Hugo Awards: The No Vote Categories

There sure are a lot of categories for the Hugo Awards (that’s 17 categories, if I’m counting correctly). My main focus has been on the fiction awards, but I’ve obviously been making my way through a lot of the others. That being said, there are some I just won’t get to, whether that’s because I don’t really care about the category or I just don’t have the time to make my way through it. So don’t expect to see much about these categories:

• Best Editor, Short Form – Honestly, I have no idea how we’re supposed to judge these editors. If I were a writer who had worked directly with all these people, that’d be a different story, but as a reader, I’m just not sure what to make of these two Editor categories. How should I know how good an editor is? As I understand it, a great editor should be invisible to the reader, no?
• Best Editor, Long Form – Ditto!
• Best Related Work – Not a category I’m inherently opposed to or anything, I just won’t have the time to make my way through it (though perhaps someday, I’ll read some of them).
• Best Graphic Story – While I do have a certain fondness for Randall Munroe’s “Time” (XKCD) I don’t think I’ll be bringing myself to read the other nominees (only 3 of which are included in the packet). It’s another timing thing here, not really a comment on the category itself.
• Best Semiprozine – If someone can explain what the hell a semiprozine actually is, I might be more inclined to spend more time figuring this category out. It seems to me that “zines”, even ones that involve paid contributers like these semipro ones, are a pretty outmoded concept. I mean, do these things actually get printed up and distributed in this day and age? As it is, I think I’ll probably give this category a pass.
• Best Fanzine – Again, the concept of a fanzine seems rather outmoded, especially when you consider that the grand majority of the nominees are basically just blogs (the packet shows the content in a more traditional zine-like format, but does that really matter). Since I have actually read a bunch of these, I may end up submitting a ballot here, just because I might have an actual opinion. Still, this category begs some questions. Maybe we should consolidate these zine categories and the fan writer category into something that resembles what people actually do these days.
• Best Fancast – If I have time to get to this category, I will. I’ve tried various SF/F podcasts in the past and have been generally unimpressed, but I’ve only tried one of the nominees, so I might try to check this one out if I have time.
• The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer – Technically not a Hugo award, but it’s facilitated through the same process. I don’t think I’ll have time to get to this, but I will say that I have read (and enjoyed) one of the nominated works (The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu) in the course of my normal reading, which I guess says something.

So I’m basically done with all of my Hugo consumption, and the votes are due in about a week. I am still reading some Wheel of Time stuff, but I’m doubting I’ll finish that in time and I’ve not seen anything that really changes my mind. So only a handful of Hugo posts left. I’ll post my final ballot at some point, as well as some other thoughts on the process in general, and I’ll probably post something once the winners are announced. Otherwise, posting will return to its former glory, what with the link dumps and movie bloviating.