Hugo Kerfuffle, 2016 Edition.

You might remember that last year, the Hugo Awards were surrounded by a lot of discussion - there had been slates for the nomination, which led to the domination of the nominees by slated works.

The voting was then very much influenced by reaction to those slates and the rather skewed selection of nominated works, resulting in a lot of "No Award" for the slated works. The group who'd done this (called "Rabid Puppies") then claimed victory and the successful destruction of the Hugos, more or less.

Well. It could be expected that this year, something puppy-ish would happen as well, and it did. The Hugo nominees for 2016 are, again, much dominated by works that were put on the Rabid Puppy slate - but this time, there are some works included that would have made the shortlist in any case... making the general "I will not vote for slated things" approach that many voters took last year somehow less attractive. (Want to know more about it? Here's John Scalzi's thoughts on the topic, and here Jim Hines'. Io9 has an article about it. If you still want more, search engines will throw more at you than you probably want to read...)

I'm a bit sad that there will be lots and lots of discussion again this year; that there will surely be some people not sure how to vote, or voting "no award" for works that would have deserved a Hugo because they were slated. (I'm also sad that Escape Pod didn't make the shortlist. It's not for lack of my nomination, though.) The Hugos are a special kind of award, since they are not handed out by a jury, but by anyone who has a membership for WorldCon, and it's a sad thing to see them dragged into political fights. So... we'll see what will happen in summer, when the voting is done.