Adam Roberts not unreasonable, though probably hopeless, request to fandom to be more imaginative about its Hugo nominees has flushed out all sorts of bizarre comments about how the Hugos are awful because they don’t reflect the writer’s taste. My favorite to date (and I’m not going to link to it because the writer really doesn’t deserve any further publicity) is someone whose rant included this:
every third or fourth year the World Convention is held outside of the U.S., which means that in those years, the awards typically go to books you can’t buy by writers you’ve never heard of.
Why those damned foreigners! How dare they? Still, in the spirit of scientific inquiry I decided to take a look at Best novel winners at past non-US Worldcons, in particular Australians ones as that’s where next year’s Worldcon will take place. This is what I found:
- Aussiecon One (1975): The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Aussiecon Two (1985): Neuromancer, William Gibson
- Aussiecon Three (1999): To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
So, “books you can’t buy by writers you’ve never heard of,” eh?
Hardy perennial, despite all contrary evidence.
From the contrary point of view, it has been hard to get non-English works nominated, let alone voted for! I’m taling about language, of course, not origin.
It was a great thrill in 1975 that our GOH was the Hugo novel winner.
It was not a put-up job, despite accusations to that effect!
Have to say, that trio is a superb list. Wonder if there’ll be something as splendid as one of those on next years’ list!
Damned Foreigners. Maybe they should be banned from voting for the Hugos alltogether. That will show them 🙂
I agree. Damn aliens. Through them out.
Still laughing…thank you for a great kick start for the day, Cheryl!
There you go, introducing facts into the argument.
It’s not safe to be a straw man in this neighborhood!
So what’s your point, Mike? Are you claiming that I have misrepresented this fellow’s views? Have I somehow cherry-picked the conventions to hide the fact that all other non-US Worldcons have indeed voted for “books you can’t buy by writers you’ve never heard of”?
This “straw man” complaint is getting as tiresome as the “I didn’t mean what I wrote” argument. If people say stupid and inaccurate things on the internet then they should take responsibility for it. You shouldn’t be able to escape from writing nonsense (and in this case offensive nonsense) by whining about being victimised.
What I mean is that if you were a boxer we’d call it fighting opponents far below your weight class.
That dilutes the relative entertainment of your effort.
Mike: Sorry to have deprived you of your entertainment, but if I was looking for a fight I would have linked to the guy’s comments.