Views from Medina Road

The Locus Poll for this year is now closed. There was a late surge of voting, some 300 ballots just in the past week -- thanks no doubt due to plugs and links from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Cory Doctorow, and perhaps others -- to bring the total number of ballots received to well over 900, half again as many as last years 600-some. Weeding out duplicate votes (many due to e-mail glitches) will bring the number down, but there are also some unknown number of paper ballots yet to be received in Oakland and typed into the (now hidden) online ballot form so that everything can be tabulated together.

My job is now to edit all the write-in votes. Despite instructions on the ballot, there were many, many write-in votes that did not use the suggested format -- lastname comma title -- and it's also fairly remarkable how many of this supposedly literate crowd cannot seem to correctly spell their favorite writers' names or book titles. Sigh. Beyond that, the most common voting error is voting for something not in the proper eligiblity year. So there are votes for early 2005 books, for still-popular 2003 and earlier books, and even for titles like A Canticle for Leibowitz and Fahrenheit 451. There are always a few who are not quite clear on the concept; it happens every year.

Despite a remark of Jonathan's, the results will not be announced shortly anywhere, but will be not be revealed until the ceremony at Westercon over July 4th weekend. (Unless Locus HQ has a change of heart in this electronic age.) The results will be known in just a few more days... just not revealed.