It’s summertime again, that period in the calendar where its time to read the Hugo finalists before the awards are announced at the end of summer. I’ve been following the Hugo Awards since the 1960s, but I’ve never attended a Worldcon. I have assumed, if I had, I would have met my people. I’m not so sure anymore. In recent years, as I’ve read the finalists for the short fiction awards, it’s felt like that fandom has left me behind — maybe a long, long time ago.
I want to read science fiction. I don’t want to read fantasy. I have nothing against fantasy, and often the finalist stories that are fantasy are well-told and engaging. Maybe a better way to explain how I feel is by relating a personal experience. Before I got married I used to hang out at Susan’s family home with her parents and brothers. This was usually on the weekend, and they always had golf on the TV. The whole family loved to watch golf, to talk about the players, quibble over the shots, argue their favorite courses, and I had to sit there and watch and listen. I have no interest in golf. I don’t hate it. I’m just not interested. That’s how I feel about fantasy.
I don’t know why fantasy is handcuffed to science fiction. To me, the two are as different as westerns, mysteries, and romances. Why are they lumped together? Why isn’t there an SFWA and an FWA? Of course, SFWA now stands for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and I have to accept that. So, why not give out Hugos to science fiction stories, and Hobbits to fantasy stories? When I read the finalists for short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels, it feels like apples and oranges are competing.
Maybe most fans are now omnigenre readers, but to me, it feels like rock songs are up against classical music. It could also be philosophical to me. I see fantasy as allied with the supernatural, and science fiction allied with science. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the supernatural. But also, the two genres have different facing perspectives. Fantasy looks to the past, while science fiction looks to the future. Wouldn’t you say they each have different artistic goals? In that sense, isn’t putting them up for an award like haikus competing with sonnets?
Then there is the confusing issue of writers who blend fantasy and science fiction together. In the past couple of days, I’ve read two of these. The first, “The Quest for Saint Aquin” by Anthony Boucher which uses the faulty logic that if robots believe in God, shouldn’t that be proof for humans? The second was, “How Long the Shadows Cast” by Kenji Yanagawa, about a space explorer who falls in love before a trip that will cause a 250-year time rift between him and his lover. That’s a great science fictional subject, but it gets confusing when reincarnation is brought into the story.
The reason why Saint Aquin is science fiction is the religion is just a belief within the story, but Shadows is fantasy because the reader is asked to believe in reincarnation to make the story work. Fantasy fans will say its only a story, and the belief is only for within the story. As a hardcore science fiction fan, I say adherence to science in science fiction is like the rules for writing haikus and sonnets — following them is part of the art form.
We live in an age where people want to reject science. I see lumping science fiction and fantasy as being part and parcel with this trend to reject science. I’m sure most bookworms will be miffed with me, and say, “They’re only goddamn stories, don’t take em so seriously.” But look at what’s happened to science fiction itself — it’s given up on science too. Most SF fans now accept a dogma that given enough time science can invent anything. They feel that gives science fiction writers permission to imagine anything. That’s heretical to me because that’s the foundation of fantasy.
And to be honest, science fiction has never been that rigorous when it comes to science. But that’s no justification for allowing the art form to degenerate into fantasy.
I’m old, and maybe grumpy. Most readers will think I’m creating a tempest in a teapot. And maybe that’s true. All I know is its no longer fun to care who wins a Hugo. And it’s getting harder and harder to find stories I really admire, even in periodicals that claim to publish science fiction.
James Wallace Harris, 6/9/20
Classics of Science Fiction 
Hobbits for fantasy stories are a fun suggestion! I like it. But this whole subject is a ship that sailed long ago. Both the Hugos and the Nebulas have always been open to fantasy, and fantasy often dominates. We do have the Astounding and Sturgeon awards, which are said to be for science fiction only, and yet I’ve noticed clear cases of fantasy stories on the final ballot of the Sturgeons (“Magic for Beginners” came third in the Sturgeons, for instance). There are even some of the winners that may be fantasy, but I haven’t read them all (and have forgotten some that I have read).
I think no one cares about the distinction any more. One of the comments on the Facebook group we follow pointed out that there are still anthologies that serve up true SF, like Jonathan Strahan’s Infinity series, but they normally don’t make the award ballots.
I also used to enjoy following the Hugo ballot announcements, because I have been reading Asimov’s (on and off) for decades, and until about a decade ago, I would always have a horse or two in the race. I still read Asimov’s, but the magazine no longer provides award contenders, arguably through no fault of its own.
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I was shocked the other day when I saw that Asimov’s hadn’t won a Hugo award since 2012. Is this listing accurate?
https://www.asimovs.com/about-asimovs/awards/
I think we’re just getting old and young people have gone off in another direction. So it goes, as Billy Pilgrim used to say.
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You may have suggested why there is so little actual SF being published and nominated for awards in your “Science Fiction I’d Write at 68” post. Given the trouble you’re experiencing writing the science fiction you enjoy, I would imagine that other SF writers are experiencing the same issues. Many of the old classic SF subjects appear to be impossible. Plus, science and technology do not appear to offer solutions to the issues, like global warming, that we are facing now and in the near future. So what’s a hard science SF writer to do? Have you figured it out? You didn’t sound too hopeful.
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