Hi.

Newbie thread (oh great...) for award years that we might think they got it all wrong.

On reading Ringworld for the first time this year, I found myself left quite cold. I mean, it was a very imaginative book indeed, with enough real science to keep it interesting and lots of set pieces that demonstrated the writer's wit -- And I realise that there's an element of satire in the book; castles in the sky, killer teddy-bear aliens, the lone barbarian warrior, etc. However, I just felt that the book was lightweight, having no real theme or moral. The constant use of the mock-swearword "tanj" was irritating (The characters have a lot of sex, so surely real a swear or two wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings?). Worse, the two female characters are both sex objects, one who is utterly gormless, the other a sex alave that sees herself as a sexual ambassador, and this may well be a satirical choice, but there is no feamle character strong enough to balance it, so it just ends up reeking of misogyny. In short, Not what I was expecting from a double Hugo and Nebula winner.

In the same year, Robert Silverberg released both Downward to the Earth and Tower of Glass, which are huge favourites of mine.

So, was Silverberg (or any of the other nominees) robbed? I think so. Or is it that the other nominees stood the test of time better?

Perhaps Niven is the victim of his own success and too many of his ideas have become familiar through his influence on subsequent writers? ...I'm not convincing myself here; I still think Ringworld is OK at best.

Who else was robbed?

Strangely, it seems I did not read a single book from the 1970 or 1971 lists where Ringworld won awards over Tower of Glass.  (If it was robbed, it was robbed 3 times: Hugo and Locus SF in '71 and Nebula in '70!)  I've put Tower of Glass on my reading list now so I can fix that lapse.

I think it's the nature of these awards to be controversial.  They're so subjective, and the process is so limiting, that they're really not "the best" of what was available but rather an indicator of what was popular at the time they were given.  As you mentioned, many of the books that won have not stood the test of time all that well just as many that were nominated, or indeed overlooked all together, have become classics today.  However, it seems clear that any book that wins an award has a better shot at being remembered and read years after regardless of relative quality.  I suspect those books get re-printed more often as well.  Ringworld is easily found in most bookstores where as Tower of Glass is harder to find new.

The awards are products of their times and as such, they don't necessarily make much sense to us today.  Like fashions from by gone days, they leave us scratching our heads wondering WTF?  How could they dress like that or listen to that music or vote that book for a Hugo?  I'm sure it made more sense at the time.  

In the end, somebody is always going to think somebody got robbed of a win which makes for spirited debate.  For me, there is no way in hell that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a better book than Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer but the Hugo volters thought otherwise in 2001.  Talk about robbery!  Of course, lots of people love HP and would disagree with me.

Giving awards the same year (or shortly thereafter) they were published does seem to produce results that are counter-intuitive decades later. I think that is why retro-Hugos are so different than the normal ones. The retros are given 50 years after publication, so hindsight makes the selection far easier, and, well, obvious.

Bradbury, Heinlein, and Asimov are the three retro winners. Anyone surprised? They just happen to be the big 3 of science fiction (well, I suppose it's a big 4, if you add Clarke, but my point still stands).

The real awards often go to people who become obscure later on, and that is why I like the WWEnd listings as they are. It allows me to discover winners who were selected for the quality of their work, and not necessarily name recognition. The retro-Hugos have their place (I consider it a sort of lifetime achievement award), but they don't do much to bring new material to my attention.

Having said that, I do think that many authors do get robbed because they are on the ballot with bigger names...and that is unfortunate. Perhaps that would be reason enough for WWEnd to start listing winners of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award , which WWEnd already lists).

-Rico