More Hugo voting thoughts!

[melannen]

I'm trying to squeeze these in because I leave for Pennsic War in a week and thus have to vote by then, so expect a post a day or so, and me maybe not leaving long comments as much as I'd like. Also I should have disclaimered this on my previous post: these aren't reviews; I'm aiming them at an audience of other people who know the works, so assume there are spoilers, possible triggers, and things that aren't explained well if you don't know the works in question. Also I am being much harsher than I would in a review, because I'm judging them against not just "was it something I'd recommend" but "does it stack up against My Platonic Ideal Hugo Winner" (which is probably something like what you'd get if you averaged the '67-'71 winners but then add in all the ways the genre & society have improved since then.) Which is a patently unfair standard but that's what you're here for, right.

Anyway let's knock out a few more categories:

Best Novella - All puppy, no award

Best Novelette: 1 nominee

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt translator (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014)
The Day The World Turned Upside Down

1. Is it science fiction or fantasy?

It's magical realism. The author says outright in the interview included with the Hugo voter's packet that he doesn't write SF, he writes magical realism. I don't disagree with that assessment.

Whether magical realism is automatically science fiction/fantasy is an open question, I think? Also that genre's been a little wobbly lately, with people putting stuff that would otherwise be inarguably urban fantasy in that category for srs lit marketing purposes etc.

I would tend to say that the sort of magical realism this story is, isn't what I look for when I look for sff, but clearly the editors of Lightspeed and a fair number of Hugo nominators would disagree.

2. Is it good?

This is an excellent example of the genre "Girl dumps boy, boy proceeds to demonstrate in great length and detail why that was clearly the best decision of girl's life."

Despite avoiding said genre at all costs, I have still been exposed to way, way too many stories with that plot, which tells you exactly how common it is. You'd think at least some of the dudes in question would notice how clearly they are demonstrating their douchebaggery, since the characterization's usually pretty good, but this doesn't appear to ever happen. There are two variants, commonly: a) girl inexplicably gets back with boy despite his lack of any redeeming qualities as a boyfriend, or b) girl sticks to her good decision, boy dies in angst, I feel a tiny bit bad for cheering, but only a tiny bit. This one was type B, even if it tried to be ~metaphorical~ about it.

In no cases of this type of story does the boy realize he needs to grow as a person, because he is an ass, and then move on from dead relationship. Nor does the narrative ever seem to punish him for his assholery (as opposed to punishing him for being silly enough to trust a woman, which comes up a lot, see above re: best decision of girl's life.)

Possibly this is in fact an accurate portrayal of how the average RL het relationship goes (I have been peripherally exposed to several that did follow that model, much to the detriment of everyone even peripherally involved) but then again that may be why I've never even abstractly wanted to be in one, and certainly don't consider them good entertainment.

Also he doesn't even seem to get his boring relationship story straight? Like mentioning at one point that he'd had lots of other relationships and slept with lots of other women and she was new and different and strange, and then later on deciding that they'd been together since they were kids.

Anyway it was a story I've read fifteen bajillion times, it had nothing new to say about that plot, and the MC was despicable. So: no.

3. Is it good SF?

I can't get over the fact that the fish should be dead. This guy is literally moving heaven and earth to save a fish that should have been dead two seconds after he got involved. Which is probably a better metaphor for his relationship than the earth turning upside down, but the author doesn't seem to have ever noticed that, so I don't give him any points.

The world-upside-conceit is pretty good but was executed in a way that was so lazy (even for magical realism) and the bits that are having-fun-with-worldbuilding don't mesh well with the "oh, magical metaphor, whatevs" bits, he didn't seem willing to commit either way.

You know what this would have been really good as? An illustrated childrens' book along the lines of Fortunately the Milk or Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. Dump the boring relationship angst, make the MC not a murdering asshole, have a ton of fun with Rube Goldberg-esque illustrations of him crawling across the upside-down world trying to save his friend's goldfish. It would have been great.

...we should start nomming picture books for Hugos, there's some really good SF in some of them.

Anyway I'm afraid this category is also going to be straight No Award. The best I can say for the story is that it was better than I expected it to be from the first couple pages, but I hated the first couple pages so much I almost couldn't make myself finish the story, so that's faint praise.

Best Short Story
All puppy, no award.

Best Related Work
All puppy, No Award

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
These are all episodes from shows I am either not watching or Emphatically Not Watching, so I don't think it's fair for me to even try to vote this category. (I'm tempted to vote for the Orphan Black one sight unseen because that seems like a great show and it would be an anti-vote for Moffat, but that would probably be a misuse of my vote. Alternatively if someone can point me to an easy free way to watch it online I could watch it while folding laundry tonight and at least have a vague idea even if not really enough context to judge.)

Does anyone know if there's a good way to put certain works under No Award but others under No Vote? Like, I would like to be able to say "Vote for Work A, no opinion on Work B, no award in preference to anything else." I don't think that's doable, though? If you're using No Award, everything that doesn't get a positive vote is counted as under No Award whether you list it or not, right? Which means for this category I'm going to have to decide whether to leave it blank or vote Orphan Black just so I can get in the No Awards for the puppies. (I'm leaning toward blank.)

Fandom, we need to nom some stuff for this category that isn't Episodes Of TV Dramas. There are plenty of glorious animated shorts out there, to start with, plus fanfilms and fanvids: stuff where it would really matter if someone won a Hugo for it. not to mention Homestuck flashes and Steven Universe

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

To everything you've said here: YES PLUS 1BILLION. Holy cow. I got a few paragraphs into the upside down one and went NOPE NOPE NOPE when it became clear what type of story it was.

And holy cow, looking at the noms could I tell what a SERIOUS divide there is between lit SF/F and media SF/F. Absolutely, things like Homestuck and Night Vale and Steven Universe SHOULD BE ON THE BALLOT, and I think video games would probably fit in this category too and there are some out there that should be Hugo noms at least, but also wtf is up with those fanartists? Anybody who's spent ten minutes noodling around in the Fan Art tag on Tumblr should be able to find as good or better. It wasn't bad, but not Hugo-worthy when compared to the really great stuff out there that wasn't on the ballot.

[melannen]

Well, I mean, from my like, two experiences going to science fiction fandom cons (and not even sf lit specifically, but general sf as opposed to media/slash/anime/comics/internet cons) those look like a fair sampling of the fanartists who sell at those cons & put stuff in the art shows, so to the extent that the Hugos are a survey of con-going fandom, I'm not surprised. (If you were nom'ing slash art awards based on what appeared in art shows at modern slash cons, you'd probably get similarly skewed results.) But yeah, I haven't looked at that category very closely yet, but based on a skim + Doctor Science's reports on that category, I am unenthused. We really need more new blood in there. I think part of the problem is that for people who know how much is out there on Tumblr, noms get overwhelming, fast. (Plus there's the question of knowing who on Tumblr/DA is a) professional vs fan and b) interested in crossing the streams even if it's to get an award.)

And the Dramatic Presentation noms that got in are just embarrassingly uncreative.

The novelette nominee, on the other hand, is almost making me want to agree with the Puppies on something...

[beatrice_otter]

Dramatic Presentation ... no kidding. You look at the nominees for the last several years and ask yourself, "have they even heard of this newfangled thing we call the internet?"

That novelette was Really Bad. Alas, it is the type of Really Bad (that comes attached to male douchebaggery) that they are more likely to actually like. I mean, they wouldn't count it as SF/F, but most of 'em would probably identify with the main character pretty strongly, so ....

[melannen]

I suspect most of the puppies would think it was Too Literary and I'm afraid I might agree.

(Of course they would define "literary" as "men having emotions at the reader" and I would define it as "men being assholes at the reader" but it still feels wrong.)

[trobadora]

Also I should have disclaimered this on my previous post: these aren't reviews

Heh. Ironically, these are exactly what I want from reviews and usually don't get.

[melannen]

Well, tbf, I probably would have responded to this one exactly the same way in a real review. On the other hand I never would have gotten far enough into it to review it if not for the Hugos...

[trobadora]

Not just this one; I devoured your Hugo novels post too. Many thanks for the write-up! :)

[melannen]

I would have been much kinder to both Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor in a normal review! They were both really good reads and Goblin Emperor knew exactly what it was doing and did a great job, it just wasn't doing the stuff I want The Best SFF Novel to be doing.

[cahn]

I am emphatically voting No Award for the Novelette. Hugo nominators, what is your problem?! You got one slot and you gave it to that piece of crap? (I also do not buy magic realism if you are going to mention how scientists are puzzled by it. Because then I'm like, but... gravity doesn't WORK like that... in the sense that, even if it stopped working, it would not stop working LIKE THAT... Also also, you put the fish in Sprite?! I have never had a fish, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't Work Like That -- I cringed hard -- and makes a great metaphor for the narrator being Completely Mistaken About The Universe, although I'm pretty sure that's not what the author was going for.)

I think that there is a difference between ranking under No Award and not putting on the ballot at all, because of the way the Hugo voting systems work. Like, I think that if you put it under No Award it still gets "points" (that is, No Award is treated the same as any other nominee) but if you don't put it on the ballot at all it doesn't get any points. So in your case (if I am reading your predicament correctly) you could rank No Award first, Orphan Black second, and nothing else on your ballot, and that would do what you want it to do, and be better for Orphan Blank than leaving it blank.

I will probably put a couple of the Puppy works under No Award but on the ballot, because they didn't make my head hurt. It depends on how political I'm feeling at the time. (No Award will be ranked to win, of course.) The Heuvelt I'm leaving off the ballot entirely.

[melannen]

No Award isn't the same as any other nominee - there's a special rule about No Award but I only understand it when I have recently read the explanation. And it's not a point-based system, it's instant runoff, so I think putting it under No Award would make No Award more likely to win than if I didn't vote it at all.

So if you have six voters, and they list:

OB, DW, NA
DW, NA, OB
OB
NA, OB
NA, OB


Nobody has a majority in first-ranked votes, but DW had the lowest number of first-ranked votes, so we eliminate all votes for DW, and end up with:

OB, NA
NA, OB
OB
NA, OB
NA, OB

NA has a majority of first-place votes, NA wins even though OB has more total votes.

But if instead we've got:

OB, DW, NA
DW, OB, NA
OB
BLANK
BLANK

We eliminate DW in the first round, and we get:

OB, NA
OB, NA
OB

OB has majority, majority wins.


...I think. Unless there's something I'm missing about the way the votes are counted.

And I think if you factor in the special No Award rule, it's even worse, but that requires a more complicated scenario to come into play. So I think that, in a year when No Award is going to be in play, at least, you're better off not voting at all than voting below No Award, if you would actually be okay with it winning.

(Ranking things below No Award only comes into play if a) everything you have ranked above No Award is eliminated; b) No Award is eliminated; c) two or more of the things you ranked below No Award are still in play; AND d) the things you ranked below No Award have more total above-the-line votes than below-the-line votes. So only use it if there are multiple things you despise but you despise one a bit less than the others. I may be ranking some non-Castalia puppy stuff below No Award just in case.)

[cahn]

Ah, yeah, I think you're right, sorry. I must have stopped reading halfway through the voting rules because the only part that really applies to me (at least so far) is

So only use it if there are multiple things you despise but you despise one a bit less than the others.

-- there are a couple of Puppy nominees that I think are less dire than the others, so was planning to rank below No Award (so as to distinguish them from John C. Wright, for instance, whom I wish I could actively vote against), but I don't actually want them to win.

[melannen]

Yeah, sounds about right.

...it's going to be difficult to decide if I hate this one enough less than John C. Wright, tbh.

[muccamukk]

Someone was suggesting Janelle Monáe music videos for short drama category, which would be cool. Be a nice break from Game of Thrones, anyway.

I'm really interested in what the puppy-free ballot would have looked like. May read THOSE stories after.

[melannen]

Ooh, an Afrofuturist music video winning would be the BEST.

The problem with any of those is getting them enough noms to override the juggernaut TV dramas, though. Once you start looking past the obvious, there's too much cool stuff out there to get it down to five noms. :?

[muccamukk]

It's not that there aren't, or at least haven't been, great tv episodes, but this year isn't them. I'm absolutely baffled by the Dr Who selection this year. It was one of the weakest episodes of the series. If you HAVE to pick a Doctor Who episode every year, at least choose a decent one.

ETA: But even if one did pick say Flatline, it's not exactly the peak of what SFF could or should be.

[melannen]

I'm sure there are great TV episodes (I have no qualms with the Star Trek TOS eps that won) but there's a lot of great stuff out there that isn't major TV dramas.

And also, TV dramas these days lean away from true stand-alone eps (even DW has been leaning heavily on season arcs in its theoretical stand-alones) so asking us to vote for one episode as short-form drama is like asking us to vote for one chapter of a serial in Analog as a short story.

[(Anonymous)]

Monique and Martin and I will be at Pennsic (probably) from Weds 7/29 through Thurs 8/6, plus I'll be there for setup weekend. Are you camping where you've camped when we've been there before?

-Aaron

[melannen]

I will be there from the first Saturday through the end of the week, and may or may not be there the last weekend as well. I will be camped the same place as usual! You?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, we're also camping with the same group as usual!

-Aaron

[starfish]

re: Orphan Black -- couchtuner.eu has streaming episodes. Turn on your adblock for best experience. I am re-watching with my partner (who is watching for the first time).

[dhampyresa]

You know, "a TV show episode" is really not what comes to mind when I see "short form". I expect, well, something short (I go with the court métrage definition of short being <20mns).

That novelette sounds terrible, but your children's book idea sounds really awesome.