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Please be a Hugo voter!




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Petrea Mitchell



Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 438
Location: Near Portland, OR
PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:41 pm Reply with quote
Anyone who is a member of Worldcon by the end of January can participate in Hugo nominating (and vote on the winners later). Registration info is at http://www.anticipationsf.ca/English/Membership. You only need to be a supporting member.

"Best Graphic Story" has only been added on a trial basis. There will be an up-or-down vote at this year's Worldcon to add it to the ballot for further years. And that motion calls for *another* vote in 2012 to reaffirm its presence there. The biggest factor people will look at in continuing this category is the level of voter participation. Not what gets nominated, or what wins, just whether anyone bothered to have an opinion about it. So please, please, if it matters to you whether manga and graphic novels get taken seriously by the one of the oldest literary awards in existence, please get a membership and vote!

I'll try to answer what I expect to be some of the more common questions/objections in this post. I'll be happy to answer more either in the thread or by private message. Please also feel free to copy this message to other forums.

"$50 just to vote?!"

Not just to vote; in addition to nominating and voting on winners this year, you also get:

  • Copies of all the con publications (you're really buying a membership in a convention, after all)
  • The right to nominate for next year's Hugo Awards
  • The right to vote for the site of the 2011 Worldcon (which, for purposes of this discussion, is basically a way to get Hugo voting rights in 2011 at the lowest possible price)

And think of it this way: $50 is 3-4 volumes of manga, when you count shipping. $50 is one box set of anime-- maybe not even that. Isn't this worth a small pause in building your collection?

"I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick nominees."

No one's read everything-- that's why there's a nominating phase! If every voter were completely familiar with everything published in the category, it could just go straight to voting for a winner. Nomination is about saying "Here's what I read that was good this year-- how about you?" If you've only read one manga that was published in 2008, and it was really good, nominate it!

"But what about all those other categories?"

You're not required to nominate something in every category. Many Hugo voters only make nominations in one or two categories.

"Won't encouraging a bunch of manga fans to participate distort the vote?"

Given the demographics of Worldcon, manga fandom is probably badly underrepresented a the moment. And, as I said above, the single most important thing at this instant is that voting happens in this category at all.
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Craeyst Raygal



Joined: 30 Apr 2002
Posts: 1383
Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 10:46 pm Reply with quote
I'm sorry, but I have to protest.

I love the Hugos. Someday, I hope to finish one of my novels and actually contend for one. To win a Hugo is to place your name alongside greats like Heinlein, McCaffery, and Asimov.

The Hugos already take graphic novels very seriously, as Alan Moore can attest. Certainly, it's likely that this category will take off, however, it's not for us to decide. It is for WORLDCON to decide, just as it has for decades.

I don't want a bunch of the brats I see at conventions waving their paddles and screaming their memes to screw up a great sci-fi institution.
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Petrea Mitchell



Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 438
Location: Near Portland, OR
PostPosted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:38 pm Reply with quote
Craeyst Raygal wrote:
The Hugos already take graphic novels very seriously, as Alan Moore can attest.


On the contrary, Watchmen won a one-off "Other Works" category that was created specifically to allow Watchmen to get a Hugo while avoiding the whole question of whether comic books in general could be considered literature.

Craeyst Raygal wrote:
Certainly, it's likely that this category will take off, however, it's not for us to decide. It is for WORLDCON to decide, just as it has for decades.


How do you distinguish between "Worldcon" and "us"? Worldcon is operated by the World Science Fiction Society, which nothing more than whatever group of people happen to have bought memberships for Worldcon that year. There's no special Hugo committee, no elect group of judges, no list of qualifications that people have to meet. It's just the set of fans who choose to participate.

Manga fandom is, as I said, way underrerpresented in the Worldcon voting population right now. If your concern is a balanced vote which is representative of fandom in general, the Hugos *need* more people with knowledge of manga.
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