Holey Hugo Ballot!

Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Sure, plenty of times fans have discovered things missing from the final Hugo ballot. In 2007 everybody noticed there were no Japanese stories at all even though the Worldcon was in Japan. But at least everybody was missing the same thing.

This week, wherever I turn some fan is complaining that a crucial nominee has been left off his 2010 Hugo final ballot. But it’s never the same one! I’m positive only a diabolical super-villain could orchestrate the disappearance of something different from each fan’s Hugo ballot.

And what things are missing?

One fan claimed Dave Langford’s name is gone from its usual place, after 31 consecutive years as a Best Fanwriter nominee. That can’t be right.

Then I thought maybe it was, seeing Airlock Alpha had titled Dennis Rayburn’s latest feature “Something Is Missing From Hugo Nominations”. In the footer it says “Dennis Rayburn is a professional fan writer,” so what other category could he possibly be writing about?

But Rayburn had nothing to say about Langford! He said there was something else missing from his Hugo ballot. No matter how long he stared at the list of Best Dramatic: Short Form nominees “Torchwood: Children of Earth” was nowhere to be found.

So thanks to Rayburn’s article I wasn’t surprised when I read John Scalzi also had found an error in the Best Dramatic: Short Form category on his Hugo ballot. Except (here’s the really scary part) the missing nominee was another show entirely!

…while, yes, I get that lots of fans really like their Doctor Who, I think having it constitute 60% of the slate might suggest nominators aren’t looking at the whole range of sf/f entertainment options available to them. LIKE STARGATE: UNIVERSE, PEOPLE. Sorry, that just slipped out

Don’t give up, John. Your show is probably on lots of people’s ballots. (Everyone please check and let him know that you found it.)

In the meantime, this is unquestionably the biggest crisis to strike the Hugo Awards since that one Scott Dennis took credit for solving (Smofs, you know which one, *wink**wink*).

We just better hope that the 2010 Hugo Voter Packet for members of Aussiecon 4 will have everything it’s supposed to. More, if possible.

7 thoughts on “Holey Hugo Ballot!

  1. “We just better hope that the 2010 Hugo Voter Packet for members of Aussiecon 4 will have everything it’s supposed to. More, if possible.”

    i understand it will include the complete works of R. Lionel Fanthorpe.

  2. Only Lionel Fanthorpe? Oh no! I see something missing! Where’s Pel Torro and Othello Baron and Bron Fane and Rene Rolant and Deutero Spartacus and Karl Zeigfreid and…

  3. The Torchwood complaint seems to be a common one. The ones I keep seeing are (a) Doctor Who/Torchwood fans who feel that despite 3 episodes on the ballot, the voters have picked entirely the wrong ones; (b) Lost fans who are fine with those but take it as a personal insult that FlashForward is on the ballot instead of Lost; and (c) Up fans who are flattered by the nomination, but confused as to how Up counts as sf.

    I’m pretty happy with the Hugos… unless Moon fails to win its category, in which case it will CLEARLY be due to BALLOT-BOX STUFFING by ZOMBIE VOTERS who allow BIG-BUDGET HOLLYWOOD to CONTROL THEIR MINDS!!!!

  4. What’s Torchwood? If it’s TV, I haven’t had cable in more than a year…

  5. Taral: “Torchwood” began as an anagram for Doctor Who, used on the rushes reels to prevent theft. They started mentioning “the Torchwood Institute” in the Christopher Eccleston future episodes and eventually showed the founding of it by Queen Victoria in David Tennant’s first season. Torchwood exists outside of the government or UNIT to fight alien threats to Great Britain.

    Torchwood One was located in the Canary Wharf complex and was destroyed during a battle between the Daleks and alternate-universe Cybermen. Torchwood Three was a small team of six in Cardiff near the rift in space/time with an h.q. under Roald Dahl Plaza commanded by the immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). Over the course of three seasons four of the team have been killed on various missions and Harkness has left out of guilt after killing his own grandson by using him to stop an alien menace.

    A fourth season is in the works presumably with a new team being assembled. There is talk of Fox making an American version of the program, expanding Torchwood’s mission from the Cardiff area to worldwide.

    The program is shown in Britain after the “threshold” hour, and is highly sexualized — virtually every member of the team was depicted as sleeping with virtually every other member over the three seasons. The last remaining member, portrayed by actress Eve Myles, is married and pregnant. It is presumed that Jack Harkness will get over his guilt enough to return for season four, whether it’s on BBC or Fox. Torchwood has had several crossover stories with Doctor Who in the last several years although with the clean slate of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor further crossovers are unlikely. I don’t believe any are planned for this new Doctor Who season which has just begun.

  6. How many “professional fans” do we think are out there?

    I was also excited to read this: “The first is that ‘Star Trek’ will finally go head-to-head with ‘Avatar’ for an award. This will be a very interesting result when it is announced as this is the first time these two science-fiction juggernauts have completed against each other in any awards.”

    Gosh: who knew?

    I’m just glad there are professional fans out there to help us with insights such as that.

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