Hugo Awards: Not Enough Fantasy?

[kevin_standlee]

Some years ago, when a Harry Potter book won Best Novel, there was a protest at how terrible it was that Fantasy won a Hugo and that the "Hugo Judges" must Do Something about it. As I say in a comment there, I would like to put protesters of that ilk in with this poster who complains about there not being enough fantasy due to "the Hugo's blatant anti-fantasy bias." It would be amusing in a "Let's you and him fight" sort of way.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Section 3.2.1 of the WSFS Constitution trumps the specific words in the name.

Besides, who do you want deciding that a work isn't sufficiently "science fictional?"

[howeird]

who do you want deciding that a work isn't sufficiently "science fictional?"
The same people I want deciding that a work isn't sufficiently fantasy or science fictional. That argument falls flat as long as there is any genre restriction. While some works of fantasy do border on having a science base, the Harry Potter series isn't one of them, and doesn't pretend to be.

the WSFS Constitution trumps the specific words in the name.
Yes it does. I guess if the membership wanted to, they could also add mystery, medical anatomy and kayaking to that list. Or remove the genre references completely. But that would defeat the purpose of a Sci-Fi fan group giving awards in its area of expertise, wouldn't it?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, the Harry Potter books take an extremely mechanistic, engineering-oriented view of magic (if a spell doesn't work, there's either a kink in the machine or else the user doesn't have his degree yet) that I find very SFnal in spirit, contrary to the pure fantasies I know and love best.

Now, it's true that "SFnal in spirit" doesn't equal "SF", but there are people like Larry Niven who insist that all kinds of scientifically impossible things get unjustly swept under the SF reg, simply because they're so convenient to have: time travel, FTL, and the like.

So are those not really "science fiction"?

Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the SF publishing genre and the man for whom our awards are named, said in 1962 or so that only one of the stories that had yet received the Hugo was really, in his view, SF rather than fantasy. But he didn't say which one, and you can really scratch your head over the list, wondering which one met Hugo's sanction, remembering that if it did, all of the others didn't.

The border between "SF" and "fantasy" is far more treacherous and full of kinks than the border between "SF/fantasy" and the outside world.