Hugo detailed-numbers commentary

I should've spent this morning editing, but I was being slow and groggy, so I looked at the detailed Hugo results instead. (Specifically the voting breakdown, available only as a PDF document.) Here are some assorted notes and comments. The most interesting thing to me is that there are a bunch of categories this year where the IRV (Instant Runoff Voting) approach made a difference in who won (specifically, the nominee who got the most first-place votes didn't end up winning); that usually happens in one or two categories, but there were several this year.

  • In the Pro Editor category, Hartwell actually got more first-place votes than Gardner, and stayed ahead until the last round; but more of the people who preferred Ellen to either of them preferred Gardner to Hartwell.
  • Same thing happened in Pro Artist: Donato Giancola was ahead of Bob Eggleton until the last round, but more of the people who preferred Frank Kelly Freas to either of them preferred Eggleton to Giancola.
  • In Semiprozine, I had expected Ansible to give Locus a run for its money, but Locus started out way out in front and stayed there.
  • Cheryl Morgan's Emerald City was out in front for the first few rounds in the Fanzine category, but Plokta and File 770 supporters preferred Mimosa.
  • And Frank Wu started out way ahead of the rest of the Fan Artists, but Brad W. Foster supporters preferred Sue Mason. (Even in the last round, Frank was only eight votes behind Mason; pretty close.)

Total votes: 805 ballots submitted (478 electronic, 327 paper); 29 were disqualified, leaving 776 valid ballots. Some day I'll go look up stats for the past several years and start tracking number of total ballots and percentage of them that are electronic, to supplement the data in the seminal George Flynn article on Hugo voting stats (which only goes up to 1999).

The top 15 nominees in each category are also available. Some comments:

  • I had come up with a theory last year that the nominee with the largest number of nominations tended to win. This year's nominee list proves that I was completely wrong about that.
  • I'm disappointed that Eleanor Arnason's "The Potter of Bones" missed being on the ballot by only one vote. Sadness!
  • Charlie Stross's "Tourist" likewise missed the ballot by only one vote, after Ted withdrew "Liking What You See." Cory Doctorow was stoked to see that "Ownz0red" only missed by four votes. I'm sad that "Isabel of the Fall" got only 18 nominations—but I suspect not many people read it, and even fewer realized it was still eligible a year later because of British publication.
  • A bunch of good stuff barely missed the ballot in the short story category: "In Paradise" by Bruce Sterling, "What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler, and "Knapsack Poems" by Eleanor Arnason all missed by only one or two votes (after the John Flynn story was disqualified), and "At Dorado" by Geoffrey A. Landis and "Little Gods" by Tim Pratt both came fairly close as well. I admit to being disappointed that nothing from SH made the ballot; as usual in the short story category, it took only 22 nominations to make the ballot. Ah, well. I think the thing I tend to forget about the short story category is that although it doesn't take many nominations to make the ballot, there are a huge number of stories nominated—over 260 this year, far more than in any other category. And when only 400 people are nominating in the category, nominations get spread mighty thin. And attempts to coordinate nominations behind a particular piece are frowned upon. . . . Somehow it had never quite occurred to me that the number of nominations required to make the ballot in a given category is fairly closely (inversely) tied to the number of nominees. Though there are also exceptions—Pro Editor takes almost as many nominations to make the ballot as Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, despite there being a fairly large number of possible nominees.
  • Lilo & Stitch came extremely close to making the Long Form ballot—missed by 4 nominations!—and would probably have made the ballot if there'd been less confusion about the short form/long form business. (As the Hugo administrators noted earlier, some noms for L & S couldn't be transferred from Short Form to Long Form because the nominators' Long Form ballots were already full (with five items nominated).) Of course, that would've meant Spirited Away wouldn't have made the ballot (unless they tied, of course). I personally liked L & S much better than Spirited Away, but some people vehemently disagree with me on that point, so I'll leave it alone.
  • Interesting that a couple of fannish items nearly made the Short Form ballot; notably, the ConJosé Masquerade Half-Time Show missed the ballot by only three noms.
  • We were delighted to see that Mary Anne was seventh on the list of nominees for Best Pro Editor! Although that delight was tempered a bit by the fact that she was 50 nominations behind Patrick Nielsen Hayden (the sixth-place nominee), who was in turn 25 noms short of making the ballot. So we've got a ways to go in that category before we're unseating any of the Big Six. :) (I'm a little surprised that Shawna McCarthy doesn't make the ballot; but Realms stories don't often make the ballot either (in fact, not a single Realms story even made the top-15 nominees list in the short fiction categories), so maybe it's just that Hugo nominators don't read Realms, which is to say maybe Realms readers don't nominate for the Hugos.)
  • Michael Whelan missed the Pro Artist ballot by three votes; how the mighty have fallen, since the days he used to win every time. I still like his work an awful lot. Phil Foglio and Thomas Canty came in seventh and eighth, respectively, in nominations, but didn't come so close to making the ballot.
  • SF Chronicle almost made the Semiprozine ballot even though it declared itself to be a prozine and thus ineligible. (Or did they retract that declaration?) SH got 6 noms even though we've always said we're a prozine and thus ineligible. Artemis, On Spec, Absolute Magnitude (which I think is now a prozine?), Talebones, The Third Alternative, Spectrum SF, and Ideomancer all received more than 10 noms apiece. It's too bad in a way that Ansible is in that category now; that leaves room for another item in the Fanzine category, but it means the Semipro ballot is pretty much predetermined for the indefinite future. (Though SF Chronicle did nearly unseat Speculations, which would've been too bad.) I'd rather see Interzone marked as pro, and the Semipro category split up into nonfiction-only magazines and fiction-oriented magazines; there are a bunch of deserving semipro fiction magazines that will never be on the ballot the way things currently stand. Of course, another option would be to increase Locus's circulation until it's too big to count as a semipro. :)
  • In Fanzine, David and Kate's Bento came pretty close to the ballot, and LCRW was only a couple places further down. (I think Gavin has indicated that that's the category to put LCRW in.) Tangent Online made the list too.
  • Cheryl came pretty close to making the Fan Writer ballot. Other people on the list include Evelyn Leeper, Jeff Berkwits, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, David Levine, and Kate Yule.
  • Frank Wu received way more nominations than any other fan artist. It'll be interesting to see which comes first, his winning the Fan Artist Hugo, or his moving into the Pro category. :)
  • Ben Rosenbaum missed the Campbell ballot by a single nomination, and Tim Pratt by seven. Very disappointing. Sadly, Ben's eligibility has now expired. Tim is still eligible next year, though, as are plenty of other cool folks (including several who aren't on the eligible authors list yet 'cause their eligible stories have only just appeared).

Okay, that's enough of that. Still not sure when or if I'll have more substantive comments, but if you're hankerin' for TorCon stuff, you can at least go take a look at Cory's photos.

13 Responses to “Hugo detailed-numbers commentary”

  1. Tim Pratt

    Wow. I had no idea I’d come so close to getting on the ballot! That rocks, and gives me a modicum of hope for next year.

    Though most of my stories appear in Realms, which Hugo voters apparently don’t read, so I probably don’t have a chance. C’est la vie.

    reply
  2. Jay Lake

    You know, I introduced myself to a number of people at Torcon3 as Tim Pratt, so, um…Tim, if you get any email or anything, don’t sweat it.

    Next year: Jay Lake-Tim Pratt JWC cage match.

    reply
  3. Tim Pratt

    Wouldn’t it be great if we *could* decide the winner by having a cage match? Man, that’d be sweet. In a perfect world…

    It’s okay, Jay. I often tell people that “Jay Lake” is a pseudonym I use so people won’t get mad at me for being too prolific.

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  4. Jay Lake

    I wonder if we could get a cage match panel, kind of like the tennis game in the film version of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD.

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  5. Tim Pratt

    That’d be fun. I used to play that game in college, but it’s been a long time, so I’m rusty.

    reply
  6. Jenn Reese

    I’m in. Can I use my nunchaku?

    reply
  7. Jay Lake

    I’d say that would pretty much guarantee you the moderator position, Jenn.

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  8. Jenn Reese

    Actually, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I just like to use my nunchaku.

    Care to explain?

    reply
  9. David Moles

    The R&G question-and-answer game has to be seen to be believed, let alone understood.

    (For what it’s worth, by the way, I once checked the script of Hamlet and the box score Rosencrantz gives after the “hawk from a handsaw” scene is in fact correct.)

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  10. SarahP

    Jenn would totally kick your butts, guys.

    reply
  11. Jenn Reese

    I don’t know about that, Sarah. Tim brought a staff to Clarion and practiced a lot. Also, I suspect this may involve *verbal* sparring, in which case I’m totally out-matched. 🙂

    reply
  12. Tim Pratt

    Nah, you’d kick my ass, Jenn. I still have a jo staff, but haven’t progressed much beyond the point where I was at Clarion (i.e., twirling the stick prettily and doing a handful of strikes and a block or two). And I suck at verbal sparring, too. It’s why I seldom take part in poetry slams — I suck at the improv round.

    reply
  13. Jay Lake

    I, on the other hand, am a couch potato with a big mouth. Bring it on, dudes…

    reply

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