Hugo Nominees Announced

Congratulations to the 2010 Hugo Award Nominees!

From the Aussiecon 4 News feed:

“Aussiecon 4 received a record number of nominations for the 2010 Hugo Awards: 864, up from 799 nomination ballots at Anticipation in 2009 and 483 at Denvention 3 in 2008. This year’s Hugo Award nominations will be announced 22:00 BST, Easter Sunday 4 April, at Odyssey 2010, this year’s Eastercon, and covered live on the Aussiecon 4 Twitter feed. Balloting for the Hugo Awards will commence thereafter and will conclude on 31 July at midnight, US PDT. The Hugo Awards Ceremony will be held at Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne on Sunday, 5 September 2010.”

I’m equally proud for all the nominees, so I’m not going to plug any particular names or suggest how you should vote, I’m only going to suggest that you do vote. A supporting Worldcon membership is not that expensive, and it gives you something priceless: the power to support your favorite genre authors, editors and artists in a quantifiable way, and the ability to be a part of the F/SF community.

So, while I’m not going to plug any particular nominees or mention my own 2011 eligibility (Editor, Long Form), I am going to plug Cheryl Morgan’s post on the Blog Feminist SF. It talks about gender issues regarding the Hugo ballots, and it also talks about why you should vote, how to become eligible to vote, and how to vote… and how it’s perfectly okay to vote even if you haven’t read or seen everything in every category.

Because it’s okay to vote for what you like without familiarizing yourself with the whole ballot first, recognized names do stand a better chance. Does that make the Hugos a popularity contest? Maybe, in part. But author and client Nina Munteanu and I were discussing that at Worldcon last year, and Nina gave that a little twist. She suggested that maybe the nomination is a celebration a particular work, while winning can be looked at as a broader celebration of the career.

Or, maybe the Hugo ballot can be a list of recommended reading to track down if you’re wondering what to tackle next. It may introduce you to something new to love.

Tagged as: awards, Cheryl Morgan, hugo, Nina Munteanu, worldcon