I got nominated for a Ditmar a couple of times when I lived in Melbourne. It seemed slightly dodgy to me as I was only a temporary worker, not a permanent resident. But when I pointed this out to people I was told to shut up and be grateful, which I duly did.

It seems very sad that, at the pinnacle of someone’s success, there should be people so willing to shoot the winners down. It must take a bit of the shine off an award, any award.

Do I feel strongly enough about it to propose a motion? No, probably not. Although it does cross my mind that if it were on the rulebooks of an award that the nominations could not be refused by the potential recipient (except on the grounds of ineligibility as Dave pointed out), then it would prevent people saying: “Well, s/he should withdraw because s/he always wins, or s/he has a home crowd advantage …” or whatever the complaint flavour of the month is.

On the other hand, I quite understand why people do withdraw. There’s a huge amount of politics surrounding the Hugos, and one of the things that is always thrown at people who win is the accusation, “you only won because…”. I had plenty of that myself. And I can quite see why people who have a perceived advantage withdraw, because they don’t want to go down in history as “the person who only won a Hugo because…”. Robert Sawyer, bless him, is thick skinned enough to deal with this, but a less self-confident person might have declined nomination in Toronto had they been in the same position as Sawyer.

There are other reasons for withdrawing too. I’m not privy to Terry Prachett’s thoughts, but I can think of at least two other reasons alongside perceived homefield advantage that he might have declined nomination last year. One is that Terry is a really nice guy, and has been so phenomenally successful that he might have felt he wanted someone else to have the good fortune of winning the Hugo. Another is the wonderful skit he and Peter Weston did in Boston the year before in which part of Terry’s script involved him begging Peter for a Hugo (Peter being the person who makes the rockets).

So yes, in general we hope that people will accept nomination, and almost eveyone does. But when people do withdraw they are generally not being arrogant, they are trying hard to negotiate difficult political and person issues, and happen to see withdrawing as the best way forward.

Of course if you really object to people withdrawing, the correct thing to do is to propose a motion to the WSFS Business Meeting to change the Hugo rules so that people can’t withdraw.

BTW, if you ever write a roman a clef I want to read it.

If you can’t deal with that, don’t put your work in the public arena.

Karen