Congrats on a Tor book getting the big one, guys - and I second your incoherent congratulations to all those you mention, to the Plokta cabal and to that national treasure, Dave Langford. And I'll also express my pleasure and total agreement with the Dramatic Awards. Yay, Serenity! And I love both new Dr Who and the new Battlestar Galactica, but Dr Who is the one I find myself re-watching.

Posted August 27, 2006 3:42 AM by Rob Hansen

It should also be noted that Scalzi, Hartwell, and Wilson all thanked Patrick and/or Teresa when accepting their awards.

(and congrats to all involved!)

Posted August 27, 2006 3:43 AM by Dori

OK, now I am allowed to be Officially Envious. My best friend from high school - Liza Groen Trombi - has won a Hugo*. (I've been unofficially envious since we got back in touch last year and I found out she was an editor at Locus.)

Congratulations to all the winners, and admiring commiserations to those who did not win. Even being nominated was a sign that you rock.

*Well, as part of a team. But still.

Posted August 27, 2006 4:32 AM by abi

Congratulations all round! And, er, slightly embarrassed thanks from far-off Reading, to all those nice voters.

In a day or two, poor old Martin Hoare will face the full horrors of security theatre in that topical film scenario Hugos on a Plane....

Posted August 27, 2006 4:56 AM by Dave Langford

Congrarulations!

I'm thrilled about the Dr. Who win, too. I don't watch much TV, but I love that show.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:05 AM by Melissa Mead

Congratulations to you all! What did you wear to the ceremony?

Posted August 27, 2006 9:08 AM by Velma deSelby Bowen

abi, I know the feeling; David Levine was one of my best friends in high school.

JBWoodford

Posted August 27, 2006 9:10 AM by JBWoodford

Congratulations to all the winners!

Did Scalzi mention Pluto in his acceptance speech?

Posted August 27, 2006 9:26 AM by Xopher

BTW: complete nominating and voting data here.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:32 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Congratulations all around! I picked up Spin on the recommendation of this blog, enjoyed it all the way through, and am glad that I now have the chance to say thanks.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:58 AM by Zeke

Ditto, ditto, ditto!

Posted August 27, 2006 10:01 AM by Kip Manley

I guess it's steam-engine time, maybe, on the subject of the important editor's in SF winning Hugos again. Not to say that the change to the Hugo categories isn't still necessary; quite probably it is. But it's nice to see a recent book editor win *before* that change goes through, too.

Congratulations to all the other winners too, of course, and the rest of the nominees (mixed with condolences as needed).

Posted August 27, 2006 10:09 AM by David Dyer-Bennet

As I've remarked several times in the last few hours, I strongly suspect that the extensive discussion of the Best Professional Editor Hugo between last year's worldcon and this one served to focus people's minds on the fact that Hartwell was ridiculously overdue.

Posted August 27, 2006 10:14 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Like Zeke, I picked up Spin on the recommendation of the Nielsen Haydens and was very glad that I did. I think its a worthy winner.

And congradulations to the other winners, too!

Posted August 27, 2006 10:38 AM by Paul Weimer

I don't think it's likely that I shall ever see a happier (purely from my point of view) set of Hugo results.

I know better than to set my heart on a given nominee's winning the Hugo, but I had my heart set on Spin. After Accelerando won the Locus Poll, my hopes diminished, but I still couldn't summon up a proper sense of detachment. I can't tell you how happy I was when it won. Bob Wilson is a wonderful writer, and a joy to work with. I've thought so ever since I published him in mimeo.

This morning I find myself thinking about how I went to the wall when Tor's previous head of production grossly miscalculated Spin's castoff, and wanted to raise its price based on her overlong estimated length. That would have been corrected when Spin was typeset, and the price would have been readjusted downward; but that artificially high price would have been in play during the period when advance orders were solicited, and would have resulted in fewer orders.

It wasn't a decisive episode. It's just what's in my head this morning.

Last night was a good night for first-time Hugo winners: Robert Charles Wilson, Peter S. Beagle, David Levine, David Hartwell, Donato Giancola, Joss Whedon, and Doctor Who.

Xopher, Scalzi didn't mention Pluto at all. He spent most of his speech talking about how good the other nominees are, and encouraging everyone to go to the hucksters' room today and buy their books.

And now, I have to run have breakfast with Mitch Wagner.

Posted August 27, 2006 10:56 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

All the winners deserve it. I think this is the first time in years that I've read all the winners in the first four categories, and seen the media winner.

When PNH recommended Spin I ordered it from a certain South American river and devoured it over three days on the trains and when going to sleep. It was worth every penny and more, and I'm glad to see that the voters at the WorldCon agree with me.

Posted August 27, 2006 11:06 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Congratulations!

Posted August 27, 2006 11:46 AM by Greg London

I just rented and watched "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" on Friday. Well-deserved win.

Congrats to all the winners and to Tor!

Posted August 27, 2006 11:57 AM by Lila

"OMGWTFBBQ!

Oh My God, Way To Fucking...

...Barbeque?

No objection to barbeque, as my well-used Weber Genesis demonstrates, I'm just [a] not sure I've guessed right that "BBQ" really does stand for "barbeque" in this instance, and [b] not sure what it's supposed to express in this context.

Perhaps... "Take it off the grill, it's done!"?

I was also surprised when Teresa mentioned that this was Peter Beagle's first Hugo. No, no, that can't be. Surely, SURELY, this can't be his first Hugo. Not Peter Beagle. That's just not right.

And except for SPIN (which is pretty damn close to the top of the TBR pile), it's the first time in years where I've read all the fiction winners.

Posted August 27, 2006 12:19 PM by Bruce Arthurs

I've got pix up on Flickr, plus I've put up my own ecstatic post, meekly entitled "Yeeeehaaaaw! David won the Best Editor Hugo!".

Posted August 27, 2006 12:21 PM by Kathryn Cramer

Congratulations to all. It's hard for me to believe that this is David Hartwell's first Best Professional Editor's Hugo. David was my editor for many years -- he's one of the very best. (David, if you read this -- warmest regards.) Also, he throws legendary parties. I remember one memorable event where we literally ended up hanging off the ceiling beams... I hope the parties were/are suitably celebratory this time as well.

Posted August 27, 2006 12:24 PM by Lizzy L

I, too, picked up Spin because of this web site, and then promptly went out and got everything Robert Charles Wilson has ever written (well, I don't have a copy of his grocery list, but that's not for lack of trying).

Also: WHOO-HOO! PETER BEAGLE! Hub and I met him at Balticon; he has the great good sense to be from Hub's neighborhood in the Bronx. He was a delight and a joy and he was very cool about my fangirl SQUEEE!-ing.

Man I wish I had been at Worldcon. One day.

Posted August 27, 2006 12:30 PM by Chryss

I read Spin because it was recommended here, too. And I didn't know Willis had written a new novella - have to check that out.

What a great feeling, to have a book you nurtured and championed take the Hugo. Congrats!

Posted August 27, 2006 12:33 PM by CaseyL

Woo hoo! Everyone that I rooted for won!

Like Bruce, I was surprised to read that this is Peter S. Beagle's first Hugo. "Two Hearts" absolutely deserves it though.

Congrats to everyone.

Posted August 27, 2006 12:48 PM by JC

Note that a few weeks ago, escape pod did shows with four of the five Hugo nominees for short story, including the winner, which podcast can be found here. I thought it was a wonderful way to spread the nominees around more before the voting.

Posted August 27, 2006 12:48 PM by Daniel Martin

Wow, sounds like a great night for the Tor camp. Congrats to all.

I have to ask: What's with the crown? I see Scalzi, Cory, and at least one person I don't recognize wearing a lovely coppery crown in several of Kathryn's pics.

Posted August 27, 2006 1:15 PM by Joe Rybicki

Joe @ 26: That's the traditional (as of last night) Campbell-winner regalia. The person you don't recognize is Elizabeth Bear, last year's winner.

Posted August 27, 2006 1:26 PM by Dori

Congratulations! Couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch.

Posted August 27, 2006 1:31 PM by eric

Bruce@19: A newsletter from Beagle says this is his first nomination. I suspect some of it is the amount of his short work that's come of out small(er) presses, and the subtlety of his novels; there may also have been a spillover effect ("Folk of the Air/Tamzin/The Innkeeper's Daughter didn't send me to the moon the The Last Unicorn did, so it can't be as good as current noisemaker X.")

Posted August 27, 2006 2:15 PM by CHip

Teresa #15: I was actually joking, but it's good to know. I could have made it clearer by saying "did he thank his daughter for having the Elder Gods devour the other nominees?"

I'm glad he showed his menschlichkeit. Glad, but not surprised.

Posted August 27, 2006 3:28 PM by Xopher

So good to see Peter Beagle win! He was our GOH at ApolloCon this year, and got terribly bad news in the middle of the con, but soldiered on like the pro he is. I'm delighted that now he has a really good memory to associate with 2006 as well.

Posted August 27, 2006 4:00 PM by Lee

The Campbell Crown, eh? So now we need the Hugo Headdress. And the Nebula...the Nebula...the Nebula Necktie? A little help here.

Anyway, the Tiptree Tiara -- from the wonderful imagination of Elise Matthesen -- waves hello to its new sibling.

Congrats to all winners.

Posted August 27, 2006 6:07 PM by Jeffrey Smith

Jeffrey Smith - It's the Nebula Nosering. Get with the program!

Posted August 27, 2006 6:20 PM by Larry Brennan

The inevitable image is of an award winner seated on a fossilized Tiptree Bake Sale object,* wearing ornate Elisian headgear featuring a plover's egg the size of an ocean jasper, holding an GT Energy Sceptre, and wearing a robe of off-white polysamite trimmed with Furry fur. Hey, it's not like he or she is in Masquerade competition.

Imagine a cross between Queen For a Day (minus the washing machine) and the West Arkham Rep production of Richard III Meets Abbott and Costello. And there was much rejoicing.**

I think I just clinched Never Winning.

*The Scone of Stone, of course. Sheesh.
**Hurrah!

Posted August 27, 2006 6:52 PM by John M. Ford

Wow! Yesterday was, indeed, a good day. The Digital Medievalist is beaming.

Posted August 27, 2006 7:35 PM by Michael Cohen

And just for a laugh: This thread turned up when we happened to Google '42' just now (in connection with Pegasus t-shirts).

Posted August 27, 2006 7:47 PM by P J Evans

Congratulations!!! Oh I am so happy for you both and for everyone who won! I started Spin while I was in Switzerland (I only had two days there) and was so into it that I skipped hiking the Alps to read that book. I just couldn't put it down, Alps be damned. You can tell him that, too. Also, I furtively read Old Man's War last week at work and wound up awfully late for something because I was finishing a chapter.

And of course: all of my congratulations to Hartwell. Boy has that award been a long time coming.

Posted August 27, 2006 8:05 PM by Torie

In case Bruce really wanted to know, it's usually expanded out to Oh My God, What The Fuck, Barbeque, yes.

(As kind of an ironic sendup of the folks going OMG! all the time.)

I forget where it started. In this case it's less ironic and more hyperventilating (hyperventilatory?), or anyway that's what it seemed like at the time.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:36 PM by kate

P.J. (36): The "42" shirt is from Instant Attitudes, and is available here. If you want the explanation on the back, you have to ask for it -- the default is to supply it without.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:52 PM by Lee

Congratulations to all winners, but also especially to Patrick and Teresa, who shepherded so many of the winners/nominees/other great fiction to publication this year. Thanks.

It is, btw, astonishing to me that this is RCW's first Hugo. Long overdue, imo.

Posted August 27, 2006 9:55 PM by Alex Cohen

That's the front, yes. We got the explanation for the other - after I asked what the upper limit was on the integral! (It's a math geek pickup line.)

Posted August 27, 2006 10:15 PM by P J Evans

Congratulations to the winners!

What's "castoff?"

Posted August 27, 2006 10:35 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Bill: Castoff is calculating the number of typeset pages a manuscript will work out to.

Iss okay. Iss Schpark schtuff.

Posted August 27, 2006 10:54 PM by John M. Ford

I should probably have said that we were googling '42' to see if it had any other significance than the obvious '9 times 6'.

Posted August 27, 2006 11:17 PM by P J Evans

As a first time Hugo ceremony attendee I was pleasantly surprised by just how good they were simply as a show -- everyone had a good time. (It is time for conrunners to take over the Emmy awards.) While everyone was gracious in accepting awards, Scalzi put them all to shame. And he looked good in the crown.

Posted August 28, 2006 12:07 AM by Claude Muncey

Just adding my congrats to everybody else's. I got THE RAVEN newsletter today in which Connor announced Peter Beagle's well-deserved win with much glee and good-natured drama. And that Dr. Who episode was gorgeous--I'm not sure if I liked it better than "Father's Day," but it was certainly more complex, and I liked it a lot.

Posted August 28, 2006 1:00 AM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Bruce (#19) - re: OMGWTFBBQ - I've seen that floating about on LiveJournal for a long time, and my guess is that it started out as a semi-sarcastic comment on the sorts of posts which consisted mainly of heavily-abbreviated, acronymic fangirl squee. OMG does equal "Oh my god!", however WTF stands for "what the [frell]" with the appropriate Earth-style terminology rather than the alternative.

The full ironic sarky usage is as follows:

"& i'm all liek whoa OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!1!!!!11!"

Posted August 28, 2006 2:20 AM by Meg Thornton

Gotta say....the looks on the *NH faces when the Campbell/Best Editor/Best Novel awards were announced were priceless. Very considerate of them to sit down right in front of my backstage post.

(Why I ended up backstage left inappropriately dressed half in glittery orange-red and trying to fit a clearcom headset over a Gibson girl hairdo is still a little unclear to me, but funny things happen when you room with the tech director.)

V. weird worldcon overall for me. Going to Canada now to process.

Posted August 28, 2006 8:32 AM by Susan

Way to go Toroids! And also a big Hoo-ha! for Peter Beagle who has not had the easiest last few years.

Jane

Posted August 28, 2006 8:57 AM by jane

#44 . . . we were googling '42'
wrong tool:

42 (number) at Wikipedia

Meanwhile, re award results: Wahooa!

Posted August 28, 2006 9:08 AM by Neil in Chicago

you guys are such rock stars. can i be your friend?

Posted August 28, 2006 10:05 AM by sdn

This is folk etymology, and worth what you paid for it.

The first time I saw the long form of omgwtf was in the immortal Cleolinda (Movies In 15 Minutes)'s Lost recap, in which she reacted to an Important Event involving Arctic fauna with

"OMGWTFPolarbear!!!!!"

OMGWTFBBQ is a descendant thereof, more widely applicable.

Posted August 28, 2006 10:15 AM by Jonquil

Congratulations, Patrick, TOR, and of course Mr. Wilson! I got "Spin" after Patrick praised it, and really enjoyed it; he's right, it's great science fiction.

Posted August 28, 2006 11:28 AM by Thomas Nephew

"OMGWTFPolarbear!!!!!"

OMGWTFBBQ is a descendant thereof, more widely applicable.

True, but don't BBQ the liver. Hypervitaminosis D can ruin your whole mukluk.

Posted August 28, 2006 11:51 AM by John M. Ford

Congratulations all round!

Posted August 28, 2006 12:10 PM by Electric Landlady

#38: hyperventilated.

Posted August 28, 2006 12:17 PM by Xopher

Woot! Congrats all around! I loved Spin, and although I'd had it on the To Read list for some time prior to PNH's post, it was probably the final push to the Buy It Now list, and it was definitely the best book I've ever read Beach-side.

And I posted this over at Dr. Oilcan's, but figured I'd probably get a better response over here: As always, trying to intuit how Hugo vote weighting works from looking at the sheer numbers is hurting my brain. Could someone explain to me why they thought the Doctor episode that won for BDP(Short) was all that? I wasn't particularly impressed with it, to the point that I remember thinking its central conceit was both obvious and silly.

BSG was robbed.

Posted August 28, 2006 1:00 PM by Skwid

Skwid, there isn't any weighting involved. It looks to me that there are more Who fans than BSG fans, from the way the tally changes after each elimination. (Tally the votes. Whichever nominee is in last place, eliminate it, and everything ranked below it moves up one notch. Repeat until someone has a majority or there's a tie. For second and successive places, eliminate nominees already placed before eliminating last place.)

It's an interesting, if hard to parse, way to tell which fandoms overlap.

Posted August 28, 2006 1:11 PM by P J Evans

My nonrepresentative sample of online fandom admires both Who and BSG; however, the first season of the rebooted Who had a hit-it-out-of-the-park year, as witnessed by the slew of nominations. If the second season of Who gets an equal number of nominations, this fangirl will be annoyed.

Posted August 28, 2006 1:16 PM by Jonquil

Ah, PJ, thanks, that makes sense. I was reading it totally wrong. I could almost understand "Dalek" winning out over "Pegasus," although my personal favorite of the three (three!) Doctor nominations was "Father's Day." "Dalek" had so much going for it, though, from a fannish standpoint.

How much is the SciFi Channel stigma hurting BSG, do you think? I know I had to specifically reassure a friend that Old Man's War was worth a read despite the SciFi Channel co-branding, so clearly its quite powerful in other regards. I'd have to say that the recent introduction of wrestling to their prime time lineup isn't helping, either...

Posted August 28, 2006 1:44 PM by Skwid

I'm looking forward to next year to see what 'Eureka' does.

You mean pro wrestling isn't fantasy?

Posted August 28, 2006 1:49 PM by P J Evans

So, I'm gonna ask a question I could probably answer by doing some research, but I figure there are quite a few people around here who know the answer.

Is the Hugo voting an example of the Condorcet process, or something else entirely? I ask because I note that in several cases, the #2 result is different from the second place for the winner.

Posted August 28, 2006 1:53 PM by Larry Brennan

You mean pro wrestling isn't fantasy?

Put the Mightily Thonged Grignr up against a skinny old wizardy dude who knows Muy Thai, and you got a prime-time slot in heaven.

"Wait . . . wait . . . manager Catullus is signaling . . . Yes! He's sending The Amazing Clodia into the arena!"

Posted August 28, 2006 1:56 PM by John M. Ford

Well, if they're seeing it legally, most U.S. fans are seeing Who on the Sci-Fi channel, somewhat cut for time, so the stigma should be equal. (Yes, the DVD came out in July.) In any case, the widely-adored FARSCAPE was also Sci-Fi.

Me, I prefer the uncut and timely version.

Posted August 28, 2006 2:25 PM by Jonquil

You've got to watch out for Clodia; she puts poison on her cesti.

Posted August 28, 2006 2:27 PM by Jonquil

Not really a Condercet. All #1 votes are counted. If the leader has more than 50% of the votes (unlikely but not impossible) then #1 is the winner. Otherwise, the candidate with the fewest number of #1 votes is eliminated, and on those ballots the #2s are added to everyone else's totals. Eventually someone has more than 50% (or, occasionally, two have exactly 50%).

To determine the number two finisher (which really isn't important, except people Want To Know), all of the ballots are counted again, without the winner's involvement. When the lower-ranking nominees are eliminated, sometimes their votes pile so strongly onto what had been the third-place finisher in the first round that it overtakes what had been the second-place finisher.

Posted August 28, 2006 2:30 PM by Jeffrey Smith

Jeffrey: You got it. And it results in an election which is almost unpredictable. (I'd have to go look, but I think once in a while, like with some of Lucas's films, the first place votes are sufficient unto themselves.)

Posted August 28, 2006 2:38 PM by P J Evans

Hugo voting reads to me like an example of instant runoff voting (e.g., figure skating up until 1998), not a Condorcet process (e.g., figure skating from ~1998 to ~2004.)

In IRV type systems, the candidate with the least votes in each round gets eliminated and votes for that candidate get redistributed based on the next preferred candidate on each completed ballot. (e.g., after the first round, you take the ballots that voted for the eliminated candidate and move them to their second choices.) Keep going until a candidate has a majority.

In Condorcet type systems, you face every candidate off against every other candidate in a series of one-on-one contests. Hopefully, one candidate beat all the other candidates one-on-one. If not, you take the matrix of wins/losses to determine the winner. This depends on the specific system. (The one figure skating used to use ranked skaters by the number of wins.)

This year has at least one really good example of why a preferential ballot system is a good thing. Having three Doctor Who episodes all nominated at once did not hurt the chances of any one episode from winning. In a simple plurality wins system, Doctor Who would have been penalized by having a really well-written first season with three nomination worthy stories.

Posted August 28, 2006 2:40 PM by JC

Instant runoff sounds about right. For the more masochistic, Jeff Copeland explains it in all its gory (Perl) detail here. He's an expert, having written the program used for most of the last twenty years (to the best of my incomplete knowledge). (And for the really curious, in 1971 and 1972, the program was in PL/I, with the nominees hard-coded in. I've seen the listings.)

Posted August 28, 2006 2:54 PM by P J Evans

P.J. (44): By now, you have probably discovered that it's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference. The unofficial name of the shirt is "The Answer Desimplified".

Meg (47): You have a typo in your example. The canonical version is spelled "liek woah". :-)

Posted August 28, 2006 3:02 PM by Lee

"Wait . . . wait . . . manager Catullus is signaling . . . Yes! He's sending The Amazing Clodia into the arena!"

That's going to be a long sleepy night.

Posted August 28, 2006 3:53 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I've been a Who fan for decades, but I had high hopes for Galactica to win. Looking for something to put it "over the top" and maybe get picked up by NBC.

It DID get the most 1st place votes! That Aussie Balloting again ...

Posted August 28, 2006 4:59 PM by David Nolte

I think I actually missed the recommendation of Spin here — but my mom found it and lent it to me, along with Cronoliths, Blind Lake, and others I haven't read yet. (She's got a stack a foot high of his books, now.)

Congratulations. It was well earned.

Posted August 28, 2006 7:37 PM by Robin Z

Congrats to all!

Put me down as another reader who picked up Spin because of Patrick's plug, and who thought it was terrific. I actually read several other RCW books too after that (and thought, contrary to the impression I got from Patrick's post on Spin, that they were almost as good, really).

It's so hard to believe this is David Hartwell's first hugo!

And Joss Whedon's! (Although that last is a bit off, since he was an uncredited co-writer -- the best part, IMHO -- on the Buffy episode that won. So he won in spirit, or something. But still...)

Posted August 29, 2006 1:28 AM by Stephen Frug

Until just now I believed that the Hugos voting system was the same as the Single Transferable Vote system used here in Ireland for elections, but I see that I was wrong.

Both systems would give the same winner, but the STV system has further complications used to pick 3, 4 or 5 candidates from a list, not just one winner, and hence doesn't require a recount to determine second place.

Posted August 29, 2006 5:19 AM by Niall McAuley

Niall McAuley: The Hugo voting system is, I think, the alternative vote which resembles STV but is intended to produce a majoritarian one-winner outcome.

Posted August 29, 2006 8:15 AM by Fragano Ledgister

#72, David Nolte (which sounds like a substitution: "Now pitching short straight lines, #72, DA-vid NOL-te!") said:

[BSG] DID get the most 1st place votes! That Aussie Balloting again ...

If the Doctor Who voting hadn't been split among three different nominees, the sole nominee would likely have received twice as many first-place votes as BSG did. That's one of the *good* effects of instant-runoff--the voter is able to make more honest votes because she doesn't have to guess among several candidates she ranks roughly equally.

Posted August 29, 2006 9:22 AM by Kevin J. Maroney

That's going to be a long sleepy night.

Not a "sleepless" night? (Clodia did earn "amazing", remember)

Posted August 29, 2006 10:29 AM by Jon Meltzer

John Meltzer: I was thinking of Catullus's description not of Clodia but of death.

Posted August 29, 2006 10:34 AM by Fragano Ledgister

My inner copyeditor, while not as active as John M. Ford's, wants to note that 'heretofore' seems to have been confused with 'hereafter'.

Posted August 29, 2006 10:36 AM by Fragano Ledgister

I understand what OMG means. I understand what WTF means. But, er, BBQ? Surely not barbecue....

Posted August 29, 2006 10:44 AM by Joseph

Joseph -

BBQ means Bugger Britain's Queen in this context.

Posted August 29, 2006 11:11 AM by Rob Hansen

Hypervitaminosis D can ruin your whole mukluk.

A.

(I think this is the shortest ML comment ever! One letter! Oh, damn...)

Posted August 29, 2006 12:17 PM by ajay

I thought OMGWTFBBQ came from Something Awful... is there prior use?

Posted August 29, 2006 1:40 PM by Sandy B.

PJ@67: I think once in a while, like with some of Lucas's films, the first place votes are sufficient unto themselves.

All three LoTR films stomped the field, getting ~2/3 of the first-place votes; the last film before them to do that was Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. (IIRC, nothing outside of "Dramatic Presentation" has ever scored like that, although I see that one fiction winner got very close to half of the 1st-place votes.) I'd be interested to see the early Lucas's figures, which I've completely forgotten. I do suspect SWIV had an anti-halo effect; a few months after it opened was the last time No Award finished first in any category. (In Dramatic Presentation; IIRC, Carrie finished second. Remember when it was really tough finding five plausible nominees?)

Posted August 29, 2006 8:10 PM by CHip

Eh, CHip, did you mean Star Wars: Episode III?

There was no SW:IV until well after the fact, and the movie now known as Star Wars: Episode IV is one of the three good bits of Star Wars stuff, the others being Empire and the recent Lego Star Wars: The Video Game

I am looking forward to the wonderfully named sequel Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Posted August 29, 2006 8:25 PM by Niall McAuley

Ah, re-reading I get your point. Excuse me, CHip.

Posted August 29, 2006 8:28 PM by Niall McAuley

The Muppet explanation is the best thing I've seen for understanding "Instant Runoff Voting". Seriously.

Teresa, it may be Bob's novel and Bob's Hugo, but you helped. For which we thank you.

Posted August 29, 2006 8:47 PM by Kate Yule

I was remembering 'Return of the Jedi" and all the ballots where 'Dramatic Presentation' was the only category with any votes. (The category was marked on, literally, 6 out of 7 ballots in 1984.) I don't remember the numbers now, and I haven't got an answer back yet from the Keeper of All Those Ballots.

(Note for the curious: the best way we found to test the Hugo-counting program was to use the ballots from the previous time: you know what the results should be, if you've kept the printout.)

Posted August 29, 2006 11:11 PM by P J Evans

Congratulations!

Posted August 30, 2006 6:05 PM by Andy

Sharon, SA frequently claims it, but SA claims a lot of things...

I have seen reasonably believable accounts that "BBQ" stood for "Be Back Quick" on BBS and early IRC chat, with the punnish connotation frequently played up. Personally, I'd always assumed it was just a slightly surrealist figure of speech inspired by the internet communities' general loves for acronyms and especially the TLA.

Posted September 1, 2006 12:01 PM by Skwid