Noreascon 4: exit Redbird, pursued by a ballot

[redbird]

I've sent in my Hugo ballot, electronically. Having put everything off to the last minute, I voted for novelette and short story, but not for the longer forms (because I didn't have the time to do the reading), and followed cattitude's advice on movies (since he doesn't have a membership, it seemed fair). I also voted for best fanzine, semiprozine, and fan artist, but skipped professional editor, professional artist, and related book.

The retro-Hugos took about two minutes, most of that on filling in the identifying information at the top of the form: a straight "No Award", because I don't think they're a useful/meaningful concept (not least because I felt, and I'm sure others feel, an impulse to vote for Clarke and Bradbury over Sturgeon or Asimov not because I think Childhood's End or Fahrenheit 451 is a better book than More than Human or The Caves of Steel but because Clarke and Bradbury will know if they won, and Sturgeon and Asimov won't. And that's at least as dubious an argument as voting for a friend purely because I like the person, without having read the work in question.

There was a definite old-fashioned feeling to the short fiction: explicit homages in the case of the Haldeman and Gaiman, David Levine's extremely Cordwainer Smithesque story, and Swanwick playing with time travel paradoxes.

Tomorrow, I'll send them my membership transfer; I already have trinker's payment, but she said I should keep the voting rights.

Comments

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Eh. I think the retro Hugos are as meaningful as the modern ones. I'm a bit mistrustful of voting as a way of picking bests. Heck I'm distrustful of the whole concept. If I were designing it I would come up with a better metric than best of the past year.

Metrics

[nwl.livejournal.com]

If I were designing it I would come up with a better metric than best of the past year. Well, why not do it? What would it be? Considering that just about all "Best of" ate totally subjective, just what metrics should there be and why is one person's metrics better or not than the next?

Some people feel that there should be no such thing as "best of" awards. Maybe they are right, but I think there is something in people that look for recognition of their labors and that isn't going to stop.

Re: Metrics

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Well, why not do it?

There are too many awards already. Nebulas, Hugos, Draculas, and everything else. Does the world really need another award system? In my mind it would be made of people part of a group who'd register what they've read and a rating (probably a standard 0-9 or something).

If enough of a percentage of the readers of this book loved it (more for lesser read book, less for books that have reached a wider audience) it gets an award. There would be a cooling off period of a year before votes are registered for a book so hopefully the voters don't get stampeded by something that is momentarily popular.

Re: Metrics

[nwl.livejournal.com]

The Hugos are nominated by members of the convention, rather than a small, elite group as you're suggesting. Most of the other awards ARE chosen by small elite groups.

If enough of a percentage of the readers of this book loved it (more for lesser read book, less for books that have reached a wider audience) it gets an award.

How is this different from what is happening now? I'm guessing that people loved the novels last year that were nominated for this year's Hugos. Which is why they were nominated. With the number of books that are published in the SF genre alone, it would be almost impossible for someone to read them all, let alone rate them within the nominating year. So people tend to read authors they liked in the past first (track record) and newer authors afterwords. Maybe.

Once the Hugo nominations come out, more people read what's nominated since it's fewer than the hundreds that came out the year before. And they vote. Or at least that's the theory.

The Retro Hugos are interesting in that if there had been Hugos then, all the fans could have read all published in the genre that year.

I think the Hugos are the oldest of the SF genre awards and one of the few nominated and given by the actual fans.

Re: Metrics

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to suggest it is an elite group, but since you mention the issue, yes it is elite and at least somewhat exclusive. The Hugo voters are representative of people interested in going to Worldcon and that group is by and large a group of older fans who are not particularly tolerant of younger fans. Nothing wrong with that, but it does give a predisposition to the voting.

As for how it would be different than what we have now it wouldn't be constrained by the straightjacket of one best book per year and excluding books published within the last year so that hopefully there would be less of a tendency to anoint works while caught up in the excitement of the moment. It's the same issue I have with the Oscars as a measure of best movies. There are a lot of movies that have been voted best picture because it was fresh in the voter's mind rather than because of any spectacular merit.

[quietspaces.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that you journaled this. I'd forgotten in the midst of our activities that today was the deadline for voting. I usually don't get to the short stories (allergic to newsprint), but read many of the novels. I'm always surprised, though, how few of the finalists I've come across.

That's an interesting point about the retros. It never had occurred to me that whether an author was alive or dead would influence a person's vote one way or another. I had definite favorites on the retro list, including The Caves of Steel. Is fun to look back at the books I was reading when I was young. :-)

[redbird]

That's another factor--not only would I have been voting in the context of 50 years of discussion of those books, but I hadn't read any of them in years.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I voted sparsely--mainly for NYRSF and Clute, and against L.Ron Hubbard, Godlike Genius or whatever they called it.