Furries and the 2011 Tor.com Readers’ Choice Awards
Award-winning sci-fi author John Scalzi used a kitten campaign to win a poll by prominent SF publisher Tor, for his short story Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue.
His novel Fuzzy Nation (review), a reboot of H. Beam Piper's 1962 novel Little Fuzzy, placed 8th in its category. From Tor:
For those unfamiliar with Scalzi’s story, its origin can be traced back to our Best SFF Novels of the Decade Readers’ Poll and the subsequent data it generated in regards to most used words in fantasy titles. We joked that “Shadow War of the etc etc etc.” would be a powerhouse of a fantasy tale and lo, John Scalzi made our dreams come true a few weeks later.
Blotch's Nordguard: Across Thin Ice (review), published by Sofawolf Press, was #1 in comics.
This reminded me of UK humor writer Alan Coren. In the 1970's, he noticed that the most sold books at the time were about golf, cats, and Hitler. So he published this book with an unforgettable cover.
About the author
Patch Packrat — read stories — contact (login required)Fursuiter and unconditional linty hugger
Comments
This is good news for John Scalzi - but it seems an even more impressive win for Blotch, considering the margin of victory. (That said, I suspect Tor's awards had little promotion in the comics arena, so their request for votes went uncontested.)
But do the results reflect the relative quality of the different works being presented, or the ability of the authors and artists to network directly with their own fanbase?
Pretty much the latter, as explained in the article on the poll results.
It's like the Ursas, only even more so - if you bother to get out the vote, you have a good chance of winning. Of course, if you weren't already popular, you wouldn't have a base to vote for you anyway.
Two words:
Harvey.
Weinstein.
Just be happy when the unfair networking helps your dog in the hunt, because it will happen anyway.
...I didn't understand any of that, neither the Miramax reference (?) nor the bit afterwards.
Post new comment