Hugo question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Are novellas and novelettes distinct enough that there has to be two categories?

[added later]

If you are here because of "James Nicoll questions whether there should be four written-fiction Hugos. Comments over there, please." note that is inaccurate. In theory we could another written category to make up for the loss of one. Best YA novel, for example.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Haven't people been asking this off and on for a while now?

I'd say no, myself. I'd add a little to the maximum short story and drop the minimum for the . . . wait, it's novella that's the longer one, right?

[michael j. walsh (from livejournal.com)]

"it's novella that's the longer one, right?"

Interestingly enough the categories breakdown this way:
Novel: 40,000 words or more.
Novella: 17,500 - 40,000 words.
Novelette: 7,500 - 17,500 words.
Short Story: less than 7,500

So, to recap: the longest form has the shortest name, the shortest form has the longest name.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My mnemonic is that as the names get shorter, the stories get longer.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

I've argued in the past that Long Form and Short Form fiction (point of division to be determined) should replace the existing four fiction categories but I'm not concerned enough about it to create a proposal to put forward to a Business Meeting. Then again I'm in favour of deflating the number of Hugo categories generally, to make each award a little bit more special than it is today.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much what nojay says. From my craft perspective (warning: auctorial opinion valid for the experience of one and only one mildly successful lower midlist writer), the real distinctions are:

Flash (<1,000 words)
Short Fiction (1,000-8,000 words approx)
Novelette/Novella (8,000-40,000 words approx)
Short Novel (40,000-100,000 words approx)
Long Novel (100,000+ words)
Series Novel

This based on the different levels and nature of effort I have to do to produce work in each of these categories (all of which I have published in). I do not however imagine this is how the Hugos should work, mostly because to most people it's either a short story or a novel, with some ambiguous stuff in the middle around single-title novellas and very short novels.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Yes, by virtue of the fact that in physical form, novellas have been published as stand-alone volumes, while novelettes have not.

I actually consider the novella vs. novelette question to be based on a false premise. The question should be novel vs. novella. I concede that as e-publishing rises, the distinctions become murkier.

Apropos: The Art of the Novella.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

And before anyone suggests I'm moving goal posts, I do realize that pamphlets and other forms of single-story publishing exist, but in my opinion that's stretching the definition of "volume" just for the sake of arguing a point.

[michael j. walsh (from livejournal.com)]

In the history of the Hugo Novella only two winners have been published as stand-alone volumes. See: http://www.sfadb.com/Hugo_Awards_Winners_By_Category#nva

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I've read both longish short stories and short novellas, and then learned afterwards that they were "actually" novelettes. I don't really see any inherent nature of a novelette except in purely abstract terms of word count. The tripartate distinction of short, medium, long makes sense to me, in parallel to the single-EP-LP division in the music business.

Logistically, if there 's so much good short fiction being published in the year that the Short Story and Novella categories can't contain enough nominations, then I can see an argument for what seems essentially like a "longer short story" category. But it isn't really related to the nature of the form for me.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

the single-EP-LP division in the music business.

The what now division?

A single is a collection of 1-5 songs.

I gather from listening to old people and audiophiles talking about their "records" that an LP is basically "an album" (generally a collection of all the music that the artist has produced since their last album PLUS little vignettes that might add some sort of theme to the collection of songs as a whole).

I have no idea what an EP might be though, beyond something that might be called "an extended play", but extended from what?

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

I'm unconvinced that adding more eligible stories to a category which has had it's short-list truncated due to highly diverse nominations will 'solve the problem'.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Not any more. Isn't it a taxonomy derived from magazine categories that no longer exist? Novellas and novelettes didn't stand alone as concepts -- they were sizes that editors bought. It's like giving a Hugo for "Best Hogshead". Smash them together as "Medium-Length Fiction".

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I do know it's an excellent excuse to give more awards to stories that deserve them.

[drplokta]

My understanding is that authors like to have as many fiction categories as possible, since it's a significant career-boost to win a Hugo and so you want as many bites at the cherry as possible. And thus any Worldcon business meeting where there is a vote on reducing the number of fiction categories will find itself surprisingly well-attended by people voting against. (I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with this; it's the system working, not the system failing to work.)

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Most authors I know don't bother to go to WFSF meetings, and even those of us who pay attention to WSFS (frex, me) are for the most rather careful to steer away from anything that smacks of politicking amongst the Fen.

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

Ask Harlan Ellison; he's the one who argued for the divisions.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Do we have any references for when he did this, and what his arguments were?

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to see some sort of chart or line graph showing the distribution of word counts in all the SF works in a given year. Is the distribution even? most probably not; there must be many, many more novels than novellas and novelettes - but what interests me is, can you see discrete groupings around certain lengths? In other words, does the division to short story, novelette and novella represent categories that writers are aiming for - or just arbitrary divisions?

[(Anonymous)]

The four prose fiction Hugos are the most important Hugos (by far). Don't mess with them. The short fiction categories used to be tinkered with every few years. Now we've had 41 years of stability. Let's keep that going. I believe we have the Goldilocks number of fiction Hugos. And, yes, there is a big difference in length between a 10,000-word story and a 30,000-word story.

I see no reason why there should be a "Best YA Novel" category. It is just a marketing category, and there are novels that could be marketed as YA or not-YA. As it is, some YA novels have been nominated, and even won.

Alan Heuer

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

I don't think YA is just a marketing category. It got popular in recent years but there's always been YA scifi, and in fact fantasy can get stuck there a lot (LOTR was actually in children's in the libraries of my childhood) but a lot of fantasy is hero quests and if the protagonist is young enough, it can be called YA with reason. I can see not wanting to have to read Twilight rip offs and urban fantasy that is actually neither, but I don't think it can be dismissed as just a marketing category. I can understand not wanting to split it off but I can also see the reasons for doing it.

And since I worked in bookstores I tend to see the publisher's idea of where something should go as only a pointer, we don't always believe them. They may be marketing it at YA but if it's going to sell better somewhere else, that's where we'll put it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I think Jay Lake has a really good point implicit in his list of fiction categories there.

One of the long-standing problems we've had, which has gotten MUCH worse over the years due to changes in publishing habits, is the series. This was clearly seen to be a problem as early as 1966, when Tricon gave a Hugo for best all-time series to Asimov's Foundation trilogy.

We have no way to recognize the form that a significant majority (in sales) of the SF and fantasy is now published in except to pick random chunks of it to try to treat as a novel. Whenever we actually do this, first the work is at a significant disadvantage because it's just part of a bigger work not complete in itself, and second people complain vociferously about it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

And yikes what a best novel ballot they had for Tricon! Two novels that are on my personal best-five SF novels ever list, a Zelazny that I don't care for that much but many others do, and Doc Smith's best book. Plus a Brunner.


Dune by Frank Herbert [Chilton, 1965]
…And Call Me Conrad (alt: This Immortal) by Roger Zelazny [F&SF Oct,Nov 1965; Ace, 1965]
The Squares of the City by John Brunner [Ballantine, 1965]
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein [If Dec 1965,Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr 1966; Putnam, 1966]
Skylark DuQuesne by Edward E. Smith [If Jun,Jul,Aug,Oct 1965]

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

But how do you distinguish "this is the second book in a series that looks absolutely cracking, but we don't know if the author can get past the second-book slump" from "this is the fifth book in a universally beloved series, and frankly this one isn't up to par" from "this is the climax of a series that has been beloved for a decade, who cares how good it is?" I am betting that either of the latter will wildly outvote anything else in the category *coughBujoldcough*.

It's pretty much impossible to disentangle the dancer from the dance, as far as series go. I would be hard put to defend the structure of THE TWO TOWERS (in fact, it's one of my least favorite structures), but the overall LORD OF THE RINGS is great. There are books that are part N of a series that are fantastic, but it's hard to get people to read them (or to begin the series at all) because book 1 was so bad. Everybody knew that book 2 in a trilogy (Remember trilogies? They were great!) almost always sagged.

I don't see how you make a meaningful Best Series vote between (say) A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (long-awaited, needed another edit); LORD IVAN'S LADY (wildly loved series, low emotional stakes); and Book 1 of [your favorite new writer goes here]. Are you voting for the book? The series as a whole? The book as it contributes to the series? How long people waited to get this volume? Other?

[darth-gofer.livejournal.com]

No.

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

Why is the short form split up so much but once a book hits 40k words it's just "yeah, whatever"?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that is because when the current definitions solidified in the early 1970s, novels were, generally speaking, much shorter than they are now. 40K was a lot of words.

I've heard suggestions for creating a super-novel category for very long novels, although I'm not sure where you'd do the length cut-off. In keeping with the longer-work/shorter-name, I've heard suggested that this new category be named "Best Tome".