Hugo Related Works

[psocoptera]

Okay, putting this off isn't going to make it easier (but I did go unload/reload the dishwasher, so putting it off briefly was good). Whole thing behind a cut.

Four questions here: in the absence of AO3, what do I think would win? in the absence of AO3, what would I *want* to win? given the actual ballot, what do I think will win? given the actual ballot, what do I *want* to win?

To review, in this category we have Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, which I talked about here and was not very excited about. The collection of Jo Walton's posts An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000 which I talked about here and enjoyed but which, I don't know, how do I put this, didn't feel like a major work, exactly? An interesting weekly column (back when we read things in columns) but not much wow. Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which I talked about here and which I *do* think was a "big" work but one that ultimately frustrated me. Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan's Hobbit documentary which I talked about here. And the Mexicanx Initiative scrapbook which I just talked about here. And AO3.

In the past four years of the Related Work award, we had two no-awards due to dog crap and then two awards to Le Guin essays. So maybe the safe bet would be that it will go to Le Guin again, but I think I'm not the only person who is going to feel that Conversations on Writing compared unfavorably to Words Are My Matter and No Time To Spare, and that as much as we all still love and miss Le Guin, we maybe don't need to use this category to do that this year. I actually think that, ignoring AO3 for the moment, the frontrunner here might be the Hobbit documentary - it's a good documentary, like, she got one really good interview with an actor and some interviews with people affected by the union politics that help personalize that part, and I think more people are likely to find time to watch 100 minutes of video than they are to slog through the Walton and Nevala-Lee books. I, myself, might even vote for the Hobbit documentary! It's sort of hard to say because I had such low expectations for it going in but it ended up having a lot more to it than I thought it was going to and was a lot more watchable.

Coming back to the real world, though, there's also this thousand-pound gorilla on the ballot, specifically one of those Brin gorillas that's been uplifted to human sentience and is also a lovable main character. And my best guess about voter demographics is that people who are willing to up-rank the Hobbit documentary are also likely to be excited about AO3 being on the ballot and are probably *more* excited about AO3, such that AO3 can and will beat it. Whereas the people who are most opposed to AO3 on the ballot are probably splitting between the Le Guin, the Astounding book, and the Walton book. So that's my prediction.

As for me, who actually has to vote, at some point here... I've gone through a lot of feelings and opinions about this whole AO3 thing, and I still have mixed feelings. However, now that I have finally actually put in the work, there is nothing else on this ballot that I love or that I passionately want to see recognized. I'm not really enthusiastic about any of the other nominees - I'd be happy for the Mexicanx Initiative people because it was a cool thing and would be exciting and happy at the ceremony but I wasn't actually that into the scrapbook as a work. And, you know, I love the AO3, it's part of my daily life, it really is an amazing thing. So, hell, let's do it.

1 - AO3
2 - The Hobbit documentary
3 - The Mexicanx Initiative
4 - Astounding
5 - Walton
6 - Le Guin

Can that really be right? Le Guin last?? And Nevala-Lee's failures still ahead of Walton's opinions? And the Mexicanx scrapbook up there because I apparently don't mind using the occasional slot as a popularity contest? I can't swear that some future me isn't going to revisit this before the end of July and completely redo things because what was I thinking. But this feels like what I want to happen.

Comments

[vardibidian]

This is really interesting to me, and is different from my usual 'competitive awards for artistic endeavors are inherently bullshit' attitude. I'm wondering how much of the criteria is what would make you happy if it won vs. what is (in some sense) the "best" work (vaddevah dat means)... Some years ago I wrote about the Baseball Hall of Fame choices, and the different attitudes of a fan and an analyst, despite the analysts mostly also being fans. At the time, I felt that it was important for the analyst to put aside the fan whilst voting. I don't think I believe that now, but I'm not sure. I'm more inclined to take awards of this kind as expressions of people's joy in stuff, for whatever reasons, and that the joy of the moment is probably more valid than sober analysis of quality. On the other hand, nobody really wants other people to vote for worthless crap just because they would be happy if so-and-so won, and that's where it all falls down.

Thanks,
-V.

[psocoptera]

I feel like it's extra hard to talk about "best" in this category in particular, because the nominees are trying to do such different things. (Even if you leave out the one that's the backbone service for a million-person community for the past decade, how the heck do you compare edited radio-interview transcripts to a collection of blog posts to a seriously researched biography to a scrapbook to a video documentary.) And then I wonder if politics might be a different axis than either joy or "sober quality", and despite glossing over this before, my support of the Mexicanx Initiative is probably more like politics than anything else. Although two levels of politics - I'm having trouble writing this succinctly, but it's both support for their explicitly pro-immigrant pro-Latinx agenda, and also support for the general project of own-voices history. Although there's definitely also politics in my support of AO3 and the Hobbit documentary too, everything is always political, gah.