Friday, April 20, 2018

2018 Hugo Voter Packet

As a finalist for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine, we were invited to supply a copy of our work for the Hugo voter packet. Since Rocket Stack Rank published about 800 different articles last year (every review is its own article), that isn't very practical, so, as we did last year, we created an article (this post) to direct people to highlights from 2017.

For the benefit of people who don't see this page, we're including PDF, EPUB, and MOBI files in the official Hugo packet. Last year, we didn't think many people would use the packet (we thought they'd use the web page) so we simply included PDFs that were little better than screenshots of selected pages from the site. Some people complained that it looked shoddy, though, so this year we put a lot more time and effort into it, and we hope people are pleased by the result.

Evaluating the Site

The most important thing is that you should only use material posted during calendar 2017 to evaluate the site. To make that easier, we've created a few links to point you at appropriate web pages.

How to Use Rocket Stack Rank

This short article is the quickest way to get a feel for what RSR is all about. In addition to explaining how to get the most out of our site, it encapsulates our vision and shows why we're not just another site that does reviews.

Regular Articles

If you have the time, a very direct way to evaluate the site it to look at all of our regular articles for 2017. These are all the posts we made except for reviews and the "pages" which you reach through the tabs at the top of the screen. At a minimum, scroll down the list to get an idea of the types of things we write about. 

We're particularly proud of Fix the Slating Problem Forever, which we think is the most thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the different voting schemes proposed for the Hugo Awards.

Reviews

To evaluate our reviews, you should probably read one or more of the stories we reviewed and then have a look at how we reviewed them. To make that easier, since you're probably going to be reading the Hugo Nominees for Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story anyway, just look them up in Rocket Stack Rank after you finish each one. That'll give you the best possible feel for what the site is all about. 

Pages

In addition to that, have a look at the pages that are accessed via the tabs at the top of the screen. These two are the most important:

2017 Best SF/F.  This is the archived page we constructed to help people make Hugo nominations in 2016. It contains a great deal of our added value, so please give it a close look.

Questions and Answers. The Q&A page covers every question we could think of that anyone might want to ask. 

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