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kevin_standleeI have mentioned this elsewhere, but here's my proposal for a significant revision of the Magazine and Editor categories to reflect what I perceive to be the way the electorate today wants to vote upon such things.
Long ago, the Hugo Awards had categories that included "Best Professional Magazine" (1953-1972) and "Best SF Book Publisher" (1964-1969). However, as I understand it, there was a complaint that rewarding the magazines was leaving out the anthologies, and thus in 1973 the Prozine category was dropped in favor of Best Professional Editor, which mostly went to magazine editors but was supposed to cover anthology and book editors as well. Over time, it appears to me that nearly everyone who looks at the Hugo Awards either forgot or never knew about this connection. Then we split Editor into Short and Long Form, with Long Form theoretically aimed at book editors; however, very few publishers actually list the editors of the novels they publish. At best, Editor Long Form could be seen as a proxy for the old Best Publisher category.
Also in the meantime, the dominance of a single publication over the Fanzine category led to the creation of a the Semiprozine category, primarily to keep Locus from winning Fanzine every year; instead, Locus won Semiprozine almost every year. Then, when some people worked to simply kill the category entirely, a bunch of small semi-professional magazines sprang forward to "save" the category, and in the ensuing multi-year melee, the category got modified in such a way that Locus wasn't even eligible anymore, although its editors are eligible in Editor Short Form.
Also in the meantime, we have people who want a Best Anthology or Collection category, and who are unconvinced when knowledgeable people like me point them at Editor Short Form. "That's not the same thing," they say. They want an award for the work, not the person, and they aren't particularly interested in a WSFS dispute from forty years ago.
I think we've reached a point, in small steps, where a significant proportion of the Hugo Award electorate doesn't know how to actually nominate in at least three categories, and at worst derides those categories because they think they are so complicated or need specialist knowledge that they'll never have. This is not good for the health of the Hugo Awards.
I therefore propose that we should delete three existing categories that people find confusing and unclear and replace them with three new categories that, while not perfectly defined (it's difficult to define things completely air-tight), are at least more accessible and understandable to the people picking up the ballot or reading the results list.
Categories to Delete
Categories to Add
The definition of Professional Magazine would be the converse of Fanzine, and would be pretty straightforward to determine:
Existing semi-professional magazines would compete against the existing professional magazines. Oh, and Locus would be eligible for the category, too, inasmuch as I'd not consider limiting such a category to be primarily fictional works. The boundary between "semi-pro" and "professional" is a lot fuzzier than it once was, thanks to online publishing.
We would have to work on the definition of Best Publisher to deal with cases like Tor US/Tor UK or to try and figure out if an imprint within a publisher is distinct from the parent publisher, but it still would be easier to figure out than Editor Long Form.
Now there is no Rule of Conservation of Hugo Number. Just because you delete three categories doesn't mean you have to add three categories. However, I do think the three new categories I propose are easier to understand for the average person than the increasingly inscrutable categories I propose to delete.
Personally, I'd prefer to pair the category changes, so each deletion was paired with an addition: Semiprozine -> Prozine; Editor Short -> Anthology/Collection; Editor Long -> Publisher. However, politics of category addition/deletion being what they are, I expect that it would be easier to submit them as six separate changes. On the other hand, this means you could have a potential swing of between -3 and +3 categories, which would also not really be ideal in my opinion. (I'd personally prefer there be not more than -1/+1 net.) In any event, even if submitted as three pairs of changes, the Business Meeting could by majority vote split the deletions and additions by the motion to Divide the Question.
I'm prepared to draft up all of the necessary language for these changes if there are sufficient people, especially people intending to attend the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City and the Business Meeting there, who agree that these would be improvements to the Hugo Award categories.
Long ago, the Hugo Awards had categories that included "Best Professional Magazine" (1953-1972) and "Best SF Book Publisher" (1964-1969). However, as I understand it, there was a complaint that rewarding the magazines was leaving out the anthologies, and thus in 1973 the Prozine category was dropped in favor of Best Professional Editor, which mostly went to magazine editors but was supposed to cover anthology and book editors as well. Over time, it appears to me that nearly everyone who looks at the Hugo Awards either forgot or never knew about this connection. Then we split Editor into Short and Long Form, with Long Form theoretically aimed at book editors; however, very few publishers actually list the editors of the novels they publish. At best, Editor Long Form could be seen as a proxy for the old Best Publisher category.
Also in the meantime, the dominance of a single publication over the Fanzine category led to the creation of a the Semiprozine category, primarily to keep Locus from winning Fanzine every year; instead, Locus won Semiprozine almost every year. Then, when some people worked to simply kill the category entirely, a bunch of small semi-professional magazines sprang forward to "save" the category, and in the ensuing multi-year melee, the category got modified in such a way that Locus wasn't even eligible anymore, although its editors are eligible in Editor Short Form.
Also in the meantime, we have people who want a Best Anthology or Collection category, and who are unconvinced when knowledgeable people like me point them at Editor Short Form. "That's not the same thing," they say. They want an award for the work, not the person, and they aren't particularly interested in a WSFS dispute from forty years ago.
I think we've reached a point, in small steps, where a significant proportion of the Hugo Award electorate doesn't know how to actually nominate in at least three categories, and at worst derides those categories because they think they are so complicated or need specialist knowledge that they'll never have. This is not good for the health of the Hugo Awards.
I therefore propose that we should delete three existing categories that people find confusing and unclear and replace them with three new categories that, while not perfectly defined (it's difficult to define things completely air-tight), are at least more accessible and understandable to the people picking up the ballot or reading the results list.
Categories to Delete
- Best Semiprozine
- Best Editor Long Form
- Best Editor Short Form
Categories to Add
- Best Professional Magazine
- Best Anthology or Collection
- Best Publisher
The definition of Professional Magazine would be the converse of Fanzine, and would be pretty straightforward to determine:
- Paid its contributors or staff monetarily in other than copies of the publication, and/or
- Was generally available only for paid purchase
Existing semi-professional magazines would compete against the existing professional magazines. Oh, and Locus would be eligible for the category, too, inasmuch as I'd not consider limiting such a category to be primarily fictional works. The boundary between "semi-pro" and "professional" is a lot fuzzier than it once was, thanks to online publishing.
We would have to work on the definition of Best Publisher to deal with cases like Tor US/Tor UK or to try and figure out if an imprint within a publisher is distinct from the parent publisher, but it still would be easier to figure out than Editor Long Form.
Now there is no Rule of Conservation of Hugo Number. Just because you delete three categories doesn't mean you have to add three categories. However, I do think the three new categories I propose are easier to understand for the average person than the increasingly inscrutable categories I propose to delete.
Personally, I'd prefer to pair the category changes, so each deletion was paired with an addition: Semiprozine -> Prozine; Editor Short -> Anthology/Collection; Editor Long -> Publisher. However, politics of category addition/deletion being what they are, I expect that it would be easier to submit them as six separate changes. On the other hand, this means you could have a potential swing of between -3 and +3 categories, which would also not really be ideal in my opinion. (I'd personally prefer there be not more than -1/+1 net.) In any event, even if submitted as three pairs of changes, the Business Meeting could by majority vote split the deletions and additions by the motion to Divide the Question.
I'm prepared to draft up all of the necessary language for these changes if there are sufficient people, especially people intending to attend the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City and the Business Meeting there, who agree that these would be improvements to the Hugo Award categories.
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 03:35 pm (UTC)This was my first-ever Worldcon, so maybe I'm just ignorant, but all four Fan* awards seemed to me like relics of the distant past. They seem very, very different from the other awards, which are rewarding professional accomplishment. I gather there would be a lot of opposition to removing them, but can anyone explain why?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 06:28 pm (UTC)But there are also many smaller publishers and small presses who might make their presence felt.
The rules would need to define "publisher." Some publishers have multiple imprints, each with its own line and editorial staffs. Are those all grouped together, or do they compete separately? Random House recently acquired Penguin to form Random Penguin (no, they are not calling that, but they should). One corporation, but still two separate imprints and editorial staffs. And even before the merger, Random House included Bantam Spectra, Ballantine, Doubleday, Del Rey, Dell, and more.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 05:11 pm (UTC)Assuming my memories are correct, the semi-prozine category was a reaction (and a bad fix) for a real problem. Locus and a very few others were dominating the fanzine award, but for a lot of folks (including me) not really being a fanzine. The fix was to keep giving that small group an award every year without them pushing out the ‘real’ fanzines. It might have been the best possible solution, but it's still a bad one.
As for the Best Editor categories meanings having changed over the years - well, yeah. Eventually people start treating something called “Best Editor” as meaning, well, Best Editor. Another case of a bad fix for a problem, though in this case it's created something marginally worse than the original problem.
None of the three proposed new categories really work for me. Were I proposing something like this, I'd break it into at least two proposals - the removal proposal, and the add proposal. That doesn't prevent the win of getting rid of bad categories by the lose of people not caring for the replacements.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:45 pm (UTC)My current inclination would be to submit them all individually, except that Semiprozine/Professional Magazine would have to be done at once because they are intertwined. In fact, technically, it would be a motion to amend the existing Semiprozine category in a way that changes its title, strips out the convoluted attempts to be neither fish nor fowl, and broadens its scope to include the existing professional publications. So there would actually only be five proposals: two deletions, two adds, and one morph.
The real problem with Semiprozine, from the start, is that there is no simple, objective, easy-for-most-people-to-determine way to define it.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:07 pm (UTC)Second, how would you define the Best Anthology/Collection award?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:40 pm (UTC)I note that the secondary definition of "anthology," BTW, is "a collection of selected writings by one author," which I'm pretty sure some people here object to and would instead call a "collection" and treat as a completely different sort of work.
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 07:44 pm (UTC)Also, a curious note, I typed "Science Fiction" into the Business Search function at the New York Secretary of State website. Along with the various local organizations, there is an entry for WORLD SCIENCE FICTION SOCIETY, INC, incorporated (doesn't say by whom) Feb 23, 1956 (my mother's 20th birthday, not that she has ever had any interest in SF). That was also the year of NyCon II - was WSFS originally the corporate identity of NyCon?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 08:25 pm (UTC)As far as that New York corporation goes: Ben Yalow told me when I brought it up before the MPC that New York makes it difficult to erase a corporation unless its organizers dissolve it officially or by complicated and expensive legal action. To the best of our knowledge, this corporation is effectively dead, but also too expensive and difficult to actually put in a legal grave, and thus it sits there in an undead state.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-04 10:10 pm (UTC)The Hugos should also replace Best Artist with "Best New Book or Magazine Cover" (and folding the long form picture books into graphic novel/comic).
This would continue the process of recognizing work, rather than individual names, as the latter tends to reward people who vote for the same name year after year
out of familiarity or friendship without recognizing new work.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 01:07 am (UTC)If you are going to change the Hugo categories can someone please do something about the "Dramatic Presentations" slots? At present they reflect nothing but mindless squee.
1. They are not Dramatic. Drama is theatre or radio. Any drama in a film or television show happens because segments of scene are edited together in a particular way, by (usually) a man working sometimes with the director or producer and sometimes alone, in a room with no windows. And because these shows are recorded and distributed they edge out theatre and radio from consideration. We missed entirely the science fiction theatre boom of 1975-85. We are not equipped to evaluate "drama". Recognise this. Just lose the word. Substitute "recorded".
2. This has been called the Golden Age of television. We don't need to have separate categories for film and television preciously disguised as Long Form and Short Form. It would be much better to show our reasons for nominating something. I suggest Best Photography, Art Direction, Special Effects and Realisation for one, and Best Story Told in a Recorded Medium for the other. If you want to honour the cast, a third category MIGHT be Best Screen Presence, just whatever you do, don't think you can judge an actor by what appears on screen.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 03:48 am (UTC)Are you aware that radio plays and dramatic slide shows were finalists for Hugo Awards in the 1970s? They didn't win, but they were honored as finalists, and remember, it's supposed to be an honor just to be on the shortlist.
I've nominated live stage performances for the Hugo Award. Two actually made the shortlist.
2. I won't carry your proposal to the meeting for you, partially because I'm part of the group that reached the current situation as a compromise. You call Short Form/Long Form "preciously" disguised Television/Film. Have you considered that if you had a "Best Television Episode" and a "Best Theatrical Motion Picture," the sum of the two categories would be less than the existing two Dramatic Presentation categories. From the beginning, I did not want the sum of the works eligible for the two split categories to be less than for the one single category.
This is not theoretical! There have been a number of finalists (and one winner) that were neither theatrical motion pictures nor television episodes. So why do you want to reduce the scope of the category?
If you really want to try to make these changes, I will help you draft them in the correct technical form to accomplish what you want, and if you want to propose it to next year's Business Meeting, you can try to convince two consecutive WSFS meetings to vote for it. But I suggest that you'll have a hard time of it.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 02:42 am (UTC)But I really don't see the point of giving an award for Best Publisher. Publishers are businesses, and I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of asking fans to give awards to corporate businesses. Specific works, or specific people (in very specific instances)? That makes sense. But business-based awards are generally given by industry groups, not consumers. Giving an award to an author for excellence in a specific work makes sense, but then giving a separate award to the publisher for publishing the work (that might already have been given a separate award) seems kind of redundant. Rewarding an artist or a piece of art makes sense; rewarding the corporate infrastructure behind the artist seems unnecessary.
(Yes, I realize that we technically do this with magazines. But I think there's an obvious difference in scale between a book publisher and a magazine.)
And to be frank, I don't think the vast majority of fandom really sees a principled difference between the various publishers. I'm not in a position to judge publishers based on their business practices, so the only metric I can see is "who publishes my favorite authors"? But if I love 7 authors published by Orbit, 7 authors published by Baen, 7 authors published by Tor, and 6 authors published by Daw, where does really that leave me? What if an author I love publishes with both Baen and Tor? What if I vote for Orbit one year because I love 8 of its authors, more than any other publisher . . . but the following year, two of those authors I love have moved to Tor. Suddenly Tor has the most authors that I love, so I vote for Tor. But that means my "love" isn't really about the publisher, it's about the authors, and I can already give awards to those authors for specific works, so why am I bothering giving an award to the publisher?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 08:00 am (UTC)I also understand Kevin's comments about settling for what you can get (and I agree), but anthologies and collections do have a fundamental difference. In the former case, the editor (who may not be a fiction writer at all) gets most of the credit, and in the latter case most of the glory goes to an author. I really think both categories are worthy of separate Hugos, and there won't be a shortage of good nominees in the forseeable future.
If the Hugos are to serve as a reading list, as they do less and less these days, I, as a huge anthology fan, would be irritated if there were an Anthology/Collection category, and if a collection won it every year.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 08:53 am (UTC)I do think that a whoever wins best publisher should not be eligible for the following year. The danger of this category either actually being or simply PERCEIVED to be a conflict between two camps (as Best Editor Long has been portrayed as a proxy war between Tor and Baen) would be reduced if no single imprint or influential editor can be portrayed has having a lock on the category.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 05:46 pm (UTC)I'd kind of like to see the emphasis for all the Hugo awards be "Best [X] of the year". The assorted best fiction awards are explicitly for works published in the previous year, so it's obvious that's what's being awarded. The "editor" and "semiprozine" awards feel more like lifetime achievement awards, and it's kind of silly to give out a lifetime achievement award over and over again to the same people or entity. "Best Anthology or Collection" would get out of the "lifetime achievement" territory, but "Best Professional Magazine" and "Best Publisher" would both risk verging back into it. :/
no subject
Date: 2015-09-05 09:18 pm (UTC)Fully support the proposal. My attendance at KC is iffy, but maybe. Have to see what work dictates.
While you are considering changes, consider best audio/narrator. I would just say narrator, but you want to award works and not people. Audio is getting to be a bigger part of the market. Scalzi released his sales date on "Lock In" and 46% of the sales were audio books sales.
For the popular Dresden Files, James Marsters recorded every book except book 13 which was recorded by another actor. I think book 14 was already produced and Butcher went back and re-recorded book 13 with Marsters doing the narration. It's an example on a what a big part the narration plays.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 07:56 am (UTC)The alternative was to declare them to be Dramatic Presentations, which a past Hugo Award administrator did. WSFS reacted by amending the constitution to define into which category audiobooks fall.
If you want to split audio performances into a category that is neither a story nor a dramatic presentation, I'll help you craft it, but I will not at this time support it myself. I am unconvinced that there are fifteen Hugo-worthy audiobooks published per year that a sufficient number of WSFS members are listening to and would nominate. Remember, it's not just enough to have a handful of good stuff each year, or even just five; it needs to be an honor just to make the final ballot, and the rule of thumb for this is at least fifteen works per year.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 02:31 pm (UTC)For whom brand identity is enhanced.
A 'Best Publisher' will make for a
Very
Direct
Conflict
Fueled even more by those who are
not
Foolish to enhance partisan conflict.
The house of Castalia will be happy.
Semiprozine sounds like a prescription drug.
It is stranger than that. Confusing indeed.
Lord Rock, the collaborating author,
The one who wishes to de-escalate?
He has pointed to the longest form,
And to its absence in the awards Hugo.
Lord Rock is wise,
Even if he is not a lord or a rock.
The contest of a best anthology is...
Interesting. Perhaps good.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 02:54 pm (UTC)Best Series has a whole bunch of other problems associated with it that I don't think you and the people who think there should be a category for it do not fully appreciate. Among them: are there really fifteen Hugo-worthy series in print every year? (Not just "are there fifteen series works printed ever year?" which is not the same question.) Also, "Do we really want another category that risks becoming a laughingstock because the exact same thing gets nominated every single year -- sometimes even when no eligible works were actually published."
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-06 11:46 pm (UTC)I prefer GRRM's suggestion: that the magazine category be "Best Magazine," rather than "Best Professional" (or "Best Semipro").
It should be about the quality of the stories. Period. If by some miracle a Semipro mag has actually managed to publish better stories in a year than any other Pro mag -- in my books, the Semipro mag would deserve to win. NO mag should be excluded. Just keep it "Best Mag."
There is at least one SFF mag based in Africa: Omenana. Good for them. As you can imagine, the editors don't have $ to pay, let alone pay pro rates, and the ability to generate sufficient $ over there is pretty slim. The mag is also offered for free, so that the stories have a realistic chance of being read by people in Africa. But the mag has great stories and great art accompanying every story; art which authors love and value. If the editors or that mag, against all odds, and with almost no budget, manage to publish the best SFF stories next year -- they should have a chance to win the award for best mag. I think it would be disgusting to tell that mag that though they published the best stories, they don't even get to be on the ballot because they aren't rich enough.
Maybe not everyone agrees that the best mag award should be 100% about the quality of the stories. Maybe they think financial profitability of a mag is super-important. Fine, then don't vote for Omenana when it comes time to vote. But at least leave it on the ballot; don't force everyone to agree with you by default. Give the voters freedom to vote who they want -- don't ever automatically exclude mags who are publishing high quality SFF. Leave it as wide open as possible, leave it to the voters.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-07 04:52 am (UTC)Are you then calling for the abolition of Best Fanzine?
What this proposal does is end the distinction between "Professional" and "Semi-Professional." Any magazine that pays its contributors or charges for copies would be "Professional," and this would include all of the existing semiprozines. Anything else would be a Fanzine.
You seem to be saying that there should be one and only one Magazine category. Is this what you mean to do?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2015-09-07 02:20 pm (UTC)But, in addition -- and as I have felt for many years -- I'd like to see _Locus_ Award style splits of Best Novel into SF and separately fantasy.
(And yes, I know the WSFS constitution history.)
JC
no subject
Date: 2015-09-07 04:19 pm (UTC)But I guess some people don't see this as a bad outcome.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-08 06:46 am (UTC)Barring some bizarre disaster (alien abduction? sentient lightning attack?) I'll be at MidAmericon in 2016, will be attending the Business Meeting, and would be delighted to co-sponsor all 6 of these changes. I strongly support 5/6* these. Best Publisher I have 1-2 questions about, but good > [non-existent] perfect.
*resists urge to type 4/6. Or make joke about voting on different numbers in blog comment. Remember when we wanted to pick different numbers than 4 and 6, Kevin? And we spent ten minutes on it? And 4 and 6 won anyway? Do you ever have nightmares about endless business meetings?**
**I'm seriously begging for some kind of smackdown with this footnote. Go ahead. I fully deserve it.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-08 06:43 pm (UTC)I noticed that most of the times we filled blanks, the meeting usually filled it with what I suggested (after spending time voting on the other possibilities) or with the originally proposed number (4/6). That hasn't stopped people from continuing to say that their alternative values are better; they're just not the ones backed by a majority.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-08 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-08 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-16 06:52 am (UTC)Best Professional Magazine
Best Anthology or Collection
I would support the Best Magazine Categories and Best Anthology or Collection, and drop Best Editor (Short form)
I find it pretty hard to tell what exactly is a semiprozine, unless I emailed them and asked.
I understand the definition is financial.
I think Best Publisher would end up being a new but equal set of problems as Best Editor (Long Form), so No - I do not support the creation of a Best Publisher category.
I've resorted to emailing the authors to ask them who is their main editor.
Reading the Acknowledgements sometimes gives you a name.
Also, if you follow an author on their blogs, the editor eventually gets mentioned somewhere.
The way I read, I do notice when an author or editor has slipped up.
If the job has been done well, the "work" is invisible. The reader gets a very polished, seamless book to read.
It would help if authors blogged more about their editors, and their input into the book eg Patrick Rothuss.