Observations on the 2022 Hugo nominations

The 2022 Hugo Award nominations have been announced, and as long as I am doing Sunday posts analyzing science fiction, I may as well comment on these, for all anyone cares, which is "not at all," as nobody reads this pretentious, little blog anyway.  Moving right along.  I only really "care" about the best-novel category, with sarcasm-quotes around the word, "care," because I have nothing at stake.  Except that that's only kind of true, and I'll get to that.  The nominations for best novel are:

• A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers
• Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki
• A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark
• Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
• She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

If we're doing the Sesame Street game, "One of these books is not like the others," or even more clearly, one of these authors is not like the others, that's Andy Weir, and Project Hail Mary.  Awesome book, by the way.  I wrote a post about it (link here).  I also wrote a post about A Desolation Called Peace, (link here) which I thought was a somewhat disappointing follow-up to the very impressive A Memory Called Empire.  I have not read the others.  A Master of Djinn is vaguely on my list, since I was duly impressed with what I read by Clark (the novella, Ring Shout, about which I posted, link here).  I am not a fan of Chambers, although that puts me in the minority in SF-fandom.  I'll get to why.  I had never heard of Aoki, nor Parker-Chan, but I was able to predict certain key elements to their books based on my knowledge of how the Hugos now work.

What is the purpose of science fiction/fantasy?  To those who do not read, do not understand, and wish to deride without bothering to study the genre, its purpose is childish escapism, wish fulfillment, or something of the sort, and to be sure, one can find examples within the genre.  Yet I urge you to read Mary Shelley's explanation for the fantastical within Frankenstein in the Preface.  "The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres and enchantment.  It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield."

The purpose of the fantastical is to explore ideas that cannot be explored otherwise, yet touch on what is real.  As I explain to my students when I assign science fiction, a science fiction world is a counterfactual, no different from the "state of nature" in the manner of its construction, and as potentially useful to understanding causation as any other counterfactual, depending on the method of application.

Also, spaceships and laser beams are cool.

My point is that science fiction, like any form of literature, can be a tool to examine society.  I do it damn-near every Sunday.  From Frankenstein to Foundation to the shit about which I post most Sunday mornings, it is a lens, a mirror, or some other glassy stuff.

To what do we apply it?

Potentially, anything.  Frankenstein is not about grave-digging, thunderstorms and angry villagers.  It's about... tap-dancing.

Or rather, the book is about parenthood, responsibility, and all sorts of other shit.  Asimov wrote Foundation inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire, the transition of Europe out of "the dark ages," the roles of war, religion and trade in society, the movement of history, and other high-minded themes.  Big stuff.  Science fiction can address anything.

But you remember Tropic Thunder?  Ben Stiller plays an action star who once tried to go serious, and he did what so many other actors did to win an academy award.  But, he went too far with the role, leading to the lecture from Robert Downy Jr.  "Never go full retard."

What gets you a Hugo, or at least, what's the price of admission for consideration?  You cannot write about the fall of the Roman Empire, nor any other big theme.  Your theme must be categorized as "social justice."

Some of the best books in the history of the genre of fit this description.  N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, foremost among them, along with many of the works of writers like Octavia Butler.  When Jemisin won three years in a row, deservedly so, for that trilogy, backlash ensued by some annoying people dubbed the "sad puppies," who basically wanted nothing but rocket ships and laser beams and avoidance of "social justice" issues within science fiction.

But... what if I just want to be able to read good books about anything?  Some social justice themes, but not exclusively?

Term:  "clapter."  It comes from comedy, combining "clap" and "laughter," referencing the phenomenon wherein a comic says something intended to invite applause for the sake of political agreement rather than laughter, along with a light smattering of chuckles and guffaws.

The major sci-fi/fantasy awards all but demand that the themes be "social justice."  Of the six novels nominated for a Hugo this year, two are transgender-themed.  Becky Chambers drove me away with the first book in the series because there wasn't enough meat on the bones to justify the constant preachiness.  Clark?  Yes, I'll probably read that one, even though with Ring Shout, did he really have to pretend that the African-American community in the deep South in the 1920s was actually just totally cool with the LGBTQ community just for the sake of writing an out-LGBTQ character that doesn't make sense for the context?  When you make the villains demonic klansmen, haven't you already hit your social justice quota?  Guess not.

Martine really just didn't think through the implications of how she went about socially constructing gender.  That's a big batch of social justice, though.

Anyway, one of these books is not like the others!

Project Hail Mary has essentially no social justice component.  There is a badass woman in it, a bit of dithering over pronouns when our hero first encounters an alien, but... it basically just doesn't touch social justice.  That's not what Andy Weir does.  "Hard science fiction," with witty banter.  That's his bread and butter.  He didn't even bother changing the POV character from "white male," although he did for Artemis.  Otherwise, he'd be in trouble now.

And because he's Andy Fucking Weir, it is very hard to shunt him off to the side.

A while back, I wrote a long series called Virtue and virtue-signaling in science fiction & fantasy.  In the first post in the series, describing the emergence of the "sad puppies," and the J.K Rowling affair, I posed the following query.  Could a right-wing author, like Orson Scott Card, get an award for a great book today?  Ender's Game is an indisputable classic, but Card is rather known for not liking gay people.  So, I posed the hypothetical case of a new author emerging:  Rowlcardstatering.  Get it?  Suppose our new author, Rowlcardstatering, writes a book as great as Ender's Game.  What happens?

The hypothetical was motivated by the problem that the sad puppies never had an answer to the Broken Earth trilogy.  The Broken Earth trilogy was mind-blowing, and the sad puppies had nothing.  Card hasn't done shit in years.  The last good thing he did was Ender's Shadow, which re-wrote Ender's Game from the perspective of Bean, and actually... it was fucking cool!  But then, he kept going, and Shadow of the Hegemon sucked, and... dude.  Anyway, if the sad puppies were going to whine like sad puppies about N.K. Jemisin, they needed an answer about who should have been winning the awards instead.  Hence, my "Rowlcardstatering" question.

When I wrote the Virtue and virtue-signaling series, my inference was that Rowlcardstatering would find little success, because of his personal politics.

It is more nuanced!

Rowlcardstatering would write a book that does not address "social justice" in any way.  Consequence?  Two things.  It doesn't get "buzz," and it doesn't get award nominations.  Andy Weir is already a star.  The Martian came out in 2011, and then was republished in 2014.  This was before the full rise of the social justice warrior thing.  What were the nominees in 2014?  Ann Leckie won for Ancillary Justice.  Way back when, I did a bunch of posts on science fiction and gender, and I wrote that Leckie did a lousy job on gender here, in an otherwise awesome book (I recommended Jacqueline Carey's Starless instead).  This is called "nerd heresy," but yes, there was a "social justice" component to the novel.  Other nominees that year?  Charles Stross before going full-woke with Neptune's Brood (awesome book), Mira Grant's Parasite (haven't read it, but she's generally fun), some Wheel of Time thing (no comment), and Larry Correia (no opinion).  Point being, this was before the full awakening of the Hugos.  Andy Weir just managed to become a best-seller and impossible to ignore.

This happens sometimes.  Glitches.  Consider music.  For my generation of weirdos, we had Jane's Addiction.  Somehow, despite being really weird, they got popular.  We... didn't understand, and in some sense, we were displeased.  How dare they listen to our band?!  Andy Weir is that in reverse.  He's popular, and good, so he forced his way into the weirdo world of the Hugos.

Right now, to get your foot in the door either for buzz or awards, it is much harder without the social justice component.

Now, why does this matter, to the degree that it matters?

There are two consequences.  First, the need for buzz or the quest for an award (see Tropic Thunder) can change how authors write.  As my recent comments on Charles Stross and the change in direction for The Laundry Files would suggest, this isn't always for the literary good.  Sometimes, the literary choices made in the quest for buzz or an award are the literary choice analogs of Simple Jack, and perhaps Robert Downy Jr. can provide some acting tips.

The second is that the tenor determines how easy or difficult it is to find the novels you want to find.  An award, or even a nomination is publicity.  This is a decision to raise up voices, and so forth.

OK.  Sure.

But what if they aren't the best books?

Consider a book from 2020 that I praised so effusively that I tried to shove the book into your face, physically, through the inter-tubes.  Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel.  One could make the case that it did not count as sci-fi-proper since the alternate universe thing was all done through metaphor rather than people actually stepping through doorways, but I'm calling bullshit on that.  China Mieville's The City & The City won sci-fi awards.  Why didn't Mandel get nominated?  No social justice.  No race or gender.  However, holy shit was this book great.

Want another one?  Ben Winters, Golden State (2019).  This one was even more egregious.  Beyond genius, and better than anything nominated by far.  Yet, it had no social justice component, and it was written by a white male, with a white male protagonist.  Kiss of death, for the Hugos.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Rowlcardstatering.  He isn't even a right-winger.  He just doesn't have Andy Weir's name.

This year, though, they couldn't ignore Andy Weir, because he's Andy Weir, and he's not just a great writer, he's too famous.

So I ask again, what is the purpose of science fiction and fantasy?  What is the set of issues that the novels should address?  If your answer is "race, gender, then we're done," then the Hugos and the other major awards are doing their job.

Foundation

Dune (the 836th movie adaptation of which got a Hugo nomination)

Ender's Game

Snowcrash

Hyperion

Slaughterhouse Five

Frankenstein

I could go on for a long time, listing important classics with vital social commentary, and very little about "social justice."  We still have a lot of challenges in the world.  Climate change (the new Neal Stephenson is on my stack), war, democratic backsliding, information and truth, disease...  The world is complex, and science fiction is perhaps uniquely suited to providing insight, yet to demand that the genre address only race/gender is to make the same fundamental error that the sad puppies made.  To foreclose any discussion of race/gender is to rule out important discussion, and important books, so the sad puppies were wrong, and the Hugo methodology is similarly wrong now for all but ruling out everything else now.  As recently as 2015, The Three-Body Problem won, and while I have written all I need to write about the shittiness of the third novel in that series, the first novel was bloody genius, and it could not win today.  It isn't about social justice, so it would not be eligible under the current informal rules.

We need The Broken Earth trilogy.  We need the Lilith's Brood trilogy.  I loved Jacqueline Carey's Starless, and many other explorations of race and gender in science fiction/fantasy.  But if that is all that is permitted, then what is excluded?  The genre should expand the potential range of ideas we explore, not limit them.  To do otherwise is to make the same mistake as the sad puppies.

The Hugos have become the inverted sad puppies, and that's not much better.

Is Project Hail Mary a great book?  I had fun reading it.  I recommend it.  Is it as great as The Glass Hotel?  Golden State?  No.  Andy Weir's specialty is a combination of witty banter and nerdy fun, but deep insight?  Not quite.  I will continue to read everything he writes, but it is time for science fiction and fantasy to remember that race and gender are among the issues to be explored rather than the only issues to be explored, with special dispensations granted to best-selling authors who broke into the club.

What's gonna win?  Don't know, don't care.

Happy Family, "Doggy-Human Contest."  The studio version is on Minimal Gods, but here's a live version.