by INDIRA CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Literature Writer
First, they come for your science fiction. Then, they come for your world.
The Greenbacks are the most prestigious awards for literary works of science fiction and fantasy. With the possible exception of the Waldos. Okay, the Greenbacks and the Waldos are the two most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy. And, the Wet Willies. The Greenbacks, the Waldos and the Wet Willies are the most - and the Oddment Society Annual Top Sevens as Voted By You Awards - although, honestly, I never thought they were that prestig -
Okay. Among the most prestigious awards for science fiction and fantasy are the Greenbacks, the Waldos, the Wet Willies and, arguably, the Oddment Society Annual Top Sevens as Voted By Yous. The important thing is that nominations for this years' awards have been hijacked by a group known as the Sad Squiggles.
Squiggles are, of course, the native race of the planet Ventrosia. Ventrosian Squiggles look like six foot tall inverted commas with semicolons on their sides for heads. They are a war-like race, but they only attack planets that have developed a healthy speculative fiction culture, on the theory that they're the only planets that would take a race of six foot tall inverted commas with semicolons on their sides for heads seriously as invaders.
To nominate books for a Greenback Award, you have to buy a membership to the World Science Fiction Convention and Galactic Rodeo. Ventrosian Squiggles bought over a thousand WorldRodeoCon memberships, allowing them to dominate most award categories (although, oddly enough, human authors swept the nominations for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Short Story Written by Somebody With Arms).
"The Greenbacks have been dominated by a cabal of Gungaflort authors for too long," explained Invasion Architect and Literary Critic, Third Class Svort Blortnick. "We just wanted to correct this bias in order to make the so-called 'among the most prestigious awards in the field, even if the Oddment Society Annual Top Sevens as Voted By Yous are a bit dodgy' actually reflect some of what the wider fan audience in the galaxy is reading."
Because of the manipulation of the nominating process, this year's awards are dominated by novels with titles like Ein Geschruben hai Globnitzi and Frabcrabchick Blortz, and short stories called "Th'wackton Arzigton d'Alice." So certain were they that their works would do well that the Sad Squiggles didn't even bother to have them translated into a language that anybody on Earth speaks.
"Would it kill you beings to learn a foreign language?" replied Blortnick. "Gungaflorters are soooooo parochial!"
Gungaflort is the Ventrosian name for Earth. I probably should have mentioned that. Consider that mentioned.
Wouldn't translating the books into English give them a better chance of winning a Greenback? "Are you serious?" Blortnick mocked. "It hurts my brain just answering your questions! Try to write a whole book in you ugly tongue? There aren't enough anti-psychotics on Ventrosia for that!"
Some authors are pushing back against the Sad Squiggles. "It does not seem to be a good idea," stated the most popular fantasy author in this quadrant of the galaxy (and France) George R. R. Martin, "to allow an aggressive alien race to dominate our fantasy and science fiction awards. Who is with me in opposing this travesty?!"
You could hear the sound of crickets in most of the mainstream media. And, while crickets are the dominant life form on the planet Ssssisssfisssal, their support doesn't actually help the anti-Sad Squiggles movement.
"While it is unfortunate that the awards appear to have been hijacked by a species that invades and lays waste to industrially advanced planets," former Science Fiction Writers of Gungaflort President John Scalzi pointed out, "They do not appear to have broken any of the nominating rules. We, uhh, may want to look into that at some future date. However, any rule changes will take time to work their way through the system, and, in any case, this problem is largely self-correcting: if the Ventrosian Squiggles take over Earth, they will likely write their own rules for Greenback Award nominations!"
The Greenback Awards were not named after the cash winning authors can expect to receive (although winning the award does increase book sales by thirty or forty...volumes, which can be as much as half a first edition print run of some smaller press titles). It was named after Hugo Greenback, the editor of the seminal science fiction pulp magazine Weird Stories, Strangely Told.
If the slate nominated by the Sad Squiggles does not win, the Savage Squiggles, a related group with similar goals, will declare war on Earth. "Literary awards competitions are just war by other means," Blortnick stated.
So, umm, a word of advice to Greenback Award voters: choose as many books written by Ventrosian Squiggles as you can stomach. The fate of the world depends upon it.