Cixin Liu's "Three Body Problem" is the first-ever translation to win Best Novel; meanwhile, the uprecedented effort to put together an organized slate of science fiction that appealed to sexist (Sad Puppies) and misogynist/white supremacist (Rabid Puppies) and homophobic (both) orthodoxy to sweep the Hugos was a flop.
Six categories came in as "No Award." Some particularly galling defeats for the Puppies: Laura Mixon winning Best Fan Writer for her investigative piece on the sociopathic troll Requires Hate (Mixon ended her acceptance speech with "Black lives matter"); and Wesley Chu winning the Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Chu had been outspoken in his criticism of the puppies).
All the puppy nominees finished behind "No Award" in the ranked ballots.
Some preliminary number crunching on the votes by Brad from Sunnyvale: "About 700 rabid puppies, 1,100 sad puppies and 4,000 non-puppies. Puppies are 30% of voters… 4,000 non-puppy to 1,800 puppy balance caused no awards to any puppies."
That means that puppies, far from being science fiction's silent majority, crying out over the nonsenical proposition that science fiction had drifted into a quagmire of social speculation (not like the Good Old Stuff, like, say, Heinlein, Silverberg, Asimov, Huxley, Orwell, Cherryh, Kress, etc etc), they were outnumbered four to one.
In other news: Helsinki was selected as the site for Worldcon 2017.
At today's Worldcon business meeting, members of the Worldcon will consider a significant rule-change for Hugo nominations and voting, co-designed by Bruce Schneier, crafted to make the Hugo nomination system harder for small groups to sweep through slates. Update: It passed. It will need to be ratified at next year's Worldcon business meeting to take effect.
Hugo discussion thread [Making Light]
(Image: Hugo Awards Ceremony, Jeff Hitchcock, CC-BY)
