Apparent kneejerk nominations is one of the things the Sad/Rabid Puppy contingent was criticized for last year. I’ve already discussed this to some extent. The popular story is that Puppy management asked for works to put on their slate, but nobody in the group had any suggestions, so they all just nominated their friends. This is something of an uncharitable view of how it might have gone. I’ve already noted the difficulty of finding “traditional” SF that actually is SF and of suitable quality to submit for an award. I’ve also noted that the Puppies next step seemed to be picking well-known “traditional SF” authors and submitting their works on the slate. Unfortunately, this seemed to be without evaluating the SF content of the stories.
Do fans do this in the standard (un-slated) nominations as well? Are there certain authors who have a large enough and loyal enough fan base that their works are sure to get nominated? Previous wins certainly count for part of the tendency. I notice Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy is high up on the Nebula Awards’ suggested reading list, although I thought her latest novel was a definite fall-off in quality from the first two installments. I was actually offended by the direction this one took. Oh well, that’s what my opinion is worth.
Lela E. Buis 
Nov 22, 2015 @ 16:05:18
Without getting into the substance of your argument that some authors get nominated for awards based on their previous rather than their current works, I’ll say that I think it’s a mistake to use Ancillary Mercy as your sole example.
You may feel that it shows a drop-off in quality, but the average reader seems to disagree. On Amazon, Justice has an average rating of 4.1 stars, Sword 4.0 stars, and Mercy 4.3 stars. On Goodreads, Justice has an average rating of 3.96 stars, Sword 4.05 stars, and Mercy 4.28 stars.
Of course, it’s fairly common for later works in series to have higher ratings on Amazon/Goodreads because readers who disliked the earlier volumes tend to stop reading the series. This means that a wider audience (say, all of SFWA who decides to vote on the Nebula Awards this year) may well decide, if forced to read and judge it, that overall they dislike Ancillary Mercy, just as you did. But unlike the Nebula voting round, the Nebula suggestions list doesn’t show what everyone thinks of Ancillary Mercy; rather, it shows the level of enthusiasm its fans–of whom at least 11 are SFWA members–have for the book. And it’s obvious from the Amazon and Goodreads data that the people who like Ancillary Mercy like it a lot.
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Nov 23, 2015 @ 00:54:15
I know. I’m always out in left field. I reviewed the novel a few blogs back so you can check there for an expansion on my opinion. Leckie has settled on a popular theme for the third novel, but I have a taste for dark fantasy and action adventure so it really, really doesn’t work for me. If you’ll read a bit further back, you’ll see a broader discussion of why I don’t like it.
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Nov 23, 2015 @ 18:47:42
That’s fine; I wasn’t trying to change your mind about the book, and I’m not particularly interested in having my mind changed about it either. I’m happy to leave it at ‘different people like different things.’
Rather, the point I was trying to make in my original comment was that if you choose to illustrate your argument with an example, then it helps if your chosen example actually fits your argument in some way.
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Nov 23, 2015 @ 19:26:14
But this work does fit the argument. Since Leckie won awards with the first book, the next two are also high up in the list for nominations. See Brandon Kempner’s Chaos Horizon site, where he does statistical predictions of winners based on a number of correlates, including previous wins. The comment that this book represents a fall-off in quality is my opinion. I have some definite concerns about the philosophical direction of SF&F just recently. If you’re concerned that I’m targeting Leckie, I had similar comments about Addison’s The Goblin Emperor.
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