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As you probably know if you're the type who would faithfully follow Fiction Unbound, SFF fandom is up in arms over this year's slate of Hugo Award finalists announced in April. Winners will be announced Saturday, August 22.
During this year's nominating process, certain SFF-world commentators rallied their followers into coalitions to vote for a slate of what they called "traditional" SFF, which other commentators alleged was more or less messageless action fiction by and for straight white men. There's no room here to summarize the whole controversy, but The Atlantic did a great job reviewing the SFF world's long history of bias, and its equally long history of rejection of bias, here.
In protest to what some lamented was a hijacking of the traditionally open nominating system, some commentators urged a "No Award" vote for certain categories. Here Steve Davidson at Amazing Stories explains how he voted and why.
Voting for the finalists is closed now, and the Sasquan 2015 organizers report that 2015 voting smashed records. 5950 ballots were received, which surpassed by 65% the previous high vote total in 2014 of 3587 votes. The Unbound Writers take this enthusiastic voting participation as an encouraging sign of the vitality of SFF fandom.
If you just can't wait and are dying for clues of what might happen on Saturday, one random poll at Amazing Stories hints that the Hugo Awards will be split, with some No Awards winning and some writers from the "traditional" coalition slate winning. Go here to vote your guess (or wish) and see Amazing Stories poll takers' best guesses as to the outcome.
Winners of the Hugos and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer will be announced on Saturday, August 22 at this year's Worldcon in Spokane, Sasquan. According to the Hugo Awards folks, the ceremony will be livestreamed by UStream in case you want to be among the first to join the inevitable Twitter outcry over however the outcome is.
Stay tuned.
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