It won what?

[Prom_STar]

Right now I am reading Ringworld by Larry Niven, Overall it's all right book. The characters are amusing; plot's good enough. The concept of a "ringworld" is absolutely asotunding (in case you're unfamiliar with the term, think Halo--as in the game--only a hell of a lot bigger). All in all, the book is entertaining but certainly not a literary triumph....

And yet....

It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards (1970 i beleive). For those who don't know, those two awards are among the biggest in science fiction. To put it in perspective, think of it this way: the first book to ever win the Nebula Award was Dune. Again, Ringworld is an enjoyable read, but it doesn't even begin to compare to Frank Herbert's masterpiece. My question, then, is simply: why is Niven's book held up there with Dune? As far as science goes, Ringworld is definitley an achievement, but it is certainly not all that impressive in a literary sense.

I wonder, has anyone else here ever read the book and could perhaps shed some light on this dilemma?

[Loredoctor]

As I understand it, he won the award for creating an alien world, not so much for the story.

[Prom_STar]

As I understand it, he won the award for creating an alien world, not so much for the story.

Well, he did do that fairly well. Perhaps it would help if I better understood what the awarders of these pretigious prizes looked for.

[Variol Farseer]

The thing is that both the Hugo and the Nebula have to be awarded each and every year. But it isn't every year that an SF book as good as Dune comes along.

There is simply no way to understand 'what the awarders of these prestigious prizes look for', because they're not juried prizes, they're based on the popular vote of various cliques and claques in the SF field. The voters change from year to year, and probably no two of them base their vote on quite the same criteria.

The Nebula awards are voted on by professional members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; there is said to be a lot of politics and infighting involved in the voting. SFWA added a second (invisible) F some years ago to include Fantasy, but it's still widely felt that the Nebula should be a simon-pure award for science fiction only. Part of this is because the World Fantasy Award is thought to fulfil the function of the Nebulas for fantasy; but a good deal of it is pure snobbery. (Only last summer, I was asked by a fledgeling SF writer when I was going to give up writing fantasy and devote myself to 'the superior genre'. I wish I could say this wasn't a common attitude among the SF fashionistas.)

The Hugos, being voted on by (in theory) the entire membership of each year's Worldcon, are less amenable to being manipulated by small groups of activists. Since the great majority of Hugo voters are not professional writers themselves, there seems to be little of the mutual hand-washing and back-scratching that characterizes the Nebula award process.

Very roughly speaking, the Hugo Award indicates what hardcore con-going SF fans like; the Nebula indicates what SF professionals say they like when they know what they are supposed to like. A 'guilty pleasure' in SF can almost be defined as a book that won the Hugo but wasn't even shortlisted for the Nebula.

In 1970, when Ringworld appeared, the battle of the generations in SF was even fiercer than in society as a whole. On the one hand you had the surviving veterans of the 'Golden Age' of John W. Campbell's Astounding magazine, who still plumped for hard SF with good hard science and plenty of futuristic gadgets, and sneered at what at least one of them called 'the hypertrophy of literary values'. On the other hand were the writers of the New Wave, experimental, avant-garde, and often rather trippy, and not much interested in science as such. Larry Niven, though one of the younger generation of writers at that time, wrote unabashed Campbellesque hard SF, and was therefore hailed as a true heir of SF's equivalent to the Great Tradition. He won the Nebula because the oldsters at that time still had the numbers and the clout in SFWA to swing the vote his way. This would not always be so. Nowadays, I suspect a book like Ringworld, though it could still easily win a Hugo, would not be a serious candidate for the Nebula. A guilty pleasure, by the definition I offered earlier.

[Prom_STar]

well, that certainly helps put things in perspective and all that.

Thanks, Variol

[Variol Farseer]

You're welcome!

Now I can feel like my years in fandom weren't entirely wasted.

[Lady Revel]

VS,

That was very interesting! I had no idea of the politics behind the awards, but if I had thought about it, I probably would have known they were there! Almost everything involves politicking of one sort or another.

Thank you for that informative description!

Prom - I am currently reading Ringworld, believe it or not, and I was wondering the same thing - while good, how in the world did it win?????

[taraswizard]

Really reluctant about commenting here. However, this is somewhat affirming Variol Farseer's discussion. A few years ago at Torcon IV, BtVS won the Hugo for the episode Conversations with dead people and Jane Espenson was one of the writers. Ms Espenson said at the time as she remembered the situation 'the Nebulas were what one should be reading and the Hugos were probably what you were reading.'

[Prom_STar]

Prom - I am currently reading Ringworld, believe it or not, and I was wondering the same thing - while good, how in the world did it win?????

How far into it are you?

[matrixman]

During my teen years in school when I was a much more, ah, reckless (and faster) reader, Ringworld was one of those books I had always considered reading, but I never got around to it. Now, I'm not sure I should bother.

It's good to have someone here like Variol Farseer, who is knowledgeable about the behind-the-scenes stuff in the publishing industry. I knew nothing of the politics behind the Hugo and Nebula awards either.

When I first came upon the Covenant books, I remember reading the blurb which said that in 1977 Donaldson won the "prestigious" John W. Campbell award for fantasy. I had not yet tasted the riches contained in the pages of the Chronicles, and the only "Campbell" I knew was Campbell's Soup.

[Variol Farseer]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, for I have heard most of these things by listening to writers grumble at one another, either at consuites over drinks, or in online forums like www.sff.net. Some of it comes from Norman Spinrad's reportage over the years, and he's certainly not an unbiased source. But the various accounts hang together, and fit well with my own impressions of the kinds of work that tend to win Hugos and Nebulas.

Other interpretations of the facts could certainly be devised. I will only say that my interpretation is partly or largely shared by many of the professionals I've known in the SF field.