Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Some Hugo Thoughts...

Obviously, I'm going to be a little obsessed with the Hugos for a bit. Even if I was still working full-time, I'd want to comment on the situation. With a little more time to spare (although job hunting is extremely time-consuming and annoying) I can say a little more.

Let's start with a report this morning that a finalist has withdrawn after realizing that the slate he willingly participated in ran the whole category. You can check out the effect the slates had on the final lists at File 770, which had some problems last night and crashed.

George R. R. Martin has weighed in on the situation. I think there's an admission in there that simply getting more people to nominate isn't going to work. He, like me, was optimistic that a larger turnout could counter the effects of the slates. While that may have worked in some categories, the rabid slates ran multiple categories anyway. I firmly believe now that EPH and, yeah, maybe 4-6, are the only way to fix the nominating process to keep people from gaming it.

The rabids this year pulled a nasty dirty trick... they picked a number of works that were likely to be nominated and put them on the slate. My guess is they think this means they can claim victory either way. If their "choice" is awarded the Hugo, they say, "Look, we nominated it!" while if it's no-awarded, they can say, "Ha, you hate your own favorites!" In addition, if the creator's withdraw their work, the rabid morons can say, "We got another SJW to quit, yay!" So there is no victory situation for non-puppies in their eyes... except.

Except I never looked at the slates before I nominated, and I put Penric's Demon on the "Best Novella" list, so I'm going to vote for it regardless of the slate. The Sandman: Overture was likely to make the cut anyway. Why wouldn't I vote for it? In the end, if those works that were likely to make it anyway get the Hugo, the rabids won't have won because they hate those works. So there is a victory situation for non-puppies... vote on merit and not because something did or did not appear on a slate.

That said, I will not read any of the crap from the rabid puppies vanity press this year. I just won't do it. If a work was published by the organizer of the rabid puppies slate, I will know not to bother with it. Not one of the things published by that press that I read last year was worth the time. I'm not going to put myself through it again. All of them will be left off my final ballot as "revenge" for making me read their crap last year.

This year I'm also excited to be working on the 1941 Retro Hugos... it's going to be a thrill to hunt some of those down. I'm a little concerned about a couple of the categories, particularly fanzine, and I hope there's something in the packet about those. The movies will be good movie night with hubby fodder, so I'm looking forward to hunting them down.

Ok, time to get to work on the job hunt.

1 comments:

Eric said...

I am just disappointed that there were no Retro Hugos last year for 1940. That would have made The Wizard of Oz eligible for dramatic presentation!