A Hugo plug and a random walk

The plug: In 2007, Baen published Barry N. Malzberg's fine book of critical essays, Breakfast in the Ruins. This volume collects his earlier, excellent book, Engines of the Night, and many newer essays. If you're at all interested in the history of SF or Barry's fascinating take on many different aspects of publishing, as well as the mindset of a very smart and very talented writer, please check it out. If you have read it, you know it should be on the Hugo ballot for Best Related Book, so nominate it. I will.

Disclosure: I consider Barry a friend, though I would not claim to be close to him, and I am a close friend of David Drake, who is a close friend of Barry. The book still deserves the award.

Thanks to my friend, Pam, I learned that the U.S. has finally won a gold medal in the World Rock Paper Scissors Championship--and the champ was the first ever woman to win the contest. See, Sarah, you have hope! (Okay, she beat me tonight. I had to admit it.)

My editor's copies of Transhuman arrived today. The book looks good, courtesy of a very striking cover painting by Dave Seeley and a strong cover design by Jennie Faries. It's an anthology, so I know that the odds are that it won't sell many copies, but I encourage everyone to pick it up. Even if you don't want to read my story, you'll find many other interesting tales in it. Check it out.

On the Overthrowing Heaven front, I think that just maybe I have all the big pieces figured out and can begin typing up what will grow into the outline.

And on that note, I return to that task.

An embarrassing correction

I woke up from a dream in which my subconscious told me how stupid I'd been. One of the stories I listed as having appeared this year, "Reunion," is actually in the upcoming Transhuman anthology, which Toni and I co-edited. The story that appeared in Jim Baen's Universe was "The Ten Thousand Things."

I fixed this error in the post below, so now that post is correct.

I have no excuse for this mistake. I think I've just been focused lately on the book to come, not the stories behind me.

Some kind of lame self-pimp I am.

Sorry.

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.

The 2008 Award Self-Pimpage Post

I recently read John Scalzi's post with a very similar title to this one (scroll down on his blog to find it), and I thought a lot about it. Today, my mail brought the latest Progress Report from this year's Worldcon, Denvention 3. That PR contained the nominating ballots for the Hugo awards, the main fan-controlled SF fiction awards.

After considering all this, I've decided to follow Scalzi's lead and let folks know what works of mine appeared this year and in what Hugo categories. I've had three:

Best Novel: One Jump Ahead
Best Short Story: "Broken Bits" in Future Weapons of War, and "The Ten Thousand Things" in Jim Baen's Universe.

To nominate for the Hugos, you have to be a member--attending or supporting, either will do--of the WorldCon by January 31 and submit your nomination on paper by March 1. Put differently, if you only want to vote, it costs $50 to buy a supporting membership.

I'm proud of my work and would be thrilled to be nominated in any category, but that's about as much campaigning as I can stand.

When I was growing up, seeing "Hugo Award Winner" on a book meant a lot to me. I think it still may, at least to many readers. I've since become quite sad and frustrated with how few folks actually nominate and vote for this award, but I still care about it. Sometime soon, I'll post my rant on that topic.