Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Yeah, I've been reading a little about the whole Hugo Awards controversy.

I am not a big SF reader....I pretty much read a bunch of different stuff, but some of the things I like (e.g., Connie Willis' time-travel stories) count as SF.

But the whole mess - the whole Dead Puppies vs. the SJWs vs. I don't know who else. It makes me throw up my hands. I think our culture is starting to get crushed under the dead weight of people deciding they are going to be offended at everything.

It seems to me there are people on one side complaining about "privilege" and the need to be inclusive and on the other side people going "Offensive? You wanna see offensive? Here, I'm gonna be as offensive as I want to be! You think this is offensive? Choke on it!"

In other words: both sides are being jerks. I don't mind discussion, I don't mind debate, but we've dropped into an ad hominem world where people are largely being jerks about stuff.

And I'm done with that. If I read a book, I want it to be an interesting story. I don't care about the sex, color, ethnic background, sexual orientation or whatever of the writer....unless they spend a lot of the book beating me over the head with how "diverse" they are as a writer or try to make me feel bad for who *I* am. I don't offend easily....but if someone were to start going on mid-story about "white privilege" or some such I'd roll my eyes and put the book down and make a mental note to be very careful about that author in the future. I'm not saying those issues couldn't be explored, but all too often they are done in a heavy-handed, didactic sort of way.....

I want to read good books.

So anyway. I am now going to look at any and all "awards" in most realms as being like the Nobel Peace Prize - sort of a popularity contest where the winner is chosen partly to make the choosers feel good about themselves. So "award winning" is now meaningless. Instead, I'm going to read authors I have enjoyed in the past, or books that people whose judgment I trust have said good things about. (Same goes for movies, same goes for tv shows....)