I cast my Hugo ballot today. I figured I should get in before the last minute rush, because it is always a strain on the host Worldcon’s servers and this year is going to be much worse. I suggest that you get your ballot in well before the deadline too.

Also today I saw this article by Sarah Lotz on the Guardian Books Blog. It will, I suspect, make Little Teddy very happy indeed, because it is basically saying that he has already won.

Look, there will be some weird stuff in the results this year. There may well be a few No Awards given out, and possibly some really bad works winning awards. It is not as if that hasn’t happened before, though perhaps not in the same quantities. On the other hand, people are talking about the Hugos much more this year than they ever have before, and in many more high profile places. In addition vastly more people have bought supporting memberships, and we are looking at a record number of people participating in the final ballot. All of those people will be eligible to nominate next year. This isn’t the way I would have liked to get that result, but it is a result all the same.

Anyone who tells you that the Hugos are irrevocably damaged doesn’t have the awards’ best interests at heart. They, like Little Teddy, want the Hugos to go away, and presumably be replaced by awards that they, and people like them, can control. If you want awards controlled by, and voted on by, fans, then you need to support those awards, and believe that the vast majority of fans are not going to support narrow political campaigns.

Sure, I could be wrong. We could be seeing the start of years of slate voting. But we haven’t seen it yet. What is clear is that if we listen to people like Ms. Lotz and take the view that we have already lost that battle, then we most certainly have lost.

Don’t give up. Vote.