So, Hugo Award nominations. Every year, it seems to be both an invitation to bellyaching among those who want the award to take itself more seriously, to again become a fair and trustworthy snapshot of the genre’s best year-in-and-year-out, and an everybody-hug-circlejerk-ignore-the-trolls-you-deserve-this-i-voted-for-you twitter fun factory between nominees. Fun times, especially for frustrated Internet pundits like myself. This year’s ballot was particularly blah, though. I won’t go through each category because, well… I don’t have an opinion on a lot of it. But there are a few spots I’d like to explore.
My first thought on the list of nominations for the ‘Best Novel’ was a tepid lack of inspiration. The inclusion of Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon (REVIEW) is the lone bright spot, and also the only novel from my list of nominations to appear on the final ballot. Redshirts (REVIEW) is entertaining, but no more worthy of a Hugo than a fourth-or-fifth episode of Dr. Who appear in the ‘Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)’ category; I’m not surprised to see it there, but I am disappointed that another of Scalzi’s wash, rinse, repeat efforts was rewarded with a nomination. The novels from Bujold and Grant are included, for all intents and purposes, because of the name on their cover, rather than the text inside. I’m sure they’re both fine novels, but neither made waves in fandom or genre discussion this year. Kim Stanley Robinson is another Hugo darling, and 2312 was at least a significant release in Science Fiction, which, alongside David Brin’s Existence (a novel that some will should have been included instead of Robinson’s), reopened a style of hard Science Fiction that has a long legacy in the genre but little recent activity.
It’s a crying shame, in my opinion, and something of an embarrassment that Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear (REVIEW) and The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin (REVIEW) were left off the list. Both were progressive, balanced novels that moved the genre towards greater inclusiveness, while paying respects to the genre’s long history and evolving adventurous Fantasy. Both are worthy novels to be remembered decades from now as representatives of what genre was like in 2012.
Julie Dillon showing up on the ballot for ‘Best Professional Artist’ is a wonderful thing. I nominated her, but, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting her to make the ballot, despite support from several other corners, including Clarkesworld. I hoped to bring some awareness to her work and thought she might have a shot next year. I’m ecstatic to be wrong about that.
Every year, my bread and butter is the ‘Best Fan Writer’ and ‘Best Fanzine’ categories. So, let’s hop over there.
In ‘Best Fan Writer,’ you have: Christopher Garcia, James Bacon, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Mark Oshiro and Steven H. Silver.
Garcia and Bacon are what they are. Steven H. Silver edits a decent site, but it’s been a few years since I’ve felt that SF Site had much in the way of relevance, and Silver’s personal writing only really seems to appear in a small corner of the web. SF Site inspired me to start writing about SFF online, but I’d be surprised if many people know who Silver is.
If you’re not familiar with Tansy Rayner Roberts, she wrote a very good piece called Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That. Go read it.
Mark Oshiro, editor of Mark Reads and a handful of sister sites, is an interesting addition to the ballot. I’ve only discovered him recently, but reading through his back catalog of writing, it’s clear that he’s an intelligent and, more importantly, lucid and amusing writer that balances sharp wit with insight. In many ways, he’s exactly the sort of fan writer and commentator I’ve been hoping to see on the ballot since I first started paying close attention to the awards several years ago, and certainly since I started writing about them. Mark’s writing and genre observations are unique to him and, because of this, he’s created a niche for himself in fandom and I take no issue with it being rewarded with a Hugo nomination. He’s good.
Prompted by Justin Landon’s recent rant-by-essay response to this year’s underwhelming and frustrating ballot, I think it’s worth more closely examining some of the voting behaviour in these categories, and also in the Hugos as a whole. In years past, I’ve discussed the sundry issues surrounding the ‘Best Fanzine’ and ‘Best Fan Writer’ awards, and, while they still exist, there has been some forward movement in these areas, which, on the surface, look promising, but, as Landon suggests in his response, illuminate another entire set of problems. Landon points to two particular authors, both popular and less-than-shy in promoting their friends and themselves for nomination, Seanan McGuire (who herself is nominated for five awards this year, including twice in the same category), and Larry Correira.
While it’s easy to complain mightily against the old Hugo crowd (that’s the one that ensures Lois McMaster Bujold is on the ballot every year or two, continue to vote for Ansible and File 770, and moan about their unsuccessful bids to ban sites like SF Signal and Elitist Book Reviews from the ballot) from our seats here at the bleeding edge of fandom, it’s also important to continue to examine ourselves and ensure that we don’t fall prey to the same insular behaviour that has caused the issues that we’re fighting against in the first place. As suggested by Landon’s research, block voting is very much alive and well in the newer Hugo voters, and writers like Mark Oshiro, and bloggers like Elitist Book Reviews likely have Seanan McQuire and Larry Correira as much to thank for their nominations as they do their persistence, talent and body of work, which might be Hugo-worthy in-and-of-itself. It’s always who you know, isn’t it?
So, instead of Elitist Book Reviews being included on the ballot because they’re insightful reviewers (which they are), or have impacted the overall genre discussion (which they have, though maybe not sweepingly), or, in Correia’s words, “because I think they are the best review site on the internet, and they deserve some respect. Seriously, take a look at EBR and compare it to the review places that normally win. EBR has more, better reviews, and doesn’t limit themselves nearly as much as some of the “prestigious” (i.e. snooty) places,” they’re on the ballot, marking the most prestigious writing that SFF fandom offers, because Steven Diamond, editor of the site, is a writing partner of Correia’s.
Oh, and, by the way, Mark is in the middle of a long-running chapter-by-chapter review of Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. And, according to Facebook, left his job in 2012 and appears to run his ‘Mark Does Stuff’ sites full time, at least enough to justify a month-long cross-country tour. Anecdotal evidence, though, so… *passes salt*.
Correia defends this behaviour by, oddly, agreeing with Landon’s judgement of the awards and indicting the nomination procedure, indicating that in addition to being ‘shameless self-promotion,’ it was also something of a social experiment to determine the severity of the issues with the awards, which he explains:
Now I like Seanan personally. I think she’s pretty cool in person and she’s a solid writer… Was every novel, short, novella, and novelette she wrote one of the best five things in the world this year? Probably not. But she is popular with the SMOFers [Secret Masters of Fandom -ed.], ergo she is nominated. You preach the right kind of message fic, you can get nominated. You get popular with the right crowd, you can get nominated. If you are popular enough with the right crowd the Hugos will even tweak which category you fit in so that their two favorites don’t have to go head to head and both can win Hugos, or if you are a SMOF favorite, they’ll even tweak your eligibility so that if you’ve been writing novels for several years, you can still be a Campbell nominee, and they’ll just say they “weren’t genre enough”.
Now me trying to work the system by getting my non-Worldcon attending fanbase to vote offends you? Oh well. Of course I’m not pure as the driven snow. Duh. I think the system is stupid and I think it deserves to be broken and rebuilt into something that is more than a Doctor Who club of fan wankery.
And you’ll note that I’ve said all of that on my blog publically for the last couple of years, and did again during the Sad Puppies campaign. Do I get shameless self promotion out of it? I sure do! That’s what makes it worth the time to screw with it.
Unfortunately, the result of his experiment is that Correia has simply shifted the issue to another group of block voters, another group of friends. Instead of addressing the issues and educating his fanbase on how they can drive forward towards real change within the nomination process, he just listed off all of his eligible buddies and managed to get nearly all of them included on the ballot. Very noble.
While I admire that Correia and I have similar goals to see “non SMOFers [nominated] in several other categories who would otherwise have been ignored,” he admits that “shameless self promotion is what the Hugos are all about now. You want to win a Hugo, you appease a SMOF faction, become one of the cool kids, and they vote for you. If you aren’t one of the cool kids, you will never win an award. Doesn’t matter how freaking brilliant you are.” There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with suggesting that your fans might like the work of your friends, Correia does nothing to hide his relationships with the other people he’s suggesting be nominated, but, with great power comes great responsibility, and if someone like Correia decides to promote their friends, knowing that their suggestions will influence the ballot enough to place them among the nominees, they should do so with some respect towards the process. Isn’t effort better spent at fixing a system you think is broken, rather than abusing it? Does Correia simply beleive that, outside of his friends, there is no Hugo-worthy writing going on? If you want to inspire change, why not suggest and nominate more than one ‘Fanzine’? Block voting is bad, period. Whether it’s old fans or new.
Looking at the rest of the nominations for ‘Best Fanzine,’ I still feel like three traditional Fanzines is too many. There is good writing there, but, with every year that passes, their relevance to the overall discussion lessens. Even Christopher Garcia, nominated twice as editor of The Drink Tank and Journey Planet, admits that The Drink Tank, which I’ve periodically written for, isn’t really Hugo-worthy. And yet, here we are, with voters happy to include the duo again-and-again. Multiple times each year. And great fannish writing, like that of Liz Bourke, Jared and Anne at Pornokitsch, and Kirsten’s work on Fantasy Cafe, continues to go unnoticed and unrewarded.
There is enough content out there — novels, films, writers (professional and fan), publications, artists and everything else — that we shouldn’t be seeing the same names recycled again and again. Fantasy and Science Fiction, by the very nature of their speculative roots, should reward diversity and celebrate the wide ranging imaginations and opinions that make up a vibrant fandom. There’s no excuse for novels like Range of Ghosts to be left off the ballot in favour of the 22nd Vorkosigan novel by Bujold. Like Neil Clarke and Jim Hines in the past, who both withdrew their names from eligibility after winning their Hugo awards, it would be great to see some of these familiar faces take a bit of responsibility themselves and encourage voters to look to new, exciting members of the community to celebrate. Fantasy and Science Fiction is often about exploring the boundaries of imagination, these authors are known for it, and yet traditional fandom, or at least the majority of Hugo voters, appears to be the least imaginative group of people on the planet.
The point isn’t to replace one group of insular group of friends with another, it’s to create a more inclusive award that widely represents the best the genre has to offer not because of its heritage, but because, as it was in the ’60s and ’70s (and correct me if I’m wrong, of course, I wouldn’t yet be born for another 15 or so years), it has the ability to again be a central facet of fandom with wide-reaching and holistic suggestions of the achievements in SFF in any given year. Is this naive and silly of me to think? Likely so, given the circumstances of the semi-closed nomination and voting system used to govern the award. The current group of voters isn’t going to change because some grumpy bloggers write about these issues. My solution will be to continue to encourage fans to vote, honestly and widely, and to engage with the nomination process. Think about your vote. Respect your vote. The Hugos are starting to show some sign of life, the award handed out to SF Signal last year prove that, but there’s still such a long way to go. The only other option as I see it is to stop treating the Hugo awards like the Oscars and relegate it to where it now appears to belong: the top shelf alongside awards given by bloggers, that thing they do on Reddit, and the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for writing the best Warhammer novel with the biggest fanbase. Because that’s all it will be worth if things don’t change. Like Landon, I wonder if the Hugo voters, those who continue to demand change, wouldn’t be better served by letting the awards fade into the irrelevancy that they seemingly desire. Like a sinking sun long faded into twilight, the Hugo awards are at a pivotal moment when they must decide whether its time to rise again with the morning, or leave the world behind with nothing but a memory of its once great warmth.
Well said, Aidan, and I couldn’t agree more.
I think you’ve mis-read Chris Garcia’s comment re. Banana Wings (which he doesn’t edit, either, although he does sometimes write for it): he says that both BW and Journey Planet are still excellent year-on-year. I’m with him on Banana Wings (I don’t really read Journey Planet regularly enough to have an opinion on it): I think it fully deserves its nomination. But I agree with your wish to see some different names on the fanzine/fanwriter ballot: Liz Bourke and Abigail Nussbaum for starters. (Let’s not even get into Best Fancast, which is entirely the same slate of nominees as last year, and mostly seems to involve pros anyway. Maybe, just maybe, there aren’t enough fancasts out there to support the category’s existence?)
The Best Novel slate is distinctly meh, as is Dramatic Presentation Short-Form, but since those are the categories that probably attract the highest number of nominating ballots, I suspect that’s no coincidence; as Justin says, many nominators probably haven’t read or seen more than a handful of new releases in any given year, so it’s not surprising that the voting gravitates towards the (often blandly) familiar, and/or to those with the biggest social media megaphones.
I’d like to think that the growing trend of readers posting their draft ballots, and therefore highlighting a range of interesting works, might help to counteract this, but tbh I can’t imagine the average litblogger outshouting the determinedly self-promoting Larry Correias of this world. I can’t even get too exercised about this: it’s their careers, I guess, and they’ll do what they feel they have to. (But yes, wouldn’t it be nice if more of the self-promoters a) gave shout-outs to other stuff they think deserves wider attention and b) as you say, did this for multiple works/people, rather than offering their fans a straight-ticket slate and creating a subsidiary block-vote in the process?)
On a more positive note, I’m delighted to see Strange Horizons in for Semiprozine, and in general I think that one is a really strong category – perhaps the strongest award of the bunch, in terms of quality. They’re all magazines I read regularly, and which the sf/f field is better for the existence of. Although I note that it took a rule change to finally get rid of Locus from semipro (an example, if ever there was one, of habit-voting over merit-voting…).
@Nic — You’re right, I was wrong about Banana Wings. It was a typo and I’ve corrected the article to now read The Drink Tank, as originally intended. Thanks. :)
I wonder if we’re not viewing the PAST Hugos through nostalgic lenses here. Were they ever really the paragon of representativeness we remember them as? I feel like they always represented the opinions of a pretty small elite (basically US-based SFF authors who hung out in the fiction magazines of the 60s and 70s) — it’s just that, given the structure of publishing at the time, that elite was more or less the same as “SFF that could get published”. Now that’s changing, and the Hugos remain the same; I’m not sure that comes as a surprise.
Yay you! Seeing the same names pop up over and over makes it all feel like some kind of high school clique. All you have to do is hang around Twitter for a week and you know who the popular kids are. There are a couple of names that come up all the time that make me cringe, because frankly their writing puts me to sleep.
Maybe it’s partly driven by the human predisposition to want to follow the cool kids? Someone decrees them cool, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. I have sort of a perverse reaction to that, never having been a ‘popular’ kid. The more popular someone becomes, the less I want to do with them.
‘If you aren’t one of the cool kids, you will never win an award’
Most inappropriate use of the word cool ever? I know some writers who truly deserve that term and will never get close to a Hugo shortlist.
The Hugos do exactly what your posts complaining about the Hugos do, Aidan. What do you want? To be relevant, to drive discussion, and (hopefully) get a lot of web traffic. What do the Hugo noms want? To be relevant, to drive discussion, and (hopefully) get a lot of sales. That they may not be so good at that last doesn’t mean anything. They grant status–and to many that’s a more precious coin than coin. (It doesn’t hurt that most authors believe that anything that raises their profile will eventually lead to more sales.)
I appreciate you naming works/people you think should have been nominated, rather than just carping on about what did get nominated as some have done. I have pointed out time and again that the nominating phase is one of the most critical elements of the Hugo process. With an expanded electorate (the combined memberships of three Worldcons means there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people eligible to nominate every year) and growing interest (over 1,300 nominating ballots cast), it’s really not surprising to me that popular, good-selling works get nominated. And in some of the other categories, you do see the same people mainly because nobody else is nominating.
If you want to make an impact on these things, I recommend making an active effort in talking up those works and people you think ought to be nominated starting in December, just before the nominating ballots come out. For that matter, set up a location for accumulating people’s recommendations, like the LiveJournal Hugo Recommendations group (http://hugo-recommend.livejournal.com). If it’s a fixed location, write to TheHugoAwards.org and ask to be added to their list of recommendation sites.
With a populist award, you have to get people’s attention. They may have read/saw things in the past year but simply forgot about them. I know that as the person who coordinates the discussions of potential Hugo Award nominees at the Bay Area Science Fiction Association every year, I keep getting those, “Oh, yeah, that!” moments as people talk about the works they saw or read that they liked.
In the long run, the Hugos probably mean nothing. Plenty of non-nominated novels and stories are classics, and the converse is true.
Think before you vote. And do vote.
In the short run–they help authors get exposure. Coin, as Brent puts it.
[…] liberally. But judiciously. God knows there are stupid things about the Hugos but Aidan Moher is completely right that the primary problem is not the process but the voters. So I’m going to try to be the […]
Nic: I’d like to think that the growing trend of readers posting their draft ballots, and therefore highlighting a range of interesting works, might help to counteract this, but tbh I can’t imagine the average litblogger outshouting the determinedly self-promoting Larry Correias of this world.
I think this is the only solution. Being a good nominator is hard work and shortlists like this one show how easy it is for individuals to collectively slip into laziness. Posting draft ballots guards against this by encouraging people to think more broadly. It doesn’t matter if we can’t outshout Correias and his ilk, we can at least re-frame the conversation.
Brent: What do the Hugo noms want? To be relevant, to drive discussion, and (hopefully) get a lot of sales.
Um, the Hugo noms don’t have agency.
I have a comment on the best fancast rules. Aidan, I remember that last year you nominated Writing Excuses. So did a lot of other people—it received the 6th highest number of nominations last year in Best Fancast.
The Writing Excuses crew originally said it was eligible as a Related Work due to confusion about the “non-professional” part of the rules (and Writing Excuses’ first nomination as a Best Related Work came before the fancast category existed). Last year’s business meeting ratified this part of the constitution:
3.2.11: A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two criteria:
(1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or,
(2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner.
Who publishes Writing Excuses? Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC, which is Brandon Sanderson’s literary corporation. Brandon Sanderson’s writing income all goes through Dragonsteel Entertainment, so it clearly provides more than a quarter of the income of its owner. Therefore Writing Excuses is professional.
If instead the Writing Excuses crew created a new company, e.g. Writing Excuses, LLC, that published nothing other than Writing Excuses, it would not provide more than a quarter of anyone’s income and the podcast would be eligible for Best Fancast while remaining exactly the same in content and advertisers. This would be an arbitrary and silly thing to do just to be eligible for an award.
Now, it’s my understanding that the new definition of “professional publication” was intended to foster more competition in the Semiprozine category, which I think is great. The unintended consequences I’m not so sure about. The other podcasts that involve professionals—if they were careful to separate the podcast’s publication from their contributors’ literary corporations, then they’re eligible, but I don’t know if many people have thought about that at all.
This is just another example of how the Hugo rules are a bit opaque.
Nevertheless I’m not really sure there’s a better system than the current one. I believe a juried award would be the wrong move; there are plenty of those and why should we create a new one? I think opening it up to a much wider audience would lead to the same situation as the David Gemmell Award. The Hugo Award has always been what it is; I think the problem is that people who grew up reading books with “Hugo Award Winner!” stamped on the top of the front cover didn’t really know what it was. Learning what it really is doesn’t change what the award is, just the perception of the award.
I do think opening up ratifying WSFS rules changes to the whole convention, not just people who bother to stuff themselves into the room where the meeting is being held, would be a move in the right direction. It is currently technologically feasible, where a couple of decades ago it would not have been.
When I vote for the Hugos, I rank the nominees in the order of how deserving I feel they are. Those feelings are mine, and I don’t expect a lot of people to agree with me. When they do agree with me, I am pleased, but there’s no point in being bitter when they don’t. “Best” will always be subjective and there is no way around that. I have not yet read a lot of the nominees on this year’s slate, but I look forward to reading them and seeing how they strike me.
@Nic, I can think of a handful of podcasts I would have liked to see on the ballot in place of some on there. There are a handful more that I personally don’t like but are probably good enough to get on the ballot. And that is before considering all the Doctor Who, comics related, television series related etc etc podcasts out there. And I don’t know anything about the video community.
There is doubtlessly more potential there than in the traditional fanzines, I can think of a couple of podcasts that started this year I would like to see on the ballot. But, something visible in artist, comics, fanzines, fanwriters, editors, tvseries, continuing productions tend to stay on the ballot for far longer than makes sense.
@kevin
You are actually highlighting one of the issues. Livejournal is for a lot of people something alien and old-fashioned. Not much better than usenet. The fact that the main discussion takes place there shows the disconnect with what is most likely the majority of online fandom. To be honest blogs probably serve a similar minority.
Where did I ever say that the LJ community was “the main discussion?” It’s one of the places of many. TheHugoAwards.org has a policy of posting links to others as long as the links are static. (That is, we won’t post new links that have to be updated regularly, because we can’t keep up with it.)
Listing an example with which I’m personally familiar (because I use it as the medium for publishing the BASFA Hugo Suggestions on account of it’s easy for me to do so there) does not and should not be taken to mean that there are no other places where such discussions happen. I’m not sure how you got that idea from what I wrote.
I’ve never seen a popularity contest that managed to put “worthy” above “popular”. The Vorkosigan books are extremely popular, so they get voted in a lot (as compared to Bujold’s Sharing Knife books, which don’t seem to get the same level of recognition, even though they’re arguably more ‘worthy’ than her more recent Vorkosigan books).
And ‘worthy’ is highly subjective. You position yourself in this post as being “on the bleeding edge” and yet (having read this blog for years, though I’m not much of a commenter) I think of this as a site for “old-style epic fantasy” fandom. How many posts on “A Memory of Light” did you do?
I also note a lot of accusations of “promoting [themselves]” levelled against Seanan Maguire, and yet, oddly, not John Scalzi. What did she actually do? Have friends? Post on her blog? Did she do more or less than Scalzi? How much self-promotion did Maguire do compared to the other writers on the ballot? Or is it simply that Maguire is not to your taste, and thus you think she’s “unworthy” despite the clear evidence that other people liked/read her more than your picks? Does Scalzi get to self-promote because he’s male and Maguire not do whatever it is she did because she’s female? [As for the immense disdain leveled by Justin Landon toward Bujold, who he doesn’t seem to think should be mentioned in the same sentence as Heinlein – sorry, but there’s a reason Bujold is massively popular and one of them is that even her mediocre novels are better than most of Heinlein.]
There’s a lot of posting going on this year about the Hugos but it all comes back to the same point: this is a popularity contest. It’s never been about worthiness. The only way you’re going to get worthiness is by making it a juried award involving some poor unfortunates having to read everything which is eligible, and even then it will be “worthy according to their particular tastes”.
Shan: *applause* There’s no such thing as an objective “Best” in anything where the only way to evaluate things is subjectively. So we should just live with that and not engage in semantic arguments that popularly voted awards like the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo aren’t “Best” while a juried selection like the World Fantasy is “really Best” in some Platonic way.
[…] disgruntlement, particularly the essays written by Justin Landon at Staffer’s Book Review and Aidan Moher at A Dribble of Ink, make me wonder about a more fundamental, heretofore unstated question: what good are the Hugo […]
So first the snark: yes, many Hugo voters and nominators are in a bubble. But it’s not just one bubble. Attendance at a business meeting will show that. And e commentariat has its own bubbles.
Now the meat: Nic’s non-comment illustrates a bubble. There are plenty of fannish podcasts and vidcasts, as shown by last year’s long list (or just perusing the iTunes store). There were quite a few nominees who broke the 5% barrier without making the top 5. The top 5 just happens to be made up of podcasts with a large following by Hugo nominators. Again.
I drafted the motion that ended up being the Fancast rule as a reaction to the “damn kids get off my lawn!” reaction to StarShipSofa winning fanzine. Not to get those damn kids off the lawn, but to recognize a growing medium of fannish expression. It did end up replacing an alternate motion purely drafted to disqualify podcasts from the fanzine category. And it was my first business meeting (although I did have help). I’m annoyed that the related language strengthening the periodical nature of fanzines was taken out at ratification time, but I can live with that.
I do think that a blog isn’t necessarily a fanzine. SFSignal is a great example of one that really is equivalent, with regular columns and contributors, and an editorial hand guiding it. It may not have discrete issues, but it does have a magazine-like feel.
Of course, a lot of blogs are rather like perzines. And I doubt those blogs are going to win any more than perzines do (The Drink Tank aside, which was an anomaly and won the year the 300th issue had 300 articles and 300 contributors).
@Nic — There are probably 3 dozen fancasts out there, including my own. So I don’t think the fancast category is problematic because of a lack of fancasts (there are other reasons for that, which might have something to do with the fact that pros run most of the fancasts on the list).
But I realize upon writing this that someone has already covered it…
I agree on the Scalzi not belonging. Great first novel but it’s been all down hill ever since.
And I find it bad taste that he is the President of the SFWA.
I think his book being on the ballot should have been censored off like he does anyone that even comes close to disagreeing with him.
I think Ray Bradbury would have considered his self promoting /Anti Everyone else to be something that should be considered dangerous in writing circles.
@Kevin,
The whole distributed nature of the discussion and the nomination process seems to be part of what causes the nagging each year. The real discussion only starts after the nominations have been announced, at which point it is too late to point people to other works they perhaps could have considered. The whole consensus/disagreement building that I think ideally should take place inside the community isn’t taking place because the fans of genre, and even the fans that vote for the Hugo, have formed their own sub-communities with not enough overlap to stimulate conversation under normal circumstances.
[…] saw another interesting post on this years Hugo ballot by Dribble of Ink’sAidan Moher. In the comments to his well thought […]
[…] Aidan Moher has Thoughts On the 2013 Hugo Nominations. […]
Maddox: That’s totally unreasonable. The Hugo Awards are not run by SFWA. They are administered by the individual World Science Fiction Conventions (the membership of which is the World Science Fiction Society). Furthermore, Worldcons irrevocably delegate the authority to administer the awards to a small Hugo Administration Subcommittee, the members of which are not secret but are all ineligible for the Hugo Awards. (Note that this isn’t the same as the committee that runs TheHugoAwards.org; marketing and administration are different things.) Demanding that the President of SFWA should be “censored” off the ballot because you don’t like him makes no sense at all.
For once, Kevin, I think you and I agree about something, Re: Scalzi comments.
First of all, I absolutely agree that The Killing Moon deserved a Hugo nomination, and I was surprised not to see it on there. I’m actually kind of annoyed, but I did what I could by telling everyone I know to read it and vote for it, and I guess the votes weren’t there. I’ve seen a lot of criticisms of the inclusion of Redshirts, but I felt that it was a strong addition to the genre and it took a cracking-good concept and executed it very well with cleverness and emotional resonance.
Landon points to two particular authors, both popular and less-than-shy in promoting their friends and themselves for nomination, Seanan McGuire (who herself is nominated for five awards this year, including twice in the same category), and Larry Correira.
I honestly do not understand the characterization of Seanan as “less-than-shy” about promoting herself and her friends. She made one post listing her eligible works and mentioning some of her professional cohorts and one post specifically recommending three nominations: the Fringe episode “Letters of Transit,” a Phineas and Ferb episode, and Mark Oshiro. That’s it. She did not make a single other post on her blog about the Hugos until the nominations were announced. I cannot speak for all of her Tweets, but aside from her linking my own recommendation post for Mark, I don’t recall seeing much “Vote for me and my friends!” activity.
Mark’s writing and genre observations are unique to him and, because of this, he’s created a niche for himself in fandom and I take no issue with it being rewarded with a Hugo nomination. He’s good.
I am so happy to hear this. This is how I hoped people would receive his nomination. Did the fact that Seanan recommended him help? Absolutely. Did the fact that he was also well-known to John Scalzi fans for reading Shadow War of the Night Dragons help? Most probably. Like you said, it’s always who you know, and, personally, I am glad that he’s getting the attention he deserves for what he’s doing, not just with his writing, but by fostering an active community with intelligent and hilarious discussion.
Oh, and, by the way, Mark is in the middle of a long-running chapter-by-chapter review of Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. And, according to Facebook, left his job in 2012 and appears to run his ‘Mark Does Stuff’ sites full time, at least enough to justify a month-long cross-country tour. Anecdotal evidence, though, so… *passes salt*.
I’m not sure what salt you want people to take? I gather that the fact that he’s reading Newsflesh means he would be popular with Seanan’s fanbase, which is true, and I understand that point. I don’t quite get the relevance of the fact that he runs his sites full-time and goes on tour. Does it make him less of a “fan writer” if it’s his job? I think that may be an interesting discussion to have with regards to what the category should represent, but I think there’s a difference between a fan writer who supports himself with his fan writing and a published author (like John Scalzi and Jim C. Hines in previous years, and Tansy Rayner Roberts this year) who also does great fan writing. Then I wonder what happens when Mark publishes the novel he’s working on; is he no longer a “fan writer” in the truest sense?
[…] carving their own path to find answers to the Hugo ‘problem’ (if such even exists). My thoughts are here. Here I’ve gathered together some of the responses complement and balance out Landon’s […]
Sunil: there is a lot of argument over what constitutes “fan writing” but one thing everyone agrees on is it’s non-commercial writing.
Scalzi, Hines and Roberts all produce fan writing for non-commercial outlets (their personal blogs, genre websites and fanzines). Scalzi is problem the likeliest edge case with his collections of writing from Whatever, but he’s never been nominated in a year that his eligible work has been included in a published collection.
If Oshiro is making his living off the work that got him nominated, the voters will have to factor that into their decisions. Looking at past voting patterns for Fan Artist, twice Randall Munroe, the incredibly popular creator of xkcd, lost. He lost through the instant run-off process, as voters for the other candidates fell to his opposition. That may be attributable to voters not considering him a fan artist because xkcd is Munroe’s livelihood.
there is a lot of argument over what constitutes “fan writing” but one thing everyone agrees on is it’s non-commercial writing.
Per the official definition of the category, however: “Only work in professional publications should not be considered.” I would be hard-pressed to describe Mark’s sites as a professional publication. But I also understand that voters’ perception may be different. All of his reviews are posted for free online. No one has to pay to read his work. Isn’t that non-commercial writing? He is able to support himself through ad revenue, video commissions, and published collections (no eligible posts from last year have been included in a published collection, for the record). He is able to go on tour because he takes a lot of buses and sleeps on people’s couches. Personally, I think the fact that he’s managing to make a living being a fan should be commended. Maybe it’s time to reevaluate what makes a Fan Writer in this day and age; in the end, Mark is still a fan who writes. I would ask voters to read the comments on his Hugo welcome post and see for themselves the impact Mark has had on people’s lives with his writing. That they read for free.
@Joris & SMD et al: Sorry, I shouldn’t haven’t said “aren’t enough out there”. What I meant was more that if the exact same candidates get all the slots two years in a row – and the majority of them involve people who tend to appear elsewhere on the ballot for their pro work – it suggests that there isn’t a big enough variety of podcasts on the average Hugo nominator’s radar to make it a truly competitive category *for the Hugos*. But we’ll see what the next few years bring, I guess; after a very underwhelming start, Graphic Story has improved slightly, albeit partly because one/some(?) of the usual suspects have now ruled themselves out.
Sunil: “professional publications” are clearly defined before the categories:
3.2.11: A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two
criteria:
(1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or,
(2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the
income of any of its staff and/or owner.
Unfortunately, it sounds like Oshiro’s websites could qualify. If the websites’ income provides the major portion of his livelihood, they’re professional publications. I would say it doesn’t matter how cheaply he lives, but living cheaply could actually be a disadvantage here.
If your criteria for Oshiro’s websites not being “professional publications” is that they don’t look slick like professional publications, then you’re falling prey to the “crappy enough for fanwork” fallacy, which is insulting to all the nominees in the category.
That said, the rules are mostly there to prevent the administrators from shooting themselves in the foot. An activist administrator might have considered disqualifying Oshiro. A sensible administrator would say “who needs the backlash?” and trusted the voters to make the decision they believe is right.
Unfortunately, it sounds like Oshiro’s websites could qualify. If the websites’ income provides the major portion of his livelihood, they’re professional publications.
Interesting! Thanks for the clarification. I will also apologize for the unintended insult to the other nominees; I certainly didn’t mean to imply that fan work has to be crappy!
That said, the rules are mostly there to prevent the administrators from shooting themselves in the foot. An activist administrator might have considered disqualifying Oshiro. A sensible administrator would say “who needs the backlash?” and trusted the voters to make the decision they believe is right.
Agreed. I hope the voters will take the rules in the spirit I assume they were intended and recognize Mark as the true fan writer that he is. As Aidan points out, I think he’s the sort of person the category needs.
I would like Aidan to respond to my puzzlement over this paragraph, however:
Oh, and, by the way, Mark is in the middle of a long-running chapter-by-chapter review of Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. And, according to Facebook, left his job in 2012 and appears to run his ‘Mark Does Stuff’ sites full time, at least enough to justify a month-long cross-country tour. Anecdotal evidence, though, so… *passes salt*.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I think my original interpretation was wrong because I was evaluating each statement separately, but they sound like they’re connected. What do the fact that he’s reading Seanan’s books and making a living reading people’s books have to do with each—
Aidan, you can’t possibly be implying that Seanan is paying Mark to write favorably about her books, can you?
@Sunil, Absolutely not. Just that Seanan was as likely to be tooting Oshiro’s horn because he’s been running some pretty fine publicity (in the form of his long-running, popular reviews) for her books as she is simply because he is an entertaining writer and personality. In other words, it seems to fit with the current friends-of-friends scenario that dominates Hugo voting these now. Know/impress the right influential people and you’re in. I do not think the reviews were prompted in any way by McGuire or her publisher, nor do I question the honesty/integrity of Oshiro’s writing. All speculation on my part, of course, which is where the salt comes in.
Thanks for the clarification! Of course Mark’s reviews are good publicity as well—though a quick glance at the number of comments shows that they’re not nearly as popular on the site as his Tortall reviews—and that’s a good thing for her. But if you look at her Tweets—which I know you probably haven’t—they are always about taking glee in his emotional destruction, since he provides a unique reader perspective for an author. (And I clarify that I am talking about directing people toward his reviews, not asking people to nominate him, which she only did once.)
As far as knowing and impressing the right influential people…well, that’s how all awards work, isn’t it? I could write the most brilliant SF novel the world has ever seen, but if no one even knows about it, there’s way it could be nominated for anything. I think the Hugos could certainly branch out past some of the regular darlings, but I think there’s been a lot of moves toward diversity in this year’s selections with regards to queer writers, female writers, and people of color (still shaking my fist about N.K. Jemisin, though), so I have hope that the community of people who are passionate about the Hugos will continue to seek to recognize the most deserving work in the field and bring attention to new writers I haven’t heard of. I’m itching to get the Hugo Voter Packet so I can read their stuff!
Joris (way late, I know): WSFS and TheHugoAwards didn’t set up the hugo_recommend Livejournal community. I did, and it was back when LJ was the premier international forum for fantasy and science fiction writers and fans.
It turns out to be a technically good solution, allowing participants to tag and search recommendations by year and category. Recommendations back to 2006 are easy to filter and review. It also supports federated login using identities from other online services. And reviewing recommendations does not require any sort of sign-in or account. So it’s not as isolated as it seems.
That said, LiveJournal is not the lively community it was before SixApart and the Russians got mixed up in it. It’s still the most writer-oriented social platform out there, and quite a few writers and actifans still have a major online presence there.
I have a lot of “meh” for Facebook. It’s awful for long-form writing. I use it, I use it well, but it constrains me in many ways. But almost everybody is there. And Social Graph search might suddenly make open Hugo Award discussion something it could be good at supporting. Don’t bet on it, though.
I have a lot of “meh” for Google+. It’s almost as good for long-form writing as LiveJournal. It’s almost as easy to manage and secure as LiveJournal. A lot of writers and artists who jumped ship from LiveJournal were early adopters of G+. It’s search-friendly, but there’s no way to manage category tags. I like it from a general perspective until I run into a feature that Facebook has implemented better. And the community just isn’t as big as Facebook.
Twitter? I can’t even begin to enumerate the ways in which Twitter is a totally inadequate platform. And Twitter pretty much runs out the range of global, high-subscriber social services.
I don’t think Google+ community/group functions would make it nearly as easy to review recommendations by category when it comes time to nominate. I know Facebook wouldn’t.
@Nic
The fancast nominees being the exact same list as last year is indeed a problem (shared with many categories with continuing products to be honest). I had hoped to see some new blood there, and I am aware people that are nominated called attention to other potential nominees. Looking at the statistics after the awards are over will be interesting. I hope that the voters will recognize all of the variety out there.
@Andrew,
I am aware that livejournal is still a nexus for (part of the community of) writers and fans. And of the relatively common social networks is indeed the most suited for long-term deep discussions. Still not perfect, and the proportion of people on there dwindles, with as you say no suitable replacement in sight.
By the way, thank you for your efforts.
[…] die auch dieses Jahr wieder laut. Beispielsweise in der Form zweier Blogbeiträge von Aidan Moher (A Dribble of Ink) und Justin Landon (Staffer’s Book Review), die gleichermaßen […]
[…] I’m intrigued how much Milt has in common with Aidan Moher, who makes some of the same criticisms about the Hugo electorate. Of course, Moher wants to give all the fan Hugos to bloggers, so never the twain shall […]
[…] What the Puppies said about it: “I like Seanan personally. I think she’s pretty cool in person and she’s a solid writer… Was every novel, short, novella, and novelette she wrote one of the best five things in the world this year? Probably not. But she is popular with the [Secret Masters of Fandom], ergo she is nominated. You preach the right kind of message fic, you can get nominated. You get popular with the right crowd, you can get nominated. If you are popular enough with the right crowd the Hugos will even tweak which category you fit in so that their two favorites don’t have to go head to head and both can win Hugos.” — Larry Correia[29] [via[30]]. […]
[…] What a Puppies pronounced about it: “I like Seanan personally. we consider she’s flattering cold in chairman and she’s a plain writer… Was any novel, short, novella, and novelette she wrote one of a best 5 things in a universe this year? Probably not. But she is renouned with a [Secret Masters of Fandom], ergo she is nominated. You evangelise a right kind of summary fic, we can get nominated. You get renouned with a right crowd, we can get nominated. If we are renouned adequate with a right throng a Hugos will even tweak that difficulty we fit in so that their dual favorites don’t have to go conduct to conduct and both can win Hugos.” — Larry Correia [via]. […]