In Which I am Invoked

[kevin_standlee]

Answering a page from james_nicoll this morning, I responded to a post about the Hugo Awards that included some misconceptions about the Awards. At one point one person repeated an oft-held misconception that the Hugo Awards are only for works published in the USA. (They aren't, as I hope most of you know; works published anywhere are eligible.)

Making more work for me was someone who interpreted an earlier version of the Voting System explanation over at the Hugo Awards web site as meaning that an author couldn't have multiple nominations for his/her works in the same category. That is, two short stories by the same author couldn't be nominated in the same year. That's not true, but it comes out of our usage of "work/person," and that's because some Hugo Award categories are for individual works (like the written-fiction categories), and some are for people (like the editor and artist categories). You're not allowed to give a work or person multiple nominations in the same category; that is, you could nominate Kevin Standlee five times for Best Fan Writer this year and the Administrator would only count it as one nomination. This usage is clear to those of us who know the Hugos well, because we know that nominations in written fiction are, strictly speaking, for the work, not the person.

As a consequence of trying to clarify this and to also include examples and alternative wordings that different people suggested, that section has grown much longer. I hope it's understandable. I also hope that we haven't been inadvertently causing people to hold back nominating multiple works by the same author because they thought it wasn't allowed.

Comments

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

In practice, Doctor Who has regularly averaged 2-3 nominations in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) award over the past few years. Without going back and checking, I couldn't tell you how many of them were by the same author(s), but given that Russell T. Davis would have (justifiably) got part-credit even on episodes where he wasn't the main writer, I suspect that there were at least some.

[sorek.livejournal.com]

there is also the concern that multple nominations for the same author can result in "splitting the vote" but that's the same problem an actor or actress can have at the Oscars.

[chocolatescifi.livejournal.com]

What if there were five different named Kevin Standlee?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I know SAG rules require each actor to have a unique working name for just this reason (which leads to middle initials being used, in some cases); SFWA could do something similar, but that wouldn't help the fan categories.

I recall being amused when I noticed that there were two SF writers named E.E. Smith (Evelyn and Doc, of course).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

With my last name, I do not worry about ambiguity. There are, however, other people in Fandom who have this as a problem.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

SmofCon 23 in Portland was not at all a large convention, but as I recall had two guys named James Anderson.