Hugo Winners Graph
29. Jul, 2009 
2 Comments
SFScope has been publishing various graphs of award results and the Variety SF blog said “To my novice & biased eyes, it basically is saying: Hugos should not be taken seriously!”
and I questioned that statement, making a case that when you put all of the winners – regardless of category – into one graph, it doesn’t really tell you much.
If you wanted to do a real graphical analysis of the field as reflected by the Hugo Awards, you’d need to complicate it a bit by showing year, number of participants at the Worldcon, voters, the original nominations, the short list and the final winners.
But even changing the scope of the graph just a bit paints an entirely different picture.
SFScope’s graph seems dominated by Connie Willis (tip of the hat), Ellison (tipping hats at Harlan – not a good idea, so here’s a complimentary sneer), Leiber and Poul Anderson.
So here’s a quickly constructed graph of just the Hugo Winners from the Best Novel Category -
Chronologically, this runs from 1953 at the top to 2008 at the bottom.? Second and nth wins are not reflected chronologically.
Now the standouts are Heinlein and Bujold, with Vinge bringing up the rear and a host of two-fers following along;? a case for the strength and relevance of the awards is the mix of authors who’ve taken more than one best novel Hugo:? the BIG THREE are in there (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) as well as representatives from just about every ‘era’ you might choose to break the genre down into.
Taken as a whole and looking just at the authors (rather than the specific works), I think you’ve got a pretty good list there of the best that science fiction has to offer.
And that list would be a thousand times better if you added the nominees in…
“(tipping hats at Harlan – not a good idea, so here’s a complimentary sneer)”
I think Harlan is fine with a compliment of a tipped hats, but would be ticked off at the idea that sneering at him would be regarded as a joke, fwiw. Understandably, as it seems a quite rude remark. Few people like being the butt/punchline of a joke.
Yes – this is much saner than SF Scope version, but… if I were to recommend some authors to a genre newcomer, the above graph won’t help me. Hugo lists appear to be useful aid, among a lot of other aids, for someone already familiar with the most important genre works.