KJ

The list of finalists was announced today! If you haven't seen them, Tor.com was one of the first to have the complete list, as usual.

Overall, I think this is a great list. Almost nothing that makes me scratch my head, some nice surprises, and some welcome returns. (Before anyone asks: since we won last time, ladybusiness recused ourselves for a year.) As far as I know, the ill-behaved canines stayed out of the proceedings, and I suspect that may have something to do with how strong the finalists are. In a way, that makes this the first "normal" Hugo awards I've ever participated in (my first year was also the first year that the Sads got anything nominated), and that makes me both sad and happy.

I've read three of the novels and two more (Provenance and Six Wakes) were already on my TBR. New York 2149 is the sixth; I've never read any Kim Stanley Robinson, but I'm up for at least giving it a go. As for the short fiction, I've read all the novellas (and nominated several), none of the novelettes, and about half of the short stories. Maybe the most exciting development for me in the written fiction categories: Lady Trent getting a series nod! I love those books so much, and have been advocating for them for years. There are only two series in that category I've never read; I probably won't bother with the Sanderson, but I really ought to pick up Martha Wells's Raksura books. Between that and the fact that I haven't read any of those YA novels (hooray for the YA novel category!), I have a busy few months ahead of me.

It's very exciting to have Fangirl Happy Hour, SF Bluestocking, and The Book Smugglers back on the list! I also really want to see Strange Horizons take home the trophy one of these days. Also, I will beat the drum for Foz Meadows as Best Fan Writer until she wins.

Two nominations for The Good Place!!

Some other things I'm happy to see (not an exhaustive list): best related work noms for Luminescent Threads and Zoe Quinn (even though Le Guin is also nominated in that category and will therefore almost certainly win, for nostalgia reasons); Kathleen Jennings finally getting her first Professional Artist nod; Get Out and Wonder Woman in Dramatic Presentation - Long Form; and Sarah Kuhn's Campbell nod for her Heroine Complex series, which are so much fun to read.

Since I will be at Worldcon, I will of course be attending the ceremony. It'll be nice to be there just an attendee with nothing on the line. The 2016 ceremony was really fun, but it was also nerve-wracking. I expect this year will be more relaxing. Now, if I can just wrangle myself into a +1 invite to the Losers Party...

As the year comes to a close, the thoughts of the Hugo nominator turn to planning her reading for the next four months. Obviously, I cannot read every single novel that was published in 2016, not even every novel that reviewed well and/or seems likely to be a contender, even if I wanted to. The end-of-year lists are already coming out, and I'll be applying to those, as well as the always-helpful Hugo eligibility spreadsheet, but there's almost too many options there.

So I figure, why not start by asking my friends and followers, whose opinions I trust? What's your must-read book from 2016? (I'll get started on short fiction and other categories later; new series are probably more than I'm willing to tackle right now.) I'm already planning to read All the Birds in the Sky and Ninefox Gambit; books published in 2016 that I've read are here. Some possible nominee contenders there, but only one slam-dunk, so your thoughts are definitely welcome.

Maybe the world doesn't need another post on this year's Hugo Awards, especially since Barry Deutsch already said much of what I've been thinking, but I feel compelled to share some thoughts anyway.

The 2016 Hugo Award finalists were announced today, and unfortunately -- but not unsurprisingly -- the Rabid Puppies ran away with them, to the tune of around 80% of the nominations (I can't get a direct link to the post to work, but the comparison to the slates should be at or near the top of the blog). This result, after a record-shattering 4,000 nominations came in, dispels three claims that have been part of the Hugo conversation lately:

1. The problem will be fixed if more people nominate -- a larger nomination pool makes it harder for a small voting bloc to game the system. I used to believe this myself, and I was moderately hopeful that getting people who signed up last year to vote against the Puppies to nominate would blunt the effects of a slate. Now, though, I'd say the evidence against that theory is pretty strong (although we won't know until the long lists come out in August). When you have a straight winner-take-all voting system, and the pool of potential nominees is this large, it doesn't take much of a bloc to overwhelm the legitimate nominations.

2. The Puppies are in this to see that popular authors writing quality works get nominated, as opposite to "authors who buddy up to the social justice warriors" (I feel dirty just typing that out). Considering that I have never heard of most of the authors on their list (except for a few big names, clearly nominated as cover), I don't see how anyone can make that argument with a straight face anymore.

3. Another argument that no one can make with a straight face: the Puppies are in this to keep political, "message fiction" from being nominated. A simple look at the Related Work and Short Story categories puts the lie to that assertion. (But look with caution. One of the titles in Related Work actually caused me to curse in chat, multiple times, which renay can tell you is something I only do at times of great duress.)

So, yeah. That happened. And it sucks, especially to have my hopes about the larger nomination pool dashed. But here we are, again, and what should we do about it? In the long term, obviously, WorldCon needs to pass E Pluribus Hugo, the change to the nomination rules that seems most likely to make a difference. I understand that the analysis of last year's voting data suggests that it would have blunted the effects of the slates but not removed them entirely, but it's better than nothing, and I think it's worth giving it a shot to see how it works. As for how we deal with this year, I have two thoughts.

First, on how to vote. Like last year, everyone is going to make their own decision on how to proceed, and there's no right or wrong way to do it. Last year, I voted almost entirely anti-slate; the only Puppy nominees I put above No Award were in the Dramatic Presentation categories and Editor-Long Form, the former because those categories rather removed from fandom politics (and some of their choices were on my own nomination ballot) and the second because good people convinced me that some of the editors were worthy of my vote. I think that was the correct choice last year, because we needed to make a strong statement that slates are wrong, and that opposition to diversity is wrong.

But this year, I think I'm going to take a softer line, and consider more of the slate-listed items. The aforementioned cover, of course -- enough people have spoken highly of Seveneves and the Sandman story, for example, and I'm a big fan of Lois McMaster Bujold -- and anything else that folks can convince me is worth my time. Why am I less inclined to sit this one out? For one, it's more obvious which of the choices are cover and which are [the loathsome troll who will go unnamed here] rewarding himself and his cronies. For another, we already tried the hard-line No Award strategy, and it didn't stop [LTWWGUH] from running a slate yet again. So now I feel like the better choice is pretending he doesn't exist. He's going to claim victory no matter what we do, so I prefer taking the path which gives me more satisfaction. And this year, that means looking at the works and judging them by my own standards. (And in some cases, the title or the person's name will provide more than sufficient data to make that judgement.)

Second, one of the reasons I got involved in this whole Hugo thing to start with was the hope of discovering new works and authors for me to get excited about. There's a few things to get excited about on this list, but not nearly enough. Last year, the Hugo long list provided some of that, but why should we wait? There's nothing to say that we can't share our nomination lists and get excited about things we love now. So, as an antidote to all this angry-making business, I propose that we do just that. Someday later this week, I'll kick it off with a list, and I hope those of you who nominated will share your lists with me, as much as you feel comfortable. And then we can get back to having some fun talking about the works we love, because isn't that what fandom is about, in the end?

The 2015 Hugo Award ceremony was yesterday. I hesitate to say "the awards were given out", because five six categories received no award -- every category that contained only slate finalists was no-awarded. And the only winner from any of the slates was Guardians of the Galaxy, in Dramatic Presentation - Long Form, which I suspect would probably have won the award anyway. Most of the slate nominees in Short Form also beat No Award, but in every other category, No Award beat all of the slate picks in the final count, and received more first-place votes than most of them. Although I wouldn't call this a victory, exactly, it is the best outcome we could have hoped for, with the slates repudiated and some truly excellent winners chosen.

Lots and lots of virtual ink has already been spilled on the voting and nomination data, and there is sure to be much more. It's been interesting to see the alternate universe slates (io9 has the most complete take), but that's actually less important to me than considering implications for future. When I started playing with the data last night, I did it with the hopes of answering two questions: how many anti-slate voters were there, and how many Sad and Rabid Puppies actually participated in the nominating process?

Chaos Horizon has done a first pass on the voting statistic already (although I feel like they may be double-counting some people to get their estimate of 500 Rabid and 500 Sad Puppy voters -- I'll be interested in the more detailed reports they've promised), and they come up with about 2500 hard-line anti-slate voters, and another 1000 who voted mostly anti-slate with some exceptions. This lines up with the numbers as I calculated them. Together, these voters make more than half of the electorate. This is a pretty solid block, and it proves to my satisfaction that a slate cannot win at the Hugo Awards. The community simply will not permit it.

Controlling the nomination process is another story. The Puppy picks for most categories received between 150 and 300 nominations, and even in the fiction categories that's enough to take over the ballot -- The Goblin Emperor, which would have missed the final ballot if a Puppy author hadn't declined their nomination, received 256 nominations, while the Puppy pick to make the final ballot with the fewest nominations was The Dark Between the Stars, with 263 nominations out of 1827 nomination ballots cast. Down ballot, where works have historically made the final ballot with very few nominations, the differences are more lopsided: Best Fancast, for example, in which the lowest-ranked Puppy pick, Dungeon Crawlers Radio, received 158 nominations, while non-slate podcast Coode Street (which was on the ballot in 2014) just missed the final ballot with 68 nominations (668 ballots total).

So it doesn't take many people to overwhelm the nominations, when so few people participate. As for how many there were, from my analysis I'm going to guess that there were somewhere between 250-300 Sad and Rabid Puppies, split about evenly, with a slight tilt toward the Rabids. I base this estimate on a few things, including the differences between vote totals for works and people listed on both slates versus those listed on only one, and in particular from one of the few categories where the two Puppy factions went head-to-head: Best Short Story, in which both slates listed four of the same works and a fifth that was different. The Sad pick, "A Single Samurai", received 132 nominations, while the Rabid pick, "The Parliament of Beasts and Birds", got 151. Obviously this still makes for a rough estimate, and the number is probably higher in the Novel and Dramatic Presentation categories, lower in categories further down-ballot, but it's a reasonable starting place.

2,122 total ballots were cast in the nomination phase this year. If we use my high estimate, 300, that's about 14% of the nominating ballots between the two Puppy groups. But that was last year. What about next year? If the Puppies see this year's reaction as a success, and there's plenty of indication that they're at least spinning the result that way, they'll certainly be back. And in larger numbers -- bear in mind that anyone who cast a Hugo vote this year is eligible to nominate in 2016. If we're looking at as many as 700 new voters, that brings the slate contingent up to a thousand, and if the rest of fandom nominates in the same numbers as last year, they'd be 35% of the nominating electorate. That's pretty grim.

But remember, they aren't the only contingent with increased numbers. We're also looking at at least 2,500 voters who are anti-slate, and can be expected to nominate accordingly. If they nominate. The most important thing we can do right now, in my opinion, is convert as many of the new voters into nominators as we possibly can. Given how scattered the non-slate nominations are, it's harder to make a guess as to how many 2015 voters are new, but I have to imagine it's a substantial percentage. One thing we do know: a record 3,587 people cast final ballots in the 2014 Hugo Awards; this year, that record was smashed with 5,950 ballots. Some of those new voters were almost certainly slate voters, but even if the Chaos Horizon high estimate is correct, about 1,600 of the new voters joined to vote against the slate. If we can convert those voters into nominations, and convince other people who have historically voted but not nominated to participate, the numbers start stacking up against the slates again. If every person who voted in 2014 had nominated in 2015, the Puppies would have been less than 10% of the electorate, and it would have been harder for them to take over.

I acknowledge that it's difficult for a diverse electorate to break a slate entirely, under the current rules of the WSFS. I understand that both rule reforms proposed at today's business meeting passed, but nothing will take effect until after the 2016 Worldcon, and since the proposals conflict eventually we will have to decide between them. That's an important effort for the long-term, but it doesn't help us next year. The expansion of the nominating pools that would be required to beat an organized slate in 2016 is, I think, beyond the capacity of the community right now. But by encouraging everyone who cast an anti-slate vote to nominate, we can certainly make it harder for them to overwhelm the ballot completely. All we can do is try-- and I think we have to try. Because I can guarantee that the slate makers will be doing the same.

The 2014 Hugo Awards were given today, and I have to say that I'm very pleased, overall, with the outcome. ladybusiness provides a complete list of winners for anyone who hasn't already seen it.

The big news, of course, is that Ancillary Justice won the Best Novel award in a walk-off. This was more important to me than any other race on the ballot, and so of course I am really happy. Several of my other favorites also won -- let me take yet another opportunity to plug John Chu's wonderful story -- as well as other books, writers, and creators that I didn't rank first but still like quite a lot. Perhaps most importantly in the long run, nothing from the Correia slate* went home with an award, and in most cases they ended up at or near the bottom of the ranking. (Vox Day's novelette came in dead last, even after "No Award".)

One of the things I like best about the Hugos is that they release the raw voting data (link to PDF) every year, so you can see how many votes each work received, how they ranked in each and also how many votes total were cast. They also release the nomination lists, including the ten works in each category that didn't make the nomination cut, and this data can be fascinating. In particular, I noticed right away that "The Sandstorm", the double episode of Welcome to Night Vale, received 30 nominations in the "Dramatic Presentation: Short Form" category. This might not sound like very many, but consider that 38 votes would have been good for fifth place, in a three-way tie with an episode of Orphan Black and an episode of Doctor Who. So just eight more nominations, out of 760 ballots in the category and 1,923 ballots total, and it would have made the cut.

So just a few people can make a big difference. In every single category except Dramatic Presentation: Long Form, the 5th place nominee received fewer than a hundred nominations, and in many cases, sixth place was fewer than ten votes out of contention. When we're looking at those kinds of numbers, it doesn't take much participation to move the needle. So I hope anyone who has been interested decides to participate next year. As much of my time and attention as it took, I'm already looking forward to it (and plotting out how to better plan my short fiction reading).

*If you're not familiar with this particular controversy, Jed provides a succinct explanation with many good links. I will leave it to others to speculate about what effects Correia and his efforts may have had on the awards; my main observation is that, while it seems to have affected the nominations quite a bit, the effect on the final results seems to be minimal to none. And that is a very good thing, both for this year's award and the health of the award process as a whole.

I downloaded the Hugo voter packet today and seriously have no idea where to even start reading, never mind the whole business of figuring out how to load the stuff onto my iPad. I have to get through all this in a month and a half? (Save the one novel, novella, and novelette I've already read.) Yikes.

Advice?