2015 Hugo Award winners

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by gbm

There where no stories nominated by Trolls, If you think so then you have a problem. You do not like a story--or any of the stories in a category--then do not vote in that category, please do not vote "no award".

I have no problems with organized campaigning for or a against a book/story, I do have a problem with organized campaigning for a "no award" especially if based on the authors politics not the merits of the story.

If I let "the politics of the author" pick my list of authors "I" like to read, it would be very short.

I hope we can leave off this in a couple of days until next year.


bernie

I did decide not to take part this year after seeing the shortlists and realising there wasn't much there for me. (I picked up the non-Puppy novel nominees - and indeed one of the withdrawn Puppy nominees - myself.)

I don't really see how you can argue that someone ought to vote on the merits of the story while it's OK not to nominate for the shortlists on the same basis.

The shortlists were gamed and the electorate didn't take kindly to that. That's how things work out under the current rules.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by taosaur

I'm flabbergasted to see so many people here decrying the "No Award" votes. It was the only option left to have any meaningful awards given.

The gamed awards are just as meaningful as the non-gamed awards. It would be even more funny if the accusations of gaming the awards behind the scenes are true. And if it is true then it is really sad that it took 3 years to have the system fall apart with obvious outside manipulation.

[BenG]

Sounds like Noah Ward had a good night.

[bgalbrecht]

Darryl: voting for No Award falls under sections 3.10 and 3.11, and all categories where no award was given was because there were more votes for No Award than for any candidate. You can see the results at The 2015 Hugo Awards Final Report

gbm: Voting No Award in every category where all nominees were selected by slate votes as a protest against slate voting is as legitimate a vote as nominating by slate. I was disappointed by the results in several categories because the categories clearly had nominees that could have been the nominees had there been no slate. I am quite concerned that Vox Day may keep his promise to nuke the 2016 Hugos by producing a slate that has no acceptable candidates in every category, and engaging his like-minded non-SF fan political base to stick it to the SJWs.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I am quite concerned that Vox Day may keep his promise to nuke the 2016 Hugos by producing a slate that has no acceptable candidates in every category, and engaging his like-minded non-SF fan political base to stick it to the SJWs.

Count on it. Mr Beale already believes he has proven his point that the "SJW"s rule the Hugo and he will make every effort to disrupt it at least one more time.

[fjtorres]

Gotta love culture war scorched Earth politics.

I expect it'll take two more rounds before both camps and the Hugos are gone and forgotten, lost in the dust of the ebook evolution.

[HarryT]

Did anyone care enough about it to propose a rule change in the Worldcon business meeting?

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Did anyone care enough about it to propose a rule change in the Worldcon business meeting?

God.. I hope so. The optimist in me believes that some real attempt will be made to fix this. Unfortunately, it's going to take two years to get anything implemented.

[Dazrin]

For anyone who hasn't already read it, the Wired article about this is pretty good.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Did anyone care enough about it to propose a rule change in the Worldcon business meeting?

Originally Posted by jgaiser

God.. I hope so. The optimist in me believes that some real attempt will be made to fix this. Unfortunately, it's going to take two years to get anything implemented.

I have heard there are two different proposals on the board for today's meeting. Hopefully both of them get brought forward even though the slates got defeated so that they can move forward again next year if needed instead of re-starting the clock next year. I haven't had a chance to look for what those proposals are yet though.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Darryl: voting for No Award falls under sections 3.10 and 3.11, and all categories where no award was given was because there were more votes for No Award than for any candidate. You can see the results at The 2015 Hugo Awards Final Report

gbm: Voting No Award in every category where all nominees were selected by slate votes as a protest against slate voting is as legitimate a vote as nominating by slate. I was disappointed by the results in several categories because the categories clearly had nominees that could have been the nominees had there been no slate. I am quite concerned that Vox Day may keep his promise to nuke the 2016 Hugos by producing a slate that has no acceptable candidates in every category, and engaging his like-minded non-SF fan political base to stick it to the SJWs.

This is "suppose" to be the award for the best in Science Fiction, not a political statement. If you do not like the what was nominated then do not vote for that category, do not vote "no award". Voting "no award" dishonors the memory every author who has won the award in the past.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Count on it. Mr Beale already believes he has proven his point that the "SJW"s rule the Hugo and he will make every effort to disrupt it at least one more time.

From were I sit it looks like his point was proven very well.
I'm hoping that because "The Three Body Problem" won best Novel that Mr Beale will hold off on "nuking the 2016 Hugo's", but that maybe

The Hugo's maybe on antibiotics but they are a long way from being seriously ill.


bernie

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by gbm

This is "suppose" to be the award for the best in Science Fiction, not a political statement. If you do not like the what was nominated then do not vote for that category, do not vote "no award". Voting "no award" dishonors the memory every author who has won the award in the past.

So... if someone truly believes that none of the nominations are worthy, then voting "none of them are worthy" dishonors people who you thought were worthy ten years ago?
(I wonder why the No Award option exists )

I don't understand your logic.
At least, you seem to be missing critical portions of your argument (as in, the beginning, middle, and end).

The Hugo's maybe on antibiotics but they are a long way from being seriously ill.


bernie

Bit of a contradiction in terms, if you ask me...

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by gbm

This is "suppose" to be the award for the best in Science Fiction, not a political statement. If you do not like the what was nominated then do not vote for that category, do not vote "no award". Voting "no award" dishonors the memory every author who has won the award in the past.

So... If I read all the entries in a category and *I* decided none of them are up to the standards of the past 50 years, then I need to keep my mouth shut and not register my opinion? Really? The 'No Award' is there for a reason, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean my use of it "Dishonors" anybody. I read most of the categories that the SP/RP owned and *none* deserved an award. If I had voted this year, the slates would have all been "No Award". If the puppies think they are being underrepresented, they need to nominate stories that can compete. Not second-rate pulp.

[murg]

The only way to stop the slates is to make them ineffective. The voters have done this. And are probably happy to do so for years. How many years do you think it will take before the slates give up due to it being a wasted exercise?

Another factor is that the oxygen has been removed from the publisher's marketing campaigns based on Hugo's wins. So, the publishers are going to be hurt by this. They can bring pressure on the authors pushing the slates to end it.

[ATDrake]

The No Award option exists precisely for the voter to register that for whatever reason, some to all of the available options are not considered to be worthy of award.

I gave out a lot of No Award this year*. I also gave out a lot of No Award in previous years, not always for the entire category (although there have been previous years when the shorter form offerings were pretty dire) but sometimes, and have ranked fairly popular and well-written works which I simply felt that, while enjoyable on a personal level†, were not quite up to the quality deserving of having "Hugo Award winner" plastered on future printings.

I have heard that some people always vote a straight No Award every year for the media presentation categories on the grounds that there shouldn't even be Hugos for those, and that the awards should stick to recognizing fans and professional writer/artists and not extruded Hollywood studio product, and this, according to the voting instructions, is a legitimate use of the ranking.

For whatever reason that people choose to use it, No Award is a perfectly valid option, in line with spoiling one's ballot when doing RL political voting (oh, how I wish I could have a straightforward "None of the Above" ticky-box on my Elections Canada ballots that if there were enough of, would send all the parties and their candidates back to try again), has been part of the Hugo voting process for decades, and has been used several times before this current kerfuffle (most notably on a Scientology-driven attempt to get an L. Ron Hubbard book as Best Novel in 1987, and a few times in the past decades as a clean sweep in the Dramatic Presentation categories when apparently there weren't any decent sfnal tv/movies available those years).

Also, I gave a shot to the various Puppy works in the packet (even if I ended up skimming most of them and flat-out quit that "Related Work" which was just a grumpy old man get-off-my-lawn cane-shaking screed with absolutely no relationship to sfnal things at all) just as I did to their attempts at puppification in previous years even before I knew what was going on with them, and again they were mostly terribad, besides having a suspiciously high congruence of VD and Torgerson's friends and immediate professional colleagues. Didn't they have any good writers in line with their purported ideology whom they could have promoted?

Honestly, I think it would be a greater dishonour to awardees past and present to have clearly subpar works elevated to rank among theirs purely on a pity allocation of "well, here's some of the least bad stuff that came out this year, so we might as well hand out a prize to someone for something for making the effort, eh".

* And for the record, I did not do my voting on a purely anti-slate line for political reasons, as people have been suggesting that voters who made use of the No Award option did, as I read over the non-Puppy Heuvelt story which won that category, twice, before deciding that, no, it still wasn't worthy of Best Novelette, in my opinion, even though I personally favour seeing more diversity in works available in translation.

† I really liked George R. R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons and indeed, got into the entire ASOIAF saga and spin-offs due to having read it from the Hugo Voter Packet after having avoided the franchise for years. But I still ranked it below No Award that year because I felt that the story presented within the 5th book did not even comprise so much as a complete subplot arc that significantly furthered the narrative as a whole and was simply a "to be continued" installment that could not stand alone, and thus, not Best Novel material at all.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Gotta love culture war scorched Earth politics.

I expect it'll take two more rounds before both camps and the Hugos are gone and forgotten, lost in the dust of the ebook evolution.

This is one thing we agree on. The Hugos haven't been particularly relevant for a number of years.