Question of the day

[james_davis_nicoll]

Do people who read for juried awards tend to become jaded and embittered with the state of the art for books covered by the award in question?

I mean, either the judges are going to have to work their way through a lot of material and most of it won't be award worthy (I feel like I need a disclaimer here that winning this or that award isn't the primary goal of most authors, although I'm sure that they don't mind winning) or the set of books covered by the award is so tiny that there's no real room for an exceptionally good example to occur.

Of course, with small sets you can get weird distributions, from "all of these should win the award" to "Let's just declare this catagory dead [1] and move on to Great Novels about 12-year-old boys from Woking who discover that their bicycle is in fact a shape-shifted unicorn."

1: Was it Andre Norton who wanted to create an award for best unpublished fantasy by a woman, on the idea that the Patriarchy [2] was suppressing a lot of good fantasy novels by women? I think it turned out that while that might be true, larger numbers of novels are being suppressed because they could suck the chrome off a bumper.

2: I'd rattle off a list of female editors at this point but I think that in fact despite male readers being a distinct and somewhat freakish minority in the world of books, most editors are still men.

That seems to imply that at some point, the male editors might stop being men. Hrm. What I mean is that a majority of the population of editors is male. I don't know if the male/female ratio is changing with time and if so, in which direction.

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

To answer your first question, "Yes." I have read so much horrible alternate history in order to get to the ones that make the ballot, it makes me glad to had created the award. "We read crap so you don't have to."

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I suspect that AH suffers from being a subgenre that is very attractive to certains kinds of cranks, so the good stuff is hidden behind magical time-displacments and wistful fantasies about the Raj Eternal.

Well, that and Turtledove has a formula that he will not vary from until it stops selling and the ability to produce huge reams of material that follows that formula. That would not be a problem if one could be absolutely certain that he doesn't have another interesting story in him.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My default assumption about alternate history these days is that it's reactionary war-porn that will probably make no sense unless you are interested in historical great battles (joined starting in the 1990s by sad, nostalgic stories about how the history of human space travel would have gone just like old science fiction if only X had happened). Of course this isn't always true, and I appreciate that somebody is willing to look for things that don't fit the pattern.

reactionary war-porn

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Eric Flint's What These 17th century Europeans Need is an American! AH series sells well and Flint's a Trot.

I will admit that the Glorious Triumph of World Socialism subgenre of AH is pretty thin on the ground.

Huh. I just thought of a completely logical subgenre of AH and yet offhand I can't think of an example: Grand Celtic Destiny, in which any of the misguided ideas of the last 2000 years turns out not to have been as completely insane as it appeared, whether it was flinging one's nation at military machine that was the Roman Republic or deciding that the best leader possible was some drunken Stuart. There's not even a "What if the Irish Rebellion of 1534/1594/1641/1798/1848/1848 (Newfoundland)/1867/1916 had succeeded" novel that I know of. Also, no timeline where the Fenian Raids into Canada were far more successful.

There is an AH where Ned Kelly leads a successful revolution in Australia but that's not really the same thing (Also, it's about as likely as Jesse James creating a break-away republic in America). Also, Harry Harrison wrote a truly horrible What These Irishmen Need is an American story.

There's also something of a lack of "What if the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence had failed", which is something I'd expect to appeal to the Raj Eternal types.

Re: reactionary war-porn

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Obviously what we have here is an opportunity. It could be a magic-secretly-works AH to leverage the pseudo-Celtic strain in fantasy.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Take a look at some of the Sidewise Award winners and nominees and you'll see that there is plenty of non-war porn AH being published.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to figure out why shwi was such a pedo magnet. I can understand, theoretically, the attraction it had for the Kool-Aid drinkers and the Holocaust deniers and the chip-on-their-shoulder Canadians. (Did we ever have anyone who combined all three?)

But there were more (male) regulars who were interested in diddling 11-year-olds -- and would discuss it, at length, on an alternate history newsgroup -- than there were active women participants. Christ.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Do people who read for juried awards tend to become jaded and embittered with the state of the art for books covered by the award in question?

Ok, I'm not reading for a juried award but for one that allows the jury to add three nominees to the final ballot (the Andre Norton award) but I shall toss in my two cents anyway.

There are a lot of forgettable books that have been sent to me but I don't know that I am jaded because of that - most of the books, well I think they would appeal to the readers who they are targeted to, so in that sense, I think they are sucesses. Pleasant, forgettable sucesses that will go out of print in a year. But I did volunteer to be on the jury because I do like fiction of this mode. So really, I've been enjoying a lot of the submissions even if I don't think they deserve awards.

Am I disappointed there is very few standouts?

Well no, not really - As I said in a post earlier today, I think real originality is pretty rare. Unfortunately, awards are run by schedules usually not given only to those who truly deserve it.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I think real originality is pretty rare.

But aren't there other praise-worthy virtues an author could have?

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Sure, but why should we give them an award for writing something that is derivative and just like 12 other books I read this year?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Because they do the thing that they do so very well.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Originality is overrated and most books trying to be original do not succeed in being good.

[dsrtao]

Telling a story well is worth more than most forms of originality. I want to be entertained. If I learn something or get interesting in a new subject, that's a bonus.

Good and bad are largely orthogonal to originality.

[caias.livejournal.com]

This happens in many industries. Take a look at the Origins Awards for the adventure game industry, where you can get many flavors of... d20.

Many awards are simply set to make people feel good, a hug in the form of a plaque. True, many people get buried in the flood of other work, but just because you are a woman/man/gay/latino/elf/Armenian national named Lem with three teeth doesn't mean an award should be made for you...

And when the award coverage is a small market, or you can't even get copies of the work in question (like the nominees for the Origin Awards where some of the best works are released by companies that are out of business three months later), of course you are going to be jaded/frustrated/annoyed. Especially when the gaming audience doesn't give a damn.

BTW, I'm new to reading your journal.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Origins award. I voted for that once (If I am thinking of the right award) at the insistance of my employer at the time. The form came will all the catagories the employer was eligible in already filled in with their name.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. Could be shareware awards.

I didn't

[redbird]

It may have helped that when I was a Tiptree juror, when we got a book or story in, one or sometimes two of the jurors would say "I'll take that" (based mostly on our workloads, with that and the rest of our lives) and report back one of three things: "the rest of the jury should read this," "good, but not relevant, save it for when you have more time," or "don't bother" (for things that just weren't very good).

Also, the Tiptree jury changes every year, so while it's a lot of work, there may be less room and time for burn-out.

[snippy]

I read for an award earlier this year. I don't feel jaded; I discovered I'd severely limited my enjoyment by skipping lots of good stuff, books that were better written and more fun to read than some of what I'd been seeking out (because of familiarity with the authors' previous work). I did read a few clunkers, and at least two that I simply couldn't get past the first 50 pages because they were so awful.

Looking over my booklog entries, more than half of the books I read for that award were by women.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(I feel like I need a disclaimer here that winning this or that award isn't the primary goal of most authors, although I'm sure that they don't mind winning)

You are right, both ways; there is so much else going on throughout the creative/publishing process, I don't know any author who thinks about their work in relation to prizes until it's actually published. After that - well, yes. The subject does come up. And speaking as a many-times-shortlisted, one-time winner: yup, it's lovely to win. And yup, not winning is hell.

I'd rattle off a list of female editors at this point but I think that in fact despite male readers being a distinct and somewhat freakish minority in the world of books, most editors are still men.

I'm not sure this is true, tho' I'd need to see lists to be certain either way. Most of the editors I know - and have known, thru' a long career - are women, but that may reflect on me more than on them. Certainly in the UK, publishing is a female-dominated industry (I have the figure 60/40 in my head as a split, but I don't know where that came from); that may or may not be reflected in the editorial lists. And it may be different in SF/F than in publishing as a whole (and I'm not considering the roster of independent/small press publishers, which at least gives the impression of being male-dominated).

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I know some people who get jaded reading for awards... but they've been reading for many decades. I haven't gotten jaded yet, though I often feel overwhelmed by the volume of nominations. Sharing the reading load across the jurors helps, but with a real variety of opinions about what makes a work award-worthy, that doesn't always cut down on the reading.

Like many people, I enjoy a lot of books that I don't feel are award-worthy, and I save some of those for after the award. Sometimes, if a book I really love is one of those I don't feel is "award-worthy," I'll still recommend it to the other jurors because of its other attributes. Sometimes others will even do the same. But there are enough really good books published each year to displace the fun-but-not-quite books.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I enjoy a lot of books that I don't feel are award-worthy

War Games and Dream Games. Not only are they not really very good but they aren't even consistant with each other. I'll still reread them from time to time.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sir Fred Hoyle's Into Deepest Space. It and the prequel are real stinkers but with important associations for me, and some interesting idea I wish someone not named Stephen Baxter would reconsider.

[rosefox]

I was on the Lambda Awards F&SF jury this year, and I think I was jaded about the state of that particular art before I ever opened the box of books they sent me.

What really made me bitter was that two of the people on the jury cared a lot about giving the award to a book that was really good F or SF, and two who struggled to read science fiction because of all the big unfamiliar words. We ended up needing a tiebreaker vote between Spin Control and Izzy and Eve, and the latter won, to my everlasting annoyance.

Your second footnote is interesting, given that I recently came across a study of income gaps in publishing that claimed women were more likely to be editors (and paid less) and men were more likely to be in management (and paid more).

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

...best unpublished fantasy by a woman,...

I wonder what the best unpublished fantasy (by a woman, or otherwise) might be? Candidates, anyone?

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

what I notice is not so much the covers, but who the publisher is. I find that the minute I don't know the publisher, it really worries me. And if I don't know the publisher *and* it is published in a non-standard format, I have little hope that I will enjoy the book. On one occasion I have been pleasantly surprised, but that just reinforces the rule.