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Still in London, back home mid-week, but I’m reminded by several people that the deadline for voting in the Locus poll is midnight tomorrow.
The Locus poll doesn’t quite have the in-genre prestige of science fiction’s Hugo Awards, but it does draw from a larger electorate; in fact, anyone with an interest in SF can vote, and you can vote online. (The form asks for your Locus subscription number but if you’re not a subscriber you can ignore that.) This year, what with the fiction Hugo nominees consisting of nineteen men and only one woman, a lot of people seem to be urging one another to use the Locus poll to, perhaps, think again. I personally think Jo Walton’s Farthing would be a good thought on which to start, but that’s just me.
Huh. First reply didn't go through, let's try again:
I hope Dave Langford rememebred to say 'hi' from Rose and myself, as we just met up with him a few hours before you did.
I see the traffic is a bit heavy in New York tonight...
I've never voted in the Locus polls before, but I did this year specifically so that I could vote for Farthing.
Just London, not Scotland at all?
('cause with 8 hours' jet lag, I feel totally sociable. Not. But still.)
If you assume that around one in four of the natural candidates for nominees is a woman (which I estimated by looking at the Locus Recommended Reading List), I think that one in twenty female nominees is easily within the range of statistical fluctuation. I suspect nobody is going to believe this explanation, though. But statistically, you can't conclude anything from one year because of the small sample size ... somebody should calculate the multi-year statistics to see whether the percentage of females nominated for the Hugo is consistently substantially less than that on the Locus Recommended Reading List, or whether this year was an anomaly.
Of course, this leaves open the question of whether the Locus Recommended Reading List is biased. But let's not go there unless we get the statistics.
I have a growing number of issues with the Locus Recommended Reading List. Starting with the year that John M. Ford's story collection Heat of Fusion failed to make the list. Not to put too fine a point on it, and fond though I am of many individual Locus reviewers, I think their tastes and outlooks span the gamut from A to B.
Abi, alas, no Scotland. Would that I had a business excuse to visit my favorite country in the world.
Patrick: The Locus list is far from a smooth consensus. This year, I spent so much time battling (with *some* success) to get my favorites onto various parts of the list, I completely screwed up the accompanying comment piece. [Note to self: Don't do that again!]
Patrick @6
Drat. I've only got a couple more months here, and then my membership in the Scottish Malt Whisky Society won't be nearly as much of a draw in persuading people to socialise with me.
Abi: You could, of course, just post me some Laphroaig. All donations of single malts gratefully accepted (finals in three weeks, last regular essays this week, headache in 3...2...1...).
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