I’ve previously discussed my love of reading; tonight specifically I’d like to talk about science fiction/fantasy and the Hugo Awards. The Hugo Awards are a fan based award; fans nominate their favorite works at the beginning of each year, the most popular nominations are then voted on using ranked choice voting, and winners are announced at that year’s Worldcon. Fans need to be a member of Worldcon to be eligible to nominate and vote for the Hugos.
The Hugo Awards have been around since 1955, though the categories have changed at times over the years as new categories are added or old ones dropped. This year there’s a new category for “Best Series”, which may or may not continue in later years — at each Worldcon, there is a “business meeting” where changes are voted on. There’s also a major change to the way nominating votes are tallied this year, thanks in large part to slates of works dominating the ballot in 2015 & 2016.
I’ll note here what I mean by “slate” — each member of Worldcon could nominate up to 5 eligible works in a category, and the final ballot consisted of the top 5 finalists. The finalists were those who got the most votes in a category, but as the number of total voters is historically low (2014 had just over 1900 nominating ballots, 2015 had 2122; 2016 had a record 4032 nominating ballots), and as not everyone nominates in every category or for every slot in a category, it took very few votes to game the system.
For example, in the “Short Story” category in 2014, there were 865 nominating ballots. (Link to 2014 Hugo Stats.) The stories that took the top spots, however, received 79, 73, 65, & 43 votes respectively. You can see how with a relatively small group of people all voting for the same 4 or 5 stories, that they could run the list. In 2015, the Short Story category had 1174 ballots, and the top vote getters for the final ballot had 226, 184, 162, 151, & 132 nominations (there were two others with higher totals that were withdrawn before final voting). (Link to 2015 Hugo Stats.)
Some people have take the view that works by non-white or non-male authors (or works containing non-white/non-male characters) are only nominated out of a sense of affirmative action, rather than for telling a good story, and thus they ran slates of works designed to ‘counter-balance’ this. This was used by two groups, “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies”, to nominate authors/works they felt had been pushed aside by “affirmative action”. There’s a lot of history I won’t get into, but author Jim C Hines has a good round-up of the Puppy wars from 2015; 2016 was similar in that the Rabid Puppies again dominated the nominations, whereas the Sad Puppies were less effective (having moved to providing “recommended” lists that weren’t in slate format). (I refuse to link to the Puppy sites, but if you want to see the worst of it, google Theodore Beale aka Vox Day, and try not to throw up.)
Nominations close in mid-March, and so the real reason I’m writing about all of this is to ask for any recommendations you might have for sci-fi/fantasy works published last year that you think were exceptionally good. The list of categories is here; I’m open to suggestions. I do a lot of reading, but usually not of current works, and I’m woefully ignorant of graphic stories, editors, fancasts, magazines, and related works, so suggestions in those areas are especially appreciated. In case there’s any doubt, I’ll be looking into and reading the suggestions and deciding if I like them enough to nominate them; not nominating them by proxy just because they’re suggested. (This also means suggestions for Dramatic Presentation are wasted on me, because I don’t watch TV and rarely see movies, so I don’t intend to nominate anything there.)
So, read anything worthwhile lately? (And although I’m open to suggestions as noted above, feel free to list any of your favorite works that aren’t eligible for or are unrelated to the Hugos.)
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
As always, this is an open thread and nothing is off-topic. What do you want to kibitz about tonight?