Record Turnout for Hugo Award Voting
Having finished TGR (The Great Revision) of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Series Book Two) on 30 June, the month of July was pretty much occupied by reading for this year’s Hugo Awards. As a supporting member of Renovation, the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention, I was both eligible to vote and determined to read all the fiction finalists, at least, so I could do so fairly.
I also blogged about all five finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, managing to get in a book report on each before the ballot closed on 31 July. If interested, you can find the reports under first Categories and then Awards in the far right side bar of the blog, here.
The reason I spend time on SFF awards like the Hugos, both in terms of reading the nominated works and blogging about them as much as I can, is because I believe excellence in SFF matters. My particular focus is on the fiction categories, and within that again on the finalists for Best Novel, simply because fiction and novels are my “thing.” But the principle applies across the board.
So I was thrilled today to see the Renovation press release announcing a record voter turnout for the Hugo Award ballot this year. The release announced that: “a record total of 2100 valid final ballots were cast, a 46.1% turnout, from voters in 33 countries. (The previous record set in 1980 was 1788 ballots cast.)”
Given that this is the 69th World Science Fiction Convention and that the Hugo Awards commenced in 1953 and have been awarded every year since 1955, this is no small achievement. I believe that the high turnout reflects on both the calibre of nominated works and also the significance of the award as a yardstick of excellence in international SFF—and I am proud to have been part, in a very small way, of the build up to the record voting turnout.
Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to learning the outcome of the ballot when the awards are announced on August 20. And yes, there will be both video streaming and text coverage of the event for those who can’t make it to Reno in person for the award ceremony. (Click on the award ceremony link for more detailed information.)
All that remains now is to ‘watch this space’; I intend to do just that. 😉