On the disintegration of the Hugo slates

[nwhyte]

Marko Kloos withdraws his novel Lines of Departure from the Hugos.
Annie Bellet withdraws her story "Goodnight Stars" from the Hugos.

As I said previously, both authors had my sympathy for being dragged unwittingly into Beale's campaign to destroy the Hugos. They both now have my deep respect.

Comments

[daveon]

I'll be brutally honest, I read Lines of Departure last night and it shouldn't have been there and probably wouldn't have been without the slate. Kloos is correct about that :/

[alexvdl]

You and I are going to have to disagree on that one.

Also, why would you start with the second in the series?

[daveon]

I have said many times I'm not keen on book x of y getting into the Hugos for that reason, but to be honest I didn't think it would make much difference. I don't think I missed much

[newandrewhickey]

Do you happen to know what the rules say about this? Does whatever came sixth go on the ballot, as it did with the disqualified works, or does the ballot go ahead with only four entries?

[nwhyte]

I'm not sure. I have seen contrary points of view on whether further amendment of the ballot is possible at this stage. I've also seen it argued that if the next in the list got less than 5% of nominations, it can't be included. (I also wonder if that 5% gets recalculated to remove the nominations for candidates who have withdrawn or been ruled ineligible.) No doubt we will hear soon.