Priest Disembowels Award

I've been trapped in my office yesterday and today where Twitter is blocked. So, I missed the initial uproar and reaction to Christopher Priest's candid look at the recently-announced Clarke Award shortlist.

I wish I could have seen that reaction.

First, if you haven't already, read Priest's article yet, read it. I'll wait - it's long, but you need to read it all.

Done? Alright, good - no hellagood!

I'm not a big fan of awards, and I don't have the time or inclination to go into detail here. But I love Priest's reaction to the shortlist. I wish we had more of these - but only if they are of the same high quality as Priest's writing. It doesn't matter if you agree with him, think he was taking cheap shots and beating up puppies. It doesn't matter if the article invoked rage, sorrow, joyfull glee, or a reminder that you're behind on TPS reports again. It's good, balanced, writing, if rather sharp-edged. I very nearly laughed outload at times due to the harsh audacity through which Priest channels hs rage. And some of the quotes in this - priceless!

Miéville has already won the Clarke Award three times – which is not his fault...

For fuck’s sake, it is a quest saga and it has a talking horse.

Anyway, as you'd expect, reactions are stacking up around the intranets like lies on a political campaign (or comprises in a panel of judges?). [this is where I turn and look embarrassingly at the camera, or is that just insanely bad blogging fit for no award?]. I've gathered up a few of those reactions here, but I'm certian to be missing a few (EDIT: I'll be updating the list below as I find other reactions that interest me).

• Larry at the OF Blog
• John Scalzi
• Damien Walker
• Charles Stross - he's making t-shirts
• The Guardian
• Charles Tan
• Fantasy Book Critic
• io9
• Only the Best SFF
• Beauty in Ruins
• Cheryl's Musings
• Jeff VanderMeer
• Cat Valente
• John Scalzi (again)
• James Nicoll
• Fandom Wank

Race in SFF

I’m always interested when a major newspaper or other media outlet talks about SFF because it just doesn’t seem to happen all that often. Today the Boston Globe ran this article by Vanessa E. Jones about race in SFF – mainly concentrating on the scarcity of black authors in the genre. It seems likely this was inspired by the monochrome appearance of the attendees at the recent Readercon.

The article itself is a pretty good one, if being rather predictable. SFF does have too few non-white authors and there are subtle race, gender, sexual orientation, and other stereotypes are too often intentionally and unintentionally perpetuated in SFF works of both the past and present. I’m not really knowledgeable enough to write in any kind of detail about this – and I’m not going to be the one to point to all the good stuff that SFF is producing in this area. Other (likely much more informed and intelligent) responses are popping up around the blogosphere (and here's an interesting entry that's a bit older but well worth reading). But, what really got to me is the focus of this article. You see apparently the race issues are limited to the black minority. There doesn’t seem to be any other racial minority worth talking about, at least the article doesn’t mention any. Anyone else a bit bothered by this bit of tunnel vision?