This year voting for the Hugos has been painful, for a series of reasons – not least because of the so-called Puppygate that has ravaged the web in the last months. The whole story has started to look like House of Cards in SF fandom, and this is not a good thing, no matter how much I enjoyed that series.
But in the end I have made up my mind and, as of 5 pm GMT of July, 30, I have voted. It’s done. I have to say that I have not paid attention to the fact of a nomination being on a SP/RP slate – as I have explained in another post – thus I have generally tried to avoid a NA (No Award) as first choice as suggested, not without merit, by some (for a good exam of the different positions, and an update on the whole story, see this excellent blog).
However, there have been a few cases where I couldn’t possibly do anything different. Take the novella, for example:
Best Novella (1083 ballots)
___ Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)
___ “Flow” by by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)
___ One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
___ “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
___ “The Plural of Helen of Troy” by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House)
___ No Award
To me, this was the most obvious NA of all, for two excellent reasons:
– Having one person getting three (!) out of five nominations does offend my sense of fairness. Difficult to pretend the ballot was not rigged in this instance (and it was, as a matter of fact). And things look even worse if you consider the editor of a fourth entry (Castalia House, the same of the three I am talking about. It should not come as a surprise that it is linked to SP/RP slates…).
– I have read a few stories in 2014 that rather deserved an inclusion in the novella list with more merit than the ones in the final ballot, and that did not got it because of the lack of enough votes to beat the slates. Too bad I could not vote for any of them. Therefore, for the novella case, fairness and a elementary sense of decency called for casting a NA.
On the other hand, there have been two instances where a vote has been (relatively) straightforward. One is the Best Novel. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu – Ken Liu has immediately got all my attention, and I read the book as soon as it has come out. (Note: I understand why Marko Kloos has withdrawn his nomination, and it’s a pity. I believe Lines of Departure fully deserved to be here, SP/RP slate or not. But this made my life easier, in a way – and voting for Cixin Liu SF novel was almost automatic to me.)
Voting for the Campbell Award too has been an easy ride: I have read (and reviewed: see this and this) all Wesley Chu’s books of Tao, and I couldn’t but support this talented and incredibly entertaining author.
In other cases, my life has been more difficult, and not for the slates.
Take, for example, the Best Semiprozine:
___ Abyss & Apex by Wendy Delmater, editor and publisher
___ Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Association Incorporated, 2014 editors David Kernot & Sue Bursztynski
___ Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
___ Lightspeed Magazine edited by John Joseph Adams, Wendy N. Wagner, Stefan Rudnicki, Rich Horton, and Christie Yant
___Strange Horizons Niall Harrison (Editor-in-Chief), Brit Mandelo, An Owomoyela and Julia Rios (Fiction Editors), Sonya Taaffe (Senior Poetry Editor), Abigail Nussbaum (Senior Reviews Editor), Rebecca Cross (Columns Editor), Anaea Lay (Podcast Editor) and Tim Moore (Webmaster)
___ No Award
In this case, instead of a NA, I would have liked to vote for them in block as number 1, since I regularly read and enjoy them all, even though for different reasons. What a difficult choice, that one. I have finally decided, but I am not happy with that, and I’m sure if I had another go at it I would certainly come out with a different ranking.
Final note: There’s still time to vote, in case you want to (and this year, for the above mentioned reasons, you should. Here you can access the Hugo Final Ballot. Paying 40 $ for keeping the Hugos fair and accessible looks to me a fair price).