hugo awards, then and now

[corplinx]

check out the hugo nominees for this years best novel versus those from the retro section

Best Novel (462 ballots)
Paladin of Souls — Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos)
Humans — Robert J. Sawyer (Tor Books)
Ilium — Dan Simmons (Eos)
Singularity Sky — Charles Stross (Ace Books)
Blind Lake — Robert Charles Wilson (Tor Books)

Now the only book in that list I have even heard of or read is Ilium. Ilium is a fantastic novel. However, its suffers from "milked epic" disease. Its the first of a two volume set and the author is writing the followup to the inspired first work on a deadline.

Don't get me wrong, Ilium is not only a great novel but I also think it has good literary value.

But checkout the nominees in the retro section:

Best Novel of 1953 (113 ballots)
The Caves of Steel — Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, Oct.–Dec. 1953)
Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury (Ballantine)
Childhood's End — Arthur C. Clarke (Ballantine)
Mission of Gravity — Hal Clement (Astounding, April–July 1953)
More than Human — Theodore Sturgeon (Ballantine)

Wow.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm surprised George RR Martin didn't get nominated. Yeah, he's working on an epic that makes Tolkien's LOTR look like a novella, but still....Even though the Hugos are supposed to include fantasy, I think they're heavily biased toward the rockets-n-robots side of things.

 

[Floyt]

Well, there seemed to be a heavy smattering of Connie Willis around in several of the last couple Hugos, her stuff is not exactly hard SF. J.K. Rowling has been there. Dragonriders-of-Pern stuff. Oh, and "A Storm of Swords" was up in 2001 (I could swear "A Game of Thrones" also made it, but that doesn't seem to be the case).

As for the quality of the retro stuff, that's something of an unfair comparison IMHO - nominating the favourites of 50 years' fandom in retrospect, it's like carbonizing fish in a barrel

Is Ilium still another Hyperion follow-up? Or is Simmons just into Greek-sounding titles?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Is Ilium still another Hyperion follow-up? Or is Simmons just into Greek-sounding titles?

No relation to Hyperion. It's Greek-myth-meets-space-robots. Pretty good, if you don't mind too much Deep Significance And Meaning that Simmons tends to drag in. (I still bear a grudge against him because of "Carrion Comfort", which I thought was awful. Much like "Atlas Shrugged", I regret reading it and yearn for the day when my brain no longer remembers any of it.)

 

[zakur]

Bookslut has a few things to say about recent Hugo nominees here.

Personally, my respect for the Hugos went way down after "Harry Potter and the [Whatever]" won. Don't get me wrong, I've read all the HP novels and I think they're good, fun reading. But no way are any of them worthy of the Best Novel Hugo. Let us not forget that Hugo is the nickname for the Science Fiction Achievement Award.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

check out the hugo nominees for this years best novel versus those from the retro section[/URL]
Wow.

Out of those listed in the retro section, I've only heard of one.

 

[Floyt]

Bookslut has a few things to say about recent Hugo nominees here.

Awright!

While it is unkind to characterize the entire body as a pack of geek fanboys (whom I love but don’t share a library with), there are still enough of them to drown out those who want a little Rucker or a lot of Banks or a bunch of Carroll.

The woman has a point
Serves her right, on the other hand, to stick to the Hugo reading list over the Nebula because it's more "democratic". In my experience, past a certain level of understanding of the mechanisms of writing, you will derive a lot more deep satisfaction from works nominated by the "peers", i.e. the authors themselves.
E.g., they say (meaning, I can't remember who did ) that Gene Wolfe is a Writer's Writer. That single novella, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", has certainly left me with more memorable images and concepts than all the thousands of pages of Harry Potter to date.

BTW, those of you in the USA - is the new Banks already available over there? Cause it definitely ain't in Germany. *suffersuffer*

 

[Skeptic]

A certain science fiction writer, a few years back, delivered the following "acceptance speech": "Oh, f--k! I've won a Hugo award!".

Good thing he didn't win a Philip K. Dick memorial award.

 

[Aerich]

Personally, my respect for the Hugos went way down after "Harry Potter and the [Whatever]" won. Don't get me wrong, I've read all the HP novels and I think they're good, fun reading. But no way are any of them worthy of the Best Novel Hugo. Let us not forget that Hugo is the nickname for the Science Fiction Achievement Award.

Please see:

http://worldcon.org/bm/const-2002.html#hugo

If you look through the history of the award, it's been given to fantasy as well as science fiction for decades.

(BTW, I primarily read science fiction, not fantasy, and would generally like to see science fiction win too. But I don't think it's too useful to be hardline about it, especially since there's a lot of good stuff which blurs the lines. For example, my username is a character in Steven Brust's Dragaera series, which started out more or less as fantasy -- but he's dropping major hints, especially in recent books, that it's not. In other words, he's in the process of pulling a McCaffrey on his world. Which lets me mention that McCaffrey won a Hugo in 1968 for Weyr Search, which was clearly a work of fantasy at that time -- the SF retcons were years (decades?) down the road back then. So awarding the Hugo to fantasy is nothing new.)

As for whether Harry Potter was worthy of the award, the Hugo is -- and always has been -- a popularity contest, because it is awarded by vote of an organization whose membership is quite easy to obtain. There have been far worse travesties in the history of the award. For example, I understand that one of the early winners of the novel length award ("They'd Rather Be Right") is both putrid and widely thought to have won due solely to underhanded campaigning tactics (buying the vote, more or less). The Elronners have tried to buy the award too, with less success. At least the HP seems to have won due to genuine popularity, and in any case I'm not sure any of the other nominees from that year deserved it more, so... (shrug)

 

[zakur]

Which lets me mention that McCaffrey won a Hugo in 1968 for Weyr Search, which was clearly a work of fantasy at that time

Gotta disagree with you on this one. "Weyr Search" was originally published in Analog, which at the time was home of only the hardest of "hard" SF. Campbell would have never published it if it were fantasy. McCaffrey's Pern was always envisioned as a science fiction world, not a fantasy one.

I don't dispute that other fantasy works have won the Hugo. My point was only that the Harry Potter win was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Not just that it was a fantasy, but that it was merely a passably-written children's fantasy.

 

[epepke]

I don't dispute that other fantasy works have won the Hugo. My point was only that the Harry Potter win was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Not just that it was a fantasy, but that it was merely a passably-written children's fantasy.

The straw that broke my back was when Back to the Future beat Brazil as best dramatic presentation. Pheeuw!

 

[epepke]

For everyone who is talking about the good ole days, please notice that the retro section is not Hugo awards that were given back then but Hugo awards that are being given now for years in which Hugo awards were not given.

Clearly, people now are going to pick works that have stood the test of time. But for all we know, had the Hugos been awarded then, the Best Novel might have gone to Super Bitchen Space Opera by Joe Blow.

Same thing happens with the Oscars. Look at the Best Picture winners from the 1950s (with both endpoints included):

1950: All About Eve
1951: An American in Paris
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth
1953: From Here to Eternity
1954: On the Waterfront
1955: Marty
1956: Around the World in 80 Days
1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958: Gigi
1959: Ben Hur
1960: The Apartment

A couple, three great films, some OK ones, and a few that nobody cares about any more. I'm sure that anybody can now come up with a dozen or more films from the 1950s that are more highly regarded today than the ones here.