By Colin Harris: INTRODUCTION: A follow-on to Tammy Coxen’s “Evolution of the Art Hugo Categories”.  I am very grateful to Tammy and Meg Frank in particular for their input, and also to everyone who has contributed to the online debate for their ideas and comments.

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In its earliest form, the Fan Artist category (first awarded in 1967) was defined purely by context – it was art that appeared in amateur magazines (later redefined into fanzines and semiprozines). But over the years there was a gradual expansion of that context, starting in 1974 with the addition of “other public display.” in 2014 “public display” was updated to “non-professional public display” and to specify that this included display at conventions. In 2019 (ratified in 2021) the definition was expanded further to include “posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution.”

Until recent years, none of the definitions of Fan Artist mentioned whether the work in question was paid for. The economic context of the work was implicit in the language defining, first, amateur magazines, and then, fanzines and semiprozines, where the art would be appearing. The later changes around public display made it clear however that “selling fan art at a convention did not make it a professional sale”.

Meanwhile, while the definition of Fan Artist has evolved over time, Professional Artist is still quite a narrow category that includes only illustrators and works published in a professional publication.

As Tammy pointed out, this adds up to a world where a person who makes their living by posting full resolution images of their media-inspired art on a print-on-demand shop would qualify as a Fan Artist, but not a Professional Artist. And conversely, if the language passed in 2024 were to be ratified, then a person who creates art for their local convention to use for free and sells the originals in the art show in the same year would NOT qualify as a Fan Artist but would qualify as a Professional Artist, even if none of that art sells. And neither of these really make sense, which is why there have been so many attempts to clarify these categories through the years.

Clearly, a relatively simple distinction has become very messy indeed. How do we untangle the mess? Perhaps it’s time to step back a bit …

THE ARTIST OR THE WORK. Here’s a fundamental question: is a Fan Artist someone who creates Fan Art, or is Fan Art something made by a Fan Artist? Similarly, is a Professional Artist someone who created Professional work, or is Professional work something made by a Professional Artist?

This might seem simple – but it gets to the heart of the matter. If we want to start from the work, then we need to focus our definition on the work. Do we then want to just define the work by economic context (was it for sale?) and where it was presented? Or is there something more fundamental about either the intent behind it, or the nature (aesthetics) of the work itself? Remember that in earlier days, the professional artist definition referred to “illustrator” while fan artist referred to “an artist or cartoonist”. And until the last decade, the list of Fan Artist Hugo winners remained full of “traditional” fan artists who were working for fanzines and convention publications: Teddy Harvia, Brad Foster, Sue Mason, Frank Wu and before that, Ian Gunn, Bill Rotsler, George Barr and various others.

It is only since 2013 that this has shifted, with more winners who are illustrating for semiprozines (rather than fanzines) or who are progressing towards professional careers. Many of the finalists produce work which is on the cusp between Fan and Pro categories; sometimes it’s just about visibility to the community and how they are perceived in a particular year. (Galen Dara won best Fan Artist in 2013 and was a finalist for Professional Artist in 2014 – I’m not sure how much their work or where it appeared actually changed between those years).

Conversely, there are still occasions where an established professional artist produces work which is clearly fan art. Lee Moyer won Best Fan Artist in 2022 for his “Small Gods” series which appears at conventions and online (https://www.smallgodseries.com/). And this seems like a tradition to hang on to – dating back to Jack Gaughan’s dual win in 1967 and more recently to cases where professional writers including Fred Pohl and John Scalzi have won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer.

It seems then, that we must allow for the question of intent, which may be reflected in the content and aesthetics of the work or the way it is published (or sold). The problem is that we also need a simple definition which will be intuitive to thousands of Hugo nominators, and we’re not getting that. Instead, we’re getting progressively more complex definitions which are just leading to progressively more dubious results (see above!).

We are in fact trying to maintain a bright white line between pro and fan art which no longer exists. Go back 50 years, and book / magazine covers vs. fanzine illos and cartoons was a genuine and simple proxy for this white line. In the age of the Internet, where pro and fan artists have equally polished websites, pros and fans both sell work at conventions, and where fans may be supporting themselves financially through e.g. Patreon, we are just tying ourselves in knots.

FAILURES OF DEFINITION – WHERE HUGOS GO WRONG. There’s a couple of routes by which Hugo categories become messy. One is the desire to have a Hugo for everything – because every part of the field should have a chance to be honoured. Of course this is understandable, given the prestige of the award and the recognition that goes with it; and when people advocate for an “overlooked” area they do it because they have a passion for that part of the genre.

The second route is the tendency for highly invested people to get lost in the detail when trying to come up with “clear” definitions, or to focus excessively on edge cases. Over-thinking is a real risk, and it’s easy to end up with a cumbersome definition in an attempt to address every edge case and scenario.

The third route is drift, which we’ve see in the Fan Artist definitions (thanks again Tammy!). Each change is small and made in response to perceived issues of the time, but over time the cumulative effect is to move away from the intent behind the award, or at least clutter it so much that it ceases to be intuitive.

So what makes a Good Hugo Category? I believe there are four over-riding considerations:

1. It should be compact in that it should bring together broadly similar works which can reasonably be compared on merit
2. It should be distinct in that it should be clearly separated from the other categories
3. It should be intuitive in that the average nominator should find it easy to identify whether works qualify or not.
4. It should have depth in that there needs to be enough good candidates to make a solid long list of 15 credible finalists.

Intuitiveness is essential. People who are directly involved in discussions about a category may spend a long time on considered analysis; vast majority of nominators don’t do that, especially if they don’t have ready access to the required information about a work (Was it for sale? Where was it first displayed? Why was it created?). Of course, we want to help the Administrators with clear guidance on what works should be eligible for a Hugo – but I believe the pendulum has swung too far in a number of the current category definitions. I plead for a return to simpler, more intuitive definitions and trust the nominators to act in line with the spirit of those definitions.

WHY ARE THE ARTIST CATEGORIES PARTICULARLY PROBLEMATIC? Building on the above, why then are the Artist categories (especially Fan Artist) particularly problematic? Simply because the natural proxies for identifying professional vs. fan contexts don’t work anymore or are too limiting.

What I mean is that the original definition had a very intuitive proxy (was something for a book/magazine or a fanzine/convention) that covered most of the art fans saw. And of course, that distinction is still helpful – but it’s no longer enough because of all the other ways people display their art (as recognised by the evolving definition since 1974).

Proxies based simply on whether something is for sale don’t work for multiple reasons. Pros and fans both sell their work – including side by side in conventions. Fan artists like Sara Felix and Iain Clark create amazing art for conventions (for free) but then sell prints or even originals of those works. Professional artists create personal pieces which are not for sale, but that does not make them fan artists.

Relying on paywall access is also not useful. A fan artist may reasonably operate a Patreon. A professional artist may put high resolution copies of their art on their website.

The field is getting broader. The distribution channels are getting broader. The answer cannot be to make long and longer definitions, especially ones which clearly give rise to absurd options.

WHAT OUTCOMES DO WE WANT? Perhaps the best approach is to agree the outcome – what we want to achieve – and THEN use that to test any proposed definition. Here’s some suggested outcomes for starters …

• A single artist (or collective) can produce both Pro and Fan art in the same year
• Intent matters; fannish work is primarily work created for and made available to the community for free or for nominal cost
• Intent matters: a professional artist remains a professional artist even if their work is not for sale, or is only shown at conventions, if it’s part of their professional body of work …
• excepting that a (normally) professional artist can also produce fannish work and qualify for fan artist in the same year
• Nominators should not need to know the economic circumstances of the artist to judge whether they are professional or fan.
• It is a bad outcome if the typical bodies of work in pro and fan artists are essentially indistinguishable apart from their economic context, or rely on marginal considerations of where someone is in their career. (Per above: a good Hugo category is compact, distinct and intuitive!)

This last point is important. The Hugos recognise work. In some categories we recognise individual works like fictional stories; in others (Editor, Artist, Fan Writer) we recognise the person for the body of work they’ve produced in a year.  It feels inherently dubious if we’re going to have two categories for essentially similar bodies of work.

It’s clear, however, that we do not even have consensus on what outcomes we want – the comments on Tammy’s article and related Facebook posts present polarised views from “anyone who is making art to sell should be a professional” to “anyone who only sells their art through direct sales within the community is a fan artist, even if it’s their main source of income.” 

These divergent views are all valid – these are subjective matters – but they become problematic when the category definitions are pulled first one way and then the other by amendments.  We will never satisfy everyone; but we need a majority consensus that can be clearly articulated to future nominators.  It’s also important to acknowledge that there will ALWAYS be examples that don’t fit well with any definition; we need to accept that, as long as we are comfortable with the lists of finalists and winners. To paraphrase Voltaire, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. Current definition (October 2023): “An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.”

This works in that the definition is simple and results in finalists who clearly belong there. The questions are whether the category should be broader to include other forms of visual art than illustration (almost certainly!) and whether it should also include more of the people who are making a professional living from their art without working for books and magazines. (The latter takes us back to the maze of what constitutes a professional sale, if it’s not the place it appears or the price tag.)

Artist Meg Frank suggests that professional art is distinguished by its client being a commercial entity, which seems helpful. In fact, this is a direct broadening of “appeared in a professional publication” to also cover work done for advertising, galleries and exhibitions.

Hence a new definition might be:

“An individual visual artist or visual artist collective creating work for sale or use by business or public sector entities in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year. These entities include, but are not limited to, publishers, advertisers, galleries and museums, but do not include direct-to-consumer sales, print-on-demand websites or similar.”

This would seem to offer several improvements:

• Allows for artist collectives
• Uses visual artist rather than illustrator, extending the category to 3D and other related art forms
• Emphasises the commercial nature of the work and that it is being done for an organisation rather than direct sale. Includes public sector entities (and we assume here people will understand that this is not intended to include conventions!) because of artwork produced for NASA, the USPS etc.
• Deliberately moves us away from the words professional publication which carry significant baggage in the Hugo vocabulary – also because we want to avoid any sense that professional vs. fan is somehow related to quality of the work
• Avoids considerations of the channel through which the work was presented, whether it was actually for public purchase, and how the artist makes a living.
• Note that this would generally put much semiprozine art into the professional category, but this does not seem unreasonable given that most semiprozines are closer to professional magazines than fanzines both in appearance and being for sale.

BEST FAN ARTIST. There are several options for the Fan Artist category, and I have chosen to set out principles rather than specific wording here to avoid the “but what about …” comments. We need to agree on the principles and outcomes we want first, THEN worry about the detailed wording!

Option A – “Everything Is Eligible Somewhere”

This option maintains the status quo where Pro and Fan Artist are complementary categories which essentially cover the whole field. The definition probably refers to work produced for free distribution or direct sale within the community, placing Etsy shops, Patreons and convention sales firmly in the Fan Artist category. The lack of an intermediary, commercial client who commissions or buys and then uses the work is what stops it being professional.

Option B – “It’s A Fan Category”

With this option Fan Artist sits alongside Fan Writer, Fanzine, and Fancast as awards given to works created by and for fans and fandom. The definition would emphasise that the work is essentially created for and gifted to the community. Nominees would revert to being people creating art mainly for Fanzines, Webzines and Conventions, as was typically the case up to 2013. The category would be clearly and narrowly defined. The two potential issues would be (1) would the category still have enough depth to be credible (2) the many artists who produce work and merchandise for personal sale (sometimes making a living from it) on the convention circuit or Internet would not longer fall in either category.

Option C – “It’s Like SemiProzine”

If you think Option A is too vague and Option B too exclusive, this may be the option for you. Why not have three Awards: Best Professional Artist, Best Semi-Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist. Best Semi-Professional Artist would be the category for all those people who are producing work for direct sale to the community or online, but not for commercial and business clients. This covers an ever-growing number of artists. This would however leave the question of whether the narrower Fan Artist category would still have sufficient depth.

At the end of the day, I go back to an earlier point. The boundaries between these categories are no longer simple things with easy proxies. Certainly, we need clearly articulated definitions, but let’s keep them simple and intuitive, and trust voters to understand and nominate based on the spirit of those definitions rather than tortuous legalese!