Priest Disembowels Award

I've been trapped in my office yesterday and today where Twitter is blocked. So, I missed the initial uproar and reaction to Christopher Priest's candid look at the recently-announced Clarke Award shortlist.

I wish I could have seen that reaction.

First, if you haven't already, read Priest's article yet, read it. I'll wait - it's long, but you need to read it all.

Done? Alright, good - no hellagood!

I'm not a big fan of awards, and I don't have the time or inclination to go into detail here. But I love Priest's reaction to the shortlist. I wish we had more of these - but only if they are of the same high quality as Priest's writing. It doesn't matter if you agree with him, think he was taking cheap shots and beating up puppies. It doesn't matter if the article invoked rage, sorrow, joyfull glee, or a reminder that you're behind on TPS reports again. It's good, balanced, writing, if rather sharp-edged. I very nearly laughed outload at times due to the harsh audacity through which Priest channels hs rage. And some of the quotes in this - priceless!

Miéville has already won the Clarke Award three times – which is not his fault...

For fuck’s sake, it is a quest saga and it has a talking horse.

Anyway, as you'd expect, reactions are stacking up around the intranets like lies on a political campaign (or comprises in a panel of judges?). [this is where I turn and look embarrassingly at the camera, or is that just insanely bad blogging fit for no award?]. I've gathered up a few of those reactions here, but I'm certian to be missing a few (EDIT: I'll be updating the list below as I find other reactions that interest me).

• Larry at the OF Blog
• John Scalzi
• Damien Walker
• Charles Stross - he's making t-shirts
• The Guardian
• Charles Tan
• Fantasy Book Critic
• io9
• Only the Best SFF
• Beauty in Ruins
• Cheryl's Musings
• Jeff VanderMeer
• Cat Valente
• John Scalzi (again)
• James Nicoll
• Fandom Wank

It’s Official – All SFF Awards Are Useless

Ok, the title is a bit dramatic, but all SFF awards should be viewed with heavy skepticism. The Locus Awards were just released – these were the only major SFF award that anyone could vote for – as close to a true popular award as you could get in the SFF world. Well Neil Clark and Niall Harrison have voiced some very justified complaints about rule changes that were made by Locus after the votes were submitted. Apparently, subscribers to Locus are so much more important than the rest of us that their votes get to count twice. Yep, a subscriber’s opinion is worth double that of a non-subscriber.

So, the Locus Awards now join the ranks of the Nebulas and Hugos as awards that have results skewed enough to make them rather meaningless. The Nebulas have become little more than a popularity contest among writers with nominating rules that could confuse rocket scientists (but would probably make sense to the IRS). The Hugos have become a joke with such a small percentage of members of a club with membership fees actually voting that I have no idea who is deciding things. My feeling is that the results are heavily skewed by authors, editors, and over-weight, Baby Boomer trekkies that are most comfortable at home in a basement speaking Klingon.

The World Fantasy Award is at least transparent in that it’s a juried award whose judges are known. Perhaps this leaves the annual poll of the SF Site as one of the best judges of what may actually be award worthy with both an editor poll and reader poll.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I don’t take SFF awards very seriously and I’d recommend that others at least be skeptical.

Caveat Emptor!