kevin_standlee | The Rediscovery of Fan [Writer]

John Scalzi has been thinking about the Fan Writer Hugo Award on his blog. Other people have been discussing it.

pnh has made some excellent points, and other people have, in my opinion, completely missed the point of what the Award is intended to reward.

I found it especially amusing to read "I would actually hate to see a published writer of commercial SF/F fiction win a Hugo for fan writing." Followed shortly by Patrick pointing out "...this has happened over two dozen times. Nor were all of those Hugos to Dave Langford."

Some of them sure seem to think there is a bright-line definition between "pro" and "fan" and that one can't possibly be both at the same time. This isn't true. It's sort of sad that there are so many people (both pros and fans) who think it is.

Edit, 22:10: Changed subject line when I realized what I'd overlooked in the title.

Current Mood: amused

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bovil.livejournal.com

These days, the Langford Effect in fan categories is kind of like the Whelan Effect in art categories.

There were a lot of people who voted Whelan because they recognized his name in an era when other professional artists weren't as well known. That's not saying he didn't produce some really great art, but I remember a complaint that at least one year he won he hadn't published any new work in professional publications.

There are a lot of fans who aren't into fanwriting, but they recognize Langford's name and vote for him because they don't recognize any of the other candidates (that's not to say he's not a great fanwriter).

I think if there is anything to tweak about the fanwriter category rules, perhaps it should be to qualify fanwriting as writing about speculative fiction and/or fandom, rather than to define it by the venue in which it's published.

Of course, I can see filkers and fanfic writers fighting that tooth and nail (if they showed for the business meeting).

From:

pnh.livejournal.com

I'd fight that tooth and nail. A substantial portion of the best fanwriting in our subculture's history hasn't been about "speculative fiction and/or fandom" at all.

Think of Bob Lowndes writing in Warhoon about Hiroshima Mon Amour. Or John D. Berry's travel writing, or classics like William Gibson's "My Life Under Fascism, Or, Franco Shot My Dog." Or, closer to home, this.

From:

bovil.livejournal.com

See, I'd consider Berry's, or Gibson's or your essay as "writing about fandom" because it's writing about fans and SF/F pros (I don't care if it's autobiographical). It's writing about the field.

We're also discussing fanwriting in terms of defining fanwriter. I would argue that a writer who never writes about the field isn't a fanwriter. I would also argue that fanwriters may and often do write about topics outside the field, and doing so is by no means stops any of them from being a fanwriter.

But I'm going to go back to something

kevin_standlee and I have been talking about offline. The Hugo rules are there to help voters understand what they're voting for. That's important. But they're also there to help administrators qualify nominations and ballots, rather than to make them disqualify nominations and ballots. That's of utmost importance. While the current rule makes it easy for the administrator to qualify nominees, it doesn't help the voters understand what they're voting for.

I think there's room to improve the rule so it better satisfies both needs, and I'm not at all wedded to the specific wording that I threw together in an off-the-cuff LJ comment...

From:

pnh.livejournal.com

Oh, well, if you consider memoirs to be inside the pale, then we have much less to disagree about.

(The linked essay wasn't mine, however, it was by Teresa.)

From:

dsmoen.livejournal.com

"God and I" is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, I re-read it last night.

From: (Anonymous)

I believe your assertion that "they recognize Langford's name and vote for him because they don't recognize any of the other candidates" doesn't stand up to close examination. You offer no evidence this is so, and my own experience dissuades me from believing it.

Many Hugo voters leave blank the categories they don't feel knowledgeable about. Witness the disparity in final ballot voting totals between the fan and other categories -- for example, in 2006 200 more votes were cast for Best Novel than for Best Fan Writer.

I suspect all you have done is observe a body of voters making what seemed to you an unjustified choice and reasoning backward that they must be ignorant. Yet ignorance is so easily remedied now that Worldcon websites post links to examples of writing by the five or six finalists in the Best Fan Writer category that it's become an unlikely explanation. I believe most people who voted for Best Fan Writer sampled the other nominees material, whether by accessing these linked pages or reading fanzines.

Besides, it's not as if Langford wins by a landslide. In 2006 he received only 99 out of 362 first-place votes. He won the runoff with only an 8-vote margin over Cheryl Morgan. Yet of Claire Brialey's 40 first-place votes, 30 of those people had Langford ranked next (the votes going to him in the round after Brialey was eliminated). More proof it's not just name recognition.

My own view is there are some excellent fanwriters who would be just as reasonable to choose, but that the voters don't see this Hugo as purely being an award for wordsmithing. As long as Langford keeps winning I am inclined to believe it's because people like his writing, like him, like the attention Ansible pays to the science fiction field, and are enthusiastic about things he says about sf and fandom.

--Mike Glyer

From:

bovil.livejournal.com

As I said, I don't think Langford is undeserving of the awards he's garnered. He's a great fanwriter.

He's also a widely-published fanwriter. Just as Cheryl's fanwriting extended beyond Emerald City, Langford's fanwriting extends far beyond Ansible. EmCit got a lot of readers, but so did Cheryl's articles for Locus and IROSF. Langford's exposure in SFX gets him a lot of eyeballs beyond fanzinista circles.

Perhaps my original comment overstated things a bit. Fans bullet-voting Langford because they recognize him is by no means the only factor in fan award voting or his wins. I don't think your example from 2006 refutes the basic point, though. You've shown that a lot of people who voted for Brialey picked Langford as their #2 vote. This supports another argument; that Langford's high profile makes him a very popular #2 choice among knowlegable fanzine fans. It doesn't show how the people who voted Langford #1 voted their lower preferences.

Langford gets the eyeballs. He gets the eyeballs because he's a good fanwriter and beyond his very popular 'zine he's published in some high-profile venues. If more people read him, it gives more people a chance to form an opinion about him. Name recognition is important.

From:

johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com

I think it's one thing and one thing alone: people read Ansible that don't read any other zine. There was a time when Emerald CIty was close to the same readership and Cheryl came close, but didn't hit it.

Personally, I'd rather see someone like Claire win one, but I know I'm in the minority of fandom that sees a lot of different fanzines and fan writers. IF there were larger readerships, I think we'd see different winners far more frequently.

I do think that the 'Since he won last year I should vote for him' effect exists, but it's not the only reason he wins. I still think he should take himself out of the running, but I know that's an unpopular belief.
Chris

From:

kalimac.livejournal.com

I tend to agree with Mike. As a Hugo administrator, I saw too many thoughtfully-cast ballots that just happened to have Langford as first choice (or as second-choice knockover) in Fan Writer to believe that it's all just a bunch of mindless zombies intoning "LANGFORD ... WE MUST VOTE FOR LANGFORD".