2008 Hugo Award Winners

Was SFScope in the running for anything?

How does someone qualify to be a novelist and a fan writer? I thought fan writer meant that the person was not a professional.

John: Not so far as I know. We don't appear on any of the nominations lists. I imagine that we might have been qualified under either fanzine or semiprozine (although this SF Awards Watch post shows that the semiprozine category may be removed at next year's WorldCon), and, per that same discussion, I, personally, may be eligible for editor (short form) in the future.

Jagi: The definitions of the two categories (novel and fan writer) are not mutually exclusive. This article of the WSFS Constitution defines a novel nominee as "A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more." and the fan writer nominee as "Any person whose writing has appeared in semiprozines or fanzines or in generally available electronic media during the previous calendar year." It would have been interesting if he'd won both.

Anyone: help my memory. Wasn't there a year fairly recently when the fan writer winner also won one of the professional fiction Hugos?

--Ian

I think I'll have to read The Yiddish Policemen's Union!

I have to admit that I haven't read the Chabon novel, so bear with me while I play a bit of the devil's advocate: Is The Yiddish Policemen's Union *really* THE Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year, as the Hugo Award proclaims? Or, because it was marketed as a mainstream novel, and thus had more reviews in the general media, more PR in the general media, and more visiblity in local and chain bookstores -- and thus more widely known and read compared to all the other SF novel finalists -- that it won the award? Given the Austrailian elimination process used to determine the award winners, doesn't a more widely read novel that is voted upon on more ballots have a better chance of winning the award even if it has fewer first place votes than one of the other books?

In 2001, David Langford won a Best Short Story Hugo for "Different Kinds of Darkness" the same year he won one of his Best Fan Writer Hugos. Back in 1970, Piers Anthony was nominated for a Best Fan Writer and Best Novel Hugo (the latter for Macroscope), and lost both.

The Fan-Pro dichotomy is not amateur-professional, but rather a different style of writing and whether the author is paid or not. When I publish, for instance, Mike Resnick or Gene Wolfe in my fanzine, Argentus, the writing that appears there is fan writing (I don't pay them) and could, conceivably make them eligible for a Best Fan Hugo.

Is The Yiddish Policemen's Union *really* THE Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year, as the Hugo Award proclaims?

The hugo is not actually given for Best Science Fiction, but rather Best Science Fiction or Fantasy novel (or Speculative fiction, I suppose, but I think only Science Fiction and Fantasy are listed in the constitution and I'm too lazy to double check).

Given the Austrailian elimination process used to determine the award winners, doesn't a more widely read novel that is voted upon on more ballots have a better chance of winning the award even if it has fewer first place votes than one of the other books?

In this case, there was no point in the run-off voting that anything else had more votes that The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Thus, the YPU and second highest total in each round of the run-off (as chance would have it, consistently Scalzi's The Last Colony):

YPU 195...195*...231**...292***...332****
TLC 158...158*...170**...219***...323****

*People who voted for No Award did not then vote for either.
**People who voted for Brasyl in first preferred YPU to TLC by a margin of 36-22.
***People who voted for Halting State in first preferred YPU to TLC by a margin of 61-49.
****People who voted for Rollback in first preferred TLC to YPU by a margin of 104-40, nine votes shy of overcoming YPU's lead.

[The Yiddish Policemen's Union] really pops up every awards that I know. I should find a copy. Soon.

There was a lot of heat and light over John Scalzi being nominated for a Fan Writer Hugo last year and nearly winning it. I've not seen the same kind of concern this year, at least not online, but I may not know where to look for it.

I don't mind Scalzi winning it. I'm halfway through "Old Man's War" (the first of his books I've read) and it's pretty good (not as good as Heinlein, as all the reviews seem to claim, but pretty good nonetheless). I'll definitely be reading more of his stuff...