Now It Can Be Said!

Previously struggling under a gag order, TOF is today free to speak out!

Of course, the gag was utterly benign. TOF was to refrain from pronouncements and manifestos until all notifications had been made and either accepted or declined. But today what was hitherto occult is made manifest by public announcement.

Behold! I bring you tidings of great joy. The story "The Journeyman: In the Stone House" has been nominated for the Hugo Award. Huzzah! Or something.

Now, TOF is as fond as anyone of Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand, but the nominated story is really the first half of a longer story the second half of which appeared as "The Journeyman: Against the Green." As such, it has a number of foreshadowings that are unrelieved until the second half. This might be accounted as a flaw, but the same might be said of single books from a series. So TOF is content to put the issue to the voters.

Of his two works appearing last year, TOF would have nominated the second, but there is no accounting for taste. TOF does not confuse his preferences with absolute standards of Truth and Beauty. It's an Honor Just to be Nominated™, but he has written stories in other years that he had thought more worthy of the honor, but which never made a blip on the Hugo radar, so go figure.

TOF does not expect to actually, you know, win. One of his previous nominations was more worthy of that than is this one. For one thing, it appeared in Analog and so has a strike against it, since the CONventional wisdom is to ignore stories from that venue. Besides, why break a streak.

Previous nominees, provided for reference, were:

• 2007: Eifelheim (Tor) — novel 
• 2007: “Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2006) — novelette 
• 2005: “The Clapping Hands of God” (Analog Jul/Aug 2004) — novelette 
• 1995: “Melodies of the Heart” (Analog Jan 1994) — novella 
• 1988: “The Forest of Time” (Analog Jun 1987) — novella 
• 1987: “Eifelheim” (Analog Nov 1986) — novella — nomination

TOF understands that there was some hoo-hah among the cognoscenti, though he is not especially attuned to such matters. Apparently, some folks had put together a recommended list and urged people to read the stories on it and, if they thought the stories good, to nominate them. This struck some other folks as horrifyingly democratic and they much preferred that nominations go to stories that they liked. (One commenter actually said this!) I think that is how democracy actually works.

Anyone from the outside world (should they even become aware of such things as Hugos) would suspect that those in the first group were liberals, since liberals always seek to extend the franchise, and those in the second group are conservatives, since as all men know they seek to confine the franchise to a small elite group of property-owners or SMOFs or whatever.  Oddly enough, they would be wrong.¹ In the Good Old Days, the privilege of Hugo nominating was restricted to those with the means to attend the Worldcon -- the Hugo awards are the creature of Worldcon. One could pay a fee to become a "supporting member," eligible to cast a ballot without actually showing up -- equivalent in effect to a hefty poll tax -- and save the expense of a hotel room and plane ticket.  (All those who decided to nominate based on the urgings of some group or other still had to purchase the right to do so.)

One group of suggestions was put forth by folks complaining that insider elites were logrolling votes on works regardless of their merits as stories. In response, a trufan announced that he will categorically vote for No Award above any nominee from that list regardless of merit, a strange sort of rebuttal when TOF thinks on't, and he would do so without actually reading the stories so condemned. Back in the Sixties, we had a word for the categorical condemnation of an entire group sight unseen.

Not at our con, you don't!

 Part of the prejudice seems to be the resentment of fans for readers. The latter have habitually not attended cons or engaged in fannish activity, and so their intrusion into the process has excited the usual resentments of a contented neighborhood for outside agitators coming in and wanting to buy houses on their block, driving down the property values. In fact, this may explain in part the old disregard of Analog: surveys back in the day revealed Analog readers to average somewhat older than readers of other major mags, and many of them were employed in engineering and other technical fields. They seldom attended conventions. So it goes.

UPDATE.
TOF has now seen the entire list, and astonishingly enough a fair number of Analog stories made it on this year! As well as several friends and acquaintances. Alas, three of the other four novelette nominees are friends, and two of them were Analog stories. Here are the professional writing nominees.

BEST NOVEL (1827 ballots)

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos (47North)
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

BEST NOVELLA (1083 ballots)

• Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)
• “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)
• One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)
• “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy” by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House)

BEST NOVELETTE (1031 ballots)

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart (Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2014)
• “Championship B’tok” by Edward M Lerner (Analog, Sept 2014)
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog, June 2014) woo-hoo
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra (Analog, Jul/Aug 2014)
• “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)

SHORT STORY (1174 ballots)

• “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet (The End is Now (Apocalypse Triptych Book 2), Broad Reach Publishing)
• “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, Nov 2014)
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
• “Totaled” by Kary English (Galaxy’s Edge magazine, July 2014)
• “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)