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The Intermittent Hugo Course
First of all, if you missed the announcement yesterday:
The final ballot for the Hugo Awards, which will be voted on by the membership of LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, has been posted, here. Congratulations to all the nominees!
Now, this is an interesting ballot for a buncha reasons.
First, the Hugo Administrators have been doing a dern good job of growing the number of readers involved in the nomination process. This year 1,343 valid ballots were received by the committee, up from last year's record of 1,101. When I wrote the first Intermittent Hugo blog post, in 2007, 567 votes on the final ballot decided "Best Novel" for 2006.
In 2011, AussieCon managed to get a whopping 1,094 valid Hugo ballots -- meaning that more than half of their membership voted.
So! More participants. Excellent.
What's also interesting about this ballot is what's been nominated. Kim Stanley Robinson, Lois McMaster Bujold, and John Scalzi aren't exactly strangers to the Hugo nominee list, but Saladin Ahmed is a first-time novelist.
Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is on this ballot no less than four times (five times, if you count the Podcast category, but I'm just dealing with fiction, here), with two entries in the Novelette category.
Out of 18 nominees, 8 are women (that's counting only once for Mira/Seanan; had she in fact been two women rather than one with the energy of three, fully half of the fiction ballot would have been held by women). There's been some...complaint over the last few years over the lack of women represented in the Hugo ballots; perhaps this year is the beginning of a trend.
When I posted the link to the nominee list, and congratulations on my Facebook wall yesterday, a couple people wanted to know why Lee and Miller aren't on the list*, and I said I'd explain that, so below is the explanation.
The Hugo Awards are a readers award, like the SFSite Readers Choice, but there are a few important differences:
1. The SFSite Readers Choice is open to anyone within the sound of its webpage, and
2. There is no monetary cost involved in voting.
Readers who nominate for and vote on the Hugo Awards must:
1. Be either an Attending or Supporting member of the current WorldCon (the full rules are here)
...and...
2. Right now, Attending Memberships are $200; Supporting Memberships are $60
So, what you have in the case of the Hugos is a closed pool of self-selected, convention-going readers/voters. These readers/voters tend to read and vote for writers they know. Growing the pool of readers/voters by making participation more attractive to people who don't attend WorldCons is, I think, going to change -- to widen -- the nominations. I think this year's ballot shows the beginnings of that.
What any of this has to do with a lack of Lee-and-Miller on the ballot is. . .the core of our readership are not convention-going fans, and therefore they do not nominate for, or vote on, the Hugo Awards.
This is not to be taken as a complaint; I don't feel especially ill-used. It is what it is, and I'm not telling any tales out of school when I say that our fans are the envy of writers everywhere.
Steve and I aren't shy about promoting our work, and we'll continue to mention it when we have works that are eligible for this or that award, because, hey -- it's what writers do.
Thank you all for your ongoing interest in and support of our work.
__________
*This is, in a way, like asking a writer why their novel hasn't been made into a movie. "No interest," is kinda hard to argue with.
Hugo's
Re: Hugo's
And it's on-point here to note Resnick's Law: Money will get you through times of no awards better than awards will get you through times of no money.
Reno was an absolutely fantastic WorldCon; Steve and I had a great time, not the least because we got to meet readers, like yourself, who we had never met before, because we so rarely get Out That Way. But, yeah, big ding to the piggy-bank.
Hugo Awards
And yes, your fans are indeed the envy of everyone. As I always say they are so smart. There always seems to be some fans that can solve any problem.
But then you work extremely hard to keep up extremely interesting communication with your fans. I'm not in touch with very many other authors. Those I investigate have web sites without too much info on them. Nothing about the process of writing and publishing books. Nothing of almost daily of interest. One publishes a blog from time to time on particular subjects but none like yousse guys picture of your daily lives which I just love: trip to the mechanic, out to lunch what you had for lunch, shopping, but mainly the daily lives of your cats which is just terrific. Cats helping with the work. Hoping Socks still maintaining by the way. Photos: cats, beautiful Maine beaches, portraits of various towns in Maine some with photos, snowfall, etc.
All this takes a lot of work. I really appreciate it. All with great descriptions of everything. Plus very interesting Facebook postings on lots of topics with lots of helpful links.
As I've commented before: my favorite author's web site for unintended comedy is George RR Martin's. He's selling a lot of stuff there: swords anyone? One blog posting really criticized his fans for wanting him to finish his 6th book already. He was really mad about that! .He says he's got other projects he has to do and the fans shouldn't get all over him for anything.....still laughing....My daughter told me she's afraid he might actually pass away before he finishes the book. To her he seems very old, you see. Funny!