Science fiction and fantasy book writing have an incredible number of awards for such niche reading in the genre, only to be outdone by the political litmus testing involved in receiving these awards. A new award called The Andromeda Award offers a cash prize—but you’re required to play pronoun games even to participate.
The Hugo Awards fell under scrutiny in the mid-2010s because of the apparent politics being played with the award, as certain people appeared to get nominated repeatedly because of their skin color, gender, or identity politics content in their books. General science fiction fandom rebelled against these awards being treated as political prizes, tarnishing the Hugos in their reputation, and only around 3,000 people voted on them in recent years.
But the Hugos aren’t the only awards that focus on identity politics. SFWA’s Nebula Awards have arguably been worse, and the author circuit surrounding mainstream science fiction publishing seems to have a new award based on identities every year.
This year saw the “Ignyte Awards” gain prominence, which states on its website it’s “centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction.”
There doesn’t seem to be a literary award in existence that is exclusive to white males in speculative fiction.
Now, the Andromeda Awards are being launched as another science fiction and fantasy prize. Their website says they are " created by UTA and C&W to seek out and support the best new emerging science fiction and fantasy writers.”
The awards are judged by literary agents who should, in theory, be qualified to read such works. The organization boasts that it has judges “from both sides of the Atlantic” to make it a global experience. The most interesting part of this award is that there are cash prizes: $5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second, and $1,000 for third, making it lucrative to enter.
However, politics is already being played in this award’s submission process. When someone logs in to submit their work, a field requesting pronouns shows—and it is required.
The immediate signaling is that one has to subscribe to leftist identity politics even to participate. Most normal people do not include listing pronouns on their sites or emails, but in recent years, leftist institutions have started pushing them in the forms of “he/him,” “she/her,” or even stranger, “they/them” or “xi/xir,” which virtue signals mental illness when used.
We’ve already seen an instance this year when sci-fi author Richard Fox was required to put in pronouns for a writing conference, where, when he put in his preferred pronouns “f***/off,” he was banned from speaking at the conference as a result, meaning what pronouns get used do influence the results of these organizations because they believe some identities are more equal than others.
It's a bad start for The Andromeda Awards to immediately sour their offerings with identity politics and make authors wonder if his or her pronouns might impact their standings.
The best way for awards to truly not discriminate would be to have blind submissions without authors’ names or genders attached, but in the age of woke virtue signaling, an author can’t seem to exist based on the merit of the work.
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They could have left it optional, and no one wold have said a word. But instead they make it a fumi-e to see one's cosmological beliefs.