Hugo definitions of the past
Jan. 29th, 2010 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacGot another batch of the usual year-old Vanamonde from John Hertz. Oh, look, A.J. Budrys died. No. 822 of 2/25/09 includes a letter of mine referring to a comment a year earlier which in turn refers to a question over a decade old even then. John is a skilled trimmer of letters, but just in case it might be desired to have the whole thing out there, here's my uncut observations:
Whether the film Apollo 13 was eligible for a Hugo Award as Best Dramatic Presentation is more problematic than you imply. You state that “it wasn’t fiction,” but in fact it contained dialogue, episodes, and entire subplots (the hostility between Haise and Swigert and its resolution) that were frankly invented for dramatic purposes. As with many other films based on historical events, it occupies a space on the fact-to-fiction continuum rarely seen in print. Though the film is based on a memoir by Lovell that contains reconstructed as well as transcribed dialogue, had Lovell’s memoir contained as much invention as the script did, publishers might have been uneasy to classify it as non-fiction, and if written as a narrative by other persons – as the film script in fact was – it would, I think, have to have been considered an unusually strictly fact-based historical novel.
In fact I would say that almost every acted film (as opposed to a documentary), no matter how historically veracious, can in practice be considered fiction by these standards. The only exception I can think of was a television program consisting of actors – if indeed they were professional actors and not simply readers – reading aloud verbatim the released transcripts of the Watergate tapes, in an attempt to restore the unavailable tapes to sound form for public edification. Lacking even stage directions, it contained no literary or dramatic invention by the filmmakers whatever. (And no artistic merit either.)
Once Apollo 13 is considered fiction, whether it is therefore science fiction is another question. Not all fiction concerning technology is science fiction. But my opinion is that anything which would have been unquestionably science fiction, if written as a story at an earlier date well within the memory of many persons living at the time of the film, qualifies as SF by the spirit of a field one of whose leading magazines once bore the slogan, “Extravagant Fiction Today, Cold Fact Tomorrow.”
But both of these questions have enough subtleties and subjective points that, as the Hugo Administrator responsible for either letting Apollo 13 on the ballot or forbidding it, I decided it was not my place to speak ex cathedra on this subject, but to decide by letting the voters decide. By the nature of things it was necessary to make this decision in public before the nominating period opened, simply to allow voters to know whether they’d be wasting one of their limited nominating slots by entering it. One or two people were very upset by what they read as an implied endorsement of the film for a Hugo by the administrator, but they forgot that the voters still had to nominate it. I could not do so myself, even had I expressed a positive opinion of its merits – although my opinion was, and is, very positive.
Whether the film Apollo 13 was eligible for a Hugo Award as Best Dramatic Presentation is more problematic than you imply. You state that “it wasn’t fiction,” but in fact it contained dialogue, episodes, and entire subplots (the hostility between Haise and Swigert and its resolution) that were frankly invented for dramatic purposes. As with many other films based on historical events, it occupies a space on the fact-to-fiction continuum rarely seen in print. Though the film is based on a memoir by Lovell that contains reconstructed as well as transcribed dialogue, had Lovell’s memoir contained as much invention as the script did, publishers might have been uneasy to classify it as non-fiction, and if written as a narrative by other persons – as the film script in fact was – it would, I think, have to have been considered an unusually strictly fact-based historical novel.
In fact I would say that almost every acted film (as opposed to a documentary), no matter how historically veracious, can in practice be considered fiction by these standards. The only exception I can think of was a television program consisting of actors – if indeed they were professional actors and not simply readers – reading aloud verbatim the released transcripts of the Watergate tapes, in an attempt to restore the unavailable tapes to sound form for public edification. Lacking even stage directions, it contained no literary or dramatic invention by the filmmakers whatever. (And no artistic merit either.)
Once Apollo 13 is considered fiction, whether it is therefore science fiction is another question. Not all fiction concerning technology is science fiction. But my opinion is that anything which would have been unquestionably science fiction, if written as a story at an earlier date well within the memory of many persons living at the time of the film, qualifies as SF by the spirit of a field one of whose leading magazines once bore the slogan, “Extravagant Fiction Today, Cold Fact Tomorrow.”
But both of these questions have enough subtleties and subjective points that, as the Hugo Administrator responsible for either letting Apollo 13 on the ballot or forbidding it, I decided it was not my place to speak ex cathedra on this subject, but to decide by letting the voters decide. By the nature of things it was necessary to make this decision in public before the nominating period opened, simply to allow voters to know whether they’d be wasting one of their limited nominating slots by entering it. One or two people were very upset by what they read as an implied endorsement of the film for a Hugo by the administrator, but they forgot that the voters still had to nominate it. I could not do so myself, even had I expressed a positive opinion of its merits – although my opinion was, and is, very positive.
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Date: 2010-01-29 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 12:15 am (UTC)I don't think it is possible to define SF without leaving out something important, and any attempt to follow such a definition in an awards process would lead only to safe but dull and lifeless results. It is much wiser to leave it to the voters.