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Monday, March 02, 2009

Just a Few Remarks about Awards 

So I submitted my Hugo nominations on Saturday, a few hours before the drop-dead deadline, and as usual left some categories entirely blank -- including, I'm a bit ashamed to admit, all the short fiction categories; I simply haven't read any current short fiction this past year. I did much better keeping up with current SF (and a few fantasy) novels, though even there a few key titles I still mean to get to -- Stephenson's Anathem, McAuley's The Quiet War, Wolfe's An Evil Guest -- remain unread pending project work on the website... I did nominate, for Best novel, Egan's Incandescence, Banks' Matter, Reynolds' House of Suns, and Baxter's Flood (In contrast, I *predict* that both Anathem and Doctorow's Little Brother will make the final ballot, just based on general buzz. And I wonder, will Charles Stross make it a sixth year in a row with a novel on the ballot, with Saturn's Children? Wouldn't be surprised. Those would be three spots. Banks might make it; I doubt Reynolds, Egan, or Baxter will; at least one slot, I expect, will go to something I would never guess.)

Anything anyone associated with Locus has to say about being nominated for Hugos, or the continued existence of the Semi-Prozine category, is bound to seem colored by self-interest, though in my case I can wish Jonathan and Charles and Liza and Kirsten best of luck, noting that at least they have categories to be nominated in! (For this year at least.) I do think Charles makes a valid point in his March issue editorial, when he points out that if the motive for eliminating the Semiprozine category is to keep Locus from winning it, then this amounts to not trusting the voters to vote for something else if they wish. It's analogous to term limits -- the electorate voting someone into office while simultaneously deciding that he's not to be re-elected in 8 years, making the decision now rather than trusting themselves to make the decision later.

On the other hand, the Hugo categories have long struck me as an inconsistent mish-mash, some categories for works and others for roles, that have apparently evolved out the desires at various times by some portion of the electorate to adjust the system so that some target group of candidates either does, or does not, have the chance to win an award. It's about who gets it, not for what. If it were up to me, which of course it isn't (I’m not even so concerned as to dare get involved in Hugo politics) I would take two or three big steps back and re-align all the categories by works:

best novel
best novella
best novelette
best short story

best nonfiction book
best magazine (fiction/nonfiction)
best drama (short/long)
best publisher
best book or magazine cover art

and perhaps even
best anthology
best story collection

...Almost, in fact, like the Locus Awards categories (which I have never had any role in defining, I hasten to add). (I also don't mean to suggest that the Locus Awards are not with their problems -- but let's not go there just now.)

Even now, I don't feel I have sufficient insight into the book or magazine *editing* process to judge who does it best...other than by the products that editing produces...which is more than just result of one person's editing (in most cases, I would think). We don't have a Best Writer category, do we? Again, a mishmash.

I have no strong feelings about 'fan' categories, one way or another, other to note that unlike the other categories they are obviously specifically intended to reward members of voting audience, rather than the works that have brought those voters together. It's almost like a separate set of awards, and I wonder if it’s unprecedented. (Imagine a People's Choice Award for best movie fan.)

And best website? I've made the case before that websites are works quite unlike print magazines or books (link), in that they can do very different things well (even if some of them are merely electronic counterparts of periodical 'issues'). So why not? Well, I suppose I understand the reasons why not, just as I understand why the other Hugo categories are the way they are. (As an aside, if Locus Online is ever nominated for any award ever again, I suppose it will have to be credited not only to me but also to Liza Trombi, who runs the news blog and who so far at least has supervised the Roundtable blog. Increasingly, I'm less the editor of Locus Online than the co-editor/webmaster.)
Comments:
This is an incredibly belated comment, obviously, but on the principle of "better late," and "besides, it's not like you have a zillion succeeding posts" (:-)): "On the other hand, the Hugo categories have long struck me as an inconsistent mish-mash, some categories for works and others for roles, that have apparently evolved out the desires at various times by some portion of the electorate...."

Yes, exactly true.

"I’m not even so concerned as to dare get involved in Hugo politics)"

All you have to do is show up at the Worldcon Business Meeting and vote. Although, to be sure, if you have some idea of your own, you'll have to lobby other voters. But it is pretty pure democracy.

"Even now, I don't feel I have sufficient insight into the book or magazine *editing* process to judge who does it best..."

This isn't exactly consistent with "this amounts to not trusting the voters to vote for something else if they wish," though.

"It's almost like a separate set of awards, and I wonder if it’s unprecedented."

Note that the very first Hugo Awards in 1953 were primarily for individuals. The categories were:
Best Novel
Best Professional Magazine
Best Cover Artist
Best Interior Illustrator
Excellence in Fact Articles
Best New SF Author or Artist
#1 Fan Personality

That's five out of seven for individuals, rather than work. (On the other hand, the next Hugos, in 1955, were five out of six for works over individuals.)

I'm not sure what you intended the "its" in "if it’s unprecedented" to refer to, but for the record, the only regular fan award from 1955 through 1966 was the Best Fanzine Hugo; in 1967, Ted White, as chair of the 1967 Worldcon, Nycon III, in the days when the rules about the Hugos were primarily unwritten, thought that fans deserved more recognition, but he also thought it made more since to have a set of awards technically separate from the Hugos, although to be voted on by the same body of worldcon members, and instituted the other two (of the time) fan awards, "Best Fan Writer" and "Best Fan Artist," but as "Pong Awards," rather than Hugos (the name coming from famous fan Bob Tucker's (aka Wilson Tucker) sometime fannish pseudonym of the Forties, "Hoy Ping Pong."

However, the outcry from fandom at large was overwhelming: fans wanted to win Hugos, not Pongs, and the awards were duly made Hugos.

This is probably more than you wanted to know, but I'm a wordy SOB at times.

Speaking of which: "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Must be at most 4,096 characters." So the rest of my comment goes into another one.
 
"Imagine a People's Choice Award for best movie fan."

This analogy fails pretty mightily in my book, though, as it entirely ignores the entire history of sf fandom as a particular body of self-organizing people. There's no body of semi-organized Fans Of Everything that created the People's Choice Awards. Neither did the Hugo Awards spontaneously arise out of dust. If you're opposed to fans organizing awards, some consistency might be in order. Moreover, you seem to regard fans and pros as separate bodies, which is also historically quite fallacious; lots of pros were fans, and a reasonable number of fans were pros. Yet even moreover, the "works" didn't bring together the voters together, being active in fandom did. (The entire concept of "voting audience" is wrongheaded, as it makes the body of active fans into some kind of passive "audience" of professional science fiction, which is simply ahistoric.)

One might also observe that the Nebula Awards can hardly be said to not be "specifically intended to reward members of [the] voting audience," incidentally.

"So why not?"

As you know, there were Hugo Awards for Best Website in 2002 and 2005. I'm completely out of touch with the current Business Meeting crowd and thinking, but traditionally folks are highly conservative about adding awards, on the grounds that the more awards, the less valuable the award is. Speaking as someone with absolutely no idea what the folks showing up to the Business Meeting in recent years are thinking, I'm inclined to suspect that a regularized Best Website Award will arrive sooner or later.

The opinion of someone actually paying attention these days would be worth a lot more, though.
 
Gee, I posted two long comments here more than a week ago, and they still haven't shown up.

Not that this is of importance, and neither did I expect discussion to ensue, but it seems a bit odd. As well as a waste of twenty minutes or so of my time.
 
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Mark R. Kelly
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