2017 Dragon Awards

Dragon Awards trophies from 2016. Photo by Fran Wilde.

The Dragon Awards winners were announced today at Dragon Con in Atlanta.

Dragon Con President Pat Henry told the audience there were around 8,000 final ballots, twice as many as last year (although no voting statistics were released last year.)

The voter participation was enough to lift the playing field above the reach of organizing efforts by the Rabid Puppies, Happy Frogs, and campaigning Superversive authors, as the only winners they backed were items that probably didn’t need the help — Jim Butcher’s graphic novel, and the game Pokémon GO.

  1. Best Science Fiction Novel
  • Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey
  1. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)
  • Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge by Larry Correia and John Ringo
  1. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel
  • The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan
  1. Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
  • Iron Dragoons by Richard Fox
  1. Best Alternate History Novel
  • Fallout: The Hot War by Harry Turtledove
  1. Best Apocalyptic Novel
  • Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
  1. Best Horror Novel
  • The Changeling by Victor LaValle
  1. Best Comic Book
  • The Dresden Files: Dog Men by Jim Butcher, Mark Powers, Diego Galindo
  1. Best Graphic Novel
  • Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Wild Card by Jim Butcher, Carlos Gomez
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series
  • Stranger Things, Netflix
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie
  • Wonder Woman directed by Patty Jenkins
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by Nintendo
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game
  • Pokemon GO by Niantic
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill: Widow’s Walk by Avalon Hill
  1. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game
  • Magic the Gathering: Eldritch Moon by Wizards of the Coast

The presenters included Jerry Pournelle, Kevin Anderson, Jim Vince, Larry Correia, Mercedes Misty Knight, Eric Flint, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Gil Gerard.

[Story with an assist from RedPandaFraction livetweets.]

149 thoughts on “2017 Dragon Awards

  1. Iphinome on September 3, 2017 at 9:16 pm said:

    Here in the year 7433 our entire culture is based on Yuri!! On Ice.

    I had to google that one, because on tumblr, that phrase pretty much describes elsanna, the Frozen subfandom that pairs Elsa and Anna. It’s about 50/50 whether they are sisters or not in the art and stories. If they are, it’s known as icest.

    Rule 34, kids, Rule 34.

  2. Unless one of a squamously-scattered assortment of people saw their shadow, yes.

    I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that I’d Rather Go Blind started to play on Pandora before I got to the end of that sentence.

  3. @Techgrrl1972 Yuri!!! On Ice is the bestest anime ever that doesn’t involve giant robots. There’s none of, uh, the slag term yuri. The title character is named Yuri.

    Indeed, it might have been called Yaoi!!! On Ice given that it centers on male figure skaters.

  4. I’m not interested in any award whose electorate voted a Correia/Ringo collaboration as “Best Fantasy Novel” of the year. A matter of personal taste I know.

    But thats the point. An award has standing if enough people think “Yeah, that award usually goes to works that deserve it.”. Every award has its hits and misses, but a good award is more often right than not. If you look at past winners and think “Yes, that is a worthy representation of the time” then the award gains standing and will start to mean something (i.e. it will be an honor for the winners and -perhaps more importantly – give fans orientation whats to read/watch/play/look for).

    In 10 years nobody will understand last years dragon award winners (if he is not in the know about the Puppies). This year is slightly better, but they will wonder if the year didnt have any better books than two sequels of ongoing sequels in the main awards (Best SF novel, Best Fantasy novel).

  5. First relieve, this year the reaction is not “what is this ” but “congrats to the winners”
    (I am talking about my reaction to make this clear)

    Most winners you could pick up and enjoy the read. We have some overlap whit the Hugos. (The Expanse and Stranger Things were both finalists and Wonder Woman has imho a good shot to be one next year)

    Peer Sylvester:
    I think the sequels are more likly to win here than in the Hugos is clear from the different system that both awards use. A sequel that doesn’t stand alone has less chance when you read all the works and choose as alternative to the fans of the work voting. (Okay if you are book 2 or 3 that is posible to overcome but no chance for book 10+)
    This is not a bug that is the nature of the difference of the 2 awards. (Hugo and Dragon)

    Are there stil things that net fixing, yes.
    Is the outcome this year less embarrasing than last year, yes.
    Is this award anything near to beeing a replacement for the Hugo, hell no.
    May writers who are (at last for genere) mainstream pay attention to the dragon award, perhaps.
    Was the not allowed to withdraw thing, embarrasing for the Dragon awards, hell yes. (Not for those who wanted to withdraw)

  6. …and what happens if the Dragon Awards, as currently constituted and administrated, actually gain some credibility and start to have a demonstrable impact on sales?

    The lack of transparency opens them up to law suits from authors and publishers.

    I’ll tell you what this whole thing reminds me of. For a while in paintball, a “promoter” would advertise a tournament with a low entry fee (pay attention to the analogs here) and a huge prize package (one far in excess of proportionality).
    A team owned and sponsored by the promoter is officiating, and a team owned and sponsored by the promoter (usually at least somewhat sub-rosa) is competing.
    Low and behold, that second team manages (somehow) to win the event.
    At the awards ceremony, they’re “given” their prizes…a big fake check, some boxes of product.
    Everyone goes home unhappy except for the promoter and his two teams. Why? Because the prizes and prize money NEVER existed.
    The whole thing was nothing but a scammy, money-grubbing enterprise.

    For non-paintballers: the teams already get plenty of support from the promoter and benefit from his profits; they’re more than happy to give up on the prizes because they get to claim winner’s status, which can (and does) benefit them at other events, get them gigs training other teams/players, help them recruit better talent. The promoter will weather any accusations of impropriety – there are ALWAYS a ton of clueless teams waiting to see their name in lights. (And if worse comes to worse, all he has to do is level charges of cheating at any loud-mouthed objectors in order to neutralize them.

    I’m almost tempted to jump back into the game, recruit a team, name them the Scrappy-Doos and instruct them to play badly and to cheat mercilessly while racking up the longest string of losses in the game’s history…..

  7. steve Davidson: and what happens if the Dragon Awards, as currently constituted and administrated, actually gain some credibility and start to have a demonstrable impact on sales? The lack of transparency opens them up to law suits from authors and publishers.

    Oh, nonsense. The awards are a private enterprise which has no contract with the authors. Authors can’t sue Barnes and Noble for not ordering their book, or not giving it a more prominent place on the shelves. Authors can’t sue bloggers for posting negative reviews (well, they can, but they’re not going to win). And authors can’t sue awards programs for not disclosing how the finalists and the winners were chosen. 🙄

  8. @Kurt Busiek: Unless one of a squamously-scattered assortment of people saw their shadow, yes. So what do you have against rugosely-assorted people? 😉

  9. I think the sequels are more likly to win here than in the Hugos is clear from the different system that both awards use. A sequel that doesn’t stand alone has less chance when you read all the works and choose as alternative to the fans of the work voting. (Okay if you are book 2 or 3 that is posible to overcome but no chance for book 10+)
    This is not a bug that is the nature of the difference of the 2 awards.

    Well, I see it as a bug.
    The question is: What does the Award want? Does it want to guide people to new books? If yes, than its not really going to help to recommend the sixth book of a series – because no one will start there. They probably start with the series, but if the 5th and 4th and second 5th book also won, they probably have.
    Does it want to honour authors? Then its also questionable if you always with new books of the same series. If every new Monster Hunter book (or Expanse book) wins, than it kind of diminishing the archievement, because at one point a book simply wins because its part of a beloved series and not because its a stand out book within this series. Will Corerira be happy if he wins the Dragon for (say) 10 times in a row with various Monster Hunter books? I kind of doubt that. And everybody else would feel its not really worth competing.

    In total I see this as a inherent flaw, that probably should be adressed (for example with a different nomination system) if the Dragon award want to become an award that matters in fandom.

  10. I have to say that there is deep irony in the fact that, after spending years making evidence-free accusations to the effect that the Hugos were allegedly run by secret cabals and bemoaning this “fact” ad nauseum, the Pups have thrown in all of their chips on an award that is literally run by a secret cabal.

  11. Will Corerira be happy if he wins the Dragon for (say) 10 times in a row with various Monster Hunter books?

    Quite possibly. Rick Riordan has won the Middle Grade GoodReads Choice award every year for about a hundred years, and Veronica Roth won the YA award throughout the time her series was appearing, and I haven’t heard them complaining.

    I think the function of this kind of award is to send out a signal about which the leading authors and series are, in terms of popularity. (But don’t sales do that? Well, not exactly, since people buy books before reading them; awards like this show whether works were appreciated by people who had read them.) If Correia wins ten times, this shows he remains a leading author by that metric, which will be good for him to know.

    Certainly the awards would work better in that respect if the shortlist also reflected popularity, but with increased security and publicity, that could be achieved.

  12. Well I doubt Correira will Complain. But would he rather win some other award at this point, an award with a better reputation? Quite likely…

  13. I think it’s extremely silly to treat boilerplate language in the Dragon Awards rules as a reason to believe the administrators are hand-picking the winners. I’ve seen no evidence that any skullduggery is afoot and to my knowledge no other Filer has presented any either.

    That doesn’t mean people should regard the Dragon Awards as credible, since they won’t release hard numbers, but let’s not engage in the same kind of over-the-top shenanigans that the puppies do when attacking the Hugos.

  14. … the Pups have thrown in all of their chips on an award that is literally run by a secret cabal.

    The Dragon Awards have administrators who deliberate in private. The Hugo Awards have administrators who deliberate in private. Given that, calling the people who run the Dragons a “secret cabal” seems wildly overblown to me.

    They don’t release the voting numbers or document eligibility decisions, but the lack of that doesn’t make them a cabal. How many literary awards share as much data as the Hugos?

  15. The fact that there are different numbers of finalists in different categories implies that the administrators are at least using their discretion there (as they have a perfect right to do), something that would never happen in the Hugos.

  16. True, but the weak administrator model employed by the Hugos isn’t always a strength. Our administrators could have saved the awards a lot of time, aggravation and lost prestige by throwing out the bloc votes the first time they filled the entire ballot with their choices.

    I know some people will be aghast at that scenario, but I regard it as a better one than letting that entire year’s Hugo ballot be forever spoiled and seeing fairly chosen nominees left off the ballot entirely.

  17. @rcade —

    I think it’s extremely silly to treat boilerplate language in the Dragon Awards rules as a reason to believe the administrators are hand-picking the winners.

    I don’t think anyone here has said that they ARE hand-picking winners. Only that their rules very clearly allow them to do so if they wish — and we would never know the difference.

  18. I wanted to look at the rules and Googled up a link — which no longer works, but takes one straight to the Dragon Con front page.

    The text is still available in a cache file.

    Couldn’t find any link to the rules at the Dragon Awards site.

    What is up with that? Have they really taken down the rules page? Is there a direct link to it online anywhere?

  19. @rcade – I think it’s extremely silly to treat boilerplate language in the Dragon Awards rules as a reason to believe the administrators are hand-picking the winners.

    and:

    True, but the weak administrator model employed by the Hugos isn’t always a strength. Our administrators could have saved the awards a lot of time, aggravation and lost prestige by throwing out the bloc votes the first time they filled the entire ballot with their choices.

    rcade, are you trying to have it both ways or are you just not thinking this through very thoroughly?

  20. Rcade:

    “The Hugo Awards have administrators who deliberate in private. “

    Pray tell me, what decisions do they make that aren’t public? What do you mean is done in private?

  21. @Mike —

    I wanted to look at the rules and Googled up a link — which no longer works, but takes one straight to the Dragon Con front page.

    Yeah, it looks like they took it down. Hopefully revamping it for next year?

    For those who can’t be bothered to dig out the cached file on the web, here are the relevant quotes that I saved a few weeks ago:

    “All decisions regarding the voting process and selection of winners shall be made by DRAGON CON in its sole discretion, shall be final, and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal”

    “DRAGON CON reserves the right, at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend this Award and determine the winners from entries received prior to the date such action is taken, or as otherwise deemed fair and equitable by DRAGON CON. All decisions of the DRAGON CON and its agents regarding the administration of this Award shall be final and binding.”

    “If DRAGON CON believes, in its sole discretion, that a violation of these Rules has occurred, it may edit or modify any submission, posting or e-mails”

    “THE DRAGON CON GROUP DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE MATERIAL, INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, FACILITIES, SERVICES OR OTHER CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR ANY WEB WEBSITES LINKED TO THE WEBSITE IN TERMS OF THEIR CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE.”

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8AFvXRlLMnYJ:application.dragoncon.org/dragon_awards_terms_conditions.php+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

  22. Hampus Eckerman on September 4, 2017 at 11:36 am said:
    And without having been on one of the Hugo committees, how would hse even know what goes on, on one?

  23. Contrarius: I know there’s all that sweepstakes weasel-wording in there, but the reason I wanted to look up the rules was to see if they explicitly said how the winner would be picked under ordinary circumstances. At no point does it say the nominee with the most votes will win —

    SELECTION OF WINNERS: All decisions regarding the voting process and selection of winners shall be made by DRAGON CON in its sole discretion, shall be final, and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal

    Lots of language empowering them to disregard suspicious votes, or basically do anything they want, but the mechanism for picking the winner is never explicitly stated, only implied by the collection of votes.

  24. Hampus Eckerman: Pray tell me, what decisions do they make that aren’t public? What do you mean is done in private?

    If you read Nicholas Whyte’s report of his administrative decisions this year — that’s an example of what goes on every year, 99% of which never becomes public knowledge.

  25. rcade: True, but the weak administrator model employed by the Hugos isn’t always a strength. Our administrators could have saved the awards a lot of time, aggravation and lost prestige by throwing out the bloc votes the first time they filled the entire ballot with their choices.
    I know some people will be aghast at that scenario, but I regard it as a better one than letting that entire year’s Hugo ballot be forever spoiled and seeing fairly chosen nominees left off the ballot entirely.

    I argued that’s what should be done. As stewards of the award, the Worldcon committee has implicit authority to resist the efforts of someone who has set out to destroy the Hugos — in this case, had publicly announced that as his goal.

  26. rcade: True, but the weak administrator model employed by the Hugos isn’t always a strength. Our administrators could have saved the awards a lot of time, aggravation and lost prestige by throwing out the bloc votes the first time they filled the entire ballot with their choices.
    I know some people will be aghast at that scenario, but I regard it as a better one than letting that entire year’s Hugo ballot be forever spoiled and seeing fairly chosen nominees left off the ballot entirely.

    I argued that’s what should be done. As stewards of the award, the Worldcon committee has implicit authority to resist the efforts of someone who has set out to destroy the Hugos — in this case, had publicly announced that as his goal.

    (As a four-time former Hugo administrator…)

    I would have been appalled if a Hugo administrator has thrown out a large number of votes that were cast by eligible voters, simply because the administrator didn’t like who the votes were for…and that is basically what you’re espousing. That would be the end of any respectability for the Hugo Awards.

    (Who’s to say that the next administrator doesn’t feel the same way about works that you like. Or is that going to be part of the decision on picking a Hugo administrator–“You will only allow works that I like, and not that other trash.”)

  27. Mike Glyer on September 4, 2017 at 12:01 pm said:

    Lots of language empowering them to disregard suspicious votes, or basically do anything they want, but the mechanism for picking the winner is never explicitly stated, only implied by the collection of votes.

    They’ve used a particular phrase more than once about the nominees and used it again in the recent press release:

    “The best and most popular of the nominated properties were elevated to the ballot.”

    As a principle, I think that is defensible for an award: pick popular nominees and pick some nominees that didn’t get so many votes but which are good. But is that what they are doing? Is that even what they meant to say? Who knows.

  28. If they want to get more people to attend they need to put on a show. With everything else goimg on at Dragoncon, who wants to go just to run off names? Its boring.

    How many peoole attend the Hugo Awards if there were alot of other con activities and no show?

    So the criticism of the award really come down to

    1. Vote and nominee votes not released. Legitimate criticism, but this is one that happens with many if the umpteen awards. I can see this getting fixed. If you were fair, you would criticize other cons for this too.

    2. Nomination process is too close to the con: Push ut up earlier. Since its a for profit con, they should pay omeone to make a website with a link to each book on Amazon and a link to the authors homepage too. Makes it easier for voters.

    3. Changing rules such as if people can drop out: Newb mistake. Give it a few years.

    4. Not notifying nominees: newb mistake. Can essily be fixed.

    5. People can vote as much as they want: Fair criticism, just like MLB Allstar voting. Two known liberals still won. James SA Corey( I know they are two people) and Corey Doctorow. Charge $5 nominal fee to register to vote if you are not a member. they do that they will get accused of profiteering. So after transaction costs donate it to charity. If someine wants to vote repeatedly its their money.
    They wold again have to pay someone to add this to the registration page and sync this with the voting. How much it costs depends on what the site looks like. Could easily be $10,000 since developers dont work for free.

    6. Turn the awards ceremoney into an event: if its while lots of other stuff is going on and there is no show with it no one will attend. Id expect this to not happen for a while.

  29. At least one difference between the Hugo and the Dragon Administrators is that in the case of the Hugos we know who they are.

  30. John Lorentz: I would have been appalled if a Hugo administrator has thrown out a large number of votes that were cast by eligible voters, simply because the administrator didn’t like who the votes were for…and that is basically what you’re espousing. That would be the end of any respectability for the Hugo Awards.

    No, that’s not the case at all. It would not have been about who you liked. It would have been about maintaining the fairness and purpose of the award. Nobody thinks it made the Hugos more respectable to let Vox Day’s few hundred backers fill up the 2015 ballot and frustrate the choices of thousands of other fans. Or force the voters to No Award five categories.

  31. Mike Glyer;

    “If you read Nicholas Whyte’s report of his administrative decisions this year — that’s an example of what goes on every year, 99% of which never becomes public knowledge.”

    I agree that there is a lot of work that we usually do not get any insight in, but regarding number of nominations, votes, eligibility and so on, we have the information. For the Hugos that is. Not for the Dragons. There are miles of difference.

  32. @Mike Glyer – It would not have been about who you liked. It would have been about maintaining the fairness and purpose of the award. Nobody thinks it made the Hugos more respectable to let Vox Day’s few hundred backers fill up the 2015 ballot and frustrate the choices of thousands of other fans. Or force the voters to No Award five categories.

    The end result of VD’s clumsy machinations are a few asterisked awards, a bunch of collateral damage to writers who actually did produce award worthy work, and a lot of thinking about how to idiot proof the Hugos against this particular variety of idiot. Empowering Hugo administrators to determine legitimate nominations would be far more damaging to the prestige of the award, plus create multiple schisms in fandom.

    Why would you want that?

  33. Nobody thinks it made the Hugos more respectable to let Vox Day’s few hundred backers fill up the 2015 ballot and frustrate the choices of thousands of other fans. Or force the voters to No Award five categories.

    Which would be worse for the prestige of the Hugos–the announcement that the administrator threw out multiple nominees (put there by eligible voters) because that administrator didn’t feel those nominees were “worthy”; or the announcement at the ceremony that the voters decided not to award a Hugo in that category that year?

    (Remember–I was one of the two people who ran the vote counting and printed out those five “no award” cards. It was an abysmal situation–but at least it was the legitimate decision of the voters, not some behind-the-scenes manipulation by the award administrator.)

  34. Cheryl S.: Empowering Hugo administrators to determine legitimate nominations would be far more damaging to the prestige of the award, plus create multiple schisms in fandom.
    Why would you want that?

    It can certainly be argued which would do more damage to its prestige, but it’s not my tendency when somebody announces he’s trying to wreck the award — and demonstrates he’s able to do it — to sit idly by.

  35. @Mike Glyer – It can certainly be argued which would do more damage to its prestige, but it’s not my tendency when somebody announces he’s trying to wreck the award — and demonstrates he’s able to do it — to sit idly by.

    VD is a pissant. He didn’t wreck the award, he exposed some vulnerabilities that people with common sense and more brains wouldn’t exploit, and Worldcon did what good organizations do, which is to adjust to changed circumstances. In the process, Hugo results for a couple of years are the equivalent of asterisked seasons.

    The damage it would do to empower administrators to throw out ballots from members who purchased their memberships and all the rights accruing is incalculable, but would likely to be significantly higher than that. And that’s before the fighting started or prospective Hugo administrators fled.

  36. The Dragon Awards have administrators who deliberate in private. The Hugo Awards have administrators who deliberate in private. Given that, calling the people who run the Dragons a “secret cabal” seems wildly overblown to me.

    The Dragon Awards have entirely secret administrators who make decisions based upon rules that are so loose as to call them rules is to mangle the language. Who they are, how many nominations were cast, how many votes were cast, whether any of that mattered is entirely a mystery. They are literally a secret cabal.

    The Hugo Awards have administrators who are publicly known, and are accountable for their actions. They routinely release the data concerning their actions, and if needed, could publicly verify everything they do.

    They don’t release the voting numbers or document eligibility decisions, but the lack of that doesn’t make them a cabal.

    The Dragon Award administrators won’t even tell the public who they are. They won’t tell anyone how they make decisions or even if they are making decisions. They are, by any definition, a secret cabal.

  37. Cheryl S: Hindsight is lovely, isn’t it? After Vox Day dictated the 2015 Hugo ballot, we saw thousands of people buying supporting memberships, no way of knowing who they were or their voting intentions. Many rules changes were advocated, but would any of them get through the business meeting? (As it is, they hardly sailed through.) As for “asterisked seasons” — that wooden asterisk was a self-inflicted wound that will never heal.

  38. @Mike Glyer, that wooden asterisk was unfortunate, but it wasn’t meant to wound. If it nicked the very thin skinned, that’s the kind of thing that thicker skin would prevent. Since the wounded were the sort of people who say “snowflake” and “safe spaces” with scorn, I feel only a little badly and mostly just raise an eyebrow at their lack of appreciation for irony.

    It’s not hindsight to have noted that VD was and is a pissant. He is a walking, talking illustration of Dunning Kruger, capable of many small malices. That he has actual followers is a constant reminder that somebody has to take the very end of that end of the bell curve. But. He also has a publically available history of small but not particularly impressive accomplishments, mostly spiteful in nature.

    In contrast, Worldcon and the Hugos, however discombobulated they might look sometimes from the inside, are pretty robust. The surprise, for those of us on the fringes, was how very few votes it took to get on the ballot. But that long, robust history seems to have galvanized a lot of people formerly on the fringe to buy memberships, which is actually pretty predictable. The great, silent majority is a cliche for a reason.

    Did I cheer for all those No Awards from Spokane? Yeah, I did, watching/reading the live feed at a Michael Franti concert, because it meant that Worldcon’s organizational strength translated to public support when needed. I wasn’t particularly surprised, though. The Business Meetings the following year went pretty much as expected, too.

    Which is all a long way of saying Worldcon is a solid organization that can weather better opponents than VD and anyone involved even peripherally should have been able to predict that, while still doing everything in his or her personal purview to forward a good outcome.

  39. I agree with Aaron – there is no accountability to the con members. On the issue of popularity, they can’t have it both ways. It can’t both be representative of Dragon Con AND be a general award that you can vote in with any email address. If they tied voting to con membership, it would at least indicate what Dragon Con fans like. It would be even better if they tied the awards to specific tracks, since that is where the fandoms are located at the con itself. As it is, it is one track that is largely represented by these awards : Science Fiction literature, a track which seems to skew conservative relative to the rest of the con, to its own detriment in popularity, based on attendance at panels. Fantasy readers pile in for Faith Hunter and Sherrilyn Kenyon, but unless I’m mistaken, neither Ringo nor Correia are part of the fantasy literature track’s events. Also, the comics choice for Butcher was very bizarre, if you know anything about comics, especially considering what he was up against. He has a big fandom at Dragon Con. This is not to say anything bad about him. He is very popular, but this award likely does not represent what people who go to Dragon Con comics panels thought was the best comic of the year. If they were huge Butcher fans, it seems like he might have been part of their track, since he is at the Con every year. Rather than being the chosen comic, my guess is that the votes for him came from his general fans, who saw his name on the ballot, and from the same quarter as Correia and the pop/pulp SF crew who seem to be the group secretly behind these awards, Note reviews from around the web by actual comics readers and critics, of Dresden vs. some of the other choices in these categories: http://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/dynamite-entertainment/the-dresden-files-dog-men/1
    compare with reviews of competition: http://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/idw-publishing/love-is-love or the leading and most consistently popular and critically acclaimed series: http://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/image-comics/saga

  40. “Which would be worse for the prestige of the Hugos–the announcement that the administrator threw out multiple nominees (put there by eligible voters) because that administrator didn’t feel those nominees were “worthy”; or the announcement at the ceremony that the voters decided not to award a Hugo in that category that year?”

    Worst for the prestige would be to have dinosaur porn on the finalist list, published by numerous magazines and displayed forever on pages about Hugo contenders. One year can be excused, several not.

  41. heryl S: Hindsight is lovely, isn’t it? After Vox Day dictated the 2015 Hugo ballot, we saw thousands of people buying supporting memberships, no way of knowing who they were or their voting intentions

    I do recall some people posting that they would buy supporting memberships for others, NOT someone saying this was happening but someone OFFERING to do that,

  42. Daniel: I was speaking of the thousands of members of the public generally who bought them.

    You are probably remembering there were memberships subsidized by Mary Robinette Kowal and a few other writers, which I estimate at less than a couple hundred all told.

  43. Remember that Mary Robinette Kowal made that generous offer with no conditions on how the recipients voted.

    I will buy a supporting membership to WorldCon for ten people, chosen at random, who cannot afford it. I am in no way constraining how that member nominates or votes. All I ask is that you read the nominations and join the conversation.

    Also, afterwards, she shared [EDIT] the experiences of those who receivedwords of those fans who expressed interest in receiving those supporting memberships. I have absolutely no issues with what she did.

  44. “Oh please it was meant to be grossly insulting and it succeeded.”

    It seems we have some SFnal mind reading here. *makes iooioo sounds*

  45. I thought it was a well-meaning attempt at humour & to tie it to a charity for orangutans. In an emotionally charged situation like that, it failed quite badly.

  46. The fact that there are different numbers of finalists in different categories implies that the administrators are at least using their discretion there (as they have a perfect right to do), something that would never happen in the Hugos.

    Not necessary. Maybe they just decided the breakoff point differently, depenign on the number of votes. If there was a bigger gap between (say) 5th and sixth candidate, while 4th and 5th were only a few votes apart, they ma have decided to make 5 candidates. In a different category the situation may have been reversed and they decided to go with just 4. Or 7.
    IMHO its more an indication of lack of clear rules and lack of transparency, not of ill intend or removal of authors.

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