Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparrow
I tend to disregard nominations as a sign of quality as it seems to me anyone could nominate anything. And people could have many motives to make a nomination.
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Anyone
can nominate anything (with the caveats listed below). But to make the nominees list,
many "anyone's" must nominate the same book.
The fact that many people liked it well enough to nominate it is no guarantee of overall quality or that
you'll like it, but it does provide a decent pointer to things worth looking into.
The Hugo Awards are nominated by and voted upon by members of the World SF Convention. Anyone can become a member of the Worldcon, and nominate and vote upon titles, though it does cost money. Nebula Awards are nominated by and voted upon by members of the SFWA, and you need actual sales to recognized paying markets to qualify for membership. Much powder has been burned over perceived flaws in the process on both the Hugo and Nebula sides (and with SFWA, you have the organization's internal politics in the mix, too), but in general, works nominated for and works actually winning the various awards tend to be worth a look.
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Dennis