2016 Hugo shortlists

The 2016 Hugo Award shortlists were announced today. They are intended to be a popular vote of the science fiction community to determine the best work in various categories. As with last year, much of the ballot is supplanted this year by work that can be found on the 2016 Rabid Puppies slate (or as they would like to call it, a recommended list).

You could argue that the Rabid Puppies can't take credit for the success and talent of various authors and editors that they've listed. True. Simply for a visual representation, in the fiction categories I will list only those stories that do not overlap with the Rabid Puppies slate (I'll make an exception for Slow Bullets since the author publicly asked for his story to be removed from both Puppy lists) and add a little commentary:

BEST NOVEL (3695 ballots)
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

I'm disappointed that Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson didn't make the list, since it was my choice for best sf novel of the year. Still, these three are strong nominees.

BEST NOVELLA (2416 ballots)
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon)

BEST NOVELETTE (1975 ballots)
“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed, Feb2015)

BEST SHORT STORY (2451 ballots)
...

I could go on to the other categories, yet I'm sure the reader can play this game, too. I've already stated my opinion on the Rabid Puppy ballot manipulation:
Hugo Award slates and the politics of exclusion
Attention seeking troll puppies
I doubt that more needs to be said.

Here is a link for a complete list of all the 2016 Hugo Award shortlists.

Attention seeking troll puppies

The various Puppy leaders, it turns out, have little to say, and their arguments implode into insignificance. They don't think a literary award, the Hugos, should go to literary fiction. They don't think science fiction should contain messages, or be socially progressive. Their voting slates, of course, contain attempts at literary fiction and message fiction. If we set aside their arguments, all we are left with is noise. Their attention-seeking trolling of the Hugo nomination process in essence says "look at me, look at me!" That is sad, indeed.

Hugo Award slates and the politics of exclusion

Slate voting is an exclusionary tactic.

Regular Hugo Awards voters nominate the stories and authors that they love in a scattershot manner, a method of voting that is easily overwhelmed in the nomination process by a relatively small group of lockstep slate voters.

The leaders of the Rapid Puppies and Sad Puppies recruited enough voters to march in lockstep, filling entire categories of the Hugo Awards ballot with their large slate of nominees. The motivation behind these slates, it is clear to me, has little to do with promoting under-appreciated authors and stories. Instead, their goal is the exclusion of others from the Hugo Awards ballot.