science fiction

A small step for Analog. A giant leap for fandom.

Published on August 27, 2019Leave a comment

“John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fucking fascist”. That was the opening sentence of Jeannette Ng’s acceptance speech at the Dublin 2019 Hugo Awards. I was in the audience and the room erupted in applause the moment she said it:

And she is right. Campbell was a fascist, a reactionary, a racist and it’s long overdue that the Campbell Award for Best New Writer is renamed, just like the World Fantasy Award lost its Lovecraft bust a few years back. Back then, it was an uphill struggle to get that far, but fortunately this time things are different:

Named for Campbell, whose writing and role as editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog Science Fiction and Fact) made him hugely influential in laying the groundwork for both the Golden Age of Science Fiction and beyond, the award has over the years recognized such nominees as George R.R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, Carl Sagan, and Lois McMaster Bujold, as well as award winners like Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, and John Scalzi.

However, Campbell’s provocative editorials and opinions on race, slavery, and other matters often reflected positions that went beyond just the mores of his time and are today at odds with modern values, including those held by the award’s many nominees, winners, and supporters.

As we move into Analog’s 90th anniversary year, our goal is to keep the award as vital and distinguished as ever, so after much consideration, we have decided to change the award’s name to The Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

It’s frankly amazing — to coin a phrase — to see the editors of analog, long the most stodgy, rightwing of the traditional science fiction magazines, respond so quickly and so willingly. Personally I expected this to be another shot in the sf kulturwars, just like the removal of Lovecraft from the WFA was back then, but it seems sf’s reactionary forces have lost the fight. Perhaps it’s a sign of how far the field has matured, diversified in the years since we first had to confront our own complicity in the racism, sexism and other bigotry endemic in our societies. In some ways, the Sad Puppies attempt to hijack the Hugos for their reactionary values and the bruised egos of petty little men was the best thing that ever happened to us. It forced us to look more closely at how we acted, which values we celebrated and who we considered part of our worlds.

But…

That it had to take until 2019 for this to happen, that it had to be done –again– by a person of colour using their temporary clout to shame us in doing so, rather than being able to celebrate their own success, that means we’re not there yet. And reading that Analog editorial message, it does still soft pedal Campbell’s true nature. We’re still too hesitant in confronting our true history as a genre and a fandom. It’s still too often the people directly impacted by the racism, sexism and other bigotry consciously or unconsciously present in fandom who have to do the hard work of rooting it out.

This is an important victory, but there’s still work to do.

Not Heinlein, not Asimov, certainly not Vox Day

Published on August 22, 2018Leave a comment

N. K. Jemisin is the first author to win three back to back to back Hugo Awards for best novel:

This is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers — every single mediocre insecure wanna-be who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honor, and that when they win it’s meritocracy but when we win it’s identity politics. I get to smile at those people and lift a massive shining rocket-shaped finger in their direction.

Harlan Ellison

Published on June 29, 2018Leave a comment

Really, all you need to know about Harlan Ellison’s legacy is that he trademarked his own name and he’s the guy who did this to Connie Willis:

Harlan Ellison was that guy who used to be an important writer and editor but now was just some old guy with anger management issues (and grabby hands as it turned out) for as long as I’ve been reading science fiction. And I’ve been reading science fiction since at least 1982. As a kid devouring anything about science fiction I could get my hands on back then, mostly from the somewhat out of date local library’s collection, he was omnipresent in books about esseff, not so much as a writer in his own right. A few stories scattered here and there among anthologies, but I’ve never read all that much about him. And what I read of his I sometimes ended up hating.

Ellison’s importance to me, as he seemed to be presented in fanzines and sf history books and such, was as a model for how to be a certain type of fan turned writer, a template for whole generations of baby boom/gen X fans. Well but narrowly read in science fiction and adjacent genres, argumentive, elistis, bit of an asshole and proud of it. Ellison campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, but as it turned out, had a bit of a history with harassing women that didn’t make it into the sf history books or fanzines.

With the news of his death came of course the eulogies, which touched off something that I think Jasmine Gower put it best:

As someone who was only 16 when Harlan Ellison sexually assaulted a colleague on stage at WorldCon, I have only ever known him by that reputation.

It’s very concerning to see my community today celebrating this sexual predator as someone who made our field stronger.

If you’re the same age as me or younger, Ellison always was somebody who had been cutting edge and radical once but now was a sour old coot; even ignorant of his sexual assaults, he came across as an asshole and celebrated for it. But there also a great many fans and writers to whom Ellison was and is still important because they were there when he was in the vanguard of the American New Wave, freeing sf from its self imposed shackles. Then there are people like Tananarive Due, who remembered Ellison for supporting both Octavio Butler and herself. And, as mentioned above, Ellison championed the ERA. In other words, the not at all rare example of a progressive man being awful in private. It’s a mixed legacy indeed, you can’t deny his good parts, but as I said eight years ago already, who would want to be Harlan Ellison now?

“Oh!” said his wife. “It’s like the War”

Published on February 21, 2018Leave a comment

Owen Stephens recalls how in 2000/01 he ran a roleplaying session for Wizard of the Coast’s then new Star Wars D20 game when an elderly gentleman with actual commando experience showed up at his table. (Via).

Also a nice example of how backwards most of the warfare in the Star Wars universe is, that WWII commando tactics can completely rip apart the opposition…

Why Peter Parker is the better nerd

Published on January 5, 2018Leave a comment

I. Coleman has a point, comparing the hero of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One with Peter Parker:

If you want a geek hero, look at Peter Parker. He likes Star Wars and obsesses over superheroes. He’s a nerd. He gets bullied for being a nerd. But his fondness for LEGOs isn’t what makes him a hero – that would be his heroism. His goodness. The fact that he’ll go out of his way to help an old lady cross the street. He knows what it’s like to get picked on, and instead of picking on others in turn, he chooses to stand up for the little guy no matter how hard it is. Peter Parker is what geek culture needs to strive to be every day. When we write an article or a videogame or a book, we should think “Would Peter Parker write this? Would he agree with what we’re saying?”

And conversely, I propose we should also ask “would Wade Watts like this?” And if the answer is yes, you should delete your draft, burn your script, drown the thing in white-out and start over. And it’s this test, more than anything else, that Ready Player One so catastrophically fails. Yes, it’s boring, poorly-written, and literally contains a ten-page list of titles of things the author likes. But it also fails the basic test of humanity, creating a character and a world so repugnant that I feel more than justified in saying it represents the absolute worst of nerd culture.

Peter Parker: science nerd

But there’s another way in which Peter Parker and Wade Watts differ, one that’s just as important as the one Coleman points out: what kind of nerd they are. It’s this difference that at least partially explains their moral differences as well. As we all know, Peter Parker got bitten by a radioactive spider that turned him into Spider-Man, but the reason he was bitten by that spider was because he went to a scientific exhibition, because Peter Parker was the kind of nerd who was really into science, who was studying to become a scientist. That’s why he was bullied, at a time when being a brainiac was not a good thing. There’s more than a hint of classism in the bullying, what with his principal tormentor being the popular, rich jock who could afford to tool around in a sports car, while Parker wore handme down clothes and thick nerd glasses. And that’s why he was bullied: he looked poor, he was a brainiac, he didn’t share the interests of the cool people nor felt the need to imitate them.

Wade Watts on the other hand is the worst possible sort of nerd, the one that thinks his (excessive) love of Star Wars and knowledge of eighties nerd trivia makes him special, gets him persecuted. He doesn’t create, he just consumes, never does anything original. He has a persecution complex but nobody’s persecuting him. His type is widespread among fandom, usually white men who’ve never had much hardship in their lives, but who’ve convinced themselves that a light spot of bullying during high school means the entire world is against them because of their brilliance. These are usually the same people who want to exclude anybody not like them — LGBT, women, PoC — from fandom, that only they are true fans though they never contribute anything. That’s the kind of fan who eat up flattering trash like Ready Player One.