Chaos Horizon were uncannily close, I’d be gloating too. I also think they’re right when they say that the drop in votes from Novel to shorter fiction was the cause of short fiction having a bad day – clearly a lot of the extra voters only felt able to vote in Novel and the dramatic categories.
CH definitely had a good night and thier misses (5th Season) were understandable.
Vox has really helped EPH get validated also.
Enough stuff there for SP4 to pretend they made a difference whilst basucally confirming they are spent force. Without the Sads giving cover the Rabids are exposed as just wreckers for an emotionally disturbed publisher.
I was going to say that the sads don’t have enough chutzpah to claim this, but then I realised of course they do….
You are right that they are stick-a-fork-in-it levels of done though – and in some way’s that’s to their credit, because at least they didn’t make a meaningful use of their list as a slate. Alternatively it could be they have really shed numbers, probably as a combo of apathy and defections to the rabid side.
I have…concerns…about EPH definitely going through. There seems to be a combo of “too complicated” and “not invented here” that might conspire to see support going to 4/6 as a more understandable version of EPH. There’s also the “too soon to tell” crowd who spoke against it last year, and I suspect that a decade will still be “too soon” for some of them. Let’s hope there’s a strong swell of opinion in its favour.
I think having Short Story effectively wrecked by Rabids should be sufficient. The overall damage is less across all categories but without EPH then we’d have to face the possibility that the Rabids could prevent a Hugo for best Short Story indefinitely (or at least until VDs trust fund runs out)
Yeah, Short Story is one of the marquee categories and having it swept is frankly a bit of a blow. It will serve a purpose as an object lesson about why we need reform though.
The ceremony will have some creditable winners though, and the Big One is a credible list with real competition even after the slate effect. I suspect JCW missing out is a bit of a shock for their campaign.
As an illustration of my concerns about people’s support for EPH, there’s this comment from the GRRM article:
Frank Probst
Apr. 26th, 2016 09:25 pm (UTC)
If it ain’t broke…
I’m still in the “Leave the Rules Alone” camp. I honestly think last year was a one-off. Yes, there are some eye-rollers in there this year, but I don’t see any category getting No Awarded.
It appears that if you weren’t paying enough attention to what VD nominated, his “cover” nominations make the results look ‘not too bad’. There’s clearly a certain amount of education needed out there…
Really, do we need locks on the windows considering the burglars only trashed one of the rooms and only did a poo in that one vase? Some of the stuff they stole we wanted to get rid of anyway.
I point out that despite a lot of worry last year about EPH’s chances, it passed. Comfortably IIRC. Yes, there are people against it, and some of them will say why. (And some of what they say will be puzzling, as in this case.) But there’s no evidence that there’s some new groundswell of opposition, which is what it would take to doom the proposal.
Hey Jim, I think this is F770-in-exile or something!
I may well be being a bit pessimistic, but people’s innate conservatism (little-c) is a powerful force, and I think EPH’s supporters need to keep on being vocal about how much of this year is _still_ VDs choices, and how EPH will fix that.
Somewither missing the cut in favor of Butcher and Stephenson is interesting. In the case of Seveneves, I can easily believe that it got a bunch of non-canine nominations. I don’t think Aeronaut’s Windlass picked up many nods from Gen Pop, though. So there might be a case where the Sads had an effect on pushing Butcher past JCW. And it’s also very popular that the Rabids themselves simply didn’t all vote for Somewither because they didn’t like it. Kind of a rebuke for the RPs’ official novelist mascot, if so.
I think Butcher may have got votes from what I think of SP-classic i.e. Correia’s fans rather than Mad-Genii. People who had voting rights from Sasquan who weren’t particularly inspired by SP4.
I think if the trainwreck that is short story, related work, and fan artist doesn’t convince people about the need for significant change in the nomination system, then there is a considerable risk at play that the Hugo’s will actually be damaged.
Yes, the awards now look vulnerable. One guy with money can wreck an important category out of spite. Doing nothing won’t solve it and even doubling the number of people nominating won’t solve it. EPH will.
I was surprised at no JCW. Here he did all that sucking up to Teddy the past year and got bupkis! No longer modestly one of the finest writers. Wonder what he did to get nixed from the dead elk list? Insufficient groveling?
A lot of people like Butcher, and as we see from Timothy’s review, there are talking cats, which are always popular. I’ll probably read it in the packet. I already read the others.
SP can keep telling themselves how important they are, but they’re dead in the water (let’s sing that “Dead Puppies aren’t much fun” song). Not to mention vile hivers from 770 suggested things there too.
Pretty much nothing I nominated got in except movies and novels. Oh well, at least it won’t take me long to vote; not gonna bother to read anything from Teddy’s vanity press, so that leaves me with unread… one novel, one novella, two novelettes, coupla comics.
I wish I was going to the business meetings. They’re going to be long, which will be offset by the shortest Hugos on record.
Will there be asterisks? It’s a new record of numbers, after all. Please let there be asterisks.
BTW, the presence of Jim Minz on the short list makes me think SP4 may not have been as inconsequential as people are assuming. Remember last year also the instant analysis was that the Sad Puppies were irrelevant next to the Rabids, but then the full nominating statistics came out and showed that in terms of bloc size, the SPs were nearly as large.
I agree that describing SP4 as “inconsequential” is inaccurate, and a little bit unfair. They’ve at least partially morphed to recommended reading list, albeit one that substantially less participated upon than, say the Locus or SFWA ones.
I would hope that at long last, the Sads understand the distinction between a RRL and a slate, but that is too optimistic even for me.
Fair point. They probably did bring people to the party and affected the balance of choices in some places. However by being less of a lock-step block and having more overlap with other voter’s choice the impact us more benign.
In terns of voting power, a large minority is always going to have more power if they act as kingmakers.
Camestros Felapton 
17 responses to “Hugo Reactions…”
Chaos Horizon were uncannily close, I’d be gloating too. I also think they’re right when they say that the drop in votes from Novel to shorter fiction was the cause of short fiction having a bad day – clearly a lot of the extra voters only felt able to vote in Novel and the dramatic categories.
LikeLike
CH definitely had a good night and thier misses (5th Season) were understandable.
Vox has really helped EPH get validated also.
Enough stuff there for SP4 to pretend they made a difference whilst basucally confirming they are spent force. Without the Sads giving cover the Rabids are exposed as just wreckers for an emotionally disturbed publisher.
LikeLike
I was going to say that the sads don’t have enough chutzpah to claim this, but then I realised of course they do….
You are right that they are stick-a-fork-in-it levels of done though – and in some way’s that’s to their credit, because at least they didn’t make a meaningful use of their list as a slate. Alternatively it could be they have really shed numbers, probably as a combo of apathy and defections to the rabid side.
I have…concerns…about EPH definitely going through. There seems to be a combo of “too complicated” and “not invented here” that might conspire to see support going to 4/6 as a more understandable version of EPH. There’s also the “too soon to tell” crowd who spoke against it last year, and I suspect that a decade will still be “too soon” for some of them. Let’s hope there’s a strong swell of opinion in its favour.
LikeLike
I think having Short Story effectively wrecked by Rabids should be sufficient. The overall damage is less across all categories but without EPH then we’d have to face the possibility that the Rabids could prevent a Hugo for best Short Story indefinitely (or at least until VDs trust fund runs out)
LikeLike
Yeah, Short Story is one of the marquee categories and having it swept is frankly a bit of a blow. It will serve a purpose as an object lesson about why we need reform though.
The ceremony will have some creditable winners though, and the Big One is a credible list with real competition even after the slate effect. I suspect JCW missing out is a bit of a shock for their campaign.
LikeLike
As an illustration of my concerns about people’s support for EPH, there’s this comment from the GRRM article:
Frank Probst
Apr. 26th, 2016 09:25 pm (UTC)
If it ain’t broke…
I’m still in the “Leave the Rules Alone” camp. I honestly think last year was a one-off. Yes, there are some eye-rollers in there this year, but I don’t see any category getting No Awarded.
It appears that if you weren’t paying enough attention to what VD nominated, his “cover” nominations make the results look ‘not too bad’. There’s clearly a certain amount of education needed out there…
LikeLike
Really, do we need locks on the windows considering the burglars only trashed one of the rooms and only did a poo in that one vase? Some of the stuff they stole we wanted to get rid of anyway.
LikeLike
I point out that despite a lot of worry last year about EPH’s chances, it passed. Comfortably IIRC. Yes, there are people against it, and some of them will say why. (And some of what they say will be puzzling, as in this case.) But there’s no evidence that there’s some new groundswell of opposition, which is what it would take to doom the proposal.
LikeLike
Hey Jim, I think this is F770-in-exile or something!
I may well be being a bit pessimistic, but people’s innate conservatism (little-c) is a powerful force, and I think EPH’s supporters need to keep on being vocal about how much of this year is _still_ VDs choices, and how EPH will fix that.
LikeLike
Somewither missing the cut in favor of Butcher and Stephenson is interesting. In the case of Seveneves, I can easily believe that it got a bunch of non-canine nominations. I don’t think Aeronaut’s Windlass picked up many nods from Gen Pop, though. So there might be a case where the Sads had an effect on pushing Butcher past JCW. And it’s also very popular that the Rabids themselves simply didn’t all vote for Somewither because they didn’t like it. Kind of a rebuke for the RPs’ official novelist mascot, if so.
LikeLike
I think Butcher may have got votes from what I think of SP-classic i.e. Correia’s fans rather than Mad-Genii. People who had voting rights from Sasquan who weren’t particularly inspired by SP4.
Glad JCW didn’t get a look in though.
LikeLike
I think if the trainwreck that is short story, related work, and fan artist doesn’t convince people about the need for significant change in the nomination system, then there is a considerable risk at play that the Hugo’s will actually be damaged.
LikeLike
Yes, the awards now look vulnerable. One guy with money can wreck an important category out of spite. Doing nothing won’t solve it and even doubling the number of people nominating won’t solve it. EPH will.
LikeLike
I was surprised at no JCW. Here he did all that sucking up to Teddy the past year and got bupkis! No longer modestly one of the finest writers. Wonder what he did to get nixed from the dead elk list? Insufficient groveling?
A lot of people like Butcher, and as we see from Timothy’s review, there are talking cats, which are always popular. I’ll probably read it in the packet. I already read the others.
SP can keep telling themselves how important they are, but they’re dead in the water (let’s sing that “Dead Puppies aren’t much fun” song). Not to mention vile hivers from 770 suggested things there too.
Pretty much nothing I nominated got in except movies and novels. Oh well, at least it won’t take me long to vote; not gonna bother to read anything from Teddy’s vanity press, so that leaves me with unread… one novel, one novella, two novelettes, coupla comics.
I wish I was going to the business meetings. They’re going to be long, which will be offset by the shortest Hugos on record.
Will there be asterisks? It’s a new record of numbers, after all. Please let there be asterisks.
LikeLike
BTW, the presence of Jim Minz on the short list makes me think SP4 may not have been as inconsequential as people are assuming. Remember last year also the instant analysis was that the Sad Puppies were irrelevant next to the Rabids, but then the full nominating statistics came out and showed that in terms of bloc size, the SPs were nearly as large.
LikeLike
I agree that describing SP4 as “inconsequential” is inaccurate, and a little bit unfair. They’ve at least partially morphed to recommended reading list, albeit one that substantially less participated upon than, say the Locus or SFWA ones.
I would hope that at long last, the Sads understand the distinction between a RRL and a slate, but that is too optimistic even for me.
LikeLike
Fair point. They probably did bring people to the party and affected the balance of choices in some places. However by being less of a lock-step block and having more overlap with other voter’s choice the impact us more benign.
In terns of voting power, a large minority is always going to have more power if they act as kingmakers.
LikeLike