By Michael Grossberg
“And the nominees are…”
Those words are familiar to just about everyone in America, since people frequently repeat them at several of the biggest annual televised awards ceremonies.
Especially at the Academy Awards, informally known as the Oscars – and still the premier annual American awards show in arts and entertainment despite its recent decline.
Yet I’d argue that such an iconic phrase is often misleading. Worse, it can lead to confusion and misperceptions about other awards – including our own.
The Prometheus Awards use the term “nominees” quite differently than the Oscars do.
What the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which sponsors and presents the Academy Awards, dubs “nominees” is actually what the Prometheus awards quite properly refers to as finalists.
That may seem like mere semantics, or a minor disagreement over labeling, but it’s an important distinction with significant differences.
In fact, finalists attain a higher level of recognition than nominees – and thus deserve greater respect and their own distinct name.
WHY FINALISTS MATTER MORE THAN NOMINEES
Achieving the status of a finalist is a major step, above and beyond a nomination. To fail to recognize that distinction is a disservice to the works that not only are nominated (among the many nominated each year), but then go on to be recognized among the much smaller and select slate of finalists.
That’s true for both the Prometheus awards and the Oscars, but you wouldn’t know it from the popular phrase that Academy Award presenters always say just before announcing the winner in each of their 24 current categories.
In the Academy Awards, when Academy members vote for particular works or individuals on their initial nominating ballots, that’s actually what should be understood to be nominations. After all, that’s the term used at that stage of the awards process for many other awards, including the Hugos and the Prometheus Awards.
Once the small slate of finalists is selected, each of those nominees then actually ascends to a higher level of recognition and status – and actually becomes a finalist.
All I’m saying is that everyone should call a finalist what it actually is – a finalist, not just a nominee.
It’s both a difference in terminology and a higher level of status, as well as something of a numbers game. While most awards generally have just a few finalists – often, five or six, sometimes a few more – almost all awards involve a far far larger number of nominees – i.e. works or individuals who members nominate on their early initial ballots to get the whole process rolling.
(In reality, there are thousands of nominees each year within the Oscar race, just as there are hundreds within the Hugo awards and typically over a dozen within the Prometheus Awards. And the respective differences in numbers has quite a large impact on shaping and constraining each of those awards, though that’s a complicated subject deserving of its own Prometheus Blog post.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF NOMINATIONS
Nominations matter, of course.
For one thing, without them, many works wouldn’t be recognized – and some would likely be completely overlooked.
Both the Hugo Awards and the Prometheus Awards are open to nominations by members – a crucial and practical privilege that helps ensure the continuation of those awards and the nonprofit organizations that sponsor them.
In the case of the Hugos, anyone who joins the World Science Fiction Society may nominate eligible works of science fiction and fantasy for their award – and once the finalists are announced, can vote to rank the finalists in each category to select the winner.
Similarly, for the Prometheus Awards, all Libertarian Futurist Society members may nominate eligible SF/fantasy fiction for our award.
Once the finalists are selected by the LFS members doing yeoman work serving on our annual finalist-selection judging committees, the wider membership has the right and privilege to read and rank the finalists in each category to help choose the annual winners.
THE HIGHER STATUS OF FINALISTS
There are some notable differences in how finalists are determined for each award. For instance, the six works that receive the largest number of nominations in each Hugo category go through to the final ballot and are considered “Hugo Award finalists,” according to the Hugo Awards website.
By contrast, once LFS members have nominated a work in either of the two annual Prometheus categories for Best Novel and the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, Prometheus judges serving on the two respective judging committees verify their eligibility, read and discuss their merits and ultimately vote to select a slate of (typically five) finalists in each category.
Once the finalists are confirmed and announced, the Hugo Awards and Prometheus Awards rules and procedures roughly converge again for the final stage of voting by the general membership.
Thus, achieving the status of an awards finalist is notably different, and significantly higher in recognition, prestige and achievement than anything that was simply nominated. Just as winners receive a higher level of honor and recognition than finalists.
So that’s why you won’t hear “And the nominees are…” during our annual Zoom-driven awards ceremonies.
But if you hear me say “And the finalists are…” when I introduce the Best Novel category (which I often do as chair of the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee), now you”ll know why!
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
