Speculations : The Rumor Mill : Anonymous : Hugo and Nebula Awards

Topic 77 was started on 1998-02-03. There are 361 messages available to read.

It's time to get those nominations in. Who's eligible, and for what?

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Message 361 was left by Connie Wilkins on 2002-10-17 00:35:07. Feedback: 0/0 Sure, Lori, but I'd buy yours anyway. Mine isn't to everyone's, um, taste.

Message 360 was left by Justin on 2002-10-16 10:37:07. Feedback: 0/0 Oh hell, I didn't know it was on Jintsu. I'll order a copy too. Wasn't trying to weasel out of paying or anything. Justin (who is clueless as usual ;)

Message 359 was left by Lori on 2002-10-16 01:39:47. Feedback: 0/0 Really, Lenora? Hey, thanks! Connie, I'll buy yours if you buy mine. :-) law

Message 358 was left by Connie Wilkins on 2002-10-16 00:55:54. Feedback: 0/0 I've been meaning for months to order Etta Mae, but never quite brought myself to figure out how PayPal works (and I've even got money there, payment from a British publisher.) I _will_ do it. And publicizing Jintsu is a Good Thing. I have a collection there myself.

Message 357 was left by Lenora Rose on 2002-10-16 00:16:01. Feedback: 0/0 If you're willing to spend a little money, you could go to: http://www.eggplant-productions.com/jintsu/etext.asp?id=6 And order "Etta Mae's Little Theory" (there are also other e-texts offered, including one by Ken Wharton, one by Frank Tuttle, and yet more by other RMers. Let's NOT pass up a chance to promote Jintsu, Etta Mae, or other such things.). It's not costly at all, and it's GOOD... Seriously, folks, I did buy "Etta Mae's Little Theory", and it's a good little story. I'd nominate it if I were eligible. I did nominate it for the World Fantasy Award, the only one I was eligible to try for

Message 356 was left by Lori on 2002-10-15 14:23:15. Feedback: 0/0 You can't nominate. Yet. :-) Seriously, I don't care as much about Target Audience, but this came under Roach's imprint and it's a very special story to me, and I'm just hoping to get it out in front of a few more people. This is one where I strongly believe it doesn't deserve to sink without a trace. law

Message 355 was left by Sean K on 2002-10-15 11:01:07. Feedback: 0/0 Hey! What about the two dollars?!

Message 354 was left by Justin on 2002-10-15 02:52:43. Feedback: 0/0 Hey, that'd be great! I have both Works and WordPerfect, so just about any format works.

Message 353 was left by Lori on 2002-10-13 20:07:48. Feedback: 0/0 Hi, Justin. I can send you a copy if you like. Let me know what format you want it in. law

Message 352 was left by Justin on 2002-10-13 16:14:42. Feedback: 0/0 Lori, where can I find a copy? I haven't read it, but would like to.

Message 351 was left by Lori on 2002-10-13 14:58:48. Feedback: 0/0 Here goes-- The period of eligibility for my story, "Etta Mae's Little Theory" (for the Nebula) will be up in December. If any qualified persons here have read it and liked it please feel free to exercise your right to nominate. I guess that goes for "Target Audience," too. Hey. My first time trolling for nominations, and it wasn't as hard as I thought. Uh-oh.... law

Message 350 was left by Teddy Harvia on 2002-09-13 14:27:39. Feedback: 0/0 Jed Hartman: You and Locus are correct! I inadvertantly gave James Gurney a nomination in 1994 instead of Michael Whelan. I have corrected the charts. It is not my first mistake. I could blame the primitive bitmap graphics program I use to create the charts but the truth is that after a while my head filled up with red and gray squares and I didn't cross-check every single one.

Message 349 was left by Jed Hartman on 2002-09-10 20:33:21. Feedback: 0/0 Thanks for the links, Teddy -- I'd seen your cool charts before, but I lost track of what site they were on. Glad to see them again. However, your chart disagrees with what Locus says in at least one respect: according to Locus, Whelan was on the ballot in 1994. These charts allow some interesting over-time comparisons. For example, the Semiprozine chart makes clear that four of the Semiprozine nominees have been the same since 1989(!), until this year, when SF Chronicle declared itself a prozine and no longer eligible. And in fact, all five nominees were the same for the five years preceding this year. This year's nomination details say that only 45 semiprozines were nominated this year (almost all of the other categories had double that many items nominated), and few of them got more than 7 nominations. With Absolute Magnitude also moving up into the ranks of the prozines by Hugo standards (I think?), there's a possible space for something new to land in that fifth spot next year -- perhaps one of the new online semipros? Also a chance for some of the long-established print semipros (and a couple of newish ones) to have a moment in the spotlight: Spectrum, Talebones, Artemis, The Third Alternative, On Spec, Weird Tales, et alia.

Message 348 was left by Rebekah on 2002-09-10 15:11:23. Feedback: 0/0 Hey all you lurking artists -- according to the last TorCon report, they're still looking for someone to design the base to their Hugo ...

Message 347 was left by Teddy Harvia on 2002-09-10 14:41:52. Feedback: 0/0 This time with the links: The year after Michael Whelan declined a nomination for the Best Professional Artist Hugo, he failed to make the ballot. I know that Hugo nominations and wins for fiction have a direct impact on an author's sales, mostly books. How they affect artists I don't know. For a complete side-by-side comparison of nominees and winners in the pro artist category go to http://web2.airmail.net/tharvia/charts/proartisthugo.gif or main page http://web2.airmail.net/tharvia/hugos_at_a_glance.html.

Message 346 was left by Teddy Harvia on 2002-09-10 14:39:42. Feedback: 0/0 The year after Michael Whelan declined a nomination for the Best Professional Artist Hugo, he failed to make the ballot. I know that Hugo nominations and wins for fiction have a direct impact on an author's sales, mostly books. How they affect artists I don't know. For a complete side-by-side comparison of nominees and winners in the pro artist category go to or main page .

Message 345 was left by Benjamin Rosenbaum on 2002-09-10 05:01:28. Feedback: 0/0 Now I'm confused. Are we complaining that the Hugos are too populist, or not populist enough? :-) Ditto that at-door voting would just result in less informed voters. Jaws's half-juried ballot is an interesting idea. I kind of like it. On the other hand, the Nebulas are already part-juried nominations, and the World Fantasy Award is wholly juried. There's something to be said for a purely "plebe" award. Maybe you should be able to vote in a category without paying for a supporting membership if you can pass an SRI-style machine-graded multiple-choice reading comprehension exam on the works of that year in that category? :-> I had an insight this year into the Hugo process -- I don't know if it's true, but I think it's interesting, and if it is true, I am impressed me with how cleverly designed the Hugo system is. Consider the proposition that the SF world is now splintered into different, muddily overlapping, subsets of fans. There are high epic fantasy fans, hard sf fans, fans of troubling and literary sf, fans of action-packed light romantic comedy sf, fans of socially probing soft sf, and so on. If you had a juried nomination system, whichever cabal was at its ascendancy would pack the ballot. With the current system -- looking at this years' ballot -- it appears that each subgroup tends to get a nominee or two on the ballot. (One result is that most fans look at the ballot, see the nomination of the diametrically opposed subgroup, and think, "how did THAT piece of crap get on there?") The mass of undifferentiated, nonaligned voters get the nomination-to-voting-day period to read up on the nominees. If they're playing fair, they'll only vote in a category where they've read the majority of nominees (e.g. I didn't end up voting for best novel because I ran out of time to read more than 3 of them). So it's a small number of voters -- but it's the ones who care to do the work. As an additional benefit, conscientious voters end up reading outside their favored subgenre (I don't subscribe to Analog, but I had to hunt down 3 Analog stories), which IMHO can only be a good thing. And then, the Australian system assures that the winner is not the choice of the biggest faction, but the nominee that the broad range of voters find most palatable. Now, sometimes this may reward mediocrity. An ultrahard SF novel, a brilliant example of its subgenre, may make the ballot as the choice of that faction, but if nobody else finds it comprehensible it will lose -- even if ultrahard SF fans were the plurality of voters. Maybe that rewards middle-of-the-road novels with something for everyone at the expense of masterful works of a particular style. (I thought Perdido St. Station was a better book than American Gods, but I liked both, and I expect that many people who found Perdido too weird found AG tolerable). This may not be a bad thing, though, because otherwise whichever was the slightly dominant faction would walk away with the award year after year. And even aesthetically, there's something to be said for a "broad" award. Austrailian rules make it *more* possible to unseat a multi-year winner -- look at the Dozois vs. Datlow numbers -- so that the dominance of Locus and Ansible, annoying and boring as it is, is probably an authentic, hard-won dominance reflective of some reality -- at least among the fans who vote. It's the "award for the work most fans kinda liked out of a small set of those works some fans deeply loved".

Message 344 was left by Alan DeNiro on 2002-09-09 21:57:55. Feedback: 0/0 How about this--voting priviliges are also extended to members of a select group of large, well-established regional cons as well? You can pick, say, five geographical regions and choose one con per region accordingly. If the issue isn't necessarily voting on-site to begin with, then it would be only a little more complicated, I think, to cross check registration against a main registration database to prevent fraud. Thus, perhaps we can extend it out to more people--who can't be worldcon members for a variety of reasons, and who justifiably don't want to pay a supporting membership. Or, it could be done so that members of these large regional cons can only nominate works, but the final ballot voting is reserved for worldcon members. What do people think? Although the tangible increase in voting might be slight, it might provide a more general, populist breath of fresh air to the proceedings.

Message 343 was left by Jed Hartman on 2002-09-09 20:59:12. Feedback: 0/0 I talked with a book editor last weekend who said that, contrary to my expectations, putting "Hugo winner" on a book cover doesn't seem to have any appreciable effect on sales. But good points from recent posters about less tangible effects of appearing on the ballot. (I should note here in passing that I used affect in a previous posting where I should have used effect -- bad editor!) Re #335: Not only that, but according to Interzone, Connie Willis is largely unknown in the UK, even in the sf community, hard as that is to believe. Voting at the door: Might be interesting, but might also result in more people voting with no knowledge of any of the categories. With the current system, at least it's not too hard to become a reasonably informed voter in most of the categories between the time nominations are announced and the time final votes are due. Juried awards: as noted by others, juried awards have problems too; in particular, they're subject to the whims and biases of the jury in question. The proposed jury-supplemented nominations sound interesting, though. Anyone know how well those work in the other places they're used? Changing things: as Mary Anne noted, going to WSFS meetings is the way to attempt changes to the structure of the awards. But be prepared to put huge amounts of time into it; I'm told that WSFS will pretty much refuse to even listen to any proposal that looks to them like an outsider coming in to push a specific agenda. Changing things having to do with the Hugos apparently takes years, and requires a great deal of time and energy, and there's a lot of resistance to change; and as Frank noted, sometimes the resistance to certain choices that seem logically best/most consistent is grounded in practical history, having tried certain approaches and discovered they didn't work.

Message 342 was left by Mary Anne Mohanraj on 2002-09-07 17:22:22. Feedback: 0/0 Hm. I'm not really going to jump into the fray -- just a few quick points: - It was an amazing thrill to be nominated, to dress up for the ceremony, to attend the fancy party, to sit there in our reserved seats waiting for our category -- even though we were almost positive we wouldn't win. And the little silver Hugo pin is the sexiest piece of jewelry I own. They gave me two sleek pens too, and a certificate. What fun! And the cheers when they announced our name as a nominee were incredibly heartwarming. - I am quite sure that the nomination did really good things for our visibility at Strange Horizons, and so once again, huge thanks to everyone who nominated us! The nomination brought us to the attention of a large group of fans across the world -- much appreciated. - I too wish Locus would bow out for a year or two. Sigh. - My practical suggestion would be for two new categories to be added: Best Professional Website and Best Fan Website (possibly a Best SemiPro Website as well, just for parallelism and more excuses to hand out shiny rockets) - If you want to actually change any of the structure of the awards (including adding new ones), the thing to do is to join the WSFS (World Science Fiction Society), attend business meetings, get to know people, argue vociferously...in short, be an enthusiastic and hard-working fan. Cheryl Morgan (on this year's Hugo committee) is planning to advise some people on what they'd need to do to try to make the change suggested above. If you're interested in learning more about this change or other changes to the Hugos, I suggest dropping her a line: cheryl@emcit.com

Message 341 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-07 15:04:59. Feedback: 0/0 How about "fans' choice"? While the implication of quality is still there, this at least blames or credits a certain faction rather than making a claim towards some objective measure of best.

Message 340 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-07 14:35:43. Feedback: 0/0 So, Nick, should we substitute "New and Improved" instead? ;-) The fact of an award implies "best," even if the word isn't used.

Message 339 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-07 14:26:46. Feedback: 0/0 Calling a Hugo an award for "best" under these circumstances is even worse than calling an Oscar an award for "best"—because at least the voting percentage for the Oscars exceeds 15% of the eligible voters. Eh, perhaps many of the eligible voters haven't read enough of the material to judge. I'm into SF pretty deep and I've never read any of the fanzines nominated except for Ansible, and only that because it is online. I don't see how increasing the number of people who may not be widely read would change results. On the jury idea, that sounds pretty good to me. The Nebulas and Stokers both use juries as a backup to the nominations/votes of SFWA/HWA. Of course, taste being a funny thing, juries could end up with wacko nominees too. How about just getting rid of the word "best"? ;)

Message 338 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-07 13:59:25. Feedback: 0/0 I'm not saying that awards serve no purpose; I just want a sliver of intellectual honesty in them. Calling a Hugo an award for "best" under these circumstances is even worse than calling an Oscar an award for "best"—because at least the voting percentage for the Oscars exceeds 15% of the eligible voters. My proposed "solution" is to create a hybrid jury/popular nomination system, whereby the popular nominations fill three slots and a jury then fills the next three in each category. A conscientious jury—and there are enough fen to create one—will do the "breadth of reading" necessary to make this credible. Or, to make it blinder, alternate: Top votegetter, top jury award that is not a top votegetter, etc. until six slots are filled, and the ballot doesn't designate which is which (only the administrator knows how a given work got on the ballot until after the voting closes). But, as this would require some judgment and actual work other than tabulation, it isn't going to happen.

Message 337 was left by Sue on 2002-09-07 12:58:01. Feedback: 0/0 Being a Hugo winner does not boost sales perhaps, but I do know that being nominated can generate agent interest. I know a writer who had a nomination for a non-fiction work and that nomination got her fiction published (and it is the opinion of many of us who know her and her work that this is ALL that got that particular piece published.) So not to sound too catty - she has improved as a writer - that novel was her FIRST ever written and it showed.

Message 336 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-07 11:56:36. Feedback: 0/0 Well Greg, no need for asbestos here, I actually agree with your diagnosis of the Hugos. My main argument is that the Hugos were basically designed to satisfy cliques of fans, so complaining that they do so might be a waste of one's energy. When started, the main clique was smaller or there were fewer fringe cliques, but in the end, the Hugos are still about pleasing those people who have nothing better to do on Labor Day weekend than to go to Worldcon. You know, the "fans." That the "fans" come up with choices that please themselves rather than John Savage, Greg Koster or Nick Mamatas is part and parcel of the Hugos not being the Savage/Koster/Mamatas Special Jury Award For Excellence In Science Fiction. As far as Williamson, I haven't read as much of him as you have, but you did list a bunch of good novels there and since the poor guy must be 147 years old by now, I'm more than willing, indeed, I'm more than happy, to give him a particular award he may not have precisely deserved, if only because I could potentially do something about that, but not about all the deserving books he should have won for but didn't. Any system has at least two levels of existence, the de jure (the Hugos are there to honor the best of the year) and the de facto (the Hugos are there to honor who the people who come to Woldcon and vote like). I don't find the mere existence of the de facto realm to be sufficient to consider the de jure realm corrupt or worthy only of destruction. And then there is the matter of taste. Even the most energetically made claim that Story A is objectively better than Story B is not evidence of such -- it could just be that people really did like Story B better. Case in point, you mentioned Charles Sheffield's failure at the Hugos as further proof that they lead to bad results; I find Sheffield to be a horrific plodder and his name in your message actually weakens your claim in my mind, even as you hope it would strengthen it. As far as sadism and masochism in the awards, I think at least part of that tension is informed by the tension between de jure and de facto. I felt bad when I didn't win a prize I KNEW I wasn't going to win (simply, not enough people had read Northern Gothic to win, even if every reader had voted for it) because it is in my nature to dream big. I bet it is in many other people's natures as well. But the old cliche' rang true, it was an honor to be nominated. Just the other day, when the guy came to put in my cable modem, he looked at my Stoker finalist certificate (aka, the Loser Award) and said "Wow, are you a writer!" That was good enough for me.

Message 335 was left by Jim Van Pelt on 2002-09-07 11:54:12. Feedback: 0/0 I'm with Greg, abolish the things!! Well . . . after I win one *g*. Actually, I agree with most of what you say, Greg, about the unreasonableness of trying to keep up with the entire field to nominate intelligently and who good works can be overlooked, but I wouldn't do away with the literary awards. Here's why: first, I don't believe that there is much money difference for the winner as apposed to the unblessed. Putting "Hugo Winner" on the cover of a book doesn't seem to boost sales that much, according to the Hugo winners I've talked to, and although it does have a lot of spiritual weight to it, it doesn't give the short story/novella/novelette authors any more pay for their next stories. I'm not saying that it's financially neutral--writers who have won Hugos get invited to participate in projects they might not have before (although, if they're really good, they're being invited to projects many writers never hear about anyway), but there isn't that MUCH more money than they were making before. Certainly the extra money from a Hugo prize won't change their lifestyle. They won't go from baloney sandwiches to caviar with a Hugo tucked under their arms. And if it does get them extra money, hooray! Somebody ought to get it. Second, the payoffs for writing are pretty nebulous as they are. I mean, the money's not that good, and the fame (what little there is) is tightly focused within the field. For example, I ran into Connie Willis in a RiteAid drugstore in Glenwood Springs this summer. We were both vacationing there. I, of course, was thrilled. But while I was talking to her, the normal crowd you'd find in a drugstore wandered by on either side. No one knew her. She could have stood in that RiteAid for a week, I'll bet, and no one would have recognized her as one of the most awarded SF writers of all time. Only at a convention does her stature and fame shine. So what are the benefits of the awards? First, as everyone has pointed out, there are a slew of stories to read each year. For someone with an urge to read good stuff, but no time to read it all, the Hugo winners are an excellent selection. They aren't the only good stories and not always even the best of the year (whatever that is), obviously, but they're darned fine reading. Second, since the world as a whole seems pretty oblivious to what we do, and it doesn't shower us with money or recognition, it's nice that within the field we try to award the high achievers. Even if the system is flawed, the idea behind it is good. Third, nothing, I mean nothing, can measure up to what it must feel like to win one of those pointy rockets. I'm a firm supporter of epiphanies and magic experiences. Walking to the podium to accept a Hugo has to feel like a quick peek into an alternate universe where the stars are aligned properly and the gods are on our side. I wouldn't take away that experience from anyone. No matter what else happens in a writer's life afterwards, they can always say, "I won a Hugo." It's irrevocable. It's like getting your picture up on the wall in the baseball hall of fame. You're a hall of famer for the rest of your life. Your a Hugo winner forever. Being nominated is great. Making the finalist list is devine. Winning is indescribable. My first Hugo ceremonies were at LA in '96. They were wonderfully done. Sitting in the audience, watching those folks accept their awards, I could feel a real sense of connection with the history of the genre. The winners talked about their influences. They thanked the masters who had gone before them. The ceremony moved me deeply. Three years later, when I got to sit with the finalists because I was up for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, I could feel the absolute electricity among the others who were also waiting to hear if they'd won an award. It was phenomenal. Am I irritated that Charlie Brown and David Langford have won for a million years in a row? Sure. Do I understand how a book that actually altered my way of looking at the universe, Passage, didn't win? Sure. Would I toss the award? Absolutely not.

Message 334 was left by Gregory Koster on 2002-09-07 01:20:11. Feedback: 0/0 For Nick: Donning my asbestos suit, the one soaked in gasoline, I plunge into the fray... You and John have talked about Jack Williamson's award. I've been a devoted Williamson collector for twenty five years, and revere the man. Yet all my respect for him can't push my conviction that his novella "The Ultimate Earth" did not come within miles of being worthy of the award this year. As John sez, that "make goods" happen often and elsewhere does not make them right. But to my mind, the big point is that Williamson has been writing since the year the Hugos commenced, and has put out a substantial amount of work in that time. Yet he never managed to win an award for any of these novels: STAR BRIDGE (with James Gunn) the STARCHILD trilogy (with Fred Pohl, can't remember the names of the individual novels at the moment) THE MOON CHILDREN FIRECHILD MAZEWAY THE SILICON DAGGER THE SINGERS OF TIME (with Fred Pohl) MANSEED Somehow, despite all these novels, spread out over forty years, he never got an award. Why? You could argue that JW is just plain unlucky. But as I said some time ago, there's a hell of a lot of other talented authors (Poul Anderson, Charles Sheffield, Charles Harness come quickly to mind) who have the same ill luck. Something is wrong. What's my solution? How about abolishing the darn things? More and more, the awards are a license for giving the winner a lot of dough. The struggle now comes in becoming "Hugo nominated" which is still worth some dough. And these awards and nominations are no more the result of spontaneous judgment than the passage of the federal budget each year is the result of 635 Congressionals weighing all the facts, judging the needs of their constituents and the nation, and making rational informed decisions. No, the Hugo comes from small cliques, with their own set of prejudices, agendas, vendettas. In part, it has to be. To do what John suggests, is beyond the capacity of most readers. How many novels do you have to read to make an informed vote? 20? 30? How many novellas? 30? 50? How many short stories? 100? To follow John's prescription, you have to slough off all other reading. How many folks are willing to do this? Why the cliques I just mentioned. And if you decide to get around this by taking advice from people you trust to judge such matters, how are you different from the average Congressional? Bah! To Hell with literary awards, say I. They are mere machines for enlarging the sadism of one winner, and the masochism of dozens of others. And on the day I ever win one, I command you to be there on the podium, giving me this denunciation, soaked in the purest strychnine, to chew on, even as I accept the award. I will leave to others to judge if the tidal waves of applause I get are generated by my accepting the award, or swallowing the strychnine. Best regards, Gregory Koster

Message 333 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-06 20:25:55. Feedback: 0/0 More to the point of make goods, they are unavoidable. While that does not make them right, it certainly suggests that energy spent on improving an award is better directed elsewhere. Also, I have to say that I'm not convinced that make goods are always wrong or always worse than the alternative of snubbing someone who is generally, if not specifically deserving, and who hasn't won before. And indeed, neither do Hugo voters, it seems. I often find that positions on moral questions (and when we talk about 'right' we're talking about moral questions, even if the topic is trivial) are best explained by expressivism. In the end, there is little more going on than saying "Yay! A man that we all love finally got a Hugo!" or "Boo! The better story and its author were cheated because of wooly-headed and misplaced sympathies!" I say "Yay" or at least "Eh" probably because I was raised in a cultural milieu that prized the elderly. Someone else who was raised up or otherwise adopted a more individualist or perhaps a rule-oriented pose would say "Boo!" Hugo voters for, whatever reason, are saying "Yay!" Indeed, they may just be saying "Yay, that names sounds familiar!" Since the Hugos are about what the fans want, I can't see that as a central complaint.

Message 332 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-06 18:13:08. Feedback: 0/0 That "make goods" happen everyone does not make them right.

Message 331 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-06 17:53:53. Feedback: 0/0 John, No sweat. I was just wondering whether your claim was "Books I believe to be good don't get nominated" or "Books that are good cannot be nominated due to some specific problem with the way the Hugos are operated." In the former case, I'd say that's just taste, though taste isn't arbitrary. Some people have better taste than others, and you may well be a near-perfect arbiter of quality SF. The Hugos have never been conceived of as what insightful and intelligent arbiters of taste enjoy, but about what fans like, and if fans like voting for a writer who got to be 90 without a Hugo, that's on them. In the end, that sort of complaint may be akin to being annoyed by the quality of fried chicken served at the local savings bank. In the latter case, something like the failure to be able to nominate anthologies and collections is important and worth grousing about and changing. As far as Williamson in particular, the make good award is hardly limited to the Hugos or to book prizes. Everything from Academy awards to political appointments have been heavily informed by 'make goods' over the years, and except for going off-planet to find that peculiar species of alien who can read and understand literature but otherwise not have an intersubjective relationship with it, we're pretty much doomed to it happening occasionally.

Message 330 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-06 17:26:31. Feedback: 0/0 Nick, I'm not going to pour ire on this year. Yet. I'm still pissed off that the four strongest novels didn't even make the ballot, and a glance at the nomination log shows that three of them weren't even close, but that's not what I'm getting at. Specific example: Jack Williamson's award last year. The man's writing has not been honored enough over the years. That's not an excuse for giving an award to something that was distinctly below average (I won't go into details, but I believe that they are much more than matters of taste) within his own ouvré. Other than that, this isn't the forum.

Message 329 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-06 16:59:11. Feedback: 0/0 In the last post, "Even people" should read "Enough people." While I'm here, I should mention that I was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award this year, and that, if anything, the Stokers also known as the Strokers, have a worse rep than the Hugos thanks to all the logrolling and campaigning that goes on. Part of my bemusement (rather than concern or outrage) over the state of the Hugos may come from my oddball experience as a nominee. I wrote a little something about the Stoker Weekends at the NYC lit website, www.mrbellersneighborhood.com They use some ridiculous java thing that obscures static URLs, but if you go to the main site and type the word 'Stoker' into the search box, my essay should pop up.

Message 328 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-06 16:48:55. Feedback: 0/0 Nick, the qualifier in your last sentence ("As long as stuff that doesn't deserve celebration isn't being celebrated") explains my problems with the Hugos, the Nebulas, etc.—because that is in fact the case. I'm not a huge fan of most of the stuff published these days (or any days) but don't think my tastes are necessarily the best guide to what should be getting awards. Even people like Asimov's stories that my dislike of them isn't sufficient to declare it objective crap. Are we talking matters of taste in your estimation, John, or are you saying that the various awards systems are so intrinsically fucked up that the scum always rises to the top? What specifically from this year's Hugos or Nebulas winners would you say was not worth celebrating?

Message 327 was left by FrankWu on 2002-09-06 16:20:24. Feedback: 0/0 Just as a point of clarification, please don't take my previous post as an indication that I'm angry or bitter about the outcome of this year's Hugo (though I would have won if voting were done the American way rather than Australian rules). The Hugos are, for whatever quirky reason, what they are. Contrary to what my respected and honorable colleagues may contend, I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the Hugos. The Hugos are, to me, like a lovely, slightly wacky uncle. Not always, but more right than wrong. The Hugo rules are like those of baseball: sacred in a way - to change them fundamentally would be to alter what they have meant for decades. I know baseball has changed - the DH, raising and lowering the mound, the evolution of the closer, but the fundamentals - three strikes and you're out, nine innings, all that are still the same. For example, I don't think Hugo voting should switch to the American method; nor do I think the category slate needs a massive overhaul. I think adding a new category or two (like best website this year; or perhaps, as John suggested, a best anthology category), would be good, but there is already a mechanism for one new category every year. The low voter turnout is a perennial problem that no solution will really solve. Posting stories on the internet might help a little - but this year there didn't seem to be a huge jump in voting or anything, though it was at the higher end of the range. [They didn't post - as far as I could tell - numbers for overall voting, but numbers for final novel (794) and short story (653) were in the upper range of recent numbers (585–893, novel; 487–704, short story, range for years 1991-93 and 95-96), though lower than 2001 (885, novel; 796, story), which is a little disappointing. I guess the lesson here is, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, if the people aren't going to vote or read the stuff, you can't stop them. Frank

Message 326 was left by FrankWu on 2002-09-06 15:33:19. Feedback: 0/0 One point John raised was that "The award for best artist is inconsistent with the awards for best work; to be consistent, it should be for best single work of visual art by a professional artist." Perhaps, ideally, this should be the case; in fact from 1990-1996, there was an "Original artwork" Hugo category, running parallel to the best pro and fan artist categories. However, in retrospect, I think this category wasn't a complete success. Only a small portion of the voters nominated in this category (hovered around 28% - compared to 80% for novels, 60% pro artist, 40% fan artist). And... In fact, there were many nominees that made the final ballot after only getting as few as 5 (!) total nominations, which doesn't seem right. So, my point is that the Original artwork category might be a good idea, but it just doesn't work. In this context. In contrast, I think the Chesleys really fill this void. Since they are administered by the Association of Sci and Fi artists (and not by an organization doing a billion other things), we get a good healthy slate of nominations ever year, and most if not all of the nominees (imho) seem worthy of winning, and there's good voting (though I don't have the numbers on hand). So, no, even though I'd be technically eligible in this category, I don't think Hugos for individual art pieces work. --------------- What would be nice - but I think this might be a nightmare of definitions - would be to split the fan artist category into (1) fan artist and (2) semi-pro artist, whereas now we are lumped together and I have to fight to remind people I'm really a semi-pro. I would differentiate them by saying fan artists would be those whose work is in fanzines (this year's nominees Teddy Harvia, Brad Foster, Sheryl Birkhead); semi-pros are in semi-pro mags (me). A third major category is people who sell art, e.g., at cons and on the net (e.g., this year's nominee Sue Mason). [Of course, there is some overlap.] I'm not sure whether that third group would go into "fan" or "semi-pro". The thing that gets me about this category is that, to me at me, "fan art" means "crude drawings of Spock or Buffy." Which is actually not what any of the nominees are doing. Perhaps the best resolution might be the easiest, which is simply slightly altering the name of the award from "fan artist" to "fan or semi-pro artist." That would make me really happy. A little wordy, but not bad. F

Message 325 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-06 14:03:54. Feedback: 0/0 Nick, the qualifier in your last sentence ("As long as stuff that doesn't deserve celebration isn't being celebrated") explains my problems with the Hugos, the Nebulas, etc.—because that is in fact the case.

Message 324 was left by Nick Mamatas on 2002-09-06 12:07:25. Feedback: 0/0 There's a lot of valid complaints here and I definitely agree that soemthing needs to be done - if only to get more people reading SF. That would be best done by writing and publishing SF that people who do not currently read SF might like to read. However, that comes with the risk of alienating the hardcore audience. This is not a problem unique to SF, nearly any popular artform suffers tension between the core audience that keeps a form alive and the broader audience that ebbs and flows. Professional wrestling fans gnashed thier teeth at Hulk Hogan in the 1980s, jazz fans spilled their pipe tobacco over the Marsalis brothers around the same time, even as these personalites opened the door for millions of people to partake in their genres of entertainment. Just the way it goes, really. The big question is how do we change it? I don't really know enough about the entire process and the history of the awards to say where to begin. There are a variety of bureaucratic means to amend the Hugos. However, the main thing to keep in mind is that many of those things seen as problems now were once thought of as solutions. Two "outside the box" things that come to mind: Allow Hugo voting at Worldcon itself. When people collect their badges, if they've not voted yet, they get to vote right then and there. That would also open up the voting to at-door and one-day members. The difficulties around this, such as creating the little plaques that go on the Hugos, can be solved with a home-engraving kit and a steady hand. I imagine fraud is a possibility as well, but is fraud necessarily worse than engrained incompetence? My second suggestion is probably more blasphemous: realize that all things pass. Brown will retire, Dozois will retire, some hot new stud will be drawing up pictures of women in nightgowns traipsing through enchanted forests, etc etc. The Hugos are a fan award, and are going to end up be unsatisfactory in the way all such awards are no matter what. Juried awards have their own problems. We're asking for a measure of objectivity in what is necessarily an intersubjective process. Awards, in my view, are primarily a way to hype/celebrate work. As long as stuff that doesn't deserve celebration isn't being celebrated, the Hugos are close enough for hand grenades.

Message 323 was left by Jae on 2002-09-06 10:22:23. Feedback: 0/0 There's a lot of valid complaints here and I definitely agree that soemthing needs to be done - if only to get more people reading SF. The big question is how do we change it? I don't really know enough about the entire process and the history of the awards to say where to begin.

Message 322 was left by John Savage on 2002-09-06 09:57:21. Feedback: 0/0 Bluntly, the entire set of Hugo categories needs a zero-based revision. That's not going to happen, however. A few examples: * Despite the primacy of collective works (anthologies and collections), there is no award that covers them, either as originals or as reprints. * The extended eligibility for foreign works is, to say the least, a bit intellectually dishonest... because it assumes that the voters are actually reading what they're nominating/voting for, something that has been demonstrated as incorrect repeatedly. * There are awards for semipro and fanzine, and pro, semipro, and fan editor (the one called "fan writer" is actually for editors of fanzines, in practice), but nothing for pro magazine. * The award for best artist is inconsistent with the awards for best work; to be consistent, it should be for best single work of visual art by a professional artist. And so on. But then, who am I to count, just because I actually treat speculative fiction seriously and read the stuff before voting?

Message 321 was left by Lenora rose on 2002-09-06 05:20:01. Feedback: 0/0 Frank: I doubt it's deliberate; if their circulation rose by 1,000 or more new subscribers, they probably wouldn't complain AT ALL. Nick: Or, perhaps, enough of them being READ by fen.