Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Okay, one more post about the Hugos: the proposal for a YA Hugo has been put forth again.

Amy McNally has revived the proposal for a "Best Young Readers" Hugo (defining the category as "YA, Middle Grade, and Children's Books"), and has a beautiful, thoughtful deconstruction of many of the arguments against.

Go. Read. And remember...

We complain about younger people not getting into the community. About seeing teenagers pack up their toys and go home at a certain point. About wanting more people to become lifelong readers, and lifelong members of our social hyperspace. But we also tend to write off YA as "juvenile" (as if that were an insult; as if Heinlein and Norton and Gaiman didn't write for young adults), and all too often, shame the people who read it. We scoff at covers that cater to teen sensibilities, instead of adult aesthetics. We don't listen.

There is amazing stuff happening in YA. Concepts and stories are being built and explored there in ways that are difficult to impossible in adult fiction. From the big blockbusters like The Hunger Games to the sneakier stories like Unspoken, it's a medium that's bursting with potential, and bringing our younger voters in by recognizing what many of them are reading, while also bringing more adult readers to this amazing work...I just can't see that as a bad thing. At all.

This is Amy's ballgame, so while you're welcome to comment here, I am declaring comment amnesty, and will only answer if I feel like it. Although I will moderate if folks get snappy. Remember, we're all in this together.
Tags: amy, awards and stuff
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At your talk on Gender/Race etc in writing, when someone asked about other kinds of discrimination or marginalization (economic was one she mentioned), the general response from our side of the room was "Take a look at YA!" There is some really interesting stuff coming out of that....well, I can't call it a "genre" - more a "marketing category" than anything else. There is lots more going on there than sparkly vampires - stuff i never would have picked up had I not been familiar with Sara Rees Brennan from when she was on lj-metaquotes nearly as often as you were :) Yes, some of it can seem simplistic to "adults", but there are a lot of just cracking good reads here.
I see the post addresses my concern about making sure YA books don't lose out by having people nominate them for one or the other of 'Best Youth Novel' and 'Best Novel' and ending up with neither. Because that would be awful. (And, frankly, I figure YA is usually of the same quality as adult SF*** and plus getting younger folks involved in this part of SF fandom** is good for the future.)

That and I notice that a lot of my nominations are helped by authors' "This is what I have that's eligible for the Hugos (and what category)", since I imagine authors being paid by the word for short stories tend to know when they cross the line into novelettes better than I do*. So authors noting that 'Books X & Y are probably not YA but Book Z is marketed to YA and Book W is middle grade' would help me in nominations.

* That and it reminds me of things I've read over the year, since 'that one story by Seanan with the selkies' is not very helpful when filling out ballots (and that's a good day for me, since I remember the author so could conceivably find the title on my own).

** Maybe combined with a youth discount or 'scholarship' memberships to account for teens for which $50 is a lot of money, if that doesn't run into problems mentioned in the previous post regarding Supporting Memberships.

*** Read: 'some of it is crap or not to my tastes or involves me wanting the antagonists to set everyone on fire, but much of it is decent, and some is very good'. And it's not like something not to my tastes has ever been nominated for a Hugo before...
I see the post addresses my concern about making sure YA books don't lose out by having people nominate them for one or the other of 'Best Youth Novel' and 'Best Novel' and ending up with neither.

I guess you mean the combining nominations part? If that's the case, then only partially: votes may only be moved to the other category if the nominator didn't use up all their slots in that category.

In other words: if persons A, B, and C nominate a certain book as YA, and also nominate 5 (other) books for best novel, and said book gets these 3 nominations in the YA category, plus 4 nominations in the novel category, the votes can't be combined, and the book ends up with 4 nominations, not 7, and another novel with 5 nominations in the best novel category goes on the ballot instead of the first book.

If this wasn't what you meant (or if my explanation didn't make sense), then forget everything I just said. :-)
Good point: I missed that when reading about combining nominations.

(Actually, are there other categories where what category something falls into isn't clear -- the only one I can come up with are things like Best Related Work and... well, anything, but as an example 'Wicked Girls' ended up there, and not in 'Best Dramatic Presentation' (and 'Writing Excuses' ends up there instead of 'Best Fancast'). I'd have to look into whether anything has had significant splits about whether it was SF or 'related work' -- I'd suspect it would be more common for things that focus on the meta, like fanzines and fancasts, rather than works of fiction.)
Wicked Girls wound up in "Best Related" and not "Best Dramatic" because it's not a dramatic presentation. It's a collection of narratively unlinked songs, which makes it related, but not a single drama.
I believe there's another proposal on the agenda this year about creating a Hugo for fan Audio-visual stuff, which might collect a number of those 'we don't really have a category for that' items. I don't remember, off hand, exactly how it's phrased and what's up with it, but people interested in these sorts of things might want to go look at it, too.
I very much like when authors post when their stuff is eligible for and what categories - because I simply can't remember any distinctions finer than "novel" and "shorter than a novel"!
I really think this is a thing that needs to happen. Amazing things are happening in YA - Tamora Pierce and Diane Duane and Tanith Lee are all doing great work, and there are so many authors out there writing great, inclusive fiction and they deserve recognition. The YA I read as a kid not only got me hooked on sf/fantasy but also was a source of escape from the gender determinist, small-minded town I grew up in that said girls couldn't be geeks or do important stuff.
Definitely-- I would never have known about Tamora Pierce's stuff if someone hadn't gotten me one of her books as a joke. ("Page" -- guess what the project I was working on was named)
I adore the hell out of YA. I would love to see it on the ballot.

I went to sign up as a Supporting Member when I got my tax return this year so I could vote for the Hugos but I was too late. I will be on time next year, I promise. You make me want to get involved, and not just to vote for you.
Price increases in September, so if you still have some of that tax return you can sign up for next year's now :)
Even though I will likely never go to a World Con, I think these posts on how to improve things are important. We all have a stake in the future of the genre and in making things better and more inclusive.

Thanks for taking time out to post these.
How different is this one from the one Chris Barkley put forth a year or two ago?
I recommend taking the question to the root post, as it is not my proposal, as indicated above.
For all the reasons that Seanan expressed above I deeply support the creation of a YA Hugo. However I do also agree that there are problems of categorization, which this proposal doesn't solve. Worse yet, as written the proposal could be read to disqualify Amy herself so I'm not sure it does what she expects.

I'd really like to see a YA Hugo, but this proposal is too vague and contradictory to implement. Sometimes proposals are fixed by amendment during the business meeting. I hope she can be patient with the process.

And FWIW, screw the complainers. Most of them haven't read any new SF in 30 years. We need to recognize that their job is to wail about progress, like a banshee. They don't wail because their comments have merit, they wail because it's their job ;-)