Hugos! * 2015 edition

The asterisk in the title is in honor of Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station. So, in a previous post, I seconded Jim C. Hines' calls regarding the Hugos.

Here's the results. We were both wrong. I called three for No Award, including Best Fan Writer. The actual number is five, and Fan Writer was awarded to somebody. (No Award went to both Editors, Novella, Best Related and Short Story). Looking at the PDF with details, it's clear that once you get past the noise of the Best Novel, the Puppies had around 500 votes per category, out of over 5,000 per category. They had roughly 10% of the total vote. Even that is a bit optimistic. For example, I voted for both "Big Boys" (which got 504 total 1st round votes) and "Totaled" (874 1st round). So, realistically, the Sad and Rabid Puppies account for no more than but probably less than 10% of the final vote.

Now, in a world in which the Puppies' reality blocking field wasn't turned up to 11, this disastrous showing would persuade them to think that they don't win Hugos because they don't have a majority of the fans behind them. Since said field is at least at 11, I suspect we're in for another round of this nonsense next year. Speaking personally, I was watching the Hugos at a bar surrounded by seven fans who didn't nominate this year. They all to a person said they would nominate next year.

An Open Letter To Brad Torgersen

Various thoughts related to Hugo and Puppies:

1) EPH does not take 76 pages to explain. The entire WSFS business packet was 76 pages, including eight new constitutional amendments, 4 from last year, various committee reports and financial reports from six or seven Worldcons. EPH only took up 3 pages of that.

2) We doubled the number of Hugo voters this year vs. last year. Last year was a doubling from the year before. How the hell many fans does Worldcon need to get to vote before the Puppies consider it valid?

3) Related to the above, Brad, you keep claiming that we should "open the voters to Comic-Con." How do you know that Comic Con would come up with a different result? Did you do a survey of attendees? If so, can we see the results? If not, why is your opinion of that group's voting preferences any better than mine?

4) The story awards are not and never were for "author I'd like to have a beer with." They are for "story that grabbed me by the short hairs and said 'come here, big boy.'" Nothing, not one word in any of your posts has ever defended or explained the merits of the work nominated. You complained that tie-in novels get no respect, yet didn't nominate a tie-in novel! You want to win a Hugo in a story category, tell me what makes the story good, not what makes the author good or another story bad.

5) I am sad that Sheila Gilbert did not get a Hugo in Editor, Long Form. Regardless, 2,496 of 4,907 voters (50.8%) felt that slate voting needed to be punished. Brad, you brought the slate, you get to take the fall for this. If you steal the Enterprise, when it blows up you own that too.