Unlabeller

[coalescent]

There is a rage shared by most critics of the literature of the fantastic. It is the rage we feel when some iteration of that literature--a novel by Jeff Noon, perhaps--is mufflingly misdescribed as non-generic by its publishers, or by some moat-defensive critic more concerned to defend his patch than to tell the truth about the text before his

Comments

[pigeonhed]

When the Clarke Award judges gave the 1992 award to Marge Piercy John Clute was one of the more vociferous critics of our choice. In a guest editorial for Vector he referred to how Body Of glass made no mention of SF on its cover, and implied that this was one of the reasons we had made the wrong choice. In the same article the judges decision to exclude Karen Joy Fowler's Sarah Canary was condemned.
In fact the judges chose to give Fowler a special mention, along with M John Harrison's The Course Of the Heart as notable but not SF. As with most other years there were many good SF novels under consideration, many of which did not have the label SF on their cover, and we felt no need to include novels which clearly were not SF simply because the author had also published SF previously.
What is relevant here is that Clute's preferred winner that year did not bear any mention of SF in words on its cover either. Kim Stanley Robinson would never deny that Red Mars is SF of course (though I could envisage a case for that.)
We as commentators on SF and non-SF do have a duty to make the distinction, but only when the distinction tells us something about the work in question. Clute's defensiveness on this issue does not do that.

[coalescent]

*hauls out his copy of Look at the Evidence*

In a guest editorial for Vector he referred to how Body Of glass made no mention of SF on its cover, and implied that this was one of the reasons we had made the wrong choice.

Well ... sort of. What he actually says is more along the lines of "not only has this award been given to a book that I think doesn't deserve it, but here is some evidence that the recipient and publisher don't care that they've received it, which makes it a double slap in the face". It's the fact that they didn't mention the award after the book had won that annoys him, not that it originally didn't mention sf on the cover.

Kim Stanley Robinson would never deny that Red Mars is SF of course (though I could envisage a case for that.)

*boggle*

My edition (which is, admittedly, US paperback) has a quote that calls it "epic science fiction in the best tradition of the term".

[peake]

Like Graham I will be careful not to say anything which touches on this year's Clarke Award, but ...

Basically Clute was pissed that Stan Robinson didn't win the Award, and constructed an argument to justify that. In fact there is and has been no evidence that Marge Piercy didn't care about the Award. And when has that ever been relevant to the decision of a jury? You are deciding what is the best book of the year, and you are deciding it on the basis of the books before you. When you've made your decision, are you then expected to change it because the recipient may not care? That is a fatuous way of looking at the award process.

As for the publishers not caring, that has been a frequent response from publishers, particularly in the early years of the award. And that applies to regular publishers of sf as much as it does to those who rarely touch the stuff. Again it is totally irrelevant to how any award jury is supposed to arrive at their decision.

As for the book not proclaiming itself SF - which was a very common and loud complaint that year from a number of people, not just Clute - in fact none of the books shortlisted for the award that year was unambiguously identified as science fiction on the cover, at least not in the UK editions that the judges saw.

[coalescent]

Basically Clute was pissed that Stan Robinson didn't win the Award

Yes, and he's pretty up-front about that. I keep meaning to read Body of Glass, because Red Mars not winning is one of the decisions that boggled me when I first came across it.

I am all in favour of a person's opinion of their award having no bearing on their eligibility for said award. That said, my impression of Clute's rant was that it was more about the insults that were added to the injury. I actually thought he was insinuating the opposite to you: not that the jury should have taken non-artistic considerations into account, but that they did take such considerations into account, through a willful snub of better books because they came from the genre.

[ninebelow]

I keep meaning to read Body of Glass, because Red Mars not winning is one of the decisions that boggled me when I first came across it.

It's not very good.

[white_hart]

I like Body of Glass a lot. But I'm saying that from the perspective of someone who has enjoyed a lot of Piercy's novels, most of which are not remotely sfnal, rather than someone reading it as an sf novel.

And Woman on the Edge of Time is better. Did I lend you my copy of that?

[coalescent]

I like Body of Glass a lot.

Ah, but more than Red Mars? :)

And Woman on the Edge of Time is better. Did I lend you my copy of that?

You did, I think as a followup to an almost-identical exchange about Body of Glass some time ago. I have lots of long-haul flights in the next two months, so ...

[peake]

I wasn't on the jury that year, so I wasn't party to the discussions. But I did read all the books on the shortlist, and I think I would have made the same choice. Not based on any extra-literary considerations but simply based on the fact that Red Mars is, in my opinion, a flawed book with serious structural problems which obstructed my reading of the book. Body of Glass is far from perfect, but the flaws were far less obtrusive when I read it, and in the end I thought it was attempting to say something more interesting.

It was also a complete work rather than the first part of a sequence that the jury was not in a position to judge as a whole. Issues like that are far more likely to sway a jury than the sort of external issues that Clute was implying.

One other point (and I repeat that I wasn't involved in the judging that year, but in every other jury I've been involved with this has been the case and I have no reason to suppose it wasn't the same in 1993): any decision about whether a book belongs in the genre or not is made at the shortlist meeting. If a juror believes a book is not sf, the time to remove it from consideration is when the shortlist is chosen. After that point, and particularly at the final judging meeting, the shortlisted titles are treated as equally science fictional and the decision is made purely on their individual merits as a book not on any such extraneous questions. Certainly such issues as whether a book might or might not be 'a wilful snub' to the genre played no part in the final jury discussions when we were considering such books as The Calcutta Chromosome or Cloud Atlas.

[pigeonhed]

My own reason for not making Red Mars the winner was, largely, that it is incomplete. It needs Green Mars and Blue Mars to work properly as a novel and as SF.
A previous jury held Hyperion back to be considered jointly with Fall Of Hyperion, and in hindsight I wonder if we should have done the same for Robinson.

[coalescent]

My own reason for not making Red Mars the winner was, largely, that it is incomplete.

Ah, that eternal question! Fair enough. I don't remember it feeling incomplete (as compared to some series books), but it's a while since I've read it.

[despotliz]

Seems to me like that could be a very slippery slope to start down. If you consider Red Mars to be incomplete without Green and Blue, then there's no reason you couldn't take, say, the Baroque Cycle and consider the whole set (Quicksilver arguably not being SF unless it's taken as part of the whole), or pretty much any longer sequence of works, and it gets difficult to draw the line.

[grahamsleight]

[Is very careful not to say anything constraining about Clarke Award choices, not today...]

In fact the judges chose to give Fowler a special mention, along with M John Harrison's The Course Of the Heart as notable but not SF.

That may well be so, but that wasn't recorded as part of the shortlist and isn't on the website archive.

Kim Stanley Robinson would never deny that Red Mars is SF of course (though I could envisage a case for that.)

Only in the incredibly narrow sense that any case is arguable. I could envisage a case that George Bush is a profoundly liberal President: it doesn't make it an accurate or useful thing to argue.