SF Awards Lens Revisions

I've got another large project in the works, and this time I think I'll spread it out a bit. It all began when I got the idea of adding a Table of Contents module to each of my Hugo and Nebula Awards lenses so people who want to look up a winner or the nominees for a particular year could click on the links created in the ToC. Then I got more ideas for making the lenses more informative.

I first thought about those books that might have won one award and been nominated for the other. I've got blurbs for all the winners of both awards, so I thought I'd go through the lenses and add the blurbs from the winning books to their listings on the lens for the other award. For instance, Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio won the Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula. I wrote a blurb for the Hugo entry and felt it should also appear on the Nebula lens where it appears as a nominee.

Of course, things didn't stay that simple. I began to think it would be a good idea to also add to each book's entry on either lens about it having won or been nominated for the other award. There are a fair number of books that have been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula but won neither, so there's no blurb, but I could add a mention of the nomination. That still wasn't too complex. It would just mean going through the lenses with the Hugo and Nebula lenses for each decade open and cross-referencing. Things might get a little more complex at the beginning and end of the decades because the way a book is nominated can mean it might be nominated in two different calendar years.

Then I decided just listing Hugos and Nebulas on the opposite lenses wasn't enough. Why not look up all the awards - major ones, at least - and list them as well. I decided that would be the most informative short of writing blurbs for every bloomin' book that has been nominated since the 1950s for the Hugos and the 1960s for the Nebula.

That, of course, requires looking up each book. Wikipedia is pretty handy for most of them, but it can be a bit erratic. So I found myself starting on the Hugos for the 2000s, using Wikipedia, and also checking out author websites as well. Sometimes that meant making decisions about whether to list some of the less prestigious awards. It also meant having the corresponding Nebula lens open to copy stuff from one to the other, making sure I didn't repeat on the Hugo lens that the book had been nominated for or won the Hugo, and saying on the Nebula lens it had been nominated for or won the Nebula. It gets a bit confusing when both lenses are open and the screen is only showing a part of the middle of the lens.

I worked my way through the Hugo lens for the 2000s, with some of the information being added to the Nebula lens for those books on both. When I tackle the Nebula 2000s lens next, it'll be easier since some info is already there and I'll just have to add stuff for those books nominated for the Nebula but not the Hugo.

There are 11 lenses and I'm not going to try to do more than one a day, nor will I hold myself to doing one every day, so this could take a couple of more weeks. At least once the information is added it shouldn't change except for books in the latest year where a book might get additional awards.

Also, with only a few days left in November, I'm hoping my Spoonerisms lens stays high enough in the ranking so it'll be in the top 2,000. It's still well above 1,000, but the effect of Lens of the Day is fading. It has been rated by 100 people and that's the most ratings for any of my lenses by far. And the Kit Cat Clock is the first of my lenses to get over 1,000 visits. Spoonerisms is close behind with over 900.

And since it never hurts to ask, if you're going to be doing any buying from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, please keep this blog and my Squidoo lenses in mind. Even if the item you're looking for isn't one I've linked to, you can click on any Amazon link and then look around from there and I'll get credit if you buy within 24 hours of clicking through via my link. Also, I've got search boxes on the left side of this blog for both the US and UK Amazons. Remember, it costs you nothing extra to go to Amazon through my links, but I'll make a commission if you buy something.