Get Your Vote On
Posted on April 11, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
For those of you who want to vote for a significant science fiction/fantasy award but are too damn cheap to shell out a mere $50 for a Worldcon supporting membership to vote for the Hugos (even though it gets you access to electronic versions of four of the Best Novel Hugos — surely a better than $50 value!), there’s another alternative: The Locus Awards. You can vote for them, for free, by using this online form and filling in the information they ask. You don’t have to be a Locus subscriber. Anyone can vote, as long as you vote by April 15, 2008.
An important note: Although the online form comes loaded with Locus‘ suggestions in each category (taken from the Locus Recommended Reading List), you may also vote for something off the menu if you so choose; for example, if you want to vote for anything I published in the last year, since Locus, in its wisdom, didn’t put anything I wrote onto its Recommended Reading List. I know! I am shocked and appalled as well. But since I am proactive and wish to make it easy for you to vote for my work, should you choose, here are these handy formatted descriptions of my stuff, which you can cut from here and paste into the poll:
Best Novel
Scalzi, The Last Colony
Best Novelette
Scalzi, The Sagan Diary
Best Non-Fiction Book
Scalzi, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop Into a Coffee Shop
You shouldn’t vote for any of these just because I mention them here, of course. Actually vote for your favorite books and stories (and SF editors/publishers) from the last year. If one of mine fits that description, groovy (and thanks). The Locus Awards usually have the most number of voters of any significant SF/F award, so in some sense you can say they’re the People’s Choice Award of the genre. I’m not sure they’d appreciate the comparison, but it’s meant with love.
Have fun voting!
I dislike their push-poll drop-down lists. “Vote for the ones we at LOCUS liked!” Er, no, thanks. ;-)
(Mind you, I do tend to find a book or two on their lists that I vote for anyway.)
Had to vote for Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine as my first pick, but wrote TLC in as second. Forgot about RJ Sawyer until after I hit submit, but would have done Rollback as third.
Well, there are those of us who are not supposed to vote for awards because we like the wrong things and question the pravdas…
Sorry if you consider me too damn cheap for living on retirement without insurance, and thus very limited in discretionary income, but them’s the breaks.
What about one of your lesser-known titles?
Scalzi, John. 2007. Alley Oop and Bob the Dinosaur: Cartoon Proof of Intelligent Design
That’s so lesser known that even I don’t know about it.
cheap:
Relax. It was a joke.
Voted for you, Schroeder, and Jarpe for best novel.
Because my ConFusion Dealer’s Room Book Raid (TM) may have been my best ever.
LOL — Oh John, good grief! What horrible experiences have you had with people and laptops in coffeehouses? Most people I see doing this are college students doing homework, trying to get away from horrible roommates and paper-thin walls.
Do I get a “I Voted!!” sticker now???
I might actually consider subscribing to Locus now just for the fact they are giving the people a voice! That totally rocks!
It struck me how many of the later-announced Nebula and Hugo nominated works were not on the Locus recommended reading list, even though their list is fairly long. It also struck me how mediocre or plain awful a few of the works are that did make it onto Locus’s list.
That goes to show the Locus list is fairly quirky and not actually a very reliable guide as a recommended reading list.
I haven’t read enough of the novels from last year yet to make a considered vote in that category. But here are my own recommendations, in hopes that I might help other interested parties around here find stuff they will enjoy:
In the novellas category, two other works that aren’t on the Locus list that I thought were among the best were “Minla’s Flowers” by Alastair Reynolds, and “A War of Gifts” by Orson Scott Card.
In the novelettes, I recommend Mary Rosenblum, “Splinters of Glass” (The New Space Opera); C.W. Johnson, “Icarus Beach” (Analog, 12/07); Garth Nix, “Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again” (Baen’s Universe 4/07); John Barnes, “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” (Baen’s Universe 8/07); and Charles Stross, “Trunk and Disorderly” (Asimov’s 1/07); along with one that wasn’t listed by Locus: Paul J. McAuley, “Winning Peace” (The New Space Opera).
In short stories, I recommend Stephen Baxter, “Last Contact” (Solaris 1); Ian McDonald, “Verthandi’s Ring” (The New Space Opera); Elizabeth Bear, “Tideline” (Asimov’s 6/07); and a couple that weren’t on the Locus list: Melanie Fazi, “Elegy” (F&SF, 6/07); and Carl Frederick, “A Zoo in the Jungle” (Analog, 6/07).
A few other points:
* There is at least one dramatic standout for magazines in terms of number of stories included on the Locus list relative to circulation and author pay rates. Can you spot it, in this list of all magazines with at least two entries on the Locus list and how many entries they had?
F&SF: 25
Asimov’s: 22
Subterranean: 6
Realms of Fantasy: 4
Baen’s Universe: 3
Clarkesworld: 3
Analog: 2
Interzone: 2
MIT Technology Review: 2
Strange Horizons: 2
That’s right: Analog is the highest-circulation SF magazine in the U.S., yet has less than 10% as many inclusions on the Locus list as F&SF or Asimov’s. Is it because Analog has gotten really stinky, or do the Locus people have a grudge against Analog? Many of my favorite stories from the year that were not on the list were from Analog, so I think the latter. What gives?
* A very large number of the stories I enjoyed the most this year are all from one original anthology, The New Space Opera, ed. by Dozois & Strahan. This is one of the best anthologies of the past several years; you will get a huge bang for your buck with it.
* Two other fine works regrettably omitted from the Locus list in the short story category are: John Scalzi, “Pluto Tells All” (Subterranean Spring ’07), and John Scalzi, “Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results” (Subterranean Winter ’07).
* This was also scandalously, astonishingly, omitted from the Locus list, almost as scandalously as the omission of Mr. Scalzi’s works, but read “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s a terrific candidate for both best fantasy novel and best debut novel.
Ray in #9, “I might actually consider subscribing to Locus now just for the fact they are giving the people a voice!”
It sounds like you think the Locus poll is something new. Actually, they’ve been conducting this annual poll since 1971.
Dennis @ 11
And your point is…??
Hmm, I vote for apathy.
I enjoy your work and that of others in the list, but it’s really not worth the time to vote.
In these days of the intarwebs polls are not meaningful indicators of pretty much anything.
I think that there are some who would vote for your works simply because you told them to. However, there are also those intolerant jackasses who will now vote against everything you write just because you don’t hate Vox Day enough. It’s probably a push.
Oops. Somehow number 14 ended up in the wrong comment thread. Should be under Show of Hands.
I see this as a request to vote for your stuff (despite the caveats).
I saw this as a request to vote for anything I’d read that I liked.