Alright, let’s tackle the most controversial Hugo awards since Sad Puppies 3—and possibly the most controversial Hugos ever!
The Nominees
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
The Actual Results
- Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
- Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
- The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
- The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
How I Would Have Voted
- No Award
- The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Explanation
The 2023 Hugo Awards were an epic clusterfuck, from which the Hugos might never recover (and honestly, I kind of hope they don’t). Not only did the organizers exclude a bunch of titles like Babel by R.F. Kuang that probably would have placed very high, if not outright won first place—excluded them for no other discernible reason other than that they might have offended the Chinese Communist Party, since China was hosting the awards—but they also disqualified thousands of Chinese ballots for the same reason that they disqualified thousands of Sad Puppy ballots in subsequent years since the big kerfluffle in 2015: namely, that they were Wrongfans having Wrongfun.
Apparently, to get on the Hugo ballot, you have to either 1) pander to or be a member of the SFWA mean girls club (for crying out loud, two of the authors on this year’s ballot were former SFWA presidents), or 2) write a lesbian love story. I suppose you can also get on the ballot if you write a love story that’s gay, transgender, polyamorous, or some other flavor of queer, but lesbians are easier because the male readers are less likely to be grossed out or confused by it.
Anyways, I didn’t enjoy any of these books, though I have to admit that I didn’t even try to read The Kaiju Preservation Society (because I cannot stand Scalzi, either as an author or a human. The Collapsing Empire with its random throwaway sex scene in the second or third chapter was the last straw for me) and The Spare Man (my wife picked it up and was so confused and turned off by the non-gendered pronoun dickery that I knew it was too woke for me). I DNFed Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series with Gideon the Ninth, for reasons that I detailed in my recap of the 2021 Hugo Awards.
As for Nettle & Bone, I was pleasantly surprised at first, because the love interest was heterosexual—which, for the Hugos, is very unusual these days. But there were other things about the book that turned me off, such as the anachronism of a religious medieval world that’s been gutted of anything religious that might offend a non-religious reader in 2023, and a very anti-natalist bias with some lines that could have come straight from Margaret Sanger. So that’s why I put Nettle & Bone below No Award, and didn’t even bother ranking it anywhere on my ballot.
Legends & Lattes wasn’t terrible, but I got bored after the first couple of chapters, and because of the lesbian love story I’m not too keen to try it again (though I suppose I could be persuaded otherwise). As for The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, I didn’t find anything objectionable with that one, and actually got about halfway through, but… I just didn’t care about any of the characters. Not a terrible book, but it just wasn’t for me.
Of the two, I think I liked The Daughter of Doctor Moreau better, or disliked it less, which is why I put it on the ballot above Legend & Lattes and below No Award. Why include anything on a ballot below No Award? Because the way that ranked choice voting works, you can still influence the outcome that way even if No Award is eliminated during the counting. It’s basically like saying: “I don’t think any of these books deserve an award, but if I had to award one of them, I’d give it to (1) and (2), in that order.”
So that’s my take on the infamous 2023 Hugo Awards. Frankly, I think it would have been much better if the Chinese wrongfans had completely taken it over, and made it so that Worldcon was held in China every other year, with Chinese authors dominating the Hugos from now on. There are certainly enough Chinese sci-fi readers to justify such a move. But alas, it seems that the Trufans are going to keep clutching the Hugos with a deathgrip until 1) they’re all dead (since most of them are boomers anyway), or 2) the Trufans and the Hugos both become culturally irrelevant, if indeed they aren’t already.
(Speaking of China, hi Mike Glyer! Still buying views from Chinese clickfarms to boost your online rankings? It must be a real slow news week if you pick up this blog for your File 770 pixel scroll.)
