A break from Cosplay... Let's talk about the Hugos

I don't generally vote in any awards. I have never been a member of Worldcon, so haven't ever voted in the Hugos. I usually find most awards to be a popularity contest anyway... and while they are nice and pretty on a shelf, they don't really mean all that much... to me. But they can be the validation a writer or artist needs, and they can help bring lesser-known works to a wider audience, so awards have their uses.

Which makes the gaming of the Hugo ballot by a group (that allegedly includes the incredibly misogynistic Gamergate idiots) all the more depressing. Fighting against what they see as a Leftist and literary tendency, the group made nominations as a block, and that resulted in a slate of works for the 2015 Hugos mostly chosen by this group and another, slightly more extreme, group. Lovely.

John Scalzi has a post about what he's going to do... and I mostly agree with it. This Facebook post quotes the organizers of the groups, so you see exactly where they are coming from.

The problem is that anyone who wins a Hugo this year is going to have that award tainted by the knowledge that the Hugos were definitely gamed. It's not against the rules, but it's very much against the spirit of the awards. Unless every person who nominated that slate read/watched every work and genuinely decided it was, in fact, the best of its category, then those nominations are a crappy political statement instead of a call to check out good writing. Most Hugo nominators make the effort to at least nominate something they are familiar with and enjoy. This block nominating implies that people didn't do that.

So, for the record, the 2015 Hugos are tainted. I'm hearing that a lot of people will be voting "no award" or Noah Ward, as some are calling it.

Unfortunately, some genuinely good works have been nominated by the idiot group, but if those good works win they will be seen as having gotten the award through the group's manipulation of the ballot. It would be better not to win at all than to be seen as a winner as the result of a misogynist, anti-progressive group's actions. In reading through a ton of articles about the incident, I saw that at least one nominee heard about the problem far enough in advance to turn down the nomination. Good for them. I suspect most of those in the same situation would have done the same thing, had they known what was happening.

In any case, here's the final lists with a breakdown of what came from which group. At the bottom of the post (and below on this post) is the list of 24 works that were not nominated by either of the groups. The problem then becomes people voting for these simply because they weren't on the slates... making the awards still almost as meaningless.

NOMINEES NOT APPEARING ON EITHER LIST

BEST NOVEL

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)

BEST NOVELLA

no non-tainted nominations

BEST NOVELETTE

no non-tainted nominations

BEST SHORT STORY

no non-tainted nominations

BEST RELATED WORK

no non-tainted nominations

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Ms. Marvel Volume 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)

Saga Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)

Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (LONG FORM)

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)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (SHORT FORM)

Doctor Who: “Listen” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)

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)

no non-tainted nominations

BEST EDITOR (LONG FORM)

no non-tainted nominations

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Julie Dillon

BEST SEMIPROZINE

Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews

Lightspeed Magazine edited by John Joseph Adams, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, Wendy N. Wagner, and Christie Yant

Strange Horizons Niall Harrison Editor-in-Chief

BEST FANZINE

Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Colin Harris and Helen Montgomery

BEST FANCAST

Galactic Suburbia Podcast Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)

Tea and Jeopardy Emma Newman & Peter Newman

BEST FAN WRITER

Laura J. Mixon

BEST FAN ARTIST

Ninni Aalto

Brad Foster

Elizabeth Leggett

Spring Schoenhuth

Steve Stiles

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER

Wesley Chu

I guess in the end it all depends on how you feel about slate voting in something like the Hugos. I hope they can find a way to fix the nominations in the future to prevent this sort of gaming of the system, but it's hard to see how it can be done without causing more problems as they go. Whatever the result, this year's Hugos are going to be pretty much meaningless to most people. Which is a shame, because I'm guessing some of those works deserve positive attention instead of this nonsense.