When I was writing about semiprozines yesterday I entirely forgot about Weird Tales. Thankfully they quickly reminded me that they too are a Hugo-eligible semiprozine.
So let’s think about this. Even if Locus were not eligible, we could have a semiprozine slate composed of Interzone, Weird Tales, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Clarkesworld and NYRSF. Would that really be such a bad thing?
And there are plenty of other fiction magazines around too. The only reason that they haven’t got on the ballot before is that no one has nominated them.
Actually, that was my nominating ballot last year.
Abyss & Apex got seven nominations last year. Really, we did!
Last year, you only needed 38 votes to make the final ballot in the Semiprozine category. The highest anyone received was 55. There were 174 nominating ballots cast in the category, but 483 valid nominating ballots overall.
Going by those numbers, it’s worth our time to do some voter education.
I think I’d describe it as “eligible voter” education.
Here’s the problem. Most of the 483 people who nominated last year are probably people who nominate almost every year. If they didn’t nominate in semiprozine it is either because they want the category dropped or they don’t read fiction magazines (or both). Getting them to actually read what we produce may be difficult.
On the other hand, there are probably somewhere in the region of 5000 people eligible to nominate. Many of them probably don’t know that they can nominate, because they are not aware that members of Denvention 3 have nominating rights. Many will also practice all of the usual avoidance tactics such as “I’m not qualified”, “I don’t have views on all of the categories”, “I haven’t read everything in the field” and so on. Some of those people will be readers of our magazines, and we need to persuade them to nominate.
The biggest problem is the “there’s no point, Locus always wins” crowd. The answer to them is that it is an honor just to be nominated, and also that if things don’t change the category will go away and we’ll never have another chance.
If anyone wants help with editorials or whatever, just let me know. I’ll look at writing a post for SFAW on avoidance excuses that you can point people at.
“if things don’t change the category will go away”
Well, if those in favor of the category are attending Anticipation and they don’t go to the WSFS Business Meeting to vote down to proposal to eliminate the category … then yes, the category will go away.