Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Bob
You appear to believe that the Hugo is administered like the Oscars, in that there is a static, shadowy group that decides the winners by fiat in a smoke-filled room. This is not the case. Anyone who wants to vote on the Hugos can do so, merely by paying for a supporting membership to Worldcon. I'm sure there are people who've been doing just that for years, just as any convention has its regulars, but it's open to everybody.
That's precisely why I find the whole idea of some conspiracy that awards the Hugo to "the right people" so bizarre. The voters are average fans. I don't see how much more open the process could get.
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Sure, I acknowledge that it's voter-based. But at no point did I suggest there was some kind of conspiracy. What I have said is that the Hugo's lack of recognition of the greatest works of SF in the last decade makes it irrelevant as a commentator on what is good in SF.
Perhaps the people that vote for the Hugo are an increasingly marginal group (i.e. nerds) who have little connection to what the majority of people enjoy. I suspect this is the SF that is dying, and not the true and energetic SF (& F) that has been emerging over the last ten years or so, and that the Hugo had failed to recognize.
I think if you want to defend the Hugo, you have to accept its faults, and progress from there. Otherwise it cannot repair its obvious mistakes.