Quick ICFA roundup:

[mariness]

Ah, ICFA. The conference centered around a pool. And tropical drinks. These are good things.

Tidbits:

1. For the all of two of you following this saga, the queen bee has successfully been moved from the owl house to the new beehive, and two jars of honey -- labeled Blak Kat - have been harvested. (Technically none of that happened at ICFA, but

Comments

[cardinalximinez]

And yes, conversations that just happened to bring up clowns, kink, and cousins in the same sentence. Something that I'm sure also happens to other people.

...All the time...

[mariness]

That's EXACTLY what I told Locus! All the time!

[cardinalximinez]

Hee hee!

[fadethecat]

The "too many categories for Hugo awards" thing certainly speaks to my last attempt to fill them out, and also my occasional frustration with figuring out where a given item goes. (Is this a related work, a really odd ezine, or would it just be easier to nominate the person who created it for the fan Hugo?) But it also rubs up inconveniently against a lot of the people who are frustrated with the Hugos for not having categories for the things they want awards for: YA, video games, or what not.

If the Hugos were the kind of things that changed rapidly, they could probably consolidate a lot of existing categories, and add a few new ones, and make many people happy while having fewer categories to poke at overall. But also enrage many other people. And I suspect that if the Hugos changed their process that easily, they wouldn't have half the prestige they do. There's a certain amount of cachet that comes from being traditional and slow to change when fads come and go.

[mariness]

There is a movement to get a YA category into the Hugos, so that might change in a couple years - and make the ballot even longer.

I was told at ICFA that video games can be nominated under "Best Related Work." I'm not sure how many people are aware of this - I certainly wasn't, and I've been nominating/voting in the Hugos for a couple years now. But that's one of the more confusing categories.

[jcbemis]

There is certainly a "too many Hugos already" group; and that causes resistance to adding new categories. There is also a "This hugo has historical significance and we don't want to change it significantly" group. This from someone who often goes to the Business meetings, nominates and votes Hugos, and will be at Worldcon this year (would you like me to hand carry a site selection ballot for you?)

[mariness]

Nah. I'm going to bow out of the site selection again so I can properly sulk over the results with all of the passion of someone who didn't bother to vote.

But thanks very much for the offer.

[catsittingstill]

You could always just quit voting in some categories. If the total number of votes in a given category drops below some fraction of the total number of votes in the most-voted-in category, (I think it's 50% but it might be 25%) no Hugo is awarded in that category that year.

If a substantial fraction of Hugo Voters skip a category, that category effectively goes away, in other words.

Personally I tried hard to nominate in every category I felt I understood this year, but skipping categories certainly would make the ballot quicker to fill out.

[mariness]

Oh, I did quit voting in some categories last year, and I left several categories blank in my nomination ballot this year.

[fbhjr]

Sounds like it went well!

[mariness]

At the very least we learned that "Drunken Sailor" goes along quite well with the bubbling sounds of a hot tub!