The Mythopoeic Society Awards have tried for years to draw the distinction you're drawing between true series and a single story told in multiple volumes. The former, in which the volumes stand alone, are eligible individually; the latter only when they're finished. (This, incidentally, is why no volume of A Song of Ice and Fire has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award: we're waiting for it to be completed. When it is, I don't doubt it'll be a finalist.)
Unfortunately, many Society members, who are allowed to nominate, interpret the "if it doesn't stand alone, it isn't eligible individually" to refer to any connection between books, which was not the intent. When Marion Zimmer Bradley died, someone tried to nominate the entirety of Darkover. I was awards administrator then, and disallowed this: Darkover was a series, not a single story in multiple volumes.
However, the Hugos take a different approach, and don't differentiate between the two. They certainly don't have the deferral-of-books if they don't stand alone that the Mythopoeic Awards have. When the Hugos had a one-shot Best Series before, in 1966, The Lord of the Rings, the nominee the category was intended to honor, was a single book in multiple volumes. Three of the other nominees - Barsoom, the Lensmen series, and Heinlein's Future History - were clearly series. The actual winner, Asimov's Foundation, was somewhere in between.
I would make even further distinctions. Barsoom and Lensmen are true series, i think. LOTR is a single book in three volumes. Foundation and Heinlein were future histories, much looser and more diffuse. Most of my own early SF was set against in the same universe, the Thousand Worlds, but I don't consider those stories to be part of a series.
Question about Tolkien's work and ASOIAFgeekfuriousFebruary 28 2017, 11:06:58 UTC
Could one consider The Hobbit and The Silmarillion as volumes in the LOTR book? And do you consider your other ASOIAF books/novellas (World of Ice and Fire, Dunk & Egg etc) to be volumes in one story?
Unfortunately, many Society members, who are allowed to nominate, interpret the "if it doesn't stand alone, it isn't eligible individually" to refer to any connection between books, which was not the intent. When Marion Zimmer Bradley died, someone tried to nominate the entirety of Darkover. I was awards administrator then, and disallowed this: Darkover was a series, not a single story in multiple volumes.
However, the Hugos take a different approach, and don't differentiate between the two. They certainly don't have the deferral-of-books if they don't stand alone that the Mythopoeic Awards have. When the Hugos had a one-shot Best Series before, in 1966, The Lord of the Rings, the nominee the category was intended to honor, was a single book in multiple volumes. Three of the other nominees - Barsoom, the Lensmen series, and Heinlein's Future History - were clearly series. The actual winner, Asimov's Foundation, was somewhere in between.
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Thanks.
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I can't speak for Mr. Martin on ASoIaF.
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