![\"Hugo](\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Hugo-Deb-Kosiba.jpg\")
Through the recent spike in the volume of tweets, I became aware of two things: 1) there is a Hugo award category called \u201cBest Fan Writer\u201d and 2) according to the rules, I\u2019ve been eligible for it since 2008. At least in principle, because the real universe is significantly different.<\/p>\n
The Hugos are essentially a popularity contest, which means you need to self-promote relentlessly to get nominated (being connected to insiders and gatekeepers doesn\u2019t hurt either). These days, this means that people with the loudest blogs and most adoring acolytes are the likeliest to show up on the ballots. The configuration has also resulted in the seasonal listing of qualifying works \u2013 a litany as interesting as \u201cthe best\/worst X of last year\u201d, \u201cmy new year\u2019s resolutions\u201d and \u201cwhat I did during my summer vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFan Writer\u201d seems to have been established as a sop to people whose lives revolve around SF\/F cons and to writers in the genre who want extra nominations beyond fiction writing. And whereas the criteria<\/a> for some categories are almost absurdly high (particularly the two for Best Editor), those for Best Fan Writer merely require writing about the genre in a non-professional venue that, per the Hugo site, \u201cincludes publications in semiprozines, and even on mailing lists, blogs, BBSs, and similar electronic fora\u201d.<\/p>\n By my count, of the 50 awards in this category<\/a> given so far, 20 have been won by David Langford and 7 by Richard Geis, both whiteAnglomen. More recently, however, runaway diversity became fashionable: since 2008, winners in this group continue to be whiteAnglo, but a mere 60% (three of the five) have been whiteAnglomen! And this year there has been a spate of suggestions for nominations of non-whiteAnglomen (in several permutations), after which we will undoubtedly return to our regular programming.<\/p>\n In this climate of wild radicalism, my name finally came up: as a footnote in the relevant entry of the World SF blog by Lavie Tidhar<\/a>; and more prominently in the livejournal of Nick Mamatas<\/a> (thanks, guys!).\u00a0 Given my habits, I will not list the blog posts that qualify for the Hugo. Those who read my blog saw these articles when they appeared. Those who don\u2019t will not rush to read them. I do realize that being a practicing scientist and a voracious reader beyond the SF\/F enclosure handicap me considerably: I was recently chastised for \u201cnot reading the classics\u201d by someone whose concept of \u201cclassics\u201d is AsimovClarkeHeinlein; someone else objected to my using (avaunt!) scientific terms in an article about \u201chard\u201d SF<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the extremely unlikely event that I should win, I may do something extravagant to celebrate. Maybe I\u2019ll publish a passage of \u201cpositively portrayed\u201d sex (yet another topic of recent conversations in SF\/F) to give people a glimpse of what lovemaking in a polyandrous society of telepaths might be like. Since my view is that such descriptions need to use precise terms if they\u2019re to be potent, don\u2019t expect to see manual-reeking couch-fainting terms like \u201csensual\u201d, \u201creponse\u201d, \u201caftermath\u201d and their ilk. But do expect to see focus on the woman\u2019s pleasure.<\/p>\n Image:<\/strong> the 2012 Hugo trophy, designed by Deb Kosiba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Through the recent spike in the volume of tweets, I became aware of two things: 1) there is a Hugo award category called \u201cBest Fan Writer\u201d and 2) according to the rules, I\u2019ve been eligible for it since 2008. At least in principle, because the real universe is significantly different. The Hugos are essentially a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}