The British Fantasy Society (BFS) announced the 2024 British Fantasy Award (BFA) shortlist on August 15. BFS Secretary David Green’s works received five nominations in four different categories. Earlier today the BFS published an update to their announcement (Twitter), addressing social media comments questioning committee influence on the awards process.
Update
As a BFS committee member was lucky enough to receive multiple nomination this year, we had an independent audit carried out prior to the shortlists being finalised. A long-term member in good standing of the BFS was given access to all voting information along with all systems required to check eligibility of voters. This audit supported the final shortlists as displayed here.
The Awards Process
The British Fantasy Awards are voted on by members of the BFS and attendees at Fantasycon. This process is managed by our awards admin – no other committee member has access to or influence over the votes or their collection.
The shortlists are formed from the (usually 4) most voted-for titles. Juries are then empanelled and given the opportunity to add egregious omissions. After this stage, the final shortlists are made public and the juries start reading. The winner is selected by the jury and communicated to the awards admin.
The jury and egregious omissions stages act as checks and balances to ensure that the final shortlist and ultimate winner are selected as objectively as possible.
The awards admin is the only committee member who has any ability to affect or influence the outcome of the awards, and as such, the awards admin is not eligible to be nominated for any awards. The rest of the committee is in exactly the same position as any other member of the society with regard to the awards, with the exception of the Karl Edward Wagner award.
The BFS committee as a whole votes on the recipient of the Karl Edward Wagner award. Serving committee members are not eligible to receive this award – a change which was made to the constitution by the current Chair and President, to remove a potential conflict of interest.
The BFS is run by volunteers – people who give a great deal of time and effort to this community because they love it. Excluding our volunteers from consideration in awards in which they have no influence or control would serve no practical purpose in safeguarding the awards, but would professionally disadvantage our volunteers, which would likely lead to difficulty in recruiting and retaining volunteers. We are a community built largely of publishing professionals – and as a result our volunteers are largely made up of people professionally involved in the industry too.
We would like to thank our awards admin, Katherine Fowler, for the huge effort she puts into this role year on year. We would also like to thank the jurors who help to make the awards possible. Many congratulations to all of the nominees and we wish you the best of luck.
For those wondering what precisely was the impetus for this announcement, File 770 commenter Spider pointed out that a multiple nominee was also involved in the running of the BFS, and also a juror in an unrelated category. D_Libris on Twitter made similar observations.
A Twitter poll also asked how people felt about these sorts of situations:
Update: A commenter challenged the foregoing statement:
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On this occasion, it does appear the organisation in the spotlight has acted in an agreed and transparent manner. Those seeking a sequel to the 2023 Hugo Awards debacle had best move on.
Just because it was transparent doesn’t mean it was correct. It’s hard to see how people don’t consider this fishy.
So, their “independent audit” was conducted by “A long-term member in good standing”? Or am I misunderstanding?
The BFS is a small group of volunteers, and they seem to be above-board about where volunteering does and doesn’t disqualify someone from award consideration. Also, if the members of BFS write the same kind of fantasy that they like, that is what they are going to nominate.
Fantasy and SF societies tend to be small and depend on the unpaid labor of a few volunteers. This should not be a surprise to anyone.
I used the term “untoward” when I brought this up in the linked comment, and that’s still how I’d describe it–not scandalous, not illegitimate, but not what I’d call proper, either. As noted, there’s nothing in the BFS bylaws saying this can’t happen. My feeling is just that if they want the awards to be taken seriously, it probably shouldn’t.
To my knowledge the British Fantasy Award has never been marketed as a low-key, low-stakes trophy celebrating the likes and dislikes of a small group of friends, but as a major industry accolade to be touted as a mark of widely-recognized quality. If the BFS wants that latter perception to endure this doesn’t feel like a great way to go about it.
Lis Carey: Yes, apparently they meant “independent on the jury / awards admin” rather than “independent on the Society as a whole” (which would be unfeasibly long and expensive). It is an unfortunate turn of the phrase, I thought the same, but managed to hold back.