sf/f/h awards

So nhw, in a labor of insanity love, has number-crunched the results of everybody who chose to propagate this meme.

As a writer/reader/ardent fan of science fiction and fantasy, I find the results interesting and thought-provoking, and although I am by no means hinting either (a.) that anyone else should inflict this meme upon themselves or (b.) that nhw should then be obliged to crunch more numbers, I do think that a larger statistical sample would be cool. Because the question about any award is: who is it important to? It's important to the people who win, if only for the sake of their egos, and it's important to the people who confer it, ditto ... but who else? I know, for example, that if a book wins the Tiptree, I will be rewarded immesurably for the effort of reading it, so that particular award has value to me as a reader. And nhw's results suggest that the Hugo and the Nebula are fairly accurate reflections of what people are reading. And I think those kinds of things are worth knowing.

Where's the ambiguity? Over there, in a box. The beast is molting and fluff gets up your nose.

Also, in my own act of insanity, I have recompiled the list of award-winners, this time in alphabetical order by author. Which makes it much more possible to use as a checklist when inspecting either one's own bookshelves or the myriad shy treasures of a bookstore.
( list )

the sociology of squirrels: reading science fiction

What I was trying to talk about in the preceding post (and failing pretty miserably) was the sociology of science fiction reading. What do we read, why do we read it, and what does it have to do with what the genre proclaims is being read? How do critical acclaim and popularity really match up?

This is, of course, a bit of a minefield of a question, since we're all Pavlovianly conditioned to reject "popular" literature as being unimportant. This is not a new problem--sixteenth and seventeenth century English writers get very snotty about plays for exactly the same reasons that academics today get snotty about science fiction. It's the obverse face of the Lowest Common Denominator; we assume that quality and popularity must somehow be inversely proportional, when in fact we need to remember Sturgeon's Law, chant it to ourselves, tape it up on our monitors, or, hell, have it tattooed on our foreheads.

90% of everything is crap.

So, sure, there are lots of plays that were very popular in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I & VI that are total crap, just as there are bucketloads of Victorian novels that were very popular that are total crap, just as, you know, 90% of what's getting published in science fiction today is total crap, wildly popular or otherwise. But, please remember, Sturgeon's Law applies across the board. 90% of the soi-disant "literary" fiction being published today is also crap. The problem is that, somehow, a neat double standard has been enacted, so that literary fiction gets judged by the 10%, while popular fiction gets judged by the 90%. And to talk about the 10% in any popular genre with anyone not already a fan of the genre (as in, The Mainstream), you'd better go in prepared to expend a lot of energy in convincing them to let go of that 90%.

Oof. I sound bitter, and I don't mean to. But I'm as susceptible as anyone else to the urge to shout, But look! Look at what we're doing! Look at how thoughtful and provocative and literary it all is! Because I love my genre, and I don't like people talking trash about it. Sure, I admit, 90% of it is crap, but that's because Sturgeon's Law applies.

A genre of writing gets bonus points with critics and academics for not being popular. Because (I hypothesize wildly) it seems to be endangered. You don't go around clubbing baby harp seals and scaring the pandas out of the mood, and you don't attack the genre of modern poetry. But science fiction is like squirrels. They're all over the place, and they're kind of cute, but they're just rodents, and after all, you know no matter what you do, you will never be able to bring the squirrels down. You don't need to be considerate because they've got numbers on their side. Also, the chewing and the ingenuity and the brass-balled effrontery. The squirrels, you feel, don't need champions.

And people speaking up for squirrels are going to get the same kind of funny looks people get when they speak up for science fiction--outside of the squirrel science fiction-loving community.

Um. I've digressed pretty thoroughly from whatever it is I thought my point was. Something about whether the various awards are or are not accurate barometers for what's going on in the genre. And, of course, "the genre" has become sprawling and byzantine enough that of course the answer is: Maybe. As a first approximation.

I do wonder what the literary historians of two hundred years from now will be reading. And will those books be the same books that we are now, by giving them awards, trying to flag for posterity's attention?

There. Maybe that was what I meant.