French King Philip the Beautiful. Boniface VIII then demanded from the Colonne the issue of their fortresses, and in the face of his refusal, on 10 May 1297 he excommunicated the leaders of the family and deposed both Colonna representatives in the College of Cardinals, Pietro and his uncle Giacomo. In response, they announced a manifest blaming Boniface VIII for the death of his predecessor Pope Celestine V and the unlawfulness of his election. The Pope then called for the crusade, ended with the destruction of Palestrina, one of the family centers.

After the death of Boniface, VIII Pietro and Giacomo were excluded from participation in the election of a successor due to the excommunications that were imposed on them. The then elected Pope Benedict XI withdrew the imposedScience fiction is full of stories of a rag-tag group of rebels taking on the Big Bad Empire. These rebels, using a combination of wits, pluck, and determination, inevitably manage to take the Empire down and bring a new era of peace to the galaxy.

Rarely, however, does such a thing happen in real life.

The Hugos are the Oscars of science fiction and fantasy, an award with a long and pedigreed history of honoring the greatest visionary minds in the genre. However, in the last few years the Hugos have become the exclusive playground of a clique—the “Mean Girls” of genre fiction—who have tried to use the Hugos as a political statement rather than a celebration of the incredible diversity of science fiction and fantasy. Instead of being awarded