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The Hugos -- looking at the numbers
Aug. 21st, 2011 08:28 amOne of my favorite things about the Hugo awards is the after-the-fact transparency, in which we get to see how all of the nominating and voting went down. This year's numbers are available here (PDF link).
As always, the instant-runoff process makes things fascinating. I'd predicted that Feed would be the popular choice (based on the fact that it's a book I'm generally unimpressed by, but which has a lot of buzz), and I was half-right; it had the most first-place votes after the initial round (416, 42 more than anyone else), but the Hugos don't go to the book with the most first place votes in the first round. After "No Award," The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and Cryoburn had been eliminated (with their first place votes being spread to the next-ranked choice of their supporters), the equally-underwhelming Blackout/All Clear had taken the lead, and the elimination of The Dervish House only bolstered the difference in the end.
There are similar stories in many categories, although Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" never looked back in the Best Novella category (actually, all of the shorter fiction categories saw the initial plurality winner coming through, as did best related work (yay, Chicks Dig Time Lords!), graphic story, and others). "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" was initially way more popular than the two-part "Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang," but that 140-point lead, not surprisingly, closed when the other Doctor Who episodes were eliminated. Likewise, the Doctor Who hegemony helped drive "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" down to fourth overall, as people who voted for one Who tended to vote for all of them in some order in their top three.
One of the most interesting "horse races," to me, was Shaun Tan's win for Best Professional Artist. Initially (and not surprisingly) the most popular, he remained so until the penultimate round, when Daniel Dos Santos picked up enough of Stephan Martiniere's fans to pass Tan by three votes. But then John Picacio was eliminated, and his fans sided with Tan enough to put him back in the lead, by fourteen votes. And once again, being the last to be eliminated does not mean finishing in second place, as Tan's votes are not counted in that process, so Martiniere ends up in second (basically, "second place" and "runner-up" are distinct terms in the instant-runoff system). A similar back-and forth happens in the Best Fan Writer category
The other fun vote is the semiprozine. Locus was solidly in first place from the beginning until the final round, when Clarkesworld surged ahead. That's not a shock, since the last to be eliminated was Lightspeed, and it makes sense that fans of smart fiction would also back another zine in that category (instead of a news and review zine). You can see something similar in the Best Fan Artist category (where Randall Munroe's huge lead vanishes in the final round. By one vote).
Equally fascinating, though, is that we can also see the votes for nominations. So we know that Who Fears Death got only four fewer nominations than Cryoburn for Best Novel. Or that "A Jar of Goodwill" and "The Naturalist" only missed the Best Novelette cutoff by two votes. For Best Editor, Short Form, Ellen Datlow had 64 nominations and Stanley Schmidt had 65; next time someone tells you that it's pointless to nominate, point out the difference one ballot would have made here (or in Best Fan Artist, above).
The most interesting bit here is in Best Editor, Long Form. Because both Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell declined their nominations, the fifth-place threshold moved to 21 nominations, where Beth Meacham, Juliet Ulman, and Nick Mamatas were all tied. Another example of a place where one person could have made a huge difference (and given the impact Meacham had on the final ballot, this is another case where one nomination made a difference).
I've often criticized the Hugos, because like almost all awards, they don't end up picking the books/people I think are best (a serious problem with everyone else's taste). And the problems with a fan vote (whether free as the Locus Awards or pay-to-vote like the Hugos) have been discussed to death (as have the problems with a jury and a group of one's fellow writers). No system's perfect. But the transparency of the Hugos is something I really, really love, as it gives a sense of both how fandom works, and how much/little each award means (note how few people nominated for, say Best Fan Artist, for example, or even the fact that the total number of voters for the Best Novel awards is below 1900). It puts the community, the awards, and the voting process in perspective (and it's just plain fun to watch, especially since the numbers are no more depressing than the ones I normally check out when reading Mets box scores).
As always, the instant-runoff process makes things fascinating. I'd predicted that Feed would be the popular choice (based on the fact that it's a book I'm generally unimpressed by, but which has a lot of buzz), and I was half-right; it had the most first-place votes after the initial round (416, 42 more than anyone else), but the Hugos don't go to the book with the most first place votes in the first round. After "No Award," The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and Cryoburn had been eliminated (with their first place votes being spread to the next-ranked choice of their supporters), the equally-underwhelming Blackout/All Clear had taken the lead, and the elimination of The Dervish House only bolstered the difference in the end.
There are similar stories in many categories, although Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" never looked back in the Best Novella category (actually, all of the shorter fiction categories saw the initial plurality winner coming through, as did best related work (yay, Chicks Dig Time Lords!), graphic story, and others). "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" was initially way more popular than the two-part "Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang," but that 140-point lead, not surprisingly, closed when the other Doctor Who episodes were eliminated. Likewise, the Doctor Who hegemony helped drive "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" down to fourth overall, as people who voted for one Who tended to vote for all of them in some order in their top three.
One of the most interesting "horse races," to me, was Shaun Tan's win for Best Professional Artist. Initially (and not surprisingly) the most popular, he remained so until the penultimate round, when Daniel Dos Santos picked up enough of Stephan Martiniere's fans to pass Tan by three votes. But then John Picacio was eliminated, and his fans sided with Tan enough to put him back in the lead, by fourteen votes. And once again, being the last to be eliminated does not mean finishing in second place, as Tan's votes are not counted in that process, so Martiniere ends up in second (basically, "second place" and "runner-up" are distinct terms in the instant-runoff system). A similar back-and forth happens in the Best Fan Writer category
The other fun vote is the semiprozine. Locus was solidly in first place from the beginning until the final round, when Clarkesworld surged ahead. That's not a shock, since the last to be eliminated was Lightspeed, and it makes sense that fans of smart fiction would also back another zine in that category (instead of a news and review zine). You can see something similar in the Best Fan Artist category (where Randall Munroe's huge lead vanishes in the final round. By one vote).
Equally fascinating, though, is that we can also see the votes for nominations. So we know that Who Fears Death got only four fewer nominations than Cryoburn for Best Novel. Or that "A Jar of Goodwill" and "The Naturalist" only missed the Best Novelette cutoff by two votes. For Best Editor, Short Form, Ellen Datlow had 64 nominations and Stanley Schmidt had 65; next time someone tells you that it's pointless to nominate, point out the difference one ballot would have made here (or in Best Fan Artist, above).
The most interesting bit here is in Best Editor, Long Form. Because both Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell declined their nominations, the fifth-place threshold moved to 21 nominations, where Beth Meacham, Juliet Ulman, and Nick Mamatas were all tied. Another example of a place where one person could have made a huge difference (and given the impact Meacham had on the final ballot, this is another case where one nomination made a difference).
I've often criticized the Hugos, because like almost all awards, they don't end up picking the books/people I think are best (a serious problem with everyone else's taste). And the problems with a fan vote (whether free as the Locus Awards or pay-to-vote like the Hugos) have been discussed to death (as have the problems with a jury and a group of one's fellow writers). No system's perfect. But the transparency of the Hugos is something I really, really love, as it gives a sense of both how fandom works, and how much/little each award means (note how few people nominated for, say Best Fan Artist, for example, or even the fact that the total number of voters for the Best Novel awards is below 1900). It puts the community, the awards, and the voting process in perspective (and it's just plain fun to watch, especially since the numbers are no more depressing than the ones I normally check out when reading Mets box scores).