Last night, I watched old episodes of Bob Ross on Youtube and thought about the controversy surrounding the Chengdu Hugo Awards. You know what I’m talking about, right? Per the Guardian, China hosted the Hugos last year for the first time (yay, world!). Only to ‘come under fire for excluding several authors from the 2023 awards, raising concerns about interference or censorship in the awards process.’
Yikes. BookRiot goes further, with a detailed deepdive into the known issues, the backstory, and the implications for the Hugos and science fiction in general. This isn’t the first time the Hugo Awards faced an existential crisis. Some people are already calling for its epitaph. It’s stressful to read, if you’re a writer who loves scifi and wants to make a living at being a writer.
California, Or Bust!
Boatloads of baleful, inauspicious, menacing thoughts ensued. What would I do if everything goes wrong with writing? I don’t have the energy or passion to reboot my life again. My Depression-era Okie family said ‘California, or bust!’ and left their homestead behind. An act of desperation, not hope. They went forward into an uncertain future because there is no other direction to go. Now, we must all do the same.
I contemplated all this last night, watching Bob Ross. Something occurred to me, and I got up this morning to share it with you. When Bob Ross got started, it was after twenty years as a drill instructor. He painted on gold mining pans, and pooled his life savings with a student to make Bob Ross, Inc. Success wasn’t guaranteed and there were many, many dead ends in his journey. Nonetheless, Ross knew what he was here to do and he kept painting. Eventually, he found his place in the universe and even now, you can see the satisfied joy he brings to his work.
We Don’t Know Enough Yet
So that’s one thing. The other is, there’s a TON of speculation and hot-takes surrounding this issue but very little verifiable fact. Perhaps the articles are correct and there’s some hanky-panky going on with the Hugo Awards. Perhaps not. We have to be careful we’re not turning into Chicken Little and screaming about the falling sky when an acorn falls on our head. It’s stressful to see something happen to science fiction, but aren’t we showing ourselves to be, uh, susceptible to manipulation?
Yes, the Hugos are an institution, but the Sad Puppies proved that institution is vulnerable. We can’t protect the Hugos from exploitation, but we can protect ourselves. There’s a quote from Robert Heinlein’s ‘Expanded Universe’ that always stuck with me: The man who can’t be blackmailed, won’t be blackmailed. Modernized, the phrase would be: if we can’t be manipulated, we won’t be manipulated.
Just Keep Writing
Tying that all together, we come back to Bob Ross. What would Bob Ross do, if he were a scifi author in 2024 looking for his big break? This is where my previous advice comes from. ‘[T]here isn’t an origin story – it’s just you making it happen every day.’ If Bob Ross commented on the Hugo Awards, his advice to us would probably be: keep writing. ‘Keep doing what you do, because that’s what you do.’
Worrying about the Hugos and scandals takes precious energy from our main purpose – making science fiction. If this avenue falls short – Bob Ross never got rich selling paintings on the back of gold mining pans – then we have to trust that another path will open for us. We have to keep going. Find your place in the universe, don’t wait for the universe to find you.
So, good news! Watching Bob Ross can give you valuable insight about the Chengdu Hugo Awards. TL;DR – relax, it’s going to be okay eventually. If you can do that, then you will survive this moment. The storm will pass and the dust will settle. We’ll see what happens to the Hugo Awards while we continue to champion our genre and community: science fiction.
