The Hugos: Putting the World into WorldCon

It’s time to put the world into WorldCon. Time to include geography and national culture in the definition of diversity. Past time.

This here is just a discussion in good faith. Remember those? There’s no outrage; no political side. All I’m saying is this: historically, the winner of the Hugo for best novel has been from the US, 82% of the time. If we take just the past five years (2014 – 2018) Americans have received 90% of nominations (27/30) and won 90% (the latter number comes from Ken Liu (as translator) sharing the award with Cixin Liu for The Three-Body Problem). For the Nebulas* – while not related to WorldCon directly, still reflective of what is happening in the genre – the picture is worse: US writers have been nominated 91% of the time (30/34) and won 100%.

If we take all the other fiction categories (short story, novelette, novella), US writers have historically receive the nomination 75% of the time.

This is a blind spot in discussions of inclusion. I look at these figures and wonder how much we’re missing. How many deserving writers from the rest of the world are toiling on in obscurity. While I actively welcome the Hugos becoming more diverse by many other parameters, this particular dimension – which takes in 96% of the Earth’s population – feels unremarked and unregarded. If anything, we appear to be going backwards**.

It’s not all bad news. WorldCon is in Dublin in 2019, and Wellington in 2020. Now is the perfect time for fiction from the rest of the world to make some noise.

What I’m arguing for here is the bleeding obvious: there is a multiplicity of histories, cultures, and cosmologies outside of the US, and maybe it’s time to shine some of the light on them. All I’m saying is that as a reader, I’m always looking for ways to have my mine blown. When I was young, my first major mind explosion was courtesy of Philip K Dick. As an adult, I’ve continued to chase that dragon. It gets harder, obviously, once you’re out of those formative years, and reach the cynical bastard stage of life. But it’s possible.

For me, those new ways of seeing that world come from stories from Southeast and East Asia, usually in translation (I’m biased, here, because I lived and worked throughout Southeast Asia for a decade, and because my in-progress PhD involves a lot of East and Southeast Asian literature).

And, I confess, I want to see the rest-of-the-world be blown away by an Australian novel, or short story (we’ve never won either category). I see this facile notion pop up online from time to time that somehow Australian fiction is the same as US fiction – usually by people who’ve never read anything by an Australian. We’re insufficiently ‘exotic’, according to some. I suspect anyone reading ‘Terra Nulllius’ by indigenous writer Claire Coleman will have any such misconceptions blown away.

Which are two selfish reasons. But if you’re looking for more altruistic motivations, I can provide those, as well. Here’s three.

One, it’s good for genre fiction. It expands and renews this field we so love by bringing new cultures, new stories, and new ideas into the fold.  Two, it’s good for the authors, as a Hugo nomination – and to a lesser extent the Nebula – can provide a boost in sales or advances. Three, it brings new readers into the field. A Filipino, or an Australian, or New Zealander, or a Zimbabwean winning a Hugo for best novel will without question introduce new readers from those countries to our genre.

Unfortunately, the next part of being constructive is putting up a list of potential novels and short stories to read. This is why outrage is so much easier than informed discussion: it doesn’t come with so much fucking homework.

But I’ve done my homework. I’ve talked to editors and writers from Australia, Zimbabwe, the UK, New Zealand, Singapore, and – yes – the United States. And I’ve come up with a list. It’s not a comprehensive one. I don’t have that sort of time, and I wouldn’t want it to be. A comprehensive list would be so eye-rollingly long the reader would have no idea where to start. And any such claim to completeness would be immediately debunked. I’m not aiming for perfection or quantity.

Also note that none of these are my nominations (yet). I will add my own to the list over the next few weeks as I get my reading done. I have two I’d like to include from my reading as Aurealis judge, though unfortunately I cannot divulge those until the awards are announced.

All these caveats aside, I present to you a flawed and partial list of stories that entirely reasonable humans from all across the world have recommended. Which is about as good as it gets:

Novels

Sisyphean – Dempow Torishima (Japan)

The Invisible Valley: a novel – Su Wei (China)

Ball Lightning – Liu Cixin (China)

Frankenstein in Baghdad – Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq)

Rosewater – Tade Thompson (Nigeria) (this is on everyone’s list for 2018, even though it first came out in 2016. Unless there’s some nomination quirk I’m unaware of, this probably isn’t eligible. But it is the start of a trilogy, so read it so you can go ahead and nominate its successor in the future)

Ravencry – Ed McDonald (UK)

Summerland – Hannu Rajaniemi (Finland)

Europe at Dawn – Dave Hutchinson (UK)

Vita Nostra – Marina & Sergey Dyanchenko (Ukraine)

A Winter’s Promise – Christelle Dabos (France)

City of Lies – Sam Hawke (Australia)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer 

City of Lies – Sam Hawke (Australia) (US writers win the Campbell 90% of the time; an Australian has never won)

Short Fiction

The Names of Women, by Natalia Theodoridou – Strange Horizons  (Greece / UK)

Girls Who Do Not Drown, AC Buchanan – Apex (New Zealand)

Logistics, AJ Fitzwater – Clarkesworld (New Zealand)

Single’s Day, Sam Murray – Interzone (Australia)

The Nearest, Greg Egan – Tor.com (Australia)

The Descent of Monsters, J. Y. Yang (Novella) – Tor.com – (Singapore)

Anthology

The Apex Book of World SF 5, Edited by Cristina Jurado (International)

Collection 

All the Fabulous Beasts, Priya Sharma (UK)

*A work first published in the US in English that year, or first published in English in electronic form, is eligible for the Nebula Award (voted on by SFWA members). Works published previously outside the US are also eligible. This would reduce, to some extent, the number of works by non-US writers able to be nominated. However, it seems to me a metric tonne of works by non-US writers would still be eligible each year, and most of those suggested in this article are.

**The further drifting away from international fiction in recent times may have been due to the toxic Sad Puppy saga (the trend over the past ten years is less bad, with US nominations (Hugo – novel) coming in at just above 80% overall). As Jonathan McCalmont argued in Interzone, regarding the Puppy controversy: “…foreigners are always going to fare badly when American genre culture decides to tear itself apart in the name of progress and inclusivity.” The next five years will give us an indication of whether the world can truly be part of WorldCon. We’ll see.