This morning’s Netfeed cornucopia brought news of yet another Australian spec fic award starting up. This one’s called the Victorian SF Chronos Award and it aims to recognise excellence in Victorian SF, fantasy and horror in 2008. (overseas folks, FYI Victoria is an Australian state). So its going to be a Vic version of the Tin Ducks.
Last year someone asked me to estimate the size of Australian spec fic. How many of us there are writing, editing, publishing, illustrating, etc the stuff? How many Aussies identify with spec fic fandom? I had no answer to the question, but as far as I can gage, it’s a small number. In the hundreds rather than thousands. With a bodycount like this, do we really need more awards? We already have one juried award (Aurealis), one popular vote award (Ditmars) and one horror award (Australian Shadows). Perth’s Tin Ducks are a Swancon tradition, with the Mumfan trophy having special significance to that community. But should the rest of the states be following suit?
I think not. I mean no disrespect to the Chronos organisers who I’m sure have nothing but the best intentions in mind, but might we Aussies be running the risk of vanishing up our own parochial bottoms with all this excessive trophy awarding? What does it actually mean when you win an award against such a small handful of competitors? Anything? What do you think?
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“might we Aussies be running the risk of vanishing up our own parochial bottoms with all this excessive trophy awarding? What does it actually mean when you win an award against such a small handful of competitors? Anything? What do you think?”
I said the same thing when the Aurealis Awards started. Thin edge of the wedge.
One country-wide juried award is culturally relevant IMHO.
But on the other hand, why not have a multiplicity of awards? If the purpose of awards is to encourage and reward excellence, then surely having them on a State *and* Federal level will lead to more encouragement and recognition. There are works, deeds and events of quality that get lost in the signal to noise ratio of strident self-promotion is inflicted the community at the moment. If an award brings interesting works and people to the attention of a larger audience, then this can only be a good thing.
even if there’s a sum total of fewer that 20 folks eligible in each category?
I don’t like the idea of the state-only thing. Partially because NSW doesn’t have one so I’d never be eligible for one, but also your point – how many fan productions are there in Victoria alone? Nationally, I have some pretty damn big competitiors, ASif and HorrorScope, not to mention other things (like Scary food for these Ditmars).
I’d like to win an award, but if I’m up against all of NSW, I don’t know if there’d even be 5 different fan productions to choose from on the final ballot. Beating ASif or Horrorscope (as much as I worship Alisa and Shane) would just be insane freaking awesome! 😛
if there’s not much competition we might as well all make our own trophies and award them to ourselves. Every child wins a prize!
And how is that worse than the current situation? It’s already every child wins a prize.
so you’re saying it’s already bad but you’re in favour of making it worse?
Hehe the Simpsons when they move town and Bart is put in a special class. They play musical chairs with like twice as many chairs as there are students and at the end the teacher goes “Hurray! Everyone’s a winner!”
Hehehehe
exactly.
The Tasmanian spec fic awards would be AWESOME – me, Dirk, Sara Douglass, Tasmaniac Publications… and… um…
AWESOME.
the NT awards would be good too.
How about the Illawarra awards (the Illas)? Or the Wollongong Northern Suburb awards (the Austis)? I’d HAVE to win an Austi — you and Rob live south!
watch out, Laura — the Illawarra is crawling with children’s writers… some of them probably write spec fic
But do they live north of Fairy Meadow — oh, wait, they probably do.
Where does Richard live, north or south?
— Laura “nawth, dahling, it’s the only place to be” Goodin
Richard lives in Figtree, so awards-wise, he’s our problem.
The Figgies!!!!
yowza!
Surely the Wollongong Awards would be called the Wollys (pronounced Wallys)?
>:)))
Cheers,
Lee
http://battersblog.blogspot.com
definitely!
in fact, the more I picture myself, Rob, Laura and Richard Harland fighting on the streets for the chance to be labelled the biggest Wolly, the more excellent it sounds!
Well but that would actually be serious competition.
I think *need* is a very strong term, I don’t think we really *need* any awards. However, I really love the Tin Ducks and feel really honored for the ones I have regardless of who else was eligible/nominated so I support the Victorians who want their own version. Heh, even the Ditmar I got was me vs ‘no award’ and I am still really happy with that 🙂
I guess what I am trying to say here is that I see your point about lack of scarcity possibly equaling lesser value, but I think the value in something like the Tin Ducks has a lot to do with other things like community as well.
I scored a Ditmar against No Award once too!
I think I appreciate it even more because of that–I was *really* nervous about loosing to no award!
hell yeah — me too!
Yeah that;s like worse than “we liked someone else’s work better than yours”, it’s “we don’t think YOU deserve an award. At all.”
I kind of agree with this. I don’t think we need them but if they help foster and encourage then I don’t see the harm.
Clearly only the States with the social cohesiveness and fannish wherewithal to hold regular conventions need an Awards system. 🙂
well that counts Sydney out!
Indeed; my point.
Still, an Awards could engender a Con at which to give them out (Aurealis’ example notwithstanding).
Chronos already got itself a con
I always liked Gunny’s teaspoon awards and have been in favour of their return for 15 years. They were awarded on ad hoc categories that he made up and given to those who had ’caused a stir in fandom’.
ha! they do sound good.
Odd that I’ve never won one… 😉
Were they still around today I am sure that you would 🙂
Um, yep. Weren’t we talking about a NSW State Awards..?
even Tassie can manage to hold a con… snif!
I’m inclined to agree. Again, no disrespect to the organisers but I am intrigued about the ‘why’. I would have thought that the Ditmars would be sufficient, and that if for some reason the Ditmars are not sufficient in terms of a popular award, then it would be better to fix what is wrong about them rather than launching a new award.
yeah
I get the impression that the Chronos awards are leaning toward a more fannish than pro emphasis.
Actually it looks to me like is deliberately riffing on the Tin Ducks (albeit using the Ditmar rules) with the intent that it will help make Victorian fandom a little more like WA fandom (ie. cohesive and all-inclusive).
if it was an all fan category award, I’d be feeling more kindly towards it.
Agreed.
But the professional categories outweigh the fannish.
IMHO the Ditmar ballot should have a balanced number of pro and fan categories. After all, they were started chiefly to recognise fannish achievements, and awarded at the Natcon which is still primarily a fan run and attended event.
Sorry, that should read, ‘outnumber’
Totally agree with you. But the avarice of pros has skewed that away from the original intentions.
Actually for fan production….I wonder if ASif, horrorscope and Awriter are all eligible if we have minions/reviewers/writers in Victoria? Up against them, winning the award would mean something for me!
The rules are on my LJ, but a quick answer is, if the productions themselves are produced, or have at least one primary editor (as opposed to sub-editors), in Victoria, they are eligible. If they don’t, then it’s just the Victorian writers and artists who do things for those productions that can be nominated.
Hope that’s clear enough, getting a bit tired.
Blast, that’s my site out then.
Ah well, have fun with it!
There are plenty of fan writers and artists in the Victorian (and National) scene that have felt that Natcon in general, and the last Worldcon in particular, abandoned them. If they feel excluded by the cons, why would they even try to get their work nominated for their awards?
For me it’s less about giving people ‘prizes’ and more an attempt to rebuild the Victorian community that was destroyed in the late 90s by the triple threat of fan politics, WorldCon, and the merging of the media and lit Natcons. Getting the fan clubs nominating their newsletters, writers and artists is a way to start the process. I’m hoping it will encourage them to get involved again.
And while the Continuum Foundation oversees the Chronos Awards, any sufficiently large and general event held in Victoria is welcome to host them – they don’t have to be held at a Continuum con.
Will it work? No idea. Do I think it’s perfect? Nope! Do I fully expect it to take us a few years to get it to something that I’m comfortable with? Yes.
There are more pro categories, because the pros tend to complain louder than the fans. If we get a lot of nominations for something highly specific we haven’t covered, we will try to learn from that. Next time around, we may well drop some categories or mutate them into something new. I’m fully expecting that if this starts to work, fans will start to complain and want category changes. And that’s fine.
As ‘to the everyone wins a prize’ aspect… I don’t see that it’s that much worse than the ‘whatever city holds the convention will automatically skew the voting for the Ditmars/Hugos/etc.’ thing.
When we had two Natcons, I won a few ASFMAs (Australian Science Fiction Media Award) in my time, and couple of Ditmars. Getting one did not cheapen the other.
Good luck with the project, Danny. I don’t know much about fan politics or indeed the fan side of things at all. Anything that works towards building stronger communities is worthy.
Short history lesson
Thank you. Now we have to wait and see what happens.
I’m going to do a short post touching on some of the history I’ve mentioned.
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cool!
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It’s done… and the finger-pointing has started! hehe
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yep, I’ve been reading. Not commenting because this is all new data to me!
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It also has the problem that human memory being what it is, there are things that get missed. I completely forgot about the part insurance issues in Victoria played in stuffing things.
One of the knock-on effects was that Swancon carried the Natcon most years for a while. Traditionally Natcon was Easter weekend. Swancon was held over so many Easters, people forgot that it wasn’t a Swancon thing and so Swancon is now considered the Easter con.
Can you imagine how people would react if a non-Swancon Natcon tried to run on Easter now?
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there’d be outrage! Rioting in the streets!
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I think SwanCon would move that year to a different weekend.
At least that used to be the position.
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if a non-Swancon Natcon tried to run on Easter, Swancon would politely move to a different weekend just like they did in 2006, when a non-Swancon Natcon ran on the Easter weekend.
The Swancon general populace might not realise it, but the Swancon con-running community is well aware they do not have dibs on the Easter weekend if the Natcon wants it, and usually watches the Natcon bid process quite carefully as a result.
Having lived in a fandom that’s had a state SF award for years, I see no problem in it whatsoever. Is a Tin Duck worth the same as a Ditmar or an Aurealis? Absolutely not. Is it a lovely way to be told that people like your stuff? Sure.
Why *not* have it? What harm does it do? If it doesn’t stick, or if people don’t care about them, what does it matter?
I’m just shitty because I’m not eligible to win one.
Hell, if it takes off I’m moving to Victoria!
It’s great, I set up a bunch of awards I’m totally ineligible for in any way!
I really didn’t think that through, did I? 😀
no you didn’t. SILLY BOY!
Danny needs an award just for this.
I’ve already got a Silver Swan, now I just need to earn the bugger 🙂
so what will the Chronos awards be called? The Cronies? That lends itself to loads of nepotism jokes.
The Chronics?
Just an outsider’s perspective, and just offered as information not judgment. From over here in Tallahassee, Florida, I find the current spate of Australian spec fic awards and sometimes even categories…very confusing.
Unlike the Arthur C. Clarke Award, which has a definitively British flavor, and the British Fantasy Awards, which are somewhat minor but still useful…I don’t really know what I’m looking at re the Aussie awards. Like, there’s no strong brand, in my humble opinion. There’s just all of this competing noise.
I know, I know–who cares what an American thinks, that’s not what the awards are geared toward.
But I would find it much more useful if there were one strong central award, possibly even with the word “Australian” in it (is there one I’m not aware of) like the “Australian Fantasy Award” or whatever, where I could say as a reader “ah! there’s a list of really good sh– to seek out.”
That’s probably just a selfishness on my part, or a laziness, but there it is…at the moment, I look at the awards out there and it looks like a herd of rugby players grappling for a ball I can’t even see it’s under so many bodies.
Again, no disrespect intended. I’ve grown to love so many Aussie spec fic writers and have become friends with so many people in the community that if there’s one place in the world I’d move to if I didn’t live in Tally it’d be somewhere in Australia.
Cheers,
JeffV
Ta for your feedback, Jeff. To me, its the Aurealis award that really means something because its juried. Judges actually have to read the stuff they vote for. I do see a place for the Ditmars too — the pure popular vote. These are our versions of the Hugos and Nebulas. I’m not sure there are enough of us writing horror to warrant the Australian Shadows award. Any statewide awards seem superfluous to me — but the Perth folks love their Tin Ducks with a passion… that one’s none of my business so I’m staying out of it.
so when *are* you and Ann moving to Wollongong? Huh? Huh?
The problem is, no awards are safe from issues. It’s been a few years since I last heard one, but I did have a few years there where former judges told me about obvious favouritism, and cases of ‘It’s not the best work, but it’s time they won one.’
Personally, I’ve been very fortunate. Every award I’ve been nominated for where I felt my work was best, I’ve won. And the ones where I lost, it was always to the work I felt was better than my own.
That’s a lovely place to be in.