This weekend I attended the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) Nebula Conference, where the winners of this year’s Nebula Awards were announced in a packed Saturday-night ceremony. While the Nebulas are one of the biggest honors in the science fiction and fantasy genre, the biggest award of the night was the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, presented for lifetime achievement in the SF/F genre. This year's Grand Master was presented to N. K. Jemisin, who at 53 is the youngest person to ever receive the award. In her speech, Jemisin mentioned that she initially didn't want to accept the award because she isn't old enough and still hitting her stride as an author. However, she changed her mind after realizing "If I'm calling for change, I have to speak when a platform presents itself." And Jemisin did indeed speak, presenting one of the best-ever Grand Master speeches, focusing on tradition, belief, and inclusion within the SF/F genre. And she directly addressed the complaints some SF/F fans have that diverse authors and books are destroying the genre, saying, "There is no threat to classical SF/F. The complaint is a dog whistle, of course. Propaganda. There's no rational argument in it because that's not the point. The point is to frighten people into rejecting social progress. There is value in tradition until it becomes a chain wrapped around a child. To people who feel there is a threat to tradition, anything is better than growth, even death." And in the speech, Jemisin also directly took aim at the "tradition defenders" who have continually attacked her, saying, "My entire career has been plagued by histrionic claims that I personally am destroying SF/F through my work. Too much politics, too many fancy literary devices, too many big words, too much healthy, loving sex. But if it wasn't these things, it would be something else. Hearing claims like this has been a pretty common experience for any marginalized writer over the last 60 or 70 years." Jemisin also pushed back on the people making such dog whistle claims: "Speculative fiction has always been home to the literary avant garde and to rejectors of the status quo, and to progressive activists. W.E.B Du Bois was one of us. Mary Shelley, a feminist raised by an anarchist, is our progenitor. We've been woke since day one." Jemisin then added that at this point she doesn't care "why some people seem hell bent on protecting SF/F to death." Instead, "what matters is truth," and the truth is that the genre space contains many different diverse groups of people who have been "accused of doing damage to SF/F by their existence." As Jemisin noted, "We have always been here, and we're pretty good at cutting chains. We aren't destroying anything. We built this, and we're not going anywhere." Jemisin also talked about how SF/F is an art form that is well suited to covering the human condition. And she took aim at the publishing houses that are trying to appeal to the people instituting book bans, never mind that those people don't even read. As she said of those doing the dog whistles and attacking others for supposedly destroying the SF/F genre, "The problem with internalized self hatred is that you stop trying to be better. You accept the limitations others impose on you. You take pride in your own ignorance and timidity, because at least that's an identity. A support group. You attack yourself, or in this case, your own genre." Those words not only reflect issues within the SF/F genre, they resonate very deeply with much of the politics driving hateful trends in today's world. Everyone should listen to the entire speech. Here's a direct link to the recording. ( Update: Jemisin has also posted the text of her speech , which was revised slightly from what was recorded.) In an amusing sidenote, at the beginning of her speech Jemisin said something was on fire on the podium, after a piece of tape that covered a podium light overheated and ignited. That fire was absolutely amazing symbolism, because Jemisin not only set the podium on fire with her speech, she delivered a speech that will hopefully influence the SF/F genre for decades to come. Ryka Aoki's Best Poem Speech Later in the ceremony, the first-ever Nebula Award for Best Poetry was presented. In introducing the award, poet and author Ryka Aoki delivered another speech people should listen to. Echoing Jemisin's words that "we have always been here," Aoiki said, “I stand before you as a trans person, queer person, and I want to call out to all the trans and queer writers sitting here today and watching us tonight because we have always been here. And you know what, so has poetry." Aoki described how poetry existed before the written word and before printing on paper. She then mixed the familiar children's poem "Star Light, Star Bright" with asking, "When we look at the stars, why do we experience the heavens?" Aoki added, "In poetry, we glean the unknowable. In poetry, our language grows beyond escaping danger or hunting down prey. Through metaphor, allegory, symbolism, we craft myth and meter. We craft the Bhagavad Gita and the Big Bang, the Kalevala and the fine structure constant." Listen to Aoki's entire speech . Final Thoughts on SFWA On a final note, SFWA went through a rough stretch two years ago , with multiple presidents, staff and volunteers leaving the organization. However, the organization appears to have recovered spectacularly from those days, with the conference running smoothly. In addition, SFWA President Kate Ristau, Vice President Anthony W. Eichenlaub, and Executive Director Isis Asare showed they have the organization’s leadership well in hand. Volunteer-led organizations like SFWA frequently have missteps and issues that pop up. However, everyone I spoke with at the conference – from the board of directors to the organization's leadership to the numerous volunteers who work behind the scenes – seemed happy and confident with the direction the organization is taking.
