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Comment by danielodievich | Hacker News Reader

Hugo and Nebula awards drive my fun-reading list. It is sad to hear that even this quaint corner of the book world is no longer ignored by vote and review manipulators. Is nothing holy anymore!? man shakes a fist at the space-ship shaped cloud

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They've been actively under attack for over a decade now.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies

We can't have nice things.

Not justifying their actions, but the movement was reactive to the general vibe of "vote for this one because the author is a ___".

I had been to several worldcons before sad puppies happened and that is literally what was being said about the nominees and winners.

Just compare to the lists of books from the 60's to 80's to the ones from 2000 onward. It's hard for me to say the quality is still.

They claimed there was bloc voting based on non-literary critera and responded by definitely bloc voting for non-literary criteria.

I've read ~half the winners from 1960-1980, and a slightly larger proportion from 2000-2020. I found the more recent novels had more interesting concepts and vastly improved writing. The quality overall has increased significantly. Pretty painful to try to read eg Asimov nowadays

I was at some of these worldcons at the time and where it may not have been bloc voting, it was definitely voting for people over stories. And I'm talking open discussion of voting for effect rather than story quality. Worldcon attendance around 2012 was heavily skewed older and I might say a hippy vibe.

Sad puppies at least was completely honest about it. I don't agree with what they did, but it's honest. Everyone's pretending like they're voting for things nobody has read because they read them and not because the author has been "blessed" as appropriate for accolades. Also, not saying it should be a strict popularity contest.

Also, 2000's looks pretty normal and it doesn't seem to kick off until 2010+.

I could be convinced, though. It's hard to pick out a book from the last 15 years which which will be on the read list 30 years from now. Except The Three Body Problem, which I loved and I think will last.

So, I'll check back on this in 30 years and see how it's aged.

It's funny, I found the three body problem to be challenging and unrewarding to read, which is similar to some of those old Hugo winners. Might have worked better as a novella than a 3 part series.

If I were asked to pick winners from the last 15 years that will still be recommended reads in 2050, I'd pick Ancillary Justice and The Fifth Season. From nominees not winners, perhaps Seveneves or Too Like The Lighting would qualify. The most recent book I can say will definitely be on the to-read list is 2000's winner, Vernor Vince's A Deepness In the Sky

> The quality overall has increased significantly. Pretty painful to try to read eg Asimov nowadays

I wouldn't go that far, Asimov is still awesome, with all the weaknesses that have always been in his works but with all the strengths, too.

That said, I agree that the SF/Fantasy scene has gotten some really amazing works lately. I don't agree with all the Hugo winners of the last few years, but that's because we have so much good competition lately :)

I kind of get the sentiment. If I go back to read Lovecraft or Verne, the technical aspect of their writing is poor by today's standards. Their stories are creative and original, though. There is a sameness to so many stories today.

Also that stuff last year in China. The key seems to be not to be the very most prominent award; Locus and BSFA and Nebula and so on seem to have a lot less strife.

The strife is more obvious with the Hugo than Locus/BSFA/Nebula because the Hugo has an intentionally open voting membership. Anyone with interest and the cost of a membership may vote. Voting blocs have to be public attempts to sway popular opinion. That very nature of it forces it to be public drama.

Some of the Chinese controversy about the Chengdu's WorldCon last year was as much about that natural sway in attending membership simply by being hosted in a controversial country like China no matter what else happened. It's called WorldCon for that reason and that sway in voting membership was always somewhat intentional to keep the Hugo Awards worldly and diverse. Some people were always going to have issues with a Chines WorldCon, even if they didn't also end up very publicly making mistakes.

Yeah, there were the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies campaigns, which led Worldcon to change the award rules.

Then in 2023 there was the self-censorship incident for the Chengdu Worldcon (and also some question about the ballot for selection of Chengdu in the first place, I believe).

Now this.

The Hugos are really having a lot of trouble recently.

The Sad Puppies were a response to the sorry state of Hugo voting, not the start of it. The Hugo process was designed (and to use that word at all is overstating things) for a world where there were enough independent SF magazines to both avoid groupthink and hopefully cover most of what was worth reading between them.

Hah. The WorldCon was designed to travel between cities and between continents to increase diversity of opinion. It doesn't need independent SF magazines to avoid "groupthink", it already has a world of diversity and the natural forcing function of the primary voters being attending members and attending members encouraging local memberships in addition to travellers.

That was as much a part of the controversy of the Chengdu WorldCon as any of the mistakes they made. The WorldCon was built to welcome that sort of diversity of opinion from an entirely under-represented part of the world in voting to that point. Even if the Chengdu WorldCon hadn't made silly mistakes it still would have angered a lot of people by how much it proved the Hugos actually aren't about "groupthink" and try to get a diversity of opinions.

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