We are a few years removed from the major WorldCon kerfuffles. The most recent issue associated with WorldCon was the decision to rename the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author Effective in 2020, the award was renamed asthe Astounding Award for Best New Author. For clarity, there is also a John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
At the time, the argument in favor of changing the name is that it was perceived that Mr. Campbell would not have approved of the identity (largely based on race) of many recent nominees. It was argued that it was wrong to give an award to a person that would have been viewed negatively by Mr. Campbell.
And let's be honest, John W. Campbell had more than a few questionable positions. Yes, "questionable" is an understatement.
The counterargument was that Mr. Campbell was not being memorialized in the naming of the award due to his opinions about race. He was memorialized for his outsized influence in the development of the speculative fiction genre. The counterargument continued by asserting that the effort to remove Mr. Campbell's name from the award was an act of "cancellation"; an attempt to remove him from history.
Those arguing in favor of the change said that such a complaint was nonsense. Mr. Campbell's place in genre history was settled and no one would attempt to rhetorically undo the past.
And yet people are doing precisely that. Jeannete Ng was the final recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. That is how the award she received in 2019 reads. Yet on her website she claims to be a recipient of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. John Scalzi also claims to be an Astounding Award recipient.
While my mild case of OCD is telling me to check author bios/websites for John W. Campbell Award recipients (and what the hell, nominees as well) from the last twenty years, the more reasonable side of my brain is telling me something else.
I routinely encounter people (some authors, some fans, some both!) who will misname the award given to recipients prior to 2020 by calling them Astounding Award recipients. That is false.
They are recipients of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. That is the name engraved on the award that they received. That was the name printed in the program when the award was presented and the name used by the presenter at the time. Should complete context be desired, people might refer to those authors as recipients of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (later re-named the Astounding Award). Conversely, the complete context from 2020 forward should refer to authors as recipients of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly named the John W. Campbell Award).
In any case, proclaiming recipients of the John W. Campbell Award to be something else is inaccurate and an attempt to erase a part of Campbell's productive history in creating and promoting the speculative fiction genre. What critics of the name change predicted is actually happening.
Tom Parsons would be proud.
[Updated to include the missing first paragraph plus a little light editing.]
