The Hugo for Best Related Work, including my own votes for this year

[nwhyte]

The Best Related Work category has been on the Hugo ballot every year since 1980. In 28 of those 41 years, it went to a published monograph or essay collection about science fiction and/or fantasy or related themes. The exceptions were as follows:

• Popular science books won twice, in 1981 (Carl Sagan: Cosmos) and 1986 (Tom Weller: Science Made Stupid

Comments

Can't Have It Both Ways

[smofbabe]

I cannot express how strongly I disagree with this statement: "Given that there are very few mechanisms for accountability for what went wrong, it's entirely legitimate for fandom broadly to express its displeasure with last year's Worldcon by putting Luhrs' essay on this year's Hugo ballot." The Hugo awards are intended to bestow acknowledgment of the best works in the SF/F genre by pros and fans. They are not intended as an avenue for political commentary, especially when the title and a large part of the content of the item being nominated consists of a nasty personal attack on only one of the people involved in a particular event, and that person was not even in charge of the event

RE: Can't Have It Both Ways

[andrewducker]

There's two different things going on there. He says
"It's entirely *legitimate* for fandom broadly to express its displeasure"
and
"I don't really *want* a 2021 Hugo winner to commemorate the failures"

I can not want something while still believing it's legitimate. I don't want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I believe it is legitimately food and others may choose to eat it. And I would expect that Nicholas would regularly have different beliefs as the maintainer of a prize (whether something is legitimate or not) and as a voter for that award (whether he likes it or not).

Re: Can't Have It Both Ways

[smofbabe]

I don't think you understood my point, which has nothing to do with people's tastes or opinions on what is legitimate to be on the ballot (although I have opinions about that too). Rather, it's that I don't see how you can say that it's acceptable and legitimate to nominate something on a ballot but then say it wouldn't be acceptable for it to win. Being on the ballot is a statement that the work is considered to be one of the top works in that category and should be considered to win the award for which it's nominated. It's not a poster that you can take down once it's made some political point.

Re: Can't Have It Both Ways

[andrewducker]

I don't think you understand my point - which is that he never says it's not acceptable for it to win.