A very short note on this year's Hugo nominations.
Particularly as I'm coming late to the party thanks to a blissful week away without my lap top.
The fan awards were and are excellent. I couldn't be more delighted. The fiction on the other hand... oh dear. I won't rehearse it now but as someone usually not keen on No Award I will be exercising my preference this year.
But I am not with all the doom gloom and what the hell is happening to fandom wailing, because I understand how minorities of various kinds can do very well on a nomination ballot: it's called concentration.
This wasn't a wonderful year for novels: with one exception (and it made the ballot) no one has been rushing up to me with book in hand to say "vote for this!" The Clarkes feel a little dull, the BSFA was more or less what we expected (yay to go for the winners!): it's felt like a competent year but with little sparkle. The effect has almost certainly been to spread the nominations of committed nominators. (That this did not happen in Best Fan Writer is precisely because certain names have come to prominence over and over again this year.) Which made it a perfect year for a concentrated group of people to get a list onto the ballot. In the nomination process, that concentration worked in a year where there wasn't much cohesion around anything in particular. It probably wouldn't have worked in a year when there was a cluster of books everyone was talking about.
Concentration certainly won't work at the vote stage when there won't be enough transfer votes in those directions to secure wins. I've been at the receiving end of this only last year when the Companion to Fantasy came within a whisker of winning on the first round, but ended up fourth as books nominated due to a cohesion of interests transferred their votes to each other (permit a small whimper, but it's perfectly fair) and this is what will happen this time.
The "success" of Vox Day is not some kind of come back of the Right, it's a last gasp final throw of the dice: they are small enough to whip into a line, but without the reach to secure a win.
The fan awards were and are excellent. I couldn't be more delighted. The fiction on the other hand... oh dear. I won't rehearse it now but as someone usually not keen on No Award I will be exercising my preference this year.
But I am not with all the doom gloom and what the hell is happening to fandom wailing, because I understand how minorities of various kinds can do very well on a nomination ballot: it's called concentration.
This wasn't a wonderful year for novels: with one exception (and it made the ballot) no one has been rushing up to me with book in hand to say "vote for this!" The Clarkes feel a little dull, the BSFA was more or less what we expected (yay to go for the winners!): it's felt like a competent year but with little sparkle. The effect has almost certainly been to spread the nominations of committed nominators. (That this did not happen in Best Fan Writer is precisely because certain names have come to prominence over and over again this year.) Which made it a perfect year for a concentrated group of people to get a list onto the ballot. In the nomination process, that concentration worked in a year where there wasn't much cohesion around anything in particular. It probably wouldn't have worked in a year when there was a cluster of books everyone was talking about.
Concentration certainly won't work at the vote stage when there won't be enough transfer votes in those directions to secure wins. I've been at the receiving end of this only last year when the Companion to Fantasy came within a whisker of winning on the first round, but ended up fourth as books nominated due to a cohesion of interests transferred their votes to each other (permit a small whimper, but it's perfectly fair) and this is what will happen this time.
The "success" of Vox Day is not some kind of come back of the Right, it's a last gasp final throw of the dice: they are small enough to whip into a line, but without the reach to secure a win.