about the Hugos

So apparently Jonathan Ross is presenting the Hugos.

seananmcguire is very upset. scalzi has no idea what's going on but nobody he reads is happy about this. So I looked up who the guy is.

He's openly misogynistic. He's openly heterosexist. He's openly ableist. He makes fat jokes. In a different category of what's wrong with this choice, he doesn't produce speculative fiction anything, which is distinctly odd for the person presenting the most prominent awards for speculative fiction. And while I'll grant that this last category of what's wrong with this choice isn't his fault, he's a white cis man, and there's a long history of the Hugo presenters being white cis men.

I've been following the SFWA debacles about representation and diversity and misogyny and so forth. Not closely following, but enough to get the gist. Picking Jonathan Ross to present the Hugos seems like one more car in speculative fiction's train to Irrelevantshitville.

I realize I am a minnow in a very large pond and nobody who could affect this decision is going to hear my voice, but: speaking as a speculative fiction writer, I want the fiction I love, both that I produce and that I consume, to reflect underrepresented populations, both those I'm part of and those I'm not. I want speculative fiction to produce delight and shock and I-never-thought-about-it-like-that in its consumers—all its consumers, who are not and should not be limited to a small demographic slice, if only because people outside that small demographic slice also have money. I want speculative fiction to be inclusive, not exclusive.

I don't want to be on a train to Irrelevantshitville. And the more the speculative fiction community tries to exclude people, the faster that train goes.

ETA: He's withdrawn. \o/


crossposted from conallpublications.com