Hugos: For Your Consideration - UPDATED for 2013 starting at post 144

[Seli]

If the nominations were opened to the public at large (some sor of registration required) but the voting restricted to members wouldn't that be a carrot to get more attendance at Worldcon?

Would the members like it if their ballot resembled the Gemmell one? And even then self-selection can still give other debatable results, the Locus awards for example are open to anyone, but still mostly represent a Locus-shaped slice of genre (admittedly probably part of the purpose and a good thing).

Of course no single solution will make everyone or even a majority happen. People will want juries to keep the lowest common denominator out, they'll want open nominations to keep elitism down, they'll want barriers to keep the award to the proper people, they'll want weighed votes to give the rest of the world a chance to give input. And save for the last one I just made up those are all arguments I've heard before, and I am basically a spectator only.

[Darth Richard]

Hmm, is there some way we can blame this on The Yeard somehow?

[Werthead]

If the nominations were opened to the public at large (some sor of registration required) but the voting restricted to members wouldn't that be a carrot to get more attendance at Worldcon?

The problem with that being that 99.99999% of SFF fandom is in no position to get to Worldcon regularly, due to the expense of travelling to a different state/country/continent ;)

If you mean opening the nominations to the public at large, with voting only being done by people who attend or buy supporting memberships, then yes, that might work. Certainly worth a try at least once to see if it throws up a more interesting shortlist.

People will want juries to keep the lowest common denominator out, they'll want open nominations to keep elitism down, they'll want barriers to keep the award to the proper people, they'll want weighed votes to give the rest of the world a chance to give input.

This is the exact problem. The Hugos don't want to seem to be 'elitist' like the Nebulas or Clarkes (though the former is a shadow of its former self anyway, and the latter is a lot better at throwing up actual good books) but they don't want to seem to be open to the lowest common denominator. I'd actually argue that the Gemmels are not a LCD award: Sanderson has also been nominated for a Hugo and Rothfuss apparently would have been for the Campbell if not for the fact that he wasn't eligible (I know he got an absolute ton of nominations in 2008, enough for him to tell people not to nominate him as he wasn't eligible, but it was rather late by then). The other winner was Sapkowski, a highly-regarded and critically-acclaimed European fantasy author who would have been well-deserving of a Hugo nomination. The only problematic Gemmell winner to date has really been the Warhammer book (which won due to block-voting by Games Workshop fans), which is something you'd have to look out for. But then the only sane reason Willis won a couple of years back was due to her mates block-voting for her anyway (it certainly wasn't down to the quality of the book), so this problem exists already.

[mormont]

Mormont's point that SFF fandom is now diffuse and fractured and the Hugos can never be as relevant as they were thirty years ago is accurate. But that problem isn't so much that, it's more than the Hugos aren't even trying to be relevant to a wider, worldwide SFF fandom. They just don't care any more. Which is fine, as long as they are not trying to kid anyone that they are still the most important SFF awards in the world evaaah, but they still are.

Again: on what do you base this?

I'm not a fan of this year's shortlist, I'm as underwhelmed as anyone - but this insistence that it's the fault of the Hugo organisers, that they aren't even trying to be relevant, that they don't care, where does that come from? So far as I can see - having nominated and voted for the Hugos four times over a period of eight years, and attended four WorldCons - they are trying. They're playing catchup, yes. They're sometimes loath to face up to the changes in fandom, yes. But why on Earth do you think they don't care?

[Nearly Headless Ned]

I like Bujold's books a lot, but I've never read The Sharing Knife series because it seems to always get negative reviews even from fans of her other books.

Like it was written by a hormonal teen mate. Good to hear that it's not representational of her normal quality if her fans don't like it though.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I like Bujold's books a lot, but I've never read The Sharing Knife series because it seems to always get negative reviews even from fans of her other books.

I liked the Sharing Knife books much more than Cryoburn. The problem with the Sharing Knife is that the first two books were written as one, and the publisher split it in half. There is a decent splitting point there, but the overall plot complexity of the novel and character arcs suffered greatly due to the split in my opinion.

So I choose to view the first two books as one book, and the second two books as one book. And I don't recommend reading them in any other way.

I haven't yet read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, but I did pick it up a couple of weeks ago. My favorite of Lois's books is Paladin of Souls.

[Werthead]

Again: on what do you base this?

Their website might be a clue.

The Hugo Awards, presented annually since 1955, are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”), which is also responsible for administering them.

I'm not a fan of this year's shortlist, I'm as underwhelmed as anyone - but this insistence that it's the fault of the Hugo organisers, that they aren't even trying to be relevant, that they don't care, where does that come from? So far as I can see - having nominated and voted for the Hugos four times over a period of eight years, and attended four WorldCons - they are trying. They're playing catchup, yes. They're sometimes loath to face up to the changes in fandom, yes. But why on Earth do you think they don't care?

For starters, because it is 2013 and they still have no dedicated award for websites/blogs/web media. Instead they insist on folding them in amongst the fanzines, semiprozines, quasidemiprozines and other redundant forms of media which now making up a vanishingly tiny part of SFF fandom (though an enormous part of 1970s/80s fandom, which is the headspace of a lot of the Worldcon old guard are still in). Rather than sorting this out decisively, they insist on faffing around by moving goalposts around a bit.

[mormont]

No, still don't see it. I see you providing some evidence that the awards are behind the times, yes. But frankly, very few people give a shit whether there is a dedicated award for fan web media. That is not why even 75% of the people who've paid for the right to vote, don't do so.

You've identified one problem with a minor award. Is this really evidence that the organisers 'don't care' about whether the Hugo is relevant?

[Nearly Headless Ned]

How do people feel this years short list compares to others? For comparison here's this years BSFA list-

Best Novel

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)

Intrusion by Ken Macleod (Orbit)

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

]EDIT: Jack Glass by Adam Roberts was announced today as the winner. Nice to see him get something as he's a hell of a writer. Unless this April Fools?

[Datepalm]

Huh, Adam Roberts won something? I liked Jack Glass a lot, not sure i'm happy with it being best of the year thought.

BSFA's definitely have a better list, but still nothing super impressive. Mind, at least from my reading, it was a bit of an underwhelming year. Jack Glass was a thought experiment - curious, but not a meaty novel. 2312 and Blue Remembered Earth I admire for ambition and mission statements, setting up a frame of "we will write about the future and we will deal with relevant issues, dammit", but what they filled that frame with was so pedestrian and uninspiring it makes me more concerned for The Death of Science Fiction than anything. Existence was *slightly* more interesting in that same category (I half expected the Hugo list to be those 3 plus maybe Great North Road and Caliban's War, which would have been hilarious, imo) but markedly worse written, in terms of plot, character, structure, etc. Intrusion had a couple (but only a couple) of interesting ideas but was a mess as a novel. Hydrogen Sonata was ok but underwhelming for Banks, more of the same. Throne of the Crescent Moon is pure fluff, and not even particularly entertaining fluff. I have no idea why anyone would vote for it for any award.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

_{Haven't read Jack Glass but it definitely appeals. Enjoyed Yellow Blue Tibia and New Model Army immensely.}

Anyone know what Dark Eden by Chris Becket is like? Seems interesting.

[Datepalm]

Is there like a really limited number of writers who's short stories get read? It's becoming despiriting, seeing Liu, Valente and de Bodard year after year after year...

14 paper ballots! My word.

[Darth Richard]

Was Sharps eligible this year? I rarely read anything when it's actually released, but that would definitely be my book of 2012, if I'm remembering my time right.

[RedEyedGhost]

_{Haven't read Jack Glass but it definitely appeals. Enjoyed Yellow Blue Tibia and New Model Army immensely.}

Anyone know what Dark Eden by Chris Becket is like? Seems interesting.

This is what I wrote for the reading thread and librarything after I read it last year:

A sad sad story but also hopeful. It's the story of the descendants of two survivors stranded on a distant planet after Earth's first wormhole capable ship is damaged in transit. Set 163 years after they arrived, there are now ~530 residents on Eden, and as would be expected genetic defects are quite common. The world itself is quite interesting in that it is not close to a star so all light and heat is provided from bioluminescent plants that have root systems reaching down into the planet's core pumping up massive amounts of geothermic energy. They live in a single valley surrounding by utter darkness and extreme cold, waiting for Earth to come looking for them. As their population has expanded food has become more and more scarce, yet the group's leadership is reluctant to move beyond their valley because they were told by the original two that that is where Earth would look for them.

Overall I really enjoyed the book, but the pacing was a bit off - especially from around the 15% through 40% marks. It was just mundane and boring in that part of the book because we knew where the story was going, but it just was not getting there. On reflection after finishing the book, I wasn't as bothered by this section because it does effectively show the plight of the main character trying to change the thoughts of the communities elders. It just went on too long. My other other complaint was overuse of repetition repetition; sometimes it worked demonstrating the devolution of vocabulary, but most of the time it was just annoying (as were the words that had changed with time: anniversary to Any Virsry, extraordinary to Strornry, and the most egregious electricity to lecky-tickity). The world was very interesting and I would love to see Beckett return to it with a time jump of a hundred or so years.

[Seli]

Is there like a really limited number of writers who's short stories get read? It's becoming despiriting, seeing Liu, Valente and de Bodard year after year after year...

14 paper ballots! My word.

I do suspect there is an issue of visibility, more than limited reading.

Ken Liu is in a highly productive period, and usually high quality, which means he has a high visibility.

Both he and Aliette de Bodard cover relevant themes, about identity of cultural minorities in the dominant culture, and this seems to resonate with a big enough group of nominators.

Cat Valente is one of the prose-dense short story writers, which sets her apart from a lot of other writers.

Another recurring nominee, Kij Johnson (this is apparently her 5th consecutive year on the ballot), seems to tickle another set of interests again. Writing highly metaphorical, interpretation rich stories.

But overall the biggest issue with short fiction seems to be that so much is published, with enough quality, in markets with enough differences in target audience, that few stories jump out to a large group of voters.

Pieces in the mainstream online publications (Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld) seem to make the best chance, mostly because anyone can check them out easily. The more niche online venues (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons) have more problems, as do the traditional paper magazines (Asimov's, Analog, Interzone, Fantasy and Science Fiction). And people publishing new stories in collections or anthologies seem to be completely out of luck. As are the people who publish in the other numerous markets.

[Werthead]

A superb overview of the award and the issues with it.

What in God’s name is going on here? Seanan McGuire for all her talent is not the second coming of Ursula K. LeGuin. What I’m witnessing is a dedicated fan base of her’s, or a subculture of which she is a part, that’s skewing the nominations to a phenomenal degree. Am I shouting in to the dark here? Does anyone else care that the only award that the average reader (genre or otherwise) recognizes as significant is becoming marginalized by its own adherents? Can anyone make a reasonable case that a reader fifty years from now looking back to see what was important about 2012 should consider Blackout and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and Redshirts and Throne of the Crescent Moon the canonical tales?

To put it even more bluntly, it’s time for the most significant award in science fiction and fantasy be awarded not to the most convincing cult leaders in fandom, but to the individuals doing the best work. If we give a shit enough to try.

The question is do people give a shit enough to try? The comments are very interesting on this basis.

But frankly, very few people give a shit whether there is a dedicated award for fan web media.

Er, this is a huge issue, very widely-discussed. People who go to Worldcon and get involved in the process don't think there's a problem, no. That in itself is the problem. Fandom is now online, that's where the fans are, and that's what the Hugos have done their best to ignore. Now, very grudgingly, they've allowed the websites and blogs on board, but only by competing in the same categories as the old fanzines which get read by 0.01% of the membership of the lowliest blog. Yet they are still treated as hugely important. People trying to hold onto the past rather than change with the times.

You've identified one problem with a minor award. Is this really evidence that the organisers 'don't care' about whether the Hugo is relevant?

No, I think the evidence is more to do with the fact that these problems have been regularly discussed repeatedly over what, a decade now? And still next to nothing has been done about it.

The Hugo Award is the American Worldcon-Going Clique Award for Their Best Mate's Novel Published That Year (or a Gaiman, or a Book That Gaiman Recommends). That isn't right given the history and stature of the award, and the prestige it continues to claim to represent.

For comparison here's this years BSFA list-

Based on what I've read, hugely superior. Dark Eden is an excellent novel and 2312 is very good, though also significantly flawed (and it was a weaker novel than Existence; Robinson can write a bit better than Brin - who has improved massively during his sabbatical - but 2312 has a really shitty thriller plotline shoehorned into what was mostly a speculative mood piece for no readily apparent reason, whilst Existence is far more cohesive from start to finish). The buzz over Jack Glass and Empty Space have been huge; much as I've hated what I've sampled of Harrison's writing, his critical reputation is near-impregnable and Empty Space was praised in the mainstream literary press as well, at least here in the UK. I suspect that anyone who tried to nominate the very minor Redshirts for that list would probably have been laughed out of the room.

[beniowa]

Wert, you do have a point about web media being overlooked, but I think you're overstating the amount of fandom online a little. Yes, there is a lot of discussion about blogs and awards. Online that is. Thing is, I think the Internet still composes only a slice of the readership at large. I have a few real life friends who are readers, including of SFF, who don't go online or if they do don't do much. Not to the level we do. The number of people who are e-reader only has certainly skyrocketed, especially last year. But how much of the total readership are they and what's your solution for including them in the Hugo process?

You really should try her Vorkosigan Series. Great, great stuff. It's probably the best Space Opera out there (or at least I'm hard pressed to think of anything better off the top of my head).

Hm. I've never picked them up because they seem more soap opera, which is not something I enjoy. Maybe I'm wrong and doing Bujold a disservice. I keep an open mind the next time I'm in the bookstore.

If you mean opening the nominations to the public at large, with voting only being done by people who attend or buy supporting memberships, then yes, that might work. Certainly worth a try at least once to see if it throws up a more interesting shortlist.

I'm not entirely convinced about opening up the voting to the public, but opening up to nominations sounds like an interesting idea. If it helped create a wider pool for more bodies of work to noticed. Something to consider.

How do people feel this years short list compares to others? For comparison here's this years BSFA list-

Best Novel

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)

Intrusion by Ken Macleod (Orbit)

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

]EDIT: Jack Glass by Adam Roberts was announced today as the winner. Nice to see him get something as he's a hell of a writer. Unless this April Fools?

A slightly better list perhaps. I'm actually surprised because the BFSA still sometimes has trouble getting past it's horror roots. The last few years it was like "horror, horror, sf, fantasy, horror".

[Datepalm]

What IS the bias of the Hugo's thought? The stereotype, at least in my head, is that it's the award of the old guard, aging white american males who haven't read a new book since Arthur C. Clarke died and care deeply about proper hard science and all that jazz and whatever. People who mail in ballots on paper and read honest-to-god fanzines and hate the internet, apparently. Neil Stephenson and John Scalzi should be winning this thing between them all the time. In practice though, the BFSA actually looks much more sciency-SF, (and much whiter and maler, while we're at it. I throw this out there having already noted that I like that list better.) BUT, these past few years and the names that have actually dominated - Valente, MacGuire in various incarnations, Bujold, Willis...not exactly that crowd. Fairy tale retellings, urban SF/fantasy, cyberpunk...The Hugo is looking weird, weak and cliquish to me, to be honest, but I can't figure out who that clique actually is.

[Werthead]

Ha. That's exactly what the linked article said:

the Hugo voter has a certain style it looks for in its fiction. Hugo-style, if you will, is like Gungam-style only without the distracting Korean guy riding a horse, replaced with Charles Stross and Connie Willis on a podium holding a. . . rocket ship. I admit Gangnam-style doesn’t have nearly as much sex appeal. In other words, Hugo nominated books tend to be recognizable. On the one hand because they are mostly written by Stross, Willis, John Scalzi, China Miéville, Robert Charles Wilson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ian MacDonald, and active members of the Live Journal community, but also because they fit a certain motif that’s difficult to pin down. I’ll fall back on the old pornography argument, ‘I know it when I see it.”

In some ways, the Hugos are fairly progressive. There's usually lots of books by women, for starters, which is a leg up on some of the other awards. That in itself is not the problem. That we should be glad Blackout and All-Clear won because they're written by a woman is undermined by the fact that Blackout and All-Clear are not great books, and almost certainly won because Connie Willis is popular at WorldCon, has lots of friends who vote and some people feel she should have won more often in the past. That's why the problem is more often called, "The Old Boys and Girls' Club," rather than "The Old Boys' Club" alone.

Wert, you do have a point about web media being overlooked, but I think you're overstating the amount of fandom online a little. Yes, there is a lot of discussion about blogs and awards. Online that is. Thing is, I think the Internet still composes only a slice of the readership at large. I have a few real life friends who are readers, including of SFF, who don't go online or if they do don't do much. Not to the level we do. The number of people who are e-reader only has certainly skyrocketed, especially last year. But how much of the total readership are they and what's your solution for including them in the Hugo process?

I think that, in 2013, it's difficult to say that there's a lot of organised SFF fandom that does not involve the web. Ten years ago, yeah, that was true. Now? I don't think people can say that with a straight face. Fifty thousand members here, twenty thousand at Fantastic Fiction, tens of thousands more at SFFWorld and other sites. Versus the what, 3,000 people who show up at Worldcon in a good year (and the maximum they ever had, IIRC, was 10,000 and they retreated from that pretty sharpish as it was too overwhelming), I think it is fair to say now that modern SFF fandom is international and exists and communicates primarily through the web, and certainly not through the fanzine letter pages like in the old days.

I'm not entirely convinced about opening up the voting to the public, but opening up to nominations sounds like an interesting idea. If it helped create a wider pool for more bodies of work to noticed. Something to consider.

This is a pretty strong idea, as it would force the Worldcon-going regulars to read and consider new works outside their comfort zone, and we'd probably end up with something more interesting. Of course, it might backfire and they might end up having to choose between two Brandon Sandersons and three Warhammer 40,000 novels, but that goes back to the question of the point of the award.

[mormont]

The question is do people give a shit enough to try?

Indeed. Based on my own experience, the actual organisers of WorldCon largely do. They don't have much of a clue how to do it, but they do care and want the Hugo to be the award in the field.

Which isn't to say there aren't a bunch of dinosaurs at every WSFS business meeting - some of us here can speak to personal experience of dealing with them. But they are, by and large, not the actual organisers of the award. They're part of the problem, but they're not actually an insurmountable obstacle: if enough people gave enough of a shit to take an hour out of their con time to show up at a meeting, they would be irrelevant. All that would take is a couple of hundred people from the thousands who attend WorldCon.

You want a dedicated web media Hugo? All you would honestly need to do is organise maybe 5-10% of the people who've already paid for the privilege to go and vote at a business meeting. The fact is, though, not enough people care enough to do it.

People who go to Worldcon and get involved in the process don't think there's a problem, no.

That's a heck of a generalisation. Lots of people on this board go to WorldCon reasonably regularly, for a start: some of them even attend the business meetings. WorldCon attendees, involved or nor, are not an undifferentiated lumpen conservative mass.

Fandom is now online, that's where the fans are

Yes.

, and that's what the Hugos have done their best to ignore.

No.

Look, I can see (and would endorse) the argument that the WSFS structures are outdated, that the WSFS is simply not well structured to adapt to the internet age, that there is a critical lack of momentum in the organisation, and so on. What I can't see is why this requires us to say that 'the Hugos' are deliberately ignoring the internet age, and that they don't care. It's a nonsense argument. I mean, the principal complaints with the shortlist above are the inclusion of Scalzi and Seanan McGuire. Now, the former's perpetual presence on the Hugo shortlist is attributable in large part to the enormous success of his blog, while the latter has a nomination (for the second year running) for her participation in a fan podcast. Scalzi and McGuire are huge in online fandom. It is a very large part of the reason they're on those shortlists. The same can be said about a number of the other nominees. The WSFS community as a whole has no problem with the internet. They love it. They participate in it enthusiastically. Go to a WorldCon and you'll see people liveblogging, podcasting, and talking about the internet constantly.

ETA - you could even go further, and make a case that it's the internet that's the problem. After all, pre-internet days, the shortlists don't look so bad. Now, it's relatively easy for an author's fanbase to mobilise and get them on the shortlist, should they be determined to do it.

No, I think the evidence is more to do with the fact that these problems have been regularly discussed repeatedly over what, a decade now? And still next to nothing has been done about it.

Yep. But this has more to do with the WSFS structures, which are admirable in their intent to be democratic and participatory in a pre-internet age: but that very same characteristic now makes changing them a slow and painful process. The tragedy is that the people who shout the loudest in their demands for change are the ones who don't do anything to effect it. It's the classic 'Somebody Else's Problem' situation: everyone talks about the problem, hardly anyone gets around to doing something.