So! How about those Hugos?
As for me, I said what I wanted to say in the acceptance speeches, which I’ll reprint below for those who missed them.
Thanks again to Kate Elliott and Tricia Sullivan for accepting in my absence, and to all the fans, readers, and colleagues who’ve supported me while I ranted my way out here along the margins. It’s an uphill slog, but you all make it worth it – and you made a popular award win possible, which, to be frank, I did not think was within the realm of possibility. Sometimes SFF surprises you. This year more than most (OMFG ANCILLARY JUSTICE 4EVAH).
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Hugo Acceptance Speech – Fan Writer
(speech in case of emergency)
I’m told blog posts don’t matter. I’m told words don’t matter.
I’m told this by storytellers who know that the only thing that matters is words – and the ideas we convey with them. I’m told this by storytellers with a deep fear of people ranting on the internet.
Fans and pros write for all sorts of reasons, chief among them being love. I write for free online out of love, passion, and often – rage. Rage that the very stories I love punch me in the face. Rage that storytellers, many of them my colleagues, grind to dust my most fervent hopes and desires for a future that includes me and others like me.
It was this rage, I thought, that would preclude me from ever being nominated for a Hugo. Science fiction does not like change. Creators don’t like being called on their BS. But in looking out at my fellow nominees, whose own work I admire so much, I suspect it is this rage, and this desire for positive change, that is fueling our future.
Thank you all for supporting this change. Thank you for championing the voices of myself and my fellow nominees. I know we have a long way to go. I’m glad you’re all on board.
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Hugo Acceptance Speech – Best Related Work
(speech in case of emergency)
Ten years ago, this rant about llamas would have dropped like a stone. Maybe a hundred people would have read it. Fewer would remember it.
But a lot can change in ten years.
This change isn’t mine to crow about. I’m just one person. One voice. And without other voices amplifying my voice, and sharing and discussing our broken views of the past that bleed into stories of the present and future, then I – like our friends the fuzzy llamas –would sink like a stone; my voice forgotten, erased from history.
And the rest of us erased with me.
The conflict of narrative we’re engaged in online, in convention spaces, in stories, and in the wider world is a real one. It’s no less than a struggle for our inclusion in our own history. Not just my history, my future. But yours. Your friends’. Your colleagues. All of us, struggling together to write a better, truer story.
So this win goes to the llamas. Every one of us. Of every type. Even the alpacas.
Thank you.
