SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

In this voting we'll continue with last month's rules: each member up to two nominations of 2022-2023 works in SFFH genres, then 2 identical polls with all nominees, and you select your first and second choice.

On the February reading we'll see if this increased participation and then decide whether to keep it

Time to make a start on 2023 fiction!
The Magician’s Daughter
The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country

I’ll nominate Neom by Lavie Tidhar.

I don’t quite understand the dual polls. Am I supposed to vote for my first choice in poll #1 and my second choice in poll #2?

Thanks.

1. Spear by Nicola Griffith

2. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Stephen wrote: "I don’t quite understand the dual polls. Am I supposed to vote for my first choice in poll #1 and my second choice in poll #2?
..."
Yes, both polls are identical, first you nominate up to two SFFH works and then vote for your 1st and 2nd choice

Just on my phone right now. I’ll add links later. But I nominate Leech and Dead Silence.

Leech
Dead Silence

I’m on my phone too, and I don’t think we’ve read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (not sure I got the punctuation right). I’ll try to think of another nominee.

Rebecca wrote: "I’m on my phone too, and I don’t think we’ve read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (not sure I got the punctuation right). I’ll try to think of another nominee."

No, we haven't read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

However, its GR award is for fiction [general], not SF and only 102 tagged it as SF, while fiction 2000+

well, I would like to read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Kateblue wrote: "well, I would like to read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

OK it stays as a nominee

Yay :) I do think its been included in lists of SFF but it may be one of those gray area books.

For my other nom: City of Last Chances

I nominate Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm. It's a short story collection by the guy who wrote There Is No Antimemetics Division, but I understood there is no connection between TINAD and this collection. It includes the SF-horror short story "Lena", which is the only story from this collection I've read before.

it is nice to see short story collections!

Valuable Humans in Transit looks very interesting. Also, love that cover.

Last day of nominating, hurry up if you plan to

The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

Not sure I am going to like this, but it is coming out in 2 days here
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

The polls are out
First choice
Second choice

Currently two book lead in poll, and voting in open till 15th, so I remind that before the deadline votes can be changed

It's kind of odd that, at least in the second poll, there are fewer votes than there are nominations.

Kalin wrote: "It's kind of odd that, at least in the second poll, there are fewer votes than there are nominations."

It is! But some people made only one nomination, so it's possible that they only voted in poll #1 for their own nomination and skipped poll #2.

Kalin wrote: "It's kind of odd that, at least in the second poll, there are fewer votes than there are nominations."

yes, I think we should drop the number of nominees per person and monthly slots from 2 to 1, and try this next month

Results of the polls:
City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky (should we rename the group to Hot from Adrian? :) )
The 2nd poll is a draw, but one of the votes is mine, so I shift it post-poll so Neom by Lavie Tidhar wins

Neom only has three votes, while both Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow & Daughter of Doctor Moreau (and, incidentally, City of Last Chances) have four. You have to add votes from both polls together and then choose the top two, or else this kind of voting system becomes frustrating and unfair.

So, even if you change your vote from T,T&T to Neom, we would still have a three-way tie: Neom, Daughter and City would all have four votes.

Antti wrote: "So, even if you change your vote from T,T&T to Neom, we would still have a three-way tie: Neom, Daughter and City would all have four votes."

I ain't sure that adding votes from two polls is a correct approach
1. we haven't done this before
2. in this case Tchaikovsky is a loser - zero votes in the 2nd poll, but I guess the voting majority wanted it to win.

I mean, this is only the second or third time you've structured the polling this way, right? So I figure the process is still in flux.

I was thinking about this last week as well: it seems to me that votes in poll 1 should be weighted more heavily than poll 2, since they are, after all, people's FIRST choice. But I haven't figured out how to implement that fairly. I don't think it's as simple as adding the votes from both polls together.

But definitely Daughter of Doctor Moreau should be weighted more heavily than Neom, which got 0 votes in the first (higher priority) poll. In poll 2 people didn't vote for it because they've already voted for it in poll 1, but it didn't win so those votes effectively disappeared.

I wonder if it would make sense to do these polls sequentially. I propose trying this: run poll 1 (high priority), announce a winner, remove the winner from the list of options, and then repeat for poll 2. Then, people can vote again for the same book they originally chose if they really want it to win, while the votes from the winning book in poll 1 get distributed among other titles.

Oleksandr wrote: "(should we rename the group to Hot from Adrian? :) )"

lol yes, pretty much.

Oleksandr wrote: "(should we rename the group to Hot from Adrian? :) )"

That's a great idea. :-)

Kalin wrote: "I wonder if it would make sense to do these polls sequentially. I propose trying this: run poll 1 (high priority), announce a winner, remove the winner from the list of options, and then repeat for poll 2."

That could work, although it has the disadvantages of making the process longer and more complicated - but neither of these are deal-breakers.

I also realized there is an option of instant runoff voting, like they do at Hugos: eliminate the least-voted-for book from poll#1, then look at poll#2 for what whas the second choice of people who voted for the eliminated book, and add those votes to poll#1. Then continue to the second-least-voted-for book, and repeat until there are only two b8oks left.

I ran the process, and by this method the winners are City of Last Chances and Daughter of Doctor Moreau.

Antti wrote: "I ran the process, and by this method the winners are City of Last Chances and Daughter of Doctor Moreau."

I'm fine with such results. Does anyone objects?

I don't object, I think that's fine.

Antti, in your process did you eliminate all the books with 0 votes in poll #1?

Instant runoff sounds feasible too, maybe more so than my multi step process.

Kalin wrote: "Antti, in your process did you eliminate all the books with 0 votes in poll #1?"

Yeah, I did.

There was a slight awkwardness with the method, since people had voted for only two options: if someone's #2 option was already eliminated (and this naturally happened multiple times), I had no #3 poll to look at, so I just had to disregard those votes. So, not perfect, either. Kalin's two-step voting would avoid this problem.