On the Hugo Awards: Two Scholarly-ish Projects to Come (An Announcement)

As you may well be aware, I am currently working on two projects related to the Hugo Awards.  I know I've mentioned both of these at some point, though the second is certainly the most visible of these projects.  I'm also sure you know that the Hugo Awards have been enormously controversial this year, earning mainstream attention in major newspapers and entertainment sites such as The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Boing Boing, and so on.  That conversation is still happening; one need only look at File 770 to see it.

My #HugoAwards Final Ballot (To Be Submitted in the Future)

Over the weekend, I explained why I intended to use No Award and Blank Spacing as a response to the Sad Puppies / Rabid Puppies campaign to manipulate and take over the Hugo Awards.  Since I am fundamentally opposed to slate-based voting measures, I can't in good conscience support works which appear on this year's ballot as a result of the SP/RP slates.  And so I won't.

Others, of course, may have different views.  TheG intends to give most things on the ballot a fair shake under the guise that voting No Award would unfairly punish those that are on the ballot but are otherwise not really part of the SP/RP world.  He admits, though, that this is hardly a strong response.  Where we do agree, however, is that there are some problematic cases here.  Some folks are on the ballot who didn't know they were included in the SP/RP slate and would have declined if they had known.  However, I'm of the mindset that support for anything on the ballot may be perceived as tacit support for the entire campaign -- a point on which Abigail Nussbaum and I agree.

With that said, voting will be rather easy for me, since the SP/RP folks have taken almost every slot on this year's ballot.  Here's what my ballot will look like when I'm allowed to submit it (feel free to lob your disagreements or what have you in the comments):

"No Award" and "Blank Spacing" the #HugoAwards -- The Only Response I Can Make to What is to Come

The Hugo Award ballot has been announced, and if you've been paying attention to Twitter, it's certainly controversial.  Not controversial because a novel everybody loved didn't make it.  Not controversial because a novel a whole lot of people didn't love did make it.  Controversial because some people have taken it upon themselves to game the system in order to create and relish in political chaos.

That last sentence would certainly sound melodramatic if not for the fact that the proponents of a certain ballot-to-be-copied hadn't already publicly stated that one of their guiding purposes for last year's rendition of this political fiasco was as follows:

"We got in [7 or 8] Hugo nominees [out of 10 or 11 that we pushed]...and ah man, all hell broke loose.  It was the end of the world.  So we had a lot of fun with that.  We made our point.  I said that if people who are not politically acceptable to these clicks are nominated for an award, the other side will have a come apart...and then, they pretty much did exactly what I said in a very public manner.  And we had fun with it."

In short:  they sought to create chaos and unrest in order to make a political point.  And when they succeeded, they relished in it.  Perhaps this is all facetious dribbling, but it does illustrate a clear contradiction:  this whole thing has never been about the quality of the work.  If it were, the intent would not be so blatantly political and so blatantly at odds with the spirit of the awards.  That any of these folks can utter something like the above in one breath and claim to respect the Hugo voter and the Hugo nomination process in another is a supreme sort of cognitive dissonance.  That some involved in this campaign can also claim that the act is not capital-P political is like courting madness with Cthulu.

As a result, the ballot has been flooded by Sad Puppies.

If this whole thing had begun simply as people sharing their love of X, I would not have to write this post.  I would not have to think of my ballot as a political tool, either.  I could look at what was there and make a judgment about the works, not the intent behind their inclusion.  Voting is already political enough, even in something as seemingly innocuous as the Hugo Awards.  I don't appreciate being put into a position where "intent" actually matters, since the only thing that should matter is the work.

But that's not how this began.  It was and remains a political campaign to game the system for personal and political gain.  It's not the same as Wheel of Time fans realizing they can all nominate their favorite fantasy series and then doing so.  It's not the same as fans who love X nominating X.  It's people with a political ax to grind taking advantage of that system to make a point.  This action shifts the voting process from small-p political, whereby one's everyday politics organically produces certain taste values or perspectives, to cap-P Political, whereby voting itself is treated as a political act separate from the preservation of small-P political interests.  That's the difference between "I love this thing because it's about the kind of stuff I enjoy" and "I'm nominating this thing to make a point to people with whom I disagree."

I take the Hugo Awards seriously as an award and as a process, and so I can't offer my support for any campaign of this type, whether it comes from liberals, conservatives, anarchists, socialists, feminists, capitalists, etc.  I don't care about the particulars of the politics.  I do not believe the Hugos should be a battleground for sf/f's infighting.  For that reason, I believe that if your intent is to use the Hugos to make a political point first and foremost, then I am obligated and justified to use my ballot to make a clear statement about the works which will be nominated as a result.  In this respect, I view the Hugos in much the same way as Abi Sutherland:

My Hugo nominations and votes are reactions to that broadening-out of my mental universe. As such, they’re intimately, intensely personal. And that’s part of the visceral reaction that some fans are having to the Sad Puppies’ slate: it looks like the institutionalization of a private, particular process in the service of an external goal. It comes across as a coarsening and a standardizing of something that should be fine-grained, unpredictable, and unique to each person participating. It seems like denial of variety and spontaneity, like choreographed sex.

As such, I suspect I will leave a good number of items off of my ballot in protest.  Since the Hugo Awards use a preferential voting system, any item which appears on your ballot will receive a vote of some kind when the ballots are counted.  Putting No Award as the last item on your ranked list means anything left off the ballot doesn't get any "points."  This is not preferable, since the "No Award" should be used to say "I don't actually think this is good enough."  Last year, I mostly used the "No Award" for its intended purpose; in fact, some of the works on last year's ballot from people who I'm sure are part of the "evil liberal conspiracy to destroy science fiction" didn't make it far on my ballot because I just didn't enjoy them.  Because that's how I normally vote:  based on my subjective sense of the quality of the work, which is, to varying degrees, influenced by my small-P political values.

This year, however, it is clear that there is no reasonable way to treat the ballot as a reflection of what people loved in the sf/f field.  It is a manipulated ballot.  A broken ballot.  And I suspect that it will result in a lot of bad blood within sf/f for years to come.  Nobody should relish in this projected future; unfortunately, I suspect a few might.

None of this is preferable.  I don't want to do any of this.  There are people who are on the slate who I actually like as people (and think are decent writes, too).  But I don't feel as if I have any other reasonable choice.  In my mind, preserving the Hugos as a worthwhile award means preserving its spirit.  Bloc-voting, etc. does not serve that interest regardless of its origins.

So that's how I intend to proceed from this point on.  If your intent is to manipulate the ballot for political gain, I will "blank space" the ballot in response.

Nominate what you love.  Leave your political agendas at the door.  That is all.

My Complete 2015 Hugo Awards Nominations Ballot (Finished on 3/10/15)

It's that time again.  Hugo Awards time.  Since the nomination period closes on March 10th, 2015, I figure it's time to start sharing my ballot with the world.

Note:  this list is extremely incomplete and will be periodically updated as I find things to add to unfilled categories.  Categories are also subject to change.  If you have suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments (seriously; I'm very scatterbrained at the moment, so I'm missing all kinds of things).

Here goes:

Hugo Award Reading: Suggest Shorts/Novelettes/Novellas (Final Open Call)

The title says it all.  I'm working on my nomination ballot for the Hugo Awards, and I need more suggestions for the shorter-than-a-novel categories so I can get a proper survey.  If you have a suggestion, please leave it in the magic comment box (links to online stories are appreciated).

By the way, I had nearly 1,000 pages of reading last year thanks to everyone's suggestions.  It was totally worth it.

Alright, off to work!

On the Hugo Awards "Best Fancast" Category: Eligibility, Vote Value, and the Unlikelihood of Change

Recently, I had a Twitter discussion* with Nerds of a Feather about the "Best Fancast" category for the Hugos.**  Briefly, Nerds' Hugo Nominations Draft Ballot contained several podcasts which I had thought weren't eligible because of their association with a pro site (Tor.com).  This discussion continued today with Justin Landon's comments about nominations, which I'll discuss farther down on the page.  First, some factual bits and pieces:

The Hugo Award categories page lists the following definition for Fancast:  "Awarded for any non-professional audio- or video-casting with at least four (4) episodes that had at least one (1) episode released in the previous calendar year."  Most podcasts would be eligible for this category if not for the word "non-professional."  According to the Hugo rules,

Hugo Awards Recommendations: Which shorts / novelettes / novellas have I missed?

It's almost that time again:  time to nominate stuff for the Hugos. I usually miss a lot of stuff throughout the year, so I like to reach out to readers to see what they'd recommend so I can create a reading list for myself.  Last time, you folks recommended so much that I ended up with a 1,200-page ebook!  I want to give myself a little more time for the next nominating season.

So...which short stories, novelettes, and novellas should I be reading?  Let me know in the comments below!

The Hugos in "Turmoil" and the Glee Crowd

There seems to be a contingent of fandom that takes pleasure in any perceived disorder in the Hugo Awards.  They themselves love sf/f, often because they write in the genre themselves, but when it comes to one of the most important awards, it's almost as if they are excited for its fall from grace, perceived or otherwise.  In some cases, they declare their hope that the award simply dies; in other cases, their public displays of laughter are all the indicators one needs to determine how they feel about the Hugos.  I don't know why they take pleasure in Hugo controversies.  At first, I thought it might be due to jealousy, since many of these same folks don't get nominated in any of the categories or rarely see their own nominees appear,[1] but that would make their opinions petty and pathetic rather than detrimental.  I think it goes much deeper than that; they are to the Hugos what the Joker is to Batman:  they just want to see the world burn.

(Updated!) 2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: The Full List + 1939 Retro-Hugo Nominees

I've decided to collapse everything into one post so I don't have to drop a dozen things tonight.  Due to time constraints, I have also left out a lot of the explanations and introductions for the various sections, as I wanted to do some more short fiction reading before I submitted my final ballot.

Here's the full ballot:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Related Work

(Update:  I 'm going to have to change my selections; it was pointed out to me by Mari Ness that this category is only for non-fiction, which means I can't have any collections here.  Right now, I am extremely frustrated about the absence of a category for anthologies and collections.)

This remains one of the ridiculous categories on the Hugo Ballot, since it is essentially a repository for all the things that don't fit anywhere else (which is what folks have been saying as long as I can remember discussing the Hugos as something more than just "that award thing").  So my selections are going to be full of fiction collections which don't fit elsewhere because there isn't a "best collection or anthology" category.

Here are my selections:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Fanzine

Well, it's that time again:  nominating blogs instead of traditional zines, primarily because this is the medium I prefer to read in and which publishes the content I like reading.

But enough of that.  Here are my nominations:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Fan Writer

There are far too many amazing fan writers out there.  This list began with 20-30 names, which I whittled down to 8.  Then I flipped a bunch of 8-sided die to pick the final 5 (or something like that).

So, here's what I picked this year:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Novel

I feel like this is one of those categories where no matter what I do, I'll always miss something.  2013 wasn't a huge reading year for me, and that means there are just too many bloody novels I didn't have time to get to.  Thankfully, I got to read some exceptional books, even if they are only 1% of the things published in sf/f in 2013.

So without further delay, here's what I've chosen:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

I thought long and hard about this one.  You'll see a lot of things missing here:  no Byzantium (though I quite enjoyed it) or Iron Man 3 or Catching Fire (which was good until the last 5 minutes) or Upstream Color or The Hobbit 2 (the latter of which I think is utter garbage).

With that said, here's the list I came up with:

2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Fancast

I love this category for entirely biased reasons:  I'm eligible for one and a lot of my favorite shows are eligible, too.  It's also a category which I think deserves to exist.  Podcasting is such a specific medium, so it really doesn't belong in Best Fanzine or Best Related Work or Best Dramatic Presentation (unless your podcast involves audio plays or audiobooks, of course).  So the fact that I get to vote in this category now is pretty awesome.

But you're here for my nominations.  So here goes (in no particular order):

2014 Hugo Nominees Incoming: Criteria and Notes

A lot of folks have been sharing their nominees.  I'm going to do the same, but woefully late, such that all the information I'll provide will be completely useless to you in the end.  After all, you won't have time to read any of the books I nominate.  Oh well!

In any case, I do have criteria and notes to preface these selections:

1. You may disagree with my selections, but I hope readers of this blog will understand that they are a reflection of a) what I was able to read/view/etc. from last year, and b) my personal taste.  There are enormous gaps in my reading.  However, if I missed a truly exceptional work, please share it with me!
2. I will only nominate works that I believe were "the best."  I don't care how popular a book was in 2013; if it is not as good as a book that sold 1/100th the number of copies, then it will not get a nomination.  I believe the Hugos are an award to celebrate the best, not the most popular.
3. Some of my sections will contain empty slots for various reasons, but the most obvious will be this:  I can only think of X number of things to nominate.  As I've noted above, I will only nominate works I consider to be "the best."  If I liked a work, but I don't think it's award worthy, then it's not getting a nomination.  In some cases, however, I may not have enough to nominate in a category.  As such, you're free to suggest something (there isn't much time, obviously, but I still appreciate the gesture).
   
   Some categories may be quite empty, such as fan artist.  Why?  Because I don't follow that particular field and haven't the foggiest what I should select anyway.  And I really don't have the time to go through the Internet looking, either...
4. There will be no pissing and moaning about what others are nominating in the upcoming posts on this subject.  I'm sure I disagree with what others have on their ballots, but I'm really not interested in pissing all over other people's personal tastes this week.  That's for later (not really :P).

And that's it, really.  Let the games begin!