Why The Hugo Awards Are Always A Mess
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- Hey, all! I'm so excited to be back. I've really been missing you all. Honestly, it's also been nerve-wracking. The thought of making a video after all this time was really intimidating, so I decided to just pull the trigger and stop making perfect the enemy of done. Hope all is well where you are!
Some interesting content on the Hugos
General WorldCon Overview on the awards: www.thehugoawar...
Jo Walton's book: / an-informal-history-of...
Vox Article on Sad Puppies: www.vox.com/20...
Wiki entry on RaceFail: geekfeminism.w...
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You made so many good points in this and there's not a lot to add really. Considering how we're in the Internet age you'd think each con would put together notes on how each aspect of their con went so everytime they can build on the past and, you know, not made the big glaring mistakes so often.
Hey so obviously this isn't a new vid, but after seeing a lot of the other comments I just thought I'd say thanks for it, I appreciated that it was both informative and even-handed
C'mon, the Hugos are a pure identity award at this point. If you're not a neo liberal woman you have virtually no chance of even being nominated. That's just a fact. There has been ONE male author nominated for best novel in the last three years. One man vs eighteen women over that span. The "community" is a monolith, they've got it on lockdown.
Something that I found surprising when I got more involved in the bookish community is that it would not be that hard to vote on the Hugos other than spending money. Which is better than how I thought it happened, especially when compared to other award spaces like The Golden Globes. But I do think the financial barrier bothers me. I am someone who reads a lot but primarily thru the library cause I am a grad student in an expensive city so spending money to vote in award is a luxury I don’t want to spend. And I am pretty privileged so it makes me think about other people like my Black step dad who grew up poor but has read more SFF than anyone I know but for most of his life could not even think of spending money to vote in something like this. Is there a mechanism for people to vote who don’t have the financial means? Cause I will say I know very little about all of this so maybe my concern has already been handled.
Yeah. This is a huge thing! Financial access to memberships is a very real barrier, and many people don't have $50 to drop on the membership. There are some fan led initiatives to pay for memberships, but they're pretty limited. I'm going to try to look up a bit more on financial support, but my understanding is that there aren't good "scholarship" or "grant" programs.
@@StoriesfromtheShelf I figured, and I think that adds to the discussion you were having about the community cause now we have excluded a very large portion of people who have valid sff opinions but can’t afford to have their thoughts recognized. And I would suspect this would affect the diversity of the people able to vote. Not just on racial lines but also social experience which I think is an important part of the conversation. Especially when lots of scifi books tackle social inequality.
@@LiteratureScienceAlliance The thing to note about the Hugos is that they are, and always have been since their inception in 1953, an award given out at Worldcon voted on by Worldcon members. And so it’s not as if the award was set up to be a thing you had to pay to participate in. It’s more like, you become a Worldcon member, and participating in the Hugos is a perk of that membership. I know that probably sounds like a hairsplitting distinction without a difference, but I just mean to point out that I don’t think the motive ever was to ensure that certain voices could not be heard, and so on, even if that is a consequence of how it all works.
The science fiction field does have at least one prominent award that is wide open to free public participation, and those are the Locus Awards. Epic fantasy used to have the Gemmell Awards, but they shut those down for whatever reason. It would be nice if there were more “scholarship“ style grants to allow people who can’t afford supporting Worldcon memberships to get them. I’m not sure but I think people could buy their memberships in installments this year?
So you're saying that goals, identity and structural issues form a sort of Triple Constraint, where all the parts of the triangle are relative to each other and affect each other? (Sorry, I've been having to deal with project management assignments lately, so this stuff is fresh in my mind. xD )
Pretty much!
I haven't really been following the Hugos that closely but last year's New Zealand shit show really intrigued me so this video was very informative. (m)
The format of having a different ConCom each year is a rough one. Without the ability to have some institutional knowledge and systems in place, starting from practically scratch each year is bound to lead to problems. And the identity & goals questions are good ones for the community to be discussing. Congrats on your pregnancy, btw!
The only thing the Hugos are concerned with are how fat, female, and non-white a nominee is. Any comic book fan can look at the 'Graphic Story' nominees and see what a joke these awards are. Theyre concerned with WHO the authors are, not how GOOD the stories are.
Thanks for this video. Super interesting and clarifying. I’m curious where these sci-fi community conversations are happening?
I am very confident in Soren's ability to make rational decisions!
I think what we're seeing is at its root the usual generational conflict in artistic tastes, but today, it's exacerbated by the increased attention to representation resulting from formerly-shut doors opening to a new and more diverse array of writers. It's not a problem unique to SFF and the Hugos. The movie industry is perennially reminded of the embarrassing fact their entrenched white male power structures have allowed only one woman to win the Best Director Oscar in more than 90 years. Aging power structures resent their growing irrelevance and are disinclined to share, let alone relinquish their power without a fight.
Oh, yeah. I agree that there's a huge issue with intergenerational conflict, particularly as the community becomes more diverse. It's one of the brighter moments in the last few years -- seeing recognition for more women, LGBTQ and POC creators. I'm hoping that trend keeps up.
that was nice,
I didn't know you were going to have a kid! You're gonna be an awesome mom.
Thank you!
Bad argument to make it all about nostalgia vs new revolutionary work. This is an award which focuses on gender and sex rather than content. Anyone who wants to argue that Joe Abercrombie is a nostalgia writer in fantasy is just making up what the conflict is all about; he is a white cis-man and therefor he is excluded from the nice little family of oppression. It is all about identity and it got absolutely nothing to do with originality or anything like that. Have fun in your made up little book circle, no one cares anymore about that silly racist award show.
Thanks for the run down.
I have wanted to go to the CON for a long time and was thinking of going this summer as it would have been convenient. Then they changed it to Dec.
As for the HUGO - I have had a long interest in the winning novel and have read all but a couple. But I have found my interest waning lately. I have the feeing quality has dropped lately but looking at the list really there only a few I feel are sub-par which you can say about any time period. So my waning interest is not due to the books. I am only watching from afar and only get a small sense of the politics.
The list has been released since your video. The 3 I have read were good but not HUGO good. I have high hopes for one that I have not read. We will see.
10:00 there is no conflict in "the community".
You are either a perfect product of the Neoliberal Global Empire, and therefore in lock step with the community or you are not IN the community. Seriously people like myself can't make an honest post on r/books without getting banned, much less participate in deciding who gets a Hugo.
Frankly your willingness to extend a message of inclusivity to people who 'enjoy a book because it reminds them of Heinlein which reminds them of when they were 12' (did you realize as you spoke how this was condescending or no? Didn't seem like it, it's ok tho) makes me think you might also be on the outside looking in and just haven't realized it yet.
@tartersauce101, I certainly didn't mean to be condescending. I was trying to be a bit flip about both "sides" of the issue, realizing that people come to SFF from all different perspectives and reasons. I can see how it came off that way, and I apologize.
I'm sorry you feel so limited in expressing your opinion on books and the forums where you can do that. I know that many people express that feeling. You're certainly always welcome here. My only rule is that people are respectful of others and I apply that universally.