A tit in the ceiling

[randy_byers]

At some point I stopped worrying that I'd have a miserable time, mostly because I was having so many interesting conversations that I got distracted. Think it was mrhedgehog who pointed out that the convention got better every day. A lot gets said in five days! LesSeaCon, whatever it is, seemed to grow strange new -- not to mention funny ha-ha -- legs. jamesb humped me with an inflatable kangaroo, but that was before I girded myself with a kangaroo scrotum. The Wall of History was deeply cool, revelatory (or was it revelratory?), and community-inspiring. The big circus of Worldcon is still an interesting angle on fandom. On the other hand, Chunga got fewer first place votes than No Award. I'm sure there's a message in this, but I'm still working on deciphering it. (Well, aside from the point that the FAAns and the Hugos represent different, although overlapping, audiences.)

I am -- wait for it -- braindead. This is just a bleat to prove that I still exist. May everyone else get home safe and sound too. Und so weiter.

Comments

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

Yeah, James got me with teh Inflataroo too. It was rather disturbing, so much so that I haven't mentioned it in any of the reviews I've done so far.
Chris

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hm, well, I thought it was funny when he did it to me, but I'm suddenly reminded of the infamous scene at the Hugos. I know that Victor wasn't too happy about getting dry-humped by James at the Eastercon, so maybe I'm just desperate for love. Yo, James, you probably owe Chris an apology!

[numbat.livejournal.com]

While I'm willing to believe that a significant portion of those likely to attend Corflus are also likely to be at worldcon I have a good deal more trouble beleiving that many of these individuals vote in both sets of awards.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I voted for both, and I'm sure you'll agree that this constitutes a serious overlap.

But more seriously, my wild-ass guess is that there is a significant overlap between the twenty-odd people who nominate us for the Hugo and people who attend Corflu and have voted us a FAAn award three of the last four years. That group is not big enough to push us above No Award in first-place votes on the final Hugo ballot. Why there are so many people who vote No Award in the Hugos is beyond my powers of speculation, although I believe the fishlifters have a theory.

Oops! Am I over-analyzing again? Dang it!

[numbat.livejournal.com]

I hate to disappoint you but I'm more inclined to count the fact that you voted in both an idiotropic overlap given your previous comments.

Okay, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that certain of your readers are voting for you in both. I'd like to see some admissions to back this up because my own gut feeling is that people tend to vote in one or the other but not in both. My gut suggests that many folk vote in the Faans because they don't see any point in voting in the Hugos.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

There are certainly people who have an ideological aversion to the Hugos who vote in the FAAns, but fandom is never that uniform. Off the top of my head, people I'd think wouldn't be averse to voting in both would include Geri Sullivan, John D. Berry, Murray Moore, Lloyd Penney, Colin Hinz, Catherine Crockett (hm, quite a run of Toronto fans there), carl juarez (if he could afford a Worldcon membership), Andy Hooper, Ulrika O'Brien, Lenny Bailes, Spike Parson, Tom Becker, Jerry Kaufman, Suzle Tomkins, Mark Plummer, Claire Brialey, Ian Sorensen, Alison Scott, Mike Scott, Steve Davies ... well, I could go on, but I hope this is enough.

Not that all of these people always vote for both in any given year, but that they (and I) represent fans who don't shun the Hugos reflexively in favor of the FAAns. (Or the Novas, for that matter.) I think the people who shun the Hugos stand out because they are so vocal about it.

But of course this is all my speculation. I have no evidence to back it up, although several people on the above list have told me they nominated CHUNGA for the Hugo.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, I wonder how many of your potential Hugo-voter constituency are like me and just don't get their Worldcon memberships very promptly (if at all)? It's not like I wouldn't have voted for you if I had been a member soon enough. Now, if you want to appeal to the wider Hugo-voting audience, clearly y'all need to add more fiction-related sercon content: such as book reviews and pro-gossip. At least, that surely does seem to sell, viz Ansible, Locus, Emerald City, and that stuff that Steven Silver does. It might not get you a Hugo, but it would surely get you ahead of No Award (which is, I grant you, a bogus thing to vote for -- I think that's people who don't know fanzines at all and think they have to vote for something in every category -- I really think that should be explained at the top of every ballot: You don't need to vote in categories you are unfamiliar with).

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Either that or the Hugo should have a No Preference option for folks who feel they have to vote in every category. No Award seems more the equivalent of Hold Over Funds from TAFF, which I take to mean "I don't want any of these people to win."

But I dunno about the rest. Plokta has ended up winning two rockets in a row without bothering with sercon content, although it did take them six losses to get there. I guess one question is whether they intially got fewer first place votes than No Award. Not that obsessing about this stuff is good for mental health. (And not to argue that Chunga is particularly similar to Plokta otherwise.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, you're right that there isn't anything like the One True Path to winning a Hugo. There seem to be several possible roads, and always exceptions, but persistence is unquestionably a basic requirement, viz. Hartwell who has, no offense, deserved one for longer than you have.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Absolutely right about Hartwell, and Steve Stiles is another. Not to mention someone like Dan Steffan whom I'm not sure has even been nominated before. (He must have, surely?) Or Andy, for that matter, who may have actually hit double digits in losses this year, between Best Fan Writer and Best Fanzine for two different zines.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

But also, you're right, the main thing is not to dwell on it. That way, madness lies. I'll lend you my book on alternate Oscars, some time, as it's interesting to see what the guy thinks should have won through the years. It just brings home again and again the fact that in these kind of beauty contests, being good, even being the best, is no guarantee of anything.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Ansible, Locus, Emerald City, Plokta all have websites of their own. While this is not the only factor making these fanzines serious contenders I think it's a very important common denominator.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Somehow, every time I read this, I recognize the reference of the title and look forward to some explanation in the text and then, by the end of the post, I have forgotten that the title is never explained. Your capacity to cloud fen's minds is awesome.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Some things seem to work best as images of mystery. See also the electrical plug hanging out of the middle of my bedroom ceiling. Maybe there's something inherently mysterious about ceilings.