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Path: utzoo!utcsri!tom
From: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Nebula valid?
Message-ID: <1357@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Aug-85 08:13:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1357
Posted: Thu Aug 29 08:13:03 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 09:25:41 EDT
References: <3439@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 38
Summary: 


Though I am a minor SF writer, I am an active member of SFWA and do
nominate and vote for the nebulas.  Nominations are handled in
an unusual fashion.  Every month or so Orson Scott Card issues
a Nebula Awards Report which lists not only the titles of works
that have been nominated but the names of those who actually
sent in the nomination.  There is no limit to the number of
nominations a member can make, so it is true that many members
(myself included) feel an obligation to nominate works by
their friends.  However, because SFWA is a arelatively small
group (700 people), it's easy to look at the Awards Report and
see which nominations are sincere and which are likely to be
returned favours to friends.  The final voting, of course,
is done secretly.  There's a second safety valve which helps
preserve the integrety of the award:  each year, the 
appointed Nebula Award Judges have the option of placing
works on the final ballot that might somehow have missed being
sufficiently nominated by the members.  As far as I know,
the judges have always used quality as the only criterion in
selecting works to be added to the ballot.

The Hugo is another matter.  I interviewed Donald Kingsbury
for Science Fiction Review a few years ago.  (He teaches
Math at McGill University in Montreal, so I wouldn't be
surprised if he's got access to the net, too).  He admitted
to having toyed with the idea of buying enough Worldcon
memberships to guarantee himself sufficient votes to win 
the Hugo.  Of course, Don is a man of absolute honour and
he did not try this, but as a math-type, he couldn't
resist playing with the numbers.  If a Hugo is worth, say
$50 000 to an authors career and a hundred votes are
enough to secure the award, and if you buy Worldcon
memberships at the earliest supporting rate of $10, you can
get a 50:1 return on your investment.

	Robert J. Sawyer
	posted through the good graces of Tom Nadas
	CSRI -- University of Toronto