My Hugo rant: vote or don't complain

The Hugo awards, on the off chance that you don't know them, are science fiction fandom's version of the People's Choice awards: recognition by the fans who attend the annual World Science Fiction Convention of the best SF works in a variety of categories. The heart of the Hugo awards, at least as far as this fiction writer is concerned, are the big four categories:

* Novel
* Novella
* Novelette
* Short Story

Hardcore SF fans debate Hugo winners endlessly. SF writers, even the most famous and recognized, cherish the awards. (I obviously do; see my previous blog entry for my 2008 self-pimpage.) Many readers look twice at any book or author with "Hugo Award Winner" next to his or her name. I've heard literally hundreds of fans griping about why their favorite writers or books never win.

Yet very, very few fans participate.

It drives me crazy.

Expense shouldn't be stopping them. Here's all it costs to participate:

1) A little money. Be an attending or supporting member of the coming year's World SF Con. This year, the con is Denvention 3 in, where else, Denver. You can join here. An attending membership is pricey ($200) at this late stage, but you can buy a supporting membership for only $50. So, for fifty smackers you can help shape the awards. You must, however, have your membership before January 31, 2008, so you have less than a month left to join.

2) A little time before the end of February. By mailing in the paper form that they'll send you (I got mine yesterday) or that you can download, or by using the online form here, you nominate the works you consider award-worthy. You just have to do so before midnight Pacific time on March 1, 2008.

3) Another small bit of time before the first of August. When the nominees are settled--the good folks at Denvention will let you know--vote for the ones you want to win.

That's it: fifty bucks, and maybe two fifteen-minute chunks of your time, and you can shape the Hugo awards.

Yet, again, very, very few fans do.

How few?

Here, courtesy of the Web Weasel's research in Locus and a few online sites, are the minimum and maximum number of nominations for each of the big four fiction categories for the last three WorldCons:





(Sorry if that's a bit hard to read; I don't have time to fight more with the sizing options.)

To give you an example of how low participation is, to make the Hugo ballot for Best Novel in the most hotly contested awards of the last three years--those at LAcon--you would have needed only 46 nominations. To make the ballot for Best Short Story, 19 would have done it in any of the past three years.

These are sad figures indeed.

So, let's change it.

If you care about SF and you want the Hugo awards to represent the choice of a broad range of SF fans--including you, spend your fifty bucks, nominate, vote, and hope your favorites win.

To make sure we're clear that this is not about me campaigning, let me address the obvious questions. Would I like to be on the ballot? Sure. To win? Of course. But neither of those dreams is the point of this post.

What I want is to know that the Hugo winners reflect the taste of a large base of passionate readers.

Let's do it.