The Hugo’s the Thing, Whereby We’ll Touch the Conscience of the King

Most sf writers have never been on trading cards either, but they get a lot more worked up about their shot at winning a Hugo Award.

Today in a discussion on Lou Antonelli’s Facebook page Ej Shumak pointed out that right after the 2008 Hugos were given at Denvention 3, Kathryn Cramer made a list of 100+ writers who have never won a Hugo.

I have been irritated enough by discussions as to why more people under 40 haven’t won Hugos, that I have spent a few hours composing a list of people who you might think had won Hugos, or perhaps ought to have won a Hugo or two, or are just plain pretty good writers —— but haven’t won a Hugo. There are bestselling writers here, hall-of-famers, and at least one person who turned down the Nebula.

Looking over this list, I think it’s fair to say that most good writers in the science fiction and fantasy field have never won a Hugo Award.

It’s an impressive list. (Except Ray Bradbury never should have been on it – he won a Retro Hugo in 2004 for Fahrenheit 451.) And the passage of time since 2008 has done little to alter the status quo.

Only four of the writers named by Cramer have won any of the 60-70 Hugos given since then:

  • 2010: China Miéville. Best Novel: The City & the City
  • 2010: Peter Watts. Best Novelette: “The Island”
  • 2012: Kij Johnson. Best Novella: “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”
  • 2013: Pat Cadigan. Best Novelette: “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”

67 thoughts on “The Hugo’s the Thing, Whereby We’ll Touch the Conscience of the King

  1. Petra, I agree with you. And I thought that the Asimov and the Heinlein were works that were there because Big Name Author more than because Really Good Work.

  2. sez Peace Is My Middle Name on July 8, 2015 at 4:35 pm:

    I wonder if those posters are making arguments not so much to change the minds of the people they are ostensibly arguing with, but to sow doubt and confusion in the minds of more casual readers and lurkers.

    To the extent that these jokers have anything resembling a coherent strategy, I suspect you’re right; it’s all about generating a critical mass of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

  3. What isn’t making sense, is that I can’t really see that many of Puppydumb’s residents attending the Business Meeting.

    I suppose my problem is expecting this crew’s operations to have some basis in logic…

    I’m back at Square One: There’s no there there.

  4. My guess is, the Puppies’ anti-EPH campaign is intended to generate FUD in the minds of people who will attend the Business Meeting. If a sufficiently large number of attendees can be primed to reject EPH, does it matter how many of them (if any) are actual Puppies?

  5. Anyone that attends the Business Meeting is probably there because they care enough to read and think for themselves. So if someone can be primed to reject EPH based on what had been said against it online and without trying to think on their own on the topic, well… I am not that worried.

    I suspect that you may be right about why it is happening. I just do not see that it will be as effective as the people that are doing it expect. It relies on people trusting sources with no research… and somehow I do not believe that the majority of the BM attendees will fall under that category.

  6. This is the problem when real action and dedication is required of people whose movement is based on manipulation, spin, ease, and sloth.

    The people who make it to the business meeting have real devotion. Good luck to the Puppies in convincing such people that taking actions to defang the Puppies’ ballot-grabbing strategy is a bad idea.

  7. Yeah, I tend to agree that FUD tactics are unlikely to work on the typical Business-Meeting-attending fan. But “you go to war with the weapons you have, not the weapons you wish you had”, right?

    Hmmm… I wonder how many Puppies, and/or Puppy-minions, will attend the Business Meeting? The Puppies’ FUD tactics are unlikely to work on fen who actually care whether or not the Hugos die the death of a thousand slates, granted. But how many Hugo-loving fen will show up for the Business Meeting? A small percentage of the total pool of Hugo nominators was all it took to ram the friggin’ Puppy slates down everybody’s throats this year; just how many Puppies-in-attendance would it take to monkeywrench the Business meeting?

  8. Peace et al

    I would not be surprised if Sads and Rads attended the business session; they are there to strike a blow, man, at its corruption which has disenfranchised straight white guys everywhere, and take back the Hugos.

    Bearing mind the fact Kevin has had to waste vast amounts of time explainimg to people that is no Strong White Man in charge of the Hugo who can order everybody to do everything, this is a delusion but obviously they have learned that if they can’t get “High Noon’ the business meeting is an excellent substitute…

  9. @Emma:

    I think Eric Flint, like Kathryn Cramer, fell into the trap of forgetting that the Hugo is about specific books, not their authors’ general output.)

    Kathryn Cramer’s list really doesn’t make sense.

    I think this complaint is premised on a misreading of Cramer’s purpose with her post. If anything, she was hinting at your own point a decade ahead of you. She doesn’t say, “These are writers who should have won a Hugo.” She says, These are excellent writers who never did win. And the context of her list is explicit:

    I have been irritated enough by discussions as to why more people under 30 40 haven’t won Hugos, that I have spent a few hours composing a list of people who you might think had won Hugos, or perhaps ought to have won a Hugo or two, or are just plain pretty good writers —— but haven’t won a Hugo.

    Basically, she was annoyed at empty “Why haven’t [these people] won Hugos?” complaints and set out to show that even most esteemed writers never win them so shut up you kids. At no point does she claim The 100 were robbed of Hugos they deserved.

  10. Lori Coulson: I can’t really see that many of Puppydumb’s residents attending the Business Meeting.

    Annie Y: I just do not see that it will be as effective as the people that are doing it expect. It relies on people trusting sources with no research… and somehow I do not believe that the majority of the BM attendees will fall under that category.

    Cubist: Yeah, I tend to agree that FUD tactics are unlikely to work on the typical Business-Meeting-attending fan.

    This is where their world-view fails them. They are willing to take on, verbatim, opinions which have been handed to them, rather than thinking for themselves. They believe that there really is some Sekrit SJW Kabal telling non-Puppies how and what to think, and that non-Puppies take marching orders toward some political endgoal in the same way that they do, so they think that FUD is an effective strategy.

    The root problem with their approach is that Worldcon fans tend to be very independent, critical thinkers — the sort of people on whom the Brian Z sort of tactics do not work very well.

    I’ve heard that they’re planning to show up “in force” at Worldcon 2016 with the goal of voting down EPH in its second-year hearing. I think that they are going to be in for a very big surprise.

  11. Hmmm… all the Puppies really need is to prevent EPH from being voted upon—motion to table the vote until next year, filibuster-y speechifying, yada yada yada. As few as 1 (one) Puppy could conceivably bring everything to a screeching halt, assuming that Pup knows what they’re doing… which is not necessarily a safe assumption to make, granted…

    I think I’ll trust Kevin Standlee to (a) be aware of this sort of crap if (when) it happens, and (b) know how to shut it down.

  12. Cubist: Hmmm… all the Puppies really need is to prevent EPH from being voted upon — motion to table the vote until next year, filibuster-y speechifying, yada yada yada. As few as 1 (one) Puppy could conceivably bring everything to a screeching halt, assuming that Pup knows what they’re doing…

    Actually, no. WSFS rules provide various methods of preventing that from happening. The WSFS Business Meeting is a lot less manipulable by a small group of malign individuals than is the U.S. Congress. In order to stall EPH, the Puppies would have to have a majority of voters in attendance at the meeting.

  13. Re: The Business Meeting: Remember that, prior to the nominations this year, and excluding, say, Brad, Vox, and Larry, a lot of the Puppies seem to have had no idea what Worldcon was, or that it was a thing you could go to, and the cost of traveling there is far, far more than the $40 for a supporting membership. I know of between 4 and 5 rabid puppies attending Worldcon this year–that’s it. (Sads–harder to say.) There *might* be multiple puppies at the Business Meeting, but my guess is that number will be single-digits.

  14. Greg: There *might* be multiple puppies at the Business Meeting, but my guess is that number will be single-digits.

    Yeah, Worldcon (and the major expenditure that attending it entails) is going to have zero appeal for the Puppies who are in it purely for political reasons. The other problem for them is that Puppies are not generally going to be the sort of people who are willing to spend 1-2 hours a day in the Business Meeting — especially when the WSFS rules have clauses specifically designed to enable shutting down attempts at disruption.

    I have to admit that I am greatly looking forward to Brian Z’s appearance at the Business Meeting next year at MidAmericon.

  15. On the other hand…

    I went to my first business meeting because a friend urged me to come along to vote her way on a proposal, and I had nothing else I wanted to do that hour.

    Unfortunately for her, I read the proposal and listened to the debate, and made one more vote against her side. (I no longer remember what it was about, let alone which way I voted.)

  16. I’ve had more than one person come to me after a Business Meeting and say, “Why didn’t you tell me this was so [fascinating/funny/interesting]?”

    My answer inevitably has been a variation of, “Because you wouldn’t have believed me.”

    Of course now we have recordings of the meetings, so you can actually go look at the cut-and-thrust of a deliberative assembly’s debate without actually using up valuable Worldcon-attending time. It’s certainly not for everyone. I think it was Frank Wu who watched the Westercon Site Selection from a few years ago and commented that he’d rather gouge his eyeballs out than have to participate in something like that.

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