George R.R. Martin responds to criticism over controversial Hugo remarks

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin hosted the Hugo Awards this past weekend, and there was a ton of backlash over his lengthy remarks.

The 78th World Science Fiction Convention, aka WorldCon, was set to take place this year in New Zealand. Of course that didn’t happen, because the coronavirus is thwarting any and all attempts at group gatherings, so like many others cons, it went virtual.

That was a curve ball for A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, who was chosen to be the “toastmaster” for what came to be known as CoNZealand (yes, this thing has a lot of names). As toastmaster, it fell to him to host the Hugo Awards, a yearly ceremony honoring the best in science fiction and fantasy fiction.

It didn’t go well. People on social media and elsewhere have accused Martin of erasing the accomplishments of authors of color, glorifying authors and editors with regressive beliefs, and generally doing a bad job as host. Let’s go over some of the accusations, and then get into Martin’s response.

If I can go wide here at the top, people seem upset with Martin for being out of step with what the Hugos are now all about. The nominees this year represented a broad range of authors of different ethnicities and backgrounds. But Martin, who framed his remarks mostly as a history of the Hugos, spent a lot of time talking about authors important to the ceremony’s past — some of whom had pretty backwards ideas about the purpose of genre fiction — rather than the new crop of writers working today.

For instance, Martin continually invoked the name of John W. Campbell, an influential sci-fi writer and editor who had some extremely backwards, reprehensible beliefs. For example, Campbell was known to say that some people were “natural” slaves unhappy if freed, and cited that as the reason for the 1965 Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles. Up until recently, the Hugos gave out an award called the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, but that was before writer Jeannette Ng won it at the last live ceremony in 2019 and gave a speech so powerful they changed the name:

“John W Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist,” Ng said. “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day.” The award is now called the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Similarly, Martin was dinged when mentioning Black author N. K. Jemisin, who has won the Hugo Award for Best Novel an unprecedented three times in a row, most recently for 2018’s The Stone Sky. According to blogger and Hugo nominee Natalie Luhrs, Martin then “undermined” Jemisin’s accomplishment by talking about how Robert Heinlein, whose works include stuff like Starship Troopers and Stranger In A Strange Land, once won three Hugos over a nine-year period.

Martin also made a joke about the genitalia of “eunuch” Oscar statues that did not go over well. “It was gender essentialist and transphobic,” Luhrs writes.

Meanwhile, many of the winners used their acceptance speeches to discuss social justice issues. For example, author Rebecca F. Kuang, who won the Astounding Award, used her time to give some frank advice to writers of color about the uphill battle they face in the publishing industry:

Martin mispronounced Kuang’s name when introducing her. Indeed, he mispronounced a lot of the names in the program. That was another big point of contention.

I’ll note here that, according to Luhrs, Martin mispronounced the names of both authors or color and white authors.

Here’s a sampling of some of the responses from viewers:

After this blowback, the CoNZealand Chairs issued an apology that reads in part:

"We acknowledge that we got some things wrong at the Hugo Awards Ceremony today, and through doing so have hurt members of our community.We sincerely apologise for that hurt. We apologise for the mispronunciations of names, and any disrespect implied. Phonetic guidelines were made available to us, and we did not overcome the challenges we faced."

And there was another apology on Twitter, presumably about Martin’s Oscar joke:

As for Martin, his most visible response so far appeared on Twitter, where he repurposed a Voltaire quote he’d posted over a week before on his Not a Blog. It does pretty much seem like a non-apology apology:

Martin responded in more detail in the comments of a post listing the winners. He started by denying rumors that he had been given the opportunity to rerecord the mispronounced names and turned it down. “Whoever is circulating the story that I was asked to re-record portions of my Hugo hosting to correct mispronounced names, and that I refused, is (1) mistaken, or (2) lying. Never happened.”

"There is also a story out there that I was provided with the correct phonetic pronunciations of all the names. That too is completely untrue. Last night at the event I was handed sealed envelopes with the names of the winners, and there were phonetic pronunciations for SOME (by no means all) of the names of those winners on the cards, which I had a second or two to digest before reading them out. I probably got some of those wrong as well. Pronunciation has never been my strong suit. I even mispronounce the name of my own characters at times (witness some of my interviews). But at no point in the process was I ever given a phonetic guide to how to pronounce all the other finalists, the ones who did not win. Had I received that, I would certainly have made every effort to get all the names correct. (I do fear I would have messed some of them up in any case. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and I freely admit, this is one of my weaknesses. I still have trouble with the name of one of my own assistants)."

Martin concedes that he could have tried to talk to the 100+ finalists by email to nail down how to pronounce all of their names ahead of time, but deemed it “a daunting task…[T]he ultimate responsibility was surely mine, since it was my mouth those names were coming out of… so once again, I am sorry.”

As for “the general tenor of my toasting,” Martin wanted “to make the evening one of fun and celebration. Since I expected a great many of those present to be Kiwis attending their con, I thought laying out the history of the awards was more than appropriate. Where the Hugos came from, how the trophy evolved over the decades, who has won it in the past — and who has lost it, something I tried to stress throughout, given my long history as a Hugo loser. Plus amusing anecdotes.”

He says that when considering an approach to his remarks, he preferred to make them “long-and-funny” rather than “short-and-sweet,” and argued that both approaches are valid and had been used by past toastmasters. Another of the common critiques was that Martin’s remarks were too long, and if you’ve read his books, you can probably buy that one.

“Most of the stories I told last night were time-tested, in a sense,” Martin continued. “I have told those same stories before. Usually they get big laughs. Or medium sized laughs, in any case. That was what I was hoping to hear from the audience in Wellington. Laughs. And appreciation for the long and colorful history of this field we all love: the writers, the editors, the fans, the living and the dead.”

"The Hugos themselves are how we celebrate the winners. The honor of being nominated is how we celebrate the losers… (and the hope that one day, the losers too may be winners, as I was eventually — which I why I tell THAT story, to give solace to the recently defeated)."

“Anyway, that was my approach,” Martin concluded. “Next year’s toastmaster will have a different one, no doubt. I regret that some of you did not enjoy my hosting. And I am pleased to hear that so many of you did (well, not here on FILE 770, but I am getting lots of nice texts and emails from people who did laugh in the right places). Obviously I wish I could have been everyone’s favorite toastmaster of all time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.”

I’m no Hugo expert, but if we give Martin the benefit of the doubt, this seems like a bad match of presenter and audience. Martin seemed mostly interested in talking about the history of the award ceremony, and knowing his general love of history, that’s not a huge shock. As several commenters pointed out, it might have been an interesting topic for a panel or a podcast. But people in the virtual audience, many of them waiting to see if they’d won awards, wanted to hear about the nominated works and the people who wrote them.

And an award ceremony that lasts for three-and-a-half hours? Again, that’s a very George R.R. Martin thing to do, but I’m exhausted just mentioning it.

I can believe that Martin is out of touch with what some of the current Hugo voters care about, but ascribing bigotry or animus to his actions seems like a stretch, particularly in light of what happened at the awards a few years ago, when certain regressive factions of Hugo voters — who dubbed themselves Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies — banded together to try and push more diverse voices off the ballot. Martin argued forcefully against these factions and did what he could to recognize those most deserving of recognition. His remarks at this year’s ceremony do seem tone-deaf, but I don’t see them as malicious.

Anyway, that’s my cursory read. We may see a Not a Blog post about this in the near future.

Congrats to all the Hugos nominees and winners!

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