Kevin Ahearn writes about...

2005 SF Awards

As 2006 begins, the science fiction community will carefully evaluate last year’s sf and prepare nominations for various awards. But 2005 was unique — a new science fiction author achieved international fame for sf whose impact will be felt around the world for years to come.

Too often the awards process becomes a popularity contest or an opinion poll. Publishers and movie studios are sometimes suspected of influencing the voters, but don’t look to the best-seller lists or your local multiplex for this breakthrough sf. Odds are no one reading this letter has read a single word of it, but if sf is to be judged on its influence on science and society, there can be only one winner of the Hugo and Nebula and the John W. Campbell Award, the sf “triple crown” for 2005.

His name is Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean researcher who claimed to have cloned human cells but who fabricated evidence for all of that research, according to a report released today by a Seoul National University panel investigating his work.

Those who believe sf must be a novel, a short story, a play or a movie might want to reexamine that limited criteria. With his papers on human cloning, Hwang Woo Suk has proven that an sf author can generate millions of dollars for scientific research and become a “national treasure,” plus he and his wife got free first-class flights for a decade, and even got his portrait on a postage stamp.

In 2005, no other author of sf even came close. On second thought, maybe the Dover, Pennsylvania School Board deserves Honorable Mention for “Intelligent Design.”

Kevin