Awards

[writerkit]

I've been thinking about awards lately, and I've come upon this question: what is the equivalent of the EGOT for speculative fiction?

If you're not familiar with the acronym, EGOT stands for "Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony," which has been achieved by just 16 people and is considered sort of the pinnacle of achievement in the music world, to have achieved at least one of each.

Obviously you start with the Hugos and the Nebulas, but there's sort of a question of what comes after that, because in SF you have the two extremely prestigious awards and then sort of a circle of slightly lower ones that are all on the same axis. And you're definitely not going to be able to do it without including some that are specific to science fiction or fantasy, because there just aren't that many awards open to both genres.

Contenders include: Locus awards, World Fantasy awards, Philip K. Dick awards, Clarke awards, Dragon awards (I know, I know, but the sheer size of the con has to be considered, and it's very clearly gotten out of the Puppies' control at this point), Campbell Memorial (name change upcoming, so whatever it becomes), and the Sturgeon award.

I have no problem considering awards for "published in a specific country" but awards that require you to live in or be from a specific country are out (this why we are not considering the Aurealis), as is anything limited to members of a particular minority group.

Maybe it's all of them and we just have a larger group? That would offset that you can accumulate several awards for the same novel in speculative fiction.

Comments

[elf]

I've been thinking a lot about the Hugos for the last few years, and I suspect they're going to drastically drop in prestige unless the exclusionists that dominate the business meetings realize that they are no longer the heart of SFF fandom.

The Hugos get a lot of mainstream media attention (...for a scifi fandom thing), but they're nominated and voted on by very few people. Couple-thousand for best novel; down to several dozen for the smaller categories. And while I get that the mainstream media-prestige awards like the Oscars aren't selected by that many people - they are selected by people who are, presumably, "experts" in the field. The Hugos are selected by "whoever throws $50+ at this year's Worldcon and cares to vote."

AO3 was nominated for a Hugo and the majority of AO3 fandom said "what's that?"

The same year, an episode of The Good Place won "Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form." And while "Janet(s)" was a good episode, I doubt the three million paying subscribers to Crunchyroll think it was the best under-90-minutes scifi/fantasy episode that year.

Aside from that: I'm not sure there's a way to get an equivalent of EGOT in speculative fiction. There are people who sweep most of the prestigious awards in a year - because most of them have the same categories, and sometimes everyone's favorite is the same. EGOTs are all different categories; I don't think it's possible for a person to win them all the same year. (Theoretically, I suppose it is?)

I think, for an equivalent, you'd have to move out of literature - what's the most prestigious game dev award?

Daughter thinks "Streamies" may be the award for best Youtube (and/or Twitch?) streamer. And there's options for best cosplay, or best ARG, or best unfiction (like Welcome to Night Vale), or best podcast.

Some of these don't have awards, and I'm probably missing some possible categories. But I think to have a fannish/sff equivalent of EGOTs, you have to include awards in other industries.

[writerkit]

A Nebula, a Streamy, a Game Developers Choice Award, and... well, they've stopped giving the Parsec, which really should be the fourth thing here. Possibly an Ambie? (I don't think anyone has ever actually done this?)