StarshipSofa for the Hugo
Tags: blog, hugos February 20th, 2010In the series of “stuff that’s eligible for the Hugos”, there is this one: podcasts are eligible for the Hugos, same as any magazine. That makes Tony C. Smith’s StarshipSofa’s Aural Delights eligible in the category “Best Fanzine”.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, I urge you to do so: it’s a fantastic labour of love podcasting some awesome fiction, and some very smart commentary. (And, hum, yes, among the fiction they featured was my own “After the Fire”, which got one of the best narrations ever courtesy of Kate Baker).
The point of this is mostly to spread the word about podcast eligibility to a maximum of places, not so much campaigning–at least not yet… Feel free to repost, link, retweet, etc.
More details here about podcast eligibility.
February 20th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Thanks for your support of StarShipSofa!
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:11 pm
[...] Fanzine: -StarshipSofa: yup, podcasts are eligible for the Hugo. Check out my previous post for more [...]
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Do you remember that brief era when much of the best SF text came out of Usenet newsgroups like rec.arts.sf.fandom and rec.arts.sf.written?
Some of us are actual readers, mostly or completely text-oriented, and find podcasts incomprehensible or merely annoyingly inaccessible. I would would rather see an online “fanzine” win than a podcast, at least until podcasters provide transcripts as a matter of course.
Podcasting is an audio-visual medium, and belongs with radio/TV/film content. There is nothing with the concept of a new Hugo category for “Best SF-Related Non-Fiction Audiovisual Material”; just don’t call it a “fanzine” if it can’t be read.
February 25th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
AHS: you’re welcome.
Mike: for me, a podcast is just a story read in audio format, which isn’t a radio emission or a TV show (where there is additional content such as different voices, sound effects, visuals…). A podcasted story is exactly the same thing delivered in another way. I don’t have much opportunity to listen to podcasts (my daily commute is way too noisy, and I’m not a very patient listener), but I don’t see any problem with making a podcast, or indeed an online market, eligible in the same category as the printed word.