The proposal to simplify the Hugos by eliminating the Best Novelette category and replacing it with a Best Saga category is an excellent start, in large part because it will completely eliminate any interference with those fresh young talents who nobody is ever interested in and who just complicate things.
But it doesn’t go far enough. A few more appropriate changes would certainly help usher the awards into the twenty-first century.
First, eliminate the short story and novelette awards as well. As everybody keeps pointing out, the short fiction markets are dying and the annual competition for an award not supported by the free market is unseemly. Short fiction has never produced anything of worth, anyway. Name just one time it has. I bet you can’t.
Make the contest all about novels, the big awards that really mean something, and make the smallest award the one for best stand-alone novel, because everybody also knows that stand-alone novels are for writers with no staying power.
Then make the awards about series of different lengths. Best Trilogy, Best Open-Ended Series, and Best Saga that Takes So Long to Write that the Final Volume Has to Be Written By Another Named In the Author’s Will.
Make the rule to render ineligible any series that has been adapted for movie or television. This makes sure they’re not just a give-away to George and spares him from having to buy another house in that cul-de-sac.
Render ineligible any books produced by American publishers whose representatives have ever said anything more than five people find offensive. Send Theodore Beale an annual rocket ahead of the ceremony with the understanding that if he ever complains about it, you won’t send him any more. Break this rule whenever there’s a letter-writing campaign.
Render ineligible any books by John Scalzi or Seanan McGuire, because.
Render ineligible any stories about dinosaurs unless time travel or cloning is involved. If no dinosaur dies from high-tech weaponry, it’s not science fiction.
Render ineligible any books that aren’t certified science fiction by a committee to be named later. Books published as mainstream that may have science fiction elements, or books that receive widespread mainstream attention and can be found on bookstore shelves other than the five that also have Star Trek novels, because those other parts of the building have cooties.
Make sure the mainstream press knows that Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy and Michael Chabon and Thomas Pynchon will never be stealing the thunder of anybody who writes about galactic overlords, ever again. This is a science fiction award, dammit.
And finally, change the name of the Hugo to the Science Fiction Award Dammit.
Comment By: Zyada K
June 22nd, 2015 at 11:19 am
“Short fiction has never produced anything of worth, anyway. Name just one time it has. I bet you canât.”
I guess this wasn’t an actual challenge, dagnabbit.
Comment By: Erin Kenny
June 22nd, 2015 at 12:18 pm
This made my morning!
Comment By: Stephen Kissinger
June 22nd, 2015 at 6:18 pm
Will twelve issues of Saga a year be enough to support this new format? 😛
Comment By: Gill Avila
June 22nd, 2015 at 9:23 pm
I miss that “Man’s magazine.” Great preposterous stories and adventure–“We sank Tojo’s monster sub!” with a pic worthy of Jim Steranko.
Comment By: David Vineyard
June 23rd, 2015 at 12:22 am
Any series that can be read in the Lifetime of an average reader must be disqualified along with any saga that can be summarized in less than ten pages.
Comment By: Jim Kelly
June 23rd, 2015 at 7:19 am
Tell it, brother!
Comment By: John Cairnes
June 23rd, 2015 at 6:48 pm
Plus: we must “simplify” the nomination and voting process by incorporating a data set based on the author’s date of birth, shoe size, body-mass index, LDL cholesterol count, the number of members of their immediate families born on a Tuesday, the percent change of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the period the book was written and six rolls of a pair of 20-sided dice printed with random 4-digit prime numbers, and calculated with a fourth-dimensional algorithm understood only by three Ukranian mathematicians who were collectively struck by lightning in 1974.
And we’ll call the process “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Hugo”.