Hearkening back to this posting and this posting, the Hugo nominations and the Retro Hugo nominations have been announced.
Interesting to see where I "hit" and where I did not. And interesting to look at the nominees as a whole, not specific titles, names or categories.
There has already been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Folks, you can't have it both ways. You can't ask people to lay out the money (it costs money to nominate and vote in the form of one of the levels of membership) to participate and then complain because they don't vote your way.
Instead, if you have a problem with a name or names on the list, lay out the money, get your friends to lay out the money and vote your way. Period. End statement.
There also have been some complaints about people (including one publisher) putting up names or a "slate". What happens on a person's blog or mailing list is (as far as I'm concerned) "free speech". Don't like it? Put up your own slate. (Heck, I did.) I'd rather more publishers try and promote works that are eligible, especially in terms of editors for the long form category. That one category gave me so many headaches trying to find (a) who was an editor at various firms; and, (b) who edited what in 2013.
My only complaint is that the short story category was again shorted due to a silly "five percent" rule. It's a very diverse and wide category, there are many publications. How about we change that rule to make sure that all the slots are filled?
Addendum (April 23, 2014): After a few days of reading articles and blog posts and listening to podcasts on this subject, it seems to me that too many people are focusing on a very tiny number of "negatives" on this year's ballot rather than a very large number of positives. Seriously, look at the categories. Look at Best Related Work, for example. I am hard pressed to make a decision between so many excellent nominations.
Less talk, more action. Vote, encourage your friends to vote. Discuss some of these wonderful books and podcasts, articles and magazines!
Short fiction is very broad but not very deep and the 5 percent rule works against that.
ReplyDelete