Nothing changes....

I see that people are out whinging about the Hugo nominations, which is second only, to whinging about the Hugo winners which is a part of the other great Fannish tradition of whinging about Conventions.  The problem is, the whinging is always the same, and the people doing the whinging don't really want to change anything.  Now, being British, I'm always up for a good moan, but with the Fannish items I try to be a little circumspect, mostly because I a) try not to take Fandom too much for granted and b) if I don't get off my ample arse and do things, I feel a little hypocritical about moaning about it myself.

The Hugo moans and the convention moans are all actually, in my opinion, pretty connected and start from a baseline problem.
flawed set of logic which goes thus:

The Hugos are the premier SF Award awarded by fans.  I am a fan.  Therefore I should have a say.

However, the Hugos are voted on by the members of the Worldcon.  The Worldcon is expensive to attend, and travels around the world (or just the USA, if you're really being a prick and trying to annoy me). The Worldcon can't possibly cost as much as it does, therefore a bunch of people must be making money of this and blocking real Fen from attending.

Which leads to: Fandom is being run by a bunch of hidden rich people who are suppressing me!!!!

Which leads to: SMOFs are evil.

I actually have some, not a lot, but some, sympathy for the position.  The Worldcon is expensive.  That's why in my 20 odd years in Fandom I've only been to 4 of them, and I'm not exactly hard up.  But then, not all the people who attend them are all that well off either.  In fact, I know people who plan around the Worldcon years in advance and scrimp and save to make sure they can go, or they take part and hope that they'll get some costs refunded at a later stage.  So, that's less of a reason than an excuse - and we've covered the bollocks about Convention economics elsewhen and where.

My bigger problem is with the idea that just because you call yourself a Fan you get to have carte blanche to do and be involved in everything you think that means and have the right to get upset about things that you are interested in.  In that respect, Fandom is no different from the real world.  There are different types of Fandom, different things interest different people.  I don't game anymore and I've never done costumes and I detest Filk.  But I adapt my behaviour accordingly.  My problem with the recent issues about how men treat women in costumes wasn't actually about dealing with an attractive woman, but that I don't really get costumes.  It's like me and Opera, I can appreciate the art of it, but I'm not sitting through Carmen.

The other thing is, like with the real world, you can complain about things, but if you chose to complain bitterly about things that you could affect, but make clear that you don't want to do anything about, then you are opening yourself up to being ignored.  Don't like your countries politics and don't vote? Sorry, you just lost a of your right to whinge.  Don't like the way the administrators of your apartment complex do things but don't want to get involved.  STFU.

The Hugo Awards are part of the Worldcon, they're not run by a mysterious cabal, they don't have secret rules, they're things that attendees of Worldcons get to nominate and vote for.  End of.  That's what they are.  Just because they don't have blogs or video game categories isn't my problem, and if you can't get to a Worldcon to try and change things, I can't help that either.  I do get to go to Worldcons, some of the time, and I don't go to the WSFS meetings and take part either a) because I'm usually sleeping off my hangover from being up till dawn talking tosh with people I only meet once a year and b) because I'm not all that interested.

It means that while I might whinge, my whinging is metered by the fact I don't want to do anything about it, so while there might be some years where stuff I liked doesn't get a nod, or I get annoyed that the same old names come up all the bloody time, I don't really have a way to beat it.  But that also means that when people I know and like do get a nod, I get to feel happy for them and hope they win.

There is a lot of moaning about the nominations this year.  I'll go out on a limb and say it's not a great year.  I'll also come out and say I didn't nominate.  The reason?  I've had the year from hell, I've read no SF, long or short.  And frankly, haven't seem much short or long form that I felt was worth it.

So there you go.  Not only was I allowed to vote.  I didn't.  So congratulations to those that were.  I wish you well.  And, at the end of the day, if we are Fans and we believe in this Fandom crap.  That's what it is all about, whether you can vote or not.

More thoughts on the annual Hugo fuss...

Part of the problem with the Hugo Awards is the way that anything gets nominated for any award.  Even when you take out what 'interests' people angle, you actually have to have people read things in the first place.  And the reality is people tend to read the same stuff over and over and from the same people.

The reality is, no matter how unpalatable, is that no matter how good somebody is, if they have a small audience they're not going to get a nod, even from a popular vote, or a wider internet vote.  The reality of, as one recommendation I read today, going to a wider internet nomination is that it won't solve the problem.  You'll still need a means to cut down all the nominations to a manageable size, and whether it's 1300, 13000 or 130,000 people nominating stuff, you're probably going to have a very, very similar distribution of results and names.

Some categories are always going to have problems...  I don't routinely read short stories or novellas these days... I don't have the time.  I suspect I'm not alone.  As we move further from the days when pretty much all Fen would read the same set of magazines practically religiously, as I did 30 years ago, that's going to get harder and the number of nominations will continue to shrink. Fan artist?  Fan writer?  That will almost certainly self select within groups of people who know each other.  As an aside, I was amused that the reaction I read online today was almost word for word the reaction I used to see from the Trufen lists whinging like hell about the weird unknown johnny come latelys from the interwebs.

The same problem is had with Dr Who - yes, it wins all the time.  Is it the best?  Maybe, maybe not.  But was Buffy?  BSG?  It's what happens...  I suspect it will always happen.