Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is widely credited with being the first modern science fiction novel. Since then, science fiction has boldly gone where humans hadn't gone before, imagining what our world would look like with a new technology or a different set of rules. More than any other genre, science fiction is about innovation, opening up to the new and unexpected.
Or so I thought. It turns out there's a faction among the fans that insists Real True Science Fiction (TM) must forever tell the same story, a Western-with-lasers where a white dude saves the day by getting a bigger gun. The only thing that changes is the description of the aliens, and the name of the mostly-naked woman shown kneeling at the hero's feet on the book cover. (Actually, her having a name at all is optional.)
And so two groups, calling themselves the Sad Puppies (led by Brad Torgerson and Larry Correia) and the Rabid Puppies (led by the grotesquely misogynist racist Theodore"Vox Day" Beale), decided to claim the Hugo Awards for Real True Science Fiction (TM). It didn't work out quite like they'd planned.
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In brief: the nominees are chosen by WorldCon member vote, so the Puppies freeped the nomination process by publishing slates of candidates who fit their ideological vision. Not all of their nominees were consulted before appearing on the slate, and two writers withdrew their work from consideration because they didn't want to be associated with the Puppies' positions. This was followed by a huge influx of people buying WorldCon memberships, and a record number of voters for the awards. The upshot: with the exception of the film Guardians of the Galaxy (which didn't need their help), every single Puppy nominee finished behind "No Award." In the five categories where all the nominees were from the Puppy slates, the winner was "No Award." While Vox Day continues to try to spin this as a victory for him, John Scalzi offers the real lesson here.
I'm still shaking my head at people who imagine that "Social Justice Warrior" is some sort of insult. Science fiction has always dealt with issues of social justice, from George Orwell's 1984 to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.
SF and fantasy writers have dreamed of a better world in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland and Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing. And they've warned of dystopias in Jack London's The Iron Heel and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, not to mention Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451.
Gender has been reimagined every which way. In CJ Cherryh's Chanur series, the characters take matriarchy for granted. In Suzette Hagen Eldin's Native Tongue trilogy, women undermine an extreme patriarchy by creating their own language. In a variety of SF worlds, reproduction has been separated from the female body, which might be a good thing (Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time) or not (Aldous Huxley's Brave New World). We've seen species with more than two genders (Octavia E. Butler's Lilith's Brood series), mutable genders (Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness), and whatever you call it in Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice.
You want to know about racism, slavery, and how privilege warps a person into a "Master"? Read Octavia E. Butler's Kindred. For that matter, JK Rowling's blockbuster Harry Potter fantasy series had plenty to say about racist notions of "pure blood."
The Puppies complain about fiction by "social justice warriors" being "ideological" and therefore bad. But that Westerns-with-lasers book where the kneeling woman exists only to please the hero? That's an ideology too - it just happens to be one that they like.
They're welcome to continue writing and reading stories about the white dude who saves the day by getting a bigger gun, of course. That's part of the genre too. But as the Hugos demonstrated this year, SF and fantasy are going to keep reaching for further galaxies and stranger stars, ones that we haven't even begun to imagine yet.
On to Top Comments!
From bluezen:
I'd like to nominate this comment:
Ted and Kelly deserve each other (3+ / 0-)
He can't survive without "journalists" of her ilk.
She can't survive without pols of his ilk.
That's a lot of ilk.
by mojave mike
From
your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
In Jen Hayden's diary A school tragedy narrowly averted: 14-year-old boy held his classroom at gunpoint in West Virginia, AR2 flagged this comment by Geenius at Wrok about what teachers go through.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
1) Libertarians are free of self irony. by Bush Bites +387
2) No, thank YOU! by anastasia p +293
3) FREEDUMB! by Ken in MN +183
4) I hope someone has told him... by Josiah Bartlett +174
5) Seriously! by Jasonhouse +166
6) I think if we use social media, we can effect by a2nite +144
7) thank you for this. only by kaminpdx +115
8) No thank you, ((((((Shaun)))))) by a2nite +110
8) What you do is so important! by howabout +110
8) We will gather together here today by Denise Oliver Velez +110
11) They still don't get it, by AnnetteK +108
12) They have "irony-poor blood" -nt by Uncle Cosmo +107
13) No one deserves the pounding you got last week. by CwV +104
14) And a big Thank You right back . by indycam +103
15) I wondered about the mercy statement, also by BoiseBlue +99
15) Yes- because libertarians are super happy to by electricgrendel +99
17) There's no nuance on that shirt by Twain Disciple +97
18) I wonder if he even has that horrible socialistic by Josiah Bartlett +95
19) Thank you for sharing this. by thea lake +90
20) Shaun, you do a great deal to help by penguins4peace +86
21) Thank you, Paleo. by Quabbin +85
22) For Those of Us by JekyllnHyde +82
22) Two or three office closures out of 46 is a budget by Christy1947 +82
24) Yes, this is the confirmation for which... by Sucker Politics +81
25) No, it's not OK to drive without a license, but by elenacarlena +80
25) Um, But The State Dept Servers, Not The by chaboard +80
25) The scary part for me is the age by Denise Oliver Velez +80
28) It shows intent to commit a murder n/t by rktect +78
29) Agreed, I'm sharing right now on Facebook and by navajo +77
29) You may be right, but... by The grouch +77
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: