The True North Strong And Speculative

In a year that saw concerted attacks on Canadian identity, it is particularly troubling to see that one of the country’s important literary institutions — On Spec Magazine — shut its doors and published its final issue.

The magazine’s impact cannot be overstated, but somehow, neither the magazine nor its editors have ever appeared on a Hugo Award shortlist. Given that its final issue was published in the autumn of 2025, this year will be the last that they will be eligible for most major SFF awards. As far as we can tell, the magazine has only appeared on the long-list once in 2025, placing eleventh.

There are many factors behind this omission; in recent years online-first magazines have dominated the Hugo shortlists while physically printed magazines have lagged. The magazine is less available outside of Canada, and at the last two Worldcons Canadians made up only about three per cent of Hugo voters. Despite these impediments to receiving a well-earned valedictory Hugo nod, we urge all our friends in the Worldcon community this year to consider nominating On Spec for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award, and to consider nominating Diane Walton for Best Editor - Short Form.

Cory Doctorow, whose first story was published in the magazine put it succinctly: “More than any other publication, anthology or project, On Spec defined and refined Canadian sf. It was always on the leading edge, always editorially daring, and always brilliant. Losing On Spec is a huge blow to our field. It deserves recognition.”

Cory Doctorow's first published story was in 
the winter 1990 issue of On Spec.
(Image via On Spec)

On Spec was founded in 1989, after a group of writers observed that there was no paying market in Canada for short-form speculative fiction. Some writers even complained that editors outside of the country would ask for their draft stories be made “less Canadian” before they could be accepted or published. It was a team that included Colin Bamsey, Jena Bamsey, Matt Bamsey, Tim Hammell, Ray Lirette, Marianne Nielsen, Paul Rogers, Hazel Sangster, Larry Scott, Phyllis Schuell, Diane Walton, Donna Weis and Lyle Weis, as well as an advisory board consisting of Douglas Barbour, Candas Jane Dorsey, J. Brian Clarke, Pauline Gedge and Monica Hughes.

From the outset, this founding group strived to create a magazine that reflected Canada’s multicultural identity and to include marginalized perspectives within speculative storytelling.

“For a lot of writers, Canadian or otherwise, publication in On Spec was an important signpost and the beginning of many Canadian and international careers,” editor and novelist Hayden Trenholm said about the magazine. “Recognizing it now would be a tribute to three decades of editorial accomplishment and to the hundreds of writers for whom On Spec meant: OMG, I really am a writer!”

For more than three decades, On Spec Magazine was the premier English-language publication for speculative fiction in Canada. Despite being a primarily Canadian publication, its influence on the genre has been felt across borders; it has helped launch the careers of notables such as Julie Czerneda, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts, and Karl Schroeder; and it fostered a uniquely Canadian science fictional voice. Over the years, it has published works by almost every important science fiction writer in the country; everyone from Candas Jane Dorsey (Winter 1999 issue), Robert J. Sawyer (Summer 1993 issue), Derek Künsken (Autumn 2006 issue), Dave Duncan (Spring 1989 issue), Fiona Moore (Autumn 2016 issue), Michèle Laframboise (Spring 2022 issue), and WP Kinsella (Winter 1994 issue).

On Spec was founded at the convention ConText'89
Authors and editors who attended ConText'89.
Back row L-R: Charles de Lint, Kathryn Sinclair,
Dave Duncan, Lyle Weis, Robert Runté, J Brian Clarke,
Michael Skeet, HA Hargreaves, Doug Barbour,
Yves Meynard, Karl Schroeder, William Gibson, John Park.
Middle Row: Candas Jane Dorsey, Catherine Girczyc,
Marianne Nielsen, Judith Merril, Phyllis Gotlieb,
Nicole Luiken, Lexie Pakulak, Alice Major.
Front Row: Gerry Truscott, Diane Walton, Jena Snyder,
David Kirkpatrick, Sally McBride,
Leslie Gadallah, Eileen Kernaghan, Monica Hughes.

But moreover, they published excellent works that may have not gotten the attention they deserved outside of Canada. We can still remember picking up the 1993 story Kissing Hitler by Erik Jon Spigel, a work whose commentary on the distortion and misremembering of history only seems more prescient today than when it was first published. Or Leah Bobet’s 2006 story Bliss, a brilliant little story about drug addiction that incisively lampoons middle-class fearmongering.

Almost as much as their publication history, the team from On Spec are known for the amount of community outreach that they’ve done. For most of their run, there wasn’t a science fiction convention in Western Canada without a presence from the staff of the magazine. They’d have tables in dealers’ halls, and their editors would conduct story reviews and writing workshops. They didn’t just publish science fiction and fantasy; they nurtured the community and young writers. The convention scene in Canada would have been much poorer without On Spec’s efforts.

For thirty-five years, On Spec has served as a cornerstone of Canadian speculative fiction and an internationally respected semiprozine. It’s high time that they got on the Hugo Award shortlist.

This is a year in which Canadian identity is under attack, and this is the last chance to do so. Please consider On Spec for your Hugo nominating ballot.

Midwife Crisis (or Regressive Theocracy For Fun and Prophet)

In a year that has been difficult for many in North America, Naomi Kritzer’s new novella Obstetrix reminds us of the solace and strength that can be found through stories. The book, which bills itself as a rebuke to fundamentalist interpretations of religion, is at its core a celebration of the importance of literature (and fantastical literature in this instance) and how it can keep us grounded in times of adversity and stress.

Although it focuses less on
reproductive rights, Obstetrix
still provides commentary
on modern misogyny.
(Image via MacMillan)

Set in a near-future United States where women’s access to reproductive rights have faced further erosion, Obstetrix follows obstetrician Dr. Elizabeth Gwynn. The book’s setup centres on Gwynn’s criminal charges for performing a medically necessary abortion, forcing her to flee North Dakota. This suggests that Kritzer has set her sights on a work criticizing the broad-scale rising tide of authoritarian right-wing misogynist politics in her home country. However, the story quickly narrows its focus and policy issues take a back seat.

Within the first chapter, Gwynn is kidnapped by an eschatological sect and imprisoned in a compound run by fundamentalists with a narrow interpretation of the Bible. These Christian cultists force their children to get married at the age of 14, and expect every married woman to bear children on a regular basis. Gwynn’s role is to serve as their captive obstetrician, handling the complications of childbirth alongside other medical issues that arise on the compound.

Rather than offer us an over-the-top cult, Kritzer depicts a group based on a fairly mundane, bland, and terrifying version of Christianity that is removed from the American mainstream by degrees, rather than leaps and bounds. Their misogynistic control of women is fairly easy to find textual support for in the King James Bible, and the close-minded censorship and rejection of literature is not much different than many Christian groups that sprung up throughout America’s Second Great Awakening. The cult is scary precisely because its most fervent adherents could well be people we all know.

Kritzer has clearly spent some effort thinking about how a person of Gwynn’s educational and professional background might go about solving problems. For example, her approaches to handling the psychological pressures of dealing with the insanity of a fundamentalist sect are informed by medical practice and experience dealing with newborns and distraught new parents.

Since the cult has prohibited all books (even the Bible can only be read by the cult leader Father John), the captive Gwynn first finds comfort in trying to recount passages from a favourite novel titled, The Onyx Dagger. She then builds a semblance of community with select other women in the camp by sharing stories from the book. These other characters go on to play an important role in the denouement.

If anything is likely to keep Obstetrix from the Hugo ballot it’s that the award has often been likelier to recognize works that are more overt in their fantastical elements. This is instead a near-future dystopia that is sometimes indistinguishable from present-day U.S. What little technological progress may have taken place is largely outside of the purview of the story.

Given the turmoil in Kritzer’s home town of Minneapolis this winter, it is interesting that this book — which had to have been written prior to the chaotic deployment of armed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — seems to speak so directly to the present moment. If anything, events are outpacing the fiction we turn to as a source of comfort in these trying times.

Hugo Framed Roger Rabbit (Hugo Cinema 1989)

This blog post is the thirty-second in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

The Hugo Awards ceremony held the evening of Saturday, Sept. 2, 1989 at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Boston was one of the most lavish to date. Given that it was the 50th anniversary of the first World Science Fiction Convention, organizers had pulled out all the stops to make the event memorable.

Fred Pohl at the 1989 Hugo Awards.
(Image via File 770)

Master of Ceremonies Fred Pohl spoke from a lectern emblazoned with gold leaf laurel wreaths around the number “50.” Iconic author Isaac Asimov, who had long been a Worldcon mainstay, made what would be his final appearance at a Hugo Awards ceremony.

Given the splendor of the occasion, it is nice to note that when Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was honoured with the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, the film’s producer Frank Marshall was on hand to receive the trophy. Contemporaneous accounts note that the big-name Hollywood mogul accepted the award with enthusiasm and participated in the evening’s fannish activities “with good humour.” It indicated a growing respect for the Hugo Award in Hollywood.

The win for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had been widely expected and was one of the most decisive victories in any category in the history of the Hugo Awards. In the final tally, the movie had 560 first-place votes … while the runner up Big earned just 94. At a Worldcon panel on cinema the day before the ceremonies, Edward Bryant, Terry Erdmann, Craig Miller, Lee Orlando, and Evelyn Leeper had all predicted that the seamless blend of live action and animation would earn the movie a Hugo Award. Unusually, the movie was screened after the awards ceremony — and most of the audience stayed.

Working both as a satire of Hollywood self-seriousness and as a slightly bonkers noir detective story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? remains entertaining and enjoyable 40 years after its release. If our cinema club had one complaint about the movie it’s that it was more of an oddball fantasy than science fiction. But those complaints are overshadowed by technical achievements. Given that this was near the end of the era of film compositing done entirely by hand, it might be difficult to convey to modern audiences just how incredible Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is as a piece of cinema craft. To better understand the level of planning and attention to detail required to seamlessly merge live action acting with animated elements, it’s helpful to look at other contemporaneous movies like Cool World that attempted the same trick. Such a comparison highlights the subtleties like the shadows cast on — and by — the animated elements, as well as the effect that the animated elements seem to have on objects in their presence. Even if — as Variety Magazine noted — the movie “loses freshness and oomph as it goes along,” Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was a very reasonable choice to take home the trophy.

Animator Richard Williams won an Academy
Award for his work on Roger Rabbit.
(Image via USA Today)

The rest of the shortlist was a bit of a mixed bag. There was Penny Marshall’s Big, which helped launch Tom Hanks to stardom; Ron Howard and George Lucas’s fantasy epic Willow; Rockne S. O'Bannon's buddy cop movie Alien Nation; and Tim Burton’s ghost story Beetlejuice. Most of the members of our club felt that several of these films did not warrant inclusion on the shortlist.

Penny Marshall’s Big retains some of its charm, but has aged poorly. Tom Hanks’ performance as a kid stuck in an adult body is engaging and amusing, and it’s clear why this movie helped launch him to stardom. But the movie’s romance is very cringy, and glosses over consent, power imbalance, and workplace ethics in a way that would not be accepted by modern audiences. What felt whimsical in 1988 now feels creepy and uncomfortable.

Our viewing group was divided over Willow; although some of us enjoyed the fable-like atmosphere and solid performances from Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis, others felt the movie represents possibly the nadir of George Lucas’ worst storytelling instincts. Either way, the movie’s leaden dialogue, clumsy pacing, and derivative worldbuilding adds up to less than what one should expect from a Hugo finalist.

When it was first shown, fan Evelyn Leeper was dismissive of Beetlejuice in her review, writing that “typical of Tim Burton movies, it has no plot.” Although the movie is stylish, and Geena Davis anchors it by offering a grounded and compelling performance, something is missing overall. The movie promises wackiness that it does not deliver, and suggests lines of conflict that are never fully explored. Is the villain of the movie Beetlejuice, or is it the family who moved in? Beetlejuice is again less than what one would expect from a Hugo finalist.

Disney was planning to remake Alien Nation in 2024,
but scrapped the project as being pro-immigrant
is now too controversial a position. 
(Image via Variety)

Alien Nation was a sleeper hit when it hit cinemas in 1988, and was well-enough regarded that it launched both a spin-off television series, and the career of Farscape-creator Rockne S. O’Bannon. The movie is essentially Rush Hour with aliens; a buddy cop story in which a racist old white police detective is partnered with a recently promoted extra-terrestrial gumshoe. Both leads James Caan and Mandy Patinkin take their roles with a level of seriousness that elevates the whole thing. The movie had some pacing flaws, and some cliched moments, but is strengthened by a refreshingly inclusive subtext. O’Bannon’s script implies that America’s strength is its acceptance of people regardless of difference. At least one member of our cinema club felt that this film should have been the winner simply because it was a well-made, old-school science fiction film.

Despite the mixed bag of nominees, there was a crowded and untapped field of SFF movies and television shows for Hugo voters to choose their nominations from. We are thus wondering why other films were left off the shortlist.

Steve De Jarnatt’s apocalyptic masterpiece Miracle Mile had gone under the radar for most. Iconic TV series Red Dwarf had an excellent pilot episode in the UK. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 hit the airwaves. And despite some issues with its second season, Star Trek: The Next Generation had a couple of great episodes such as Elementary, Dear Data.

There are two movies however, whose omission from the Hugo shortlist are especially notable: They Live, and Akira. John Carpenter’s They Live — an anticapitalist tale of aliens undermining American democracy — probably deserved consideration for the Hugo. It’s a movie with enduring value due to its metaphors about seeing structures of power through different lenses. Although it’s a lower-budget film, it’s directed with attention to detail and offers some superb camera work. In addition, Roddy Piper and Keith David have great on-screen chemistry.

Akira remains an iconic classic of science fiction
and should have been a Hugo contender either when
it hit Japanese cinemas in 1989 or on its American
release the next year. 
(Image via Criterion)

Animated cyberpunk action film Akira was a cultural juggernaut in Japan, and redefined what was possible in animated science fiction. Based on a successful graphic novel, it plays with systems of military power in a Tokyo transformed by nuclear blasts. It is as iconic a science fiction movie as has ever been made, and clearly deserved consideration for the Hugo Award. For many of our group, it was the movie that should have won. 

The 50th anniversary of the World Science Fiction Convention saw an extraordinary Hugo Award ceremony. Even if we had quibbles about the shortlist, it’s difficult not to celebrate what an extraordinary year it was for science fiction and for sci-fi cinema.

Wild Animals Of The Wildest West

This review contains mild spoilers for the book Outlaw Planet

M.R. Carey's latest novel
is the third (and best) in his
Pandeminium series. 

M.R. Carey’s Outlaw Planet features an anthropomorphic dog gunslinger striding across a post-apocalyptic Wild West-analogue landscape wielding a talking gun and fighting anthropomorphic bear outlaws and anthropomorphic raccoon military bad guys.

The result is a rollicking, entertaining, and occasionally ludicrous novel that does not take itself too seriously. And although some readers might enjoy Outlaw Planet as simple pulp entertainment, it has much more complexity and depth on offer than might be obvious at first glance.

Screenwriter and teacher John Truby notes that the traditional western didn’t die; rather, the fight for a new frontier moved into outer space, and includes genre favourites like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy,. Truby wrote in The Anatomy of Genres, “If science fiction is social philosophy in fiction form, and crime and comedy are applied moral philosophy, the western gives us a philosophy of history,” and this is evident in Outlaw Planet, as the book offers both ideas about a philosophy of history and broader ideas about social philosophy.

The setting (the titular “outlaw planet”) is a nation similar to the antebellum United States. It’s populated with the sapient descendants of numerous mammal species; everything from dog people and cat people to weasel people and even moose people. As the story begins, readers are introduced to Elizebeth (aka “Dog-Bitch Bess”), a young woman of canine lineage who sets out from the prosperous southern coast out into the untamed wilds of the west in search of her destiny. As she reaches the frontierlands, her nation plunges into civil war.

Featureless white ceramic towers litter the landscape of this Western setting, vibrating with an ominous hum — and as it turns out, resetting the minds of everyone who lives there to restart their civil war over and over again.

It slowly emerges over the course of 500 pages that this planet’s analogue of the United States Civil War has been engineered by shadowy figures as part of a multi-generational experiment to figure out what species of sapient mammal makes the best soldiers for their much larger war. It’s a lot to fit into one book, and our biggest criticism of Outlaw Planet is that it might be overlong.

The subtext of this setting is timely. From our perspective, it seems like the United States is trapped in an endless cycle of conflict, replaying the tensions that eight score and five years ago led the nation to its first civil war. America’s mass-media ecosystem is complicit in misinforming the public, and pitting the masses against each other while faceless corporate overlords profit from the resulting tensions. Consequently, the setting of Outlaw Planet that features mass media organizations broadcasting falsehoods from featureless skyscrapers and pitting citizens against each other is somewhat apt as a metaphor. Or maybe we’re reading too much into things.

At its heart, the book succeeds primarily because of well-developed character work. Even when the protagonists Bess and her gun Wakeful Slim have lost their moral compass, they’re written with believable empathy and the reader understands their bad choices. Supporting characters — such as elderly warrior Mur Ghrent and young shaman Dima Saraband — may not be fully fleshed out, but they aren’t reduced to a series of cliches either.

As a non-American, author M.R. Carey does not 
seem to be swayed by the mythologized version
of Westward Expansion or "Manifest Destiny"
that many United States residents are taught.
(Image via Wikipedia)

One of the interesting details in this setting is that the only characters recognizable as standard-issue human beings belong to semi-nomadic bands living in western lands that are slowly being expropriated (stolen) by settlers. We are not of Indigenous ancestry, so we cannot speak definitively about whether this depiction passes muster. It is interesting to note that members of these Indigenous-analogue groups are the only characters in the book who truly know how the World really works. Indeed, Indigenous knowledge is depicted as being vital.

The book acts as a stealth sequel to Carey’s previous two novels, Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds. Outlaw Planet is not marketed as the third part of the Pandominion trilogy, with the publisher’s website even describing it as a “standalone” novel. The previous novels had introduced the Pandominion, a multi-planetary empire stretched across billions of parallel Earths with sapient species having evolved on different Earths from almost every mammalian lineage. This empire — and its fracturing during the events of Bridge of Worlds — is referenced early in the book, and eventually becomes crucial to the outcome of Outlaw Planet.

Over the past few decades, numerous writers best known for work in comic books have attempted to make a transition to writing prose novels. The results have been mixed at best; even influential comic book figures like Alan Moore, John Byrne, and Warren Ellis have often found limited success on book store shelves, and although Neil Gaiman has sold a lot of books and graphic novels, his career is the exception rather than the rule. Even the legendary Stan Lee’s attempt at prose (a series of novels called The Zodiac Legacy) is not well remembered. It is clearly a different set of skills that is required for success as a purely text-based author as opposed to one whose work involves words and pictures in sequential panels. M.R. Carey, the Liverpudlian author of Outlaw Planet seems to be a worthy exception, having begun writing successful novels only after a multi-decade career as a high-profile comic book author.

Outlaw Planet is a delightfully weird fusion of western and big multiversal sci-fi adventure, and it’s one that we sort of hope earns Carey his first Hugo nod in best series.

Guest Post: Celebrating Poetry at the 2026 Hugo Awards

We are pleased to welcome a guest column by 2025 Worldcon Poet Laureate — and friend of the blog — Brandon O'Brien. He is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been short-listed for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, available from Interstellar Flight Press, is the winner of the 2022 Elgin Award.

In my presentation of the Best Poem category at the 2025 Hugo Awards at Seattle Worldcon, I hoped to remind people of the long road that poetry has carved for the speculative genres, not only as one of the initial sources of our most revered epics as examples of genre fiction, but therefore as one of the oldest and most enduring forms of storytelling craft in human history. I had hoped in doing so — and in delivering a cheeky challenge to the Worldcons to come — to reiterate how important it is as a fandom to continue valuing poetry as a part of the legacy of our genre.

Writer, poet, artist and game designer
Brandon O'Brien, who was the 
Poet Laureate at last year's Worldcon.
(Image via the author's Bluesky)

So imagine my absolute glee when I have learned — just the same as many of you — that LACon in 2026 will also have a Best Poem category at the Hugos! Following Marie Brennan’s historic win in the same category for ‘A War of Words’, I am beyond excited that we keep this trend going of supporting and rewarding poetry as a part of this great genre into the future.

As we wait for the LAcon Business Meeting to potentially ratify a permanent space for this category in the awards going forward, this decision not only gives us even more data about the viability of the category, but makes 2026 an especially bumper year for speculative verse, as SFWA will be hosting a similar category for the very first time in that year's Nebula Awards thanks to the stalwart work of their Poetry Committee. My sincere hope is not only that the community of readers becomes even more invested in reading and discovering speculative poetry, but that this year is the one that shapes a more committed presence for speculative verse in the imagination of science fiction and fantasy both in fandom and in the mainstream.

I'm even more excited as a result to hear that LAcon has also announced Terese Mason Pierre as one of their Special Guests! Terese is a phenomenal poet and editor, and an outstanding champion of the form. The convention is beyond fortunate to have someone as curious, as creative, and as thoughtful as her present and waving the flag of speculative verse next year in Anaheim.

Having heard Terese both read from her own work and speak on the craft of verse in panels, I can say without a doubt that she is exactly the voice for the art form that the convention will benefit from: a confident and critical voice in her own right, incredibly excited about the work of her contemporaries, and infinitely knowledgeable about what poetry has done and can still accomplish in this genre.

What fills me with the most joy, of course, is watching the response to this news elsewhere. Seeing fandom continue to show excitement for Worldcon as an institution valuing speculative poetry is infinitely heartening. I'm grateful that Los Angeles Worldcon has offered this opportunity for yet another year, I'm excited to see what wonderful spaces for reading and discussion will come to bear as a result, and I hope that it continues to be a positive sign of the public appreciation of verse in science fiction and fantasy, today and well beyond.

Per penna ad astra,
Brandon O'Brien

The Next Degeneration

Three months ago, right-wing billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance Media bought Paramount, the venerable and storied studio that is the home of SpongeBob SquarePants, Mission Impossible, and of course Star Trek.

As Variety has recently reported, Ellison’s short tenure at Paramount has already brought significant changes to the company. Management directives have included everything from hosting Mixed Martial Arts events on the White House lawn in celebration of President Trump’s 80th birthday, to firing executives who made the unforgivable mistake of being women, to blacklisting stars who have condemned the Israeli invasion of Gaza. 

New Paramount CEO David
Ellison is afflicted with resting
frat-boy face.
(Image via Paramount)

It is clear that Paramount now has a specific political perspective. It is also clear that the studio’s owner plans to expand their reach by acquiring additional intellectual property.

Given the long production schedules of television and cinema, the effects of this right-wing turn will likely not be immediately obvious. But it is likely that the next generation of Star Trek showrunners will be incentivized to curb the franchise’s progressivism, either directly or by the knowledge that advancing left-wing ideas is a career-limiting move in the company. Five years from now, it is almost inconceivable that whatever Star Trek is still being made by Paramount will depict labour unions or transgender characters without villanizing them.

Blogger Darren Mooney has ably pointed out that the series is not always as progressive as its reputational legacy, but recent incarnations such as Discovery and Strange New Worlds have certainly leaned into diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential elements of the franchise. This is in sharp contrast to the values of the franchise’s new owners, who have vowed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the studio.

We suspect that Star Trek is boldly going nowhere good.

The spectrum of political viewpoints expressed within canonical stories of a franchise that is considered to be acceptable exists within certain expectations governed by creators and owners. In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry was prohibited from depicting a labour union in The Original Series, but in the 1990s labour organizing became part of mainstream Star Trek politics. In the 1980s, David Gerrold quit The Next Generation because LGBTQ stories were prohibited on the series, but by the 2020s, such stories were an essential part of Star Trek. This is the Overton Window of the franchise; the spectrum of political storytelling that is considered canonical.

Star Trek Picard was not our favourite series,
but they do have to be given credit for being
pretty clear on their position on I.C.E.
(Image via StarTrek.net)

This window shifts slowly. It is unlikely that there will suddenly be a Star Trek: Neutral Zone Patrol show where Dean Cain and an alien hedgehog first officer are heroic Starfleet officers trying to prevent Romulan immigrants from stealing Federation jobs. But It’s more likely that the show will maintain a patina of progressivism, while airing an increased number of episodes that implicitly endorse warrantless wiretapping, right-wing military adventures, or racial profiling.

There is a faction within every fandom that embraces the franchise as part of their identity. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Dr. Who, they identify as a Whovian. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Star Trek, they identify as a Trekkie. Someone isn’t just a fan of the television show Mercy Point, they identify as a Pointhead. There is often in-group slang and a rejection of criticism of the franchise coming from those outside of the group. Once you have pledged allegiance to a specific intellectual property, the ability to assess its output becomes more difficult.

This type of fan loyalty is already big business, with media properties monetizing commitment to community through slapdash sequels and merchandise. The most die-hard fans will continue to follow the franchise uncritically even when intellectual property is owned by someone whose overt political agenda informs the end product. For a franchise like Star Trek, which has built an occasionally insular partisan core of fandom, the most fanatical group is fairly well established. It is conceivable that Trekkies who once celebrated inclusivity, exploration, and social critique may find themselves complicit in endorsing a vision they did not initially share, simply by remaining loyal.

Two years ago this blog predicted that within a decade, one of the major streaming services would lean into culture war divisions in an attempt to build a walled garden that appeals to the increasingly extreme right wing political identity. That prediction is coming true faster than we had anticipated. Paramount Plus is on its way to becoming the Fox News of entertainment content.

Declaring allegiance to a specific corporate-owned franchise effectively puts one’s loyalty up for sale; whichever media conglomerate owns the property has its hooks in the fandom. The transformation of Paramount under Ellison illustrates how corporate ownership might reshape both the content of a franchise and potentially its fandom.

When allegiance to a brand eclipses critical engagement, even the most idealistic communities risk being co-opted by forces that run counter to the values they once championed.

Inconceivable! (Hugo Cinema 1988)

This blog post is the thirty-first in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

Confusion about program item locations, registration difficulties, and a convention committee that seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis. These are some of the reasons that the 1988 World Science Fiction Convention is remembered as a largely shambolic affair. Held in New Orleans on the weekend of September 1, it was described by Locus Magazine as “easily the most disorganized large-scale Worldcon ever held.”

The Metropolitan Auditorium in New Orleans
where the 1988 Hugo Awards took place has
lain vacant and in shambles since 2005.
(Image via NOLA.com)

The lineup to get into the Hugo Awards ceremony was also a mess, but once fans got inside the festivities were actually pretty entertaining. Toastmaster Mike Resnick had the audience roaring with laughter, and Gardner Dozois’ acceptance speech for his first Hugo Award was lauded as heartfelt and moving.

Not a single Best Dramatic Presentation finalist appears to have been in attendance for the ceremony, leaving Resnick to announce the award fairly quickly, hand the trophy to publicist Terry Erdman (who hadn’t even worked on the movie), and then move on.

Hugo voters had been enthusiastic in their support for The Princess Bride, with more votes being cast for the Best Dramatic winner than anything in any other category. With 493 votes, it eclipsed its nearest competitor Robocop, which garnered only 276 first-place votes.

The 1988 shortlist is a mixed bag. On top of Princess Bride and Robocop, there was Star Trek The Next Generation’s pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint,” Arnold Schwarzenegger's Predator, and George Miller’s Witches of Eastwick. Two of these probably didn’t deserve to make the cut, but it’s difficult to think of other movies from that year deserving inclusion instead.

Perhaps the British anti-war low budget movie Friendship’s Death might have warranted inclusion on the ballot, or the classic Anime Neo Tokyo. Inner-Space, Batteries Not Included, and Spaceballs all have their adherents, but any of these would likely have been a marginal call. Harry and the Hendersons also came out that year.

It would be fair to say genre cinema was in a post-Star Wars lull. As unbelievable as it may seem in retrospect, there was not a single science fiction or fantasy film among the Top-5 highest grossing movies of the Hugo-eligible year. This had not happened in more than a decade, and has not happened since.

In fact, the highest-grossing science fiction or fantasy movie of 1987 was the mostly-mundane Witches of Eastwick, which earned $63 million and eighth in the box office rankings for the year (behind the mediocre Richard Dreyfuss cop comedy Stakeout).

David Foster Wallace dismissed Witches of Eastwick
author John Updike as “a penis with a thesaurus.”
(Image via New Statesman)

The Witches of Eastwick probably should not have been considered for a Hugo Award. It’s barely fantasy, and is a meandering and irritating movie. Based on a novel by Couples author John Updike, and brought to the screen by Mad Max director George Miller, it portrays three single women (Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher) who are seduced by a stranger who might be the Devil (Jack Nicholson). Each of the three women are portrayed as missing something in their lives, and the audience is supposed to accept that Nicholson’s devil has the power to change that. Insultingly, to the characters, each of them essentially gives up their career and artistic aspirations as soon as they’re with him. John Updike may have his admirers, but to us the portrayals of women and LGBTQ people in his works have aged extremely poorly, and Witches of Eastwick is no exception. There is also a tonal mismatch between the source material, the directorial vision, and the energy brought to the screen by the stars. As a reviewer in Variety Magazine noted, “Miller seems to become impatient with the material and tries to hike it up a notch toward the end with some inappropriate special effects.”

The Predator is probably not the best his planet has
to offer. The scorpion-faced alien is just a half-rate
nepo kid trying to pretend that he’s formidable
and worthy of his father’s affection.
(Image via Newsweek)

Released on the exact same day that summer, Predator is a well-constructed and highly quotable pulp adventure action movie featuring one of the best-designed alien creatures of that era’s cinema. The almost all-male cast is muscle-bound and somewhat cliched, with action beats interspersed with bro-handshakes between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. But while Predator is on its surface a testosterone-fuelled jungle romp about heroic American soldiers put into conflict with a deadly alien who hunts them, it is often pointed out that the movie can be read as a condemnation of American trophy hunters who take high-tech weaponry with them on African safaris where they hunt whatever animals they can put their sights on. It’s a savvier movie than it’s often given credit for, and was a worthy Hugo finalist. As an interesting aside, as far as we can tell, Predator director John McTiernan is the first Hugo-winner to serve time in prison.

Probably the most anticipated science fiction event of the year had been on the small screen, as Star Trek launched The Next Generation — and earned a Hugo nomination in the process. Although the series would eventually become a classic, and possibly the most popular iteration of the franchise, it got off to a very rough start. The pilot episode “Encounter At Farpoint” is a fairly clunky two hours of television, with two plots that seem to work at cross purposes. On one side, the Enterprise D and its new captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stuart) gets accosted by a malevolent god-like being, while on the surface of a nearby planet half of the crew are trying to solve the mystery of how a city got built fairly rapidly. It’s rough around the edges, and occasionally very clunky in terms of dialogue. Whether or not this deserved to be on the Hugo shortlist probably depends on your affection for The Next Generation, but we would suggest “Hide and Q,” which aired on November 23 of that year, would have been a better pick.

However, two works on the shortlist — and indeed in that entire year — stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Given the militarization of police over the past three decades, the increasing corporate dominance of

It may be of fannish interest to note that in 1987,
Forrest J. Ackerman played the President of Earth
in the movie Amazon Women On The Moon.
(Image via Letterboxd)

America’s legal system, and the lack of accountability among those in power, Robocop’s grim satire seems more timely now than when it first hit cinemas. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, it’s an over-the-top social commentary peppered with immersive and organic worldbuilding and intense non-diagetic inserts. Depicting a near-future Detroit where the police force is being privatized, the movie follows a detective named Alex Murphy (Peter Weller). Murphy is killed and then brought back to life as a cyborg who must avenge his own murder. But the story is so much more than that, tackling the dehumanization of labour and the alienation of late-capitalism. The movie is occasionally witty, sometimes disturbing, and structurally perfect. Details introduced in the first act (e.g., the way Alex Murphy holsters his gun) are relevant to in the denouement (e.g. the reveal of who Robocop is), Some members of our cinema club argued that this is the most incisive and relevant science fiction movie made in the entire decade, as the movie offers brutal social commentary presented in an innovative manner.

Studios had struggled to market The Princess Bride, and as “Inconceivable!” as it might be now, the movie was widely regarded as a box-office disappointment. Opening on barely 800 screens, it hadn’t even cracked $30 million, and wouldn’t be popularly regarded as a significant movie for several more years. So the fact that fandom chose it as their favourite indicates that the Worldcon community was ahead of the curve. Told as a metafictional narrative read by a grandfather to his sick grandson, the movie follows a farm boy named Westley (Cary Elwes) on a quest to rescue his true love Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright). For at least one member of our cinema club, Princess Bride remains her “favourite movie of all time,” but some others found the delivery a touch too saccharine and the whimsy to be forced.

Although some of us still wish a more purely science fictional movie like Robocop could have won the Hugo that year, it’s difficult to quibble with the overwhelming vote of the 1988 Worldcon attendees. The Princess Bride was the film that represented the tastes of fandom voters that year. Considering the fact that it remains a cult favourite in the broader public, it’s probably the right pick for the award.