Little Aideen's page

Here is my hope for this book… I hope this book disappears. I hope it joins the honorable, very honorable ranks of past Hugo winners, which spoke to a particular community at a particular time and not to all of history. And I hope for that disappearance because no one sets out to write a science fiction dystopia wanting to be proved right. And Some Desperate Glory is a book which was inspired by some of the worst of what is happening in the world today.

It is comforting, especially if you are a bookish sort of person, which I think many of us are, to believe that books can change the world. I have to say that with the possible exception of Karl Marx, I think very few writers of books can really claim to have shaped history. What a book can sometimes do is change the heart, sometimes as a comfort and sometimes as a spur. And comforts and spurs alike move people, and what actually changes the world is people. And I can imagine few places, few communities, more full of vision and energy and hope for the world than this community here in Glasgow tonight.

I wrote Some Desperate Glory imagining, if you like, a “bad end.” I am so pleased that games are now a permanent category. I love a video game, I love a bad end. I imagined the worst possible outcome of what humanity could become, some of the worst of our species: cruelty, brutality, hatred of outsiders and love of power. Tonight, I’d like you all to join me in imagining instead the best, which is something science fiction can do and has always done. And through and because of that power of imagination, I ask you to act in whatever way you can and whatever way is right for you to support the victims of violence and warfare around the world, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan and in many other places. To support the victims of cruelty and intolerance close to home, including here in the islands where that solidarity is dearly needed right now, especially for the victims of the recent racist riots, and for those targeted by the transphobia of some parts of the UK media.

I wrote humanity’s bad end, and I call upon you all with perfect faith to prove me wrong. Thank you.