I haz the award sad

April 10, 2015 by iansales 10 Comments

Back in 2012, I self-published a science fiction novella, Adrift on the Sea of Rains. I had expected it to disappear without trace, so I was surprised and delighted when it was nominated for the BSFA Award. And it won!

Wow.

Adrift on the Sea of Rains was the first book of the Apollo Quartet, it said so on the cover. The second novella of the quartet, The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself, was actually published a couple of months before Adrift on the Sea of Rains won the BSFA Award. Some people liked it better than the first novella. The third novella, Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, was published in November 2013. Like the other two books, it received some really good reviews. Even Adam Roberts, an extremely sharp and insightful critic, wrote of Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, “excellence is here”.

A number of people I knew online told me they were nominating The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself or Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, or both, for the Hugo. I did myself too (in hindsight, not the smartest thing I could have done).

Then the Hugo shortlists were announced. I wasn’t on any of them. I was disappointed.

But what I did not do was go home and start up a Sad Ian campaign to get myself nominated the following year. Oh, I wouldn’t have framed it as a “get Ian nominated for the Hugo” campaign. I’d have said there weren’t enough self-published works getting nominated: Sad Indies. Or perhaps I’d have complained there weren’t enough Brits on the shortlists, despite the Worldcon taking place in the UK that year: Sad Brits.

And then I would have got a bunch of people who like my fiction, or believed my lies, and persuaded them to nominate me and a few other random members of my clique. But I’d have made sure everyone knew it wasn’t about me or my inability to get nominated. It’s about indie writers! Or, it’s about Brit writers! And if the stats didn’t back up my position, well, I’d just lie, or point fingers at someone popular I could recast as the villain of the piece.

I spent half an hour this morning tallying up the gender balance of the Hugo Award fiction categories since 1959. It doesn’t make for pretty reading. In 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1971 zero women were nominated. Typically the percentage hovered around 85% male to 15% female, although in 1992, male writers were in the minority for the first time (48% male, 52% female). In 2010, things started to change. The percentage of women on the shortlists doubled to 39%. And in 2011, 2012 and 2013, women outnumbered men.

But then the Sad Larries happened. And last year, the percentage dropped to 62% male and 38% female. And this year, they managed to drop it even further to 80% male and 20% female. And yet they claim they ran their slate to increase diversity! On what planet does more white men on the shortlists than before mean increased diversity?

This year, I have three novels published – the final book of the Apollo Quartet, All That Outer Space Allows, from Whippleshield Books; and the first two volumes my space opera trilogy An Age of Discord, A Prospect of War in July and A Conflict of Orders in October (the final book, A Want of Reason, will appear next year). I don’t want to be sad next year because none of them were nominated.