I finished up my four-part post about the Semiprozine Hugo over at SaveSemiprozine.com this morning. In the concluding entry, I look more towards the future and ponder what can be done to clarify the definition of the fanzine, semiprozine, and editor (short form) categories. The vote takes place next week at Worldcon (exact place and time) and I’m hoping that we not only win, but also find a way start the ball rolling on fixing what is broken. Modernizing the definition is a good place to start and can dovetail nicely with education and promotion of what is eligible in (and from) all three categories. (also needed, judging by some of the comments I’ve read)
Anyhow, I’m told that lots of people have tried (and failed) to crack the nut of category definition. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on my very simplistic way to redefine the categories. Agree or disagree… discussion is a good thing.
safewrite
Fiction and non fiction, for starters. You know I think the award should be split into two along those lines ….
wyrmadmin
Yeah, and I’m of the belief that it could never happen. While non-fiction publications have done well in the semiprozine category, there aren’t enough of them to warrant a separate category. That could easily change, but the timing for such a split isn’t now.
Interestingly, no one has commented on how my definition would move a few of this year’s Hugo nominees to other categories. For example, Locus would move to best editor and Electric Velocipede would shift to semiprozine.