Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Hugo stats from a decade ago

Happened to come across a few of the stats for the 1996 Hugos -- the ones given ten years ago, at the exact same venue (the Anaheim Convention Center) as this year's Hugos; the ones ten years ago were given at L.A. Con III.

Back then, the nominees were Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age (which won), my The Terminal Experiment, Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, David Brin's Brightness Reef, and Connie Willis's Remake. But what's interesting is that ten years ago, 734 ballots were cast in the best-novel category, and this year only 567 ballots were cast -- that's close to a 23% reduction, which is yet another sign of the declining readership of SF, and the shrinking of fandom, I suppose.

On the other hand, back in 1996, it took just 27 nominations to make the final ballot: (Stephenson had 76, I had 58, Baxter had 47, Brin had 28, and Willis had 27), whereas this year it took 45 (Stross had 90, Wilson had 76, Martin had 47, MacLeod had 46, and Scalzi had 45.)


5 Comments:

At August 30, 2006 12:28 AM , Blogger E.Jim Shannon said...

Hi Rob...just curios who gets to vote on the Hugo's etc? Can anyone vote? Or do you have to be SFWA member? Who gets to vote? Is ther some kind of selection process?

 
At August 30, 2006 10:20 AM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

You have to be a member of the current year's or previous year's World Science Fiction Convention to nominate, and a member of the current year's World Science Fiction Convention to vote. Anyone, anywhere, can become a member of the World Science Fiction Convention. The Hugos have nothing to do with SFWA.

 
At August 30, 2006 11:36 AM , Blogger BrentKellmer said...

Rob...Don't forget that ComicCon was held less than a month ago in San Diego -- that's a huge con, and certainly siphoned off a fair number of voters. Of course, there's no way to know for sure until we see the membership at Denver in 2008.

 
At August 30, 2006 12:31 PM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

Oh, I agree, Brent. In fact, I made the exact same point at the end of this blog entry a couple of days ago. :)

 
At August 30, 2006 8:41 PM , Blogger Lou_Sytsma said...

I must admit when I browsed the pictures that Hugh linked over at the discussion group, I was taken back by how old the writers are on average.

Of course, then I remembered I am pushing fifty myself.

 

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