Pitchfork Wielding Townies vs The Village Idiot

Cheryl Morgan, Neal Clarke and Kevin Standlee have all weighed in with comments on the semi-prozine category issues and they have naturally raised good points for further discussion.

Here’s my?point:? for the past 25 years, the only publications that have won the semi-prozine Hugo category have been news and commentary publications, not fiction publications.

Going all the way back to the inception of the semi-prozine category, there has only been one exception to this rule – Interzone – winning in a single year.

Other fiction oriented magazines have been nominated irregularly, but other than the occassional inclusion of Interzone and Aborginal SF, all of the rest of the nominees have been review, news, scholarly?and commentary oriented – Locus, File 770, Ansible, Alien Critic, NY Review of SF, Speculations.

Locus is an aberration, so we’ve got to remove it from general consideration before moving forward: it has been so influential and is so widely known and distributed that it can’t fail to skew things – and that may remain so even if award category definitions change, so we’ve got to discount it before we can move on.

There can really only be two reasons why the semi-prozine category is overly represented by (I’ll call them ‘news’ for want of a better description) news zines: first is one of presence and circulation.? Most fans with any degree of exposure to publications will quickly find File 770, Ansible, NYROSF and etc.? They’re referenced all over the web and are often passed on as a matter of course.? Their subject matter is of a more generalist appeal and thus, when faced with a ballot containing numerous unrecognizable names, in a relatively undefined and formless award category, they stand out.? If you want to check a box but don’t know anything about the category, you’re more likley to pick one of those than something that has a title that is not only long and artsy, but more often than not doesn’t have any reference to the genre in it.

Before I continue:? the above is not to suggest that the only reason any of those news magazines win an award is because people don’t know what else to vote for in the category; what I am suggesting is that their already existing prominence on the web and in personal recommendation may be enhanced by this effect.

The second possible reason why the category is dominated by newszines is that in the current perceptual universe that is Hugo voting science fiction fandom, the category is NOT for fiction magazines. Indeed, the only year that a fiction magazine has won was a year in which the Worldcon was held in Scotland and it is a good guess to assume that the local fan-base voted more heavily in favor of their own homegrown publication (backing this contention up is the win for Ansible in the Fanzine category that same year).

Again, I mention these things not to diminish the award or the winners, I’m simply trying to look at the trends and explain the outliers.

WHY? do folks believe (on the basis of the award history) that a category entitled Semi Pro Zine is the preserve of news and commentary? Why are fiction magazines below a certain circulation level not considered for the category?

I can make informed guesses: circulation being the main one (as in presence). If we assume that any of those publications is ‘read’ by 10,000 people and we chop it down by the percentage of con-going fans, further by those who buy a membership in Worldcon, still further by those who vote for Hugo awards, we’re probably left with literally a handful who might remember to nominate them.? Most likely the only final votes they would receive (presuming they make it to the final ballot) would be the original nominators.

Taste: I like this editor’s choice in fiction, you like that other guy’s.? News about the science fiction world transcends tastes in fiction.? Most of the publications in question more often than not are featuring new writers for whom there is not yet a following.?? Let me put it another way:? If I’m sitting in the doctors office, I’m much more likley to pick up Time than I am ‘Fiction For People Sitting in Waiting Rooms Quarterly’:? I know I will find something of interest in the general interest publication.

Influence: Let’s face it – Charles Brown, Mike Glyer and Dave Langford know more people who attend Worldcons (and vote) than do most of the other folks behind the fiction mags.? There are exceptions, but personal influence can not be discounted.? I’m a Glyer fanboy and I make sure to let everyone know I think he should win an award.? My influence is minimal to non-existent – but I am not the only one whispering into other (voting) fan’s ears.

Political Influence: Different than the above, but what little I know of Hugo Award Category Creating history tells me that this aspect has/does have some effect.? I don’t necessarily mean smoke-filled rooms and blank envelopes with lots of cash filling them; sometimes though, folks are apt to take a look at what consequences their decisions will have down the road and are likely to take that into account.? It’s not for no reason that the Semi-prozine category is sometimes referred to as the ‘Locus’ category.

(My understanding is that the ‘politics’ of the era dictated that Locus be removed from consideration in the fanzine category and other politics dictated that Locus still be allowed to win a Hugo Award (almost) every year.? My understanding could be wrong, or it might be filtered through the rememberances of one camp or another, but again, it hardly matters now.)

Again, past reasons for how we got here are only worthwhile if they inform our future handling of the issue.? I think that it is pretty obvious to anyone who looks at the history that the only effect calling the Semi-ProZine category the ‘News and Commentary Publications’ category would have had would be to push a few (a very few) fanzines back into the fanzine category and maybe adjust the nominee list a bit from year to year.

In retrospect, adding the semi-prozine category in order to relieve pressure on the fanzine category (and let ‘fanzines’ – whatever they are – win) didn’t solve the problem – it just kicked the can on down the highway a few years – because once again we are facing the same exact issue: the definition of the category does not sufficiently contain and describe the works that are eligible.

I’ve obviously been thinking about this a lot, so now I’ll crawl further out on the? almost broken limb of the hanging tree I’ve been occupying and suggest what I think are the existing categories of semi-regular publicaton:

SFWA Qualifying FictionMagazine (Analog, F&SF, Asimov’s)

Non SFWA Qualifying Fiction Magazine (most, if not all, of the magazines on the ’save the semi-prozine’ list)

*News/Commentary/Reviews/Academic ?(Locus, Ansible, File 770, Speculations, etc)

Amateur Publication (Fanzines)

*Subject to a proviso that news coverage of the industry – be it industry, fandom, personalities, etc., constitute the bulk of the content over the course of a year.

Also note that I’ve not even gotten into the print vs electronic issue – and note that I’m disrespecting the current WSFS category definitions, deliberately so.? That’s a separate issue (making the real world conform to the rules) and a step that we are still far away from having to worry about.

For the villagers who are sharpening their pitchfork tines and dipping rags in pitch for their torches – I’m not personally invested in any of these suggestions:? I’m like the village idiot who’s sitting on a stone wall playing with himself as life goes by.? If I bother to think about the impact of what I’m saying might have, the question that comes to?mind?is ?”what’s everyone so upset about?? It feels good, it doesn’t cost anything and if you’re jealous, the solution is in hand.”

Personally, I am particularly enamored of the?SFWA/Non-SFWA divide for fiction publications.? It gets rid of the whole stigma of ’semi-pro’, isn’t based on circulation (or medium) and is pretty darned easy to determine.? SFWA publishes a list.? And it is a divide that any publication can cross in either direction at will.

I’m also very much in favor of the news/non-news divide.? I’ll make it even simpler and call it the fiction/non-fiction divide.? (Forget the news part – after all, what’s ‘news’?? Too sticky.? [in fact, some fannish news is fiction and some fannish fiction is news...])

I know I’m probably being a bit simplistic here, but ask yourself if the following criteria don’t encapsulate everything that is out there:

Schedule – Regular/Irregular

Media – Electronic/Print/Both

Rates – SFWA Qualifying/SFWA non-qualifying/no pay

Content – fiction/non-fiction/undefined

I can’t think of an eligible publication that doesn’t fit within the confines of that matrix.? There are 54 possibilities – and only?18 if we make no distinction between electronic and print publications.

You know, I’m going to make up a table and spend some time plugging past fanzine, prozine and semi-prozine winners and nominees into it to see where they fall.