vote count looked like. It looks like it would not even be on the short list. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25245686/hugo_awards_best_novel_statistics.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25245686/h...
- ianburrell 3y agoPeople have been pointing out the numbers are bogus [1]. Notice that huge drop in votes between #7 and #8, that doesn't happen with normal voting. It can happen with slate voting but this would have to be pretty extreme. Also, the weird votes are only for some awards like novel. I don't know what the score means, but notice that for Babel it starts lower and never changes, while the others increase presumably from lower ranks being added to score. I think the only way Babel happens if there were no ballots who put it lower only top position. It is also suspicious that it goes out at the seventh position, just losing out to the lowest slate. Also, why would they the disqualify it if it had been eliminated. It makes sense to disqualify at the beginning or end of nomination. Also, there is no final vote count, there is nomination count and the final vote. It was removed before the final vote. 1: https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distribution-statistics https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distrib...