As reported on SF Awards Watch, the Clarke Award short list has been announced. There’s already been a fair amount of reaction to it, and John Jarrold in particular seems rather upset. On the other hand, the announcement did make The Guardian. I generally used to get emails about the Clarke, but this year I didn’t, and SFAW apparently doesn’t rate a copy of the press release either, but The Guardian does. Maybe this tells us something, especially given the tenor of the Guardian coverage which seems to suggest that the award is moving away from that awful science fiction stuff and is now rewarding proper fiction instead.
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Awards
Women Make Good Actresses Shock!
Following on from the Oscars, The Guardian has an article by Sarah Churchwell pointing out that women only seem to win those little nudey man statues when the contest is for being a woman (or for doing things that women do, like making clothes or putting on make-up). I mention this because I’ve been doing my Hugo nominations and, as is often the case, a lot more than half of the people on my ballot are men. And when the list of nominees comes out there will doubtless once again be a chorus of disapproval from people complaining about how awful the SF industry is, and how this is all the fault of Evil sexist “Hugo judges”, Evil sexist SMOFs who fix the ballot, and Evil sexist publishers and editors, not to mention Evil gender traitors like myself who vote for men.
Well, actually, no. I know that is is much easier, and much more fun, to yell and scream at people you know than to deal with the real problem but, as Churchwell points out, it happens elsewhere too. The reason problems, I suspect, are more to do with the fact that many boys are still socialized from birth to believe that women are inferior and not worth their notice except as sex objects, and that many girls are still socialized from birth to believe that they are inferior and so they shouldn’t try to compete in a world that belongs to men (or indeed that the whole idea of competing in unfeminine).
To pick up on a theme from Churchwell, separatism does not equal equality, having quotas does not equal equality, only cultural change brings equality.
Oscars Verdict
Who cares about the silly old movies? I haven’t seen any of them anyway. Dresses, on the other hand…
The best set of photos I have seen so far is on Style.com, though the BBC does have some good close-ups.
Marion Cotillard’s Gaultier number certainly stood out. From a distance it is absolutely magnificent, but close up it looks a little cheesy.
Cameron Diaz managed to stand out by picking something interestingly different on a night when far too many people seemed to have read a “what’s in this year” manual before hand.
Cate Blanchett proved that it is possible to look gorgeous when you are pregnant.
Renée Zellweger was undoubtedly the queen of bling for the evening.
Helen Mirren continues to look fabulous, thereby giving hope to all of those who feel old by are younger than she is.
Julie Christie’s gloves were, sadly, the disaster of the night.
Kudos to Heidi Klum who announced that she’d be auctioning her gown for charity immediately after the show.
And my pick of the night? If you want to stand out, try picking something really simple and styling, like Katherine Heigl. (Of course it does help to have a great figure and fabulous hair, but it is still a great dress.)
Nebula Final Ballot
Having spent much of the day doing Nebula-related stuff at SFAW I thought I might as well comment on the nominees here (something I keep having to restrain myself from doing back there). First of all, just in case you haven’t seen it, the nominee list is here. I don’t have much to say about the short fiction as I still haven’t read much (must do so over the weekend as the Hugo deadline looms). The script category is widely regarded as a joke, so I’ll ignore that too. As for the novels, well…
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The Artist Hugo
I’ve just been spending an hour or so writing an article about the Best Professional Artist Hugo for SFAW (hopefully to be posted tomorrow) and I followed it up by taking my own advice and looking at the Locus Online directory of cover art. I now have a list of people I’m intending to nominate, and given all the fuss about the same people getting nominated each year I through I’d share my picks with you.
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Teddy Awards
Part and parcel of running SFAW is that I have to keep an eye on news reports from around the world. So it was that I discovered that at Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, they have a special set of awards for films with LGBT content. And lo, they are called the Teddy Awards.
I can’t see anything on the web site that explains the origin of the name, and the trophy is in the form of a bear (Berlin has an ongoing relationship with the animal). But I’m going to assume that the awards are named after someone. Yay! Go Teddy!
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
I read most of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on the plane, and finished it off last night. I’m please to report that the Periscope Light book holder worked very well. As for the book: fabulous. It is a little difficult to get into if you are not Jewish, and therefore not familiar with a lot of the language, but us spec fic readers ought to be used to that sort of thing. It is an alternate history, so it is definitely Hugo-eligible. The writing is wonderful, as one might expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner. And along the way the book makes some interesting points about religious fanatics, terrorists and US foreign policy that it might not have been able to make so clearly if it were not set in a parallel universe.
At this point I think I’m finally beginning to settle on a short list for the Hugos. It currently looks like this:
- Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay
- Spook Country, William Gibson
- Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand
- In War Times, Kathleen Ann Goonan
- The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon
I have to admit that it is hard to shoehorn the Hand into a spec fic category, but it is a wonderful book with a definite spooky air too it, so I’m nominating it anyway.
Yes, I know, there are three men on that list, so I’m a class traitor who will be first up against the wall when the Feminist Revolution comes.
And speaking of awards, I’ve looked at the Nebula Preliminary Ballot, and I have scratched my head in bewilderment. I suspect that SFWA members simply don’t read much these days.
Channeling the Other
One of the things I mentioned in the SMOFcon report is that a number of the attendees had a lot of difficulty with the “Words we use” panel because they tended to assume that if a word had negative connotations to them then it would have negative connotations to everyone. Marketing is, of course, about understanding how other people think, but fandom isn’t always very good at this.
We can see the same sort of thing in action in the “debate” about the Lifetime Achievement Hugo. I use the scare quotes deliberately, because while some people are talking seriously about how the award might work, many people aren’t making much sense at all.
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Quick WFA Comment
I think this year’s WFA Awards were pretty much as expected. The only real question was how the short fiction awards were going to be divided up between Jeff Ford and Mary Rickert. Poor Mary was quite tearful, but she proved the value of winning two awards: having to come up a second time allows you to thank people that you embarrassingly forgot the first time.
Gene Wolfe’s book was on my Hugo list last year, so I’m delighted that it won. But the results that really make me happy are the wins for Shaun Tan and Gary Wolfe. Gary, sadly, missed out on a Hugo in LA, but he very much deserves his Howie. As for Shaun, next stop Best Related Book for The Arrival.