The Hugo nominees are out and I’m already having second thoughts about my decision to read all this stuff. Lots of it seems to fit in a personal mental classification I have labeled “fiction for people 20 years older than myself,” and I was wondering if I’ll still have that classification if I reach my nineties.
“Ugh, look at this story involving people drinking alcohol while trying to solve a mystery, that must be for my parents. Grown-ups are so boring.”
I’m very happy that Adrian Tchaikovsky is up for best novel, since I think he’s a genius and have enjoyed lots of his work. I’m also happy for Nnedi Okorafor, whose Death Of The Author has been in a holding pattern on my Kindle for a while now, waiting for me to get over my Dungeon Crawler Carl infatuation. And Carl’s next adventure comes out in less than a month, to further complicate my reading backlog.
I was happy about K-Pop Demon Hunters getting nominated, but when I wrote a piece about it for File 770 I realized that it had kind of a lukewarm acceptance among the science fiction crowd – probably a little young for them, so I figure they’ll go with Sinners. Which I liked but not nearly as much as KDH.
That goes along with the whole feeling that this crowd is old for me, even though I’m only two years away from my public transit discount. And some of these people I’m objecting to are also younger than me, so it’s not really chronology that’s setting me off. As far as “generation astrology” goes I’m on the cusp between Sign of the Boomer and Sign of the Gen X, but I was assigned one of those mutant brains that latches onto new experiences. So I have three tickets for the upcoming BTS tour but just told myself “naaah” when contemplating tickets for formative punk group the Damned (playing at the Fillmore in case you’re interested).
Sometimes my Gen X peers will share silly posts claiming that punk, or metal, or some other form of music they enjoyed in their youth, was always about celebrating modern sensibilities and virtues. And my memory, which hasn’t faded yet, reminds me of that live clip you can find on YouTube where Jello Biafra apologizes if he’s offending anyone before playing Nazi Punks Fuck Off.
So when I was reading descriptions for the novel entries, I ran across this one for one of the novel entries – A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett:
“The book blends classic detective tropes with biopunk fantasy …”
I immediately thought this smelled like “literary punk,” where diverse people unite to fight capitalistic oppression, instead of the kind of punk Jello was singing, in which he was part of a mostly-white-guy scene where he was apologizing to fascists before telling them to fuck off. It’s a revisionist thing that some of us old Gen X types do in order to present ourselves as morally superior. And it doesn’t sound like my kind of tale.
Nor do two other best novel nominees that include “mystery” in the description. It’s not my preferred genre. If I ever get interested in it, there are plenty of authors like Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard, and Dorothy L. Sayers for me to check out. I already know they’re good, judging from the acclaim. It’s not like I have any desire to read any mysteries that aren’t acclaimed yet, let alone mysteries that are expecting me to acclaim them. As if.
Mysteries are for people whose brains work differently from mine, just as Dungeon Crawler Carl is for people whose brains work similarly to mine.
As I get older, the distinction between “bad” and “not for people like me” has evolved, to the point where I can look at a chunk of media and reliably predict that I’ll probably have a bad experience if I engage it with it, but that’s not necessarily true for everyone.
When I first started voting for the Hugos, in 2016 during the Sad Puppies episode, I got the impression, based on the surrounding reporting, that it was an “all hands on deck” situation required to save science fiction from a takeover by right wing trolls. There was a book up for best novel, written by a woman who had been subjected to some racism by one of the people backing the Puppies. I did not like this book at all – it was full of psionics, which is an automatic fail for me.
I had a good discussion about psionics with another science fictional guy, who correctly noted that during the late 1900s there was legit scientific interest in psionics. Which didn’t pan out, but it was considered possible during the time when lots of science fiction was being written, and it’s rather firmly cemented in the speculative fiction culture. Psionics comes from new age translation of South Asian traditions involving “siddhis” or paranormal powers one might develop from practicing yoga, and forms of yoga that were supposed to unlock this potential were popular with individuals who considered themselves forward-thinking at the time. The movie Oppenheimer goes into this a bit.
So psionics is in that realm of “science fiction that never happened” along with the flying cars, the traveling nonchalantly through space and time, and other past speculations. It’s one of my pet literary peeves, especially of the people doing the psionics are grunting and straining like they’re severely deficient in fiber and haven’t pooped in a while.
And yet I voted for a psionics novel for best novel, based on wanting to award the author something after she endured that initial racism.
So I don’t want to do that again, feel like I’m compromising my values by doing something that also compromises them, but less. And while I’m also hesitant to hand out awards to people for just being themselves, right now I’m inclined to hand one to Adrian Tchaikovsky because I know he has written excellent books in the past.
And I’m also looking at the current controversy sweeping through the science fictional community, based on a troll post that combines heinous triggering crimes with bad math. Probably in an attempt to provoke infighting between the triggered and the mathematical. It’s succeeding wildly, and I’m seeing lots of anger at math-focused types, including comparing us to heinous criminals for the sin of nitpicking. And I’m saying us because I’m rather math-focused, and I work as a fact checker, and nitpicking is my job description.
Back in 2016 I was checking out the scene to determine if my nitpicking ass would fit into this subculture before I invested a lot of time and started building relationships. I don’t get along with fascists. But as it turned out, I don’t co-exist well with the anti-math types either. After a decade of experimentation, and my math skills advised there was a greater than 80% probability that I’d just get bullied over aggravating bullshit (like my innate nitpicking nature), and have an overall stressful experience, if I try to write spec fic in this crowd.
The plus side? I can go around judging books by their cover and refusing to read them, and it’s not like I’m going to face a tsunami of disapproval over my alleged unfairness. As opposed to my calculated and experience-informed decision that a particular experience will be suboptimal. What are they going to do about it, throw non-fun parties and not invite me to them?
In fact, most of the speculative fiction I’ve really enjoyed over the past few years has come from somewhere other than the established ecosystem – Andy Weir, Matt Dinniman, the geniuses behind KPDH. Adrian Tchaikovsky has been at it for years without getting nearly enough recognition. It doesn’t seem like the support of the SF ecosystem is necessary for success, and it might even be detrimental, but I’ve been writing for social reasons because I wanted to travel around to cons and have interesting conversations, not because I want to make a billion dollars, and that has shifted me to trying to write a trial novel (since I get along with lawyers far better than I do with writers) (Adrian Tchaikovsky is another techie/law nerd like me, except with a British perspective).
So, in summary, if you didn’t feel like slogging through all that (and I don’t blame you), my amended statement about Hugo voting is that I’ll read some of it while feeling free to snub the rest, and I will offer up my real opinions, as opposed to my people-pleasing “gosh I hope they accept me in this subculture” type opinions.
Also, I might even have something to promote at this Worldcon since I’m going to be in the dinosaur anthology.
So I’m not quite into table-flipping, burn-it-all-down, let’s blow this scene mode like I was back when one of this year’s nominees was involved in my one and only episode of workplace sexual harassment. Maybe I’ll tell that story some day.
It’s more like finding that recognition that this isn’t really a bad subculture as much as a “not for me” subculture that a few of my friends are in, which I can visit once in a blue moon as opposed to active involvement, and being at peace with that.
What I really want to do is perform my filk about Dungeon Crawler Carl set to the tune of Hotel California, but there is no way I’m going to get on an airplane with my good Ovation, so I’m scheming to see if I can find someone who will rent/loan me an electric and/or acoustic guitar for the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment