Daniel José Older, author and editor of Long Hidden, recently started a Change.org petition to redesign the World Fantasy Award. This has led to signatures and celebration, as well as some controversy. His petition’s immediate request is that the WFAC change the award to resemble Octavia Butler. The current WFA statuette (shown here) is a stylized bust of H.P. Lovecraft. Designed by the great Gahan Wilson, it is a striking piece of sculpture—but it is also a reminder of the community’s contentious past.
So there is also a larger question that needs to be heard: who is SFF’s audience? Who is this community for?
I think it’s safe to say that most people would reply that the community includes everyone with an appreciation of speculative fiction—smart science fiction, fantastical stories, thought-provoking horror. So what does it say when one of the most prestigious awards you can win as a writer within that community honors a man with a complicated relationship to race and gender? It’s a reminder that many of the writers whom we revere as the founders of speculative fiction held beliefs that are damaging, and frankly repellent.
This might seem like an academic argument, but for Nnedi Okorafor, who won the award in 2011, it was anything but. She wrote a moving essay about how much the award meant to her, and having to balance her happiness with learning more about some of Lovecraft’s views on race:
“This is something people of color, women, minorities must deal with more than most when striving to be the greatest that they can be in the arts: The fact that many of The Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us.”
She asked China Miéville about his response to the award, and he said that he turned the statuette around:
“I have turned it to face the wall. […] I can look at it and remember the honour, and above all I am writing behind Lovecraft’s back.”
Nalo Hopkinson came into the comments on the essay to give her solution:
“Like you and China, I was happy to accept the award itself. As to what I’ve done with the bust? I’ve turned Lovecraft’s face outwards. I want him to see me Breathing While Black.”
Lovecraft’s stature in the community is rightfully huge. Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi has critiqued the petition, deriding the criticism of Lovecraft’s unique style. He also raises the more relevant question of whether Butler, as a primarily sci-fi writer, is the right choice for an award that is given largely for fantasy and horror. (Older has also written a response to Joshi, which you can read on his blog.) Others have also mentioned this, and there have been some calls to replace the award with something more abstract. Comic writer Kurt Busiek suggested a globe covered in fantasy maps, for instance.
And at the same time, we can’t simply erase the past. H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, John W. Campbell, and many others held views that many of us today find alienating, old-fashioned, and off-putting. But editing them out of our community entirely won’t work, either. In some cases these people created entire subgenres that younger writers still get to play in today. And trying to scrub our community’s history of all reminders of past wrongs doesn’t help anything. To quote Okorafor again:
Do I want “The Howard” (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette. Lovecraft’s full name is “Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe. Maybe it’s about that time. Maybe not. What I know I want it to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it. If this is how some of the great minds of speculative fiction felt, then let’s deal with that… as opposed to never mention it or explain it away.
What would it say about our community if we chose to redesign the WFA in honor of Butler? As Older says:
[W]e can embrace a writer that changed the genre with the depth of her humanity, the sharpness of her power analysis, the ferocity of her words and stories. Let’s do what our genre asks of us and imagine this world the way it could possibly be while being honest about the way it is.
Check out the petition here, and voice your opinions in the comments.
Leah Schnelbach thinks this discussion is a long time coming. She also really likes the word “eldritch.” Tweet at her!
While acknowledging the importance of Lovecraft’s influence on the Fantasy genre, I think the award should change. After all, his use of the n-word is all over his work, and one his poems is a rallying cry for the Stormfront crowd. I remember reading a beautiful piece of Lovecraft’s work, and when I turned to the next story, there was the n-word, staring me right in the face.
It might make more sense to either pick an abstract image, or, if they do want to honor Lovecraft in some way with this award (not being too familiar with his work or the history of this award, I’m not sure why his image is the one that represents an award that could go to any speculative fiction writer – there are so many writers who have changed/influenced the genre or have done great things within it), to use an image representing something from his work, not his person.
Even if they do pick a new person to represent this award, no matter who they pick, they will probably have beliefs that offend somebody (either now or in the future) so it will seem too much like a total endorsement of the person.
But if they do want a person…well, Wheel of Time didn’t get that Hugo (not disputing that decision) so, they could make it a bust of Robert Jordan ;) Although I’ll be honest, I’m gonna admit, my instinctual thought for a bust representing a world fantasy award was Tolkien. Which I admit is kind of cliche – and also defeats the point of trying to find a NEW face who better represents the diversity and new influences in the genre.
Nick Mamatas responds here, arguing that Lovecraft is a much better writer than Older gives him credit for, that Butler isn’t primarily a fantasist anyway, and that the award should be changed to something nonhuman (like a chimera), if only because Butler–or anyone else whose face is to adorn the statue–may turn out to have feet of clay as well.
I like the last quote from Nnedi Okorafor. It’s wrong to try to sensor and cleans the past to make it more acceptable for today’s common POVs.
Maybe they should consider something more abstract in their design. Otherwise in another 40 years they will want to change it again to honor someone who had a great impact during that time.
And maybe the POV of Butler will have become problematic to the audience and authors of 40 years from now. It’s too hard to know what the future will hold.
I dont see why an award should look like any single person if it is not specifically named after that person. Make it a Dragon. A Sword. Something like that. Certainly not a SciFi Author for a fantasy award. A horror author (Lovecraft) is just as strange though. Tolkien would have been more suitable, but as I said, not using a person would be best. Or: Use something (character, item, mythological creature, what ever…) representing the book that won the previous award.
Is this a sign that we are now committed to liberal tolerance? Or are we merely picking one form of bigotry to ostracize while tacitly approving others? Considering nobody seems interested in batting an eye at Saladin Ahmed comparing the US Supreme Court to the Iranian Ayatolla, or the Israelis to Al Qaeda, among many other examples of casual bigotry by spec fic authors, I’m afraid it is the latter.
While Butler was a brilliant writer and richly deserves recognition, I can’t help but think that putting the image of a science fiction writer on the WFA statue replaces the racism of Lovecraft with the sexism of “Boys write SF, girls write fantasy.”
Except of course when they’re writing bestselling and/or epic fantasy. Then it’s boys again.
The Hugo is a rocket. The Nebula is a block of lucite with a nebula inside. The World Horror Award, last time I looked, was a delightful sculpture of a haunted castle. Surely the fantasy genre could come up with a similarly iconic, non-gendered, all-inclusive symbol?
I would have thought some kind of mythical beastie would be ideal for a Fantasy Award. Same as a rocket does for the Hugo, and a swirly for the Nebula.
Finding out it is a rather disturbing looking face is just depressing.
This is one of the times when choosing something “generically fantasy” is actually probably better in the long term.
I’d rather avoid the inevitable dragon though, and it needs to be easily replicated, so maybe some kind of funky looking bird?
I started thinking of mythical animals, but lots of them are in use already (unicorns, phoenix etc). Manticore would be cool but hard to streamline. Then again, the Gemmell awards look stunning, so why not this one?
Exactly. I don’t understand why this is being made more complicated than it should be.
Plus, it would avoid the issue that Nick Mamatas mentions here (# 1) that Octavia Butler “did not write fantasy for the most part, and did not primarily identify as a fantasist.” In the attempt to honor a person of color, you would end up simply using that person of color as a token or prop, rather than honestly representing their work … which is even worse.
And as I said, the tokenism is gendered as well as race-based. Because she’s a girl, you know.
My ongoing headache from constant contact with desk is getting kind of awfully old.