The Word For "World" Isn't America

In China they honour works of science fiction with the Galaxy Award, the Atorox Award is presented annually to the best Finnish work of SFF, Australia’s Ditmar Award recently celebrated 50 years of recognizing Aussie sci-fi, Japan has the Seiun Award, Canada the Aurora, New Zealand the Sir Julius Vogel Award, Netherlands the Paul Harland Prize, in Croatia they present the SFera Award … we could go on.

The Ditmar Award is almost
as old as the Nebula, and
recently recognized 
J.S. Breukelaar's "The Bridge."
(Image via BlackGate)

These national awards support science fiction fandom by platforming works that express the local concerns and national character of their host nations. Although neither Julie E. Czerneda, Candas Jane Dorsey, or Karl Schroeder have been honoured by the Hugo Awards, they’re truly great authors and we’re glad that the Aurora Award has recognized them. Their creative works speak to and for Canadians.

So why is there no national award recognizing the best science fiction published by authors from the United States?

It could be argued that this is a reflection of American exceptionalism or imperialism.

The Hugo Award — when it was established in 1953 — may have billed itself as celebrating the world’s greatest science fiction, but that was for a limited definition of “world.” This was a “world” that extended no further north than Toronto, no further east than London, and no further south or west than Los Angeles. American cultural hegemony was baked into the DNA of the award.

An American national SFF award was not seen as necessary, because the Hugos existed.

To date 84.2 per cent of all winners, and 84.5 per cent of the authors represented in the prose categories (short story, novelette, novella, novel and series) were born in the United States. If anything, these statistics understate the level of American dominance, given that the non-American 15 per cent includes figures like Isaac Asimov (born in Russia), Algis Budrys (born in Germany) and Ursula Vernon (born in Japan). If the goal of the Hugo Awards is to represent the best science fiction in the world, then we cannot limit ourselves to works by American authors.

It can be argued that American dominance might have eased slightly in recent years. But even over the most recent three awards ceremonies, 76 per cent of Hugo finalists in the prose categories were still Americans.

Despite a slightly increasing global reach of Worldcon over the past 20 years, clearly, the award’s early focus on America and on American SFF remains.

And this now feels like a disservice to the genre as a whole. The list of iconic SFF writers who did not primarily write in English, and who consequently never got even a whif of Hugo recognition is long. Among others, we’d mention Japan’s Kobo Abe, France’s Pierre Boule, Brazil’s Jerônymo Monteiro, France’s Bernard Werber.

Elia Barceló is among the best-known Spanish
authors and has published best-selling works of SFF.
But the Hugo Awards have yet to recognize her work.
(Image via Zendalibros.com)

The lack of an award for Best American Science Fiction means that the Hugo is the primary award that American science fiction fans and authors pay attention to, lobby for, and consequently dominate. Thus, the award for the best science fiction on Earth is usually awarded to American authors, and consequently reinforces the perception that American science fiction is the beginning and end of the genre.

Put another way, the lack of an American SFF award ends up disprivileging non-American authors.

But it’s a sword that can cut both ways.

This year, with Worldcon being held in China for the first time, there have been more nominating ballots than ever before received from science fiction fans whose first language is not English. There is consequently a real chance that the Hugo Award ballot may primarily celebrate Chinese-language works.

If this comes to pass, and if deserving works of American science fiction are denied recognition as a consequence, we should not blame the Chinese fans who engaged with the Hugos. The fault belongs with all of us in North American fandom for trying to have our award be global, but still wanting to be the only ones who can win it.

Regardless of what the shortlist looks like in 2023, the Hugos would be improved by the existence of a national science fiction award in the United States.

As much as Worldcon likes to think of itself as a “World” event, it seems pretty clear that for the first seven decades that it existed, the Hugo Award has steadfastly resisted the global reach of fandom.

If the Hugo Award is to be a truly “World” award, American fandom may need to relinquish it … by establishing an American award for American fiction.

The science fiction of revolution

America was born of science fiction.

In the 1770s, the idea that a country could govern itself through the collective decision making of

Ben Franklin was the Rick
Sanchez of his time.
(Image via Wikipedia)

everyday people was a science fictional concept: It required imagining a fundamentally different world that was bereft of monarchs; it was based on an unproven social technology; and it aspired to a utopian future.

The man who is often called “The First American” — Benjamin Franklin — was the most science-fictional person of his day. He experimented with electricity, invented new technology, and imagined new ways of organizing government.

All science fiction is political. But all political movements – especially the revolutionary ones – are likewise science fictional.

Those setting out to change the world start with the premise that the world could be different. They have to imagine a different world before knowing that action should be taken, and the more revolutionary the change, the greater the imagination required.

Which is why some particularly radical political movements keep being reexamined, reflected, reinterpreted, and revisited within the genre of science fiction.

Major radical movements such as communism, libertarianism, socialism, feminism, conservatism, and fascism have each been reflected in major movements in science fiction.

This isn't science fiction — it's the
headquarters of the communist party
of Bulgaria (Image via Wikipedia)

There was a well-established strain of science fiction in the Soviet Union — much of it made with explicit government support — that depicted a triumph of communal living.

The German Nazis produced several works of now-forgotten (I would say deservedly forgotten) films and novels depicting a triumphalist science fiction that echoed the architecture of Albert Speer.

It could even be argued that the bizarre fantasist Arian mythology created and promoted by the Nazi regime was a morally corrupt work of science fiction.

Perhaps this is why the “Nazis In Space” trope echoes throughout the genre, from the Empire in Star

Sometimes the space Nazis aren't just
a metaphor. (Image via IronSky.net)

Wars to Emergents of Vernor Vinge’s Deepness In The Sky. Authors unconsciously recognize that Nazis were a science-fictional regime based on a radical ideology that is anathema to modern liberal values.

And of course, the genre is rife with variations on planetary democracies that are a reflection of an idealized U.S. — from the United Federation of Planets to the Twelve Colonies of Kobol to the Interstellar Alliance of Babylon 5.

When we realize how integral science fiction is to radical politics, it should be no surprise that the most radical American political leader of the past 30 years, Newt Gingritch, is an avid fan, and has even published science fiction.

Now Gingritch’s utopian vision, best expressed in his “Contract With America” is not a utopia that we would subscribe to, but it is indicative of the link between radical politics and science fiction.

In his Hugo Award-winning 1998 book The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, Thomas Disch suggested that science fiction can claim to be America’s national literature because “it is the literature most suited to telling the lies we like to hear about ourselves.”

Although this may be partially true, one could alternately argue that the space opera is America’s national literature — and that variations of science fiction are national literatures of many nations of the Western World — because science fiction is an embodiment of an idea that the world can always be changed for the better.