2016 Hugo Awards – Former “Alas” Blogger N.K. Jemisin Wins Best Novel Hugo! Also, Rabid Puppies Nominees Tank, and E Pluribus Hugo passes

Congratulations to N.K. Jemisin for her well-deserved Hugo Award for her novel The Fifth Season.

“Alas” readers with long memories may recall that we were lucky enough to see some of N.K.’s posts here (under the name “Nojojojo”). They were being reposted from the Angry Black Woman blog, so maybe calling her a former Alas blogger is a stretch, but I’m very proud for this blog to have even a very tiny association with Jemisin.

The full list of nominees and winners can be seen here (my favorite TV show of the year, Jessica Jones, won best dramatic presentation short form). And stats junkies can look for the complete Hugo vote stats here (pdf link). But, basically, the rabid puppies lost big; their nominees either wound up below No Award, or were obvious “human shield” picks like Neil Gaiman.

(Speaking of Gaiman, he had harsh words for Puppies in his acceptance speech.)

Chaos Horizon, a Hugo stats blog whose author is sympathetic to the Puppy cause, writes:

So what happened? The Rabid Puppy vote collapsed from the Nomination to the Final Voting stage. This most likely happened because you can nominated in 2016 for free (provided you paid in 2015), but to vote in the final stage in 2016, you had to pay again.

In the comments, regarding an estimate that about 165 dedicated Rabid Puppies voted in the final Hugo round (and would be able to nominate next year without buying new memberships), the blogger wrote “165 core Rabid Puppies would get you 1-2 picks in lesser categories like Best Related Work (EPH would cut that down to 1), and nothing in the big categories like Best Novel.”

So it’s at least plausible that we’ll see much, much less Puppy control of the Hugo nominees next year. That would be pretty wonderful.

I’m pleased to see that the short story that was written to harass Mandolin got creamed. I’m not sure anything did worse this year. I mean, not even the 165 or so Rabids liked it:

Looking at the long lists, it seems likely that without Puppy nonsense, the “graphic story” category nominees would have been:

Bitch Planet
Nimona
Saga
Ms Marvel
Squirrel Girl

Although maybe Sandman would have beaten out Squirrel Girl; hard to say. Regardless, that’s a much stronger list of comics than the group nominated by the Rabid Puppies. (Bitch Planet and Nimona were both on my list of favorites for the year.)

UPDATE: E Pluribus Hugo has passed!

UPDATE 2: Estimating Rabid Puppy Numbers | Camestros Felapton “I think, looking at all these figures, the ones with stronger Rabid connections come out around 160 to 180 votes. I think that is probably the right estimate for people voting along strict Rabid lines – with maybe 50 to 60 more voting along semi-Rabid lines, plus some residual Sad Puppies and others.”