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An open note to the Worldcon Hugo Committee(s)
On the occasion of the Sad/Rabid Puppy near-sweep of the 2015 Hugo Nominations (for anyone not familiar, here's an excellent overview):
Word on the street is that you're pretty pissed that a group of folks were able to game the award nominations this way. Good. You should be. The rules for how the Hugo Awards work have long been in need of an overhaul to reflect how fandom has changed in the 21st century. Maybe their success will finally provide the impetus to make these changes. But I have two fairly simple suggestions that I think would go a long way to help keep something like this from happening again.
1. Make it easier to vote. This might seem counter-intuitive. I'm sure that it's tempting to blame the ease of buying a supporting Worldcon membership, and that it might seem like a simple fix to return to the days where you had to buy a full attending membership in order to nominate and vote. Please, don't do that. The Sad Puppy campaign started in the first place because a handful of people were unhappy about the greater diversity of voices getting onto the Hugo ballot (younger people, women, people of color...). And this diversity was born from more people having an opportunity to vote. Their voting bloc is a backlash to positive change, and these positive trends need to continue if the Hugo Awards are to retain any hope of staying relevant to the culture as a whole. Opening up the process by lowering the price of a supporting membership to $25, $15, even $10, would give you a much larger voting pool, therefore making it much harder for a voting bloc to take the ballot over.
Also to this end, consider completely rethinking the categories. The current categories are complex, confusing, and in some cases not very relevant to modern fandom. There are a number of different directions such a change could go; although I don't agree with all his suggestions, I think The G's Moderately Expanded Slate (scroll down to the bottom of the post) is an excellent place to start.
2. Put more nominees on the final ballot. One reason the SP organizers got so many works nominated this year was their decision to list five nominations for each category. If the nominating ballot has fewer slots than the final ballot, it becomes much harder for any block to sweep. And it also allows you to recognize more of the many, many great scifi and fantasy works being published right now.
Whatever you decide to do, as you begin to take action, I hope that you work to hear more voices, not fewer; to offer more inclusion, not less. The awards is at a crossroads here; some level of change is inevitable. We should take this wake-up call as an opportunity to make the award even better than it was before. The only way to fix this mess is by moving forward, not by stepping back.
Word on the street is that you're pretty pissed that a group of folks were able to game the award nominations this way. Good. You should be. The rules for how the Hugo Awards work have long been in need of an overhaul to reflect how fandom has changed in the 21st century. Maybe their success will finally provide the impetus to make these changes. But I have two fairly simple suggestions that I think would go a long way to help keep something like this from happening again.
1. Make it easier to vote. This might seem counter-intuitive. I'm sure that it's tempting to blame the ease of buying a supporting Worldcon membership, and that it might seem like a simple fix to return to the days where you had to buy a full attending membership in order to nominate and vote. Please, don't do that. The Sad Puppy campaign started in the first place because a handful of people were unhappy about the greater diversity of voices getting onto the Hugo ballot (younger people, women, people of color...). And this diversity was born from more people having an opportunity to vote. Their voting bloc is a backlash to positive change, and these positive trends need to continue if the Hugo Awards are to retain any hope of staying relevant to the culture as a whole. Opening up the process by lowering the price of a supporting membership to $25, $15, even $10, would give you a much larger voting pool, therefore making it much harder for a voting bloc to take the ballot over.
Also to this end, consider completely rethinking the categories. The current categories are complex, confusing, and in some cases not very relevant to modern fandom. There are a number of different directions such a change could go; although I don't agree with all his suggestions, I think The G's Moderately Expanded Slate (scroll down to the bottom of the post) is an excellent place to start.
2. Put more nominees on the final ballot. One reason the SP organizers got so many works nominated this year was their decision to list five nominations for each category. If the nominating ballot has fewer slots than the final ballot, it becomes much harder for any block to sweep. And it also allows you to recognize more of the many, many great scifi and fantasy works being published right now.
Whatever you decide to do, as you begin to take action, I hope that you work to hear more voices, not fewer; to offer more inclusion, not less. The awards is at a crossroads here; some level of change is inevitable. We should take this wake-up call as an opportunity to make the award even better than it was before. The only way to fix this mess is by moving forward, not by stepping back.
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Rated perspective: I have seen (and include myself in) the growing movement of the fully fed up who have left traditional gatekept media behind to form our own independently produced publishing houses. Recently read an article (sorry- on phone now, cannot link) regarding how this movement had been a boon for writers and graphic novelists (writer artists) who are marketing to the English media market but who are not male and/or cishet and/or white. Taking control by making our own presses and distribution channels. While I find mass media horror/para/SFF and big publisher genre horror/para/SFF fiction depressing as all fuck, I have been seeing so much vibrancy and (lol, for my tastes) damn good stuff coming out of the micro presses I have been networking with at cons.
Not sure how any of this will pan out with big awards like the Hugo... There is a divide regarding whether it is worth ones while to fight against conservation-based elements in the main stream.
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Whether the award can or should be "saved" is definitely a fair question. For now, I tend to think it's worth trying, if only because the trends were so positive just a few years ago, and I hate to give in to a backlash. For better or worse, the Hugo is currently the sf/f award most recognized outside of fandom; I might find, say, the Tiptree a better measure of whether I'll find a work interesting or relevant, but its cachet in the wider media world is almost non-existent. But if the tide doesn't change soon, I suspect whatever cultural relevance the Hugo might have once had won't be long for this world.
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Much agreement with everything you said. This whole discussion echoes the conversation I had earlier today at my weekend happy-hour mediaheads table.
The other piece to add to all of this is how the big presses and big media corps are addressing the issue of adding greater diversity to those in positions to purchase and/or produce stories. When the gatekeepers lack diversity, our media ends up being more of the sameysamesame. This is why for the past dozen years, and even more so in the past seven or eight, I have made my home almost entirely in the indie side of media as a consumer, an occasional reviewer, and as a creator. In the end, I guess we all just gravitate to the segments of the media industry that tell stories that personally appeal. Unfortunately that means trolls will complain when things aren't designed for them.
You have probably see today's salon article on the Hugos (http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/sci_fis_right_wing_backlash_never_doubt_that_a_small_group_of_deranged_trolls_can_ruin_anything_even_the_hugo_awards/)? Interesting historical comparisons.
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At a larger level, it is disturbing how SF/geek/gamer culture has at least one major reactionary-led war per year that makes international news.
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