Amid much controversy, the 2015 Hugo Awards nominees have been announced: The list of nominees is available here.
Much has been said about the results of nomination, and the methods that led to this year's slate.
I come to this late, but I wonder if "gaming the Hugos" actually could be good for them.
Look, the thing is I only vaguely heard of SP last year, and wouldn't have heard at all this year if not for the noise, but it doesn't matter: I've known for a long time that the Hugos had become much less respectable than they once were - in some circles, even a joke. And by "a long time" I mean something like a decade. And frankly when I realised it, I realised it had been dodgy for a while already.
Attendance and membership really took a dive after 1984 and there was much wailing in various editorials and letters to magazines about the future of SF etc through the late 80s. From when it hit bottom in the early 90s until 2009 the numbers of ballots were low, really low. Published stats are hard to come by for that era (I'm trying to dig them up now, but having real trouble - most of what is available can be seen via the Hugo Awards web site as a result of the efforts of fans and volunteers) but we're talking less than 1000 voting ballots. Assuming modern ratios are generalisable, that means around 600 people were responsible for nominations.
I don't believe in any cabals - a cabal isn't necessary.
When you get a community shrunk to that size you're going to lose a lot of diversity. Moreover, with the 5% rule to qualify in the nomination phase you only need 30 people voting together to put something on the slate. Assuming the rest of the nominations are fragmented (logically so, since 600 people are unlikely to have read exactly the same new things or even have more than a core overlap) basically that little community has enormous sway.
Because of the way voting works, all you need to get your pick to win is for your little group of like-minded folks to vote together again, and enough of those whose picks didn't make the slate to rank your picks higher than some of the other items (and probably also refrain from using No Award - I'd love to know the long term trends for how that was used - it appears to have been more common in the past).
All the above can be explained quite simply through a combination of demographics and statistical clumping phenomena. No cabal is needed. And once you have this happen a couple of times in a row with a clear ideological slant (which could also happen quite innocently, partly by sheer chance, but I'm sure the fact this occurred just as the era when public engagement by authors was getting to be important for marketing is no coincidence) then you will quite naturally get an amplification effect over the years as people see a certain kind of work consistently winning and either give it up (why vote if your picks obviously can't win?) or adjust to the status quo.
So yes, "gaming" the system could help because the system desperately needed a shock. Either to wake people up to the ruts they've fallen into or to encourage a lot more people to fill out the bloody forms so that the briny little tide pool can be reinvigorated by a big dash of open ocean.
And to be clear: I say this as someone who would cross the street to avoid certain parties who shall remain unnamed, and who doesn't think that the current Sad Puppy protagonists Larry Correia and Brad Torgerson generally produce work that meets my mental bar for merit. (Currently, based on what I have read of theirs so far: both are relatively new writers, so who knows what the future will bring). I don't know if I quite qualify for "social justice warrior" status, but many of my attitudes put me in their camp. For that matter, I even like many of the works and authors lionised by those tagged as SJWs (though frankly, some of the work getting Hugos in recent years are ridiculous examples of the cult of personality at work) and I find the current bumper crop of authors and venues and publishers extremely exciting.
So, I am not coming at this with any kind of conspiracy theory in mind, and I'm not the sort who decries how SF has fallen. And yet I agree that the circle of eligibility for the Hugos has clearly narrowed dramatically over the years and I think it's obviously due to the tiny number of nominators and voters. How could it be otherwise? Such a small group could never even scratch the surface of the excellent SF currently available in various forms.
Anything that draws attention to the Hugos and draws more fans into the voting circle the better. It can't help but dilute the distortions that come with individual personalities' followers, will drastically expand the range of nominations, and will make the awards more clearly about merit - as they were in idealistic years of yore, when people were almost painfully earnest about "doing the thing right" and it was technologically much harder to generate a cluster of loyal followers large enough to have an impact on the outcomes, no matter how charismatic you were.
There's always going to be an advantage to writers who know how to play the crowd of course (always has been) but maybe better participation will increase the number of people who "do it right" as well, which will make the cult of personality fans less of a force.
After the near collapse of organised SF lit fandom (in the US) in the late 80s and 90s (as mentioned, widely bemoaned in the eds and letters in Asimov's Analog, hell everywhere) the bias people claim to see was an inevitable consequence of demographic clustering and the statistics of small samples. Long term the reinvigoration of fan interest in the Hugos could be good for the institution simply by ensuring more voting readers for the embarrassingly huge volume of SF/F, and thus more and better work gets onto the ballot.
From what I can see, the increase in membership this year and last far exceeds the Sad Puppies' following so there's a very good chance of this happening. And you know what? The revival of active use of No Award is good too. From the stats available, it seems to have been used more in the past - not to punish, but to say "yeah, we picked the best we could find but no one seems to have found anything that quite makes the grade." No Award should never win, in my opinion (unless it's been a truly awful year for SF/F publishing) but being able to use it can knock clearly sub par items out of the running before people's 3rd and 4th place rankings for it twist the results. For me, it's no tragedy if a really well written book I don't personally like much wins, but it's a calamity when pedestrian work wins by default because no one had the heart to say "not yet: bring a better game next year."
As for the tirades decrying the offence that is suggested slates?
I've been at this a long time. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in the ship's little cinema during an Atlantic crossing at a time when it was still a perfectly ordinary (if getting less usual) middle class means of travelling with lots of luggage. Personally, I have found it harder and harder to find quality new SF over the years - there's just so much that the good ones are drowned out. I say more slates, more recommendations. If there are 5 new books you've read this year that you think are truly Hugo quality I want to know about them. I read (and enjoy) enough pedestrian work, but I starve for the amazing stuff. Social message fiction? Bring it on as long as it's amazing writing. Same for MilSF, or cyberpunk, or space opera. If your list is nothing but one or the other? I have a whole world of internet in which to find someone with other suggestions.
The last ten years, I've read some truly great books that as far as I can tell never even got nominated while in their year the Hugo winner seemed like a mediocre pick. Why? Because normal human beings need to eat and sleep, and people don't ordinarily go out searching for different stuff - especially not these days when there's already more than any one person can read well within their comfort zone - so not enough of the 600-1000 nominators had even heard of my picks for best book, much less read them. More people involved means more eyes to scour the field for gems. You might not like opals well enough to buy one for a ring, but I hope you could look at a truly amazing one and recognise it as such. That's all anyone asks of the Hugos. That, and not looking only at diamonds and declaring that the best one you can find is obviously the best of all gems. You might well be right, but there might also be a ruby out there that would blow you away.
So, more attention, more interest, more voters - long term win for the Hugos and for SF in general. But the controversies?
I'm pretty sure that the Sad Puppies have not been good for the Hugos this year, and I don't think many people are saying otherwise. It may be good for the future of the Hugos as a respectable award for merit. But that depends entirely on how people respond.
This year? Definitely broken if the ritual shunning campaigns are large enough. Next year? If even a fraction of the mass of new Worldcon members reads a bit of SF and decides to sign up again next year and is willing to vote strictly on merit it's a win for everyone.
There's been way too much bile spilled on all sides this year (last year looks like it was just as bad, but at least I missed it) and as a fan loyal to SF rather than any one writer, and with money to spend, I'm watching carefully to see who's being reasonable and who's being a hateful ass on all sides. This stuff won't stop me from reading a good story, but it'll sure as hell sour the value of someone's opinions, or writing as much as anything else.
In the meantime, I encourage anyone who is a fan of SFF to pony up the US$40 fee for supporting membership in Worldcon, which entitles you to vote on this year's awards and to nominate for next year. Signing up takes just a few clicks on the Sasquan 2015 web site. The only rider on this invitation?
Read.
That's right, read the work and judge it on its merits. If nothing makes the grade, nothing reaches the mental bar you set for quality worthy of an award, well then No Award is there for you to use.
And for the next year?
Read.
Read and talk about what you have read, why you liked it (or didn't) and whether you think it might qualify as your nomination for a Hugo.
It's fandom's award for merit: let's make it the kind of award SF/F writers can be really, really proud of.
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