We Are Missing Important Science Fiction Books
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Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W. W. Norton, November 1, 2022); Orbital by Samantha Harvey
(Grove Press, October 29, 2024), and Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (Faber & Faber, April 4, 2024)
I just finished Richard Powers’ Bewilderment, from 2021. It’s a really intriguing and powerful novel, that I argued with at times, but still loved. It’s got a great ending, tremendously moving.
And it is absolutely science fiction. Way more so than most SF books these days, even hard SF. But, somehow, it didn’t even get a sniff at either the Nebula or Hugo shortlist.
Mind you, I didn’t read it until now, so I’m part of the problem. And, to be fair, both Ian Mond and Paul di Filippo reviewed it for Locus, so it wasn’t ignored.
The Nebula that year went to The Master of Djinn, and the Hugo to A Desolation Called Peace. Both are fine books, and A Desolation Called Peace is science fiction. But they are not at the level of Bewilderment.
We — the SF community — are missing important SF books. We missed Orbital, a Booker winner. (Bewilderment made the Booker shortlist.) We may be missing Cahokia Jazz.
I think we need to come to terms with the fact that writers who are not part of our “SF community”, if you will, are doing some great science fiction anyway.
Rich Horton’s last article for us was a review of The New Atlantis, edited by Robert Silverberg. His website is Strange at Ecbatan. Rich has written over 200 articles for Black Gate, see them all here.
Crucially, would the publishers of either book even want to be associated with the Hugos? This is very much a case of two publishers appropriating an award to enhance their reputations only to end up defining it – and yes, I’m talking specifically about best novel. Every winner since 2015 has either been published by Orbit or Tor or what appears to be (as far as I can tell) a hybrid of the two. The demographics (re the winners) in terms of gender and nationality is telling. Diverse it ain’t.
Doesn’t the Hugo award for novel usually go to the writer as much as the book? It seems like a lot of the awards have been (A) the latest eligible work by a big name in the genre, based on past performance, or, failing that, (B) the hot new work by the hot new name to come to prominence in the genre. With many more in category (A) versus (B). The few examples I can think of that don’t fit this are A Canticle for Leibowitz, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. It seems to be a reward for the author’s reputation as much as anything else. Reputation in the genre, that is, which excludes works like Orbital or anything else too “literary”.