How did I do?

So, I've been asked on Facebook each time I've posted a Hugo review which of the nominees were on slates (Hi, Denise). I have been answering as I go, and sometimes the results have startled me a little.

I'm going to round up the four categories I've reviewed and figure out which ones have slate nominees and what I thought of those nominees.

Short Stories

I started with Short Stories. All five of the nominees were on slates. Two of them, "On A Spiritual Plain" and "Totaled" were on both slates. "A Single Samurai" was only on the Sad Puppies slate. "Turncoat" and "Parliament" were only on the Rapid Puppies slate.

I found "Totaled" to be the only one worthy of an award. It is on my ballot, but I left the other four off. Yes, "No Award" is also on my ballot... right above "Totaled". While it's a good story, I'm not convinced it's Hugo-worthy and could not bring myself to rank it first.

Fan Artist

My second category was Fan Artist. None of the nominees were on the slates. I'm not sure why, but that's what happened. I haven't filled out the ballot for this category yet, but I was inclined to put all five on it.

Professional Artist

Four of the five nominees in Professional Artist were on the slates. Kirk DouPounce is only on the Rapid Puppies while Nick Greenwood, Alan Pollack and Carter Reid all are on both slates. Julie Dillon is not on a slate.

I loved Dillon's work. It spoke to me and I enjoyed it immensely. The others were kind of "meh" for me. I had intended to put Dillon first and "No Award" second, then rank the others below. I will probably still do that.

Graphic Story

There was only one slate nominee in the Graphic Story category, and that was Carter Reid's zombie book. That was also one of the two nominees I was considering leaving off the ballot. The other was Ms. Marvel. I'm still dithering about that. I may just rank them both below "No Award" instead.

So, to sum up, trying very hard to judge these works entirely on their own merits, not by whether or not they showed up on a slate, I still managed to pretty much pick the non-slate stuff for higher on the ballot. Granted, this is only four categories out of 16, not including the Campbell. So I'm only a quarter of the way through and there's a lot more to decide.