Harry Potter Wins Hugo 452
H.I. McDonnough writes "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling has won the Hugo for best novel. I'll refrain from commenting." I read the 2nd and 3rd Harry Potter books last week and they are just wonderful stories. I'm looking forward to reading this one. But a Hugo for SciFi Achievement? I have a hard time calling Potter stories Sci-Fi. But then again, since SF and Fantasy are often so blurred together, it probably is worth it. And anything that can get kids to read (or for that matter, get me to read a dead-tree version of anything) is good by me. And if you haven't read any Harry Potter books, then you aren't qualified to complain ;)
Overrated? (Score:2, Informative)
When I was a kid, I was reading things like Robert Westall, John Wyndham, Ursula K LeGuin, Diana Wynne Jones... maybe it's just nostalgia, but Harry Potter doesn't seem like it's even in the same league as those old classics.
There are children's authors who deserve a Hugo (Roald Dahl springs to mind, as well as some of those listed above) but I suspect this award was given due to popularity, and the cynical side of my nature suspects that at least part of that popularity is due to their safe, harmless nature.
Great books, but way out of the genre (Score:5, Informative)
2000 A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
1999 To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
1998 Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
1997 Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1996 The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
1995 Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1994 Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
1992 Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1990 Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
1989 Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh
1988 The Uplift War, by David Brin
1987 Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
1986 Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
1985 Neuromancer, by William Gibson
1984 Startide Rising, by David Brin
1983 Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
1982 Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
1981 The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge
1980 The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke
1979 Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre
1978 Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
1976 The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
1975 The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
1973 The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
1972 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
1971 Ringworld, by Larry Niven
1970 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
1968 Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
1966
1965 The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
1964 Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
1963 The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
1962 Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
1960 Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
1959 A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
1958 The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber
1957 No Award
1956 Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
1955 They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton (currently sold as The Forever Machine)
1954 No Award
1953 The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
From the Hugo rules... (Score:5, Informative)
Article 3 - Hugo Awards
...
Section 3.2: General.
3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.
With added emphasis by me...
Anthony
The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Score:3, Informative)
Reverie
?All the ideas in science fiction have been used up!?
How often we?ve heard this moan from editors, authors and fans, any one of whom should know better. Even if it were true, which is the last thing it is, it would signify nothing. How long ago do you think the themes of ordinary, mundane fiction were used up? Somewhere in the late Paleolithic, I should say. Which fact has made exactly no difference to the overwhelming outrush of modern masterpieces, four a shilling in the third tray from the left.
No. The existing material is sufficient to provide an infinite number of stories, each individual and each worth reading. Too much stress is laid on new ideas, or ?thought-variants?, on ?novae?. They are all very well in their way ? and it?s a way that leads to strange, delightful regions of fantasy ? but at least as important are characterization and the ability to treat a common- place theme in your own individual style. And for this reason, in spite of all his critics, I maintain that if any could equal Weinbaum, none could surpass him.
If, in addition to its purely literary qualities, a story has a novel idea, so much the better. Notwithstanding the pessimists, there are a million million themes that science fiction has never touched. Even in these days of deepening depression, a few really original plots still lighten our darkness. ?The Smile of the Sphinx? was such a one; going a good deal further back we have ?The Human Termites?, perhaps the best of all its kind before the advent of ?Sinister Barrier?.
As long as science advances, as long as mathematics discovers incredible worlds where twice two would never dream of equaling four: so new ideas will come tumbling into the mind of anyone who will let his thoughts wander, passport in hand, along the borders of Possibility. There are no Customs regulations; anything you see in your travels in those neighboring lands you can bring back with you. But in the country of the Impossible there are many wonders too delicate and too fragile to survive transportation.
Nothing in this world is ever really new, yet everything is in some way different from all that has gone before. At least once in his life even the dullest of us has found himself contemplating with amazement and perhaps with fear, some thought so original and so startling that it seems the creation of an exterior, infinitely more subtle mind. Such thoughts pass through the consciousness so swiftly that they are gone before they can be more than glimpsed, but sometimes like comets trapped at last by a giant sun, they cannot escape and from their stubborn material the mind forges a masterpiece of literature, of philosophy or music. From such fleeting, fragmentary themes are the Symphonies of Sibelius built - perhaps, with the Theory of Relativity and the conquest of space, the greatest achievements of the century before the year 2000.
Even within the limits set by logic, the artist need not starve for lack of material. We may laugh at Fearn, but we must admire the magnificent, if undisciplined, fertility of his mind. In a less ephemeral field, Stapledon has produced enough themes to keep a generation of science fiction authors busy. There is no reason why others should not do the same; few of the really fundamental ideas of fantasy have been properly exploited. Who has ever, in any story, dared to show the true meaning of immortality, with its cessation of progress and evolution, and, above all, its inevitable destruction of Youth? Only Keller, and then more with sympathy than genius. And who has had the courage to point out that, with sufficient scientific powers, reincarnation is possible? What a story that would make!
All around us, in the commonest things we do, lie endless possibilities. So many things might happen, and don?t - but may some day. How odd it would be if someone to whom you were talking on the phone walked into the room and began a conversation with a colleague! Suppose that when you switched off the light last thing at night you found that it had never been on anyway? And what a shock it would be if you woke up to find yourself fast asleep! It would be quite as unsettling as meeting oneself in the street. I have often wondered, too, what would happen if one adopted the extreme solipsist attitude and decided that nothing existed outside one?s mind. An attempt to put such a theory into practice would be extremely interesting. Whether any forces at our command could effect a devoted adherent to this philosophy is doubtful. He could always stop thinking of us, and then we should be in a mess.
At a generous estimate, there have been a dozen fantasy authors with original conceptions. Today I can only think of two, though the pages of UNKNOWN may bring many more to light. The trouble with present-day science fiction, as with a good many other things, is that in striving after the bizarre it misses the obvious. What it needs is not more imagination or even less imagination. It is some imagination.
Re:What it was up against. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Just one question. (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a jury.
The Hugos are voted on by fans. Each year, there is a World Science Fiction Convention held somewhere in the world. This year, it was in Philadelphia.
Members of the convention (most of whom are also attendees) are eligible to vote for the Hugos.
The Nebulas have a jury. When the Hugos go wrong (and they do; The Dispossessed is an interesting book, but it's nowhere near as significant as The Shockwave Rider, the Nebula winner that year) it's a matter of mass confusion, not a small, elite group going weird.
Perhaps next year they will give it to American Gods. :)
A few misconceptions in the comments (Score:4, Informative)
#1: The Hugos are a juried award. Nope; they're a fan award. Anyone who is a member of that year's Worldcon can vote; all it takes is the money to pay for a voting membership. You don't even have to attend.
#2: The Hugos are only for SF. They tend to be given to SF works, but the criteria explicitly include fantasy.
#3: Why didn't <foo> win instead? Hugos are given based on year of first publication, so Lord of the Rings wasn't eligible this year. The movies will be eligible for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo, however.
#4: The plagiarism case. A Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com] and a transcript of an online chat with Stouffer [washingtonpost.com] give some more details, but I tend to side with the folks who doubt the claims she makes [hpgalleries.com]. They were going to make a billion dollars! All my records were lost when my roof collapsed! I talked to the (never-married) editor and his wife! You can't remove IE from Windows without breaking it! (Sorry, that last one was from someone else.)
Re:There is no justice (Score:3, Informative)
The only guy who ever did a good job at it is Darko Suvin, the Canadian SF theoretician. He nails it down pretty well, in like five hundred academic essays, but nobody in the field is ever going to say he is right. He talks about cognitive estrangement; that sf is "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment". (Note that my short excerpt of those aforementioned zillions of essays is broad enough to include fantasy; further reading is recommended, especially if you have trouble sleeping at night.)
Some other nice definitions:
A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its speculative scientific content. (Theodore Sturgeon)
Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings. (Isaac Asimov)
Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities. (Miriam Allen deFord)
Personally I prefer this definition, offered by John Clute and Peter Nichols in The SF Book of Lists (emphasis mine):
Re:From the Hugo rules... (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't cost very much to buy an advance supporting membership. I wish this page for the current Worldcon [netaxs.com] still had the prices for advance membership posted, but that info was probably removed when the deadlines passed. The prices were probably not too much different than next year's Worldcon [conjose.org]. Act now; for just $35 USD, you too will be able to nominate and vote the Hugo for works first published in 2001.
*** Ponderoid
bah (Score:3, Informative)
I go the the same university as JK Rowling went to. TPTB are changning (strongly opposed) the name of the Free Tibet room the Harry Potter room. Theres a lot of anger arround the university regarding that.
I wouldnt mind, but We have other alumini that are more worthy! (Thom Yorke from Radiohead for one)
Re:A Better Choice (Score:3, Informative)
I imagine it's simply that philosophers aren't "exciting" enough for all the ADD-afflicted American audiences.
Or maybe that "philosopher" has a much different connotation in American English rather than British English.
But hey, don't let logic stop you when a perfectly good cynical explanation will do.
Re:What? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:There is no justice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Demise of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Score:3, Informative)
I will have to violently disagree with this.
Before I begin, I should say that I love both Tolkien and Asimov, grew up reading the Narnia books, and intensely dislike Clarke (except for the rather interesting short story The Billion Names of God, which I think is quite good). Both Tolkien and Asimov get whole bookshelves devoted to them.
I've been reading a lot recently, although only some of it was sf/f. Here's some sf/f authors who are currently publishing that I think are really interesting:
No, the real problem is a lack of recognition for these people. Although Robinson did win some awards, there are huge gaps. Generally speaking, in order to make the Hugos, you've got to have commercial success first: and nowhere is this more clear than in the Dramatic Presentation category, where the 1999 awards [dpsinfo.com] didn't even mention New Rose Hotel, [imdb.com] probably the best cyberpunk movie ever made.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they do. There's a specialist bookseller on Charing Cross Road in London, that caters exclusively to the Crime, Romance and SF/Fantasy markets. They do, at least, have enough sense to put them in separate parts of the shop, though
As for why SF and fantasy are lumped together, it's almost certainly because they attract the same core market. Yes, there are exceptions, but in general, SF fans like fantasy, and vice versa. I know that's certainly true for me. Fantasy currently dominates my bookshelf by a ratio of about 2:1, but that's mostly because I can't find enough decent SF books. And yes, I'd say I have a large enough bookshelf to be statistically significant (just over 1000 at last count).
Re:I guess.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:check other categories (short fiction, etc.) (Score:2, Informative)
Some counterexamples:
1997 best novella: Blood of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
1995 best original artwork: Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud
1991 best short story: Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
1991 best dramatic presentation: Edward Scissorhands
1982 best novelette: Unicorn Variation by Roger Zelazny
1971 best novella: Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
1958 best short story: Or All the Seas with Oysters by Avram Davidson
And these are just a sampling of winners that I know to be fantasy. There are many more I suspect may be as well. True, there is a strong tendency to choose SF over fantasy for the Hugos, but it's never been a rule.
[1] To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, Hyperion, The Snow Queen, Dreamsnake, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and Lord of Light are all on the border between SF and Fantasy, and several other entries are clearly soft SF. Note that Larry Niven argues that all time travel tales are fantasy.
Re:I truly enjoyed Harry Potter myself... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, you are wrong.