Day in the Life of an Idiot

You have fully encapsulated my feelings.

Like, we really screwed this up by trying to "protect" people from censorship they might never have faced... I mean, the fact that no one composing these dossiers seemed to know Nepal from Tibet (or that you have to get Chinese permission to trave to Tibet, so it's not like that's seen as particularly rebellious) or that Babel was, as you noted, PUBLISHED IN CHINA.

Ah, so much SIGH.

Good point.

I guess, for myself, I'm always aware that the people running the cons we love are, at the end of the day, just people who are volunteering. As you note, they've done this one thing for years, but they aren't professionals or even necessarily experts. I'm honestly always impressed when we manage to pull of a WorldCON? Like, actually, just get it all done?? So, my bar might be lower than average.

I didn't try to listen to that interview with Dave McCarty. You are a much braver person than I. I have, however, heard other people express similar takeaways about McCarty's state of mind. I don't know him? So, I can't really comment one way or the other.

I think one of the reasons that I haven't really commented on the whole Chengdu rolling disaster until now is that I'm not fully convinced that having won or having been nominated for a Hugo tells a potential reader much of anything about the book they have in their hands other than, perhaps, that it is likely science fiction and/or fantasy.

First off, as we all know and no one would argue, enjoying a book is subjective. I might love a book that no one else likes and visa versa. There have been plenty of award-winning books that have left me cold and just as many (if not more) books that have never won awards that I've absolutely and fully adored. There are books that sell really well that have never won an award and there are books that have won that just never break sales records. That's just the nature of it all. So, no award anywhere can determine for certain that a book will be universally loved or admired; that's just not how readers (and thus awards) work.

But add to that the fact that, as I described in my post, the people who nominate and vote on the Hugo have paid for the privilege. WorldCON membership, even at the cheapest voting level, is REQUIRED to nominate and/or vote. This is obviously the loophole that the Puppies exploited, right? Because, they realized, there really aren't that many of us--particularly in the nominating phase--who are going to hit on the same books, short stories, etc.

I still think that the Hugo tells you something, but I'm not sure it's what I used to think it was. I used to think the Hugo was a kind of popularity vote, which is why I used to tell my writers' group colleagues that of the two, I'd rather win a Hugo than a Nebula. The Nebula is the respect of your peers; the Hugo is the adoration of the masses. Except it isn't. I mean, NOT REALLY. WorldCON membership is a whole LOT of people? But what percentage of is it, in comparison to, say, the overall number of people buying science fiction/fantasy books regularly?

And it's becoming obvious to me that it's kind of the same people nominating and voting every year. I guess I'm saying that I'm not sure the extent to which the Hugo really has its finger on the pulse of SFF publishing, as a WHOLE, especially in this day and age of things like BookTok (and other ways that people are finding and consuming books).

I don't know.

I mean, obviously, I still believe in it or I wouldn't have just dropped money to continue to take part in the process. So, I could probably be convinced that I'm completely wrong about my sort of "eh, whatever" attitude.