Five Ways
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free story!
Teachable
Patreon
Cat Rambo

The World of

Cat Rambo

books, community, classes, & resources

Share this:

The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated Awards Process

Image of a baby two-toed sloth, taken at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica.
This is a baby two-toed sloth. I figured it would be more appealing than an award logo.
Hugo nominations have opened and with that, an array of canvassing and promotion techniques have begun to be deployed, which will no doubt continue until the actual awards are awarded and everyone can briefly calm down before a new season begins.

The thing I’m not fond of, which has arisen in recent years, is the idea that one should vote according to one’s politics, and plunk down a vote for the “right” books without bothering to read them. Some people like to justify this by pointing to something that is undeniably true — the award is often less often the expression of the opinion of SF fans overall than that of a small subset of those fans and sometimes — perhaps even often — popularity, access to high-traffic websites, or other factors not related to quality of writing affects those results. In these cases, that’s usually used as a justification for throwing the votes in what’s perceived in the opposite direction.

And my reply is this: FFS, people, read stuff and vote for the stories you like, the stories which YOU find well-crafted and appealing. Go download the excellent Campbell sampler that Marc Blake has been putting together each year and take the time to read through it. Look at the ‘year’s best’ lists. Ask people what they liked that you might. Look at the five kerjillion “here’s what I have eligible this year” posts, particularly if you have a favorite author and want to make sure you don’t miss anything by them.

But read it and apply your standards to it and then vote for what you thought was the best story/novella/whatever. Anyone telling you to vote any other way, anyone offering their work and saying “you should vote for this because we belong to the same category” rather than “I hope you’ll vote for it if you like it” has an agenda that is not at all about quality of writing.

Yes, there are “taste-makers” — critics whose likes and dislikes are listened to, and often used for guidance. But those folks fall all over the spectrum and the answer, if you think there’s not someone representing your particular niche of opinion is to become one yourself, by putting your opinion out there articulately, clearly, and interestingly, which is the very same process by which those taste-makers got to that position.

You may well not agree with a particular award’s results. Opinions are like…well, you probably know how that saying goes. There’s plenty of room in a world this size for a vast array of opinions. But when a piece you didn’t like wins an award, saying that it did so because of politics comes off as soreheaded sour grapes more than anything else. Let’s face it, a shitty, badly-written piece has an awfully steep (but again, admittedly not impossible) hill to climb before accumulating the avalanche of votes something needs to win one of the major awards. But assuming that because you don’t like something no one else is justified in liking it is narcissistic egotism.

Want to see the stuff that you like on the ballots? Nominate it, vote for it, spread word about it on social media, through reviews, and via blog posts or other writings. Work at that, not trying to handicap the other candidates just so yours can limp home. And read stuff and decide for yourself, don’t just take the slate of predigested candidates someone has prepared so you don’t have to read any of that nasty conservative/liberal/whatever prose and actually think for yourself. Read all over the spectrum, not just one color. You’re shortchanging yourself of some good stuff otherwise.

23 Responses

  1. Pingback: Round-up of Awards Posts by F&SF Writers, Editors, and Publishers for 2021 | The World Remains Mysterious

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

newsletter
Interview
Uncategorized
classes & workshops
conventions
daily life
editing
F&SF history
guest post
publications
recipes
wayward wormhole
Writing
you should read this
youtube

Get Fiction in Your Mailbox Each Month

Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.

Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.

 

"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

You may also like...

WIP: A Cavern Ripe With Dreams

Cover for A Seed on the Wind, painting by Mats Minnhagen
Tiny things floated through the air all around him. He stretched out his palm and kept it motionless long enough that one drifted to be trapped in his palm. A seed, a brown seed. Attached to one end a tuft of hairs, fine and feathery, to carry it along. Carefully he raised his hand, examined it more closely. So small. As it neared his eye, it became no longer brown, ridges and swirls marked its surface in grays and greens and reds that somehow blended together to create the impression of brown from just a few inches farther away.
I’m finishing up A Cavern Ripe with Dreams, the sequel to A Seed On the Wind. A version will undoubtedly go out to Patreon patrons before I start shopping the combined novellas around as a single entity.

This story owes a great deal to both William S. Burroughs’ Junky (indeed, the protagonist is named Bill in his honor) and Joe R. Lansdale’s Drive-In, a book I found immensely freeing and exhilarating in its sheer WTFery and bravura. If you’ve read A Querulous Flute of Bone, it’s the same world, that of the co-writing project The Fathomless Abyss.

From part of today’s writing:

Bill felt a rush of fear, but a kind that he had never experienced before, something like the fear you feel when someone tells you a frightening story that they believe is true. A terror that was convincing yet somehow dilute. A terror that was not his, somehow.

A fear that was enjoyable.

He realized that it was the creature. That he was feeling its emotions. That if he closed his eyes, he could still see the room like a ghostly overlay across the darkness behind his lids.

He wondered if it experienced the same phenomenon, this double life. He put his hand up and touched it with a fingertip, stroking along the coarse fur that was still damp with eggy fluid. It smelled like newly-split wood, rare and sharp. As he touched it, it shuddered but stayed still, like a woman whose innermost core had been touched, who feared and craved more. At the thought, he grew hard, and he felt it shudder again before it curled tighter around his neck.

He lay there with it around his neck, savoring the mental taste of it, dipping in and out of its perceptions. After a while, his bladder drove him into standing and using the chamber pot beneath his bed. As he pissed, he could feel the creature tasting his sensations in turn.

It made him curious. Settling back onto the bed, he took a syrette from the bedside table, already loaded with honeypain. He injected it in his wrist and lay back to feel the twofold sensation.

First it felt as though the back of his eyes had dissolved, only to be filled with a subtle warmth that flowed out from them, flowing through him until he was only a zone of temperature and sensation, as though he was warm water in a bath, only an outline. But always with that lurking presence perceiving him, keeping him whole. He had loved honeypain for its ability to take him outside himself, but now he realized that it was nothing compared to the creature.

He tried to think at it, to see if it would answer him, but all his thoughts were blurred by the honeypain. He could hear only his blood drumming in his veins, a hard and insistent beat that told him he was alive, as it had before, for sometimes when he was dipped deep in these reveries, he thought himself dead. Now he had that beat but more ““ the creature curled on his chest. Part of him but not part.

After a while he slept.

Enjoy this sample of Cat’s writing and want more of it on a weekly basis, along with insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon..

...

Read blog post
Documents of Tabat: The Statues of Tabat
abstract image
What are the documents of Tabat? In an early version of the book, I had a number of interstitial pieces, each a document produced by the city: playbills, advertisements, guide book entries. They had to be cut but I kept them for web-use. I hope you enjoy this installment, but you’ll have to read Beasts of Tabat to get the full significance. -Cat

“An Educational and Instructive Listing of Notable Statues of Salt Way,” being Pamphlet #17 of the third series of A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat, Spinner Press, author unknown.

Lining the incline of Salt Way as it runs uphill towards the College of Mages at its terminus are ninety-nine white marble statues, each depicting a major citizen during the reign of the 3rd Duke. At the time of their creation, sculptors vied to be among the thirty-three artists chosen to handle three statues each, and one former worker in oils, Brynit Firaubo, converted his medium to stone specifically for the event.

Visitors lacking time for a leisurely perusal of each statue (supplied in Adelina Nettlepurse’s complete guide to the statues, A Complete Guide to the Statues of Salt Way, also available from Spinner Press) can, by using this list, obtain a representative sampling of the tour sufficient for conversational purposes.

Beginning at the foot of Spray at the very entrance to the street, are the Duke’s husband and daughter. The statue of Eryk Kanto holds sword and lantern, signifying his status as an Explorer, while his daughter Alba holds a crown in her hands, foretelling her coming reign.

Three blocks up is Figgis Doughmaster, the fattest man of his time in Tabat and a renowned chef who served the Duke before opening a chal shop, the Fuchsia and Heron, and a series of bakery carts that now service the entire city. His bulk makes the statue a favorite for the birds that cluster here, including flocks of parrots and Fairies escaped from the gardens on the College of Mages grounds.

Notable singer Vyra Serena, another two blocks up, has become a patron saint for those who seek success on the stage or in love. Floral garlands can often be found hung around her neck, and superstition promises the lover who makes such an offering only the best of luck.

Merchant Fisia Nettlepurse watches over the road a half block up. She founded many of the businesses around the docks, such as the chal shop the Salty Purse, and civic improvements such as the Sea Gardens. Touching her toe is regarded as good luck for those down on theirs, and her appendage has been worn away over the years until she is clubfooted, but also considered a surefire method of revealing those with evil intentions.

The statue of Jack Buttertouch, also known as Sparkfinger Jack, is considered ill luck to visit. Visitors will know the statue quickly; its features were defaced and removed six months after its installation after his horrific crimes were discovered.

At the very top of Spray Road, the 3rd Duke and the head of the College of Mages, Elora Two Sails, face each other. She was responsible for some of the basic magics that shaped Tabat: smoothing of the harbor and the creation of the Sea Gardens, and the implementation of the sewer and underground farm system that yields what is euphemistically called “Elora’s fruit.”

***
Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.

#sfwapro

...

Read blog post
Skip to content