I have been nominated for a number of awards in my career, and even won a few.
The nominations include two Hugo nods, three Stokers, and eight Nebulas, none of which I have gone on to win.
That’s okay. For the time being I will make do with my Seiun and my Philip K. Dick award.
But because the Hugo has been of special attention these past months, I wish to repeat something I’ve had cause to say before. I think I first said this two years ago, and have had no reason to change my mind since.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because you’re my friend on Facebook.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because you’re my friend in real life.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because we shared a great time at a convention.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because I’m politically liberal and you like what I stand for.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because my strongest opposition is politically conservative and you wish to oppose what they stand for.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because it’s “my turn.”
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because you think I really deserved to win because of some past story, that either wasn’t nominated or was, and lost.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because somebody you really, really respect says you should.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because somebody you despise says you shouldn’t.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because it would piss off the right people.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because there’s a list of stories you should nominate and I appear on it, because you’re voting for everything else on the list and why not?
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo because you want to do a favor for the venue that published it.
Please don’t nominate me for a Hugo for any reason not having to do with the story itself.
Nominate me for a Hugo, and later vote for me for a Hugo, if my story blew you away, if it made you want to read it again, if it so deeply affected you that you tell everybody else about this creature of smoke and shadow that you encountered looking for an illusion built out of words. Nominate me for a Hugo because having read that story, you cannot bear the thought of that tale not getting a Hugo.
I will do my part and try to make you feel that way.
Do your part and refrain from providing me with laurels I haven’t earned.
I believe the laurels serve a purpose. But I do not want them, for their own sake – or even for the sake of whatever other unconnected point anybody might want to make. Never, ever.
Years ago I confessed that, of the available trophies, I wanted the Stoker, as a physical object, most. I said this to a prize official and he offered me a surplus, un-engraved one he had lying around. He would have sent it to me, had I asked. I immediately realized that I did not want it under those conditions.
It turns out that he made the offer as a test, a test that I passed.
I have since been offered a spare Hugo rocket, by a past Worldcon official who has some lying around. I discover I don’t want that either.
They are objects. They are artifacts I respect, but I respect them because of what they stand for. Shorn of meaning, they are just things. I don’t want them. I find that if I had them, I would grow to despise their very presence. They would poison me, slowly and inexorably.
Vote for me for a Hugo when every impulse in your heart insists that I deserve it, and you can’t help wanting to make that happen.
I will take that and be grateful.
But that’s the only circumstance under which I want you to vote for me, next year. Or ever.
Comment By: Michaele Jordan
August 27th, 2015 at 8:20 pm
Well-spoken. I am trying to be grateful that I do not run any of those risks. People only don’t nominate me because they’ve never heard of me and my wonderful stories. But if there were any danger of my being nominated, I would still wish only to be nominated for the story. I fantasize sometimes about a kid in the future, discovering my book at the back of an old library and being brightened and changed by the discovery. But it’s so far in the future I won’t live to see if it happens
Comment By: Ann Cohrs
August 27th, 2015 at 9:17 pm
I wish I had read Emissaries from the Dead the year it was written. It was wonderful and I would have nominated it.
Comment By: Alice Luxton
August 27th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
*loud applause*
Comment By: Steven Angel
August 27th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
In response to posts from you, Mr. Gerrold and others, I registered as a supporting member for 2016.
I hope that my voice and choice might contribute to restoring integrity to the Hugos. Or at least mitigate the asshattery.
Comment By: Brian Salyards
August 27th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
I have a spare, in engraved AVN award if you want it…
Comment By: Justin Semmel
August 27th, 2015 at 9:18 pm
Your Cort books blew me out of the water, can I look forward to more?
Comment By: Naomi
August 27th, 2015 at 9:39 pm
You’re right, of course. And yet, I worry that this kind of narrative is becoming far too common. I don’t see the behavior it describes actually happening. What I do see is a lot of people accusing each other of it, and that worries me.
In addition to all the other problems between the factions which sniped at each other throughout this particular Hugo cycle, there appears to be a serious communication failure. According to the Sad Puppies (I’ll leave the Rabids out of this, for the moment; they’ve got somewhat different motivations), everyone who has voted for the Hugo winners in recent years MUST have had motivations which had nothing to do with the actual quality of the work. How do they know this? Because the work was — in their own personal taste — yecchy; and because it didn’t get the kind of popularity among the general public that some of its competitors received. (This is variously supported by sales figures, bestseller lists, or Goodreads ratings.)
But that’s correlative, not causative; any SF fan should understand enough scientific method to be able to tell the difference. I can think of half a dozen possible reasons which could explain the correlation that have nothing to do with people voting awards to stories they don’t actually like as stories. Meanwhile, there’s no direct evidence that any significant number of voters in *any* year — until this one, when the behavior of the Puppies in attempting to corner the market in nominations angered a lot of people into making a rare exception — supported any Hugo nominee based on its politics, its demographics, or any other non-literary quality. (The one exception is that people do, to an extent, support their friends who are authors; but since they also often like their friends’ work, it’s questionable how much of a difference this makes to their ballots.)
*Everyone* I know who votes regularly for the Hugos — from all sides of the political and literary spectrum — shows the same deep commitment to reading the works carefully, judging them fairly based exclusively on their merit *as books*. I hear them debating the merits of specific works at length over the spring and summer months, before the ballots are due. I hear them exchange ideas on how to weigh a book’s language vs. its plotline, or how to compare works in very different subgenres, or discussing what they want to see in character development. I’ve heard long, passionate debates about whether it is “REALLY fair” of a voter to stop reading a nominee before the bitter end, if they can already tell they dislike it. I’ve heard conflicts between different philosophies about how to approach a ballot which contains nothing one considers Hugo-worthy.
What I’ve never once heard mentioned in those discussions, until this year, was a reason for anyone to vote for any work other than that they thought it was the best piece of writing in that category on that year’s ballot. Not ever.
It’s clear that the SPs and their opponents disagree on many things — from politics to literary taste to what constitutes ethical behavior (in both directions). That’s fine. Disagreements are part of being involved in a large subculture with an emphasis on diversity and individuality.
What isn’t fine is for either side to argue that, because the other’s taste is not theirs, the other side must have reasons for voting the way they do which have nothing to do with taste in SF stories. The anti-Puppies are guilty of this as well, claiming that the literary merit of the Puppy slates was so atrocious that it’s clear they could only have been chosen for their political presentation, not their literary merit. Meanwhile, the Puppies routinely accuse the anti-Puppies of voting for a work strictly because it has a gay, or female, or non-gender-binary protagonist; or because it was written by a person of color or a woman or someone in the LGBTQ+ range, without having any interest in (and sometimes, they claim, without having even read) the STORY involved.
But the truth is, tastes differ just as politics differ. While I tend to share the anti-Puppies’ views on the literary merit — or lack thereof — of the few Puppy-slate works I’ve read (since I wasn’t voting this year, I saw no reason to torture myself by forcing my way through the whole collection), I have no reason to doubt that the Puppies themselves find those works as enthralling and delightful as I find my own favorites. Likewise, I am quite sure that my anti-Puppy friends have not spent those endless hours I described above, reading and debating the merit of Hugo nominees, only to ignore all the work they’d done and vote according to simple demographics. They choose the works they do because they like them better than anything else on the ballot… whether or not the Puppies can fathom WHY they might like them that well, or indeed like them at all.
We all vote for what we like. When there’s something which thrills us to our bones, we vote for that. When there isn’t, we vote for good craftsmanship and eloquence and interesting ideas and whatever else floats our goat as readers.
You’re entirely right that that’s the way we *should* vote, of course. But it worries me, this increasingly prevalent assumption I keep hearing, that there must be a large group of voters — always composed of the bloc the speaker doesn’t agree with, of course — who votes any other way.
As far as I can tell, while I may consider my neighbor’s taste abysmal, I have no reason to doubt that he actually votes his taste.
Comment By: Janna Silverstein
August 27th, 2015 at 10:18 pm
Well said, Adam.
Comment By: Rick Novy
August 28th, 2015 at 1:01 am
Turning down the spare Hugo rocket is a lost opportunity to stick a model rocket engine in the bottom and actually launch the sucker. That would have made for great video.
Comment By: ATC
August 28th, 2015 at 5:01 pm
Quick answer for Justin: we are exploring avenues for continuing the Andrea series.
In the meantime, “The Coward’s Option” is a novella set in the earliest days of her career. It will see print in 2016 in ANALOG.
Comment By: nickpheas
August 30th, 2015 at 2:37 am
I’ve checked the list and I think voting for you because you once had a particularly entertaining column in Amazing Heroes is still legit.
Comment By: Dave M. Strom
September 1st, 2015 at 6:08 pm
Hey! Here fellow former Amazing Heroes columnist! I gotta nominate you for a Hugo because you neglected to list that as a reason not to! But I deserve votes more (once I get my lazy butt out on Kindle) because MY column was in the BACK of Amazing Heroes! THE BACK!!!
Cue evil laughter:
MOO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!!
P.S. After reading a few puppy short stories, I think the main reason they lost was that the writing just plain sucked.
Comment By: Dave M. Strom
September 1st, 2015 at 6:08 pm
I hate typos. Especially mine.
Comment By: Elaine Bagley
December 28th, 2015 at 9:17 pm
I’ll vote for you.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
December 28th, 2015 at 10:17 pm
For stories that you believe deserve it, please: is the point.
Comment By: Jen Bredell
November 25th, 2017 at 11:17 am
I don’t vote on these awards, I just buy, read, and enjoy your stories. And worry about prices rising when you do win, as I hope and trust will happen.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 25th, 2017 at 11:17 am
Jen Bredell: I thank you. You are not the target audience for the post, which is mostly for people who say, “I haven’t read the story, but have to vote for Joe because I love his posts!”
Comment By: Jen Bredell
November 25th, 2017 at 11:17 am
Adam-Troy Castro , understood completely; I just want to offer what encouragement I can.
Comment By: Chapter Five Esk 8/29 Ancillary Doghouse | File 770
September 13th, 2018 at 6:41 am
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