Not at all, please comment away!

I don’t know how it is with the BSFA awards, though.

The BSFA Awards are much smaller than the Hugos and mostly avoids the problem of competing claims because of that. No one is going to mistake it for science fiction’s most prestigious award. But there is a pretty strong sense in which in speaks on behalf of British fandom, even though BSFA membership is only a subset of this. So I do think the BSFA needs to encourage those who are eligible to take part and to really think about what is out there. Hopefully we are relatively successful at this. The fact nominations are published as they are received is one way of helping potential nominators think about worthy winners by seeing what other people think is the best of the year (I certainly find it useful). It’s by no means perfect though; for example, I’d still like to see greater participation. I think vigourous discussion around shortlists is a good way of drawing attention back to how the process itself effects the outcome.

By the way, if there are any BSFA members reading this, you’ve still got until midnight tonight to get your final nominations in.

I too don’t understand what logistical purpose the self-promoting is supposed to serve. In order to be informed of my favorite writers’ eligibility, I’d already have to be aware of their eligibility, so that I know to seek out their blog, so that they can tell me what they’re eligible for. Tor.com, for instance, has already released spreadsheets of eligible novels and short fiction for the sake of of their Reader’s Choice vote (itself a popularity race), which seems like a vastly more efficient way to go about it.

Scalzi probably deserves a free pass for life on Hugo self-promotion

On the other hand, in his own eligibility post this year, he suggested that a vote for Fuzzy Nation would be a great way to vote for H. Beam Piper, of blessed memory. That was pretty crass.

I haven’t been observing these awards for very long, but it seems to me that part of the problem with the Hugo, for instance, is that people around the award refuse to really clarify and examine the current nature of the award. There’s a lot of elision that goes completely unexamined between the competing claims of “the WorldCon award,” “the fandom award,” and “sf’s most prestigious award”. Comments on that–not even criticisms–get dismissed, with outrage, as “complaining” and as attacks on “the fans,” whoever they are. Morgan’s tweet is an example of that, it seems. I don’t know how it is with the BSFA awards, though.

There is a logistics issue but I don’t think it is a particularly big one and I certainly don’t think eligibility posts are a good way of addressing it. In fact, I don’t see that they are at all relevant for any of the three examples you gave.

In the case of the anthology, any editor worth her salt will include original publication information as a bare minimum. If they haven’t, a quick Google will solve the problem. Semiprozines are a case where the Hugos have made a rod for their own back by creating a ridiculous category with no basis in reality. But again, it isn’t very hard to find out what is and what isn’t from Google. As for editor, well, that is a case where an author can make a big difference (see this example from NK Jemisin) but it is the opposite of self-promotion.

If you want to nominate something and don’t know if it is eligible there are no shortage of people to ask, starting with the award administrator themselves. But that is the way round the process should be: reader led.

I’m split on this issue, since on the one hand I’m sympathetic to the gut feeling that it’s crass bragging, but on the other hand sometimes it’s really useful to avoid wasting votes on things that aren’t eligible.

Of course, my only Hugo campaign this year will be Gary Wolfe for Evaporating Genres in Best Related Work. He’s never won a Hugo, and that’s just wrong. And I’d much rather see him get it for Evaporating Genres that for the review collections, which have a more uneven quality by virtue of their format.

I’m not persuaded that this is in fact what’s happening. In my experience it’s rare for an author’s blog to become a “cultural space” in the sense that it hosts of a community of fans and a broad range of discussion. At best, it’s a site for a single voice and perspective (what Scalzi’s blog was in its earlier years, though it’s been several years since this was the case, and nowadays, as has been noted, most of the blog is taken up with promotion, of Scalzi’s work and that of others, and pointing to his writing in other places). It’s unusual to find a broader discussion of the genre or of specific works on an author blog – that sort of thing tends to be reserved for readers’ blogs, review sites, and forums. So I don’t think that self-promotion, whatever its ills (and I am agnostic about them though I agree with Martin that pretending that self-promotion is a public service is a risible insult to my intelligence), has had a significant effect on the conversation.

Farah: as Martin and Jonathan have pointed out, if this was indeed Morgan’s intention then she was making this point a) to the wrong people, and b) on the wrong topic. If she made the tweet despite being aware of this disconnect then she deserves all the scorn that Martin heaps on her and more. If she isn’t aware of it, doesn’t that validate his characterization of her as a paranoid fantasist?

What annoyed me about Morgan’s reaction at the time was the fact that she seemed to be suggesting that a taboo against self-promotion was part of some concerted effort to keep people out of fandom. As I say, I’m not quite sure how this would work but if we are talking about throwing up barriers to access then I suggest that the taboo against self-promotion does very little damage compared to the impressions that a) the Hugos are so complex that their rules require expert interpretation and b) changing the Hugo rules is such a legally intricate process that all proposals need to be presented in legalese and followed up by concerted lobbying campaigns. Morgan and her friend Standlee seem to work very hard to create and maintain these impressions about the Hugos.

Which is more damaging to SF’s democratic institutions? A taboo against using those institutions for the purposes of advertising or an impression that becoming involved in those institutions demands a level of knowledge commensurate with becoming a constitutional scholar?

I don’t mind Morgan being wrong, what bothers me is when that wrongness combines with hypocrisy and a needlessly confrontational attitude to innocent differences of opinion. That’s when you need to hold people to account and that is precisely what Martin has done.

Very good point and I was remiss not to mention it. I think he had a quite a bit of capital before that but the Hugo Voter Packet was a wonderful development. I think you are right about it increasing both nominations and membership; it was certainly a major factor in me buying supporting membership for the 2010 Worldcon. So yeah, Scalzi probably deserves a free pass for life on Hugo self-promotion. I still worry that it is a step down the slippery slope towards the situation Jonathan outlines.

Farah: Morgan is talking about a specific subset of fandom that continually complains that the wrong people nominate.

Who makes up this specific subset? Is it somehow exactly the same specific subset who are complaining about eligibility posts (which is what Morgan was responding to)? More importantly, if that is what Morgan is talking about, why does it bear no resemblance to the words contained in her Tweet?

Disagree with Morgan if you wish, but please do not insult her. She has been monitoring the Hugos and the debates around them for many years.