As per that ancient Chinese curse, SF and fantasy have been living through interesting times. This year attempts to rig the Hugo ballots by disaffected, right-wing, mostly American fans – known as the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies – were heartily rebuffed by fandom more generally. The Puppies have not gone away, but as the year ends, it seems their influence is waning. More recently, the World Fantasy Awards decided to change their trophy from a bust of HP Lovecraft’s head to something else, as yet undecided, on the grounds that identifying the award so closely with a man who was in life so racist and antisemitic was inappropriate. Some on the right reacted angrily to this decision, as though Lovecraft himself were somehow being censored. He is not, of course: his books are as available, and as widely read, as ever.
What we are witnessing is a struggle for the soul of the genre. In the blue corner are those who look back nostalgically to a notional “golden age”: mostly white, male, American SF, with exciting adventures, accurate science, cutting-edge technology and a sense of wonder. In the red are those who see SF now as a global literature, hospitable to the alien and to otherness, an imaginative space in which old certainties are challenged, new stories get told, and where the pulp increasingly crosses over with the literary.
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