Blast and bedevilment, it's Ditmar time again, and the hoary old arguments are coming out. Apparently, it is an offense against nature to lobby people to nominate you, or to nominate stuff that you, and they like. So my little pony, sorry, magazine, shouldn't get its members together to nominate a whole bunch of artwork and stories that we've published over the last year. This despite the fact that other groups will do this.

Note that I do not say vote for a work when it's on the ballot. That's a whole different question, with a whole different group of responders. Anyone who's involved in fandom, or who is known to a few fans, can nominate works for a Ditmar. Only those who are members of this or last year's Natcon can vote for the final ballot.

Okay, for instance: Sean Williams' The Changeling is eligible, and I'm going to tell everybody I can that it should be nominated, because I think it's one of the best things he's written. In fact, I'm going to try to organise for it to be on the ballot. I also think that Dirk Flinthart's story "This is not my story" deserves a place on the ballot, and, again, I'll tell everybody I can to nominate it. Because I'm a member of the ASIM collective, I'll suggest to them that Dirk should get a guernsey. Now, for some people, this is a foul crime, offensive to the purity of the turf. I says it's what groups do, and have been doing as long as the Ditmars have been in existence, and I've been around to watch about thirty of the award ceremonies.

There are those who believe that we should sit on remote mountaintops and never discuss the works that surround us, never say that you'll like something if you read it, or that this is a piece of crap. I'm a reviewer, and I do it for a living. Lots of people do it as conversation. So what? Discussion as to the worth of a story or a piece of artwork is normal, and will influence what you nominate.

Note that I do not say organise bloc voting for the final ballot. Yeah, I know it's been done, but that goes too far. You get five (or seven) choices in the Ditmar ballot, culled out of all the nominations. Far too frequently, good stories just do not get on the ballot, because too few people nominate them. Sometimes it's just because they have been published in some inaccessible journal, sometimes it's timing; people have short memories. They lose their one chance to gain recognition, for what it's worth, because they're only eligible for a single year. I have a story in my collection Son et Lumiere called "Shark in a Foggy Sea." It's a pretty good story, got an honourable mention in a year's best, that sort of thing. Wasn't nominated for anything, possibly because it was published in Nemonymous 3. Ever heard of that journal? No, I didn't think so. It was republished in Son et Lumiere, and got a few good reviews. Can't be nominated, because it's a reprint, even though this is its first Australian publication. I should have got a few people together, the year that it was published, to nominate it, because I think the story deserved it.

We at ASIM have done the noble thing over the years and gone our own separate ways in nominations. I'm damned sure that hasn't been the case for other groups. Consequently, even though we've published a lot of short stories, we don't figure much on the ballot. Ah, the fruits of nobility: holding one's virtuous head high while the people who write and illustrate our magazine don't get the recognition they deserve.

My predictions for the ballot? Well, they'd have to do with fictional planets.

Later