Tor and the 2014 Hugo Awards

by J. D. Popham

The 2014 Hugo Awards were held yesterday at the World Science Fiction Convention, hosted this year by Loncon3, the London Science Fiction Convention.  I walked away from this year's ceremony with three main observations: 

First, Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie's first novel, picked up a well-deserved win for best novel. Ancillary is thoughtful, well written and a good story well told in the best tradition of Science Fiction.  Ms. Leckie's novel pretty much ran the table for awards in its category this year.  Ancillary Justice won the Arthur C. Clarke award (for Science Fiction first published in the United Kingdom), the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and the Locus award for best first novel. Taken together, this represents a rare consensus across the Science Fiction/Fantasy community with regard to the quality of Ann Leckie's work.

Second, Game of Thrones, 'The Rains of Castamere' won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. During the presentation (which was broadcast on UStream TV) there was a bit of snarking on Twitter that at least it didn't go to Dr. Who.  This puzzled fellow blogger Amanda Rutter from England, who asked whether there was some backlash behind the sniping at the beloved BBC series.

The answer is that the good Doctor has been dominating this category for the last ten years.  In fact on this year's ballot alone the Time Lord occupied three of the six final nominations for the category, with two episodes from the show itself (The Day of the Doctor and In the Name of the Doctor) and one comedic send-up of the show (The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot).  While Game of Thrones has won this category two years running (winning with Game of Thrones, 'Blackwater' in 2013), Doctor Who has not had fewer than two nominations in the category since 2005.  From 2006 to 2012 the good Doctor pretty much owned Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, losing only once; in 2009 (the year of the great television writers' strike) to Joss Whedon's Dr. Horribles' Sing Along Blog.  

I enjoy Doctor Who very much.  However, it would be wise for the Hugo Awards to limit final nominations for shows in an episode format to one episode.  Allowing a single television show, however popular, to occupy multiple slots on the final nomination ballot presents a myopic view of the state of the art.  There's a lot of excellent Science Fiction and Fantasy being produced in short form these days that are well regarded by fandom, but looking at the Hugo ballot the last few years, one would think that weren't the case.  Limiting final nominees by a single franchise would present a more expansive view of what fandom is watching.

Finally, you'll recall I pointed out earlier this year that Tor Books is very far ahead of the other Science Fiction and Fantasy imprints when it comes to proactive outreach to the fan community.  Their website, Tor.com, does more than merely flog it's latest offerings and broadcast marketing-chum onto the web. Tor maintains a family of bloggers whose writings inform opinion for much of Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom. It publishes short stories, novellettes and novellas and has the resources needed to ensure good quality both in terms of the fiction acquired and the editing and presentation of that fiction on its web site. The authors, bloggers and editors in the Tor community know each other and each others' work. Fans who visit and read the Tor website know them as well. 

And you can see the pay-off on Tor's community building strategy in this year's Hugo Awards. Tor authors won the Hugo's in the short story, novella and novelette categories. Ellen Datlow, a Tor editor, won the Hugo for Best Editor, Short Form. Aidan Moher, whose A Dribble of Ink won the Hugo for Best Fanzine is a former member of the Tor.com blogger community. This doesn't mean Tor expects its community to vote in lock-step, but that Tor understands that people in a community tend to look kindly on works by their peers within that community and that translates into both votes and vote recommendations.

Of course winning Hugos in the shorter fiction forms doesn't automatically translate to revenue for Tor. However, it goes a long way toward reinforcing the image of the Tor brand and the Tor community as a center of quality in Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom.  It creates pride and shared accomplishment within the Tor community - a sense of 'Look what we did'.  So, when Tor promotes books to that community, readers and writers therein are much more likely to consider reading those books and then going on to generate positive social media buzz for those books they enjoy.  

What I find fascinating is that none of Tor's competitors seem minded to repeat Tor's success in this area.  While Tor's website has become an internet destination for SF&F fandom, Orbit, Del Rey, Harper Voyager, Angry Robot, DAW, AceRoc and the rest of the Science Fiction and Fantasy imprints, all seem flat-footed and crude when it comes to their presence on the web. Their websites and social media broadcasts announce their presence and push product, but little more. While they seem to view social media as mere digital billboards for peddling their imprints, Tor is integrating themselves into the fan's Science Fiction and Fantasy experience.

So props go to Tor this Hugo season. Congratulations, and well done. As for the rest of the SF&F imprints, you might want to slip out of your bow-ties and eye-shades, get off the sidelines and into the game. 

The Heirs of Scheherazade

by J. D. Popham

The other day my wife turned to me and, not quite meeting my eyes, asked, “Do you think I’d like Game of Thrones?”

The question caught me so flat-footed that for a moment it didn’t quite translate.   I mean, she might as well have asked “Do you think I might enjoy shooting heroin?”, or “Would you object to a threesome with Scarlett Johansson?”

Early in our relationship it was established that fantasy and science fiction (F&SF) were, for Susan, NMG (‘Not My Genre’).  My occasional suggestion that she approach F&SF as a logical extension of the magical realism literary genre were, one might say, dismissed.  Good soul that the is, she had tried on occasion to humor me and watch a Science Fiction movie or television show, but was simply unable to engage.  On one occasion she left the room saying, “I’m not drunk enough for this”.  And so, F&SF have been my private, albeit somewhat looked-down-upon, domain.

This isn’t to say that she restricts herself to Masterpiece Classics, foreign documentaries and black and white arts films. She is not without her own guilty pleasures when it comes to movies and television. She takes unashamed glee in watching such shows as Scandal, Revenge and Damages: US telenovelas steeped in estrogen and unabashedly over the top.  I suppose if they held out some expectation of gratuitous nudity I might be persuaded to watch an episode with her now and then.  Sadly, Kerry Washington persists in revealing little more than plot points, and so these shows remain NMG for me, and Susan’s exclusive bailiwick.

For some years this has been the way of things. Usually we only indulge in our respective ‘reprehensible television’ genres when the other is not around. Thus, harmony has been maintained.

So understand that, when Susan asked about watching Game of Thrones, it made evident a neigh-seismic shift in the cultural milieu.  Cracks have begun to appear in the walls of the fantasy and science fiction ghettos.  fantasy and science fiction have gone legit.

It has been a long time coming.  The fantastic and unworldly have been inseparable from the art of fiction since, in some dark and ancient past and in a language long forgotten, the words 'Tell me a story' were first uttered.  Gilgamesh, Scheherazade, Beowulf, The Odyssey, all hailing from separate oral traditions, bear witness to the human fascination with tales that transport the listener beyond the banality of our day to day.

However, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, a more structured literary culture and associated business model began to coalesce.  Not surprisingly, it took on the values and structures of the culture in which it emerged, and this was an industrial age: a practical time. While the lower classes might squander their time and money foolishly on 'penny dreadfuls', gentler folk of higher station and reasoning abilities (if they must read fiction at all) were expected to read respectable 'literature'.  Gods, monsters, alien worlds and other elements of the fantastic were, in general, consigned to the outer darkness of 'popular' fiction.  Literature, would have no truck with them.

As complex, insightful prose could not compete for "Joe's beer money", the turn of the century found the heirs of Scheherazade reduced to cadging for nickles in the pulp magazine trade.

Happily, The Golden Age of Science Fiction, emerging in the late 1930s, rescued Fantasy and Science Fiction from bug-eyed monsters, gizmos, women in brass brassieres and the other trappings of pulp space opera.  The New Wave movement of the 1970's pushed the genre further along toward the borders of literature's high gardens and gated communities. However, despite these advances and a number of works given grudging respect by the guardians of respectable fiction, fantasy and science fiction as a larger genre has remained a literary ghetto. 

Until the one-two punch of the internet and the direct cable television changed the game. 

Might-have-been novelists who previously bypassed the East coast print scene for the more lucrative environs of Hollywood screenwriting are now shifting their course yet again, this time toward cable television, the newly anointed center of the creative writing universe.  Here, at least for the moment, writers have an unprecedented degree of latitude to create compelling stories. Enabled by relatively cheap digital production and special effects tools, they can create new worlds or destroy old ones, cast aside the known and set their stories and parables in venues that have never been.  

The heirs of Scheherazade have found a new voice and a new venue.

And, it appears, an audience has been waiting for them. Today's younger viewer, the entertainment industry's most desirable demographic, are not strangers to Fantasy and Science Fiction.  To them, Jean-Luc Picard, Katniss Everdeen and Harry Potter are not kid stuff, but cultural touchstones.  Suddenly, Game of Thrones' Westeros is as legitimate a setting for a costume drama as Downton Abbey's Yorkshire, or Boardwalk Empire's Atlantic City.  

As often happens these days, the young audience is showing its elders the way. Fantasy and science fiction is catching on, albeit grudgingly, among responsible adults. When noted author Chang-rae Lee sets his latest novel in a dystopian future, and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times cries out "Bring me my dragons!", you know we've arrived at a cultural watershed.  At this point, I won't be surprised if Dune begins to appear next to The Prince and The Book of Five Rings on the bookshelves of corporate middle managers.

This is not to say that all fantasy and science fiction has been redefined as high art.  The genre serves too broad an audience.  For every Shakespearean prince of Thebes, there are a host of rude mechanicals gamboling or stumbling about on the F&SF stage.  The quality of writing in Fantasy and Science Fiction is, overall, nothing if not irregular.  Which is, I think, for the good.  This genre, founded on the question 'What if?' and long-time home of willful dreamers, has always been a welcoming and unselfconscious place. 

And that is fertile ground for good stories.