“Best Editor” comes closest, though it’s a bit different from what you want. The editors of really good anthologies are usually nominated, even if they don’t always win. I’ve found a good ones by digging through the old nominations.
Gardner Dozois, for example, deservedly has a ton of Hugo’s for his editing, usually including his annual anthology of the year’s best. I’ll read just about anything he’s edited.
It might be worthwhile to introduce a “best anthology” or “best classic anthology” category, but there really just aren’t that many in any given year.
Dozios tends to lean a hair more towards the “artsy” side than the “storytelling” side, but overall he’s great.
I don’t know if there’s a real distinction, but for me “anthology” means “more than one author”, “collection” means "bunch of stories by one author (Kuttner/Moore aside. ).
Collections seem to get no love at all. I’d love to see a “best anthology” and a “best single-author collection” (or better, a “best classic–say, no story less than 10 years old?–single author collection”)
Hugos are owned by the World Science Fiction Convention. Every year at the Worldcon, those who are interested stage a meeting to look at categories. I think a category has to be voted on two consecutive times to be added, although a Special Hugo may be awarded by a particular convention.
There’s a huge, long history to what Hugo categories exist. Many people insist there are too many categories. Many people insist there are important categories missing. The resulting Hugos are the compromise between them. Pretty much everybody agrees that only new work should be rewarded, though, which is probably why collections and other historical works are set aside.
Disclaimer: I’ve never been part of this, and I’m only reporting what I’ve heard and read about over the years. Lots and lots of fan politics are involved.
World Fantasy has an award for best anthology, but that’s gone to both new and original ones. It also tends to go to original anthologies. There’s also a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, which goes to reprint stories from a single author. WFC has a different system than the Hugos; something like the Sad Puppies could never happen.
The Locus Awardsalso have categories for Anthology and Collection, and often go to reprint anthologies.
Note that there is precedent for removing nominees from the ballot. In 1989, P. J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton did exactly what the Sad Puppies are accused of doing: buying up memberships in order to push their novel, The Guardsman. The committee removed it from the ballot (though they were listed for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which isn’t technically a Hugo). In this case, though, the committee couldn’t really do the same thing without an even greater shitstorm.
Somebody brought this up on the SFWA thread and was told that it was supporters who did the block voting and the authors were exonerated. How they knew there was no communication between them all, I can’t say.
Ok–as long as this thread is quiet, I’m gonna hijack with a semi-unrelated question:
Reading all this current stuff led me to find that that Vox cretin wasn’t even the first person to be expelled from the SFWA*. I keep finding cryptic references to “THE LEM AFFAIR” with the SFWA
Here’s what I’ve pieced together:
George Zebrowski wanted Polish author Lem to be granted an honorary membership in the SFWA because…reasons.
Poul Anderson (then head of the SFWA) said “Sure, whatever” and did.
Lem said (or had previously said) < something bad > about Philip Jose Farmer. Also, depending on who you believe, Philip K. Dick may or may not have accused Lem of embezzling money for translating one of Dick’s books (Frederik Pohl, bunches of others say Dick did this, Dick says he doesn’t…but years later and Dick is not a reliable source. So…who knows?)
Farmer blew up and demanded Lem be de-Honorary Member’d
Big debates. Turns out bylaws forbade honorary membership anyway, if the person had been published in the USA.
Honorary Membership revoked.
Lem says "Big deal :rolleyes: "
So…two questions:
A) The above roughly accurate?
B) The bit that every reference seems to miss: What exactly did Lem say about SF in general and/or Farmer in particular?
*Let’s not quibble about “expelled”. That’s what the blogger said and I’m using his term.
Lem was extremely critical of western SF, claiming most writers were interested in adventure tales and sales than pushing literary boundaries (very nice coincidence given the current state of the Hugo’s). That it was mostly poorly written and conceived. He did use some of Farmer’s books as examples, so it wasn’t a personal insult but a professional one. Some SF writers naturally took offense at this, particularly Farmer.
Philip K Dick reportedly thought Lem was actually a pseudonym for a committee of communist writers designed for thought control through American SF publications (note: Dick was known to have mental health issues), though Lem was actually complimentary of Dick himself in general.
Lem himself claimed he accepted the honorary membership in an attempt to change attitudes about writing from within the organization and that he wasn’t successful, therefore uninterested in signing up for active membership.
Here’s what SFWA has on its FAQ on the matter:
[QUOTE=SFWA]
While it is true that Lem was unpopular with some SFWAns for his opinions, there was apparently a miscommunication about the meaning of the term “honorary” membership. According to the SFWA by-laws then in force, honorary membership was intended not as an “honor” but as a means to extend benefits of SFWA membership to individuals who would otherwise be ineligible, such as SF writers who had not published in the U.S.
(Another honorary member was J.R.R. Tolkien, whom SFWA assisted with regard to an unauthorized U.S. edition of Lord of the Rings. As soon as an authorized edition was published in the U.S., Tolkien joined as a duly paid-up “Active” member.)
When it was noted that Lem’s work had been published in the U.S., making him ineligible for further honorary membership, he was offered full, voting, Active membership. An individual SFWAn offered to pay for this membership, in case the currency transaction was an obstacle. Lem declined both offers.
[/quote]
Some other writers claimed it was out of spite than strict adherence to the rules (which were enforced haphazardly anyway), but it was likely to be a mix of both some spite and the actual case that he was no longer eligible for an honorary membership.
Thanks! I finally found some of Lem’s actual words, and he sounds like Grandpa Simpson. An irrelevancy shaking his cane at people impotently as he sneers about ideas he no longer understands.
Note that this is largely impenetrable because of the “Author A said < see document C > about Author K who objected to Author G’s interpretation of < document X> written by Author A[sub]1[/sub]” crap.
A few relevant excerpts
I can’t find the stuff where he criticizes Farmer at all or singles out Dick.
Also, at least based on the translations I’ve read of Lem, he is in absolutely no position to criticize anyone about…well…anything, literary, popular or kitsch.
Also there’s speculation that Zebrowski wanted the honorary membership for Lem specifically (as opposed to any other author in the world) because Zebrowski speaks Polish and was hoping for work translating Lem.
[ol]
[li]In the early 60s, SFWA created an “honorary membership” category. Honorary members were those who had never had anything published in the US; they were not required to pay dues. The category was created for one particular author: J.R.R. Tolkien. His books had been pirated in the US (it’s more complicated than that, but bear with me) and SFWA wanted to help him out, but, if they admitted him as an active member, it would legitimize the pirate publication and hurt any legal action. After the pirated edition was shut down, someone else published Tolkien in the US and he joined SFWA as an active member.[/li][li]At some point, George Zebrowski thought it would be a nice gesture to give Lem an honorary membership. Since SFWA has the institutional memory of a goldfish, no one remembered the purpose of the honorary membership (even though it was written in the bylaws), and Lem was given the honor.[/li][li]Lem probably didn’t pay much attention. In one interview, he was very dismissive of SFWA, probably conflating it with Soviet-style writers organizations which were run by the government.[/li][li]Quite a few SFWA members heard of the interview (Phillip Jose Farmer was furious about it). The objection was “We’re paying these dues to support the organization; why should we give a free ride to someone who hates it?” The problem f[/li][li]In response to the controversy, someone actually read the bylaws. They clearly said it could only go to people who had not been published in the US. Lem had had several books translated and published in the US at that time he was named honorary member.[/li][li]SFWA president Fred Pohl (see his comments here) said that a mistake had been made and the honorary membership was rescinded. Lem was welcome to join as a regular member and Pohl would pay his dues if he liked. Lem declined.[/li][li]Some members didn’t want him even as a paying member, but that was never tested.[/li][/ol]
So while it’s technically correct that Lem was kicked out, he was not banned from the organization, and he never should have been an honorary member in the first place. It wasn’t that he was dismissive of SFWA (there’s a long line of members who have done that), but that he attacked the organization after they let him have a free ride.
Man, Scalzi annoys me when he’s writing as a blogger. I love much of his stuff (the best proof that something’s wrong with the Hugos is that his Lock In wasn’t even nominated when it was the best SF novel I’ve read since…geez…maybe Vinge’s Fire Upon The Deep*). But even when I agree with him (as I do with his comments about not tarring all the people on the Sad Puppy slate with the same brush), there’s something about his blog voice that’s like someone squeaking balloons and running fingernails on a blackboard to me.
That said, thanks for the great link and I think he makes good points. Even if his ‘voice’ there sets my teeth on edge.
*There have been plenty of other great SF novels I’ve read between the two, but those two just blew me away.
Found it. It’s in “Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case - with Exceptions” originally written in 1971 and reprinted several times since. In the “Microworlds” translation I have, the relevant section is towards the end in an extended section on how Philip K Dick should be (but isn’t) the guiding light of the SF of that era and just how great he is.
There’s a section where he’s basically saying that there’s a New Wave of writers (he dismisses the Old Wave - or what we call Golden Age - writers almost entirely) who are trying to imitate their betters but doing so poorly and basically not even catching up to the pinnacle of SF that was HG Wells.
Personally, I disagree, but Lem was always quite the odd duck.
[QUOTE=Stanislaw Lem]
Repressed but powerful inferiority complexes are constantly at work, and we can detect this because all the experimenters seem to believe from the bottoms of their hearts that the medicine and models for redeeming science fiction can be found only in the Upper Realm. Out of this belief came Farmer’s Riders of the Purple Wage (no mean piece of prose, but of a markedly secondary, or even tertiary, character to Farmer’s model, Joyce’s Ulysses, which is itself modeled on The Odyssey) and Stand on Zanzibar, which, as we all know, was written by Brunner on the model of Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passes. The New Wavers seized expressionism, surrealism, etc., and so they completed a collection of old hats; it becomes a race backward which still arrives in the nineteenth century before they know it. But a blind search can give only blind results; just “blind shells” (duds).
The novel has a somewhat different tone than the short story–I read the two back-to-back so it was a little jarring, but the novel just rocks.
Thanks for posting that. What’s funny is that there’s a very small but extremely vocal group of Brit/Euro SF types who have gargantuan inferiority complexes about “American” science fiction. Aldiss, Clute, Lem (apparently). Aldiss in his (well worth reading) Billion Year Spree goes so far as to dig up a copy of some Swiss(?) pamphlet from 1873(?) that probably had a circulation of 12 copies, where the idea of a generation space-ship is mentioned to “prove” that Heinlein stole the idea. Lem’s blatherings fit right in with that. So for all Lem’s talk about inferiority complexes, he’s the one showing one: “Their stuff sells and mine doesn’t, so they’re obviously bad writers”
An easy litmus test is to ask how the person feels about Gernsback. If they say “Meh–he popularized a type of science fiction that was more gadgets and less ‘good writing’ than Wells, but mostly harmless”, they’re not part of this crowd. If, however, foam appears on their lips and spittle starts flying as they rant about how Gernsback “stole” real science fiction from Wells…then…they’re probably Brian Aldiss or one of this sort.
Nah, he was just a true believer. His stuff sold just fine, tens of millions of copies world wide. He may actually be the most widely read Polish author ever, and he sold more copies of his books in the US than most of the people he criticized.
He really did think himself a great literary talent and that SF was filled with opportunists instead of real artists (with a few exceptions).
He had some other, to be polite, unconventional and sometimes unpopular viewpoints. For example, he was increasingly critical of modern technology, like the Internet, the television, and many aspects of computing.
).