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Should the World Fantasy Award be Changed?


farseer2

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Should the World Fantasy Award be changed? Right now the physical award is a stylized bust of H.P. Lovecraft, who has been accused of having racist views. There's a petition to change it for a bust of Octavia Butler. More info here:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/08/should-the-world-fantasy-award-be-changed

Do you think it should be changed? If so, to what?

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Possibly the more interesting question is, 'why does it look like HP Lovecraft in the first place?', since no other award in the field looks like a famous writer, and HPL is really more of a horror (and arguably sci-fi) writer.

Absent any really good reason why it does look like HPL, the argument about changing it inherently shifts more towards the 'why not?' end of the scale.

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It would be important and useful to discover from the founders "Why Lovecraft". They may well have had very good reasons.

As to "why not", even absent anything else, it's now the tradition, there are those who recognize what the "Howard" award is, and so on.

And then there's the can of worms. Are we next going to target the Hugos (a far more well-known award), for the fact that Hugo Gernsback was a racist as well, and in 1936 proposed that in the future the solution to racial tensions in the United States would be the use of genetic manipulation so that black people could finally have white children?

And what about the Stoker award? Another racist, and likely an anti-semite...

I don't like the idea of erasing or rewriting history. The Howard should remain the Howard. The depiction of who or what it shows, I'm okay with that, though I'd be inclined to Cthulhu rather than something more abstract or generic.

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In relation to the Hugo comparison, there's a substantial difference between winning an award named after someone who held questionable views, and winning an award that actually looks like someone who is famous for their questionable views (and in whose work those views are pervasive). There's certainly no difficulty in drawing a line between these two situations.

And the 'why not?' issue is important, too. It's not about 'rewriting or erasing history' if there is no really substantial connection between the award and HPL. As you say, Ran, the originators might have had a particular reason - but if so, it's a non-obvious one and nobody seems quite sure what it might have been. HPL is just not integral to the history of this award in the way Gernsback is to the Hugos or Stoker is to the Stokers. Even after 40 years, the connection seems slight. So I don't see a 'rewriting history' problem here, not of any significance.

Lovecraft's writing are still widely admired for their strengths, even while they're criticised for their weaknesses, and many writers have been moved to write mythos stories that challenge the racism inherent in some of the originals. That's as it should be. Nobody, I think, is trying to erase his legacy. They're saying that it might be a good idea to come up with a more appropriate design for an award that has little to do with HPL in the first place.

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If you want to replace an award who looks like someone with another shape because said person upsets some people, the only logical step is to make an award that doesn't look like anyone, because whomever you'll pick, you'll be open to debate.



And if you really want to pick someone for a World Award, pick someone who's worldwide famous. Not necessarily Tolkien himself, but still.


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mormont,

It seems to me that placing another author on the bust means that they also advocate changing the common name for the award. You can't call something with Octavia Butler's bust a Howard, right?

I'm fine with an abstract image, as I said. But the name should remain as it is, otherwise the Hugos, Stokers, and doubtless other awards are going to be open to similarly destrucive critiques.

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While I'm certainly okay with asking 'Why Lovecraft?' before moving further, in general, I agree with Nick Mamatas's take here: http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1893140.html%C2'>



In short, moving away from HPL is fine, but to OB (or any other writer) is probably going to vary from a bad idea to a terrible idea. Okorafor's quote in the Tor piece is also important, IMO, about acknowledging these attitudes rather than pretending it was all "of his time" or "but it was so long ago". Given some of the things that were reported over the weekend in London, these attitudes are definitely not past.


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why not make it a statute of a noble man and woman that supports the value of life and, for all those who view it, makes their things rise up and overthrow the evil gubmint?

By that, you mean it should be a noble goat. One possessing a cerulean scroll, no less.

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mormont,

It seems to me that placing another author on the bust means that they also advocate changing the common name for the award. You can't call something with Octavia Butler's bust a Howard, right?

Oh, totally. I'm not at all persuaded of the merits of substituting someone else for HPL. Make it an abstract thing. But not a dragon! (Unless, maybe, you do a different design every year, like the Hugo base.)

You do raise an interesting point: I'm honestly not sure I've ever heard anyone refer to the World Fantasy Award as a 'Howard'. They almost always say 'World Fantasy Award' (in contrast, even before 1992, nobody called a Hugo a 'Science Fiction Achievement Award'). I suspect that's down to the loose connection between HPL and the award, but then I would. ;)

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Does it follow that the only literature we should praise is that done by an author who appeared to adhere to a modern sense of morality?

Not that this award is in the shape of one of his stories (Ctulhu statue ftw), but I don't see why it needs changing. It's not as if people are denying or ignoring that he was a racist, as David Selig says. Hell, Shakespeare probably had some views that would offend people now. Most authors would. That doesn't mean we should ignore their impact on literature, as long as it goes with the caveat that if they were writing now they'd be considered huge arseholes.

Nope. Many awful people have written many wonderful novels. I firmly believe that as long as their ugly ideas don't permeate the pages of their works then there's no reason to stop praising them as authors. But that doesn't mean that we should hand out likenesses of them as marks of achievement. I would be fine with something called the Lovecraft Award, because Lovecraft was a master of his genre, and naming an award after him would be purely in recognition of his literary merit. But handing out busts of him, especially for an award where there were many other fine (and more obvious) authors that the bust could have been modeled after, is too close to celebrating the man, and not the author, for my comfort. Similarly I'd be fine with something called the Hamsun Award, I think Knut Hamsun is one of the greatest and most important novelists of any time, but if the Nobel Prize had his face carved on it I'd have a problem with that.

I agree with mormont, the lack of any real reason why the WFA is a bust of Lovecraft makes this a pretty easy call. If the bust was handed out for an award named after the man, then it would be pretty hard to justify changing it. But choosing his face to represent pretty much all of speculative fiction was a bad idea, and one which can still be changed.

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Well, Lovecrafts ugly ideas did kind of permeate his work., I mean, he has that poem that I can't even say the name of.

But, yeah, why is it a bust of HPL? There has to be a story there somewhere.

I'm aware of the poem, but that's not really a part of the main body of his work. I'm also aware of the subtext in some of his stuff which can be read as allegory for some of his uglier ideas, but those works can also still be read without reading into the subtext.

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