Hugo Awards 2014

hooboy at Vox Day being nominated. What a fun week for the blogosphere this will surely be.

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It will be great reading reviews of his novelette after people get their hands on the Hugo Packet. 'Cause the Amazon sample of the collection it's in...does not impress.

Yeah, the Wheel of Time nomination seems a little odd. Why not just A Memory of Light?

rwm4768 said:

Yeah, the Wheel of Time nomination seems a little odd. Why not just A Memory of Light?

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I guess it's allowed for an entire series to be nominated for a Hugo if an individual book in that series hasn't been nominated previously. I guess none of the other WoT books have been. My guess is it's been done in this case as a sort of posthumous lifetime achievement type award for Jordan. If it were just for Memory of Light, then it would go to Sanderson.

rwm4768 said:

Yeah, the Wheel of Time nomination seems a little odd. Why not just A Memory of Light?

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There was a fan campaign going around during nominations to get the entire series in, citing the WSFS rules posted above by ULTRAGOTHA.

It will be interesting to see if/how this affects nominations going forward. We might see more campaigns like this one for other series, since it was successful enough to get on the ballot. It will be interesting to see how voting goes, too. Weird to measure an entire series against the single novels that make up the rest of the nominees.

Between these controversial nominations and the hosting fiasco earlier, this has been an odd year for the Hugos indeed.

ULTRAGOTHA said:

The voting will be very interesting. As of the end of March, there were 6211 members of LonCon3 and they're on track to break 8000. That's the largest WorldCon in ... ages if not history. It's based in London and 2177 of those members are from the UK.

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The largest worldcon was in 1984 LA Con II with 8,365 members.

The other cons that have had numbers greater than 6,211 are (unless I've accidentally missed one out) in ascending order of numbers:

59th Con 2000 with 6,269 - Millenium Philcon
64th Con 2006 with 6,291 - L.A. Con IV
41st Con 1983 with 6,400 - ConStellation
51st Con 1993 with 6,602 - ConFrancisco
53rd Con 1995 with 6,703 - L.A. Con III
62nd Con 2004 with 7,485 - Noreascon 4
47th Con 1989 with 7,795 - Noreascon 3

So basically Loncon3 has yet to exceed 8 other cons in terms of numbers.

Aquarianhelix said:

The largest worldcon was in 1984 LA Con II with 8,365 members.

The other cons that have had numbers greater than 6,211 are (unless I've accidentally missed one out) in ascending order of numbers:

59th Con 2000 with 6,269 - Millenium Philcon
64th Con 2006 with 6,291 - L.A. Con IV
41st Con 1983 with 6,400 - ConStellation
51st Con 1993 with 6,602 - ConFrancisco
53rd Con 1995 with 6,703 - L.A. Con III
62nd Con 2004 with 7,485 - Noreascon 4
47th Con 1989 with 7,795 - Noreascon 3

So basically Loncon3 has yet to exceed 8 other cons in terms of numbers.

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Correction. I just checked the Loncon3 website. They are now saying they have a membership of 6,339. Which means Loncon3 has yet to exceed only 6 other worldcons in terms of numbers.

It's already the biggest ever outside of the USA.

zanzjan said:

Yay Francis!

I have two Hugo-eligible things this year: the novelette Hotel in the Jan '13 Asimov's, and the short story Lanternfish in the Overworld.

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I haven't read "Lanternfish", but you need to blow the hell out of your own horn for "Hotel".

Combining SF, humor, secret agents, and Mars in a way where everything not only makes sense, but still has an undercurrent of seriousness intent, and makes readers remember it well after the last word is read is not an easy task, but you pulled it off wonderfully.

J.W. Alden said:

It will be interesting to see if/how this affects nominations going forward. We might see more campaigns like this one for other series, since it was successful enough to get on the ballot..

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Well...except that the chances of it ever happening again is almost zero. A series is not eligible if any single novel has been nominated.* So A Song of Ice and Fire for instance, is not eligible as a series (if/when Martin finishes that) because individual books has been nominated.

Personally I find it absolutely ridiculous that a series where none of the individual parts where seen as worthy of award nomination can be nominated as a whole. And as several people have pointed iout elsewhere, the rule was put in place to allow novels that were published in serial form to get on the ballot.
I get that they want to five Jordan a lifetime achievement award, but they should go to the WSFS business meeting to do that.

*Season one of The Game of Thrones TV series was nominated as a whole, meaning that none of the individual episodes could be nominated. After that the individual episodes written by Martin has been nominated. -There was alot of talk about the serialisation rule when that happened. The rule used to allow WoT was the one that was pointed to as a reason to allow a whole TV series as a single dramatic presentation.

Weirdmage said:

Well...except that the chances of it ever happening again is almost zero. A series is not eligible if any single novel has been nominated.* So A Song of Ice and Fire for instance, is not eligible as a series (if/when Martin finishes that) because individual books has been nominated.

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I didn't mean to imply that they would be successful campaigns. Robert Jordan's influence on the genre is clearly what carried the success of that fan campaign (along with Sanderson's current popularity), but this does set an odd precedent. So I wouldn't be surprised to see other fan/author campaigns in the future that try to get their series nominated if they've had no previous nominations. I'd agree that it's unlikely we'll see another successful push though.

I'm actually wondering if this will be brought up at the WSFS meeting. Maybe now that the loophole has been identified and exploited, someone might try to do something about it.

Update on membership numbers for Loncon3 - they've now reached 6,414. This means that there have only been five (yes, 5) Worldcons with greater membership numbers. In ascending order they are:

51st Con 1993 with 6,602 - ConFrancisco
53rd Con 1995 with 6,703 - L.A. Con III
62nd Con 2004 with 7,485 - Noreascon 4
47th Con 1989 with 7,795 - Noreascon 3
42nd Con 1984 with 8,365 - LA Con II

The Co(u)n(t)-down has begun...

Loncon3 is already the biggest worldcon outside of the USA!

(edited for a typo in the numbers!)

zanzjan said:

*blushes*

Thank you very much for the kind words. It didn't make the final Hugo ballot, but it was huge fun to write, and a positive experience all around.

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That's cool! Congrats!

I was actually thinking of subscribing to Asimov's again (last time I did was in the 1980s). This spurred me to subscribe today (via iPad), and to buy that back-issue.

J.W. Alden said:

(Also, hooboy at Vox Day being nominated. What a fun week for the blogosphere this will surely be.)

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/mysterious

Just back from Eastercon where there were some *very* interesting conversations about the more, uh, controversial noms.

/end mysterious.

OK, so not so mysterious, but prolly not relevant was a highly amusing convo about the reception some people might get if they were to turn up in person, and how the attitudes differ from one side of the pond to the other re the whole "I can say this because freedom of speech" etc etc.

Frankly I'd pay money to see said reaction.

ULTRAGOTHA said:

I think you're right re the lifetime achievement. But a Hugo for Memory of Light would have gone to both Jordan and Sanderson. Both names are on the cover as authors.

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Ah, you're right.

Shows I haven't read it. I tried to read the first book in the series many years ago, and I just couldn't get into it.

I wonder if anyone who hasn't read the series at this point will be able to burn through the whole thing in time for Worldcon.

ULTRAGOTHA said:

Why, yes. Yes you will.

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That's awesome. Good on TOR for that. Makes it that much easier to encourage people to participate this year.

Mr Flibble said:

Frankly I'd pay money to see said reaction.

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You're not alone.

Membership numbers are now up to 6,625. This means that there have only been 4 (yes, FOUR) Worldcons with greater membership numbers. In ascending order they are:

53rd Con 1995 with 6,703 - L.A. Con III
62nd Con 2004 with 7,485 - Noreascon 4
47th Con 1989 with 7,795 - Noreascon 3
42nd Con 1984 with 8,365 - LA Con II

The Co(u)n(t)-down continues...

Loncon3 is already the biggest worldcon outside of the USA!

I'm surprised AW doesn't have a meetup at Worldcons.

I'll be there.

amergina said:

I think there's a bunch of us from AW going to Loncon3...

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Glad to hear it!

I'll be in London with my fiancee (who will be my wife by then, whee), but she doesn't have much interest in SFF. So I'll likely be wandering the con by my lonesome. AWers, please bump into me.

Debeucci said:

I'm surprised AW doesn't have a meetup at Worldcons.

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Not too late, I suppose!

"Worldcon in 1995 was in Glasgow. 1996 was LACon III."

Thanks for the spot on my typos, zanzjan and apologies to all - it was actually the 54th Con in 1996.

However, as membership numbers are now up to 6,707, LACon III membership has now also been exceeded by Loncon3. This means that there have only been three (yes, THREE or 3) Worldcons with greater membership numbers. In ascending order they are:

62nd Con 2004 with 7,485 - Noreascon 4
47th Con 1989 with 7,795 - Noreascon 3
42nd Con 1984 with 8,365 - LA Con II

The Co(u)n(t)-down is going apace...

Loncon3 is already the biggest worldcon outside of the USA!!!

Will be able to meet in such a large crowd?