at various times in my life, i have read substantial amounts of SF & Fantasy. lately i'm mostly reading Civil War History, but i still try to pay attention to what's going on in SF. the recent controversy over Hugo Voting caused me to take a look around. here are some thoughts on what i found.
this is how i started. for any given year it's worthwhile to read the nominees as well as the winners. tastes vary and frequently i like one of the nominees best that year. secondly, what i wanted to do was try and figure out what the Puppies were so upset about. they were complaining about a trend away from the kind of SF they like, which seemed to me to be an odd claim. keep in mind that there are two parallel things going on here; there is what is being published and what is getting awards. there seems to be lots of stuff being published that the puppies like, but it's not getting awards and that is making them unhappy.
so i have started reading. i had previously read and enjoyed Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series, so i set out to read The Goblin Emperor next. Finished it on a plane flight, enjoyed it a lot, think the nomination is well deserved. Next up will be The Three Body Problem and i'm looking forward to it. i seem to be enjoying the nominated works that the puppies don't like.
so i'm not really done, but i'm going to present some preliminary thoughts.
the puppies describe a past that i think doesn't really exist, at least not in their lifetimes. i started reading SF in the early 70s, when i was in middle school. at that time, the "New Wave" had been around for a few years and Dangerous Visions was a well known, critically acclaimed landmark. Harlan Ellison had already written and received a Hugo for I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Ursula K Le Guin's great novels, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed had swept the novel category for the Hugo and Nebula Awards the years they were published.
So i'm having trouble understanding what's changed in 40-45 years. the Hugo awards have been honoring socially conscious writing for a long, long time. the puppie's fondly remembered past would seem to be imaginary.
but i know that some of the touchiness is over some of the shorter fiction. i'll have to go read that soon (time permitting). but so far, what i'm seeing is that the Hugo awards are still functional as a guide to good SF reading, even if you do have to pay attention to the context now in a way you didn't have to before.
