Not to be either entirely humourless or over-sensitive about this, but I question the ethics of putting this piece on the blog. Even for the sake of amusement, and despite your disclaimer, is it really a good idea to present the best way to BUY a prestigious award and finely detail the costs involved? Haven't we had more than enough voting controversies in recent years to not even hint around at the possibility of inciting a new one? I know SCI FI WIRE has been moving to a less...conventional (shall we charitably say?) presentation over the last few months, but I think y'all have stepped up to a line that should henceforth be given a VERY wide berth. Please.

It's been tried on more than one occasion, and the people that run the Hugos have sensibly intervened to keep such schemes from working. The system works pretty well to spot and neutralize behavior in bad faith.

Note that membership in the Worldcon only includes nominating rights for the following year, not rights on the following year's final ballot.

Even assuming you could buy enough votes to make the ballot, there's a very good chance that the presence of a work that seems obviously out of place would generate a lot more "buzz" around the voting and lead people to vote who are eligible but don't often do so, which would significantly increase the cost of buying the final award. There are hints that this sort of thing has happened in the past.

Thanks for the note Kevin. We'll fix.

As other people have noted, the administrators are usually pretty good at spotting such attempts. Another point: presumably you'd be tempted to spend this much money to win a Hugo award either to jump-start or cement your career or to get the respect of your peers. People tempted to try this might want to consider the effect on their peer group or professionals in the genre (including editors and publishers) if they tried to do this and were caught.

Craig, I agree with the others: cheating is unethical. However, I’m curious as to whether a Hugo Award trophy legitimately won has ever been auctioned off or otherwise sold in a legal manner. As we sometimes see with celebrities and professional athletes, awards and trophies can be sold off in cases of financial hardship or following one’s death. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

What gets me is that anyone's talking about buying Hugos as if the Hugos are actually worth anything. Yeah, they're a great ego boost, particularly to the "Best Pro Editor" winners who'll never see themselves editing magazines or books outside the genre, but fighting for a Hugo, these days in particular, is like fighting for a Golden Raspberry.

Um, Paul, some of us editors *have* edited books outside the genre. And even if we haven't, why do you see that as a way of putting down an editor? I've known a lot of editors and most of them could no more edit science fiction than they could fly a rocket to the Moon.

Not that I disagree with you about your basic point---I agree that there's little point to getting worked up over the Hugo Awards. I suspect that if I put my 2008 Hugo up for sale, I'd be lucky to get $1400 for it, let alone $14,000.

---Gordon V.G.

Paul, I don' t know if anyone has sold a post-win Hugo privately, but I don't think there are any limitations on if you could sell one or not. (Kevin or Patrick might know more.) I do know a fair amount have been donated and/or loaned out to things like museums.

I have never heard of someone selling their trophy. I suppose a trophy might have ended up in someone's estate sale and we've never heard of it.

Trophies have, as Craig noted, been loaned or given to museums or other special displays. The older trophies in the Permanent Floating Hugo Award Trophy display at Worldcon are donations from past winners, because it's only been since the 1990s that Worldcons began building extra trophies and donating them to the display (which didn't exist before 1989) as a matter of course.

Paul Cornell attempted to reply to "Paul" above, but because the captcha somehow failed to work, he posted his reply at SF Awards Watch.

Hm, the link to Paul Cornell's reply didn't post; I'll try one more time. If no link appears at the end of this post, it means that the comment-screening software strips all links: http://www.sfawardswatch.com/?p=1347#comments

There's a statistical issue here that people may be missing because of the way Craig has presented the numbers. Because the minimum number of nominations required to get on the Short Story ballot is so small it looks like it is a category that no one cares about. That's not true. There were more nominating ballots actually cast in Short Story than in any other category except Novel (BDP(Long) tied with Short Story).

So what's going on here? Well, there are a huge number of short stories published each year, many of them free online. They don't take long to read, and people's tastes in short fiction tend to be very varied, so there is little consensus on which stories are the "best". Consequently the distribution of votes is very wide and flat. You can contrast that with Novel where everyone gets to hear about the latest hot book from reviews, but few people have time to read more than a dozen or so each year.

This doesn't negate Craig's central point - that someone with 20 good friends could get on the Short Story ballot - but it certainly isn't the case that no one cares about short fiction.

Craig and Kevin, thanks for your comments about the legal sale/donation of trophies. Unrelated, I note that Paul Cornell had a problem posting a comment. I, too, had a problem when I posted my comment last evening. My problem seemed to be an IE browser problem, as I was finally able to comment using the Firefox browser.

It isn't a Firefox issue. I use Firefox and my posting failed the Captcha first time around.

A good captcha system ought to give you a different set of letters if you fail the first one, and should have an option to re-generate the letters if you can't read what you've been given.

I'm buying one for each of my seasonal homes.

I know of no one who has sold a Hugo, but I gave one away, once. It was awarded to Edward Ferman at F&SF, and I gave it to Gordon Van Gelder, a couple of years ago.

Paul Cornell could not get his comment though so here it is:

For some reason the Captcha on Sci Fi Wire won’t work for me, so here’s what I failed to paste there, the ‘Paul’ in question being the previous poster there.

Rubbish, Paul, rubbish. For me, and for my friends in SF fandom, this is the award. I work in British TV, and I don’t want to win a BAFTA, I want this, because of the history, because of the culture. And as for the cynical point of the article, it’s about time someone said this, and I think I speak for a huge number of people: I wouldn’t want to *buy* a Hugo, because I want to *win* one, fair and square. Look at the enthusiasm of people like Scalzi, grabbing that paper to see how many votes he missed by. Look at the long game dedication of a Picacio or a Stross. Don’t tell me they don’t care. The solution to the terribly small number of nominations needed to get a short story in play is the promotion of the short story as a form, getting behind those who edit and read them. Saying ‘meh’ to the Hugos is cheap theatre. Oh, so brave and so cynical, why, we must all dress like him. But the real grace and honour is amongst those who care about this award, who nominate, who vote, who are involved in the business of SF. I may never again get a sniff of a Hugo, but my two nominee pins are my proudest possessions. Go ahead, sneer all you want.

I am angry of Oxfordshire!

Andy---

I do indeed have the F&SF Hugo that you passed along to me. And at the risk of offending Paul Cornell, I have to confess that I use it to hold a roll of paper towels---it's actually very useful that way.

---Gordon V.G.

I was going to say that it's been tried, actually several times, and in no case has it benefitted the nominee. But Patrick got there first (Q. Why was Black Genesis booed during a Hugo ceremony?) Buying the award &/or the nomination is a Very Bad PR Move.

Getting on the ballot is more a problem of social networking than money. But this is much more evident as a problem with the Nebulas than the Hugos.

"Getting on the ballot is more a problem of social networking than money. But this is much more evident as a problem with the Nebulas than the Hugos"

Since i have a friend whose first novel apparently made the Nebula ballot due to such maneuvering (not on his part - it's a long story, and not mine to tell), i have to agree.