The nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards have been announced. Check out the full list below.
The nominees that follow were chosen by popular vote of members of Loncon 3 (the 2014 Worldcon), Sasquan (the 2015 Worldcon) and MidAmeriCon II (the 2016 Worldcon).
A total of 2122 valid nomination forms were received (2119 online and 3 paper).
A list of the top 15 nominees in each category, along with the number of nominations received by each, will be released after the Hugo Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 at Sasquan in Spokane, Washington.
BEST NOVEL (1827 ballots)
- Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
- Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)
- The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books)
BEST NOVELLA (1083 ballots)
- Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)
- “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)
- One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
- “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
- “The Plural of Helen of Troy” by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House)
BEST NOVELETTE (1031 ballots)
- “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014)
- “Championship B’tok” by Edward M Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014)
- “The Day The World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014)
- “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014)
- “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014)
SHORT STORY (1174 ballots)
- “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014)
- “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
- “A Single Samurai”, Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books)
- “Totaled” by Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge magazine, July 2014)
- “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
BEST RELATED WORK (1150 ballots)
- “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF” by Ken Burnside (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
- Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli (The Merry Blacksmith Press)
- Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
- “Why Science is Never Settled” by Tedd Roberts (Baen.com)
- Wisdom from my Internet by Michael Z. Williamson (Patriarchy Press)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY (785 ballots)
- Ms. Marvel Vol 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt, (Marvel Comics)
- Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)
- Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate by Carter Reid (The Zombie Nation)
- Saga, Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
- Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (LONG FORM) (1285 ballots)
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, concept and story by Ed Brubaker, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo ((Marvel Entertainment, Perception, Sony Pictures Imageworks)
- Edge of Tomorrow screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, directed by Doug Liman (Village Roadshow; RatPac-Dune Entertainment; 3 Arts Entertainment; Viz Productions)
- Guardians of the Galaxy written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, directed by James Gunn (Marvel Studios, Moving Picture Company)
- Interstellar screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, as Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy)
- The Lego Movie written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LEGO System A/S, Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation (as Warner Animation Group))
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (SHORT FORM) (938 ballots)
- Doctor Who: “Listen” written by Steven Moffat directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
- The Flash: “Pilot” teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW; Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television)
- Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper” written by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves ((HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
- Grimm: “Once We Were Gods” written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC; GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV)
- Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions, Space/BBC America)
BEST EDITOR (SHORT FORM) (870 ballots)
- Jennifer Brozek
- Vox Day
- Mike Resnick
- Edmund R. Schubert
- Bryan Thomas Schmidt
BEST EDITOR (LONG FORM) (712 ballots)
- Vox Day
- Sheila Gilbert
- Jim Minz
- Anne Sowards
- Toni Weisskopf
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST (753 ballots)
- Julie Dillon
- Kirk DouPonce
- Nick Greenwood
- Alan Pollack
- Carter Reid
BEST SEMIPROZINE (660 ballots)
- Abyss & Apex, Wendy Delmater editor and publisher
- Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Association Incorporated, 2014 editors David Kernot and Sue Bursztynski
- Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews
- Strange Horizons, Niall Harrison Editor-in-Chief
BEST FANZINE (576 ballots)
- Black Gate edited by John O’Neill
- Elitist Book Reviews edited by Steve Diamond
- Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Colin Harris and Helen Montgomery
- The Revenge of Hump Day edited by Tim Bolgeo
- Tangent SF Online edited by Dave Truesdale
BEST FANCAST (668 ballots)
- Adventures in SF Publishing Brent Bower (Executive Producer), Kristi Charish, Timothy C. Ward & Moses Siregar III (Co-Hosts, Interviewers and Producers)
- Dungeon Crawlers Radio Daniel Swenson (Producer/Host), Travis Alexander & Scott Tomlin (Hosts), Dale Newton (Host/Tech), Damien Swenson (Audio/Video Tech)
- Galactic Suburbia Podcast Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)
- The Sci Phi Show Jason Rennie
- Tea and Jeopardy Emma Newman & Peter Newman
BEST FAN WRITER (777 ballots)
- Dave Freer
- Amanda S. Green
- Jeffro Johnson
- Laura J. Mixon
- Cedar Sanderson
BEST FAN ARTIST (296 ballots)
- Ninni Aalto
- Brad Foster
- Elizabeth Leggett
- Spring Schoenhuth
- Steve Stiles
CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (851 ballots)
Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2013 or 2014, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).
- Wesley Chu *
- Jason Cordova
- Kary English *
- Rolf Nelson
- Eric. S. Raymond
*Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.
Post updated 14 April 2015: The following changes reflect eligibility rulings by Hugo administrator John Lorentz.
“Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright was previously published on a web site in 2013. Replacing Wright’s novelette on the ballot is “The Day The World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014).
Jon Eno did not publish any qualifying artwork in 2014; Kirk DouPonce has been elevated to take Eno’s place in the Best Professional Artist category.
Post updated 17 April 2015: The 2015 Hugo Award Administrators have announced that two of the finalists originally announced for the 2015 Hugo Awards have withdrawn their acceptances and will not appear on the final ballot.
In the Best Novel category, Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos was withdrawn by its author. It has been replaced by The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu).
In the Best Short category, “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet was withdrawn by its author. It has been replaced by “A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond.
Uh, hi, yes, does anyone here know if it’s possible to refund a Worldcon membership before voting starts? So you can dip out before you have to vote for, well, anything? (half-seriously)
Probably not. Wouldn’t it be better to vote for those you like and give everything else to Noah Ward?
I can count all the nominees I like this year on one hand. Literally.
Well this award has zero significance now.
Nana: Then those, and No Award, should be the only nominees on your ballot. (Please read https://theweaselking.livejournal.com/4574210.html in order to understand how to use No Award effectively.)
In whatever circle of hell Richard J Daley is burning in he’s looking up and saying, “Good job, Puppies. I wish you could’ve been part of my political machine.”
I may vomit.
Yeah, but the point is I shouldn’t HAVE to make “No Award” the winner on most of the categories on my ballot. I know these aren’t the Nebula awards we’re talking about, but is it too much for people to actually recognize the BEST SF/F in a given year, instead of turning it into a political game?!
An excellent result for the outstanding writer John Wright and others whose recognition is long overdue.
I can’t see a reason to rank NO AWARD above any of “Goblin Emperor”, “Ancillary Sword”, and “Skin Game”. And I m surely voting for my first cousin Phil Lord’s “The LEGO Movie” (and will rank the other four movies above NO AWARD) even though “The LEGO Movie” is fantasy only by a rather elastic definition of fantasy.
Anyone have short stories, novellas, novelettes on the ballot they think rank above NO AWARD? Puzzled at John C. Wright as the major figure–I loved his “The Guest Law”, but everything else written by him has bored me and I have bounced off of it…
Brad DeLong
Should have said: everything by John C. Wright I have tried to read except “The Guest Law” has bored me, and I have bounced off of it…
@patrick: Yes, at the expense of EVERYONE ELSE whose recognition is long overdue, and didn’t have the benefit of being bros with Day/Torgensen.
Glad to see John C. Wright getting some well deserved attention. Tom Kratman’s “Big Boys Don’t Cry” was heartwrenching and also deserves it’s nomination.
If you’re not happy with the nominations because of “Politics”, I’d suggest you read some of the nominated works and judge for yourself.
I would certainly have liked every category on this year’s ballot to be like last year’s short stories — i.e. all nominees good enough that I’d be happy to see any of them win — but that’s clearly not what this is.
I’m encouraging you to vote No Award aggressively, Nana, because I don’t see any other way back to better nomination slates. The, ah, backers of the rumored nominating irregularities will eventually get fed up and quit if they never win anything, right? (I admit to having hoped that that would happen last year.)
@delong: No, don’t get me wrong, The LEGO Movie was fantastic, and I’m voting for it, it’s just that I wish Snowpiercer was recognized, which was much more SF that The Winter Soldier. I’m also happy that Laura J. Mixon, Lightspeed, The Goblin Emperor, Guardians, and Lightspeed made it. It’s just that most of this list is making me wonder why I bothered paying $40.
…at least only one DW episode got nominated this year. And it was actually the best one of the year.
Also, it’s too late, but Lady Business set up a spreadsheet where people could suggest good potential nominees. There was some stuff I’d never nominate in a million years, but otherwise it gives you a much, MUCH better picture of 2014 that what was on the slates.
http://bit.ly/2015hugosheetofdoom
Lupert @13: You can decry a broken process even if the results are not uniformly awful.
I stopped being able to read John C. Wright when he called me an immoral pervert–not people like me, me specifically–for not agreeing with his particular interpretation of Christian chastity.
…and here’s one for this year, if you’re sick of this.
http://bit.ly/hugoaward2016
I did that last year. I was so uniformly unimpressed with last year’s slate nominations that I wrote two lengthy blog posts explaining exactly why (IMNSHO) none of them should have been nominated. (1) (2) I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised by this year’s slate nominations, but I am not holding my breath.
Count me thrilled to see John C. Wright’s nominations as well. And I’m honestly amazed to see Tom Kratman on there for the novella category (although “Big Boys Don’t Cry” IMHO is excellent and deserving of a Hugo), Sad Puppies or no, simply because the mere mention of his name is enough to cause Scanners-style head explosions among the activist literary left.
Speaking of which: Ohmigod Vox Day. I need to go buy more popcorn. The coming Internet cataclysm will be epic.
No Award will be prominent. It’s a shame that a lot of good stuff got bumped.
Regarding No Award voting: would ask that people not write off Marko Kloos just because he was on the SP slate. No idea why he was included, but he is not in philosphical league with them, to my knowledge (I follow him on Twitter). He’s a friend of Scalzi’s and a former Viable Paradise student for pete’s sake.
Vox Day, seriously? A guy who advertises himself as the Voice of God? Talk about swollen egos, not to mention the history of sexism and general assholery. The Hugos used to mean something when the people who voted on them were actual science fiction fans — not selfish glibertarian jerks trying to score points over people with consciences about how their behavior affects others.
Huge fan of The Goblin Emperor. So much so that after finishing it, I went back to check something near the beginning and wound up reading the whole damn thing again.
Glad it made the finalists, and I really hope it wins!
@Tehanu: We should start our OWN awards! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the awards!
I’d heard that there were some attempts by certain groups to ensure authors they agreed with ideologically were on the Hugo Ballots. From the reactions here, it seems that it worked. Are there are good overviews of what’s going on floating around the net (blog posts or the like). Or does anyone want to give an overview for those of us late to the party?
I tend to be a few years behind on my SF/F reading (student budgets and hardcovers don’t mix well), so I don’t recognize most of the authors either way.
Well, at least I’ll enjoy reading a decent proportion of the novels and related works, but man the short fiction is going to be a Sad Puppies slog from the looks of this. Oh well, maybe some of it will be as laughably, hilariously undeserving as Vox Day was last year and it will cross the line into entertainment. I had a very good time MS3K-ing that piece of schlock within an inch of its life.
Seriously though, nominators? This is or was about the only fan award that actually has some meaning, historically. That would be a horrible thing to lose if this goes on. I’m not telling anyone what to nominate if they absolutely, genuinely believe it was the best of its year (I’ve certainly made some off-the-wall nominations, though it looks like no one was with me on any of those this year), but don’t go manipulating it just because you’re mad at the Activist Literary Left, and at least consider nominating a work whose themes trouble you if it’s well-written.
Glad Jo Walton at least got some recognition elsewhere, though admittedly she’s dominated the Hugos for a while now.
Back when I was a kid, in the 80’s, the only science-fiction that made it regularly to the markets here in Mexico were the obvious classics (Bradbury, Asimov, Huxley), and the Hugo Awards winners. Back then, whenever I saw something that had won a Hugo Award, it meant that thousands of fans had voted for it, based on how good the story was.
Sadly, if all this turns into a right-versus-left, us-versus-them conflict, then the awards will lose their meaning and it will turn into a popularity contest.
@mutantalbinocrocodile: Uh, I’m gonna tell you now that “Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth” will make you want to strangle small animals.
The awards already are a popularity contest instead of a best of contest.
@tauchiss: “Agreed with ideologically?” I wasn’t aware Kevin J. Anderson or Jim Butcher were “right-wingers,” and both of them were nominated for the Sad Puppies slate. There were a couple of other similarly-inclined authors who were SP-nominated, and subsequently asked to have their names removed, due to hate mail and threats from the anti-Puppies crowd.
Brad Torgersen is likewise liberalish; Mike Williamson and Marko Kloos tend to the left side of libertarianism, and Larry Correia (who was also apprently nominated this year, but declined) is a rightish libertarian. John C. Wright and Vox, of course, do qualify as strong religious conservatives, but taken all in all, the Sad Puppies slate took in a pretty broad swath of the spectrum. I don’t think you can say that of their opposition.
Aw, c’mon, people. It’s not as if Sad Puppies have any monopoly on hinky behavior. Just look at the award to Goblet of Fire a few years back. How many Harry Potter fans do you think actually bothered to read any of the other titles on the list?
The Hugos are a popularity contest. They’ve always been a popularity contest. And they’re a popularity contest with a remarkably low hurdle to entry. You just pay some money and boom, you get to vote.
Even so, a really tiny number of people even bother. There were only about 2,000 valid ballots this year. 2,000! How many people do you think actually read science fiction? A lot more than 2,000. So what we have is a popularity contest run as a self-selecting poll with an extremely tiny sample.
Nobody comes along to check to see if you’ve read all the stuff. Most people only have their own conscience to go by in those matters, and who knows how many people’s conscience is overridden by seeing something they like get nominated. Or even something by an author they like but they haven’t read yet. After all, how good could all those other things they haven’t read be? Can’t be any good, or they’d have already read them.
Hell, for all I know people some people might roll dice or throw darts to decide who they’re going to vote for. And you can’t stop them. Any of them. Be they Sad Puppies or convention-goers.
And even if they did read them all, what makes the average Hugo voter qualified to judge a particular book on its artistic merits, as opposed to whichever one they just happened to like most? They’re a popularity contest.
For that reason, it’s really kind of silly to care much about who wins or loses in the Hugos. To anyone who knows anything about how they work, they’ve really got about the same credibility as your average Internet poll. And they always have, Sad Puppies or no Sad Puppies.
They do look impressive on the covers of books to the people who don’t understand how they work. But then, so does foil embossing. And as far as an indicator of overall quality goes, they really both have about the same level of significance. Especially this year.
So, what the hell. If there aren’t enough “legitimate” voters to keep the puppies off the carpet, maybe the Sad Puppies deserve to win. Maybe it’ll prompt other people to run their own get-out-the-vote campaigns next year and increase the sample size so it’s a slightly larger fractional percentage of all SF readership.
(I’d personally like to see Gen Con named a WorldCon some year. It has an attendance base of 56,000 people, most of whom are genre fans, plus a significant programming track for writers, editors, and readers. That would be considerably more potential Hugo voters and nominators than LonCon had! There’s a whole section of the exhibition hall set aside for writers to sell their books. There are many self-published and professional authors of varying levels of fame in attendance every year, both as guests and regular attendees. Jim Butcher was there last year. So was Larry Correia, for that matter. Maybe that’s how Butcher got picked for Sad Puppies this year?)
In the end, it’s just a popularity contest, after all. It’s not as if it really means anything.
Hopefully, Toni Weisskopf can win in BEST EDITOR (LONG FORM) this year. I’m impressed with this year’s hugo finalists
I’ve been watching this whole thing from the sidelines for a while, as a spectator sport. Just came from Larry Correia’s site, it seems that his latest MHI novel got the nomination. He turned it down. So it looks like it isn’t about getting a winged dildo for Larry’s mantel. It isn’t about the ego of the terrible right wing monsters who want to disrupt Fandom. Maybe…I don’t know, shooting from the hip here…maybe you’re wrong. It’s a terrible thing to realize you’ve screwed up. I’ve been there, I’ve done things that were wrong. Ooops. Maybe that’s why Marko Kloos made the Sad Puppies slate, he wrote a good story. Think how some of these authors feel when they make the list for the Hugo, the Freaking HUGO! And someone says their story sucks, and they want to “vomit”. You say the system doesn’t work, because some obscure work that you liked didn’t make it, because hundreds of other voters thought something else was better. I read “I-robot” in 1968, and I’ve been reading Science Fiction ever since. I am SF.
Thrilled to see Viz Productions honored for EDGE OF TOMORROW.
@Harry Govna
“some obscure work” = “something I haven’t heard about and didn’t bother to look up”
Also, “I am SF”? Not “We are SF”? That kind of exclusivism thinking is what’s causing all these problems in the first place.
of all 150 candidates only 11 were not on sad puppies slate of which 5 were in categories where sad puppies did not have 5 people on their own slate all of the people they nominated in those categories did get in
Well, this has left me highly depressed and genuinely wondering if it’s worth shelling out for a membership to vote this year. I highly enjoyed doing it last year and was really looking forward to it this year…until this moment. I really want the Hugos to mean something…but they don’t to me this year. Let me be clear, I don’t care what the idealogy is, slate voting is a lose-lose no matter how you look at it.
I’m not sure I want to live here anymore. The rancor and the hate make it really difficult.
It’s really about ethics in Hugo voting, right?
I’ve seen a lot of interesting commentary on this subject, but the most surprising to me is that for all the hue and cry none of these categories had even 2,000 ballots cast. That’s just a pitifully small number. And even so there are people complaining that these 2015 nominees were selected by people who are not “true fans”. Who exactly are these mysterious “true fans”, and why are there so few of them? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, the self-selected pool of Hugo voters had become so small and insulated as to not be representative of the market as a whole? There are tens of thousands of SF readers out there. Are they not fans? Why do we limit the control of these awards to those who can attend conventions? If the Hugos are supposed to be the most important awards in SF, selected by the fans, then lets get more fans involved in the process.
Some people here are saying that they would rather vote “No Award” than give any award out; that they don’t like ANY of the choices. You know what that means? Those people have different taste in SF than the majority of the voters this year. That’s it. That doesn’t mean their tastes are wrong. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But if you don’t like that everyone else’s opinions aren’t the same as yours and therefore want to exclude the majority of opinions, that’s a sure fire way to make the awards meaningless.
@46: “Why do we limit the control of these awards to those who can attend conventions?”
Different methods of voting can lead to different ways of gaming the system. If you give everyone on the planet a free vote on who wins the awards, what’s to stop a country’s government from “suggesting” to its population that they should vote for a certain group of authors or stories (for whatever reason, be it that the authors are citizens of that country or that the stories paint that country in a good light)? Suddenly the different tastes of 30 to 40 thousand fans are irrelevant considering the millions of votes coming in from overseas.
Set up a jury to decide which books and stories are considered “worthy” of being on the ballots? Then the discussion turns into one of “who gets to be on that jury” and then you’re just having the same problem on a different battleground.
I suppose there’s no way of always pleasing everyone. I just hope things get settled (somehow) so that the Hugo awards don’t get turned into something irrelevant and meaningless in a few more years.
@46: “Why do we limit the control of these awards to those who can attend conventions?”
From the Hugo Awards website: “The Hugo Awards are trademarked by the World Science Fiction Society(“WSFS”), an unincorporated literary society which sponsors the annualWorld Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”) and the Hugo Awards. WSFS is really just a framework for the individual Worldcons”
Each individual Worldcon convention administers that year’s Hugo Awards, but that is part and parcel of the award – they are an aspect of Worldcon.
With that said, the Hugo Awards are not limited to just people who attend the convention. Each worldcon offers a supporting membership (which is really a way to say “hey, I support what you’re doing as a convention, have some money to keep doing it!”) which also conveys nominating and voting rights for the Hugo Awards.
What I have always found interesting is that relatively few people vote for the Hugo Awards out of those who attend. For example, last year 5527 attending memberships were purchased and 2882 supporting memberships were purchased (8409 total), but there were only 3587 total voters last year and not everyone voted in every category.
If you assume that at least half of the supporting members voted (which is just a random guess, but I buy supporting memberships to nominate and vote), then it is a decreasing number of attending members who actual participate.
I have to say – it turns out that I’ve actually read all 5 of the best novel nominees. I appreciated all of those; some more, some less – but I can see the nomination for each of them. Which one is the one I’m supposed to be outraged by?
I’m conflicted by my love of the Dresden books in general and the way Skin game advanced a fun story for me vs. the way I felt about the Goblin Emperor as a standalone work – but I enjoyed Lines of Departure more than I expected as well. I can appreciate the craft behind Ancillary Sword, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
I’m less familiar with the works in the shorter forms becuase I don’t read as much outside of the Novels – but I don’t see anything in the novel list that makes me say “Those bastards! How could they!”.
The process for voting is really pretty straightforward. Get either a supporting or attending membership and vote for what you like. That’s it. No secrets. No secret masters. It works like this because as jsherry@48 mentions, that’s how the Hugo awards are defined to work.
As to why there isn’t more voting, one common thread I’ve seen is that people don’t feel qualified in some way. They haven’t read everything or something.
To that I say, don’t worry about it. If you read one thing and thought it was great then go vote for that. The way the nominatin process is supposed to work is as a kind of collective gestalt gathering. Everyone votes for what they liked and then the top 5 go forward for the final voting process.
Slate voting breaks this process by greatly magnifying the voting power of a small block of voters.
49: Honestly, the novel category isn’t too bad. I mean, a lot of us have problem with the slate voting idea, and so the nominees that were on that slate are tainted by association, but among the novel nominees, they’re not that bad. They weren’t what I would have chosen, but aside from one on quality alone (which I won’t name out of politeness, and also because I’m basing this judgement not on the novel itself, but by a novella by the author, set in the universe, that I read… I could be wrong) doesn’t belong, I don’t necessarily think they’re BAD choices.
It’s many of the other categories, the shorter fiction, where the same person (and utter homophobe) gets nominated three times in a single category, or where every piece of fiction is from the slate, where Vox Day, a racist who actually believes women’s right to vote should be retracted for their own good and his pet publishing house dominate.
And even there, I wouldn’t like them being there, but I’d grit my teeth about it, if it wasn’t for the slate voting that got there, where instead of this group of disgruntled fans who have a problem with the prior choices (a problem which seems pretty nonsensical to me) choosing whatever individual works they liked, a group all piled on the same five noms in each category to make sure they were the only options when it came for the final vote. I wouldn’t like that regardless of which side did it. And I may well vote No Award to discourage it in the future (I’ll give most of them a fair try, but I’ll be merciless in applying the standard of ‘does this deserve to win a major award’)
@44 if you don’t like slate nominated candidates, then make sure you vote No Award and leave all the slate-nominated candidates off the ballot. If ‘No Award’ wins, then presumably after a while, the people nominating slates will go away.
Also, if you care about the award, make some nominations! Sure you’re “not qualified”, but if you think something you read might be worthy, then nominate it. You paid 40 bucks for the privilege, after all (since you’re thinking of voting). Even if the people nominating slates don’t go away, if even 20% of the people who paid for memberships of whatever stripe nominated, the slates would probably be overwhelmed.
That said, my opinion is that slate-wide voting hurts everyone and has got to go… gotta nip this problem in the bud, so to speak before we get slates of all stripes competing for the award.
@51. Peter D.
I completely agree with you. If there was someone who held idealogical beliefs that I didn’t agree with got a work nominated that strictly held those beliefs, I would give it all due consideration. But slate voting just destroys the spirit of the Hugos in general.
I’m still trying to decide whether this is worth my investment and trying to fight for the Hugos to retain relevance, or if it’s genuinely not worth it and see how it shakes out in the years to come…
@52. cheem
Here’s the problem with that. I’m pretty sure that 20% of the people who paid for memberships did nominate works. But they didn’t band together to agree on five works that all of them would nominate. I put forth my nominations of the works that I thought were deserving. But I would be incredibly surprised if there was even 2% of the voters who nominated the same 5 works that I did. So, a minority can very easily overwhelm the voting system if they band together to make a slate vote…which is what happened.
The contention that there have been slates in the past they were just secret is hard to credit. If a slate is secret, how can enough people find it to vote for it? If enough people know about it to get a work on the ballot, how can it be secret? Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead; exactly what kind of casualty rate are you picturing for the Hugo voting pool?
There were at least two works published in 2014 that are exactly the kind of thing that the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies would love. The Heinlein bio, and Ken Liu’s _The Three Body Problem_. Both works were well known in their respective areas and would have had a decent shot at the Hugo Ballot.
Larry Correia (Sad Puppy) admitted in a comment on his blog that he would have put the Heinlein bio on his slate if he’d known about it in time. Vox Day (Rabid Puppy) admitted in a comment on File 770 that he would have put _The Three Body Problem_ on *his* slate if he’d known about it in time.
The slates took three places in the Best Novel category and all five places in the Best Related Work category, shutting out non-slate works. Including the Heinlein bio and _Three Body Problem_.
Because slates don’t just hurt “those poopy-heads whose tastes differ from mine.” Slates hurt all non-slate works, including works that the slate makers would have loved to have on the final ballot. For this reason I will be reading all works in the Hugo packet, but any work that was on a slate will be going below “No Award” on my ballot. Slates are inherently unfair, and I will not vote to give a Hugo to a work that got an unfair boost from a slate, period.
I know that many people weren’t asked before their works were slated, and many people accepted but had no idea just how unfair the slate was going to turn out to be. My heart goes out to these authors. I will read their works, and if I like them I will continue to follow their work. Perhaps in some more auspicious future year I can nominate and vote for one of their works with an undivided heart.
“Could it be that maybe, just maybe, the self-selected pool of Hugo voters had become so small and insulated as to not be representative of the market as a whole?”
Here’s a trick: go to any Barnes & Noble in America and look for any of the Best Related Works nominated this year. The market!
DonM@57:The works on the SP slate may or may not be the greatest things ever. The problem is that they were in essence picked by a minority of the nominators with the effect of pushing off other works that may also have been the greatest thing ever. Slate voting is a bad road to go down for everyone and so its results should not be rewarded.
If “#1 Bestselling Author X” really wants a Hugo, they have now been given a clear way to do this in perpetuity. That really isn’t the system we want. If it were, the whole system could be shortened to give out the award to whoever sold the most books.
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