kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2011-09-01 08:50 am
kevin_standlee) wrote2011-09-01 08:50 am
Entry tags:
Sad
Cheryl's withdrawal from many of her current projects saddens me, although it doesn't surprise me.
If there is anyone out there who wants to continue to insinuate that the Hugo Awards are somehow "corrupt," and who has any better evidence than "I didn't win" or "The things I wanted to win didn't," I want them to actually come forward and produce it.
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: The failure of works/people to win the Hugo Award that you want to win is not a failure of process. Why is it so difficult for people to get it through their heads that not everyone thinks exactly the same way they do? Is it so important to you to consider yourself The Standard Person?
If there is anyone out there who wants to continue to insinuate that the Hugo Awards are somehow "corrupt," and who has any better evidence than "I didn't win" or "The things I wanted to win didn't," I want them to actually come forward and produce it.
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: The failure of works/people to win the Hugo Award that you want to win is not a failure of process. Why is it so difficult for people to get it through their heads that not everyone thinks exactly the same way they do? Is it so important to you to consider yourself The Standard Person?
Re: Speaking For Fandom
What this means is that you, the voter, should nominate a work in the category you think it should fit. Within some specific restrictions, the administrator will attempt to count your vote. In practice, it means "If the voters think it's a short form dramatic work and it's less than 108 minutes long, leave it there."
This is not "the committee makes the rules" — if anything, it is "the committee follows what the voters tell us to do unless we're explicitly prohibited from doing so."
And this is why I'm so exasperated. You're accusing the Hugo Administrators (which I am not, although I was in the past -- 1993, 1994, and 2002) of ignoring the voters and just doing anything we please when in fact the Administrators bend over backwards to do what the voters want unless it's impossible for them to do so. (Say, when a work published in a prior year is nominated.)
This has been going on not just in dramatic presentation, but also in the four written-fiction categories, forever. I'm sure that if you dug through the hundreds of nominees in the past, you'd find a "short story" that was slightly more than 7500 words long or a novella that was slightly less than 15,000 words long, but in all cases the works were in the gray zone and were there because the voters said they should be there. Indeed, the last time an administrator explicitly moved a novellette to short story (explicitly allowed under the rules), there was a huge hue and cry over ignoring the will of the voters.
Basically, when the administrator does what the voters say they want done, there's rarely any controversy. What would have been controversial, and widely criticized, would have been disqualifying those "too long" Doctor Who episodes or moving them to Long Form. Instead of just one person insisting that there was an ineligible work on the ballot, there would be hundreds of people furious that the Administrator was ignoring the will of the electorate on what would be considered specious technical grounds.
Re: Speaking For Fandom
As I have said before, I don't have a problem with it being moved, but >I do have a problem with the move being done in "secret". And if the Hugo committees were better at communicating it would mean most criticism of the award would be seen as opinions and not valid criticism.
So as you not think I'm totally "anti-Hugo" I would like to point out that I have defended Blackout/All Clear as being within the Hugo rules that states "A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more."
Although I must say that this seems to mean a part of a series would be ineligible, or that chapter 5 of novel X would be eligible. And my point being that these are things that could easily be defined in the category rules. As the rules stand it looks like Blackout/All Clear and Cryoburn cannot be said to belong to the same definition of story. (With the caveat that I have not read Cryoburn, and that it may be a standalone story.)
Mainly I just want the written rules to be in accordance with what is going on. As they stand know they are very loose in their definitions. And I think that that should be easily remedied without much disagreement.
Re: Speaking For Fandom
There are also cases of shorter works that later went on to be part of longer ones being nominated and winning on their own. "Weyr Search" is an example of this from the 1968 Hugo Awards — it's the first part of The Dragonriders of Pern and was later published as part of Dragonflight.
It's really very difficult to write absolute rules. I know it seems simple to you, but if it were simple, we would have done it already. The reason for the looseness is because it's not as simple as you think it is. Few of us who participate in WSFS business write complex rules for their own sake.
Re: Speaking For Fandom
I understand that rules are difficult, and I know that seeing flaws in them is a lot easier than making them flawless. I still can't help think that the dramatic presentation category needs a better definition, especially with television shows with one story arc is becoming more common. -On the other hand I think a discussion of whether the "conspiracy" episodes of X-Files are one story would be neverending. (To just pick a TV series I like, and that is consisting of both standalone episodes, and episodes that form a single storyline as an example.)
Re: Speaking For Fandom