Hugo Nebula & World Fantasy Awards
Quality Assurance for readers of Speculative Fiction
Awards provide a measure of quality within speculative fiction, and enable readers to filter out inferior fiction, as popularity is an inadequate measure of quality.
How does one measure quality?
Arguments range within speculative fiction, as they do in most other walks of life. In 1972, it would have been possible to read every new book published within the genre in a year. It would have needed the reader able to devour a book a day, but it was possible. Now the would be omnivore would need to get through six books every single day, just to read the new titles!
Readers need some sort of filter to avoid ploughing through junk, especially when every new writer is taught that the way to sell is to self-publicise, and to get favourable reviews.
There is no simple answer. The most popular method in our celebrity/sucess obsessed culture is to assess by popularity, but for book writers this means that established writers are inevitably better than new ones, as they will sell more. Given that speculative fiction thrives on new blood, new voices, this clearly contra-factual.
Hence the proliferation of awards in recent years: They provide a semi-empirical method of analyzing quality, albeit it may be quality as defined by a small jury or the membership of a large organization, such the registered attendees of the World Science Fiction and / or Fantasy conventions.
The Nebula Awards are voted for by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and are awarded to the best novel, novella (long short story between 17,500 and 40,000 words), novelette (7,500 – 17,499 words) and short story (less than 7,500 words).
The Hugo Awards are voted by the fans who each year attend the World Science Fiction Convention and are awarded in the same categories (although short stories run up to 8,500 words), while the World Fantasy Awards are voted by the attendees of the World Fantasy Convention; in this case, the awards are for best novel, novella (10,001 to 40,000 words) and short story (up to 10,000 words).
While some inferior works may scrape an award in poor years, it is a fairly good barometer of a work’s worth if they win two awards – more is rare, as the Hugos and World Fantasy Awards are normally mutually exclusive, but lately fantasy works have crept onto all three ballots. And no writer is going to win consistently year after year without being a good writer.
So for the reader who wants to learn about the history of science fiction and fantasy, and who are the best writers to keep an eye out for new books from, it’s probably a good idea to check this index.
