Reflections on giving awards to series-things

[naath]

So the nomination for WoT as *one story* has annoyed many people. I have thoughts, but not good words.

*One friend alleges that a novel-in-a-series is no good if it doesn't make sense stand-alone. There are indeed many series-novels just like this. But I feel strongly that the sort of series that really is *one story* in many volumes has a place in this world, and that it is neither necessary nor desirable for the volumes to *always* make sure that a newcomer can fully understand what is going on. Plus, even if you *could* get something out of the book stand-alone, you certainly won't get all the things that readers of the whole series get out of it (you have less background on all the people).

*The suggestion that it is "unfair" to suppose that voters should read an entire 10,000 page series. I don't really think you have to read the whole thing to get an idea whether it is any good. Start at the start. If you hate it instantly I guess you just hate it; if you love it and can't put it down then yay (you agree with me!) and I don't think you have to get to the end to know that. (I really do recommend you start at the start; because I agree that it is one story, starting in the middle would be like starting a novel in the middle)

*If just the final volume had been nominated in addition to the problems with "does it even make sense" (ish? maybe? there's a fight I guess you could follow it; but there are loads of cameos to tie up loose ends) there is the problem that if you did go "OMG THIS IS THE BEST THING" you have just read the HUGE SPOILER.

*the 'wtf is going on' and the spoiler problems are shared by two of the short-form dramatic nominees this year - if you watch the GoT or Orphan Black episodes that are nominated and not the whole series (in the case of GoT a whole 3 seasons!) then you may find yourself confused about who all these people *are* (perhaps more so for GoT which has a stronger on-going story) and they both contain serious spoilers for the serieses as wholes. (Dr Who doesn't *really* have so much of a season long plot that you can be confused about/spoiled for - but it also isn't that good, and I am tired of the category trying to be "best Dr Who episode". )

*Season 1 of GoT go nominated as a long-form in one piece. This got much less of the whining that the WoT nomination did. Is this because more people like GoT? more people have seen it all already? Or was I just not paying attention to the whining?

*I am of course a HUGE WoT fan. But also in general a big fan of very long form story telling. I like epic fantasy series that come in 10 1,000 page novels; I like TV series that have ongoing plot arcs... I think it is good that such works get recognized as awesome (when they are awesome) and not just dismissed as "too long" or have to be judged one small part at a time. Also I think that if we give more recognition to people who write at a particular length then people will be less likely to write looooooooong things and I will be sad.

Comments

[simont]

I feel as if, in principle, what you really want is a Hugo category for Best Enormously Long Series separate from Best Novel. Because although you make a good case for WoT's nomination-as-a-whole being the least bad option of all the ways to nominate it at all, I think it still fits very badly in a category where people are used to being able to read five or so novels and then vote informedly, all before the deadline!

And it also makes sense to have a separate category precisely because not everyone is a fan of very-long-form storytelling – people looking for a good book to read might check out recent Hugo winners and nominees, and people looking for a good giant series to read could do the same in a different category, and people who like both could do both. Plus, very long-form stuff takes longer to produce (for obvious reasons) and there's not all that much of it, so perhaps that category could be run every five years (say) instead of every one, or something like that.

[naath]

I think that would probably be a good idea, it would need to not be every year (few such series get finished every year); I don't know how much support their would be for such an award.

[jack]

In fact, even 5 years might be too much. I'm thinking of Jo Walton's description of different types of series: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/04/so-what-sort-of-series-do-you-like

We're talking primarily about type 1 series or type 1.5 series, which are primarily one ongoing plot, not separate stories. How often are there five of those that might get nominated? I can't think of that many (and it goes down over time -- at 500k words, LOTR is barely longer than some single novels).

OTOH, you could have an award for *any* sort of series, and sometimes "individual books in the same world" series would win, and sometimes "one long story" series would win.

But on the other other hand, there's lots of sorts of stories which *could* have their own categories, which ones actually should? I'm not sure.

[naath]

Oh, thanks, that's a useful link. (And I agree with Jo that series need LABELING DAMMIT)

I think a problem with style 3 and especially 4 series is that they don't really have an actual end. Discworld is clearly going to keep going until Pterry is nailed in his coffin, and possibly beyond if his daughter inherits it. So if the award is for "finished series" you can never give it to Discworld, because it is never done. If you allow unfinished series then presumably some series will be nominated (and maybe even win) in multiple years-of-awarding.

A story like WoT you get to write "The end of the Wheel of Time" at the bottom of the last page and know that *it is done*; which is part of how you know it's one story.

[jack]

Yeah, I always knew there were different types of series, but seeing them all laid out like that was really, really helpful. And yes, I really hate it when series aren't marked. I can sort of see why, but for me, it's just awful -- I'm usually only looking for that if I've picked up a book and said "this sounds awesome, ok, let me find the first one and if that's any good I'll start reading there". And the first one almost always IS there, because bookshops buy that if anything. And if I can't find it, I'll not buy the potentially-middle book, because sometimes that works out well, but often it makes no sense...

[naath]

I can't really see why. Surely people who accidentally buy book 5 of 13 in a type 1 series are more often annoyed by this than they are happy? And if you buy, say, a randomly selected Vorkosigan book then *maybe you want more* and it would be useful to know that there is a lot more, and what it is called.

Obviously sensible bookshops buy copies of volume 1; but sometimes they will have all sold out. Libraries often don't have #1 around, which is also very irritating. (Obviously more people will buy/borrow #1, because it's the start, but some won't like it and so stop there)

[tigerfort]

I had fewer problems with the "Best Dr Who episode" category when the people were nominating episodes like "Blink" and "Midnight" that were actually good, rather than, say, "End of Time" or "Time of the Doctor", which were badly written drivel.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The suggestion that it is "unfair" to suppose that voters should read an entire 10,000 page series.

I can see how this could be a problem, but it doesn't seem like it is a problem. Most people I've heard talking about have been pretty clear they either love WoT or hate WoT, based on the amount they *have* read. The chance that you hate books 1-3 but love it if you read books 4-13 seems vanishingly unlikely. I mean, it's worth bearing this in mind when deciding whether series should be eligible in this category, but it seems like it's only ever going to come up once every twenty years, so it's not worth worrying about too much.

[simont]

I read the first volume of WoT a couple of years ago (randomly got out of the library, well before the Hugo nomination) and wouldn't say I went nearly as far as hating it, I just ... didn't like it enough to read another 12.

And since I was reading purely for pleasure, that's just fine; 'meh, it'd probably be readable enough but I can't be arsed' is a perfectly good reason to go and read something else instead that motivates me more.

But if I'd been trying to decide in some at least faintly objective fashion how good it was, and in particular whether it was better or worse than some other specific book, then I think I would have felt after book one that the true answer was 'well, er, I don't really know'. I agree with naath that if after book one you really hate it then you haven't got a problem in terms of knowing how to vote, but if after book one your answer is 'well, who knows really' then you have to either read further or vote based on some kind of meta-reasoning (e.g. 'its length counts against it' or 'it was unfair to put it on the ballot in the first place' or 'I can't reasonably be expected to read this lot and will protest that unreasonable expectation by voting it down') that absolves you of the obligation to read further.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! I sort of see. But I guess to me "I didn't read the first one enough to want to read on" sounds like a decision. If that's what you thought, it sounds pretty convincingly "doesn't deserve to win". I don't want to decide only on that basis, I'll also ask around in case anyone says "yeah, the first one is a bit odd, but you should love it by book 2", but if not, it doesn't seem worth forcing myself to read the rest of the series.

[naath.livejournal.com]

mmm, it'd be more a decision in fptp - if you just had to say "this one" you could cheerfully say "WoT did not grip me, it is worse than this other book that did". But with ranking them all you sort of have to decide if it is better or worse than other things that didn't grip.

FWIW I would rank anything that I couldn't finish below everything that I could; and then "bit boring" above "godawful" and hope that this achieved a full ranking (considering the nominations are usually a good selection of "things some people thought were super awesome" that usually aren't that many in the "ugh" bucket)

[simont]

Sure, being meh about WoT #1 would convince me that it didn't deserve to be right at the top of my ballot above, say, Ancillary Justice. But in a preference voting system, I'd also need to decide how it stacked up against the stuff further down my ballot, so "doesn't deserve to win" is not the end of the story! :-)

I suppose the obvious approach if you CBA to read further is to treat book #1 as a representative sample and assume it's all about the same quality (perhaps unless someone tells you otherwise, as you suggest). Though of course knowing that the last few books were written by a different author (and, in my case, one I do have an opinion about – I really enjoyed Mistborn) might complicate that theory a bit...

[naath.livejournal.com]

It's not completely consistent throughout; books 1 and 2 feel more like they are trying to work alone. After that it gradually slows down, to a complete crawl by 10...

Sanderson tries hard to emulate Jordan, and 11/12/13 are not written in the same style as Mistborn (or Way of Kings, which they do more closely resemble as it is more Epic). Some people really hated that Sanderson didn't manage a perfect impersonation, other people loved it (the pace really picked up! we got an ending!)

I honestly don't know if 13 would even make sense to someone who has not read the rest; it's certainly a huge SPOILER (predictably), but if you don't want to read it all you may not care. The internet contains brief plot summaries if you wanted to catch up on "who are these people and what is going on here" without reading the intervening volumes. (Leigh Butler's re-read on Tor.com is not "brief")

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've been putting off even taking a look at WoT as I reckon my time for reading and analysis is better spent on the other categories.