Just Scratching the Surface

The only reason I didn't post any more comments on this post about the Hugo Awards was that I had to get back to my Day Jobbe for a while, not because there weren't more points to address. Thanks to james_nicoll, maybe, for calling it to my attention.

This is not the first time that I've seen someone theorizing on the Hugo Awards and proposing that we adopt categories that meet their intellectual consistency standards. However, such theorizing seems to lead to us creating categories in which almost nobody nominates and also ends up nearly doubling the number of categories, neither of which is likely to be met with a positive reaction. Of course, the fact that it's very difficult to change Hugo categories is in my opinion a feature, not a bug, but I recognize that having to engage in retail politics is a lot of work and most people aren't going to put in the time to make it happen. Life's too short, and it's always easier to complain than to actually work on fixing things, particularly when the fix involves traveling to widely-separated Worldcons and convincing a lot of very conservative, change-adverse Business Meeting attendees that your proposals are a good idea.