Hugo Award Categories: Magazines and Editors

[kevin_standlee]

I 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

• 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:

1. Paid its contributors or staff monetarily in other than copies of the publication, and/or


2. 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.

Comments

[lunaticsx.livejournal.com]

>"The whole point of this series of proposals is to make the categories more accessible on the surface to people coming to them for the first time, and to make their definitions more obvious."

This is an admirable goal, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. The Best Editor (Long Form) and Best Editor (Short Form) are particularly two categories that I have found difficulty in knowing who to nominate for Hugos, and then who to vote for.

It's very clear, though, that there is and will continue to be a great deal of resistance to removing the Best Editor (Long Form) and Best Editor (Short Form) categories in particular. This is at the very least because many people really do like to vote for a particular individual--especially, I'd suggest, over "Best Publisher."

In the written works categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story) it should be clear to all that even though specific works are named, it's likely that for many people the name of the author associated with those works bears significant weight on their votes. Yes, of course, in a perfect world it should be the works themselves that bear the full weight of the consideration, regardless of author, but we live in the real world, not a perfect one.

As mentioned above, there is then also the consideration if these categories are switched of "who gets to keep the rocket?", again especially for "Best Publisher."

I would make a suggestion that achieves the same goals, without these objections, at the cost of a bit of complexity to the Hugo Awards committee. (That is, it moves the burden of complexity from the shoulders of the nominating and voting members to those of the committee.)

Viz.

First:

Change "Best Editor (Long Form)" to "Best Editor (Long Form), AND/OR Best Publisher"

Under this category, nominating members could for example submit either "Patrick Nielsen Hayden" *or* "Tor Books" and it would count the same. If they submit both, they are counted as duplicate entries. On the final ballot, both the name of the editor and the name of the publishing house would be listed. When the Hugo is awarded, two rockets are given, one for the editor to take home and one for the publishing house to display in their office.

Second, instead of changing "Best Semiprozine" to "Best Professional Magazine":

Change "Best Semiprozine" to "Best Professional Magazine Editor AND/OR Best Professional Magazine."

Finally, "Best Editor (Short Form)" would be changed to "Best Editor of an Anthology/Collection AND/OR Best Anthology/Collection."

This separates editors of specific anthologies/collections from editors of magazines, where they are currently both mixed together in "Best Editor (Short Form)," right now.

Again, when the award is given in the Pro Magazine/Editor category two rockets would be handed out, one for the editor to take home and one for the magazine's office.

If there's only one editor of the winner in the Anthology/Collection/Editor category there obviously only needs to be one rocket given.

From my viewpoint the main difficulty with the above suggestions would be what to do when a publisher or pro magazine changes editors within the period of eligibility. I'd say just give one to each editor as well as one for the office of the publisher/magazine. Multiple rockets are already given for winners in categories like Best Fanzine and Best Fancast, and I don't think it would be an extraordinary burden on the convention.

Of course, people are likely to grumble at the awkwardness of these category names, with their "AND/OR" constructs, but IMHO with just a tiny bit of text on the nominating/voting ballots they are both the most clear in the end to the members (as well as the world at large), *and* the most fair to all parties involved.

[lunaticsx.livejournal.com]

Edit: Ok, what happens when a publishing house has multiple concurrent editors? (I admit, I don't pay so much attention to the inside of the industry, and I didn't look close enough at the list of past "Best Editor (Long Form)" nominees.)

One option would be to list all the editors together for each nominated publisher, and then award rockets to all of who are listed on the winning entry. It could be argued that this both diminishes some individuals who would have otherwise won singularly over their peers, as well as gives some publishers extra weight if they have multiple popular editors.

Or the second rocket could just go to the "head" editor for that publisher. But then a nomination for one of the other editors gets collapsed into the single publisher finalist, and they don't get individual recognition on the final ballot.

Honestly I'm not sure if the majority of the nominating and voting members really know enough about who has edited which books under a publisher that has multiple concurrent editors. I know that I have absolutely no clue.

I would speculate that those who really do know the best should perhaps be giving out some kind of "inside publishing" "Best Book Editor for SF&F" award, instead of a Hugo.

So maybe just "Best Publisher" actually should be the replacement for "Best Editor (Long Form)," but I still think that's going to face a significant amount of resistance, since people really like to give their nods towards specific individuals.

Or "Best Editor (Long Form)" could just be left as it is, with the recognition that it'll still be confusing to a large number of members, and we can just hope that the people who are nominating and voting in that category are the ones who might actually know the kinds of inside information needed to do so. (I'd still favor switching it to "Best Publisher," at least, with the recognition that that proposal would be harder to pass.)

[j. c. salomon (from livejournal.com)]

Similarly, what about freelance editors, a position likely to become more prevalent as small presses take more of the market. Such an editor is likely to have done significant work for several publishers in a given year.

How about this: Have Best Editor and Best Publisher, and if the Best Editor works for the Best Publisher, give the awards together. MOAR ROKETZ!