‘Wokeness’ Seen in ‘Laughable’ Esquire Fantasy Novels List That Omits J.K. Rowling

Some science fiction and fantasy authors were not happy with Esquire magazine’s new list of what it calls “The 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.”While Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Gene Wolfe, and Ursula K. Le Guin were among those represented, missing was the global force behind Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling. “The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemisin tops the list, and other titles include “Who Fears Death” by Nnedi Okorafor, “The Grace of Kings” by Ken Liu, and “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi.“To put Jemisin ahead of Tolkien — while completely omitting J.K. Rowling — is laughable,” a science fiction and fantasy writer, Brad R. Torgersen, whose “A Star-Wheeled Sky” won the 2019 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, said. “Also, where are David Eddings, Tracy Hickman, and Stephen R. Donaldson? Leaving them off the list seems to be an act of willful ignorance.”Another fantasy author, John C. Wright, believes that much of fantasy and science fiction has been taken over by “wokeness,” making the gender and social justice awareness of the authors and their characters more important than plot and talent. In recent years, Ms. Rowling has been criticized for her stance on transgender issues.Mr. Wright said that many of the works on the Esquire list are by newer authors who are being feted at the expense of the masters. “Number one on the list was not any work by J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, or L. Frank Baum,” Mr. Wright said, “but a work of ‘woke’ by N.K. Jemisin that no fan of fantasy has any interest in reading.” “The Fifth Season,” a work of fantasy that has analogs to the real-life history of slavery on Earth, won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel.Mr. Wright also lamented that “Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lord Dunsany, Abraham Merritt, Clarke Ashton Smith, Andre Norton, Jack Vance were not even mentioned anywhere in what purported to be the best fantasy of all time, nor was William Morris, who invented the genre.”He claims that science fiction and fantasy have become more about social justice than fighting dragons or blasting into space — and he may be right. “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” of 2019 features many stories focusing more on issues of concern to today’s political progressives than dealing with swashbuckling interstellar explorers. Characters in Charlie Jane Anders’s “The Bookstore at the End of America,” Peter Watts’s “Cyclopterus,” and Alec Nevala-Lee’s “At the Fall” all survive in a world almost ruined by global warming.Income inequality is the theme of E. Lily Yu’s “Green Glass: A Love Story,” Rich Larson’s “Contagion’s Even at the House Noctambulous,” and Ted Chiang’s “It’s 2059 and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning.”As with “The Fifth Season,” N.K. Jemisin focuses on race in her story “Emergency Skin.”Science fiction author John Scalzi, who once called President Trump “the worst president in my lifetime,” applauded the Esquire list. “A list guaranteed to enrage certain quarters,” he tweeted, “which is kind of delightful to me.”Such political strife has been dividing “speculative fiction” communities for the last several years. Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine dropped John W. Campbell’s name from its annual prize for best new science fiction writer after the 2019 winner, Jeanette Ng, criticized Campbell in her acceptance speech. “He is responsible for setting a tone for science fiction that haunts this genre to this very day,” she said. “Stale, sterile, male, white, exalting in the ambitions of imperialists, colonialists, settlers, and industrialists.” The prize is now called the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, after the magazine that Campbell ran from the late 1930s until his death in 1971, Astounding Science Fiction.John W. Campbell was a pivotal figure in the history of American science fiction, transforming much of it from pulp fantasy to accomplished storytelling and even literature. Alec Nevada-Lee wrote about him in “Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.” The book notes that for more than three decades, “an unparalleled series of visions of the future passed through his tiny office in New York, where he inaugurated the main series of science fiction that runs through works from ‘2001’ to ‘Westworld.’” Campbell did have some crackpot ideas and racist opinions, but he had his defenders. Asimov once wrote: “Campbell championed far-out ideas. He pained very many of the men he had trained (including me) in doing so, but felt it was his duty to stir up the minds of his readers and force curiosity right out to the border lines.”Campbell published thousands of stories and launched the careers of writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. He wrote sci-fi under his own name and as Don A. Stuart. His most famous story is probably, “Who Goes There?” It was turned into a much-loved movie, “The Thing,” that has nothing to do with social justice issues.

‘Wokeness’ Seen in ‘Laughable’ Esquire Fantasy Novels List That Omits J.K. Rowling

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