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George R.R. Martin's Controversy At the Hugo Awards Highlights a Power Struggle in Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Photo credit: Hearst Owned
Photo credit: Hearst Owned

From Esquire

When Game of Thrones was still on the air, the show was rightfully criticized for its gratuitous depiction of rape. According to one fan who crunched the number, by the series's fifth season, it had depicted or recounted 50 acts of rape or attempted rape. On average, there wasn't a single episode of the show that was free of sexual assault. But what fans who hadn't read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series might not have known is that when it comes to sexual violence, Game of Thrones's source material is far, far worse. The five books in Martin's series featured four times as much rape as the show, with 214 acts of sexual violence included.

It's not super surprising that Martin wasn't a paragon of sensitivity as host of the digital 2020 Hugo Awards last Friday. The awards, which honor achievements in science fiction and fantasy, have in recent years begun to recognize the contributions that women, the LGBT community, and people of color are making to speculative fiction. And, in contrast to the diverse slate of nominees and winners, Martin has been criticized for focusing his remarks on white men, mispronouncing the names of nominees, and making transphobic jokes during the awards. This thoughtless approach towards issues of race and class, from an author who can be so very thoughtful on other subjects, is unfortunately pretty much in keeping with the Song of Ice and Fire books. And this controversy is a perfect example of the progress the sci-fi/fantasy genre still has to make, and the lessons that its icons—like Martin—still need to learn and accept.

Virtual attendees noted that in his remarks, Martin seemed to dwell on praising white male writers of old, including some with a history of racism, rather than engaging with the nominees and their work. The Hugo Awards were first held in 1953, but it wasn't until 2016 that a Black person, acclaimed author N.K. Jemisin, won the prize for best novel. She also took home the prize in 2017 and 2018, making her the only writer ever to pull off a best novel hat trick. According to former Hugo nominee Natalie Luhrs, Martin mentioned this feat, but quickly pivoted to praising a white male author who also won the award three times in a nine-year span.

He also reportedly praised H.P. Lovecraft and John W. Campbell, now-dead writers who won retrospective honors at the ceremony, despite the fact that each had an extensive record of racism. (Because of his bigotry, an award named in Campbell's honor was rechristened just last year. Some viewers took Martin's repeated praise of Campbell to be a subtle criticism of writer Jeannette Ng, the Hugo winner whose advocacy spurred the prize's re-naming.) Over the course of the event, Martin also bungled the pronunciation of nominees' names and of the Black literary magazine FIYAH, and joked about the Oscar statuette's genitalia in a manner insensitive to transgender and gender non-conforming people.

It's not the first controversy the Hugos have seen in recent years. The awards are hosted by the World Science Fiction Convention, and voted on by WorldCon attendees. As the ceremony became more inclusive in the early 2010s, it sparked a backlash from conservative fans, some of whom gathered in groups dubbed the Sad Puppies and the more explicitly alt-right Rabid Puppies, which organized voting block to support a more conservative, white, and male slate of authors.

Martin was one of many critics of the Puppies' efforts. "There was never any need for Sad Puppies to 'take back' the Hugos," he wrote in 2015. "The feminists, minorities, literary cliques, and Social Justice Warriors never took them in the first place."

On Saturday, Martin responded to the criticism in a comment on a blog post about the controversy.

"I do hereby apologize to everyone and anyone whose name I mispronounced. I am deeply sorry," Martin wrote. "That was never my intent." It didn't address the transphobic remarks (though the event's organizer later apologized to "fans beyond the binary"), and explained that his remarks focused on retro writers rather than honorees in an effort to lay "out the history of the awards."

A representative has confirmed to Esquire that Martin wrote the comment.

It's easy to understand that a 71-year-old might feel the pull of nostalgia in addressing a community that he's been part of since his teenage years. But while Lovecraft, Campbell, and others may be part of the Hugos' history, not everyone can have as rosy remembrances of them as Martin does. Campbell was an influential editor until his death in the early '70s, and according to acclaimed writer Samuel R. Delany, he refused to publish a story Delany wrote simply because it had a black protagonists. There are still people who were directly harmed by Campell's racism living and working today.

Thankfully, the future of speculative fiction looks very different—just take a look at the photos of Friday's winners. And they weren't selected by a handful of insiders, but by hundreds of sci-fi and fantasy fans. Maybe the criticism he's receiving will help Martin to better understand the current values of a community he so clearly loves.

But in his own work, Martin has often handled women and people of color in stereotypical ways. Early in the series, Daenerys is married off to Khal Drogo and raped on her wedding night. It was a horrifying scene in the show—where the character is played by an adult actor. In the book, though, the character is just 13. This rape of a female child by a swarthy barbarian sets the stage for a series filled with tribes of brown savages and descriptions of female characters' nipples so attentive that they've become the butt of jokes within the fandom.

Martin has responded to criticism that his work includes gratuitous rape scenes by suggesting that realism demands them. "Rape, unfortunately, is still a part of war today," he said in 2015. "It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist." Men are also frequently sexually assaulted—but Martin hasn't felt that he should write numerous, graphic depictions of such acts for realism's sake.

History, like reality, can be tough to analyze subjectively. Just as H.P. Lovecraft is an important part of fantasy history, so is N.K. Jemisin—and so are the 2020 nominees, who are making Hugos history right now. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books don't feel animated by the out-and-out hatred that fuels the likes of the Rabid Puppies, but rather a complete indifference towards interrogating inherited tropes and stereotypes. It's an indifference that came through in Martin's role as the Hugo Awards host. And by highlighting the perspectives of those diverse winners of the Hugo Awards, the genre is attempting to move beyond the narrow, and regressive, point of view that has dominated sci-fi/fantasy books for half a century. This should be an opportunity—as he continues to finish his beloved fantasy series—for Martin to learn and grow from his mistakes, talk to those out there criticizing him, and expand his worldview as the genre continues to be more inclusive to perspectives other than his own.

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