I was hoping someone else would have replied since my last post, so I didn't look too obsessive, but I guess it's still early in the day for the left hand side of the Atlantic.
Anyway, I have fairly strong opinions about the Best Novel ballot, which I'll attempt to put into some kind of sensible form, here.
The nominees are:
Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
Neptune's Brood - Charles Stross
Parasite - Mira Grant
The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
Warbound - Larry Correia
The simple, quick form, to me, is that there's one book here that obviously deserves to win. If the Hugo doesn't go to Ancillary Justice, then what's the point of it existing? At this stage, AJ has won the Clarke, the BSFA, the Nebula and the Locus First Novel. I actually believe that Ancillary Justice needs the Hugo a lot less than the Hugo needs Ancillary Justice. If it doesn't win, I think I'll have to regard the Hugo as broken, possibly irreparably.
The main problem is that, since fairly small numbers of people take part in the nominating process, it's fairly easy to exploit with a bit of organisation and campaigning.
This year, it seems that at least two of the five nominees are there through gaming the system: a Wheel of Time fan campaign, and the "sad puppy" political ballot promoted by Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen and embarrassment to humanity Theodore "Vox Day" Beale (and others?)
I kind of have my suspicions that Mira Grant's repeated nominations might be due to similar campaigning, but maybe that's just my personal prejudices.
My problem with this kind of activity is that it's not, in my opinion, nominating the works people genuinely believe are the best of the year. I feel like I'm not being treated with respect as a neutral voter, and as a result I don't really feel like I need to treat the works with respect. They shouldn't be there, so I don't have to read them.
Gaming the ballot kind of breaks the award. The award is not about winning the field for your gang, it's about promoting the field outside itself. A good winner is a win for everyone, and a bad winner is a loss for everyone.
The Wheel of Time is eligible through a rule that says that a multi-part single narrative can be nominated as a whole if the final part was published in the necessary year and no previous part has ever been nominated. The rule is there, I guess, for serialised novels from the magazine era, but was used more recently for Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.
I'm a fan of the Wheel of Time, or at least I was - I was buying hardbacks up to Jordan's death, but haven't read the last three books - but under no circumstances do I want it to win the Hugo. I don't think it should be there. The superior early books were never nominated, so why does the whole thing, with its badly sagging middle, deserve a win?
Warbound is book three of a series that has never featured on any other ballots anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. I imagine I'd probably quite enjoy it, but I don't feel like reading all three, and I don't think it should be on the ballot, so I don't feel obliged to take any notice of it.
I've read Stross and Grant before, and don't get on with them. I'm told that the Grant isn't even as good as her previous nominees, so I think I can rule it out. I can't say I really object to the Stross. I just don't think it's for me. (And again, it's a sequel, and I hate not starting at the beginning.)
I may yet decide to sample the books I'm currently ignoring, but basically I have one strong favourite and the rest of them are fighting amongst themselves for the consolation prizes.