Why I Don't Like the Hugos
Note: I use both "science fiction" and "speculative fiction" in this, but don't intend them interchangeably. I use "speculative fiction" to indicate when I mean "science fiction and fantasy (and also some horror)."
So the Hugo Awards nominations were announced, and I haven't read a lot of "real" books over the past year so it's no surprise that I haven't read any of the literary nominees, though in previous years I had at least heard of a bunch of the nominees, which is decidedly not the case this year.
What I do read are comics, and I watch television and movies, so I can at least comment on those categories, and well, it's kind of WTF. In 2009 they introduced the "Best Graphic Story" category, and every year Fables and Schlock Mercenary are nominated, and every year Girl Genius has won (and is nominated again this year). So three out five slots are taken up by the same comics every year. Comic sales might be down, but it's not like they're lacking in diversity. Chew? Morning Glories? Return of the Dapper Men? They're all good, speculative fiction works that could have been nominated, but weren't.
I think what's at work here is a small, dedicated group of people who only read a handful of titles and vote for those titles en masse year-after-year, while everyone else generally ignores the category or votes for the few things they've heard of, which then squeak through in the remaining slots (this year Unwritten got a nod, as it's just started to pick up steam in the past few months, overlapping perfectly with the nomination period).
I think that's true of the Hugos in general, which are very literary, very book-based, and that's why the dramatic presentation nominations tend to be rather homogeneous. I don't have a problem with the long form nominations this time around-it's nice to see Toy Story 3 recognized, and definitely nice to see Scott Pilgrim get a nod-but I think that's more a function of the most popular speculative fiction movies from the past year actually being really good. The nominations in past years tend to hit a lot of popular-but-not-necessarily-good films because that's what people have heard of, though luckily that's not always reflected in the winners (Moon beat Avatar last year, rightfully so).
But that short form category really gets me this year. Once again, it's dominated by three episodes of Doctor Who, with "The Lost Thing" (winner for Best Animated Short at the Oscars this year) and "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" holding down the last two slots.
"Fuck me, Ray Bradbury" is a parody music video that is about exactly what the title says. It's cute, but in no way is it science fiction. And yet this is what they nominate, because apparently no episodes of Stargate Universe, Fringe, The Walking Dead, or Futurama were good enough. Okay, that's not fair, it's more likely that not enough people voted for any of those, while everyone was passing around the music video to their fandom friends, because hey, they all love books and they all know Ray Bradbury, so of course they would vote for something they can all relate to!
I've had multiple people mention to me how old (in terms of average attendee age) science fiction fandom is, and how they tend to be very traditionalist and yes, literary. My first clue was in how outdated and ugly most science fiction con websites tend to be (I'm actually surprised there is a dedicated Hugo website, as there didn't used to be and the general Worldcon site is ugly-as-sin). Just compare them to the websites for anime cons, which tend to have a much younger and Internet-savvy audience. It's so weird, considering that you think "science fiction fans = geeks" and "geeks = tech-savvy" but somehow the transitive property didn't come up with "science fiction fans = tech-savvy."
Another acquaintance once expressed trepidation over the 2007 awards being held in Japan, because Japan was very visual and very media-heavy, two things that Worldcon and science fiction fandom were not. But I didn't hear any horror stories come out of that, so I guess it went okay and it seemed to have little effect on the Hugo nominations as well (Hugo nominations are voted on by the membership of last year's and the current year's Worldcon, so the nominations often reflect the demographics of the attendees, such as being heavy in US works when the con is held in the US).
They almost had a video game category a few years back, too, but it was canceled due to "lack of interest." Not because they couldn't find works to nominate (video games tend to be very heavy on the speculative fiction front, after all) but because no one cared enough to vote. Or knew enough to vote. So yeah, it's definitely a literary crowd, which gives us plenty of choices in books but leaves speculative fiction in other media horribly underrepresented and unrecognized.
I know there's always the Saturn Awards, which are designed for movies and television to the point where they recognize the directors and actors as well, but 1) they're not considered prestigious 2) because the nominations are often a joke (Clash of the Titans was nominated this year, for the love of God) and 3) they're not even speculative fiction-exclusive (they have a "best action/adventure" category for movies and "best syndicated/cable show" category for television). It's a consolation prize, and really means nothing if you take your speculative fiction seriously. And I'd like to think I do.
For the fans of a genre that's supposed to be about all the things that could be or might be, they sure don't show it sometimes.
So the Hugo Awards nominations were announced, and I haven't read a lot of "real" books over the past year so it's no surprise that I haven't read any of the literary nominees, though in previous years I had at least heard of a bunch of the nominees, which is decidedly not the case this year.
What I do read are comics, and I watch television and movies, so I can at least comment on those categories, and well, it's kind of WTF. In 2009 they introduced the "Best Graphic Story" category, and every year Fables and Schlock Mercenary are nominated, and every year Girl Genius has won (and is nominated again this year). So three out five slots are taken up by the same comics every year. Comic sales might be down, but it's not like they're lacking in diversity. Chew? Morning Glories? Return of the Dapper Men? They're all good, speculative fiction works that could have been nominated, but weren't.
I think what's at work here is a small, dedicated group of people who only read a handful of titles and vote for those titles en masse year-after-year, while everyone else generally ignores the category or votes for the few things they've heard of, which then squeak through in the remaining slots (this year Unwritten got a nod, as it's just started to pick up steam in the past few months, overlapping perfectly with the nomination period).
I think that's true of the Hugos in general, which are very literary, very book-based, and that's why the dramatic presentation nominations tend to be rather homogeneous. I don't have a problem with the long form nominations this time around-it's nice to see Toy Story 3 recognized, and definitely nice to see Scott Pilgrim get a nod-but I think that's more a function of the most popular speculative fiction movies from the past year actually being really good. The nominations in past years tend to hit a lot of popular-but-not-necessarily-good films because that's what people have heard of, though luckily that's not always reflected in the winners (Moon beat Avatar last year, rightfully so).
But that short form category really gets me this year. Once again, it's dominated by three episodes of Doctor Who, with "The Lost Thing" (winner for Best Animated Short at the Oscars this year) and "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" holding down the last two slots.
"Fuck me, Ray Bradbury" is a parody music video that is about exactly what the title says. It's cute, but in no way is it science fiction. And yet this is what they nominate, because apparently no episodes of Stargate Universe, Fringe, The Walking Dead, or Futurama were good enough. Okay, that's not fair, it's more likely that not enough people voted for any of those, while everyone was passing around the music video to their fandom friends, because hey, they all love books and they all know Ray Bradbury, so of course they would vote for something they can all relate to!
I've had multiple people mention to me how old (in terms of average attendee age) science fiction fandom is, and how they tend to be very traditionalist and yes, literary. My first clue was in how outdated and ugly most science fiction con websites tend to be (I'm actually surprised there is a dedicated Hugo website, as there didn't used to be and the general Worldcon site is ugly-as-sin). Just compare them to the websites for anime cons, which tend to have a much younger and Internet-savvy audience. It's so weird, considering that you think "science fiction fans = geeks" and "geeks = tech-savvy" but somehow the transitive property didn't come up with "science fiction fans = tech-savvy."
Another acquaintance once expressed trepidation over the 2007 awards being held in Japan, because Japan was very visual and very media-heavy, two things that Worldcon and science fiction fandom were not. But I didn't hear any horror stories come out of that, so I guess it went okay and it seemed to have little effect on the Hugo nominations as well (Hugo nominations are voted on by the membership of last year's and the current year's Worldcon, so the nominations often reflect the demographics of the attendees, such as being heavy in US works when the con is held in the US).
They almost had a video game category a few years back, too, but it was canceled due to "lack of interest." Not because they couldn't find works to nominate (video games tend to be very heavy on the speculative fiction front, after all) but because no one cared enough to vote. Or knew enough to vote. So yeah, it's definitely a literary crowd, which gives us plenty of choices in books but leaves speculative fiction in other media horribly underrepresented and unrecognized.
I know there's always the Saturn Awards, which are designed for movies and television to the point where they recognize the directors and actors as well, but 1) they're not considered prestigious 2) because the nominations are often a joke (Clash of the Titans was nominated this year, for the love of God) and 3) they're not even speculative fiction-exclusive (they have a "best action/adventure" category for movies and "best syndicated/cable show" category for television). It's a consolation prize, and really means nothing if you take your speculative fiction seriously. And I'd like to think I do.
For the fans of a genre that's supposed to be about all the things that could be or might be, they sure don't show it sometimes.