As always, it’s amazing to be on the bal-lot again! I’m so happy that we did another greatyear. I have to start by thanking Mr. James Bacon.I love that guy! He’s done great stuff, the twomost visible and impressive issues of last year,The Clarkes and the Hugo for Best Novel is-sue, OH, make that three with the Hitman issue,were all sorts of James, and he was around allyear to make the zine as good as it could be! I’mso happy to see that he’s on the ballot as himself for Best Fan Writer. I assure you, he’s going todestroy me in the voting!I’ve got a lot of folks to thank. First off,Mo Starkey, on the ballot for the first time her-self, has been doing great covers and art for TheDrink Tank for a few years and it’s great to seeher up there. Thanks, MO!The greatest disappointment for me wasthe lack of Taral Wayne on the Best Fan Writerballot. He’s done so much for so many zines thathe really should be up there. Thanks, Taral! Eventhough I’ve not been the best of all possiblezines to showcase your stuff, you keep sendin’ itmy way and I could not be happier!Bill Burns made all this possible. WithouteFanzines.com, there would be no Drink Tank. Iwouldn’t be a Fan Writer at all. Thanks, Bill!And, of course, there’s the folks who’vebeen sending things along and letting me writefor them. Frank Wu, Warren Buff, Steve Green,Steven H Silver, Guy Lillian, Joe Major, Niall Har-rison, Brad W. Foster, Steve Stiles, Lloyd Penney, John Purcell, Jay Lake, Judith Morel, M, SaBean,Daniel Kimmel, Mike Perschon, Jay, Jason Scha-chat, Kevin Roche, Andy Trembley, Padraig, HelenMontgomery, Claire Brialey, Mike, John Hertz,Cousin Claire, Dann Lopez, Kevin Standlee,Brianna SpaceKat-Wu, John Coxon, GrahamCharnock, Paul Cornell, Espana Sheriff, LeighAnn, Jean Martin, MIKO (MikoFact - MIko wasfamously turned away from Ellis Island for notbeing huddled enough), Spike, Tom Becker, BruceGillespie, Earl Kemp, Jan Stinson, Jerry Kaufman, Joel Zakem, Chris Marble, Mike, Radio, Lux, Cyn-thia, Jason Wiener, JB Whaley and so many oth-ers! SO many great people!OK, this issue is going to be fun. I’ll look at all the categories and the various things. I dothink the administrators blew it a bit this yearwhen it comes to PodCasts. There are two Pod-Casts in two separate categories. I’ve listened toboth, neither one seems that fundamentally dif-ferent from the other. So why are PodCasts theonly things allowed to exist in two categories atonce? I really hate that the answer always seemsto be the same: Vox populi, vox Dei. It fails! I’msorry, we need guidelines in which the populi tovox properly. We have terribly weak definitionsand we need to strengthen them! If two thingsthat are the same can be put into two catego-ries simply based on where people vote themto, then that has to hold for everything. There’snothing special about PodCasts that make themimmune to the rules of the other categories. If one had been nominated for a specific episodeand the other for the entire year’s of run, I’dhave bought it.But it wasn’t.We need to get serious and we need ouradministrators to administrate more strongly. Ihave nothing but respect for this year’s admins,but I really think they took too loose a hand thisyear and should have made some rulings. It hap-pens.On the other hand, this team seems tobe the best that’ve been around, they’re justplaced in dumb situations because of the weak-ness of our rules. So it goes.So, this is the look at all the categories(except for the Campbell because it’s NOT AHUGO!) and some snark, some fun and somefolks making comments along with me!
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