Kim Stanley Robinson: “All awards are club awards” (entrevista)

Ainda a propósito do aniversário de Kim Stanley Robinson, autor da consagrada "Mars Trilogy" (Red Mars, Blue Mars e Green Mars), de The Years of Salt and Rice e de 2312, aqui fica um destaque de uma entrevista recente que o autor concedeu ao portal húngaro SF Mag. Na entrevista, Robinson fala sobre a importância dos vários prémios de fantasia e ficção científica, sobre a sua carreira literária, sobre alguns progressos científicos contemporâneos e sobre as perspectivas quanto à colonização de Marte, numa alusão à sua célebre trilogia. Um excerto:

SF Mag: Your novel 2312 was posted on several short lists, and won the Nebula Award, too. What’s your take on science fiction awards, how serious do you consider them?

Kim Stanley Robinson: All awards are club awards, this is important to remember. Even the Nobel Prize is just one Swedish club. So I keep that in mind, and what I feel about awards depends on what I feel about clubs; also I know I’m not eligible for many awards, as I am not in the clubs involved, either through my choice or theirs. If it’s their choice I’m not in their club, and I don’t get their award, then that’s their problem, not mine.

So, as a science fiction writer, I think the Hugo award is important, as it comes from the central group of science fiction fans. That’s not exactly my core audience, but I am fond of them, and if they like a book of mine, it means something to me. Then the Locus awards, given out by Locus magazine, used to be a readers’ poll, and the readers of Locus are the industry itself: writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, people who really care. So a Locus Award was a big thing to me, coming from the industry. Now they have opened the award to anyone who wants to vote, which reduces its meaning for me greatly. In fact I am pleased that they report that if the poll was restricted to Locus subscribers only, both Galileo’s Dream and 2312 would have won the Locus awards in the year they came out. I remember that even though it is not official, because it’s a sign from the industry I am part of. Then the Nebula award comes from my fellow sf writers, and that matters of course, but writers all have their own agendas, and it’s the young sf and fantasy writers who care most about that one, so they vote for their friends, and it’s very clubby.

The British SF Awards come from British fans and I love the British sf community, so that one matters to me. The various jury awards (Clarke, Tiptree, Pulitzer, any jury award) are simply jury awards and the juries have to reconcile their votes and it’s a mess; I’ve been on juries and seen it. So no jury award means much to me, though if a book of mine were to get one, I would be pleased of course. But it would mean precisely that 7 people compromised by picking my book. So in fact, real sales matter hugely more, as being choices by that many more readers. What counts are readers. Giving a book the time to read it; the effort; that’s a big gift!

A entrevista completa pode ser lida em inglês no SF Mag.

Fontes: SF Mag / SF Signal