[Paracelsus]

Quote:

I will say, though, that there is no dishonor in losing to a writer as gifted as Lev Grossman, and many many terrific writers have lost the Campbell Award over the decades, starting with me. And it is an INCREDIBLE honor just to be nominated. Think about it. We have hundreds of new writers entering our field every year, all of them dreaming of careers, all of them fighting for recognition, trying to build their brand... and a few, maybe, lusting for rockets. Out of all those people, the fans nominated FIVE (sometimes six) for the Campbell.

Leaving aside the other careful sophistry in Martin's rant, this phrase is significant.

Who is "the fans", George?

Not everyone gets to nominate a book for a Campbell or a Hugo. Only members of the relevant society do. This year, according to Wired, was the biggest ever turnout for the Hugos: 5,950 votes cast. 65% more than the previous record, which means that in the past, roughly 2,700 people -- less than the population of a small shitberg village -- determined who got a Hugo. And eligibility to vote does not require any sort of authorship or qualifications in literature. Flat $50 or so and you have a vote, as demonstrated by the sudden, massive turnout for these Hugo awards.

If that's a representative or large sample of the total population of the SF-reading community, I'll eat my fucking baseball cap. But then I don't have to: there's at least one analysis floating around out there which demonstrates pretty clearly that goodreads ratings have skewed away from Hugo award winners for a few years now.

At this point the Academy Awards have more credibility than the Hugos for artistic merit, not least because its voting body is a big slice of the acting and directing population of Hollywood -- and that regularly gets it wrong and is manipulated by advertising campaigns. Is dear old George actually arguing that the Hugos are sacrosanct or are immune to that sort of pressure?