Time is running out to vote online or make last-minute changes to your Hugo ballot.
Hugo Voting Closes Sunday July 31 at 11:59 PM PDT
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They also suggest only saving at the end of each voting session instead of after each category. (I know I’m guilty of clogging up the works with those extra saves in the past!)
Finally finished my ballot. I found the top and bottom choices easy to make, but have shuffled the middles often. Common experience?
Done. I applied No Award a fair amount, but had only one category go to No Award entirely. Somewhat better experience than last year.
@bbz: My 2-4 got shuffled a LOT, yes. That’s where the hard decisions are. Crap is easy to spot. Really extraordinary YOW! is also. But ranking things that are about equal in excellence is HARD.
@Jon Z: I think I had 2 categories go completely NA, but yes — much better than last year. Not that I didn’t have an NA somewhere in many of the 2016 categories… f’rinstance Fan Writer went OGH, NA, entirely blank.
Supporters of slating got left off entirely. Human shields of slating got ranked according to quality. Waffled mightily over giving Chuck Tingle a mention after NA, simply for his delightful counter-trolling.
Basically what everybody else said 🙂
Lots of tricky middles. Only one category No Award. Dithered over Tingle.
Did you get my vote, Chuck Tingle?
I can’t remember another Hugo vote like this
You were on their slate Chuck Tingle
But you were parodying yourself and softly pounding something new
I could see the cheesy artwork
And sounds of raptor calls were coming from the blue
There was something on the slate that starred
The buckaroos were hard, Chuck Tingle
They were pounding there for you and me
For liberty, Chuck Tingle
Though I hope that No Award will win
There’s no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Chuck Tingle
Same here. Only one category went to No Award (I bet the same one as with everybody else here), lots of No Awards somewhere on the ballot, lots of tricky middles and the good Dr. Tingle got a mention, too.
To contribute to the statistical roundup, I voted No Award first in three categories.
Fewer No Awarded 1st Place than last year; still more than one.
I voted, such as I could. Much more poorly read on this ballot than last year’s, despite an earnest run at reading enough to nominate. (In a legitimate year, I suspect I would have read many more of the finalists).
July is a really bad month to ask me to do a lot of extra reading in any given year, as it is my single busiest month, and will be until I am too physically or mentally infirm to go out and volunteer for two festivals, one 12 days long, and the other involving tenting. This year, I also started a new full-time job (a temp spot) at the very end of June…
If the candidates had been the usual run of quality stuff that might at worst be “not to my taste”, I might have approached the job with more enthusiasm, though.
@Camestros Felapton: LOL, nice take on “Fernando”! #ABBAFAN
@Statistics: I completely No Awarded two categories. I put No Award first in two other categories. I keep rethinking my Best Novel second & third places (and second-guessing, but not changing, my first choice – three of them were really great!).
I’m traveling and am kicking myself for forgetting to bring the file listing my nominations, which I wanted to refer to. Oh well.
Happy Hugo’ing! I’m still doing some last-minute reading/thinking. 😉
BTW anyone know if there’ve been any more changes to the packets in the last 1.5 months? I don’t believe so, but since they don’t list “last updated” dates, I don’t know. Just mildly curious; with just under 24 hours remaining, I have no time to worry about it.
I finished my voting. I ranked No Award first in three categories. I used No Award (i.e. ranked it at all, in a slot from one to five) in all but one category. I did not rank any entries after No Award – once I used No Award in a category, any remaining finalists were simply left off my ballot.
With profuse apologies to Porgy, Bess, George Gershwin, and 33,000 cover versions (really, 33,000! Wikipedia says so):
Hugo Time
And the votin’s not easy
Pups are slatin’
And the rotten is high
Your reading’s done
And No Award’s good lookin’
So hush little voter
Don’t you cry
One of these WorldCons
Pups’re going to give up trolling
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll fly to the sky
But till that morning
There’s a’nothing can harm you
With EPH & 3SV standing by
One of these WorldCons
Pups’re going to give up trolling
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll fly to the sky
But till that morning
There’s a’nothing can harm you
With EPH & 3SV standing by
Two categories with No Award at the top.
I personally feel like no award ought to be given in a category where there’s only one item that didn’t get there by shenanigans. If the final round is to mean anything at all, the voters have to have something to choose between. So I just felt that in cases where the final round had been rendered moot, there shouldn’t be an award, and I put NA at the top in seven categories. I accept that nobody else thinks that, though.
Only one NA at top here (you can probably guess which that was); six NA’s in all. I only used it when I wanted to rank things below it – this caught all the ‘absolutely must exclude’ nominees, like VD himself and and the Eness work, anyway.
I was going by the ‘vote on merit’ principle, and while last year this produced more or less the same results as ‘exclude all slates’, this year it didn’t. If we knew exactly which works would have got there without slates, we could have excluded all the others, but of course we don’t. So I didn’t vote for active slate supporters, but otherwise ignored the issue.
Lots of difficult choices. A few observations:
1. I consider Stephen King’s “Obits” horror, and so little like SFF that it didn’t belong on the ballot, hence I ranked it just below you-know-what. Good stuff, wrong genre.
2. JJ’s reviews roundup was enormously helpful, and I recommend it for those desperate at the last minute.
3. I love Chuck Tingle’s style, but, seriously, the nominated work isn’t Hugo-worthy. On the gripping hand, I’ll sure be delighted if it wins.
4. I continue to think Long-Form Editor is an inherently broken category, in that that so few of us will ever be able to intelligently vote it (for lack of the necessary insider knowledge) that it should be eliminated. The only vote that makes sense if you feel that way, IMO, is first choice Noah, and nothing below that.
5. What Hampus said. And it would have been three except for Larry Elmore. (I found John Picacio’s argument to give him in effect a lifetime achievement award convincing.)
NA in two categories (the obvious ones) and used it as a separator in a few others.
I think I’ve managed a balanced result. I’m reasonably happy with my decisions anyway.
Am I right in thinking that one of the two ‘obvious NA’ categories is Fancast? I must admit that, having no interest in that category, I tend to forget it exists.
By the way, I have for the first time in my life (and possibly the last) voted for a Dramatic Presentation (Fantasia).
Andrew M: In an unusual-in-a-bad-way year like this one, it’s difficult to know what to do about categories that you don’t know very well. Do you ignore them and hope better-informed voters prevail? Problem is, that might mean the slating prevails. Do you try to find reviews you think you probably would agree with and follow their advice? What about where the reviewers frankly admit a bunch the nominees for that category are unknown to them? What about the worthy competitors that were pushed off the final ballot? I found the nerds-feather.com fancasts review useful, but was a lot, lot more severe in my overall assessment of that category, FWIW.
L.M. Myles (of “Chicks Unravel Time” fame) listed back in March the fancasts she felt worth nominating. You might consider that a list of worthy competitors pushed off the ballot, if you share her tastes.
@Andrew M: For me, yup, but I don’t know if everyone’s dancing around the same category name or not.
BTW I’m guessing the final results will have 4-5 No Awards. Anyone taking bets? 😉
Fabulous filkage, Camestros and Stoic!
I’m not a betting person, but am expecting Related Work to be NA and maybe Fancast.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Tingle came in second; honestly, the setup for that story makes me think it would have been better if it was longer (that’s what she said).
Like Mike Glyer I voted NA first in 3 categories. For the first time I put a few things under NA. Normally once I rank NA I leave the rest of the category blank. NA rated fairly highly on a few other categories. May next year have better SFF without RP slates controlling our choices.
As usual due to my hearing and hit by truck cognitive problems I left blank:
Fancast
Short Presentation
Long Presentation
——
Today I finally got everything straightened out related to Helsinki/Worldcon 75. My husband and I are officially attending members. Just got to get my health fixed a bit more. Test to look for internal bleeding (endoscopy & colonoscopy) scheduled for mid-September. Still waiting to see if Iron IVs did any temporary good – so far I’m not noticing anything.
@Kendall:
I’d rather finalists take no offence if I can avoid it. Reasons some voters rank works/persons below Noah (or list just Noah) other than ‘it sucked’ include:
1. Not genre.
2. Category is problematic (e.g., Editor Long, IMO).
3. Work’s in wrong category.
4. Work’s real competition is missing (because slate pollution).
5. Work’s fun but not among the year’s best.
6. Just not one’s cuppa.
But all the author/editor typically hears is you preferred nothing over awarding his/her work: I’d rather not be unkind.
I envision a finalist whom I don’t yet know to be someone like Kary English, who’s an enormously talented new writer many of us met at Sasquan, who is super-nice, and who should be encouraged. For 2016, I listed below Mr. Ward at least one finalist in each of ten categories. In two categories, all finalists. But saying which two might mean ten creative people think you said they suck. But I suspect most here are thinking of the same two.