Dear People Who Bought a Worldcon Membership
Posted on July 27, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 29 Comments
A poll especially for you!
Remember, you can vote until 11:59pm (Pacific Time) this Sunday, July 31. And you can do it online, even! SO GO DO IT. Now. Don’t make me come over there.
Anyone not voting for “F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury” is a Grinch isallimsayin’
Been waiting for all those money transfers to clear so my vote goes to the highest bidder…
…seriously, been trying to get a few more items read. I did OK in the long form this year, but not so good catching up on the short forms! But the die will be cast.
I voted last night, actually. I had a hard time deciding between Feed and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but eventually went with the latter.
I was disappointed in the short-story entries this year. Three of them seemed just okay — and the fourth seemed downright awful — but voting for “No Award” seemed like it would only discourage short-story writers MORE, so I rank-ordered the three okay stories and put only the awful story after “No Award.” If you want an easy Hugo, John, you might try writing a short story. :-)
I ended up not voting on the novelas, because all of them seemed about the same to me (not in subject matter, obviously — I mean that all of them seem very well done but ultimately unsatisfying); I figured I’d leave the voting for that category to someone who was passionate — either for or against — a particular story.
Signed, sealed and delivered!
I voted….Campbell award was hard for me, Corriea or Wells – horrible decision, but have much soul searching I did decide.
Just finishing up a couple of things, but I should get mine in by 11:57. Lotsa time!
I was just getting ready to look up my number/pin!
Where’s my choice “Dude, I want to, but I’m not allowed to, so that sucks!”
Still hoping to get through Dervish House by then.
I have yet to read the novellas. I will vote as soon as I finish them or 11:30 ET Sunday night, whichever comes first.
Can’t support WorldCon this year, because they’re not accepting debit cards or PayPal. That’s not a very future-facing policy, is it? So I’m left wondering what I’m going to write this year, in place of this: http://mycodehere.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-voted-for-hugos.html. Very sad.
I’m working on it! I’ve been having a great time reading all the entries and trying to decide how to order them. I’m currently reading the fanzine nominees and have already found one I’d like to see more of—“Banana Wings”.
I will, I will, I will get my vote in under the deadline. (I could claim I’ve been busy working on my apazine that I mailed off today with a deadline of tomorrow.) But then what was I doing all that other time?
I voted two weeks ago, actually. Schlock Mercenary über alles!
Don’t know where John Kerr got the idea that Renovation isn’t accepting debit cards or PayPal payments. Our online registration can accepted any debit card that’s attached to one of the major networks (Visa, MasterCard, Discover–as well as AMEX cards)–I’ve never had a debit card that didn’t belong to a major network (nor have I ever encountered a web site that would take a payment from a debit card that wasn’t either one of the major networks).
And while PayPal isn’t listed on on our online reg page (a requirement of our credit card processor), we can certainly accept PayPal payments. Email memberships@renovationsf.org for more information.
John Lorentz
Renovation Reg
John-I think I may have a small problem with your characterization of voters v. non-voters. While I would like to see many more “knowledgeable” members vote, I do not believe that voting for the sake of voting in categories that the voter is unfamiliar with is necessarily a good thing. For example (since you do not have a novel on the ballot this year), I do not think that a person should vote for “Old Man’s War 8 1/2” without having read it or a least a few of the other nominated novels just because that Scalzi person writes a blog that rocks (or at least does not suck). One does not have to vote in each and every category and I would rather see people only vote in the categories that in which they have some familiarity with more than one of the nominees, or skip voting if they have no knowledge of any of the nominees. I believe that, to do otherwise just for the sake of voting, serves to cheapen the Hugos.
Having said that, I would urge every eligible voter to vote, but only in the categories in which the voter has some knowledge. For me, this means, unfortunately, ignoring many of the fiction categories (I will try harder to keep up next year)and only voting in the fan categories in which I have some familiarity.
I will get off of my soapbox now. It is time to vote.
Dude, I only bought the membership for the package deal on the ebooks, and I haven’t read most of them yet.
Joel—Renovation members were provided with a downloadable version of almost all of the print categories. So, for example, I voted in the categories for novel, novella, graphic novel, and short story. I skipped the novelettes because I didn’t get around to reading them and I’m not in the mood to go back. I *also* voted in the Professional Artist category through the method of going to Google and pulling up images by the artists in question, and I recommend that tactic. It’s quick and easy and I’m really glad that method exists.
I was unable to vote for Dramatic/Long Form because I haven’t seen any of the movies. Yet. But I’d seen all but one of the short form, so I at least felt comfortable voting in that category.
But I Have Voted. For the first time as a Worldcon member, as it happens. (I was a little encumbered by a newborn the first year Mr. Scalzi got together the voter’s packet.)
B. Durbin (17)-I know about the Hugo packet, and actually own dead-tree versions of some of the nominated novels, but since I did not make the time for reading them, I decided to skip most of the fiction categories. I do commend you for being a knowledgeable voter, and for skipping the category in which you felt little familiarity.
What John Lorentz said. I got off my duff when I didn’t find any PayPal options AND EMAILED TO ASK. John was kind enough to help me (ON A SUNDAY, EVEN) get registered. Let me repeat: ON A SUNDAY. WITH PAYPAL. VIA EMAIL.
Thanks, John L.
John Lorentz: thank you, I will try both methods of payment (if necessary) tonight. Cheers!
Debit card rejected as expected; apparently my card number is invalid. Must be a sheer fluke that it still works everywhere else! MasterCard, You Fail. Have now requested PayPal details by email.
frankly, I suck because I never get around to reading all of the entries so I don’t feel like I should vote at all. I believe that doesn’t stop a lot of people from voting but it should.
Josh Jasper: I really, really wanted to vote for “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.” So much. It made me really sad to not rank it at #1. But the thing is, I didn’t think it was the best thing on that list. Life is hard.
Corylea: I hated one of the short stories, too! I wonder if we chose the same one to put below ‘no award.’
Listening to “The Woman Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” on audio at StarShipSofa made me love it even more than I did when I read it in text. But the Ted Chiang story was so so good. Why does the world have to be so full of awesome? How can I possibly rank the order of the awesomeness?
I skipped watching ‘Inception,’ and probably would never have bothered if I hadn’t felt an obligation to see it before voting. It was a lot better than I expected.
I didn’t vote in either of the ‘editor’ categories, because I just have no idea how to evaluate editing.
#22: Can’t help but find something worrying about an argument that favours fewer overall votes. Who was it who said “You might not find anyone you want to vote for, but there’s always something you want to vote against”? I’m sure it was a SF author, since I’ve rarely read anything else!
By the same argument, we shouldn’t be allowed to nominate a book for an award, until we’ve read every single book published that year…
Must have been Heinlein. Or Asimov. Or…..
All signed up now, thanks to the industrious John Lorentz. Sitting with my feet up, slippers on, puffing an imaginary pipe and waiting for my voting credentials to arrive.
You can change your vote as you finish reading stuff, ya know. So, vote on what you’ve read/watched/listened to NOW, and then you can change the vote as you read and re-consider. And if you don’t finish the reading, at least you’ve voted on some of the categories.
Life has spat all over my attempts to read all the material. If I buckle down I may be able to vote in a couple of categories.
Aha! Escape Pod has most of the short stories and one of the novelettes up. I think I’ll walk home from work today and chew through some of these.
Thanks to the voter package, I was able to make it through my reading assignment(s) so that I felt relatively confident casting my vote. Which I’ve now done.