Attending WorldCon for the first time has ended up being…MUCH different than I had anticipated when I registered, as is the case for literally everything that has happened in 2020. I was planning to attend with a friend who has gone to a couple of others, and cancelling highly anticipated travel plans is always a bummer. BUT I’m glad to have been able to distract myself from the general shittiness of the world by consuming all of the things for Hugo voting! (I’m also extremely grateful to the con organizers for making the decision to take the convention online super early on, so that it wasn’t a drawn out, excruciating process.) I’m going to get more into the actual experience of WorldCon as a convention following the actual thing next week, but first I wanted to talk about the Hugo Award voting.
After the nominations and then finalists were announced, one of the things that was a bit tough was finding tips on how to think about that voting, or what that voting practically looked like. So I thought I would put together some reflections as a first-time voter, not only for anyone who is curious but also for my own self to look back on when I’m voting next time. I’m also throwing in some tips from the friend with whom I was meant to be attending the con. (Shout out to Gina for those.)
Before that, though, a bit of background about WorldCon and the Hugo Awards! If you are already aware of all of this, you can click here to skip to where I start talking about my voting experience.
WorldCon in New Zealand–aka CoNZealand, isn’t that clever?–is the 78th World Science Fiction Convention. The convention was started in 1939 and has been held every year since, save two: 1942 and 1945, because of World War II. The convention is held in a different location around the globe every year, which as a nerd AND a traveler is such a rad thing. (Remember when we got to travel? Good times.)
Anyway, anyone can register and attend the convention! The two big things that gives you access to–other than the awesomeness of getting to attend panels with experts and fans about things in nerdery that you care about–are voting for the Hugo Awards, and voting on the site selection for the WorldCon in two years.
The Hugo Awards themselves are considered a literary prize, though there are categories outside of the book world (more on that later), and is widely considered the most prestigious award in science fiction. The Awards were named for Hugo Gernsback, who founded the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and have been given every year since 1955. They also are doing Retro Hugo Awards, for years after WorldCon started but before the Awards started. You can see the finalists for the 2020 Awards, and for the finalists in the 1945 Retro Hugos that were also voted on this year.
Alright! With all of that out of the way, here are some things I took away from this process as a first-time voter:
- I mean, I should have known this, because I know how voting works for other awards–and also just voting in general, I guess–but they send you a voters packet!
Right around when the finalists were announced, I had just started a new job so I splurged and got myself the Best Novel and Best Novella finalists. I’m glad that I purchased those, because I ended up either loving or enjoying almost all of them and am glad to have them in my library. But I’m also super glad to know that the voters packet exists for future times where I might not have the funds readily available. While it’s true that some of the categories do not often have full versions of the work in the packet–for example, Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form which includes six films or full series of a show–a lot of them do!
Next time around, though, I’m going to open that packet as soon as I get it and set aside a few hours to open the zipped files and glance through which materials have been included, and which ones I might still need to seek out in some way if I’m interested in consuming them (like thinking of hold times at the library, for example). I didn’t do this right away this time, and because I was not super familiar with the categories up front and because they were right up top on the finalists list, I jumped on the Best Novel and Best Novella categories and neglected to think about how much time I might want to put into, say, the Best Series category (obviously a BIG time commitment) or Best New Writer (another sizable endeavor).
- Luckily you don’t have to pick the ONE winner in each category when you are submitting your ballot. You actually rank them and then there’s a very complicated system (okay, simple but involved, instant runoff system) that the awards administrators use to determine who receives the award. Certainly took the pressure off.
- There are SO. MANY. CATEGORIES. Of course the ones that you hear about most are the people who have more long-form fiction work. But there are eighteen categories in total, ranging from Best Novel to Best Semi-Pro Zine to Best Related Work to Best New Writer. Which is great! I didn’t even realize that television shows and movies that fall in the SFF genres have their own categories. I’m not sure why Marvel (aka Disney) should get a Hugo award, but that’s a different conversation.
ANYWAY. One of the pieces of advice I got from my friend when I was freaking out about being overwhelmed at the pure volume of materials is that you have to prioritize. Especially since I was still working during the majority of the time between finalists being announced and ballots being due, I had to decide to which of the categories I was really going to devote my time. I definitely didn’t get to all of the categories this time around and I didn’t even THINK about looking at the 1945 Retro Hugos. I wish I’d had the ability to do that. - I still have no idea how I would go about ranking Best Editor categories. I feel like that’s really saying something because I have BEEN and continue in many regards to BE an editor. But I think it’s hard to truly gauge that work unless you see a before/after, and that’s not really what’s provided in the packet. So I’m going to be thinking about these categories a lot in advance of next year’s voting.
- I’m really not much of a consistent bullet journaler BUT I did find it very helpful to create a tracking sheet for myself. In my journal, this took three pages, and I had a column to indicate when I’d read/watched the thing, and then a column next to that for ranking. While I was working my way through the categories, I penciled in my rankings, and then once I finished a category (and reviewed my rankings one or two or an obsessive amount of times), I put them in pen.
However, with the online voting, you can save ranking if you want and go in and make changes until the deadline, which is also good to know for the future.
- I’m going to be spending some time thinking about a more structured way of approaching voting for next year, because most of my voting this year was emotional. I’m not saying I want to completely move away from that, but I’d like to take time to be more thoughtful about it.
- A few observations about the nominees: I’m sure it varies year to year, and also depends on what is being released and what resonates with readers/viewers-at-large the most during a given year, but a few common themes I noticed in the pieces this year were time travel and loss/sacrifice/war.
- Even though there are some categories that I didn’t really get to, I’m still grateful to have received the materials in the voter packet because I’m hoping to get into those things in the next few months. I think I’ll still be really into them. So shout out to all of the publishers, editors, writers, visual artists, etc. who contributed materials to that.
And I voted! Even twelve hours before the deadline too.
Hopefully there were some interesting tidbits there. Have you read or watched any of the finalists? What were some of your favourites? If you’re also a Hugo voter this year, do you want to discuss your rankings?! Reach out to me, I’d love to do that.
Jo In Real Life 