hugo award headerHere are this year’s nominees, along with the voting results from last year.  (The Hugos release the data every year, giving an interesting peek behind the curtain.)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY (785 ballots)

  • Ms. Marvel Vol 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt, (Marvel Comics)
  • Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery written by Kurtis J. Weibe, art by Roc Upchurch (Image Comics)
  • Saga, Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
  • Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
  • Zombie Nation Book #2: Reduce Reuse Reanimate by Carter Reid (The Zombie Nation)

Here’s how the voting works.

Attendees (and sponsors) of certain Worldcons are allowed to nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards.

(It’s a popularity contest, although the ideals state that this is an award of merit, to select the best in each category, voted on by fans. As with any fandom, there is contention and controversy, but we’ll ignore that all for now.)

What is interesting is that the voting results are released each year, right after the awards banquet.

Here are the results from last year’s Hugo Awards, listing titles which were nominated, as well as the final voting tallies.

The nominees:

Best Graphic Story (552 Ballots)

  • 164 Saga, Volume 2 Written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples 29.7%
  • 68 Schlock Mercenary: Broken Wind By Howard Tayler 12.3% *
  • 36 “The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who” Written by Paul Cornell, illustrated by Jimmy Broxton 6.5%
  • 36 “Time” By Randall Munroe 6.5%
  • 28 The Meathouse Man Adapted from the story by George R.R. Martin and illustrated by Raya Golden 5.1%
  • 28 Girl Genius, Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne & The Sleeping City Written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright 5.1%
  • 24 Locke & Key Vol. 6: Alpha & Omega Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez 4.3%
  • 23 Girl Genius 12: Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg Phil and Kaja Foglio; Cheyenne Wright 4.2%
  • 22 Boxers and Saints Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien 4.0%
  • 21 Spacetrawler Christopher Baldwin 3.8%
  • 20 Young Avengers Vol. 1: Style > Substance Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie 3.6%
  • 19 Nimona Noelle Stevenson 3.4%
  • 18 Lazarus Vol. 1: Family Greg Rucka & Michael Lark 3.3%
  • 16 Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido 2.9%
  • 16 The Unwritten Vol. 7: The Wound Mike Carey & Peter Gross 2.9%
  • 15 Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 4: Materia Thomas Siddell 2.7%

*Not eligible in 2013

[For the record, “Schlock Mercenary” was the Sad Puppies recommendation.]

Just 5% of the votes cast are required to make the final list!

So, how did the final voting precede?

2014 Final Results for Best Graphic Story

3,587 total voters. 25% cutoff = 897 voters.

2,344 valid votes cast in Category.

Race for Position 1
Nominee Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3 Pass 4 Pass 5 Runoff
Time 715 716 742 820 1027 1511
Saga, Volume 2 566 566 597 667 810 0
Girl Genius, Volume 13 397 398 439 582 0 0
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who 382 383 417 0 0 0
The Meathouse Man 186 187 0 0 0 0
No Award 98 0 0 0 0 223
Preference 2344 2250 2195 2069 1837 1734
No Preference 0 94 149 275 507 610
Total Votes 2344 2344 2344 2344 2344 2344
—
Race for Position 2
Nominee Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3 Pass 4
Saga, Volume 2 735 737 786 911
Girl Genius, Volume 13 582 586 637 865
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who 498 500 550 0
The Meathouse Man 222 223 0 0
No Award 134 0 0 0
Preference 2171 2046 1973 1776
No Preference 173 298 371 568
Total Votes 2344 2344 2344 2344
—
Race for Position 3
Nominee Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3
Girl Genius, Volume 13 808 819 920
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who 686 696 802
The Meathouse Man 300 304 0
No Award 188 0 0
Preference 1982 1819 1722
No Preference 362 525 622
Total Votes 2344 2344 2344
—
Race for Position 4
Nominee Pass 1
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who 1020
The Meathouse Man 443
No Award 277
Preference 1740
No Preference 604
Total Votes 2344
—
Race for Position 5
Nominee Pass 1
The Meathouse Man 944
No Award 413
Preference 1357
No Preference 987
Total Votes 2344

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

8 COMMENTS

  4. http://file770.com/?p=16685
    The author of the webcomic prefers to have his collections nominated.
    Otherwise, it would require a single online strip, such as XKCD’s “Time”.
    No collection produced that year, thus not eligible, as the author stated on his website.

  5. George is… misinformed.

    Sad Puppies is not affiliated with Rabid Puppies, which was another writer/editor’s attempt to piggyback on to SPs when he didn’t get nominated by SP. Said author is an ideologue with an axe to grind against the SFWA and left-wing fandom in general. Again, not affiliated with Rabid Puppies.

    Nor is it affiliated with GamerGate. This was an ad hominem without a scintilla of evidence advanced by the wife of the chief editor at Tor, which has dominated the nominations in recent years. When you stand to have your income hurt by something, you trot out your wife to smear the people that might affect it.

    Sad Puppies is an attempt to advance works on the basis of merit rather than ideological / gender / racial / ethnic profile of the creator. That’s why there were works by veteran authors whose ideologies no one could identify (Kevin J. Anderson, Jim Butcher), by minorities, by women, so on – and even by (gasp) some white males! The stories were nominated based on the perceived merit by the people creating the slate based on recommendations from their fans.

    The freak-out is over the fact that Tor and some of their allies (ideological and simply friends) weren’t expecting to lose – and lose badly – in an award they’ve dominated for decades.

  6. Alex is….spinning things.

    Gamergate’s standard line is that nothing is associated with gamergate, because gamergate’s just this idea man, and not an organization. But I’ve seen enough people associated with GG also talking about Sad Puppies and/or Rabid Puppies (or vice versa) that they all look worse for the connections.

    Larry Correia is one of the prime forces behind the ‘Sad Puppies’ Hugo slate–basically, a suggested list of nominations, which his fans can copy-paste into the nominations process. Anyone who is at least a supporting member of the last or next Worldcon can nominate works, and that takes only $40 or so.

    The point of the Hugos, though, is that you nominate things you’ve read and liked. And then when the voting comes around for the winners (only members of the next Worldcon can vote for the winners of the awards handed out at that Worldcon) you read everything you can, and vote accordingly. Promoting a slate of works to be nominated undermines that ideal. And since the Hugos have traditionally had a fairly small voting pool, and even smaller pool participating in the nomination process, they’re very easy to sway with such a stunt. (For the record, I was eligible to participate in the nomination process this year but did not, as I didn’t feel I’d read enough stuff to have a good sense for what was eligible and important enough to be nominated.)

    Sad Puppies is now in its third year (the first year didn’t get much traction, and was ignored for the most part). Earlier years were unabashedly political (“SP1 was very politically biased because it was just me. SP2 did have a preponderance of nominees on the right side of the political spectrum, again, because that slate was basically my suggested list of stuff that I personally enjoyed. ” http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/) In short he does, to borrow a phrase from Alex, ‘have an axe to grind against….left-wing fandom in general’ at a minimum. Correia maintains that this year’s slate is more politically diverse; I am not familiar enough with the suggested works to issue an opinion on that, but given the history of the brand, I’m skeptical. Personally, I find Correia a competent if formulaic writer. I disagree with his politics. He’s free to nominate whatever he likes, and to encourage people who like his writing to become Worldcon members and nominate things. I think publishing a slate of nominations, or even publicly stating what you’re nominating, is a bad thing to do, regardless of your politics.

    Rabid Puppies is new this year, and is run by Theodore Beale, aka Vox Dei (yes, his internet persona name is ‘Voice of God’). It’s set up as a competing slate. Since his followers are rather rabid (possibly even literally so) it was a bit more successful, as reported in another link upthread. From his own public writings, Beale is scum, and if something offends him it has at least one redeeming characteristic, as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t read every work in the slate, but the fact that works he suggested dominate the Hugo nominations disgusts me. That there are whole categories where every nominee is acceptable to him will probably keep me from voting this year–unless a ‘no award’ movement catches a lot of steam–while assuring that I’ll take part in nominations next year.

    But that’s my opinion. Read Beale’s writings (I won’t link to his blog, but you can find it linked from http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale) and decide if that’s the guy you want picking your options. I don’t recommend that you read his fiction; the one bit of it I’ve read was nominated for a Hugo last year because it was included in the SP2 slate, and it wasn’t coherent enough to be offensive.

    The larger question is how to protect the Hugos from this type of manipulation without fundamentally changing the process of the awards. The only way to do that is to increase participation. I hope that future Worldcons do a better job of promoting the Hugos.

Comments are closed.