Not that you need another Hugo commentary, but…

Last night I posted this on Twitter and facebook:

“The Puppies obviously care a lot about the fiction they like. That’s good: they should use that passion to establish an award of their own.”

My friend Dan Willis responded with this:

“And here I thought the Hugos said for years that they were a fan award, representing the best fiction SF had to offer.”

I realized that my post sounded pretty exclusionary, which was not my intention. The Hugos ARE a fan award, and anyone can nominate and vote, and that needs to happen more, not less. My comments were mostly directed to the Rabid Puppy group, whose leader has stated unequivocally that he doesn’t want to change the Hugos, he wants to destroy them. Even Brad Torgerson has said in interviews that he doesn’t care about the award. They don’t like the way the award is being handled, or the kind of fiction it tends to celebrate, so I think it makes the most sense to take that energy and start celebrate the kind of fiction they do like–to creat something positive instead of tearing down something else.

It would be awesome if a single award represented the best that all science fiction had to offer. The Hugos certainly don’t: their refusal to consider most YA or tie-in fiction is a good example, and yes, they tend (at present) to swing fairly liberal and reward certain Chosen Ones. But the thing is, I don’t think a single award CAN represent the entirety of science fiction. That’s simply too big of a tent. The Hugo, and arguably every award ever, has an inherent bias, and that bias changes over time but it’s there, and it will always be there. If the Puppies want to celebrate old school, spaceships and ray-guns SF, as many of them claim, yay. More power to them–I like old school spaceship and ray-guns. So turn your creative energy and your obvious passion toward celebrating the fiction you love, instead of gaming and attacking and destroying an award that other people love. That way we actually gain something from this–two something’s, actually, because there would be two awards–instead of just losing everything and making people angry and sad.

I don’t want to exclude anyone from the Hugo: it should be, and needs to be, a fan-driven award. But the fans driving it need to be people who care about it. If people spent more time supporting the things they care about, and less time fighting over what they don’t like, the world would be a much, much happier place.