… Harry Harrison

Preambel: We want to look behind the work of some British  SF-writers resp. US-authors, who are known as »milestones« of SF-literature ( or at least »mighty pebbles«).

First I want to speak about Harry Harrison.

Naturally  it's my personal view, nevertheless I want to name the column  »the German view«.

The Hugo Awards

Introduction
Let's talk about the Hugo Awards. Horst has brought together a bunch of viewpoints about the Sad Puppy campaign, and the response to it, and we all owe him a huge vote of thanks.

Now to toss some dynamite into the discussion.

The Hugo Awards don't matter. Period.

The Hugo Awards are Irrelevant

I'm going to ask you to ignore everything you've heard about the Hugo Awards for the last ten years. I know it will be hard. Make that probably impossible, but I'm going to ask anyway.

So, let's go back to the days of First Fandom - 1938 to be precise. Before 1938 there'd been no fannish activity. Well, yes, the Futurians technically predated First Fandom, but they didn't count since they all went on to be writers.

David Gerrolds Guest of Honour speech
The Hugo-Issue - Addional Material

David Gerrold ist the Guest of Honour on the Science Fiction Worldcon in Spokane and will handout the Hugos. He was attacked by the puppies (Sad as well as Rabid). Gerrold told on his Facebook-wall, that he consider the con as giant party and he wouldn't dare to disturb this party.

His speech is a proof of this attitude. Here it is:

The Puppy Position
The HUGO Issue Part 1

It is August 12, and as of the writing of these words, countless opinion pieces have already been written, regarding the Hugo awards being given out at the 73rd World Science Fiction convention. 

Some of those pieces have been supportive, others have been critical.  Almost all of them have discussed the Sad Puppies project, which I helped organize for this year.