Comments on: FINALISTS: 2012 Nebula Awards (With Free Fiction Links!)

By: James May

James May — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:09:57 +0000

What does being a white man have to do with anything? You can’t promote the idea that skin and gender convey nothing and take away nothing and then negate that at the same time. It’s an Orwellian argument. A word processor has no idea what color you are or what you are sitting on.

By: James May

James May — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:05:41 +0000

Isn’t the real issue whether one wants Harlequin Romance novels in the Nebulas? Does that put one on the wrong side of history? What about car manuals? They have a lot of tech. This isn’t about diversity and discrimination, it’s about whether one wants the box score of a softball game submitted for nomination. If I don’t like Harlequin Romance novels am I mean? Funny how that stuff is introduced and disavowed at the same time.

By: Paul (@princejvstin)

Paul (@princejvstin) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:16:33 +0000

You misunderstand me.

The fact that we’ve developed as a genre to the point where the field recognizes novels written beyond SF novels written by white men as among the best of the year is a good thing.

There have always been these writers in the field, however few; now they are getting the attention and acclaim they deserve.

If the output of 2012 was published in 1990, the list of Nebula nominees would look very different and it would NOT be a better one.

By: Paul (@princejvstin)

Paul (@princejvstin) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:11:20 +0000

The problem with that idea is when you get books that deliberately blur the non-existent line between SF and fantasy. The World Fantasy Award excludes SF, but I’d like to see what they think of fantasy novels with SF foregrounding, or SF novels that are on fantasy templates. (Jo Anderton comes to mind immediately)

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:02:40 +0000

I think I need to go and track down your books now, thank you for calling people on their nonsense.

By: Elena

Elena — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:04:21 +0000

I’ve read quite a bit of fantasy, as there are usually some, lately most, on the list. But, I prefer science fiction, as in outer space, lots of tech, new worlds with interesting cultures type stories. I myself didn’t see the 6 novels as diverse but political conformism trumping art. There is nothing new or even particularly good about Throne of the Crescent Moon or The Killing Moon. If you’re the type of person who thinks something not even on the level of Flamewinds by Norvell Page from 1938 is a novel by a “writer’s writer, which what I expect a nominee to be, then you’ll love Jemisin and Ahmed.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:53:28 +0000

The sun comes up every day. That is unoriginal too, yet doesn’t affect it’s correctness. A principle is for everyone, like a strike zone in baseball. Change a strike zone according to the skin and gender of who’s batting and pitching, and you’ll have chaos. Even Mr. Spock on a shallow TV show could see through that cultural conceit, which amounts to saying wine is in fact more sophisticated than soda pop, rather than merely having a different chemical make up. Guess people just like the spaceships rather than the lessons preached for 100 years about perception.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:48:14 +0000

Is that why Delany won both the Hugo and Nebula for his short story? And contrary to belief, though they didn’t have the internet, the pages of the Munsey Magazine 100 years ago were full of letters from knowledgeable fans who knew very well what was going on and who was who. It was called fandom, and this very site wouldn’t exist without them. I find that a lot of people love to take down 140, or 200 million, Americans from decades ago, from a moral hill of very great height, though you never met those millions you lump together as endemic women-hating racists. In fact they were much like us.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:40:35 +0000

Clever arguments similar to “privilege,” that seek to detach and attach morality according to ethnicity, were used on black folks and Jews. Of all people, SF readers should know how to avoid that pitfall, since it is our literary legacy that provides us with tools of self-criticism to make simple comparisons through a fog of misperceptions. We can be Orwell’s Children in a good or bad sense.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:35:17 +0000

Such promotions are best left in the realm of fantasy as the KKK’s promotions are of little interest to me in real world terms. In that real world, we have a Bill of Rights, which we should take seriously not because we have to, but because it’s a good idea. Orwell warned of perceptual traps, in fact leaving us a how-to manual on how to avoid them, so SF fans, with a legacy of turning identity on its head, should be the least liable to fall into such traps, not the most.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:28:47 +0000

Thanks for that fantasy short wherein you seize the moral high ground by reading my mind as well as the minds of people long dead. How does it end? Hahahahahah.

By: James May

James May — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:25:35 +0000

If it’s a vote, it’s a vote, and 3-2 is 3-2.

By: Ann

Ann — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:55:53 +0000

Ahahahaha! I needed a good laugh! A committee of more than one person who is going to decide whether any given work is F or SF without getting into a pedantic argument….that has got to be the most hilarious thing I’ve heard in months.

Don’t tell me you’re serious, because if you are I’d advise you to lie down in a dark room with a cool, damp cloth over your eyes until the spell passes.

By: Ann

Ann — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:51:48 +0000

The past looks so rosy when you edit out the things you don’t want to acknowledge, like the very real racism and sexism non-male and non-white authors faced decades ago, and still face now. There’s a reason all the writers you’ve mentioned either used initials, took masculine pen names, or already had ambiguous first names. And there were, indeed, those who stinted on praise for Delany, but it’s easier to ignore that when you’re looking back on a rosy vision constructed to convince yourself of your moral superiority, and avoid actually questioning any of your assumptions.

And as Disco Biscuit says, actually a lot of women are pretty aware of the history of women in SF. And not just the bits you find consoling or convenient.

By: Ann

Ann — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:34:09 +0000

And if no one cared whether any of those writers were women, why did one use her initials and the other use “Andre Norton” and not “Mary Alice North”? And the third had an ambiguous name. Could it possibly be that there existed readers who refused to be stunned by their best work because they were women?

You might try not caring if authors are women, yourself. I mean, sincerely so and not that disingenuous “I don’t care if its written by a woman so long as it’s a good story! You know, the kind that isn’t girly!” Of course, the way you know a story is girly is it’s by a girl. Because no guy ever wrote anything that might be considered romance if only its author had a more feminine name. Right?

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.