From high atop the Coode Street Motel Six, deep in the Waldorf Room, Gary and I fired up the podcasting equipment to bring you episode 101 where, finally, we come to an appreciation of which convention we correspond to, while discussing the recently released Campbell Memorial Award ballot, the SF Hall of Fame, and other things. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.
Listening to the discussion about the Campbell award (and previous discussions about many other awards) I was struck that it has been a long time since I’ve bought a book because it “won X award”. In fact, other than the Hugo and the Nebula, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a genre book because it “won X award”. Do we have too many awards in the field?
I’m noticing the same about “Best of” anthologies. I got excited when it was only the Wollheim or an original annual such as Knight’s Orbit. Now you can’t swing a dead cat (I’m going with the “Hey you kids, stay off my lawn” old grumpy fan approach here) without hitting an annual best of megatome. Too many?
Hey Fred. I don’t know. I think I tended to stop buying books when they won awards when I became so involved with the field that I was keeping track and aware of what was around. Every now and then there’s something surprising, and I do follow that up, but it’s rare. As to best of the year volumes – as a repeat offender I can only say I love doing mine but understand when people choose not to buy them
Are there transcripts for this?
Sadly, no. We may get to producing them at some point, but simply haven’t had the resources up till now. I’m aware some automated services exist, but I’m not sure what we need to do it.
I really enjoyed the in depthgender commentary on this one. Jonathan, it is delightful to see how much a male-heavy awards shortlist really bugs you!
Also it doesn’t suck at all for Galactic Suburbia to be classified as the Wiscon of podcasts! (hmm might grab that as a formal blurb from you at some point…)
I think of you guys as the World Fantasy Convention of podcasts, myself. ;-)
Another enjoyable podcast, gentlemen!
Jonathan, I counted the female winners of the Nebula Award, novel category, and found that 13 of the last 25 were/are women. That excludes the winner to be announced later tonight, EST. I thought this factoid might surprise you, in view of one of your asides about gender balance problems in various awards and how they probably affect the Nebulas as well.