As we await the start of the business meeting, John Pomeranz is handing out WSFS Businss Meeting Bingo cards. Kevin Standlee is the free space. Players are instructed to fill in the rest of the blanks of frequent participants and when they have bingo, get recognized and include the word Bingo in their statement.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@andyl: Sadly, remote participation in the Business Meeting is explicitly forbidden by the constitution (somewhere in section 6 – 6.3, maybe?). We’d have to change that first, and I suspect it’s going to be impossible to do until convention center connectivity improves enough to allow real-time video.
Isn’t it likely that GRRM’s calls to action mobilized the biggest turnout? He advocated voting based on merit and using No Award sparingly.
Sure, but when Merit and No Award for all slaters produces the same result, how can you tell?
I suspect it’s going to be impossible to do until convention center connectivity improves enough to allow real-time video.
I suspect few people would be able to use it, even then. That’s a lot of bandwidth and equipment that not everyone has, or even wants.
+1 to nickpheas – voting on merit and No Award are functionally identical this year.
@Aaron On his Hugo Ballot, VD voted for himself for short form and Toni Weisskopf for long form. (He was 4th in his ballot for long form.) So if the RP/Elk follow his lead, he should do significantly better in the short form category.
You might also look at Graphic Story where he just voted No Award. (However, both SP and RP seem to have little love for comics.)
Brian Z.,
Thank you. We’re in agreement that the ability of 15% of the voters to completely disenfranchise the majority is a problem. That’s progress.
What do you suggest we do to fix it? E Pluribus Hugo ensures more proportional representation and increases the percentage of voters who see one or more of their preferences on the final ballot. That’s an improvement over the existing system.
I haven’t argued for or against any such thing. I wasn’t even aware of the proposal until it came up in the live blog of the business meeting.
My focus is on fixing the problem of a small minority being able to disenfranchise a majority of voters. I’m glad you agree that it is, in fact, a problem with the current rules.
@Cat: ROFLMAO! The puppies are LARPing – the unreality of their comments makes a lot more sense now. 😉
Sure, but when Merit and No Award for all slaters produces the same result, how can you tell?
Also, I think the ability of authors to mobilize a group of voters by themselves is more limited than people think. After all, when Martin suggested that Leviathan Wakes deserved a Hugo nomination a few years back, it didn’t make the ballot.
To mobilize lots of voters to vote in the way you want them to, you need a ginned up culture war narrative like the Puppies have been pushing.
You might also look at Graphic Story where he just voted No Award.
That’s probably not as good a proxy – there are some people who vote against Graphic Story out of principled opposition to the category. I figure whichever editor category has the larger number of votes for Beale will be pretty close to the upper bound of Rabid Puppy strength.
(However, both SP and RP seem to have little love for comics.)
Which is ironic given that Torgersen spent a lot of effort bashing WorldCon voters because they, in his opinion, ignored the world of comics. Then again, most of what Torgersen has written about the Hugos has been raw nonsense, so it isn’t surprising. Just ironic.
Creating a 2-year nominating window is not viewed as a tweak but as a fundamental change to the mission of the award. That’s why it won’t be adopted.
@Kendall
Puppies as a LARP was how I explained their otherwise non-fandom Best Fan Writer nominees. Really as a model it explains so much of the reality-disconnect.
Mike, I thought the mission of the award was to honor the best in sf. If The Three Body Problem gets two years, it makes me think that everything else should too.
Point considered, though.
Patrick May, I think you have accurately stated our disagreement. I don’t believe that 60% of the members of our organization should be disenfranchised when making decisions about whether or how to change the award they became members to participate in. Whereas it didn’t even occur to you that supporting members paid dues but have no vote, and even now that you know it is a concern, you don’t see it as a problem worth addressing.
My solution is simple: hand over any proposed rules changes to a committee tasked with studying them and undertaking a consultation of the membership before making recommendations. What do you find objectionable about that?
Dramatic presentation. The Puppy nominations there were fine on merit, and very likely could have been nominated without them.
If The Three Body Problem gets two years, it makes me think that everything else should too.
How did The Three-Body Problem get two years?
@Kate
Yep I know – but long term it will change IMHO. I also know the tech is still lacking at the moment, and convention centres are not as hot on improving their tech as I would like.
@Aaron
It was eligible when it was published in Chinese and then again when it was translated to English.
Generally quite a lot of stuff has two bites at the cherry. If a book is published in the UK or Australia or Ireland and then published in the USA in the following year then it is eligible in both years – if I parse the rules correctly.
It seems to be widely agreed that merit and No Award for Slates produce the same result in two categories; possibly, but more debatably, in a third category. In the DP awards, as Will McLean says, they don’t produce the same result, and probably not for the editors either.
I think many of us imagined at first that there would be an evening full of No Awards; this now seems unlikely. If there are just two No Awards, this will be a Good Thing, in that it shows we actually are basing our judgements on merit, and that the Puppies cannot plausibly claim prejudice (they will, of course, but they cannot plausibly): but also a Bad Thing, in that it gives less of a resounding message than a whole evening of No Awards would do.
It’s possible, of course, that there will be a couple of No Awards in non-all-Puppy categories, in which case they will not have won, but will have succeeded in messing things up massively.
On another topic, could someone explain just what is meant by the idea that the YA award should be Campbell-style? Just how would it resemble the Campbell?
@Andrew
I think that it means that the YA award will not be a Hugo, but will presented along side them just like the Campbell Award is now.
I think mainly that we should be ritually obliged to point out that it was Not A Hugo every time it was mentioned.
Aaron at 9:17:
I don’t know the circumstances of Martin’s championing it, but it seems like at least one part of your statement must be in error — Leviathan Wakes made the ballot in 2012.
Site selection now official. Helsinki in 2017
I don’t know the circumstances of Martin’s championing it, but it seems like at least one part of your statement must be in error
As I recall, he was suggesting it should win. In any event, the key here is that I don’t think the “famous author” effect is as large as people think. For example, last year there were a lot of people convinced that The Wheel of Time would overwhelm the rest of the nominees and walk away with the victory, based on the fact that it was very popular and Robert Jordan was very famous. It came in fourth.
Brian Z — what you are ignoring is that those of us buying supporting memberships know going in that it gets us three things: the publications from Worldcon (progress reports and program books), the right to vote on the Hugos, and nomination rights for the following year.
We know that it doesn’t carry voting rights at the Business Meeting, and it shouldn’t. That right is only available to an attending member. So if voting there, or getting something before the committee of the whole, are important to you, you either attend or convince those who will be attending to act for you. I happen to know that there was a fundraiser to get someone who had worked on EPH to Worldcon to present it.
I’m not sure why this fact upsets you — this is the way Worldcon works. If you don’t like it, go start your own con — or convince Dragon*Con to start its own award system. Good luck…
I believe the major “Campbell” aspect of the YA Hugo is that it will be aimed at authors not works, thereby sidestepping any arguments about whether a particular work is YA or not.
I think that it means that the YA award will not be a Hugo, but will presented along side them just like the Campbell Award is now.
And that would mean that we don’t need to formulate criteria separating it from other categories, and it wouldn’t make YA books ineligible in other categories?
That makes sense. But I had the feeling that some people were heavily invested in its being a Hugo.
Aaron, WoT came in fourth because the books aren’t that great. They badly needed ruthless pruning and less faffing about by the author. I gave up reading the series after the third book, when it failed to advance the plot to any degree I could perceive. If I want that level of stagnation I’ll go read Frodo and Sam’s trek through Mordor again…
Brian Z.,
There’s nothing special about a committee designated by The Powers That Be and a grassroots organization coming up with a proposal in public. That’s exactly what happened with EPH and all of the discussion is still available online.
What I object to is delaying tactics. Now that there is an existence proof of the power of slates, there is no reason to believe that the same groups of people, plus possibly some new groups, won’t do exactly the same thing next year and the year after.
EPH addresses the problem directly while remaining nearly identical to the current rules in the absence of slates. The only reason to delay for another year is if you really don’t think what you agreed is a problem is actually a problem.
Okay. If that’s what you meant, then I agree that this supports your point; it looks like LW had the fewest first place votes of all the novels.
It doesn’t. He’s engaging in FUD.
Wouldn’t it be great if the YA award was named after the late great Diana Wynn Jones?
Beth,
After reading all the Hugo nominated works, I’m catching up on my issues of Asimov’s and Analog. I have high expectations of “The Shepherd’s Crown”. Other than that, I’m watching what people here recommend.
Well, nothing I’m reading at the moment will be eligible next year … I’m currently midway through Riders of the Steppes, the third volume of Harold Lamb’s collected Cossack fiction (and Howard Andrew Jones deserves massive credit for getting Lamb back into print), and before that I took a slight detour to Alan E. Nourse’s Scavengers in Space, an old childhood favorite.
(I’d have to double check, but right now I think the only 2015 book I’ve read is Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings; I also need to move Aliette de Bodard’s House of Shattered Wings up to the head of my queue.)
Will be awaiting the Hugo results with great interest …
WoT came in fourth because the books aren’t that great.
I agree. I left it off my ballot last year along with Warbound in favor of No Award. But last year there were a lot of people who were convinced that Jordan fans would turn out in droves to vote for the series – so much so that there were worries that some categories would get washed away because they wouldn’t have enough total votes cast in them. It didn’t happen. I don’t think droves of Butcher fans will push him to victory this year either – I’m guessing he’ll wind up at best third or fourth, but we’ll know for sure in about twelve hours.
I think the “famous author effect” may be more pronounced when it comes to defending the Hugos in general against slates than it could ever be when recommending a particular work for for an award. Sure, Leviathan Wakes would have been more widely read as a result of GRRM’s advocacy, but the great majority of the extra readers would still have voted (or not) according to merit.
ETA: Glad I checked the title; I almost wrote “Leviathan’s Wake”; whether a Corey/Joyce mashup is feasible is something I must leave to those who’ve read both.
Remember, for fans to turn up in droves to vote for something, they have to be willing to actually pay for supporting memberships.
Before that, they have to have heard of the World Science Fiction Convention, which is, I suspect, not exactly the first convention most people think of when they think of SF conventions, assuming they have even heard such things exist.
No matter how popular a work is, I wonder what percentage of random fans are willing to drop $40 to vote it up somewhere.
For the most popular authors, it wouldn’t take a high percentage. GRRM could own the Hugos for himself and his friends if he wanted that.
For the most popular authors, it wouldn’t take a high percentage. GRRM could own the Hugos for himself and his friends if he wanted that.
I tend to doubt it. People say this a lot, but the only time authors have managed to do this in a serious way has been the Scientologists, who have their own oddities, and the Puppy slates, who had to coordinate several authors and invent a phony cultural war to feed the persecuted delusions of the dregs of the internet to do it.
An author of big stature has never tried to game the Hugos.
With a large social media footprint, an author could encourage her fans to join Worldcon for voting privileges, talk up the packet, do a “for your consideration” post of her Hugo-eligible works, tell people when the voting periods begin and end and let things take their course. It wouldn’t even have to seem underhanded. The whole thing could be presented as building support for the Hugos in general.
Don’t you think someone like GRRM, J.K. Rowling or Jim Butcher could get 500 fans to buy a supporting membership and nominate?
For the most popular authors, it wouldn’t take a high percentage.
That’s possibly true for the shorter fiction and some of the other low-participation categories. Novel, not likely.
Don’t you think someone like GRRM, J.K. Rowling or Jim Butcher could get 500 fans to buy a supporting membership and nominate?
I think it is a dubious proposition.
<i.Don’t you think someone like
Not if they want to keep their writing careers. Word gets around.
I don’t know if this has been reported here:
https://www.facebook.com/david.gerrold/posts/10206302423851838?fref=nf&pnref=story
Gerrold didn’t name the “person” in his account of events, but I think will be pretty easy for most people to guess. Does anyone think Gardner Dozois will be answering his calls in the future?
Writers at a sales level of GRRM, Rowling and Butcher?
“Does anyone think Gardner Dozois will be answering his calls in the future?”
I’m going to guess “his” ain’t Gerrold and the person might be a guy who’s name rhymes with Sue?
(Confirmed in the comments, it appears…)
It sounds like he handled it about as well as he could, since he didn’t want the drama of where that conversation might go.
Gerrold’s comment “Some people think I’m a good person. I’m not …” is pretty interesting. Where’d that self-assessment come from?
I suspect no truly thoughtful person can honestly conclude that they are a good person, particularly in light of all the horrors committed historically by people who firmly believed — or at least asserted — that they were good people.
Rcade at 12:29:
I read him being as skeptical that ‘good’ is a description that can be accurately applied to persons, rather than having any particular sense of himself as a grim antihero.
That’s way too bleak an outlook for me. I think plenty of thoughtful people also consider themselves good.
If skinny people called themselves fat it wouldn’t make me thin.