The Joy(s) of A Shortlist

No sooner are the Clarkes, Hugos, The Subjective Chaos, The Nommo awards and many others are awarded in August do we soon start to turn to other awards like the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Awards plus soon smaller niche awards like the Booker Prize will be announced. What nearly all awards share are the love of a good shortlist and I’ve been pondering why exactly are shortlists constant sources of attention and criticism which has made me ponder what are we (and here I’m talking the wider genre community) using them for. I think they serve many important purposes.

The Shortlist is Validation

Ok this one is very egotistical (shock for a reviewer) but who doesn’t like seeing the books they enjoy on a shortlist? That lovely feeling that the whole world is finally using your taste as a barometer of quality. Getting those books on the shortlist is I imagine what football fans feel knowing they are off the Wembley final. If you’re a booktemper you may feel a warm evil glow of satisfaction at knowing your efforts have paid off. Someone was reading those reviews! At the same time not seeing your particular favourites on a list clearly means the award is rigged; the future of the genre is over and I am incredibly disappointed in the judges, juries and entire membership nay readers of the world. Its not the most logical of choices but it’s the most passionate response.

The Shortlist is to Aid a TBR Pile

There are thousands of books published every year. You won’t be able to read every single one. On that lovely bit of good news though the shortlist is another source alongside friends, bookshops and reviewers for helping bring books to your attention. You are though not going to like them all…no one likes every book. It helps to find those awards that tend to chime with your tastes because the odds are that they will give you books in the same ballpark and ideally there will be ones you’ve been meaning to read because you’ve heard good things and sometimes a book you know very little about and get a pleasant surprise. As an example, Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjel-Brenyah I knew little about before reading it when I crammed the Clarke list – it’s a read that really packs a memorable punch. Sometimes a shortlist offers readers a trip to the unknown and that is part of the pleasure of reading in finding out how you’ll react to that. A Good shortlist should make you say ‘I want to try that’

The Shortlist Redefines What A Genre Can Be

If you read the blog, I assume you already know science fiction isn’t always rocket ships nor fantasy Chosen Ones and Quests. Unless you’re Margaret Atwood…in which case I suspect you know this deep down but will never tell. But a healthy genre is always evolving. If every detective story was a noir about a loudmouth detective then we fall into the trap of just enjoying pastiche and staleness ensues. I think a good shortlist can really make you ponder what is a genre like science fiction now at this point in time? The Hugos this year had american snark and light comedy in the form of Starter Villain by John Scalzi, leaps into a not quite golden age style SF adventure tale that actually explores fascism and indoctrination with Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh and goes far away from humans (and yet doesn’t) with Translation State by Ann Leckie exploring concepts of alien, gender and the right to live as you want. On Fantasy we have high seas ancient adventure with The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Sbhannon Chakraborty that refreshes the style for 21st century Audiences that goes with Witch king by Martha Wells for a unique secondary fantasy world and then for something different again The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera offering a wonderful strange and beautiful world not quite our own with added UnChosen ones, portals, suppression and changing histories.

These all fall into the badges of science fiction and fantasy and yet all offer different reading experiences. I’d very surprised readers all enjoyed them equally and the interesting part of shortlists is how those reactions get discussed. Here we get in shortlists a chance to ask some qualifying questions for books - is this book actually part of the genre its up for? Is this genre actually what I thought it was? For me a good shortlist nomination should make you go – I didn’t know you could do this with this type of story…but I like it. If a shortlist can get you to re-appraise what we mean by the terms of any genre, then its starting a good discussion and also very likely will lead you to more books that you can explore now these new branches of the genre tree.

The Shortlist Helps define Quality

This is very much linked to the above. If something is within a genre and so eligible then the next hard question is asking what is Best about it? Now this is one of the most difficult things to get any agreement on. Does a winner have to transcend genre? Does it re-define it? Does it need just good prose? Can you win with awesome characters, wonderful worldbuilding and a great plot? Is making me laugh, cry or squee better than making me question the very meaning of life? If a review is what is this book trying to do and how is it doing it well, then I think judging a shortlist is how are the books doing its genre category credit?

I’m a blogger having opinions on the relative merits of a book is sorta my hobby/second unpaid job/obsession asking why is this book here is for me fun (No I do not go out much). Reviews though are just opinions and just because I didn’t like In Ascension didn’t mean it shouldn’t win the Clarke Award when the judges clearly saw it as the winner. There are lots of books I don’t like that others do well and the scary thing is to admit that is actually ok. Reviews are about being fair and honest using my experience as a reader to explain my feelings and if I am feeling disappointed with a book then I have to explain why. That may sometimes make you want to read a book for your own views, may sometimes make you question my sanity and sometimes steer clear. As long as you focus on the book not the author and aren’t using bad reviews as a song and dance show (its so easy) then saying I don’t think this book works for this type of award is fine.

The benefit of a shortlist though is really this should create some wider conversation. Many people may be weirdly reading the same books at the same time and ideally The Conversation will commence. Be this in a decaying social media platform, bog articles, discords or con chats a good shortlist should crate some debate and while may not create a consensus it should for you as the reader help you determine why something stands out more than the rest.

When the consensus and results go the other way its tempting to say well the universe is wrong but the more interesting question for me is what have I missed? Why may this have spoken to some people more than it did to me? Is there a new taste in the genre coming? Is the reviewer showing a lack of awareness of the culture a book comes from? Sometimes though it will be this book I find subjectively disappointing, and you have to stick to your guns.

The Shortlist Refects Our Community

Obviously, bloggers and reviewers are always right but in reality, we’re just one part of a huge ecosystem of fans. Many awards are voted on by groups of fandoms/societies or associations. Its often forgotten these communities are small and you can be a reader, a reviewer, a writer, a publisher and more all at the same time. Small voting populations may have unusual results there are not that many votes in it needed to swing a shortlist one way not the other. There is a though an important communal aspect for those awards which is actually quite charming – being recognised by your peers, and also this helps explore where different facets of fandom are. Increasingly indie presses and self-published authors are making some splashes in the genre. Tastes are always changing as genres evolve. Thinking back say the last 15 years Urban Fantasy turns to Grimdark Turns to Cosy Turns to Romantasy Turns to Whats’s Next? A good shortlist should be showing where we are as a wider community and genre at the same time. It may help determine new subgenres and the direction of travel for a genre. Some will say SF is going too YA and others will say it’s nice to actually have a book without men all talking and women being invisible. Lots of people will say its not as good as when I was young and forget the books that they have excised from memory due to how bad they were. A Good shortlist should be able to say this is where fandom is as much as where the genre is. It may also say to fandom perhaps its time to explore this area a bit more closely?

Sometimes Community can be an issue. The days of all male shortlists are though rapidly drawing to a close but getting more authors who are non-white or live outside of the UK/North America bubble is still very much a work in progress. This though is a shortlist reflecting the issues of a community that too need highlighting. Sometimes over-enthusiasm seems to mean people will decide to award their faves every category. This is really not new in fandom, but it raises some questions like have you seriously not read any other author this year? Fandom groups are small and so it is not unusual to see the same names appear every year for certain awards and those nominations tell me as much about the fandom’s tastes (or conservatism) as anything else. I do though think we must acknowledge if a small group of people feel that moved to nominate something then the book is doing something right and the interesting question is what and how? At these times Community will run up against these other strands of shortlist criteria and we should not be surprised if people are not actually jealous of a book’s nomination but instead seriously debating the merits of the book and coming to different conclusions once it has been read.

Shortlists are all of the above

Shortlists are all of these things at once and suitably in competition with all of these. We cannot change a shortlist once published as much as a bad review would force people to take a book off the shelves and re-edit it. For me a shortlist is all these things being aligned and sometimes in conflict with one another to create that discussion within the reader and ideally the wider Community. What is someone’s amazing experimental fiction may be trying too hard for others. This amazing much-loved author that touches hearts and minds for some may now be 25 years out of date to other readers. A good shortlist gets that debate running and the community involved, reading and important talking about the books. It is though always nice to see the winner finally announced and someone smiling with joy but for me it’s the shortlist journey rather than the award ceremony where the fun is.