2007 Hugo Award Winners Announced

(via Big Dumb Object)

The votes are in and counted, the counter-intuitive preference system has been engaged and voila, the Hugos have deposited their traditional collection of interesting wild cards and depressing foregone conclusions on our collective doormats.  Let us survey the wreckage and see if there are any survivors...

• Best Novel - Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End
• Best Novella - "A Billion Eves" by Robert Reed
• Best Novellette - "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald
• Best Short Story - "Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt
• Best Related Non-fiction Book - James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon by Julie Phillips
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - Pan's Labyrinth
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form - "Girl in the Fireplace" from Doctor Who
• Best Editor, Long Form - Patrick Nielsen Hayden
• Best Editor, Short Form - Gordon Van Gelder
• Best Professional Artist - Donato Giancola
• Best Semiprozine - Locus
• Best Fanzine - Science-Fiction Five Yearly
• Best Fan Writer - Dave Langford
• Best Fan Artist - Frank Wu
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer - Naomi Novik

What I Got Right...

If you cast your collective eyes back to the First of August and you'll see my expectations and aspirations for this year's awards.  Pleasingly, I got four out of five right.  I correctly guessed that once the Americans got to see Pan's Labyrinth they'd love it, I also guessed that "Girl in the Fireplace" would beat out the the lackluster BSG.  I also guessed that Locus would boringly stomp its way to another victory and that Naomi Novik would crush all comers for the Campbell award.

What I Got Wrong...

Seeing as this is only the second round of Hugos that I've properly paid attention to, I was unaware of quite how eccentric the actual voting system of the Hugos is.  I assumed that everyone voted for who they liked best and that the person with the most votes won.  This is evidently not the case.  Instead they have this weird system whereby secondary preferences get taken into account as books get eliminated round by round (full details HERE in PDF form).  By and large, this didn't make a difference to the voting except when it came to best novel.  I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by Rainbows End and thought it too niche to stand a chance when facing the populist might of Temeraire.  However, what I didn't factor into my decision making was that the battle for second place was between two SF books who were both more popular than Eifelheim, the other fantasy title on the shortlist.  So, Watts got knocked out, then Flynn leaving Stross and Vinge against Novik.  Vinge had enough juice to knock out Stross and then inherited all of his votes, which tipped the balance towards him in the fourth round.  Two facts surprise me about this result.  Firstly, I simply can't account for Vinge coming straight out the gate as having the most votes in the first round.  While the book was well received upon release, it didn't generate anywhere near as much buzz as Temeraire or even Blindsight, which brings me to my second surprise.  While I didn't expect Blindsight to win, I expected him to beat Flynn.  I think we can chalk both of these surprises up to the fact that the Hugos are only voted for by members of Worldcon and as a result they're not completely representative of the scene as a whole.

What I found interesting...

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Strange Horizons got a few nominations but they were spread out over the Fanzine and Semiprozine categories.  I think that this is an area that the Hugo organisers really need to think about.  The concept of a fanzine and a semiprozine are doubtless obvious to someone who remembers the good old days of mimeographed fanzines but to someone who has arrived in fandom within the last 5 years (such as me) the distinction is not an obvious one.  Strange Horizons pay their contributors suggesting they're a semiprozine but they're available for free... suggesting they're not like Locus.  I'd like to see some conceptual ground-clearing carried out in this area because at the moment the categories are set up in such a way as to freeze out websites in favour of more traditional publications that clearly fit into the Hugo categories.

Comments

[Liz]

I really like the Hugo voting system, because it means I don't have to exercise tactical voting. It means if there are multiple great episodes of one TV show nominated it doesn't split the votes of the fans between them (not that J. Michael Straszynski ever worked that out), it means I can vote for No Award first if I think all the nominees are terrible without losing my say in what actually wins, and it means I am free to vote for whatever I really like even if I think it's no chance of winning without any fear that it means something I really dislike will win. So I'm a great big fan of STV.

This year it was also pretty important in the Best Novelette category, where the Resnick story ahd most first-preference votes but ended up fourth, and in Best Fan Writer and Best Editor Longform, where Dave Langord and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden both won narrow victories after the vote redistribution when they were losing on first-preference votes.

[Kevin Standlee]

What exactly is it that you find counter-intuitive about the Hugo voting system? Would I be right in assuming that by "intuitive" you mean a system whereby everyone marks an X by the thing they like the best, and the candidate that has more Xs than anyone else wins? If so, think about the implications of this: You can quite plausibly get a "winner" that is detested by nearly 80% of the people who voted, as long as it gets 21% of the vote and the remaining votes are split evenly among the other four nominees.

With preferential voting, what you say when you mark a 1 is "This is who I want to win," and by a 2 you are saying, "If #1 can't win, I would prefer #2 wins," and so forth. That allows us to take your full opinion into account. What it actually does is replicate the process of runoff elections, which is why the system is sometimes called "Instant Runoff Voting."

This system is explained further on the Hugo Awards FAQ under the question "Why do you have that complicated two-stage system?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I think it detracts from the legitimacy of the award.

On a flat vote it's the person who most people thought had the best novel that walks away with it.

As it is, it's mostly "the person who the least number of people hated" walks away with it, which seems less prestigious and straight-forward to me. I understand why the system is used but I disagree.

This year the issue is moot as the person with the most votes in the first round ended up winning it but what of past years? Maybe that's why every year there's a lot of harrumphing about the Hugos.

[Tero]

I don't see the Hugo voting as "the person who the least number of people hated" but instead "the person most voters thought worthy of winning". Which, to my mind, is much better than "the person who has the most single-minded following, even if nobody else likes them", which the other system you're proposing would too often produce.

If there are five candidates, of which I think two are really good, the current system gives me the chance to ensure my vote goes to whichever of them has the better chance of winning, without me having to try to second-guess all the other voters (as in, "I think candidate A is best, but candidate B has a better chance of winning against an inferior but popular candidate C, so I'll have to vote for B instead of A").

And really, the Hugo system (for the voter) is really, _really_ simple: vote for all candidates you think are worthy of winning, in order of preference. The system takes care that the most people's votes count towards the winner.

[Max Cairnduff]

I agree with Jonathan, using a single transferable vote systems risks ending up with the Conservative party leadership election approach to awards.

The winner is the one with least enemies, which is also often the blandest. Hence the Tories got William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith, men nobody in that party objected to enough to oppose, and men nobody in the country cared enough about to elect.

The risk is blandness, though I do recognise the countervailing risk of a winner that only a tiny number like, but at least it's a winner that a tiny number really like as opposed to a winner that a large number kind of like.

[Adam Whitehead]

Despite our disagreements elsewhere, I found this analysis of the Hugo Awards to be most interesting.

I think both sides have a point about the Hugo Awards voting system (I hope to attend Denver next year, so this is of some personal interest) and I especially like the phrase 'The Tory Leadership Election Approach' to voting. The system as it stands now does seem to lead to compromises rather than out-and-out populist wins. OTOH, as has been pointed out, if there are two or three books you like on the shortlist then being able to move your votes between them is quite handy. If there is only one, then it's of less use.

On the BSG front, the choice of episode was fairly odd. Any of the 'New Caprica' arc would have been a worthy winner but instead a much weaker episode (IMO) was nominated. Given that "Exodus, Part II" has attracted much praise as one of the best episodes of SF TV ever and everyone assumed it would win easily, its total absence from the list was a major surprise. Given the rest of BSG Season 3 (the part that aired this year) was fairly weak, I'd be surprised to see BSG even on next year's ballot. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see Doctor Who get all four nominations, given that Heroes could be nominated for its entire first season in the Long Form category.

Patrick Hayden informed me that the Campbell is for Best New Writer when I thought it was for Best New Novel, which clarifies the Novik victory, since she had three novels (and IIRC a short story) in the eligibility period compared to most of her competitor's one novel apiece.

Next year I'm hoping Ian McDonald's 'Brasyl' will get the Best Novel nod, and certainly will get my vote. Of everything else I've read this year only Richard Morgan's 'Black Man' had a similar impact.

[Jed]

One reason Strange Horizons didn't get more noms as either a semiprozine or a fanzine is that we're neither: we consider ourselves a prozine, and there's no Hugo category for that. We've therefore traditionally asked nominators not to nominate us in the Semiprozine and Fanzine categories. (We're happy for people to nominate Susan Groppi in the Best Editor, Short Form category, of course.) We may change our minds at some point in the future--there are magazines that are prozines by SFWA standards but semiprozines by Hugo standards, and we could conceivably consider ourselves one of those. But for now, we'd rather call ourselves a prozine.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Max -- You have my position entirely. I think if you're going to go down the democratic route then the person who most people think should win... should win.

As I said, this year wouldn't have made much difference but I think it detracts from the popular mandate for a book to win the Hugo because it was less hated than the other finalist.

The downside to this would be more "WTF" reactions but as a commentator, it's more grist to the mill for the likes of me :-)

Adam -- I just finished BSG series 3 and thought the first two acts of the episode dealing with unions was the stand-out episode. I thought the New Caprica arc was rather shallow... but then I think that's a criticism you can put to the series as a whole (and indeed I shall when I get the moment).

Jed -- I think semiprozine is fair enough. It's not as though anyone can live off of their Strange Horizons pay.

You do raise an issue though... why isn't there a prozine category? There are loads of them now. You could define it as differing from the semiprozine as being a magazine that pays a salary to at least one of its contributors.

[Adam Whitehead]

I think I remember commentary from David Langford about ten years back (probably in SFX) that the prozine/semiprozine/fanzine part of the awards confuses even the judges. I gather this part of the awards has been fiddled with a fair bit over the years and redefined, and they probably don't want to go back to that particular well again.

As for BSG, the politics of the New Caprica arc are about as subtle as hitting a pea with a sledgehammer, but from an entertainment/drama perspective I felt it was the highlight of the season. And no other drama show on US TV even attempted to comment on Iraq the way they did, which is rather depressing.

[Tero]

Sorry to piss all over your analogy, but if the current method is 'The Tory Leadership Election Approach', then the one some of you are proposing is the one that produces George Bush as the winner when people aren't allowed to say, "what I really want is Nader, but if he can't win, then it must be Gore". I see that as much worse, although that is of course not directly applicable when you're trying to "just" determine the best work of fiction.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Adam -- My problem was that aside from suicide bombing and the whole division between making friends with the people you're occupying and teaching them a lesson, BSG really didn't have anything to say about the occupation of Iraq. It was just content to include a plot-line inspired by it.

Interestingly, I had another look at the piece I wrote about series 2 and compared it to the piece Strange Horizons ran about series 3 and I was amused by how closely we agree. I knew I agreed with the SH piece, but I'd forgotten that I had come to those conclusions a year or so ago.

Tero -- We must agree to disagree then because, for me, the idea that the person with the most first round votes should win is more important than the idea that, without adequate safeguards, a person most people dislike might win.

As Max said, worrying about what people dislike rather than like leads to blandness or at least "inoffensive" winners. I can understand why the Hugo bods would prefer that than a stream of winners that cause controversy but I think that if you're going to go with democracy and the idea that the Hugos are some kind of weathervane for fandom's tastes then the first round is where it's at.

[James Nicoll]

"Eifelheim, the other fantasy title on the shortlist."

I am pretty sure that a story about aliens shipwrecked in 14th century Europe is SF.

[Damien]

Man, I never thought I'd see someone defending first past the post voting.

It's not about least hated, it's about splitting coalitions of similar votes. Look, say I'd voted. My top picks would be Blindsight, Rainbows End, and Glasshouse... not necessarily in that order. Someone else into hard SF might have a similar preferred set, though a different order. It's not about hating Novik, it's about the fact that if any two of those books were missing, the third would beat Novik by a landslide[1]. But if you just look at the first round vote, that preference gets obscured by the vote being split among three similar books.

Worst case, people might be flipping a coin to decide between Blindsight and Rainbows End, say. "I know I prefer one of these to win, but I can't pick which one!" So a strong preference for (one of these two) gets split. The current system doesn't punish that.

Now, there are other counting methods besides instant runoff -- Borda counts, approval vote (which is closer to the nomination process), Condorcet (which might be best, since there's no practical problem with saying "none of these books beats the others head to head, it's a tie!")

[1] Actual vote numbers may not correspond to my model.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Damien -- I am quite happy defending first past the post :-) politically I'd prefer list-based proportional representation but I think a popular vote on a matter such as this benefits hugely from the freshness of first past the post.

Alternately, I'd prefer a system whereby you voted for four preferences from an open field rather than a short list. For example, I'd vote for Blindsight as best book of the year and Glasshouse would be in there too but eifelheim, Temeraire and Rainbows End wouldn't be anywhere near my top 5 novels of the year.

So If you want single transferable vote, I'd like an open vote from which the first five most popular novels would be chosen. These would constitute the "short list" and the winner would be announced at the convention. Though I understand the practicalities of people voting at the convention would make this impossible without vast software support.

I'm just saying that I think the current system pulls towards the bland.

[Tim Illingworth]

Jonathan: you say "So If you want single transferable vote, I'd like an open vote from which the first five most popular novels would be chosen. These would constitute the "short list"".

That's exactly how the system works (modulo the fact that it's "pick five" and the winners of that stage are announced at Easter).

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Are you sure? you may be right but I looked it up and I got the impression that you nominated stuff, the shortlist was announced and then you voted from the short-list.

If you're right then it's an amazing coincidence that so many people picked the same five books :-)