Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
I read all Hugo nominated things last year and the biggest problem with the works that were nominated just because they were on the sad puppy list was that most of the work was pretty bad and it pushed out better work.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Really, can you mention 5 of these tainted and incestuous awards.
I really do not agree that the Hugo award is one of them.
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Bad works (nominated by influential, other-agenda voting blocs) pushing out better works is pretty-much the definition of tainted and incestuous.
Can't really be helped, though. Not as long as it (and other awards) are run like popularity contests anyway.
Juried awards can be a
bit less easily manipulated. But then they run the risk of alienating the common reader by ignoring the more popular titles/authors.
I don't find the Hugos very useful right now myself, but then ... I don't really care if they're useful or not. I can ignore them quite easily. They're a symptom, not an underlying
cause of anything. They don't affect whether good SFF gets
written or not. They only affect whether an author gets to give a speech at a podium, put a phallic trophy on their shelf (deserved or otherwise), and make some more money on sales.
I don't say that to demean any Hugo-winning authors' accomplishments, or anything, but lets face it: fair, relevant, and utterly unbiased recognition for literary "bestness" is unattainable anyway. All you can do is hope that popular and "good" intersect every now and then.