So there’s been a bit of a kerfluffle about the British Fantasy Awards, the organisors being accused if not of devious going-ons than of giving the appearance of same and general incompetence, most fiercly by Stephen Jones, who has previous form for this sort of thing. Long story cut short, as Cheryl Morgan put it, “the person who counted the final ballot was also the winner of one award, the publisher of two other winners, and the partner of the winner of two more” though there is no evidence that there was any fraud going on. Not a good thing for any award, to give the appearance that its administrators are not wholly impartial and it would’ve been better if those had recused themselves.
For Damien G. Walter this however would not be enough. Looking at the three main UK awards, the Clarke, the BSFA and the BFA, he concludes that these should be replaced by one unified award:
Speculative fiction writing is incredibly rich in the UK, but a splintered field of amateur awards is failing to reflect this richness to the outside world. We need a unified award for spec-fic in the UK, that many fan groups contribute to, which is taken seriously by the SF profession, and the larger world of publishing and culture. British SF is fantastic and creative, and we deserve an award that truly reflects that.
Personally I’d think any attempt to try this will have the same outcome as the various attempts to unify the British Trotskyite left; ending up with one more award at the end of it. But more to the point, what’s the use? Why do “we” need to have one award, when the existing awards do very well indeed?
Take a look at the Wikipedia pages for the BSFA and the Clarke awards: both have an excellent track record for recognising the best works published in the UK. Or at least they both agree with my own tastes.
If Damien is correct in arguing that these two awards are not prestigious or well known enough outside of science fiction fandom, what needs doing is to promote them better, if that’s our goal, rather than starting a wholly new award which will face the same struggle anyway. The Clarke award certainly, as Damien acknowledges, already has a certain standing outside of fan circles, which could be build upon. The BSFA award meanwhile already is the voice of fandom, not the whole of fandom certainly, that’s impossible these days, but as open as any award can be without becoming a meaningless online poll. Both awards do the job they need to do most of all, in that they do most years produce winners that can be taken seriously. Therefore we don’t need a new award, they just need to be better at getting the outside world to recognise them.
If that’s what we want to do.