{"id":441,"date":"2006-07-31T10:42:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T10:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/31\/handicapping-the-hugos\/"},"modified":"2006-07-31T10:42:24","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T10:42:24","slug":"handicapping-the-hugos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/31\/handicapping-the-hugos\/","title":{"rendered":"Handicapping the Hugos"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a comment to the most recent Open Thread<\/a> at Making Light asking why there isn’t more handicapping of the Hugo Awards. The commenter, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, makes reference to a comment on John Scalzi’s “Please Vote” thread<\/a>, that suggested there was a clear favorite in the balloting:<\/p>\n

\n

There is a certain book on the short list that had more preorders than the rest of the books had sales combined — by a factor of 10, most like.<\/p>\n

This certain book’s author has a fan community that meets up at each Worldcon and throws the biggest and best parties. This year, over 100 members are expected, not counting spouses and friends. That is a lot of votes.<\/p>\n

This book is also the only fantasy novel on the list. Fantasy has been kicking the crap out of SF at the Hugo’s all decade. The SF votes will be split among a few very good books, but the fantasy votes will be concentrated in one single volume.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The topic failed to take off at Making Light, and John cut it off because he thought it was unseemly to have a vote-handicapping thread on the blog of a nominated author. I’m not up for any awards, though, so I’ll post some thoughts here. I’ve talked previously about who should<\/strong> win<\/a>, but below the fold, I’ll talk about who I think will<\/strong> win.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m actually a little surprised at the suggestion that A Feast for Crows<\/cite><\/a> is a clear, runaway favorite. For one thing, it’s just not that good a book (Quoting Kate: “A whole book of the Lannisters, and no Tyrion? Bleagh.”), and even fans of the series have been somewhat cautious in their praise of it.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, though, I think there are two other problems with the argument: first, I think it’s a mistake to assume that the recent success of fantasy novels means that there’s a large fantasy-only voting bloc out there that far outnumbers the science-fiction-only voting bloc. The former, if it exists, is probably only comparable in size to the latter (which, sadly, I know exists)– I think most voters probably read both science fiction and fantasy, and vote for whatever they liked best in any given year. And, beyond that, the voting protocol used for the Hugos lessens the effect of ticket-splitting– the science-fiction-only crew is free to put Martin’s book below “No Award,” and any of the SF options can pick up a lot of second and third place votes.<\/p>\n

I also think it slightly overstates the power of the cult of personality. Which is not to say that it doesn’t exist– some fairly weak novels have won awards in the past primarily because their authors are well-liked– just that I don’t think George R. R. Martin really has a decisive advantge in this area over, say, Charlie Stross. I’m not exactly sitting here with my finger on the pulse of fandom, though, so take that for whatever it’s worth.<\/p>\n

My honest expectation is that Charlie Stross’s Accelerando<\/cite> will win, and I’m not just saying that because it was far and away my least favorite of the nominees, and the universe is a perverse place. My low opinion of the book is not widely shared– quite the contrary, it’s generated a great deal of excitement, and been hailed by many people as the most exciting thing in the field since whenever. On top of that, Charlie is pretty active and well-liked in fan circles.<\/p>\n

I would expect that most of the science-fiction-only vote will coalesce around Accelerando<\/cite>, in the end. The MacLeod doesn’t seem to be as widely read, Spin<\/cite> is too consciously literary, and Scalzi’s book is a little too light, plus he’s up for the Campbell, which gives people a way to vote for him in one category and Charlie in the other.<\/p>\n

The wild card factor here is probably the fact that Accelerando<\/cite> is a fix-up of a bunch of stories that were published a while back. People might not be willing to vote for a fix-up over a new novel. But I expect Stross to win.<\/p>\n

So, there are my thoughts. Disagree? There’s a handy comment box just a little further down the page…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a comment to the most recent Open Thread at Making Light asking why there isn’t more handicapping of the Hugo Awards. The commenter, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, makes reference to a comment on John Scalzi’s “Please Vote” thread, that suggested there was a clear favorite in the balloting: There is a certain book on the… Continue reading Handicapping the Hugos<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}