The Point of SF Awards

A controversy has been raging regarding Locus Magazine's decision to shift the goalposts of their awards from a democracy to an aristocracy by counting subscriber votes twice.  Neil Clarke has the story, Niall Harrison comments, as does Ken.

I always use moments such as these as opportunities to think about what particular SF awards attempt to say.

For example, the Nebulas are a thermometer for how much fun was had at Jack McDevitt's annual SFWA-only "get me on the shortlist" foot rub and malt whiskey barbeque (evidently 2006 overshadowed the 2007 bash).  Meanwhile the Hugos are perfectly representative of popular opinion in the SF community assuming that the demographics of the community have not substantially changed since 1955 (after all, everyone who enjoys SF regularly travels half-way across the globe to attend a convention... right?).  Of course, last year's Clarke awards was less democratic in that it was voted for by a pannel of experts composed of some of the finest critical thinkers drawn from the institutional pillars of the UK SF community... oh and someone from SF Crowsnest was there too.



Aside from it being fun to be rude, I do have a point and that is that it is important to bear in mind what an award says.  The Locus award used to be representative of a certain cadre of SF fans.  Anyone could vote but in order to bother to do so you had to actually know about the existence of Locus.  This was not a particularly clear mandate for excellence but it's a good deal clearer than the current one which is open to everyone who has heard of the Locus awards and wants to vote but the opinions of readers are more important  except if you choose to get the magazine from a shop rather than by post, in which case you're classed as a non-reader.  Rumours that Locus deleted all votes cast by people with the same names as Floridian criminals have since been rejected as comedic and Republican.

Humans are messy beasts and any group project is necessarily going to be born of compromise but it would be nice if SF awards actually stood for something sensible occasionally.

Comments

[James]

Yes, very fun for you to be rude, made me laugh out loud.

[Jonathan M]

I'm glad to have helped ;-)