Nebula Bloggery
January 15th, 2009 by Editors
So far so good, it appears:
- John Scalzi approves
- Andrew Wheeler approves
- David Moles doesn’t appear to disapprove
- Tobias Buckell approves
- Niall Harrison approves
- And even the SFWA LJ is fairly free of whingeing
Much of the discussion on the LJ is to do with the recommendations list – something we have a bit of experience of. There are complaints that if recommendations are anonymous then all sorts of rubbish will get recommended. That might be true, but our experience suggests that people will be much more likely to make recommendations if they can do so anonymously.
The complainers also appear to have missed the point with regard to the eligibility period. OK, so some SFWA members might have been confused by it, but a lot did understand it. That was never the point. The problem with rolling eligibility was that hardly anyone outside SFWA understood it, which was bad for the public image of the awards.
An interesting change that isn’t getting much press is that nominating rights, and possibly voting rights (subject to a bylaw change) will be opened up to Associate members. “Associate” is effectively SFWA’s term for “wannabe” – it means someone who has at least sold one short story to a qualifying venue. A bigger voting pool might help remove embarrassments such as the total lack of nominees for this year’s Norton. However, Affiliate members (editors, agents, critics and other people who actually read a lot of books) are still barred from participating.
That might be true, but our experience suggests that people will be much more likely to make recommendations if they can do so anonymously.
Which is why I suggested that including one’s name be optional. People may be more likely to make anonymous recommendations, but I’d be surprised if people aren’t also less likely to pay attention to them.
I imagine something like this site’s recommendation lists, only about thirteen times longer. At 10-20 works with no contests, most of the lists here are — sorry — already too long to be much help, except perhaps to echo a recommendation I’ve already seen elsewhere. Whereas if I saw, say, that 37 people had recommended Memoirs of a Master Forger, or that even though only three people had recommended “From Clarissa” those three people were Matt Cheney, Jeff Vandermeer and Kelly Link, I’d be much more likely to take the trouble to track those works down.
In general, “doesn’t appear to disapprove” sounds accurate enough. I’m not one of those people who’s been agitating for Nebula reform, so I don’t much care one way or the other about the changes re: the eligibility period and so on. I agree that throwing the nomination/voting process open to Affiliates is one fo the more interesting changes — I doubt it’ll do much one way or the other to affect the output, but it’ll make the Affiliates feel better and probably attract more of them and more dues money for the organization, so hurrah.
To editors, agents, critics etc., I suggest either selling that token pro story — not that hard, really; in a pinch you can do it with two collabs — or forming an SF Other Professionals A (hey, I’d join) with its own award. One suspects that such an award would quickly get a reputation for being more reliable than the Nebula, so long as it wasn’t the Roger Elwood Memorial Award.
Er, for “contests” substitute “context”. Stupid fingers.
And for “Affiliates” substitute “Associates.” Apparently it’s not my morning.
The problem with rolling eligibility was that hardly anyone outside SFWA understood it, which was bad for the public image of the awards.
very true. it’s not that hard to explain either, but for some reason people just didn’t bother. it doesn’t matter now.
it is a bit surprising that few people have commented, or maybe noticed (?), that Associates will now be allowed to nominate at least. That is a positive step as the class at present is a totally useless concept. Useless, as in to the person joining. of course people keep arguing with me about this but I’ve been at this level and I say from my experience they might as well scrap it.
there are better ways to waste your money, like sending out manuscripts or paying for websites, books, etc.
I’ll have to agree with David Moles it that a Nebula reform doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other. It does seem important to a lot of people, though, so, well done SFWA Board I guess.
David commented:
it is a bit surprising that few people have commented, or maybe noticed (?), that Associates will now be allowed to nominate at least. That is a positive step as the class at present is a totally useless concept. Useless, as in to the person joining. of course people keep arguing with me about this but I’ve been at this level and I say from my experience they might as well scrap it.
In the past year, I qualified for Associate membership, and whenever Jane asked me if I was going to change from Affiliate to Associate, I asked her what benefits the change would get me, aside from the higher membership fee. I wasn’t able to get any real answer, although a while ago Russell hinted that something (this?) was in the works for Associates.
David:
Point taken about the rec lists here. We know they are not as good as they might be, but getting them better requires software and time that we don’t have. SFWA may be able to do a better job, and if they can we’d be delighted.
I see that Jason Sanford and Jonathan Strahan are happy too.
On the other hand, over at Andrew Wheeler’s blog, someone called “King Rat” asked: “Why is it important that people outside the S.F.W.A. understand the details?” Thank goodness SFWA now has some leadership that knows the answer to that question.