One of the effects of the Puppies has been to bring the Hugos to the attention of the mainstream media. A lot of the coverage has, of course, been embarrassing, but now that the Awards are a subject for discussion we are starting to see more serious coverage, and more general interest around the world.

So, for example, I was very pleased to see this coverage of the Awards in a youth-focused news site based in India. Hopefully that is giving young Indian writers dreams of rockets in their future.

Of course Nnedi has a point:

I wish the media would discuss the stories we wrote more than the grumblings of&responses to a certain group of ppl I won't name.#HugoAwards

— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD🕷️ (@Nnedi) August 23, 2016

All of the fiction winners this year are really good, and it would be nice to see them get celebrated for that rather than for their dealing yet another defeat to the Puppies.

China at least has got it’s act together and is enthusiastically celebrating a second win. The South China Morning Post majors on the fact that Hao Jingfang beat Stephen King to the trophy, whole The Shanghaiist notes that Hao has two published novels that I hope will now get translated.

Hao, however, is no stranger to mainstream news. Her story was actually cited in The Economist back in July. Another political news site, Quartz, picked up the story after her win.

Newspapers in the Philippines have also taken note of what went down in Kansas City. Here’s The Inquirer celebrating Michi Trota’s win.

Next year, of course, we will get to see what Finnish newspapers make of Worldcon. The Helsinki Sanomat has generally had good coverage of FinnCon so I’m looking forward to seeing what they do for the big show.