The ongoing sourness of humble pie

[randy_byers]

I have now seen the Hugo voting data in a readable font size, and it was even worse than I thought when I couldn't really read the numbers in the convention newsletter. No Award (no, not Marty Cantor's No Award) got 36 first place votes for Best Fanzine, and Chunga got 19. We were the only fanzine to get fewer first place votes than No Award, but I had thought the wee font said 29. Even with the unreadable font size, however, I knew that we didn't pass No Award until after fourth place votes had been counted.

Ouch, please! Ah well, it is of course an honor to be humiliated.

On a less sour note, the nomination data is interesting too. Banana Wings got the most nominations for Best Fanzine (although just barely), but ended up coming in fourth in the voting. I guess it reflects the fact that Interaction members could nominate but not vote, but it's still kind of strange.

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It's nonsense, of course. People are voting in the category who aren't familiar with fanzines at all, and aren't bothering to read the nominations. I suspect 'No Award' is picking up votes from people who don't think there should be a fanzine Hugo at all, too.

Chunga is a superb fanzine that you should all be very proud of, and had I been eligible to vote (I wasn't) it would have got my vote.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Alison. Your comments are very much appreciated! And while I'm not actually complaining about not winning, let me stop pouting long enough about this No Award thing to congratulate you guys on a second rocket. I figured File 770 would take a hometown victory this year, and it must be particularly gratifying to you lot to bring one home from foreign soil. Plus this year's base really is cool. I tried to talk pmcmurray into giving me the rocket he was wandering around with after the ceremonies, but he didn't seem to think that would be a very good idea, although he had a very pleasant manner of saying "No fucking way."

You raise a good point regarding the people who think the fan Hugos should be done away with altogether, but that still doesn't explain why we were the only zine that got fewer first place votes than No Award. I suppose it's possible that our mailing list has fewer Worldcon attendees (and thus fewer potential Hugo voters) on it than others, but the results are certainly a counterargument to those who think Banana Wings is at a natural disadvantage because they have no web presence!

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Wow, and here I thought I couldn't get any MORE cynical about the Hugos. Amazing!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, it's only a model!

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Statistical or Super-?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

All I know is that the glue is making me light-headed.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Bacon's patent man-glue?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, well. bohemiancoast is right -- Chunga is a damn' fine fanzine, and if I had been eligible to vote I would have voted for it too.

I think of Chunga's performance in the Hugos as being not unrelated to the fact that the core audience for the zine are the sort of fans who sit around fmzfen bitching about how Worldcon has turned its back on "fandom" while utterly failing to notice that to the extent this is true, it was mutual. Or as at least being ambivalent about Worldcons per se, like me.

I also think that you can never discount longevity and the concept of "dueness". I mean, look, ninety-three people listed Chunga as their second choice after Banana Wings. That's what the 93-point jump between the 4th and 5th place ballots has to mean. Meaning Chunga was first or second choice for 145 Hugo voters. That's more than the total number of first-or-second votes PLOKTA won with. Chunga is in the top two fanzines for 145 zine-savvy, Hugo-voting fans. That's really not bad. But Banana Wings has been around quite a while longer, and so I speculate that of the people who know and appreciate both zines, there will be a tendency to favor BW based on being more "due" for a Hugo. Alas, it's all pretty much the same constituency and so you follow behind them all the way down until BW is eliminated.

Also, Australian-style elimination ballots produce weird results. Like the fact that Chunga had more first-or-second votes than PLOKTA did, but they placed fifth and first respectively in the final tally.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hmm. No, I think I'm wrong about how well I can pull first-or-second out of those numbers, but I'm still sure that 93 people voted Chunga right after BW, and that ordering preference is invisible until BW is eliminated.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hm, I'm thinking I don't understand how to interpret Australian ballot results. My reading of the 93 point jump at the end was that 93 ballots had us in fifth place. Nu?

Definitely feel that a lot of Banana Wings supporters like us second after Banana Wings, and I can't argue with that. In fact, I'm not even arguing that we didn't deserve to come in fifth. Again, my whinging is about our results in comparison to No Award.

That is, if I'm even understanding the results correctly, which you have made me doubt. I don't see where you get the idea that we got more first-or-second place votes than Plokta, for example

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm a bit confused too, I realize, but:

"My reading of the 93 point jump at the end was that 93 ballots had us in fifth place. Nu?"

No, I don't think so. It means 93 ballots had you ranked somewhere other than #1, but immediately after BW. I'm not sure, on second thought, whether you can tell where that sequence of BW-then-Chunga falls in those ballots at all.

But I think it's dumb to grouse about anybody's performance with respect to NO AWARD, because people who are voting NO AWARD are not voting it relative to Chunga. It's a completely different category of input and doesn't have anything to do with a judgment of relative merit.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, it's dumb to give two thoughts to awards at all, and yet I do. But after two thoughts, I typically move on, still uncertain what it all means. Is it beer o'clock yet?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Is it beer o'clock yet?

Well, I've been thinking it's too long since we've been to Brouwers, but I think Hal and I may try to catch Scanner Darkly tonight at the Crest. Mebbe later in the week, with His O'Neilliness?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Seems possible that something involving Dave might happen tomorrow, and then maybe he's flying to NYC for the weekend. But I was actually thinking about the Grimbergen Blonde Ale that's sitting patiently in my fridge, and which is mine, all mine! So y'all enjoy A Scanner Darkly, which is quite good, and I'll drink the Grimbergen, which is also quite good.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Bon Grimbergen, then, sir.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. "No Award" might be voted ahead of it by someone who considered CHUNGA perfectly horrible, but I'd say there's a 90-some % chance that it's just a matter of "I've never seen [or maybe even heard of] the rest of these titles". Cluelessness, IMHO, on the part of people who really don't know enough about the category to be voting in it. *sigh*

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, *sigh*. Although at this point I'm more apt to sigh at myself for getting so bent out of shape about nothing. Nothing so clueless as an ego ...

By the way, I've planted those bulbs you gave me. I look forward to seeing the plant. (Although I could cheat and look it up online of course, and maybe I should, just so I recognize it when it comes up and don't pull it for a weed.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on further reflection, it can't be more than 45 voters who had a ballot that had BW first and Chunga second, because BW only had 45 first place votes.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

So, do you want to be good or popular?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, my glib reply is "both." My arrogant reply is that I already know that we're good and I'm just trying to figure out whether if we get nominated for the Hugo again we should decline the nomination so that the fuckwits who vote in the Hugos don't get a chance to piss on us again. My humbler reply is that I simply don't understand what it means that more first place votes went to No Award than went to us. I don't understand how enough people can think we're worth nominating but not enough people think we're better than No Award.

In the end I think I just have to go back to feeling that the Hugos are irrelevant to what we're doing, but getting nominated makes one think about what it means.

Anyway, while you're here: Are you DS Ketelby by any chance?

[(Anonymous)]

Well it was a glib question to start with...

I doubt anyone actually weighed up the choice of voting No Award and Chunga and came down on the side of NA. I expect most people voting NA were those who wanted to vote for books/films that they knew and treated NA more as a "No Idea".
The nominations/votes thing is a bit odd though. Obviously when people like you they really like you and are prepared to put in the effort to nominate you.

And no, I'm not DS Ketelby. Should I be? If he's someone I should have heard of then I'm obviously being ignorant.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

And that comment was from me, fairly obviously. The random logging out strikes again.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right about the "No Idea" aspect of it, but why are people picking on gerisullivan?

Sorry, that's another fanzine-insider joke. Geri used to publish a fanzine called Idea.

As for the mysterious DS Ketelby, he/she has had two pieces in Banana Wings that are exactly the kind of thing I was I were clever enough to write. Something in the latest piece made me think he/she was a Croydon fan. I have the impression that it's a pseudonym, but I'm not even sure of that. So far the fishlifters are mum.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit behind on reading Banana Wings, though if it's something you wish you'd written it's unlikely to be by me.

More likely to be this chap don't you think. Though maybe that's all a pseudonym as well. Maybe DS Ketelby is the new Luther Blisset.

[Can't do LJ today, not logged in and then post things in the wrong place]

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hm, you may be right on the identify of Ketelby. Many of the indicators are right, although I wouldn't have predicted he was a Green and a parent. But he's a fan of Velvet Goldmine, so he's obviously a lost soul-cousin of mine.

And how can I tell if I envy your writing ability if you won't send me a copy of Gerald, you bastard?

[I think LJ should ask us if we're really, really sure we want to post anonymously, because I do that by mistake all the time too.]