I have a whole lot of posts to make following on from the last three days on the road, but given that I have just put the Nebula Awards results up on the SF Awards Watch website, here are a few thoughts.
As Kevin and I explained on our podcast last week, the Campbell is “not a Hugo” because it doesn’t belong to WSFS. The award is owned and presented by Dell Magazines, and it would be quite wrong for WSFS to try to lay claim to it by calling it a Hugo. Nevertheless, every year outraged fans complain about how awful it is that WSFS insults young writers by not recognizing the Campbell as a Hugo.
The Nebulas, in contrast, have only four categories: novel and the three short fiction lengths. Two additional awards are presented with the Nebulas: one for movies and one for YA novels. They are both owned and presented by SFWA, but they are not Nebulas. I hardly ever hear anyone complain about the Bradbury or Norton being “Not a Nebula”. Which I think shows that all of the complaints about the Campbell have far more to do with fannish spitefulness than any real concern about the awards.
Having said that, I think the short list for the Norton this year was spectacular. Shipbreaker, White Cat and Mockingjay are all wonderful novels, and none of them won because they were up against Sir Terry Pratchett. Discworld novels are not really my cup of tea, but I knowledge the popularity and critical acclaim that they have garnered. The other three novels would all be ahead of several of the Novel finalists, including the winner, on my ballot, if I had one.
I’m always pleased to see Kij Johnson win awards, even if she does so with stories that were not published in Clarkesworld. I am a bit disturbed, however, about what I heard about the award ceremony. If you have a tie for an award you announce it as a tie, you don’t announce a winner, let her make an acceptance speech, and then announce that the result was a tie.
I haven’t read the winning novelette, though I will do soon as it is in the Hugo Voter Packet. I will note, however, that it is good to see Analog getting stories on award ballots again. Well done, Stan.
The novella winner is no surprise. Rachel Swirsky’s story has been getting award nods all over the place.
As for the novel, as I said on the podcast, Connie Willis is popular. The Nebula win, however, shows that she is popular with her fellow authors as well as with fandom. That’s something that people often forget when discussing the Hugos. A lot of writers attend Worldcon, and many of them vote. So if you don’t like the results of the Hugos, you can just dismiss that as the result of fannish stupidity.
I’m not particularly interested in the political campaign that has been waged against Willis’s book. This isn’t the first time that a novel has been split in two for publication, and it won’t be the last. This suggests, once again, that there is rather more going on that the stated reason for the complaint. But what of Blackout/All Clear as a novel?
Well, I haven’t read it yet. I have read several of Connie’s other books, and a new one is not high on my “to read” list. But I have had reason to complain before about her slapdash approach to story backgrounds. I was willing to give her a pass over the idea of extending the London Underground to Oxford. Not everyone is interested in railways, although if you live in the UK it is pretty obvious what a daft idea it is. The issues being reported with the new novel, however, appear much more serious. The Jubilee Line being open during WWII? Three hours to walk from Euston to Oxford Street? These are errors that any simple fact check ought to have turned up.
I suppose it is possible that Willis is trying to signal that these stories do not take place in our world. A more likely explanation, however, is that she and her publishers don’t care. That in turn, I suspect, is because the books are not set in the UK, but in a Disney theme park version of the UK. Which is why American readers love them, and British readers hate them.
Of course this too is nothing new. Hollywood does it all the time. Mary Poppins was hugely popular in the UK, despite Dick Van Dyke’s portrayal of a Londoner. But I like to think that in books we can, and should, do better. Also, giving a high profile award to a book that is so sloppy is a slap in the face to writers who do try to get their history right.
