Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: calm
  • Music: Ludo, "Skeletons on Parade."

Why a Supporting Membership to WorldCon is a great idea.

Voting for the 2012 Hugo Awards is now open for all Attending and Supporting members of the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCon 7. ChiCon will be held this August in Chicago, Illinois, where attendees will be able to see such wonders as me tending bar for Barfleet, Amy fiddling for everyone in the known universe, and Cat and I in full-on flustered fairy tale princess mode. Super-fun!

Now, if you're not going to WorldCon, you may wonder why this is relevant to your interests. I have two words for you: voter packet.

All Supporting Members receive, in addition to Hugo voting rights, a copy of the Hugo voter packet. This includes all the nominated works for the year. Novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, graphic stories, and yes, related works (so this year, they had to figure out how to include MP3s of an entire filk album—I am a living complication). Strictly speaking, this is well over a $50 value. I mean, the Related Works category alone would probably cost you around $80 if you bought all the physical media, and that doesn't go into the fiction categories at all. So you save a lot, while getting a neat little packet containing electronic copies of what the community thought was best about the previous year. And oh, I forgot to mention there's also samples of the Fan Writer nominees, and art, and and and and...

And here's the thing. I can't pretend that I don't have a vested interest in this year's Hugos: I said last year that no one accepts a nomination when they don't want to win, and I meant that sincerely and without embarassment. It's even worse this year, when I'm on the ballot four times and terrified of losing four times. I want to win. But even more, if I'm going to lose, I want to lose fairly. I want to lose because the community spoke, and what they said was "this one over here should be the victor." That means people need to vote.

Every year, when the Hugo ballot is announced, some people say "these things, these things are wrong." Then, after the votes are counted, some people say "these wins, these losses, they are also wrong." But the only way to change the wrongness is to participate. That means nominating, and that means casting your vote. It's never been easier, and it's never been more...balanced, for lack of a better word. $50 isn't peanuts. There have been years where I wouldn't have been able to afford that. On the other hand, you get a lot of bang for your bucks, and you get to be a part of shaping our community's history. And if you register now, you may even have time to read everything before the deadline!

If you can afford a Supporting Membership, I highly recommend it. It's a fair value, and it lets you participate. Everybody loves participation, right?

This ends today's public service announcement.
Tags: awards and stuff, con prep, reading things, shameless plea
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  • 70 comments

yellowblackhaze

April 30 2012, 22:12:27 UTC 5 years ago

'Every year, when the Hugo ballot is announced, some people say "these things, these things are wrong." Then, after the votes are counted, some people say "these wins, these losses, they are also wrong." But the only way to change the wrongness is to participate. That means nominating, and that means casting your vote. It's never been easier, and it's never been more...balanced, for lack of a better word. $50 isn't peanuts. There have been years where I wouldn't have been able to afford that. On the other hand, you get a lot of bang for your bucks, and you get to be a part of shaping our community's history. And if you register now, you may even have time to read everything before the deadline!'

This! Totally this! I see comments pooh poohing the awards, and I ask myself if the people making them bothered to do any research or actually participated in the process by nominating or voting for the nominated works. For what you get $80 is rather on the conservative side, especially down here in Australia where books are regarded as a luxury item and priced accordingly.

seanan_mcguire

May 1 2012, 14:34:29 UTC 5 years ago

I didn't even think about the Australia angle. Cheese and crackers, y'all should be the majority of the voters, just for the SAVINGS.

thedragonweaver

May 5 2012, 03:06:00 UTC 5 years ago

I think the best part of the Hugo packet is the ephemera—the magazine stories and the like. Before they started providing them (and Renovation was the first complete year—John Scalzi started the ball rolling in 2008 by getting as many as he could, but they didn't follow up for the next two years), once they ran, they were gone, and if you didn't have them, you could only hope that a friend did. For my first Worldcon, the only category I might have been able to vote in was Best Novel, since I'm not a big movie person and that was pre-Hulu. Now, with the voter's packet, I can vote in every category if I so choose. I got through most of them last year (the difficulty being the transfer of text to the iPhone—not the world's best if you've got PDF, so I had to read some on my desktop.)

(Yes, I have a desktop.)

(Yes, I actually NEED a desktop.)