The campaign for a slate of authors at the sci-fi awards was less a blow against political correctness than a sign of discomfort with the evolution of storytelling.
Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy growing up, and I still have fond feelings for it. I don't dismiss it as kid stuff or think of it as some kind of phase one might pass through on the way to reading more legitimate material. So even though I don't keep up with it any more I still pay attention when it breaks into the news - which it did this week because of the Hugo Awards. It turns out there was this thing called #PuppyGate in which a group that called itself Sad Puppies - and a splinter group called Rabid Puppies - attempted to organize block voting for a slate of Hugo candidates. (By the way, memo to activists: the suffix -gate is a reliable indicator of an essentially trivial matter that someone is trying to hype into a scandal.)
The Sad Puppies were unhappy with what they saw as an atmosphere of political correctness. By their lights, any book that eschews current trends in favor of good old fashioned butt kicking adventure is unwelcome, ostracized even. It should go without saying, of course, that good old fashioned butt kicking adventures are not informed by any particular point of view but are wholly objective.
Those they deride as social justice warriors (SJWs) have created a stifling atmosphere in which only approved narratives are eligible for recognition. So they tried to get as many like-minded individuals as possible to vote for books that the SJWs had it in for. Scoring a win as a gesture of defiance to the tastemakers would emphasize the importance of quality over fads. Please try not to think about that last sentence too much.
The puppies are upset because, as they see it, the rest of the sci-fi community has declared that inclusiveness and alternative narratives are inherently meritorious. If, say, you write a book with a gay protagonist then your book has (in the puppies' reading) a leg up on a book with a straight one. To be fair, I don't think those on the side of diversity have always spelled out their reasoning as explicitly as they could have, which leaves some room for misinterpretation.
Amy Wallace has a nice overview of both the campaign and the awards. One of the striking characteristics of the puppies' campaign is how inscrutable its lingo is. Terms like SJWs and the puppy titles themselves aren't intuitive - they need to be explained to anyone who hasn't marinated in the subculture. Maybe that's how they want it. Maybe they don't care about being understood as much as energizing true believers, in which case exclusionary jargon is a plus and not a minus. But it sure seems like a curious approach for any group trying to make a case to the larger public. As a largely disinterested observer I found it off-putting.
In any event, it didn't strike me as an issue of rigidly enforced RightThink as much as one of innovation. If sci-fi and fantasy have traditionally been disproportionately represented by white men, then actively seeking out those who aren't widens the spectrum of default perspectives. It's not that a straight person can't write believable gay characters (or vice versa). It's that we all start by having the greatest ease and nuance in our own skin. That can be overcome - I've seen women rhapsodize about Tolstoy's female characters - but it's not easy, automatic or common. So casting a wider net will generally bring in a greater variety of storytelling, which in turn helps redefine the boundaries for the genre - and that is inherently meritorious.
The Sad Puppies' position largely boils down to conservatism and nostalgia. They believe science fiction and fantasy should be about grand, sweeping epics - the kind of stories that used to dominate the form. They'd like it to go back to that, but as with all art and literature, sci-fi has evolved. The puppies don't like the new direction; fair enough. There are also music fans who think it's all been downhill since "Won't Get Fooled Again." No one is required to endorse new forms as they emerge.
Those who prefer older forms, though, should acknowledge that there may be some merit they don't appreciate in the new ones. They should also understand that a flawless execution of the former may be less important than an imperfect execution of the latter. Only one of those pushes things forward, and pushing forward is the only way art stays vital. That seems like something worth celebrating - worth rewarding, even - not something to get sad or rabid over.