Last night Sir Elton John received an award.
One some level, this is not news. Sir Elton’s stories career as an entertainer, composer, philanthropist, and HIV/AIDS activist has brought him the following awards and honors:
- Two Oscars.
- Six Grammys.
- A Tony.
- Two Golden Globes.
- A Drama Desk Award.
- The Kennedy Center Honors.
- Bucketsful of nominations for awards major and minor, multitudinous gold and platinum records, large numbers of ASCAP and other industry awards, MTV Video Music awards, Brit Awards, etc., etc.
- Appointment as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 2019.
- Election to the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame in 1994.
And oh yeah, Queen Elizabeth II personally bestowed the accolade upon him in 1998 for his charitable work raising money and awareness in the fight against HIV infection worldwide (and quite possibly for his participation in the funeral of her former daughter-in-law the year before, not that Her Majesty ever said so in public even though the timing was not precisely coincidental).
It really should not have been a surprise to anyone that one of the most honored and hard working men in show business received yet another award last night, let alone Sir Elton himself. His five decade career is one of the most storied in modern entertainment history, spanning everything from glam rock to film to Broadway, and if he’s now rich, famous, and loved by millions, with a loving husband and two charming little boys, he’s worked hard for everything he has.
So again, it shouldn’t have surprised him, the audience, or anyone involved when President Biden awarded him the National Humanities Medal after a concert on the South Lawn…but not only did it do just that, the award reduced Sir Elton to tears. "I'm never flabbergasted, but I'm flabbergasted," he said, wiping at his eyes, then hugged the President and First Lady and assured them that he would treasure this great honor from the people of the United States. It was a heartwarming moment, especially given the Biden family’s connection to certain of Sir Elton’s songs; the President used to listen to Sir Elton’s music as he drove his children to school when they were small, and used at least one to communicate with his Beau as his life slipped away.
As great an honor as the National Humanities Medal is, though, sometimes the recipients have note precisely been the “well, duh” of Elton John or fellow honorees such as Philip Roth, Joan Didion, the National World War II Museum, Chef Jose Andres, or Madeline L’Engle. James Patterson, whose recent work has leaned heavily toward the ghostwritten...Midge Decter, the anti-feminist neocon...John Eastman’s former employer the Claremont Institute...Heritage Foundation president Kay Cole James...the Hoover Institution...these honorees range from the questionable to the “were they on crack?” level of puzzlement.
And then there were the three years that the forty-fifth President didn’t nominate anyone at all, possibly because he was sulking at his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize in between bouts of flinging overcooked meat about the White House and having the Prime Minister of Denmark tell him no, he could not buy Greenland, it was not for sale.
As for his last-minute bestowal of the Medal of Freedom on the likes of Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, and the unspeakable Rush Limbaugh — I got nothing, guys. “Flabbergasted” doesn’t begin to describe my reaction. If you can think of a better word, I would welcome your input.
Better, see if Aldous J. Pennyfarthing is willing to give it a try. I know my limits, and El Rushbo receiving our nation’s highest civilian honor for a career of spewing lies, hate, and bigotry across the airwaves is way, way more than I can take.
The Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction and fantasy. First awarded in 1953, they have been the centerpiece of the annual World Science Fiction Convention for nearly seventy years, and have been handed out to some of the very finest and most influential science fiction and fantasy writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Nominated and voted on by members of each individual Worldcon, among the honorees over the years are:
- Novels and short stories by the likes of Fritz Leiber, Robert Heinlein, Connie Willis, Robert Bloch, Lois McMaster Bujold, Harlan Ellison, John Scalzi, Anne McCaffrey and N.K. Jemison.
- TV shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who and Babylon 5.
- Artists like Michael Whelan (who won so many he eventually withdrew himself from consideration), Kelly Freas, Rovina Cai, and Phil Foglio.
- Films like A Clockwork Orange and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Galaxy Quest.
These are just a few of the many, many fine writers, filmmakers, and artists who’ve received the Hugo, and that’s only the professionals. Fanzines, fan artists, podcasters, and plenty of other amateur genre artists, writers, and bloggers have also won Hugos, and I have no doubt that there will be Hugos in other categories as technology, literature, and the field change in the years to come. There’s even been a collective win in 2019, when the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own won for Best Related Work, an award that usually goes to reference works, biographies, or essays by SF professionals.
There’s just one problem: it can be shockingly easy for something that isn’t worthy to win.
This should not surprise anyone; remember, the Hugos are chosen from a list of nominees submitted by fans who pay for a Worldcon membership, which is why the author of an amateurish novel from a third-tier publishing line got on the ballot for Best New Writer in the 1980’s after several dozen friends and relatives bought voting memberships. Worldcons have tweaked the rules to guard against this, most notably in response to the Sad/Rabid Puppies anti-diversity campaign a few years ago, but short of having a jury vet the nominations and select the the finalists, it’s unfortunately still quite possible for a less than stellar work to be nominated and then win.
Tonight I bring you two examples of Hugo Recipients So Bad They’re Good. One is admittedly far, far superior to the other, but by any objective standard it never should have won anything, let alone one of the most prestigious awards in its field. The other was controversial in its time and is a real headscratcher today, when the original context is pretty much forgotten:
“Gollum’s Acceptance Speech at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards,” starring Andy Serkis as himself and as Gollum, written and directed by Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, and Peter Jackson — the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation has a long and somewhat spotty history. First given out in 1958 to The Incredible Shrinking Man, it wasn’t awarded to anything in 1959, 1963 and 1971, and until 2002 it lumped together all nominees regardless of length, with some awards going to whole seasons of television shows, some to feature films, and some to individual TV episodes. The 1970 award didn’t even go to fiction — for some reason the 1970 Hugo went to NASA and the major networks for their coverage of Apollo 11, and as much as this may have warmed the cockles of fans who’d cut their teeth reading about Delos D. Harriman, it wasn’t a good look.
Fortunately for everyone who thought that pitting a feature film like The Truman Show against the Babylon 5 episode “”Sleeping in Light” was a terrible idea, the category was finally split into Long Form and Short form categories in 2002, after The Fellowship of the Ring beat out three other films and the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This should have solved the problem...except that the rules only stated that Short Form nominees had to be under 90 minutes. It didn’t specify a minimum length, and as far as I can tell, still doesn’t.
This may be why a two minute long joke was nominated in 2004 (probably as a joke), and ultimately won.
Now. I watched this when it first aired, and laughed so hard that two then-current members of the Triple Felinoid boinged off the sofa and fled yowling for the safety and comfort of the kitchen. It was and is genuinely funny, and if the Hugos had a “Best Dramatic Presentation — Micro Form” no one would have batted an eyelash. Unfortunately, the winner was up against four excellent TV episodes (one each from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville, two from Firefly), any of which would have been far more worthy of the honor than what actually won:
See what I mean?
They’d Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley — the first Best Novel Hugo was awarded in 1953, and it’s hard to imagine a better pick for the initial award. Alfred Best’s novel The Demolished Man is a dazzling, genuinely brilliant examination of a society with enough telepaths that murder should not be possible but still is. In many ways the book holds up astonishingly well, and if some of the sexual politics are painfully Freudian, well, it was 1953 and everyone but a handful of stubborn Karen Horney disciples thought that Freud was right, period. Otherwise this is still a stunning read, with sharp characters, a marvelously twisty plot, and some of the finest writing the genre has ever produced. The Demolished Man was a terrific choice for the first award, and it should have set the standard for years to come.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
Just what happened, how it happened, and what other novels were nominated is not clear at this point — lists of non-winning finalists for the first few awards do not seem to have survived — but the the next Best Novel Hugo was given out in 1955 to what is pretty much universally regarded as the single worst book ever to win the big prize: Mark Clifton and Frank Eiley’s They’d Rather Be Right.
If none of those names sounds familiar, no, you’re not losing your mind. Clifton, a personnel manager who claimed to have personally interviewed over 200,000 job candidates, wrote a handful of psychologically astute short stories in the early 1950’s. His collaborator, Riley, was a travel writer who also wrote advertising copy, and published even less than Clifton. Both seem to have been out of SF completely by the early 1960’s, although Clifton in particular seems to be worth a reread.
As for They’d Rather Be Right...there are two schools of thought as to why this otherwise unknown book by two now-forgotten authors won the Hugo at the time when Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ted Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Leigh Brackett, Cyril Kornbluth, and Eric Frank Russell were active:
1. Clifton’s short stories were considered so unusual and psychologically astute that when he and Riley novelized their series of short stories about an advanced computer called “Bossy,” fandom decided to vote for him over any and all other candidates. This is the theory advanced by writer/critic David Langford, and is probably correct. The book is also a reasonably scathing critique of McCarthyism and the mob mentality that swept America in those dark and awful years, and given how marginalized SF writers and fans were, it’s no surprise that a book satirizing Tailgunner Joe was briefly popular.
2. “Bossy,” which could “optimise your mind...and give you eternal youth into [sic] the bargain, but only if you're ready to abandon all your favourite prejudices,” was a blatant and quite possibly knowing riff on L. Ron Hubbard’s “new mental health cult” Dianetics, which later became Scientology. Langford investigated this, and despite startling similarities between “Bossy” and the auditing equipment used in Dianetics, he found no definite connection.
Based solely on the plot summaries, especially the stubborn insistence of non-Bossy users that they’re right to avoid “her” despite hard evidence that “she” really can deliver immortality, mental health, and even a cure for acne, I’m inclined to think that the second theory may be closer to the truth than anyone is willing to admit. Dianetics made similar claims, after all, and its devotees could and did throw out decade-plus friendships with non-believers. At this point, though, it’s impossible to be sure.
It’s also not easy to find a copy of They’d Rather Be Right to judge for one’s self. It’s been out of print for several years now, and used copies (especially the hardcover) are not cheap. Modern critics haven’t been kind, either, with Lawrence Watt-Evans pointing out that it seems to be a classic case of a book based on one of the typical “here’s a great idea, now go write it” thought experiments John W. Campbell, Jr., used to throw at his writers during one-on-one meetings in the 1940’s and early 1950’s. David Langford further noted that what might have been a decent idea “is flattened into the ground by the authors' reluctance to do the work which would make it convincing” thanks to numerous plot holes and the then-standard emphasis on plot rather than characterization.
Either way, They’d Rather Be Right is widely considered to be the single worst Hugo winner, ever, and considering some of the other picks *cough*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*cough*The Forever Peace*coughcoughcough*Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell*coughcoughcoughchokeackhelpwaterpleaseCOUGH*, that is saying something.
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Have you ever read They’d Rather Be Right? Laughed hysterically over Gollum insulting Andy Serkis? Do you have the collected works of either Mark Clifton or Frank Riley in your knotty pine rumpus room? Tried Dianetics in hopes of curing your acne? It’s a chilly night in Massachusetts, so fix yourself a steaming mug of something and share….
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