The 2015 Nebula Awards were announced today. Glaring inequality abounds* inside the sci-fi and fantasy world, and it’s not okay:
Earlier tonight, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America handed out the Nebula Award in Chicago, and this year women have swept one of science fiction’s biggest awards.
This year’s Nebula Award Banquet toastmaster was actor John Hodgeman, who opened the show with a fun performance of ‘Radio SFWA’, pitched his own novel idea, A Feast for Bros and lamented the lack of genre NPR shows such as Car Talk: Fury Road.
The science fiction world has had its share of drama with the Hugo Awards as various slates have worked aggressively to push against the growing numbers of women and people of color appearing on award ballots. The Nebula Awards have demonstrated, for two years in a row, that science fiction and fantasy literature remains a strong, inclusive body of literature.
I jest, I jest. The reality is, of course, that gender problems live in the eye of the beholder, since it’s based on imagination, some Internet histrionics, and one’s preferences concerning diversity (which, as I’ve said before, has nothing to do with morality). People are free to nominate and vote for whomever they like, for whatever reason.
The bigger questions are: was this a change from recent years, and how did this change occur? There’s an entire domain of ethical considerations packed in these two questions, and one shouldn’t be surprised if there is pushback from people who just want to read and write good sf/f without a moralizing finger wagging in their face.
* Bonus points if you can make a low-road joke from “women swept,” from the post’s title, and domestic duties. There is a joke in there, somewhere. I’m sure of it. I’m just too lazy to think of one right now.
4 Comments
It’s not the first year that women have won a number of Nebulas. The funny thing is I saw some women complaining about the gender problems in sci fi because they didn’t sweep one category of the Nebulas. YA, maybe? Or something. Gender problems are not based off the imagination, not when there is a concerted effort to make them a problem.
“Gender problems are not based off the imagination, not when there is a concerted effort to make them a problem.”
Well, right. I was referring mostly to groups without any official “rules” for inclusion. Things tend to end up monolithic, because that’s how humans organize (like golf leagues, Curves health clubs, black southern churches). People can imagine exclusion in those things where there isn’t any…and sometimes poking them to be more inclusive causes divisiveness, paradoxically.
I’m waiting for the inevitable fork that leaves the likes of the SFWA in the dustbin of irrelevance. I recall Vox fussing about it some years back and refusing to be involved after a certain point. He and others are already trying to establish new publishing houses, etc.
I think that’s Castalia House, which seems to be doing well. I don’t pay too close attention to the Puppies since it didn’t/doesn’t concern me directly.