My Discouraging Hugo Second Thoughts

I'm slowly catching up on all my feeds -- I lost a couple of days in Anaheim and on the plane, and then had a lazy weekend, so I've gotten behind on all of my electronic communications -- and running through everyone else's thoughts about the Hugo winners.

(I'm not going to start gratuitously insulting the idiots out there, though there are many of them. Actually, I'm amused that the idiots this year -- at least the ones I've seen -- are fantasy-loving idiots, unlike the usual squadron of SF Triumphant Hugo Complainers. Perhaps we're entering a new era of rotation in illegitimate complaints? Perhaps next year the big squabble will be about whether enough Belgians have been honored?)

What I intended to post about, before I got sidetracked there, were my predictions and how badly wrong I was this year. Looking at the list of winners again a couple of days later, my problem was that I was insufficiently cynical -- I know, it's hard to believe that phrase could ever be used to describe me, but it's true.

Let's look again the ones I got wrong, and I will demonstrate:

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang for That Weird Mid-length Kind of Story That No One Can Spell Correctly -- Hugo voters clearly have a tropism for the same names, and I should remember that.

“Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear for The Dying (Alas!) Short Story -- no one can resist Bear. It's useless to try.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher for Loosely Related Book -- How did I miss that this is a book steeped in the purest essence of faanishness? It was the obvious cynical choice.

Stardust for Dramatic and Too Long -- Neil Gaiman. See? That was all I needed to know.

Doctor Who: "Blink" for Dramatic and Too Short -- Actually, this one cynicism wouldn't have helped me with. I thought I was being exceptionally cynical, actually, picking the bisexual time-traveling bad boy.

Gordon Van Gelder as Editor of the Hobbits -- He won last year. Add to Hugo voters' usual patterns, stir and decant.

David G. Hartwell as Editor of the Frost Giants -- He's not young, and a past winner. Why did I expect Hugo voters to pick someone new? They hardly ever do.

Stephan Martiniere as Artist Wot Gets Paid -- Another one of the very few categories where cynicism wouldn't have helped.

Mary Robinette Kowal as Campbell Is Not a Hugo Tiara Power Go! -- She's gotten very active in SFWA recently (and quite successful, as far as I can see) and everybody likes her. So, if the cynical view is that Hugos are purely a popularity contest among BNFs and associated pros, then she was the obvious choice.


See? It's clear that I would have done much better with my predictions if I had been able to completely ignore the actual merits and abilities of all of the nominees and focus my attention, laser-like, on the most trivial and pointless facts. I must remember that for next year.