(Image: BlackJack3D/Getty)

OPINIONBooksAugust 5, 2020

How NZ’s best fantasy and science fiction writers got shafted on a global stage

Guest writer

(Image: BlackJack3D/Getty)

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards last Thursday were meant to be a celebration of some of our best genre writers. It didn’t turn out that way, as Casey Lucas, one of the winners, explains.

This is the story of how the nominees and recipients of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s most prominent honours for science fiction and fantasy writers, were sidelined at an event meant to centre them.

In August 2018, voters at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California voted to host the 78th iteration of the convention in Wellington. The convention, known colloquially as WorldCon, is the world’s most prominent celebration of science fiction and fantasy literature. It’s a chance for fans to mingle with the creators they love, for experts in their fields to share their wisdom with fans and fellow authors, and for attendees and authors to vote for – and perhaps even win – the coveted Hugo Awards, one of the eminent awards of genre fiction.

This convention was to take place over July and August 2020, bringing some of the biggest names in the field to Aotearoa. Our Sir Julius Vogel Awards, recognising the best in New Zealand science fiction and fantasy, would be awarded on the same stage as their prestigious international counterparts.

But, well, we all know what happened to international stages in 2020.

The organisers of CoNZealand and their team of volunteers worked tirelessly to convert the convention, which wound up on Sunday, into a virtual experience. Unfortunately, now the dust has settled, and despite CoNZealand’s apology, many of us fans, writers, nominees, and award winners are left feeling like the air has cleared to reveal something ugly.

Criticism has been rightly levied at Hugo Awards toastmaster, bestselling author George RR Martin of Game of Thrones fame, who presented the awards via a series of livestreams and pre-recorded introductions from his home in America. These criticisms point out his transphobic jokes, his insistence on glorifying racists and sexual assaulters of the past, and, most damningly, his careless mispronunciation of many nominees’ names.

Many silly hats were worn by George R.R. Martin during his debacle of a Hugo Awards Toastmaster performance (Photos: Supplied)

Others more eloquent and more immediately affected than myself have covered Martin. I urge you to read the responses on Twitter from L.D. Lewis of FIYAH, Chimedum Ohaegbu of Uncanny, and the many-times-nominated author and editor Nibedita Sen. The Spinoff’s own Sam Brooks has covered the Hugo Awards ceremony fiasco here.

But I’m going to do what the Hugo Awards committee was afraid to do and stop giving Martin airtime. Because I’m here to document a completely different phenomenon – one that has only been generating chatter once the immediate shocking aftermath of the Hugos’ disrespect to its own nominees had passed.

It began as murmurs in chat rooms, posts on social media platforms, questions posed on industry Slacks and Discords: say, where was the New Zealand representation at the Hugo Awards ceremony? The New Zealand presenters? What of the karakia, the acknowledgement of mana whenua? Aside from a few jokes, a ramble about our gorgeous country, an admittedly brilliant segment on the artists who crafted the physical Hugo trophies, and a stuffed kiwi on a desk, there was no New Zealand content.

Those who attended the WorldCon held in Helsinki, Finland in 2017 commented on the stark contrast. That ceremony, organised in part by the Turku Science Fiction Society, presented Finland’s Atorox Award alongside its international counterparts. So … what about our local awards ceremony?

The Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony, pre-recorded the prior Sunday night, was broadcast to the convention at 11am on a Thursday, meaning it was competing for attention with the convention highlight, a Guests of Honour talk running concurrently. Not only that, it was tacked on the back end of the Retro Hugo Awards, a ceremony that pays homage to genre greats of the past, and which this year dedicated valuable airtime to extolling the virtues of famous dead racists John W Campbell and HP Lovecraft, among others.

Imagine yourself as a young writer nominated for your first literary award. Imagine finding out that award will be part of the biggest, most prestigious gathering of your genre’s luminaries. Imagine then finding out that your ceremony will be broadcast while everyone else is watching the guests of honour speak.

Imagine yourself logging into the broadcast of your ceremony regardless, because damn it, this is your moment. And your friends are there with you, so many talented friends who have spent hours volunteering to make this event happen and many more hours yet writing the works that got them on that ballot.

Cover art by Vivienne To (for the book Dragon Pearl) which won a Sir Julius Vogel award for best professional artwork (Image: Supplied)

When the prerecorded Retro Hugos ceremony began highlighting the works of Campbell and Lovecraft, many viewers were rightly disgusted. They tuned out. They changed the channel to watch a different slot of programming.

Imagine yourself as that young writer, watching people speak their disgust and depart. “Haven’t these ghosts of our past won enough awards?” someone asked in the chat. “Did we really need to prop up Lovecraft’s corpse again?” asked another. The viewer count ticked down as, due to a combination of technical difficulties and backward-thinking content, convention attendees gave up.

It’s the equivalent of watching the crowd at your ceremony get up and walk out the door just as you’re about to take the podium.

Imagine then finding out, not through an earnest apology but through internet gossip, that your voter packet – the free archive of nominated books disseminated to thousands of convention attendees so that they can make informed votes – was never even sent out to the audience.

That’s right. It seems our works were never even offered to the greater voting body who decided our fate, nor were those people told they were eligible to vote for us, except in two passing newsletter footnotes without links to any voting forms. We had spent hours formatting our work and the organisers had spent ages compiling it into a Google drive – which was then effectively shoved into a drawer and forgotten.

Was this a deliberate omission? Were we simply overlooked? Did they feel this was fine to do to us because as New Zealanders, we are perceived as distant and insignificant? Or, the most crushing thought of all: it’s like they were embarrassed by us.

I do not write fiction for awards. I do not even write fiction for sales, releasing the majority of my work for free online. I am lucky enough to make video games and comics for a living. It would be easy to sigh, shrug, and chalk it up to organisational dysfunction.

But here’s the thing about podiums, be they physical or virtual. When you win something, you have an opportunity to speak up. As the Sir Julius Vogels ceremony was pre-recorded, we were robbed of the opportunity to speak up about how the convention programming treated us.

I want to note that thanks to the hard work of organisers Lynelle Howell and John Toon, who also deserved far greater recognition than the convention lent them, us nominees were treated to a brilliant night in person that we will never, ever forget. So much talent and aroha, in a room full of the bright young queer, indigenous, immigrant, disabled, and neurodiverse voices who are the future of our genre.

Winners with their Sir Julius Vogel Awards (Photo: Twitter)

But on the wider virtual stage? Those writers got the shaft. They got angry tears. They got a gaping, New Zealand-shaped hole in the programming agenda. Like the Hugo nominees whose host could not even be bothered to respect their names, they had their moment of triumph derailed. Why did I mention these writers’ ethnicities, sexual orientations, immigrant status, or disabilities? Because writers like us are used to being pushed to the margins of mainstream programming. We did not expect it to happen so close to home.

I was not formally involved with the convention, save as a panel participant and an award winner. I do not know who made the final call on these decisions. Having worked on events in the past, I can guess it was probably a horrendous confluence of several committees butting up against one another while trying to make an event happen under nearly impossible circumstances. If this is the case, I have empathy.

And hell, to an extent I can even understand the actions of those who worked on the Hugo Awards ceremony – the George RR Martin shambles – even if I furiously disagree with their choices. Martin is as big a name as it gets. In my years as an editor, I have had the unenviable task of wrangling creators who are “too big to fail”. Masters of their genre whose fame and sales and influence tip the scales heavily in favour of them being able to completely ignore any edits you’d make to their work. Of course, in editor land, we all know that makes for worse creative work, but I digress.

These authors, the best in their field that Aotearoa New Zealand has to offer, deserved better.

While science fiction and fantasy are often regarded at eyebrow-raised distance from the wider literary scene, the works on this year’s Sir Julius Vogel ballot addressed subjects as meaty as any literary novel. These works tackled colonialism, history, sexism, family, friendship, belonging, disability, illness, divorce, love, redemption. They gave voices to the phantoms of our country’s history and identity, our lore and our pūrākau and our dreams for the future.

Our longstanding isolation from the wider literary community only makes it bite all the deeper that the SJV nominees had to fight for recognition within our own convention, meant to celebrate our own genre.

Big winners at the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. From left: best novel, best youth novel, and best novella (Images: Supplied)

Like many nations across the world, Aotearoa New Zealand must continually confront and examine its colonial history and its colonial present. Genre fiction allows us to explore the tangles of our real-world identities and the scars of our past – while also giving us free rein to imagine something better. Yet the genre fiction community itself must face a similar reckoning: why do we always find ourselves stepping up onto the podium only to look over our shoulder at the past?

When I ponder writing as an act, I think often of Tina Makereti’s powerful University of Auckland Public Lecture: Poutokomanawa — The Heartpost. Makereti herself is a powerhouse who seamlessly blends genre elements into her literary work in a way that is unique to our country, our perspective.

I want you to think about what you would like to see at the heart of your national literature. I know that my literary poutokomanawa begins deep in the lands and seas of Aotearoa, where the stories of this country began, aeons ago, and that even then our whakapapa connected us to the entire Pacific.

I know that eventually our stories became inextricably linked with another culture from far away, and then more. I know that what makes us strong is this story — not of an inherited English literature, but of the extraordinary mix of language and narrative and metaphor that could only take root in this one place on Earth.

Like Makereti says, we as a culture must be mindful of what we center when building things. So too must organisers of events like this. The runners of future WorldCons in Chicago and the bid in Brisbane have promised to do better, but these are promises writers on the margins have heard before. In order for WorldCon to truly live up to its name, host cities must be willing to build their conventions on a bedrock of respect for the local community and culture. CoNZealand had plenty of local flavour in its panels, readings, and book launches, including a brilliant piece on genre fiction and te ao Māori. The programming gave us a glimpse: the awards ceremonies did not have to be this way.

The works on show at this year’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards could not have come from anywhere else. These stories carry in their bones the complex cultural history of Aotearoa, and the world was robbed of the opportunity to appreciate and cherish them. As Makereti says, Aotearoa New Zealand’s stories are kindled in the fires that burned when this planet was still new. Bold new voices in our literary world are already carrying that fire towards futures both realistic and fantastical – now it’s time for our awards and institutions to do the same. To lead us forward rather than hold us back.

A full list of finalists and winners of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, including links to buy, is available here. Congratulations all.

Keep going!

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer and the book she took 12 years to write (Photo: Jake Abel)

BooksAugust 5, 2020

‘Writing as Edward stressed me out’: Stephenie Meyer on returning to Twilight

Catherine Woulfe

Contributing writer

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer and the book she took 12 years to write (Photo: Jake Abel)

A new Twilight book launches today. Its author told Catherine Woulfe about gender politics, anxiety, and the challenges of writing the Twilight story from Edward Cullen’s perspective.

Midnight Sun is the original Twilight story, except instead of Bella Swan narrating it’s her vampire love, Edward Cullen.

It’s a book that I and the rest of the OG Twihards have been waiting for forever. The first chapter was published in 2008, as a teaser at the end of the original Twilight book. But Meyer stopped writing when further draft chapters were leaked online, and only finished the project late last year. She told the New York Times it “was just a huge, pain-in-the-butt book to write … every single word was a struggle”.

It was hard to write questions for Meyer, too. Partly because I have so many questions about Twilight, in particular about how it has infiltrated our culture and all the ways in which that worries me. Top of the pile, and impossible for her to answer, is why do I still fucking love it so much.

My questions were long and complex; apparently they were edited by Meyer’s team before they got to her. These are the edited versions.

Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, joylessly, in 2008. (Photo: Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

The Spinoff: You get asked this all the time, or you used to be, and I wonder whether your answer has changed over the years: why has the story resonated so strongly and for so long?

Stephenie Meyer: I wish I had a good answer for this question. I’ve never stopped being surprised that so many people respond to something I wrote for just myself. I was shocked that people were so excited for Midnight Sun. I was sure most of them would have given up by now.

You said to Variety in 2013: “I get further away [from Twilight] every day. For me, it’s not a happy place to be.” Can you elaborate on that, and whether it feels like a risk to you to re-enter that place now? What made it feel like a risk worth taking?

I am an introvert. I think that’s pretty common for writers; most of us prefer spending time with imaginary characters to facing the real world. At that point in time, it had been several years of intense engagement with the Twilight world, with a lot of required public interaction. It was all pretty far outside my comfort zone. I’m the kind of introvert who can do the occasional large group or public speaking, but then I need a long quiet time to recharge. I hadn’t been getting my necessary recharging, and it made me a little dramatic, ha ha. Since then, I’ve spent a few years hiding out in the quiet, and it’s helped me to feel a lot healthier. I needed the space and the isolation to keep going with Midnight Sun.

Arriving at the LA premiere of the second Twilight film in 2009 (Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic via Getty)

You said after writing Life and Death that you were surprised how therapeutic the process was. Was writing Midnight Sun the same – and in what way?

Those were very different processes. Life and Death was therapeutic because it stripped all the outside input away from the story and especially from the characters. None of them could look or sound like the movie actors, they were no longer captured by the graphic novels or fan art. They were pared back to the core of who they were. On top of that, I didn’t feel tied into the dialogue and actions so tightly. The structure was loose enough for me to make changes. It was like getting another editing pass 10 years later, and I really enjoyed that.

Midnight Sun was very rigid. I didn’t have the leeway I had with Life and Death. But I did have my characters back. Life and Death had cleaned them off for me, removed expectations outside of my own. It made it possible for me to finally finish.

Obviously you have changed a lot in the last 15 years, and so has the culture you’re releasing this book into. Have you changed your thinking about the story at all – how different is it from the one you’d write if you had that dream tonight?

I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. Twilight was a product of who I was in 2003, what I needed from fiction right then. It was a very personal escape. I don’t need the same things now, I’m such a different person. If I had the dream tonight, would I even write it down? I really have no idea.

Meyer wrote Twilight after an intense dream about Bella and Edward in a meadow (Photo: Supplied)

Tell us how much of a play you’ve had with Midnight Sun: are you revising the original Twilight story at all, or have you treated that story as static, and revisited it from another angle?

I had to keep the story static. It wouldn’t have been a true companion to Twilight if I’d played fast and loose with the story the way I did with Life and Death. This is one of the reasons the book took so long; getting to create, to imagine – that’s what fuels me when I’m writing. Working around an old creation was often extremely frustrating. All of my favorite parts of Midnight Sun are the places where I could be freer in my creation – the places where Bella was “off stage”, the places where Edward retreats into his memories. Those are the moments when the writing flowed.

Are there any scenes that you particularly enjoyed writing from Edward’s POV? (I’m thinking about the strut through the school car park – just like an ordinary guy with his girl – as a high point, maybe.)

As I said above, the parts I enjoyed most were the parts that were brand new. The fastest chapter I wrote was, appropriately, the chapter where Edward races along the Phoenix highway, causing major mayhem, to rescue Bella at the dance studio. I also enjoyed seeing Bella through Edward’s eyes in the places where she edited herself. Bella was always more interested with everything Edward said and did; she was analysing, marvelling, working to put together the clues he was dropping. When it came to things about herself, she skipped over the inessentials; she just wasn’t interested. Edward is obsessed with Bella’s every word, and so we get the fuller conversation here. And then the flashbacks were always fun.

The first conversation, in biology class (Photo: Supplied)

When did you finish writing?

I finished the rough draft in November of 2019. It was a comparatively short editing cycle. Both myself and my publisher were aware of the long time the readers had been waiting; we wanted it on the shelves as soon as possible.

What was Edward like to write? Do you think Edward’s perspective – the fact that he can read the minds of other characters, in particular – holds any surprises or upsets for fans?

Writing from Edward’s perspective was a darker experience. Bella is an incredibly well-adjusted, happy person in comparison. Edward is riddled with anxiety, constantly over thinking, and 100% convinced that there can be no happy ending for him with Bella. Though he has a few chapters where optimism forces its way into his life, that feeling is fleeting. Writing as Edward stressed me out.

I think readers are in for some mindreading surprises. Some characters will be even more likeable, some much less. Though I wonder if anything new at this point in time will be able to shake opinions held for 15 years.

Climbing trees at Edward’s place; a rare moment of playfulness (Photo: Supplied)

Do you think the switch to a male narrator is likely to attract more boys and young men to the Twilight story?

Ha ha, I doubt it. Twilight is too well known as a story about a girl. And there’s a very obviously female author’s name right there on the cover! One of the biggest disservices we do to our male children is teaching them that only male stories apply to them. Girls grow up reading books written by men in school – those are the classics. They have to search out the classics written by women. So girls grow up reading both sides of the story. Boys never have to, and are often taught that they shouldn’t. When my son was 10, he loved the Anne of Green Gables books (which of course I had put into his hands), but he gave up on the series because he was teased at school for reading a book with a girl on the cover. It broke my heart. Girls are never shamed for reading books written by men, but even they are shamed for reading books by authors of their own gender. Why are we teaching kids that female stories are less than and optional? It’s a tragedy.

Do you think those writing for adolescents and young adults have a certain duty of care?

I do, and yet, I certainly never considered that when I was writing Twilight. I didn’t know I was writing a YA book when I started. I was writing for one 29-year-old mother of three. When I was told it was a YA book, I was surprised. I don’t know how much would change if I went back in time and wrote with a YA audience in mind. Actually, I do know. If I’d had any idea of any audience outside myself, I never would have finished.

Students of Quileute Tribal School at the real La Push, 2011 (Photo: The Olympian/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)

Does “cancel culture” worry you? You’ve already had so much flak for Twilight, and it seems you’re opening yourself up to it again, and perhaps even more intensely so, with Midnight Sun – partly because of the rise of social media but also because you’re writing from the POV of a male character who is controversial for his protective “pushiness” and knife-edge dangerous nature, and his inclination to stalking (which I have tried to overlook and explain away, because despite it all I am extremely besotted with Edward). There have also been criticisms over cultural appropriation (re the Quileute) and that’s very much in the spotlight right now … I just wonder whether you’re braced for the fallout. It must feel very different to when you were writing the original story, before all this massive slavering interest.

Meyer did not answer this question. Perhaps it never made it to her.

Are you done with Twilight now? Is this, finally, where the story heads blissfully off into its forever?

I really don’t know. I know that I’m going to spend some time in my quiet place now, but I don’t know how long. I have other stories I want to write, and I do long for the chance to create something brand new – a new world, new rules, new characters. So that will certainly take me a while. But the Twilight world is always out there, and there are stories left in it. We’ll see if they tempt me back.

Midnight Sun, by Stephenie Meyer (Hachette, $37.99) is available from Unity Books Wellington and Auckland.