Well. That was a fucking disaster.
I don’t know about you guys, but when I think of an awards ceremony, I like to think of it as celebrating the present. As something that gives a voice and a platform to (some) of the best artists and creators doing work at the moment.
What I don’t think of is old men dwelling on the Good Old Days for 3 hours of an awards show that lasted 3 hours and 18 minutes.
Especially when that dwelling involves the glorification of John W. Campbell, a man who had notably played devil’s advocate (and sometimes just advocate) for such detestable topics as slavery and racial segregation. Robert Silverberg — who in my opinion shouldn’t have been on the show after his graceless and vulgar comments about N.K. Jemisin — had the audacity to describe Campbell as “the greatest of them all”. Toastmaster George R.R. Martin was also repeatedly complimentary about Campbell throughout the show.
This is on the same show where the amazing Jeannette Ng won an award in part for drawing attention to the fact that John W. Campbell was a fascist. As Ng alluded to in this year’s (also amazing) acceptance speech, they weren’t telling us anything that we shouldn’t already have known, and that we hadn’t already been told.
Pulling down monuments to dead racists is not the erasing of history, it is how we make history. And I am proud to celebrate that with you here. And I am humbled to have contributed in this small way to these conversations, these revolutions within and without our genre. Not that I ever thought it would be controversial. Moorcock has been calling Campbell a fascist for years. But unlike Moorcock’s context, my voice is shriller, and my, well… I’m not white. And that makes me sound angry, or I become “graceless and vulgar”. But I really didn’t think I was saying anything new, anything you didn’t already know. I wasn’t speaking to make change. I thought everyone already knew… and this was “okay”. They were okay with it, it was what normal looked like to me. So thank you everyone who made it happen, who actually made it happen.
Jeannette Ng, acceptance speech for 2020 Best Related Work Hugo Award
In a year where statues of myriad dead racists have pulled down, we shouldn’t be wasting any time trying to build them back up. Yet that’s exactly where last night’s Hugo Awards chose to spend its energy. And I use that word “chose” very deliberately, as there is no excuse for this shit in a show filled with pre-recorded segments.
This holds doubly true for mispronunciations. Why go through all the effort of putting together a pronunciation guide if the toastmaster is going to ignore it? Someone, somewhere made the choice that these segments weren’t going to be re-recorded. It’s desrepectful, ignorant, and belittling in the extreme.
I feel awful for all of the award winners and nominees from last night. This should have been a time to celebrate them. This should have been a time for celebrating the present and looking forward to the future. A time for looking at what’s going on in the world, and thinking of what we in the community can do better.
R.F. Kuang’s acceptance speech focused on the issues that authors of colour face when entering the industry, from microaggressions to blatant racism:
If I were talking to a new writer coming to the genre in 2020, I would tell them… Well, if you are an author of colour, you will very likely be paid only a fraction of the advance that white writers are getting. You will be pigeon-holed. You will be miscategorised. You will be lumped in with other authors of colour whose work doesn’t remotely resemble yours. The chances are very high that you will be sexually harassed at conventions, or the target of racist microaggressions, or very often just overt racism. People will mispronounce your name repeatedly and in public, even people who are on your publishing team. Your cover art will be racist and you will have to push against that, and the way people talk about you and your literature will be tied to your identity and your personal trauma instead of the stories you’re actually trying to tell. And if I had known all of that when I went into the industry, I don’t know if I would have done it. So I think that the best way we can celebrate new writers is to make this industry more welcoming for everyone.
Rebecca F. Kuang, acceptance speech for 2020 Astounding award
How disheartening must it be for those authors starting out on their journeys to watch last night’s awards, and see the hosts attempt to undermine the progress that authors of colour have driven?
Well, fuck them.
If there is one thing to take from last night, it’s that when the present got a chance to shine, oh it fucking shone. The winners’ speeches were a bright and guiding light through the fog.
THAT is where our energy should be spent. THOSE are the people we should be giving a platform to. To be blunt, I couldn’t give a shit about the life and times of George R.R. Martin, or if someone dropped an award in 1967.
The future is here. It’s bright. It’s exciting. It’s full of talent and insight and righteous rage. Fuck me, but it’s time we stopped ignoring it.
2020 has become a clusterfuck of what happens when nostalgia is allowed to run amok.