Splitting Best Novel Hugo?

[kevin_standlee]

According to this entry on the Emerald City blog, an entry on the Locusmag blog suggests splitting the Hugo Award for Best Novel into best SF and best Fantasy Novel. Cheryl heaps scorn upon this proposal for good reasons, and I mostly agree with her and amplify on this in my comments to her blog entry.

The key reason it's unlikely to happen anytime soon is that the regular attendees of the Business Meeting are very likely to "spike" the subject by an Objection to Consideration if it's proposed. Any proposal that can't get at least one-third of the attendees present willing to vote to debate dies a quick death, and the WSFS BM regulars have shown a tendency to kill a lot of proposals without a hearing. Some have decried this practice, complaining that they're not being given a fair hearing; however, I think it's the right way to go. Deliberative assemblies have rights as a whole, and one of them is not having their time wasted with proposals that have the support of small minorities.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Dropped a comment on Cheryl's blog. Short version? "Are they NUTS?!?!?"

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I'd love to be at the business meeting that proposal sees light of day at so I can count how many people shout "Objection to Consideration!"

[(Anonymous)]

19 years ago there was a motion to remove "Object to consideration" from the set of legal procedures. Another party suggested that I find suitable music for a chorus to O2C this motion; I thought about the original tune for "Dies Irae" but gave up when I thought about who would be singing it. I wasn't at the meeting but I understand nobody trampled anybody else to be the first to O2C.

/CHip

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It hardly matters; there are other procedural methods that are very similar to OTC. The only thing OTC has going for it is that it takes precedence over a lot of other motions, including being able to pre-empt the opening speech. (The maker of a motion normally has the right of first debate to a motion.)

If OTC didn't exist, we'd have to give the maker one opportunity to have his/her say, after which someone could kill the motion in one of the following ways:

1. Move to Postpone Indefinitely (WSFS doesn't allow debate on Postpone Indefinitely, requires only a majority to kill the main motion).

2. Move the Previous Question (under WSFS rules, you'd have to allow one speech against before this motion is in order), then vote down the main motion.

Note that it is not in order under WSFS rules (based on Robert's to move To Lay On The Table. (Sometimes improperly moved as "To Table.") The chair should rule this out of order if made for the purposes of suppressing debate or killing a motion.

In short, there are plenty of ways to kill new business that a supermajority doesn't want to discuss.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

I don't like these half-baked ideas.

To change categories, someone would have to clearly articulate the significant differences between the different art forms. Then, they would do an analysis of works offered over a number of years, showing how the new categories would have worked if the definitions had been in place before (i.e. showing which works would be in which categories and how the actual historical awards ignored a set of works). Finally, there would have to be some discussion about adding a new category versus balancing things by eliminating an old category. I think there would be resistance to creating a fifth length-based writing category, while changing the existing categories to keep four might be more acceptable (e.g. make "short story" be up to 10,000 words, "novella" be 10,001 to 40,000 words, "novel" be 40,001 to 100,000 words, and "epic novel" be more than 100,000 words). Give people a year or so to digest the idea, review the specific arguments, and compare the offered research with their own analysis.

There are enough people and enough ideas that we need some way of filtering ideas before they hit the floor.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

If we contemplate adding an overlength-novel category, I will push for it to be called "Best Tome" so that the existing inverse relationship between work length and category title length is maintained. (This is the only way I can ever keep "Best Novella" and "Best Novellette" straight.)

According to Mark Olson, Tony Lewis suggests that it be called "Best Novelissimo."

IMO, we're more likely to merge the two middle fiction categories than to either add a new longer one or split novel in two; however, none of these changes has a high probability of success.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

I'm not advocating the change. I'd be easy to persuade that combining the middle categories would make sense. For the long-novel category, I would have to be persuaded that worthy mid-length novels were being ignored in favor of the blockbuster fat books; I'm not convinced that's the case.