The Hugo awards (and the Nebula awards) have become highly political. Works seems to be chosen more for their political viewpoints than for the quality of their writing. The article is a perfect example: The story "Rabbit Test" (according to the author's website) is all about "the past, present, and future of abortion rights in America".
Abortion rights are important, but that's not what the awards should be about. If I want to read a political screed, there are plenty of other sources. The Hugos should be about cracking good SciFi/Fantasy stories.
It used to be that I would run out and buy anything that came up as a finalist for a Hugo or a Nebula, if I hadn't already read it. Nowadays, I take them more as a list of authors to avoid.
Scifi has always addressed social issues. Like, probably the only sci-fi novel that most people have read is 1984.
I think there _was_ a period, maybe from the 50s to the 90s, where there was some degree of split, with scifi covering social issues (1984, Handmaid's Tale, Children of Men) self-consciously considering itself _not scifi_ (Atwood was particularly emphatic about it), but even then it wasn't a clean split; a lot of Clarke's stuff covered social issues, say.
Followup: And Larry Niven, how could I forget! Albeit most notably over something which turned out not really to be a real-world issue (Niven was absolutely obsessed with the idea that authoritarian states would be incentivised to execute people for the purpose of harvesting their organs; organ transplantation was just beginning to show up when he started writing these.)
What short fiction do you recommend in each of the past several years instead? Also, what do you mean, the awards have gotten political? Rabbit Test is about abortion, but the year before it, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” is a fake literary analysis of a ballad collectively performed in an online sort of format. The year before that, “Open House on Haunted Hill” is literally a story about a house that is sapient and has been empty for a long time and wants to be occupied?? I guess the story before that, “Give The Family My Love” assumes that the world becomes uninhabitable due to anthropogenic climate change— but by that logic any futuristic idea is political?
Comments
The Hugo awards (and the Nebula awards) have become highly political. Works seems to be chosen more for their political viewpoints than for the quality of their writing. The article is a perfect example: The story "Rabbit Test" (according to the author's website) is all about "the past, present, and future of abortion rights in America".
Abortion rights are important, but that's not what the awards should be about. If I want to read a political screed, there are plenty of other sources. The Hugos should be about cracking good SciFi/Fantasy stories.
It used to be that I would run out and buy anything that came up as a finalist for a Hugo or a Nebula, if I hadn't already read it. Nowadays, I take them more as a list of authors to avoid.
Scifi has always addressed social issues. Like, probably the only sci-fi novel that most people have read is 1984.
I think there _was_ a period, maybe from the 50s to the 90s, where there was some degree of split, with scifi covering social issues (1984, Handmaid's Tale, Children of Men) self-consciously considering itself _not scifi_ (Atwood was particularly emphatic about it), but even then it wasn't a clean split; a lot of Clarke's stuff covered social issues, say.
Followup: And Larry Niven, how could I forget! Albeit most notably over something which turned out not really to be a real-world issue (Niven was absolutely obsessed with the idea that authoritarian states would be incentivised to execute people for the purpose of harvesting their organs; organ transplantation was just beginning to show up when he started writing these.)
Also Heinlein, obviously.
What short fiction do you recommend in each of the past several years instead? Also, what do you mean, the awards have gotten political? Rabbit Test is about abortion, but the year before it, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” is a fake literary analysis of a ballad collectively performed in an online sort of format. The year before that, “Open House on Haunted Hill” is literally a story about a house that is sapient and has been empty for a long time and wants to be occupied?? I guess the story before that, “Give The Family My Love” assumes that the world becomes uninhabitable due to anthropogenic climate change— but by that logic any futuristic idea is political?