From 1994 until 1999 Howard and I ran a small record production business. We spent lots of time and energy helping record 5 or 6 CDs full of truly beautiful music. The business died because we lacked marketing expertise and a good distribution channel. In 1998 or 1999 a group of musicians got together and began the Pearl Awards. This was run similarly to the Academy Awards but the focus was on rewarding people for creating excellent religious music. We qualified to be voting members for the Pearl Awards. This meant that we could nominate things and we could vote for who we thought should win. The first year we were excited to recieve all the demo CD’s and review them and vote. After that when the CDs began to arrive they carried a load of guilt because we didn’t have time to really review them all and make informed decisions. Some years we neglected to vote at all. This meant that people were spending money to send us CDs and were getting no benefit from it. After we’d been out of the record production business for a couple of years we let our membership lapse because it felt dishonest to keep accepting free CDs when we weren’t in the industry anymore.
All of that is back story.
On Tuesday at my writer’s group we had a breif discussion about membership in SFWA (Science Fiction Writer’s Association.) One of the advantages that was brought forward was getting to vote for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Because of my experience with the Pearl Awards, I waved my hands and dismissed this as more of an annoyance than a benefit. I’m still concerned that some of the annoyances of being a voting member are inherent in award systems. So many things are nominated that it is hard to properly review everything. But music was not my field. It has never been my field. I was there because of Howard. On the other hand, writing and reading are what I do. I am constantly looking for things to read. I am much more likely to read 20 novels than I am to listen to 20 CDs. And when I’m done with the novels I’ll have much more to say about them than I would about the music. So being a voting member in SFWA would be much different than being a voting member of the Pearl awards.
It is something to think about. I don’t have to make any decisions until I actually qualify to become a SFWA member.
My Dad was a member of SFWA for years and years. One of the first things my brother and I discussed when talking about “you tell so-and-so group and I’ll tell such-and-such group” after my father died was which one of us needed to notify SFWA as that was a fast way to get word to a lot of collegues and friends all at once.