Graphic Novel Hugo: Don't Celebrate Prematurely

My standing searches have turned up a number of people celebrating the addition of a Best Graphic Story Hugo Award. As you may know, the WSFS Business Meeting gave first passage to an amendment creating such a category, and Anticipation, next year's Worldcon, has agreed to a request from the Business Meeting to use its Special Category authority to add the category to next year's Hugo Awards ballot. However, I'm concerned that both supporters and opponents of adding this new category are likely to overlook the fact that the question is not settled and will not be for at least a year and probably three or four years.

I posted at length my reactions to the announcement as part of this discussion on the Anime News Network's forum.

Here's a comment I just posted to one blog entry on this subject:

( Don't Count Your Hugos Before They've Launched )

And the reason I'm going to keep hammering on this point is that I'm really concerned that many of the people celebrating this are not themselves going to ever join Worldcon, nominate, or vote, and then these same people will then end up being disappointed and will complain bitterly when "they" (those mysterious people who run the Hugos) fail to ratify the proposal or drop it for lack of interest. Alternatively, I think the people who think this category is a bad idea -- and there are some -- will get the idea that the whole thing is a done deal and there's nothing they can do about it. Speaking as Chairman of the Business Meeting next year, I'm troubled when people say, "Nothing I can do; the SMOFS control everything."

WSFS's Town Meeting government isn't always easy, but it isn't exactly secret, either. As I'm fond of saying, the only "secret" of the Secret Masters of Fandom is that they're not secret.