Science Fiction Awards Watch

Wow! Every year’s Hugo Award results produces some drama, but this year was something special. Let’s look at the results one category at a time.

Novel

Vernor Vinge does it again! Who would have thought it? Certainly very few of the people who voted in our poll predicted Rainbows End as the winner. We did warn you that the preferential voting system could throw up very different results, and Vinge’s victory was something of a come from behind act. Naomi Novik held the early lead on first preference votes, and it took Vinge four rounds of voting to overhaul her. As is often the case in the Hugos, a lone fantasy novel tends to loose out when preferences from the other SF books are redistributed.

And yet, Vinge was a clear second on first preference votes. Peter Watts, who won our poll comfortably, finished last in the actual Hugos. Blindsight got more votes in our poll than it got first preference votes in the Hugos. So next time, Peter Watts fans, you need to vote. OK?

Novella

This category was a close fight between Robert Reed and Michael Swanwick. Reed maintained a narrow lead throughout. It is an impressive performance to beat a regular short fiction Hugo winner such as Swanwick.

Novelette

Mike Resnick has a very loyal constituency amongst many Hugo voters. Unfortunately for him, his work is not to the taste of everyone else. He had a narrow lead on first preference votes, but lost out to Ian McDonald as votes were redistributed. And he kept losing out, finally finishing fourth. Those of us who voted for River of Gods in 2005 are very happy. Perhaps this bodes well for Brasyl next year.

Short Story

If there was one person that people thought was unbeatable in the Hugos then that person was Neil Gaiman, but no longer. We hope that Tim Pratt is being properly feted wherever he is, because this is an amazing achievement.

Gaiman did have the lead on first preference votes, but only just. Pratt drew ahead on the fourth round of voting.

Related Book

A fairly comfortable win for Julie Phillips, and thoroughly deserved as well. Her biography of Alice Sheldon is a wonderful book.

Dramatic Presentation; Long Form

Pan’s Labyrinth was a comfortable winner here. Interesting that the winning film was the only one with an original script rather than being based on a famous book.

Dramatic Presentation: Short Form

Steven Moffat seems to have something of a lock on this category right now. Nice to see two other series on the ballot, though. A few episodes from Heroes are featured in the long list of nominees, but the word is that Heroes fans intend to nominate the entire story arc in Long Form next year, so Doctor Who is probably safe for another year.

Editor: Long Form

Hugo lore suggests that the best way to win a Hugo is to die. Before the results were announced, most people predicting the results seemed to think that Jim Baen was a certainty. We know we did. But it turns out that Jim was another one of those "love him or hate him" nominees. Sufficient people loved him to give him a clear first round lead, but on the final round of balloting, as David Hartwell’s preferences were re-distributed, the majority went to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and he sneaked into the lead by just two votes. Hartwell himself managed second place. Which just goes to show that in the Hugos hardly anything is a certainty.

Editor: Short Form

Given the dominance of Asimov’s in the fiction categories, you would have thought that Sheila Williams ought to win this category. Certainly she is in the running, and she did finish second, but this category is very close. This year it was Gordon Van Gelder’s turn to finish top of the heap. Who knows why, but we did detect a certain amount of irritation on Gordon’s behalf amongst the pro community this year on account of the barracking he has been getting in certain parts of fandom.

For those of you who were wondering, Ellen Datlow missed nomination by just one vote.

Professional Artist:

Donato Giancola seems to have established himself as the artist of choice at WSFS these days, but keep an eye on Picacio and Martiniere. We confidently predict that both of them will win this category in the near future.

Semiprozine

Well, not every category can be a surprise. Locus is still clearly ahead of the rest of the field. But The New York Review of Science Fiction did rather well. One of these days, there will be an upset.

Strange Horizons supporters need to get their act together. The magazine got 10 nominations in semiprozine and 4 in fanzine. Their stated policy, last we heard, was to ask people to vote for Susan Marie Groppi in Editor: Short Form because they want to be seen as a fully professional fiction outlet. She got 9 votes this year. Put all that together and she’d only be a couple of votes away from a nomination.

Fanzine

Well here’s one winner that can’t come back to haunt us every year. We confidently predict that Science-Fiction Five-Yearly will not win again next year, because it will not be published again until 2011(*). We note also that Geri Sullivan is just the sort of hard-working, talented person who deserves to win a Hugo.

Fan Writer

Oh boy, this category generated more controversy before Worldcon than anything else, and now it has produced the closest result. Just one vote separated Dave Langford and John Scalzi when the final batch of preferences was redistributed. Does this mean that fannish honor is satisfied, or is the category broken because Langford always wins, even when challenged by one of the most popular authors on the Internet? Will Scalzi try again next year?

Cheryl notes with amusement that she got the same number of nominations as Jay Lake and Ted White. Now there’s an interesting group of fan writers for you.

Fan Artist

Talking of domination of a category, is Frank Wu set for a Langford-like run of victories? He looked very comfortable this year.

Campbell

The dragon is strong. The dragon is mighty. The other nominees are naught but chaff before the dragon’s claws. There was no contest.

The Missing Women

A scan through the nomination long lists shows that the lack of women writers continues at all levels. Just taking novels as an example, Jo Walton and Ellen Kushner are the only women in the list, alongside 20 men. And yet… Chris Moriarty won the Dick, and Elizabeth Bear was runner up. Catherynne M. Valente was co-winner of the Tiptree and is a World Fantasy nominee. Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Andrea Hairston and Shelley Jackson have also done well with 2006 novels. There are good books by women out there, but they won’t get nominated if no one votes for them.

Summary

As might be expected with the convention happening in Japan, voting is well down on last year. Best novel saw only 471 ballots compared to 567 in L.A.. Dramatic Presentation: Long Form saw only 425 ballots compared to 660 in L.A.. There may be some people who will blame the odd upset result on lack of turnout. But the solution is really very simple. You don’t have to attend Worldcon in order to vote in the Hugos. A supporting membership will do. For next year it only costs $40. You can buy yours here.

Update: We have been informed that there are no plans for another issue of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly due to the death of its founding editor, Lee Hoffman.

Update 2: Jed Hartman confirms that Strange Horizons considers itself a pro market, not a semiprozine or a fanzine. (Although that should not detract from the fact that it is run entirely by volunteers who do a darn good job.)