While I was in an elevator leaving the Hugo ceremonies, Frank somebody looked me in the eye and said “How’d you like that. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it,” in a surly voice. Since he was being rude I told him to get off my case.
But let me answer Frank’s question now. The whole situation is a tragedy. It would have been a worse tragedy if any of these slate nominees had been rewarded with a Hugo. For that reason, yes, the outcome was what I voted for.
That should not detract from the accomplishment of Hugo ceremony hosts David Gerrold and Tananarive Due in pulling off a ceremony that was often funny, rich in creativity, and somber when appropriate (Gerrold was reduced to tears by seeing Nimoy on the in memoriam list).
Things began with a giant grim reaper figure lumbering onstage accompanied by an evil assistant. Three Star Trek redshirts, led by Due, battled with them and the lone survivor, Due, cleared the stage so that a reluctant David Gerrold could follow her out.
Some other highlights were Robert Silverberg’s “blessing of the Hugos” — a reminiscence of the “tension, apprehension and dissension” that plagued the 1968 Worldcon, including intermittent clouds of tear gas drifting up from downtown Berkeley, and to dispel similar tensions in 2015 he ended by taking out a tambourine and performing the Hare Krishna chant sung by street-roaming initiates back then.
Later, Connie Willis took a turn on stage, talking about her experience being bitten by a bat, and a mild concern about possible vampirism. Then she reassured Gerrold and Due about the challenges of emceeing the Hugos, remembering half a dozen things that have actually gone wrong at Worldcons, and suggesting a couple more that haven’t gone wrong yet but could, all of which despite being comedy seemed to leave Gerrold and Due a little more shaky than before she started.
During the introduction, Linda Deneroff of Sasquan’s WSFS Division laid the foundation for Hugo voters exercising the no award option. And it came up several times in the pro categories, as you know, though at the beginning there was a whole string of fan categories which had winners and the night seemed darned near normal for a little while.
TAFF delegate Nina Horvath was the presenter of all the fan categories. Gerrold personally handled most of the categories where there was no winner (though not ONLY those categories, so it wasn’t entirely a tell.) And for the dramatic categories he was assisted by a lifesize Dalek, which provided considerable amusement.
The acceptances were fun, best of which was Pat Cadigan reading Thomas Heuvelt’s speech from a tablet, with her characteristic asides and humorous timing. Campbell winner Wesley Chu obviously enjoyed himself, spontaneously falling to his knees before the bearer of the Campbell tiara so it could be placed on his brow.
Although I had a press seat in the balcony, the house lights were so low I couldn’t see a screen or write a note. Thus the File 770 Hugo coverage was provided by commenters watching the livestream — you all did a hell of a job, and extra credit for finding links to the voting stats and other commentary!
Definitely buying a tablet or something before I tackle another Worldcon though. This hotel computer is so limited — can’t edit or post photos, can’t copy between windows, etc. etc. But I will recharge my Kindle and be back at work in the morning.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@Protest manager
Well done, you managed to read the first four words of my comment. Now, if you’d read any further, you would have noticed the words “first-time Hugo voter” which, y’know, makes your question about whether I’ve always No Awarded anything listed by Scalzi look reeeeally silly.
Nonetheless, I would like to see your proof that Scalzi, or Locus, regularly put up slates with 3-5 options in most categories, and didn’t say have more than one massive open thread for anyone to suggest their favourites (Scalzi), or 30+ options (Locus). It isn’t a slate if there are so many options that the votes will be extremely diffuse.
Compare and contrast to the Puppy slates (Sad Puppies, by the way, has “slate” in both title and URL so don’t try to claim that it wasn’t a slate), where there was always five or less options, and the options themselves were not derived from the suggestions publicly provided by Torgersen’s fans but from what Torgersen’s friends and colleagues said they’d produced. This resulted in Williamson’s execrable Wisdom From My Internet (which isn’t even sf/f) being on the ballot, despite him having what was actually a pretty decent story out that year (seriously, I read it, it was better than anything except Totaled).
I suppose you think concentrating the vote onto so few candidates was what made you “better” at slates, rather than realising that that’s why Locus and Scalzi weren’t running slates, and why you ended up really unpopular with Hugo voters old and new.
So, every year Scalzi has “Pimped the Hugos” you’ve “No Awarded” everything he pushed? Because that’s a slate.
So, you think two open threads on his blog a year, one in which any author or creator can mention their own Hugo-eligible work, and one in which any fan can suggest people look at their favorite Hugo-eligible work, constitute a slate? And this alleged slate consists of what? Hundreds of entries? None of which are curated or otherwise managed by Scalzi? You Pups are grasping at straws, and the straws are entirely imaginary.
@protest manager: You sound upset. Give it some time.
@Protest Manager
I think you need to readjust some assumptions, including that you’re discussing with people who voted NA without reading and judging the works, and another of which is that everyone did that. A simple look at the voting stats for Totaled, which was repudiated by RP, will show you that several hundred non-puppies voted it above No Award, and several hundred more (including me) ranked it as the best below NA. A substantial number of people voted on merit, it’s just that in the vast majority of categories merit was identical to a blanket NA strategy.
Let’s discuss some “No Awarded” stories that clearly IMHO did not deserve it:
An excellent plan. Bear in mind that the criteria here isn’t “is it good” or “is it a professional-level story” but “is it great enough to win a Hugo”.
Skin Game: If you’ve never read any other DF, then I have the advantage in being able to say that this isn’t even the best DF book, let alone the best book of the year. It’s potentially a good idea (I bet Butcher didn’t have to sell this to his publisher with more than “Harry does a Heist!”) but really fails to be a good fantasy heist. Consider Locke Lamora or Jhereg for how to do it better. As Aaron said, solid isn’t enough for Hugo quality.
BBDC: Oh dear, I’m afraid we’re really in disagreement on this one, because this is a rehashed Bolo fanfic (and I mean that quite literally; the original is still kicking around on the internet somewhere) that displays really poor message fiction. The “interesting” part according to you is presented in a series of cartoonishly satirical vignettes of venal civilian/REMF corruption and stupidity that jar with the rest of the story. There’s actually a core of something decent in there (i.e. the bit that comes from Bolo) but the author can’t resist going over the top to jam a ridiculous idea about the training process in. The final nail in the coffin is that the author pauses the story (and if you’re pausing a shorter-length story you need a damn good reason) to jam in a transphobic insult against a critic he hates.
Turncoat: Aaron’s made the comparison with Damage, and although Damage isn’t the best story of 2015 by a long shot you can see the difference: both have Weapons Geekery, but Damage has the craft to integrate it into the plot and move it along, whereas for Totalled a paragraph with missiles is a paragraph which gets you nowhere. It’s not a terrible story, but it doesn’t rise above the basics, and ends with a poor and inaccurate joke when a better writer would have done more.
Totaled was the most difficult choice for me, because it’s within a whisker of being worth of a nomination. It was a good idea (if not that original) executed by a competent writer. I would say it had a few too many strands (the “Total” concept, the science, the relationship with the co-worker, the family) and didn’t really strengthen any, with the result that after a good opening the story floundered a bit with a literally passive protagonist. To make the NA call I looked at what other stories could conceivably have made the ballot, specifically the Nebula-winner Jackalope Wives (which the later stats showed was the most popular non-slate nominee, so I feel this was a good call). Even if the story of JW isn’t your taste, the difference in craft is clear.
So, there’s my opinion on each, which resulted in something remarkably similar to someone voting an anti-slate NA tactic. Based on the stats you can clearly see strong variance in people voting NA in various categories, and clear evidence of merit judgements in the closest calls such as Totaled. While there are some solid estimates out there for the number of people who effectively voted NA against slates, they don’t reveal how many of those were doing so on merit.
Personal attacks that mainly consisted of quoting the things the puppies were saying on their own blogs. That’s just vicious. How very dare we?
Was OK. OK is not enough for a Hugo. It was a poor choice for various reasons (even beyond people don’t like it when extremists try and game something they care about) particularly because volume 15 of a series is a turn off for people who haven’t previously read it. Even Lois McMaster Bujold hasn’t won anything in a good while.
Both derivative, being Bolo-fanfic, and in the submitted form massively over long. Could really have done with an editor. Far from the worst thing on the ballot, but that don’t make it good.
Again, OK. Not great, not crushingly awful. The almost sexualised weapon porn at the start was a bit of a turn off.
Actually I thought that was decent enough and I think put it above Noah Ward. In a normal year it would have tanked of course. Damnit, just read Jackalope Wives. Actually, had it not been a 2015 publication, Tuesdays with whatzizname the Destroyer would have cleaned it’s clock as well.
So now tell us what you thought was good about The Plural of Helen of Troy and Wisdom from my Internet. Fair’s fair.
One thing does occur to me: All the outrage that poor Toni got snubbed. And she did. We’re being fair. Now she probably contributed to that by declining to support her nomination with evidence, but I suspect another significant factor was the short fiction and the related works. What sympathy there was for an essentially decent person gamed onto the ballot by underhand tactics was undermined by the other stuff gamed onto the ballot. Had Toni been assessed on her own she would have done better than when she was assessed in conjunction with JCW.
Nominees not in the packet are automatically no awarded? Which Baen related works and short fiction bothered you specifically?
@Brian Z
You’re doing that willful misunderstanding thing again.
Meredith, if you don’t want to field that one, explain to me what JCW has to do with her worthiness as an editor. I didn’t even vote for her and I felt offended.
@Brian Z
I could answer any of them, but there isn’t much point because it has very little to do with what NickPheas said. I still can’t tell if your reading comprehension is really that terrible, or whether you just like twisting the words of others to either try and make them into strawmen or to make them support your point when they didn’t. Neither option is exactly flattering to you.
What am I missing?
The rest of the paragraph?
Can you explain how that answers my questions? Was there Baen work in the packet or wasn’t there, if there was then what was wrong with it, and what does that have to do with JCW?
If Brian were a Lemony Snicket series, it would be Asking The Wrong Questions.
@Project manager
By the way, I appreciate you going to the effort to say what you liked about some of the nominees. It has been a bit rare to see honest appreciation for the work from Puppy leaders or supporters (rather than just “this person has written or sold lots of books” which isn’t really what an award ought to be looking at – that’s what Bestseller lists are for). I don’t agree with you about most of the stories you mention, but that’s partly down to taste, and there’s nothing wrong with a difference in taste.
Personally, my favourites on the Puppy ballot were Totaled (it had its flaws, but the framing was good and the ending was very moving), Triple Sun (fun little story, unusual aliens, but it suffered from an overly passive protagonist despite supposedly being the leader, and an ending which didn’t actually show the resolution but just told us about it), and Ashes to Ashes (whose main flaw was being a bit over-long, and I wish that the aliens were more fleshed out, but the use of folklore and beliefs was unusual, and I liked the character dynamics). I just didn’t think they quite got up to the level of previous Hugo nominees, and the way they got onto the ballot disenfranchised the majority of Hugo nominators. I can’t in all good conscience use my vote to encourage disenfranchisement.
@NickPheas
I just read Tuesdays… as well. It’s a fine story. Had the original SP list made it through without losing Tuesdays… to incompetence and Goodnight Stars to malfeasance then I’d have had a much harder time.
I wonder if Tuesdays will feature this year? I’m not sure it’s better than, say, Bucket List which has the same sort of light but affecting tone to it.
I doubt very much that anything can really answer your questions Brian, but I shall try and spell this out using only short words and after that you can FUD off.
Voters read novella. Category has much shit in it.
Voters read novellette. Category has much shit in it.
Voters read short story. Category pretty damn shitty.
Voters read related works. Category reek to high heaven. Voters wonder what kind of people would like this kind of thing.
Voters look at editors. Voters don’t know who edits what book. Voters assess editors based on other things. Voters know that they are only thinking about Toni W. because of the people who made them read much shit. Some voters wonder if Toni W. and shit come as a couple. Voters don’t want any more shit. Benefit of the doubt all used up. Voters quite probably being unfair, but voters sense of smell overloaded by this point.
Incidentally, there was a Baen short story on the ballot, and when it was put in the packet Baen very kindly put the whole anthology in.
I’m fairly sure that Weisskopf losing to No Award had less to do with Weisskopf (even though she did shoot herself in the foot with her packet submission) than to do with new voters struggling with how to choose any editor. The comments we’ve had discussing it since have proved that many readers (me included) don’t really know what an editor does. Even people who do know (because they’re editors) also don’t know how they’re supposed to judge any individual editor that they don’t work with. Writers have pointed out that a good book doesn’t necessarily mean a good editor, and may mean a bad editor who the author has managed to stop from ruining the book. I’m halfway convinced that the Long Form Editor category is too flawed to be kept.
We’ve seen that anti-slate voters are willing to suspend the protest vote for works that they think are good enough (Guardians of the Galaxy) (although I have my suspicions that that also benefitted from a lot of people “knowing” it would have made the ballot anyway), and that a lot of them are willing to put No Award over non-slate works they just didn’t like (TDTWTUD almost lost to No Award). The Editor categories were too difficult for people to judge, and so couldn’t make it over the quality hurdle because people don’t have any way of truly judging the quality, regardless of whether any of the editors are good at their jobs.
Better to think of it as a problem with the category than anything else, because there’s more truth in that.
NickPheas,
That’s clear. Thank you.
Meredith,
Thank you for acknowledging that. Until now we’ve heard repeatedly in these pages that Weisskopf submitted nothing and that was the reason to no-award her without reading. In fact we got a free Baen book.
If so, why did more voters than have historically voted for Hugos in total vote to place all the editors below No Award?
The category has been around for quite some time without this outcome.
@BrianZ
The facts of Weisskopf’s packet submission are well established by the simple mechanism of us all having got that packet.
It contained no specific statement as to what she, personally, had done as a Long Form editor.
The existence of a Baen Short Form collection in the packet is entirely irrelevant.
You know this. I know you know this. We all know you know this. Stop.
@Brian Z
But not one we knew Weisskopf had contributed to, how much, or in what fashion. The book was there for the short story, and was not helpful with regard to judging the Editor category.
ETA: And as Mark points out, a short form anthology isn’t worth the pixels it was written on when judging Long Form Editor.
Yes, it has. But is that a good thing? I was also quite specific about it being something new voters probably had a particular problem with (inexperience + lack of information + pre-existing anti-slate opinions = No Award), but I’ve also seen longer term voters say that they normally don’t vote in the Long Form at all, and either still didn’t or only did this time because they wanted to rank people above VD.
I think (and my opinion has evolved considerably over the last couple of days) that the category is fundamentally flawed, although I understand its appeal to some editors, and people who want to reward them. I’d quite like a shiny rocket, too.
Basically, the answers to your questions/statements were in my original comment.
@Mark
re: Stop
That’s clear. Thank you
Jesus, man, that’s exactly what Meredith said originally, except with the word “shit” added.
Meredith,
That’s fair rebuttal to the point you made. I had responded to NickPheas who said:
I was pointing out to NickPheas that if no-awarders wished to judge Toni Weisskopf based on short fiction, they seem to have done so without considering the short fiction she included in the free packet for them.
Except the answer as to why thousands of fans have never no-awarded any other editor in Hugo history.
Meredith, I agree the category has “problems,” as do many Hugo categories. These can be addressed with an honor system – if only those who are able to make an informed judgment step up to the plate. Perhaps you feel this principle was violated by the “puppies” at the nomination stage, but no-awarding those nominees was nothing more nor less than fighting fire with fire.
If not, maybe we should prune the categories back to Best Novel, Best TV Series, and Best Hollywood Movie.
@Brian Z
I don’t believe a fan award should have a category that cannot be reasonably judged even by experts let alone garden variety fans – as I said, we’ve had editors in the comments saying they didn’t think Best Editor Long could be reasonably judged.
Making a slippery slope argument that if that’s true we should then bin most of the other categories, none of which are as opaque, is silly.
ETA: And you’re flat out wrong that I didn’t answer that. New voters is not a hard thing to understand as something that might alter results, nor is people who do not ordinarily vote on that category did so this time.
Meredith, if you argue that you have made a protest vote against an entire category, I might agree.
I made a protest vote against Best Podcast, sorry I mean Fancast.
I made a protest vote against the two Dramatic Presentation categories because I think there are much more interesting things to fill those with than bland blockbusters and TV series episodes.
So, sure, I agree.
On the other hand, there is probably a place in the Hugo ceremony for honoring editors. So, what to do?
@Brian Z
I’m quite sure I both mentioned that my opinions had evolved recently in a comment above, and that I did not say how I’d voted.
Sorry if I missed something in one of your comments. How did you vote, how did your thinking evolve, and how would you vote if you had to do it today?
@Brian Z
My votes in full are on the Hugo live-commenting thread, my original opinions on the category and the evidence that has lead to me changing them is on the thread or two in which the category was discussed since the ceremony, and my current opinions are in this thread. You’re welcome to go and find them.
Meredith, I didn’t demand you answer my question. I just wondered how your thinking has changed. Your call on whether to respond.
I just searched this particular thread for your name and the word “editor” and got:
Is that still your current position?
@Brian Z
No, that was me empathising with the position of people who No Awarded that category for that reason (or a similar one). That’s why I phrased it “I can understand wanting to” rather than “I voted No Award because”.
Also, come on Brian, I know you’re good at words. Quit it with the willful misunderstandings.
Alright. You don’t wish to tell me what you think, and I didn’t find it by searching your name and the word editor. Anything else to add?
I won’t quote him directly, to avoid causing angst among our fellows, but did our resident troll just claim that people should have been using a book of short stories to gauge an editor’s worthiness for ‘Best Editor: Longform’?
Between that and pretending not to be able to understand Meredith, this thread is more amusing than normal. 🙂
Short stories: no, NickPheas said that the voters probably decided on her merit based on the slated short stories in the packet, and I questioned it since she included a Baen book of non-slated stories in the packet.
He also said that the voters decided about her case based on JCW, who is not a Baen author.
Meredith: She is welcome to say how she thinks she should have voted in Best Editor, versus how she actually voted, which she has said is different, if she wants to.
Why, Maximillian, how did you vote?
@Brian Z
Is there a reason you didn’t seem to remember the Baen anthology until I brought it up?
Meredith, I asked NickPheas which Baen short fiction in the packet he was referring to. He hasn’t replied. Then you mentioned the Baen book, which is, in fact, the Baen short fiction in the packet.
If you aren’t going to tell us how you did vote, how your thinking as changed, and how you would vote differently now, anything else?
And really, my votes are super easy to find, since I already pointed you to the post they’re on. They’re on the first page of the live commenting post for the ceremony. You don’t even have to click to the second or third page or anything. Acting like you can’t possibly know what they are is just lazy, Brian.
@Brian Z
You also said:
That doesn’t sound like you remembered to me.
Meanwhile, how did you vote in the editor categories, how has your thinking changed, and how would you vote if you had to do it over?
I’d like to thank Brian Z for demonstrating—continuing to demonstrate, rather—that he’s an isotopically-pure, Grade A, 100% USDA Choice, primo grande bullshitter, and that he has no intention whatsoever of interacting honestly with anybody hereabouts.
Meredith, my ballot is here. I didn’t vote in the editor categories because I don’t think I am in a position to compare their work as editors. I read the fiction, and you can see the results. What did you do?
@Brian Z
I’m mostly wondering how many times I need to point out that my ballot is on this very website, on a post I have pointed to, with a comment page number, before you’ll actually go and look for it.
OK. So how did your thinking change and how would you vote differently now?
Brian,
Your behaviour has hit the brick wall marked “being an ass”. You’re not Paxman.
I don’t see how anyone can say that Weisskopf was denied a Hugo here. Sure, she was leading among Puppy voters, but if the ~2,500 people who voted No Award had voted for another editor, they would have won.
We know, for example, that among the people who expressed a preference after No Award, 92 of them selected Weisskopf as their second choice, while 134 of them chose Gilbert. That’s a 29% rate in favor of Weisskopf and a 43% rate in favor of Gilbert. In that situation, the first pass would have had Weisskopf at about 1,947 votes and Gilbert at about 1,820.
It probably would have come down to which direction the people who had Sowards higher on their ballot than either of those two went, and we have no way of know how that would have shaken out. I do, however, think that believing the theoretical 300 to 350 voters who probably would have favored Sowards would have not gone heavily for Gilbert over Weisskopf as their second choice is not unreasonable.
We can’t know, of course, what might have happened instead of what did happen, but pretending that Weisskopf’s victory was a done deal but for the No Award contingent is just silly.
Mark, I didn’t ask Meredith to jump in when I asked NickPheas a question. She has previously had a very low opinion of Baen editors, and as far as I can tell she still does, despite saying she has changed her mind about something. She can either explain her thinking or decline to explain it.
@Brian Z
By “low opinion” you mean I said..?
Also, Weisskopf had had reasonable but not spectacular results in recent years, so historically the electorate weren’t particularly favoring her. (Which is of course part of the grievance).
(Sorry Meredith, I realise I butted in unnecessarily there. My Brian-restraint is clearly weak today!)