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Fact-Checking Fielding

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - 17:04

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

I don't usually post more than one LHMP entry per day, but I wanted to pair this article closely with Fielding's original, so that readers have the "real version" immediately available to compare with Fielding's fiction.

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LHMP #549 Baker 1959 Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction

The Female Husband (Henry Fielding)

Full citation:

Baker, S. 1959. “Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction” in PMLA, 74 pp.213-24.

Although the date of this article should serve as a warning for homophobic content, it presents an extremely thorough dissection of three topics: the evidence for Henry Fielding as author of The Female Husband, the relationship of The Female Husband to the objective facts of Mary Hamilton’s life and trial (i.e., tenuous), and the most likely sources for Fielding’s fictional additions and substitutions. I’m going to skim over much of the detailed evidence, but will use this opportunity to include the text of the primary sources that Baker quotes.

The solid historical facts about Mary Hamilton {and the broad strokes of their conflict with Fielding’s text, in brackets} are:

She was born in Somerset. {Not the Isle of Man.}
At some point the family moved to Scotland. {Nowhere mentioned.}
At age 14, she left home in her brothers clothing and began a multi-year apprenticeship as a quack doctor, then set up in business on her own. {No apprenticeship mentioned. No reference to a brother. Inciting cause for cross-dressing is disappointment in love and an intent to become a Methodist preacher.}
In the course of her work, she returned to Somerset in May 1746.
There she lived in Wells as Dr. Charles Hamilton. {Not George Hamilton.}
She lodged with one Mary Creed and her niece Mary Price. {Aunt, not mother.}
In July, she married Mary Price and they lived and traveled together for two months. {Only one marriage to a woman, not three.}
In September, having discovered Hamilton’s gender disguise, Mary Price reported her to the authorities. {Not the mother/aunt.}

Baker’s article begins with a summary of Fielding’s narrative and notes the scanty correspondences with the historic record. Fielding had no personal connection with the case, although a cousin of his was mentioned as having been consulted on the charges. Although Fielding called the case “notorious” implying that the details he related were widely known, in fact there had been only brief mentions of the case in a couple of newspapers. Fielding himself created the notoriety.

Identical notices in the Daily Advertiser (1746/11/07) and St. James’s Evening Post (1746/11/08) repeated an item in the Bath Journal (1746/11/03) mentioning the trial for “a very singular and notorious Offence” and the defendant sentenced as “an uncommon notorious Cheat” but the work “notorious in this context doesn’t mean “widely known” but something more like “notable.” And Fielding clearly didn’t expect his audience to be familiar with Hamilton’s story, given how many liberties he took.

The article continues by citing characters, motifs, and events appearing in Fielding’s works that correspond to some of the invented details in The Female Husband, including some episodes that repeat scenarios appearing in his novels. Even the insertion of the satire on Methodism echoes events in his novel Shamela. (Methodism is nowhere mentioned in the factual record and the description of Hamilton as something of a fop is at odds with Methodist practices.) This catalog of motif sources goes on for quite some time.

Moving on to the trial itself, where records of the Quarter Sessions are available, it’s clear that Fielding did not make reference to the official record for his fiction. In fact, his version barely squares with the more limited information published in newspapers.

The Quarter Session Record

The deposition of Mary Hamilton “daughter of Wm Hamilton & Mary his wife” made on 1746/09/13 is as follows. (The deposition originally was taken down in the first person, presumably as dictated, and later revised to be in the third person. I’m going to stick to the revised version. I have also converted all instances of “ye” to “the.”)

“The Examinant saith that she was Born in the County of Somerset afores[ai]d but doe not know in what parish and went from thence to the Shire of Angus in Scotland and there continued till she was about fourteen years of age, and then put on her Brothers Cloaths and travelled for England, and in Northumberland entered into the service of Doctor Edward Green, a Mountebank and Continued with him between two and three years, & then entered into the service of Doctor Finly Green & Continued with him near a twelve month and then set up for a Quack doctor herselfe, and travelled through several Counties of England, and at length came to the County of Devonshire, and from thence into Somersetshire afores[ai]d in the Month of May Last Past where she have followed the afores[ai]d business of a Quack doctor, Continueing to wear mans apparel ever since she put on her brothers, before she came out of Scotland.

“This Examinant further saith that in the Course of her travels in mans apparel she came to the City of Wells in the County afores[ai]d and went by the Name of Charles Hamilton, and quartered in the house of Mary Creed, where lived her Neice Mary Price, to whome she proposed Marriage and the s[ai]d Mary Price Consented, and then she put in the Banes of Marrige to Mr Kinston Curate of St Cuthberts in the City of Well afores[ai]d and was by the s[ai]d Mr Kingstone Married to the s[ai]d Mary Price, in the parish Church of St Cuthberts afores[ai]d, on the sixteenth day of July last past and have since travel[e]d as a husband with her in several parts of the County to the day of the date above mentioned and further this Examinant saith not.”

Signed with “the mark of Mary Hamilton” with “Mary Hamon” written in a different hand.

The record also includes Mary Price’s statement, from a month later on 1746/10/07, the date of the Quarter Sessions. (That is, Hamilton’s statement was taken at the time of her arrest, but Price’s was taken at the time of the trial.)

“Who on her Oath saith that in the Month of May last past a Person who called himself by the name of Charles Hamilton introduced himself into the Company of the Examinant and made his Addresses to her, and prevailed on this Examinant to be married to him, which she accordingly was on the Sixteenth day of July last by the Rev[eren]d Mr Kingstone Curate of the Parish of St Cuthbert in Wells in the said County—And this Examinant Further saith that after their Marriage they lay together several Nights, and that the said pretended Charles Hamilton who had married her as aforesaid entered her Body several times, which made this Examin[an]t believe, at first, that the said Hamilton was a real Man, but soon had reason to Judge that the said Hamilton was not a Man but a Woman, and which the said Hamilton acknowledged and confessed afterwards (on the Complaint of this Examin[an]t to the Justices) when brought before them that she was such to the Great Prejudice of this Examinant.”

The deposition was signed “The Mark of Mary Price” with a mark indicating her signature.

Baker also provides transcripts of the sentence (“Continued as a vagrant for Six Months to hard Labour, and to be whipped publickly…”) and the reference to the consultation with Fielding’s cousin regarding the appropriate punishment.

With respect to the trial record, Fielding has also spun the tale in a way that more strongly frames Mary Price as a naïve innocent, continuing to protest that she believed her husband to be a man even after the arrest (whereas the factual record indicates that she was the one who brought the complaint). This is further evidence that Fielding did not consult with anyone directly familiar with the case.

The newspaper mentions from the Bath Journal are given as follows.

1746/09/22

“Tuesday last a Woman, dress’d in Man’s Apparel, was committed to Shepton-Mallet Bridewell. She was detected at Glastenbury and has for some Time follow’d the Profession of a Quack Doctor, up and down the Country. There are great Numbers of People flock to see her in Bridewell, to whom she sells a great Deal of her Quackery; and appears very bold and impudent. She seems very gay, with Perriwig, Ruffles, and Breeches; and it is publickly talk’d, that she has deceived several of the Fair Sex, by marrying them. As the Circumstances in general are somewhat remarkable, we shall make a further Enquiry, and give our Readers the Particulars in our next.”

Although several details here contradict Fielding’s narrative, this may be a source for the multiplication of marriages that Fielding attributes to Hamilton.

A second notice in the Bath Journal dated September 29, mentions her alias of Charles Hamilton and adds “…we hear that she was born in Yeovil in Somersetshre.” Fielding does not seem to have used this information, but most likely did have access to the following item appearing in both the Bath Journal on November 3, and the Daily Advertiser:

“We hear from Taunton, that at a General Quarter Sessions of the Peace, for the County of Somerset, held there lately, Mary Hamilton, otherwise George, otherwise Charles Hamilton, was try’d for a very singular and notorious Offence; Mr. Gold, Council for the King, open’d to the Court, That the said Mary, etc. pretending herself a Man, had married fourteen Wives, the last of which Number was one Mary Price, who appeared in Court, and deposed, that she was married to the Prisoner, some little Time since, at the Parish Church of St. Cuthbert’s in Wells, and that they were Bedded as Man and Wife, and lived as such for about a Quarter of a Year, during which Time she, the said Price, though the Prisoner a Man, owing to the Prisoner’s using certain vile and deceitful Practices, not fit to be mentioned.

“There was a great Debate for some Time in Court about the Nature of her Crime, and what to call it, but at last it was agree, that she was an uncommon notorious Cheat, and as such was sentenced to be publickly whipp’d in the four following Towns, Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells, and Shipton-Mallet; to be imprisoned for six Months, and to find Sureties for her good Behaviour, for as long a Time as the Justices at the next Quarter-Sessions shall think fit.”

This newspaper account introduces several details that diverge from the depositions (the length of time married, the multiple marriages, the use of the name George) but that appear in Fielding’s account, making it likely that he had access to this and relied on it.

Baker concludes by speculating on Fielding’s financial motivations for publishing the hasty and sloppy account, concluding that the work was not intended as anything more than a sensational opportunity to monetize the events.

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Charles/Mary Hamilton

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The Original Female Husband

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - 16:59

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

This book functionally invented the term “female husband” for an assigned-female person who marries (formally or otherwise) a woman while presenting as male. It’s possible (though speculative) that the book also encouraged pop culture fascination with the phenomenon, though I suspect that the fascination would have existed even if the label had never been created.

As discussed at length in Baker 1959 (being posted simultaneously), the vast majority of Fielding’s book is total fiction, which makes it an interesting sequel to the series on the General History.

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LHMP #548 Fielding 1746 The Female Husband

A scanned copy of the original publication can be accessed at Archive.org.

Full citation:

Fielding, Henry. 1746. The Female Husband: or, the Surprising History of Mrs Mary, Alias Mr George Hamilton. Liverpool, M. Cooper.

# # #

In 1746, a young woman named Mary Price discovered that her recently-wed husband was assigned female at birth. She considered herself to have been defrauded and brought the matter to the attention of the law. Her husband was tried and found guilty under the vagrancy laws. England had no laws that addressed cross-dressing or gender-crossing specifically, and the legal records indicate that the system did a certain amount of head-scratching to figure out what charges to bring—though they were clear that they planned to find something.

A few months after the conviction, an anonymous pamphlet was published purporting to provide the history of the accused. Analysis has demonstrated that the author was almost certainly novelist Henry Fielding (author of The History of Tom Jones among others). Analysis also demonstrates that the vast majority of the details in The Female Husband are entirely invented (contradicted by the legal record). (Baker 1959 discusses this evidence.)

The question of Hamilton’s gender identity (as understood from a modern perspective) is tricky, especially as we must discount much of what might otherwise appear to be psychological evidence presented by Fielding, as it is entirely of his invention. I will be using female pronouns for Hamilton but refer to her primarily by surname.

Fielding situates Hamilton’s life within a mythic context, providing a quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the title page that refers to a supernatural sex change. The text then opens with a brief meditation on sexual desire and its variants, framing normative desires as being dictated by “virtue and religion” while non-normative desires are the result of “excess and disorder.” The implication is that non-normative sexual desire (of which he notes “all ages and countries have afforded us too many instances”) is a result of excessive desire and a failure to apply cultural restraints to exercising it. This is relevant to constructing a landscape of how English culture understood same-sex (or trans) desires, as it contrasts with theories based on aberrant physiology, or theories positing inherent orientation. (Of course, the presence of this framing doesn’t mean this was a universal or uncontested view of sexual desire in the mid 18th century, only that it was a view expressed in popular literature.)

The biography proper begins with Hamilton’s birth and early family life, which conflicts with the known facts of her life from the trial records. Hamilton is described as having been brought up “in the strictest principles of virtue and religion” with no indication of straying until she was seduced by a neighbor woman, Mrs Johnson, who had “learnt and often practiced” sex between women within a Methodist community. Fielding’s pamphlet includes very clear anti-Methodist sentiments, suggesting that they practiced various types of sexual impropriety.

This part of the history frames Hamilton’s attachment to Johnson as initially non-sexual, but that the strength of her devotion made her susceptible to Johnson’s sexual advances. Their sexual activities are described—using the standard legal phrasing of the day—as “criminal conversation,” despite the fact that sex between women was not criminalized in England. Johnson, however, transferred her affection to a man (another fellow Methodist) and married him, to Hamilton’s great distress. (The pamphlet quotes an entirely invented “Dear John” letter supposedly sent from Johnson to Hamilton, exhorting her to repent and follow her example into marriage.)

Hamilton’s response to this was “to dress herself in mens cloaths, to embarque for Ireland, and commence Methodist teacher.” (Note that in Fielding’s fiction, the decision to live as a man happened after engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman. No direct connection between the two is made at the time, although one can be implied by Hamilton’s later relationships. The implied connection seems to be “a woman will leave a woman for a man, so a stable relationship with a woman can only be had as a man.” However nothing this specific is spelled out.)

Methodism and its discontents continues to be a motif as Hamilton shares a cabin on the ship to Dublin with another (male) Methodist preacher who “in the extasy of his enthusiasm” while praying stuck his hand under Hamilton’s shirt. It isn’t clear from the narrative whether he suspected Hamilton of being a woman, whether this was pure accident, or whether—believing Hamilton to be a man—this was intended as a male-male pass. In any event, after some commotion and further sexual advances (still unclear what sex he believes Hamilton to be), she pops him one in the nose after which he leaves her alone.

On arriving in Dublin, Hamilton has picked up a severe cold and lost her voice, postponing the start of her preaching, but not the start of her courtship of a widow staying in the same lodging house. Being unable to profess her love verbally, Hamilton “was obliged to make use of actions of endearment, such as squeezing, kissing, toying, etc.” followed shortly by a written declaration of love. The widow, alas, though generally desirous of another marriage, rejected Hamilton in rather harsh terms, soon after marrying another.

Disappointed in love(?) and with funds running low, Hamilton turned to pursuing another well-off widow who seemed much more receptive of the attentions of what she believed to be a youth. In this context, the narrator frames Hamilton as having quite mercenary motives, whereas with the previous widow she “had never any other design than of gaining the lady’s affection, and then discovering herself to her, hoping to have had the same success which Mrs Johnson had found with her.” That is, Hamilton had as an end goal a romance in which both partners knew the other to be a woman. (Though it never went far enough to test this.) But with the second widow, Hamilton is depicted as planning to carry the gender disguise through the marriage. “A device entered into her head, as strange and surprising, as it was wicked and vile; and this was actually to marry the old woman, and to deceive her, by means which decency forbids me even to mention.” Though Fielding is being deliberately—indeed, aggressively—coy, the context indicates he’s referring to consummating the marriage with an artificial penis.

The marriage was celebrated and the bride not only declared herself satisfied but boasted to her friends about her husband, despite them commenting on how her husband looked more like a woman than a man. But her curiosity was roused and one night she (we must assume) felt up her husband and discovered the anatomical lack, whereupon she flew into a rage and accused Hamilton of being a cheat and an imposter.

Hamilton, realizing that Dublin had grown too hot to remain, immediately took ship back to England where she began practicing quack medicine. [Note: this isn’t necessarily to say the practice was fraudulent, but only that it wasn’t “textbook” medicine but rather folk practice.] Hamilton soon became enamored of one of her patients who was being treated for “green sickness.” [Note: Although the term “green sickness” is now associated with a type of anemia, historically it was considered to be a disease of virgins that could best be treated by sexual activity.] Hamilton wooed the girl and they married. “The Doctor so well acted his part, that his bride had not the least suspicion of the legality of her marriage, or that she had not got a husband for life.”

Once again the marriage is initially happy until the bride once again discovers her husband’s anatomical lack. Hamilton tries to persuade her “she would have all the pleasures of marriage without the inconveniences” but she isn’t convinced. At this Hamilton makes haste to leave town even as the abandoned wife tells her parents all, who rouse the law against Hamilton.

Setting up in another town, Hamilton once more fell in love, this time with a girl named Mary Price, whom she met at a dance. Two purported love letters exchanged between the two are quoted, the one from Price written in an exaggeratedly illiterate style. They plan a swift marriage, despite interference from a jealous sister and an altercation at another dance in which Hamilton’s breast was briefly exposed during a fight. But married they were and continued happily for months, even as Hamilton’s reputation as a doctor grew. Unfortunately, someone who recognized Hamilton from the time of her previous marriage raised the alarm. Hearing of this, Mary Price’s mother quizzed her about her husband and noted inconsistencies in the story. Confronted by Mary, Hamilton considered admitting to the whole, but by this time Mary’s mother had summoned the law and Hamilton was arrested, with Mary protesting that the accusation was false and malicious.

In court, the true story came out, and a search turned up “something of too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature, which was found in the Doctor’s trunk, having been produced in evidence against her.” (Again, the implication behind Fielding’s coy language is that this is an artificial penis.) Hamilton was prosecuted under the vagrancy act “for having by false and deceitful practices endeavoured to impose on some of his Majesty’s subjects.” During the trial, Mary Price testified that she had no suspicion of her husband’s true sex and that as far as she knew her husband had “behaved to her as a husband ought to his wife.”

Hamilton was convicted and sentenced to four sessions of whipping in different towns as well as imprisonment. But rather than serving as an effective deterrent, Fielding claims that the evening after the first whipping, Hamilton “offered the gaoler money, to procure her a young girl to satisfy her most monstrous and unnatural desires.” But perhaps, he notes, the story will serve to deter others.

Fielding concludes with an assurance that, despite the shocking nature of his subject, he has written it up so carefully that “not a single word occurs through the whole, which might shock the most delicate ear, or give offence to the purest chastity.” This comment speaks to his avoidance of specific descriptions, using circumlocutions, euphemisms, and allusion for all sexual matters.

Before taking any of this narrative seriously, compare it to the verbatim court reports which are quoted in Baker 1959 and provide a much shorter and simpler story.

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The Female Husband (Henry Fielding)

Charles/Mary Hamilton

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The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment VIII

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - 09:30

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The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

by Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here.)

Contents

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.2 Media

3.2.1 Introduction

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.2 Media

3.2.1 Introduction

Categorizing work by Media has to do with the format of the work rather than its content. The basis for classifying the various Media types is given in the Categorization Process section in the Media chapter. The discussions below of individual Media types will include any trends or observations specific to each format. This introductory section examines large-scale trends. The analysis is the most straightforward and least interesting with regard to changes over the various eras, as the category names Non-Fiction Book and Related Book, as well as the eligibility definitions, strongly influenced nominations to be restricted to physical print Books.

If one accepts Convention Ephemera (souvenir program books, restaurant guides, etc.) to fall conceptually within “physical print books," then all Non-Fiction Book nominees are, in essence, Books (1 Finalist is Convention Ephemera), and all Winners in this era are Books. In the Related Book era, all nominees are, in essence, Books (1 Finalist and 1 Long List work are Ephemera) with one exception: a Periodical nominated in 2007 that did not make the Long List.[1] All Related Book Winners were Books.

Therefore, the interest in this part of the analysis comes from tracking changes in Media across the Related Work era. Two data sets are compared: Finalists and Long Lists. There is only one year (2010) during the Related Work era where additional nominees were listed (N=23).

Taking the era as a whole, the Finalist and Long List proportions are highly similar, though some rarer Media formats appear only in the Long Lists. Table 3 shows percentages ordered by popularity in the Long List data.[2] The table also includes percentages for Winners of the category.[3]

Table 3: Proportions of Media Types

Proportions of Media types. A table showing the percentage of works in each Media type in Long List data, Finalists, and Winners during the Related Work era.

So in terms of format, the Finalists appear to be closely representative of what is nominated as a whole. This distribution also suggests that for any formats outside the top five or six, observations are likely to be anecdotal only. Proportions of Winners are also roughly representative of the overall proportions of nominees, with the caveat that only Books appear more than once as a Winner.[4] On a proportional basis, we might expect there to have been at least one Video Winner and would not expect a Speech Winner, but otherwise, interest in the Media format as a whole is reflected in the voting outcome.

To examine the trends over time, the distribution by year is shown in Figures 10 and 11 and Tables 4 and 5, where the details may be easier to see due to the number of categories.

Media of Long List. A chronological bar graph showing the percentage of works in each Media category for each year for all works on the Long List for all years when the data is available.

Media of Finalists. A chronological bar graph showing the percentage of works in each Media category for each year for Finalists.

Table 4: Media Types for Long List

Media types for finalists. A year-by-year tally of the number of works of each Media type during the Related Work era.

Table 5: Media Types for Finalists

Media types for long list. A year-by-year tally of the number of works of each Media type during the Related Work era.

We can see that it took a while for nominators to begin engaging with the potential range of Media beyond Books, with Podcasts being the first expansion. (The full data set for 2010 includes one Podcast, with all other nominees being Books.) It makes sense to do the primary analysis on the Long List and then compare the Finalists.

Within the Long Lists, Books dominate the Media formats, falling below 50% in only three years, and falling below 67% in only five years. However, there is a trend of Books increasingly being displaced by other Media formats as time progresses. The lowest presence is 33% in 2025 (the last year of analysis).

Before moving on to the more detailed analysis, it might make sense to take a slightly different, and higher-level, view. The second most prevalent Media type is the Blog/Article group—that is, textual works that are shorter than Books or that are published on the web rather than in hardcopy format. Combining the numbers into three super-sets—textual works, audio or video works, and other—the trends can be seen in Figure 12 and Figure 13. (These same graphs also work to analyze the most common versus less common formats, as the Audio/Video and Other groups are also significantly less common.)

Media Supercategories of Long List. A chronological bar graph showing the percentage of works in each Media Supercategory for each year for all works on the Long List for all years when the data is available.

Media Supercategory of Finalists. A chronological bar graph showing the percentage of works in each Media Supercategory category for each year for Finalists.

Here it’s even more clear that the expanded scope of Media formats has not dislodged textual works from dominance. Text is never less than 50% of the Long List and rarely less than 75%, though again there is a gradual downward trend across the era. The “Other” Media group takes longer to begin appearing in the Long List, but once present, it vies with Audio/Video for second place.

This dominance is even more striking among Finalists, with textual works never being less than 50% and filling all the Finalist slots in 7 years out of the 16. Audio/Video formats are a regular presence, but there is a cluster of years (2019-2021) when Other Media types are strongly represented among Finalists.

Returning to the more finely-grained analysis, there has been an overall (though erratic) increase in the number of different Media formats represented in the Long List with a similar, though naturally lower, increase for Finalists (Figure 14).

Number of different Media formats. A chronological line graph with two traces showing the number of different Media formats present among the Long List (line 1) and Finalists (line 2).

Long List diversity of format increased steadily to 2014 when 7 formats were represented (tied for maximum with 2022 and 2025). This fell significantly in the following few years (2015-2017, which include the two Puppy years), then increased again, with the anomaly being the low diversity of format in 2023 (when Worldcon was in China). While a rigorous analysis hasn’t been performed, the non-textual formats in the Long List appear to cluster toward the bottom of the nominations, so it may be that anything that disrupts normal nomination patterns is more likely to push out works in non-text formats. This is speculation.

Finalists are relatively more diverse in format than the Long List, with only two years in which only a single format was represented (Books, as one might guess).[5] There are 3 years where the 6 Finalists are drawn from 4 different formats, with Book and Video being constants, and Article/Blog, Event, and Website occurring in 2 of the years each (closely corresponding to our 6 most frequent Media formats overall).

As noted previously, diversity of Media increases gradually, but certain types begin appearing at different times. Interestingly, the Article/Blog format, though second most popular overall, doesn’t show up in the Long List until the fifth year of the era (2014), though it appears continuously from then on, and with at least 2 works each year. The earliest format expansion is Podcast, appearing in the 2nd through 5th years of the era, then sporadically later. There are several specific features of Podcast appearances that affect their appearance in Best Related and the dominance of one Podcast in this Media format. This is discussed in the Overlapping Categories section, Fancast chapter. Video and Website both appear frequently, but not continuously, starting in 2014. Unlike Podcast, Video works are not dominated by a single repeating show, although some works are part of a Series by the same creator, where only one or two episodes were nominated. Website falls somewhat between the two patterns, with one repeating work accounting for almost half the nominations for this format. The latest addition to the range of formats appearing in the Long Lists is Social Media, first appearing in 2022.

Of the 8 Media formats appearing as Finalists, 4 (Book, Article/Blog, Album, Podcast) appear in the earlier part of the Related Work era (2010-2018) and may also occur later, while 4 (Event, Speech, Video, Website) appear first in 2019-2020 and may also occur later. Looking at both Finalists and Long Lists, 2019 feels like a tipping point for expanding the diversity of formats.

Conclusions

Overall, although there are a wide variety of Media formats appearing in the data, the majority appear rarely, and text formats (long form and short form) dominate the data. Non-Book formats took a few years to be embraced by nominators, with some being adopted earlier than others. When assessing the Related Work period as a whole, Media formats appear as Finalists roughly in the same proportions that they appear in the Long List, and—within the constraints of the numbers—Winners are also roughly proportional to presence in the Long List. That said, when examined on a year-by-year basis, there is an overall trend for non-Book formats, or non-text formats in general, to become slightly more prevalent as time goes on, with non-text formats never exceeding 50% of the Long List or Finalists. And even in recent years, there have been multiple times when the Finalists were entirely text works.

The remainder of the Media section will examine each Media format and discuss any interesting features of its frequency and appearance. For rarely-occurring formats, the discussion will focus on the factors behind the specific works that appear, whereas for more common formats the analysis will review other features of the format that may have changed over time.

(Segment IX will cover Part 3 Historic Trends, Section 3.2 Media, Chapters 3.2.2-3.2.14.)

[1]. This is the only work in the entire database categorized as a Periodical. It might reasonably have been classified as a Book but see the Category discussion for details.

[2]. Note that one format (Periodical) does not occur during the Related Work era, as it has only a single instance in the entire dataset.

[3]. 7% represents a single Winner. Thus, only Book has had more than one Winner.

[4]. During two years no award was given, due to voter response to the Sad Puppy slate nominations dominating the category. For this purpose, % Winners are calculated relative to total winning works, not number of years.

[5]. “Relatively more diverse” means “number of different Media types compared to the number of nominees.”

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(Segment VIII will cover Part 3 Historic Trends, Section 3.2 Media, Chapter 3.2.1 Introduction.)

The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment VII

Monday, March 30, 2026 - 11:30

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The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

by Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here.)

Contents

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.1 General Trends

3.1.3 Gender

3.1.4 Authorship

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.1.3 Gender

Gender Fractions

As the simplest way to present gender fraction data is in a bar graph, there is no convenient way to indicate the different eras in the figure. Remember that Non-Fiction is 1980-1997, Related Book is 1998-2009, and Related Work is 2010+. See Figure 8 and Figure 9 showing the overall gender fractions for each year for Finalist and Long List respectively

$Gender fraction for Finalists. A chronological bar graph showing the author gender fractions for each year for Finalists.$

$Gender fraction for Long List. A chronological bar graph showing the author gender fractions for each year for all works on the Long List for all years when the data is available.$

For Finalists, there is an overall shift from primarily male authorship during the Non-Fiction Book era, including 5 years with only male authors and no year when male authorship was less than 0.60, to occasional years of parity in the Related Book era (2 years with male authors at 0.50, but otherwise male authorship is nearly always 0.80 or higher), to overall parity during the Related Work era (6 years when male authors predominated, 7 years when non-male authors predominated, and 3 years nearly equal at 0.50 +/- 0.05). Outside of the Non-Fiction Book era, the only gender shut-out was in 2015 (a Puppy year) when all Finalists were male. In no year were all Finalists non-male, although 2020 came the closest with 0.50 female authors and 0.33 non-binary authors.

For the Long Lists, the overall trends are roughly similar, with a gradual increase in non-male authorship over time (with some years deviating from the trend). As might be expected, due to the larger data sets, year-to-year variability in this trend is less. The Finalist and Long List proportions are relatively similar. In 18 years, the difference between the two for male authorship is less than +/- 0.10. In 9 years, male representation is noticeably higher in the Long List than in the Finalists, while in 5 years male representation is noticeably lower in the Long List than among Finalists. The two years of greatest disparity between the two both involve lower male representation in the Long List (2011: male representation goes from 0.80 for Finalists to 0.25 in the Long List; 2015: male representation goes form 1.00 for Finalists to 0.63 in the Long List.).

If one takes the Long List as better representative of overall trends, three years stand out as breaking trend. 2011 with out-of-trend low male authorship (0.25), 2023 with out-of-trend high male authorship (0.86), and to a somewhat lesser extent 2024 with out-of-trend high male authorship (0.58).[1] With the exception of these three years, the year 2017 represents a tipping point when the Long List shifted from consistently male-dominated to consistently non-male dominated. This same year represents the point when the Finalist list shifted from being male-dominated (with occasional parity years) to primarily non-male dominated (with one exception). That is, out of the 46-year history of the category, something resembling gender parity has only been achieved within the last 9 years.

It may not be coincidental that this occurs immediately in the wake of the Sad Puppy years. That is, the campaign to promote “traditional” (i.e., male) nominees may have resulted in the opposite: a greater focus on works by women and non-binary authors.

There are three years for which more extensive nomination data is available and the gender proportion calculation was done on the complete set.[2] The resulting proportions are not significantly different from that of the Long List.

2007: Long List 0.87 male, all data 0.86 male (n=40)
2009: Long List 0.77 male, all data 0.74 male (n=25)
2010: Long List 0.59 male, all data 0.66 male (n=23)

The above analyses contrast male and non-male authorship,[3] but it’s worth taking a look at non-binary/gender-fluid authorship specifically. Non-binary authors first appear (in both the Finalist and Long List) in 2001 and, in the past 25 years, have appeared among Finalists in 10 years, and on the Long List in 12 years. The highest representation among Finalists is 0.33 in both 2010 and 2020. The highest representation in the long lists is 0.13 in the same two years. While this might seem like an unexpectedly high rate of representation, it’s worth noting that of the 19 works in my data set with non-binary/gender-fluid authorship, 12 involve the participation of one specific (highly-prolific) individual.

Proportion of All Male, All Non-Male, and Mixed Authorship

Another way of examining the gender data is to consider the percentage of works with all-male authorship (regardless of author number), percentage with all non-male authorship, and percentage with mixed-gender authorship. This is calculated only for the data set as a whole and for the individual eras. We see a similar pattern as for the gender fractions, with strong male dominance in the earliest era gradually giving way to something closer to parity, with mixed authorship holding fairly steady across all eras.

Table 1: Gender Proportions by Era

Gender proportion by era. A table indicating percentages of works where the authors are all male, all non-male, and mixed gender, for each era of the award as well as the whole data set.

Gender of Topics

For a consideration of the gender of the subjects of Books, see the section for Other Tags in the chapter on People, which also examines repeat appearances for authors and Topics.

Overall Conclusions

The Best Related category has shifted over time from being strongly dominated by male authors, to shifting recently to a slighter balance toward other genders, though this is not consistent. This shift cannot be correlated specifically with the changes in the category name/definition, as it is gradual, but a key tipping point occurred in 2017.

Although it isn’t practical to do a cross-category survey as part of this study, there is evidence that a gender-related inflection point occurred in the fiction categories as well. James D. Nicoll surveyed gender-skewing within the fiction categories for the period up through 2019 by identifying years in which Finalists included either one or no male or female authors.[4] Low male representation is extremely rare in any of the 4 fiction categories up through 2010. There is a 3-year period from 2011-2013 when 1 or 2 of the fiction categories included only 1 male author, then another 3-year period form 2017 to 2019 (the last year in the survey) when at least 2 fiction categories included 0-1 male authors, culminating in all 4 fiction categories having only one male author in 2019. In contrast, prior to 2011 in 54 (out of 58) years at least one of the fiction categories had low female presence, and in the same period 49 (out of 58) years saw at least 2 fiction categories with low female presence. During the same couple of 3-year periods when some categories saw low male presence, no categories saw low female presence. (That is, it wasn’t just that women dominated in the specific categories with low male presence, but that they had more representation in all categories in those years.)[5]

3.1.4 Authorship

Unlike the fiction categories, it’s not uncommon for works in the Best Related category to have multiple authors. However, the way in which authorship is attributed for some of the non-Book formats isn’t always consistent. In the case of published works, the author list has sometime been revised from what is published at the Hugo website to reflect credited names in the original publication, however in the case of non-text works authorship is as attributed at the Hugo website.

Out of the 609 works in my data set, the number of listed authors is distributed as follows:

1 author: 448
2 authors: 108
3 authors: 27
4 authors: 8
5 authors: 4
6 authors: 1
32 authors: 1[6]

For an overall average of 1.19 authors per work, where 74% are single-author works. Because the vast majority are single-author works, a year-by-year analysis would be too granular to demonstrate any overall trends. Therefore, the data is grouped by era, then compared Finalists and full data sets (which may include more than the official Long List, but which is largely identical to Finalists for the Non-Fiction Book era).

Table 2: Number of Authors by Era

Number of authors by era. A table showing the average number of authors per work, as well as the percentage of single-author works, for each era as well as the Related Work era without the high-number outlier.

For Finalists, the average number of authors increases across the eras while the percentage of single-author works falls and then increases again. We may have a “Spiders Georg” problem here.[7] It is unusual for Best Related works created by a large team to include a full team roster.[8] If the one work that lists 32 authors is excluded, then we see only a minimal increase in average authorship between the Related Book and Related Work eras, while the percent single-author works is not substantially affected. Overall, this suggests that nominated works increasingly are involving (or at least crediting) larger teams.

When looking at the full data sets, the average number of authors is constant between the Non-Fiction and Related Book eras, then increases in the Related Work era (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on whether the outlier is excluded. This percentage of single-author works is also identical between the first two eras, then falls somewhat under Related Work. Taken all together, this suggests that the percent single-author Finalists in the Related Book era is the anomalous statistic. This appears to be due to multi-author works in the Related Book era still having a relatively small number of authors (2-3) in comparison to the Related Work era (see below).

In all subsets, Finalists have a higher average authorship and lower rate of single-author works than the full list, raising the possibility that there is a slight nomination bias in favor of multi-author works.[9]

Of the 13 works with 4-6 authors, 2 occur during the Non-Fiction era and the other 11 during the Related Work era (most of which were Finalists), with none occurring during the Related Book era. And of the 11 Related Works, 7 are a format other than a Book or Article.

This suggests that the expansion of scope to non-text formats (which may involve larger teams) in the Related Work era may be the driver for an increase in average authorship even as single-author works return to a higher level.

[1]. Given the specific years involved, it might be tempting to investigate whether this reflects a bias towards male authors on the basis of Chinese nominators, but the Chinese-language works show no such bias, therefore there is no basis for hypothesizing a gender bias with regard to the nomination of non-Chinese works by Chinese nominators.

[2]. Due to extensive ties at the low threshold for the Long List, some Long List data sets include up to 21 works.

[3]. See the Gender chapter in the Categorization Process section for the basis for categorization. To reiterate, as far as can be determined, all authors categorized as non-binary are assigned female at birth and are most likely to be perceived as female by an unknowledgeable observer. The question of the timing of when they shared their current identity publicly has not been investigated, therefore non-binary identity may have been retrospectively assigned for years prior to this being publicly shared.

[4] Nicoll, James D. September 10, 2019. “Gender and the Hugo Awards, by the Numbers” in Reactor Magazine (https://reactormag.com/gender-and-the-hugo-awards-by-the-numbers/) accessed 2026/02/26.

[5] A very rough back-of-the-envelope review of Finalists for the fiction categories in 2020-2025 indicates that in approximately ¾ of the category-year data sets, female-presenting authors were in the majority. So the author-gender inflection point for fiction appears to be sustained to the present.

[6]. This is not a typo. The r/Fantasy Bingo team was an extensive list. In recent years, it has become more normalized for large-team groups, especially publishing teams for Semiprozine, to list all staff individually.

[7]. See: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spiders-georg.

[8]. For example, collections of Essays by a large number of people do not list all the contributors as “authors.”

[9]. If this is a genuine bias, there are multiple possible explanations. Multi-author teams might well be more likely to create higher quality works. Alternately, each team member might attract a different set of fans to the nomination process, increasing the likelihood of making Finalist. If this proposed “multi-author fanbase effect” is real, it may suggest that “non-traditional” works gain an advantage by involving larger creative teams than is practical for “traditional” text-based works. Plotting number of authors versus number of nominations does suggest something resembling a correlation for works with 2 or more authors, more so for works with 3 or more authors, and even more clearly when the analysis is restricted to finalists. However as the vast majority of high-nomination works have single authors, the phenomenon seems unlikely to affect nomination results significantly.

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(Segment VII will cover Part 3 Historic Trends, Section 3.1 General Trends, Chapters 3.1.3 Gender and 3.1.4 Authorship.)

The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment VI

Friday, March 27, 2026 - 19:30

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The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

by Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here.)

Contents

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.1 General Trends

3.1.1 Introduction

3.1.2 Basic Nomination Data

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.1 General Trends

3.1.1 Introduction

With all the administrative details out of the way, this begins the meat of the analysis. To some extent, this study has a case of “you need to read everything before you read everything else” so don’t expect it to be entirely linear. This first section will review and analyze descriptive data that is not related to the format or content of the works. The second section will analyze by Media format, the third by Category, and the fourth by Other Tags.

In each case the eras of the award will be compared, as well as determining whether there are any observable shifts or trends within each of those eras. All three eras will be compared for Finalist data, while the Related Book and Related Work eras will be compared for Long List data. If relevant, there will be anecdotal discussions of more extended data sets for particular years, or in some cases the full data set for each era will be compared.

In some contexts, the data is too limited or too anecdotal to come to meaningful conclusions, especially in terms of year-by-year trends. For a few topics where the data is limited enough (especially if confined to a single era), the topic has already been discussed in the administrative chapters and a pointer to those discussions will be provided.

In order to keep this publication to a manageable size and format, the full data tables are not included, but will be made available in downloadable format.

3.1.2 Basic Nomination Data

How does nominator interest in the Best Related category compare to other categories? And how does that interest change over time? Do the changes in the category name/scope affect nominator interest in the category? These questions aren’t always easy to answer, but some attempt can be made.

When looking at general Hugo nomination data, it’s immediately obvious that there have been some overall shifts. In general, there has been a steady increase over time in the number of nominating ballots (with fluctuations due to specific contexts).

Personal anecdote by the author:[1] When I first started attending Worldcons back in the 1980s, I was aware of the Hugo Award process but didn’t participate. Back then, novels came out in hardback first and then maybe a year later came out in paperback. As my budget didn’t support buying hardbacks, my reading was always too late to participate. I wasn’t plugged in to the culture of fanzines and fan writing/art. I had no idea who the fiction editors were. I think I did participate in voting sometimes, but I didn’t feel like I was part of the world of knowledge necessary to nominate. For me, the internet changed all that, giving me access to conversations about SFF and fandom. I imagine a lot of other fans had similar experiences, with larger social changes affecting the shape and dynamics of fannish conversations, and increasing access and interest in the Hugo process. Creating a process for nominating and voting electronically additionally reduced barriers to participating, both in terms of streamlining the transfer of information and making it possible for both nomination and voting to be an “impulse” activity—something you could do the moment you thought of it, while still retaining the ability to update your choices (up to a point). And finally, when the Hugos became a flashpoint for anxieties around representation, people with all manner of opinions felt more motivated to participate as a way of shaping the image of SFF fandom.

All of these factors mean that it isn’t possible to trace simple and straightforward explanations for changes in nomination dynamics, especially for specific categories. Therefore, none of the suggested “causes” here should be taken as more than informed speculation.

Number of Nominating Ballots

Figure 1 shows the number of nominating ballots that included Best Related nominations for each year (as available), identified by era.

Nominating ballots for best related. A chronological line graph showing the number of nominating ballots that include nominations for Best Related for all years when the data is available.

The data is very spotty for the Best Non-Fiction Book era, falling from 304 to 197 (but with only three data points). During the Best Related Book era, data is available for most years and falls within a relatively narrow range from 159-263. But when we enter the Best Related Work era, participation immediately increases and is consistently higher than in either of the two previous eras. Numbers rise to an absolute peak of 2080 ballots in 2016. This was the second of the two major Sad Puppy years when attention was high on the Hugo process. In addition to the Sad Puppy organizers encouraging people in their community to nominate, non-slate nominators had seen how a coordinated and focused campaign generating nominations could “take over” the Finalist list and responded the next year with a surge of participation. Nominations in 2015 had been twice the average of the previous several years, and nominations in 2016 nearly doubled that number.

At the same time, nomination numbers had already been rising sharply during the Best Related Work era, suggesting that the change in scope might have attracted more interest in the category. But can we disentangle general effects from those specific to Best Related? When we look at what percentage of all nominating ballots included nominations for Best Related (Figure 2), we don’t see an increasing proportion that would indicate a specific increase in interest for this category.

Percentage of all nominating ballots with Best Related nominations. A chronological line graph showing the percentage of all nominating ballots that include nominations for Best Related for all years when the data is available.

A problem occurs in that data for the overall total number of nominating ballots isn’t available for 2013-2018—the years when Best Related nominations are experiencing their highest peak. Figure 2 could be interpreted as showing similar numbers at the start and end of a peak as we see in the absolute numbers for Best Related, but where the main peak is simply missing from the data.

A more straightforward explanation accounts for the smaller peak in nomination numbers in 2023-2024 in Figure 1. Worldcon was held in China in 2023 and experienced a massive surge of interest in Hugo participation that—based on the works being nominated—can be attributed to Chinese members who had not previously participated in the Hugos. (In both years, two Chinese-created works were among the top nominees, although one item was determined to be ineligible.) The Best Related nomination data in 2023 shows some of the “cliff” phenomenon that—along with other factors—suggest that the nomination data may not be entirely reliable.[2] The 2024 nominations (in addition to being administered more transparently and reliably) make sense for this explanation. The top two nominees in 2024 are the two Chinese-authored works. If one subtracts the number of ballots on which the top nominee appears from the total, the result is directly in line with neighboring years. (In fact, if that same number is subtracted from the 2023 Best Related ballots, the result is nearly identical. This suggests that, whatever else was going on in 2023, we may be able to identify the number of Chinese-focused nominating ballots in this category as approximately 343.)

Did the change to Best Related Work generate a surge of interest in the category that also coincidentally aligned with the Puppy years? Or was this an overall surge of interest in nominating for the Hugos, with no special benefit to Best Related (again, coincidentally aligning with the Puppy years)? Since the overall ballot numbers for key years aren’t available, we can try an approximation by comparing Best Related nominations to Best Novel nominations—a category that we can expect to be consistently popular and that had no definitional changes in the relevant era. Figure 3 shows the same data from Figure 2 with an addition for Best Novel.

Percentage of Novel and Best Related on all nominating ballots. A chronological line graph with two traces, showing the percentage of all nominating ballots that include nominations for Best Related (line 1) or Novel (line 2) for all years when the data is available.

We do indeed see that Best Novel is included on a relatively stable proportion of ballots, mostly around 80 +/-5%. To try to fill in the missing years when we don’t have the absolute number of ballots, we can look at the ratio of ballots with Novel nominations and those with Related nominations. (Figure 4) Although all the data is included, we’re mostly interested in the Best Related Work era.

Ratio of nominating ballots for Novel and for Best Related. A chronological line graph showing the ratio of the percentage of nominating ballots listing Novels and the percentage listing Best Related for all years when the data is available.

The ratios are quite varied during the Best Related Work era (1.59-2.92). For those key missing years between 2013-2018 the ratios are relatively low (that is, nomination rates for Best Related are more similar to that of Best Novel) and extremely similar to the ratios during the Best Related Book era. This argues that the spike in absolute nomination numbers following on the change to Best Related Work is not directly related to the change in category scope, but reflects a coincidental overall surge of interest in nominating.

From 2019 onward, absolute numbers of Best Related nominating ballots remain higher than in prior eras (more than twice as high) while the proportion of all nominating ballots and the relationship to Best Novel nominations becomes more erratic, but suggests a slight decline in interest relative to Best Novel.

What does all the above tell us? In general, over time, although there has been a massive increase in participation in Hugo nominations in all categories, the proportion of nominators who nominate in Best Related has seen a gradual but fairly steady decline. Is this specific to Best Related? Or might it be that with the continual expansion of specialty categories, more nominators find themselves only interested in (or knowledgeable about) a subset of categories? (It might not be surprising if Best Novel were an anomaly in terms of a consistent level of interest.) Unfortunately, to answer this question this analysis would need to be duplicated for multiple other categories, which is outside the scope of this project.

Distinct Works

Absolute numbers aren’t the whole story, though. What is the size of the potential nominee field? Logically speaking, with the expansion of scope at each era change, the number of works that might hypothetically be nominated presumably increases. Does this affect how many different items show up on nomination ballots? How is popularity distributed? What are the largest and smallest numbers of nominations that will make a work a Finalist? Or a Long List entry? As is often the case, the data is incomplete, but there’s enough to show some features.

When nominations are processed, an important (and labor-intensive) step is to normalize the data so that nominations for a specific work aren’t unintentionally attributed to multiple variations of its name. This means that the total number of distinct works is an available statistic, though it isn’t always reported. Figure 5a shows two numbers related to distinct works: the absolute number, and the ratio of distinct works to nominating ballots that include Best Related items. (Two different y-axis scales are used to include both on the same chart.)

Distinct works and the ratio of distinct works per ballot. A chronological line graph with two traces showing the number of distinct works nominated in Best Related and the number of distinct works divided by the number of nominating ballots with Best Related works for all years when the data is available.

During the Non-Fiction Book and Related Book eras, the number of distinct works remains fairly consistent (71-95) even as the number of nominating ballots increases across the Related Book era. Under Related Work, the number of distinct works increases significantly and is consistently 2-3 times the number seen in the previous eras. This makes sense as the restriction to Book (and, realistically, to Books published by mainstream presses, given the dates) puts a practical limit on the number of publications that would reasonably be eligible. But with the expansion of formats and types of content, a vastly larger number of potential candidates is under consideration. In addition, the larger number of nominators would be expected to increase the number of distinct works in the “long tail” where only one or two people nominate the work.

Interpreting the relationship of distinct works to ballots is more complicated. In the three years from 2020-2022, the parallelism indicates that even as more distinct works are nominated, they are being drawn from fewer ballots. (Alternately, more people are nominating the maximum possible number of works, rather than leaving some of their nomination slots empty, and the larger number of nomination-events follows the long tail distribution, including more distinct low-frequency works.) That is, during these three years, diversity is increasing out of proportion to the number of people nominating. But when we consider the Best Related era as a whole, no such relationship exists, and certainly there is no overall trend. Note that the number of distinct works is not available for 2015 or 2016, the Puppy slate years. Due to the repetition of an identical set of nominees across a large number of ballots, we would expect the works-per-ballot statistic to be relatively smaller. On the other hand, the highest number of distinct works occurs in 2017, when nominating patterns were still being affected by reactions to the slating.

A different statistic can be used to answer part of this question: the degree to which people who nominate for Best Related are using all the available nomination slots. If a higher percentage of slots being filled corresponds to a higher diversity (relative to the number of people nominating in this category) then the mystery is solved. This assumes that the long tail pattern applies, and that a larger number of nominations means a larger number of nominees. Since the number of filled nomination slots isn’t directly available, we can best approximate it by calculating what proportion of the hypothetically-available slots are filled by the nominees above a certain cut-off. (The top 15 nominees will be used as this data is consistently available.) The comparison percentage is calculated by the sum of the nominations for the top 15 works, divided by the number of ballots with any Best Related nominations x 5 (the number of available slots on a ballot).[3] As a control for cross-category trends, this statistic for Best Related is compared to Novel, Dramatic Presentation Long Form, and Fanzine, to use categories likely to have established but distinct patterns. See Figure 5b.[4]

Percentage of nomination slots filled by the top fifteen nominees. A chronological line graph with four traces showing the percentage of the available nomination slots (ballots times five) that are filled by nominations for the fifteen most popular nominees, in four categories (Related Work, Novel, Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Fanzine) for all years when the data is available.

In 2009, one of the years with the largest extended nominee list reported, the report also provides the total number of nomination slots filled, so we can compare the top-15 percentage to the overall percentage. The results are:

Best Related: 43%
Novel: 62%
Dramatic Presentation – Long Form: 52%
Fanzine: 58%

Three observations are most obvious. The percentage of slots filled for a particular category tends to be relatively consistent, and three of the categories have fairly similar rates. Years with anomalous nomination behavior (2015 & 2016 the major Puppy slate years, and 2023 the Chinese Worldcon year) show a relatively higher percentage of slots filled, which would make sense either in terms of a significant proportion of ballots filling out a nomination slate (which would be included in the top 15) or some other phenomenon that appears as a “nomination cliff.”

As a third (but less relevant) observation, Dramatic Presentation behaves differently, having a higher rate of slots filled, but also a rate that is less affected by anomalous years. In addition, the complete percentage-filled for Dramatic Presentation in 2009 is much closer to the top-15 percentage than for the other categories (with a ratio of 0.83 for Top 15: All, compared to ratios of 0.42-0.65 for the other categories). This makes sense if nominators are working from a much smaller set of potential nominees and therefore the long tail represents a smaller proportion of the total nominations. The tendency of Dramatic Presentation to pull from major studio movies also means that works on the Sad Puppy nomination slates were primarily works that would have been nominated apart from the slates.

A slightly less obvious observation is that in the years when we first see a substantial increase in nominator numbers (2011-2014), we also see a slight but general decline in the slots filled for the non-Dramatic categories. This aligns with previous hypotheses that as number of nominators increase, there is either a decrease in investment in filling out a complete nominating ballot, or an increase in the proportion of nominations falling in the long tail (and so missing the cut-off for the top 15).

This brings us back to the question of how the percentage of slots filled relates to the number of distinct works listed. To examine this relationship, two statistics are combined in a single graph, on two different y-axes in Figure 5c: % slots filled by the top 15 and number of distinct works divided by nominating ballots.

Percentage of nomination slots filled and ratio of works per ballot. A chronological line graph with two traces showing the percentage of nomination slots filled by the fifteen most popular nominees in Best Related and the number of distinct works divided by the number of nominating ballots with Best Related works for all years when the data is available.

There is no consistent overall relationship shown by this graph. In the early part of the Related Book era (1998-2003), it would appear that distinct works decrease in parallel with slots filled, which one might expect to be the pattern if all other factors are equal.[5] In contrast, during the only other sequence when both statistics are available (2019-2022) the correlation is the opposite, with works per ballot increasing as percent slots filled decreases and overall number of distinct works increasing (as seen in Figure 5a). That is, diversity of nominated works is increasing even as more people are submitting only a partial nominating ballot. One possible explanation would be a much greater prominence of the long tail, due to the expanded conceptual scope of possible nominees. This wouldn’t explain the relationship between the numbers in 2024-2025 when the total number of distinct works decreases, even as the works per ballot increase, while the percentage of slots filled is relatively stable. There are probably too many interactive factors to have confidence in any particular explanation.

Overall with respect to nominee diversity, while we can observe that the available data during the Related Work era shows much greater diversity of distinct works than previous eras, both in absolute and relative terms, we aren’t able to entirely tease out the possible influence of reactions to the Sad Puppy events.

Thresholds for Finalist and Long List

The criteria for organizing threshold data were discussed under the Analysis Process chapter, as it involved making some editorial decisions around the change in how nomination data is processed. Figure 6 shows the percentage of the total Best Related nominating ballots required to make the Finalist and Long List thresholds. As usual, the data for the Best Non-Fiction Book era is extremely sparse, making it impossible to do a valid comparison with the later eras.

Percentage of ballots required to be a Finalist or to be on the Long List. A chronological line graph with two traces showing the percentage of nominations for Best Related needed to be a Finalist or to be on the Long List for all years when the data is available.

There’s a fair amount of year-to-year variation during the Best Related Book era, but as an overall trend, there’s a slight decrease in the threshold for Finalists, but a fairly stable threshold to make the Long List. Considering the absolute number of Best Related ballots, the number of distinct works, and the percentage of ballots required to final, there is a clear interaction during this era. As seen in Figures 1 and 5, ballot numbers increase somewhat in the first half of the era then stabilize, and the number of distinct works also increases somewhat in the first half of the era then stabilizes, while the overall trend for percentage of nominations required to final decreases (Figure 6). Together, these indicate an expansion of the nominator pool and, as a result, the set of works they’re familiar with. Nominations are distributed over a larger number of candidates thus resulting in the lower percentage threshold. Although a logical story can be made for the relationships, the interactions can be complex.

In the Best Related Work era, things get even more complicated and interesting. If we temporarily exclude 2015 and 2016, we appear to be continuing the overall decline in the percentage of ballots needed to make Finalist (which again coincides with overall higher nomination numbers and a significantly higher number of distinct works under consideration). The cutoff to make the Long List remains relatively steady around 3-4% (similar to the previous era, but more consistent), then declines gradually starting after 2017, when the EPH nomination processing system is implemented. (Since the analysis is of the actual number of nominating ballots at last position, the EPH calculations themselves shouldn’t be a cause, however it’s possible that nomination patterns are subtly affected, with people more likely to nominate a wider variety of low-popularity works. This is pure guesswork, however.)

As an overall pattern, this would suggest that across both these eras the distribution curve is flattening, with less concentration of the available nominations at the highest range. But since the Long List cutoff (approximately position #15) is remaining relatively stable, this flattening isn’t necessarily affecting the entire “tail” of the distribution. Overall, what we may be seeing is a decrease in the tendency for a small number of works to be extremely well-known and popular, across the entire nominator pool which could make sense in combination with the broadening of scope of the category.

But let’s go back to those two years that we set aside: 2015 and 2016, when it required getting on at least 18% of the Best Related nominating ballots to make Finalist. These were, of course, the peak Sad Puppy slate years and need no other explanation. If the five slated works in 2015 were set aside, the absolute number of nominations required to final would be similar to that of 2014. In 2016, it becomes more complicated because nominators responded to an awareness of the slating activities by increasing participation. In that year, if the slate is excluded, the number of nominations required to final would be about 25% higher than in 2014. (It isn’t easy to calculate what percentage of nominations would be needed as it would require knowing how many nominating ballots were submitted solely in response to the existence of the slate, on one side or the other.)

In 2017 (when EPH had neutralized the effects of slating and people were aware that it was intended to do so), absolute nominating numbers required to final remained higher than pre-slate years (reflecting the relatively high nomination numbers), then fell closer to previous numbers by 2018. As the figure shows, there was a steep fall in the percentage of ballots needed to final between 2020 and 2024, only recovering to something resembling the overall trend in 2025. This is the same period when the threshold for the Long List is also declining (slightly) and probably reflects a parallel dynamic. (The effect of the relatively high number of distinct works during this most recent timespan can’t easily be analyzed, as that data isn’t available for the earlier subset of the Related Work era.)

In general, the thresholds for making Finalist or Long List as a percentage of the total nominating ballots for the category make sense in terms of the expansion of the category scope, combined with the increase in number of nominators, resulting in a wider variety of works being nominated and thus nomination numbers being relatively more distributed.

For a slightly different angle on this question, Figure 7 shows the maximum and minimum nomination numbers for Finalists. If anything, when viewed as absolute numbers rather than percentage of nominating ballots, the threshold for Finalist is even more stable. The Non-Fiction and Related Book eras are highly similar (12-28) while the Related Work era begins and ends around the previous high (27-28) but in between shows a gradual increase, the anomalous highs of the Puppy years, followed by a gradual decrease. (Note: 2017 shows the highest non-Puppy threshold but, as previously noted, nominating participation may have been higher due to community response.) The elevated nomination numbers in 2023 and 2024 did not significantly impact the Finalist threshold in absolute numbers. In 2023 this was due to the disqualification of 2 works with high numbers of nominations. There was a “cliff” comprising the 7 works with the most nominations (119-221) followed by a steep drop-off to the next highest (38), which became a Finalist after the disqualifications. In 2024, while the 2 works with the most nominations did, in fact, benefit from large numbers of nominators listing Chinese-language works, no other works received unusually large numbers of nominations, including the 2 other Chinese-language Long List members.

The maximum nomination numbers, as might be expected, are a lot more variable, presumably reflecting the individual popularity of specific works. This is probably illustrated most directly by the 2017 nomination of Kameron Hurley’s The Geek Feminist Revolution with 424 nominations (the next highest number is 133) which—in addition to the work’s objective qualities—caught the zeitgeist of progressive/feminist reaction to the preceding Puppy years.

Maximum and minimum numbers of nominations for Finalists. A chronological line graph with two traces showing the highest and lowest number of nominations given to Finalists in Best Related for all years when the data is available.

Nomination Numbers and Winners

Although this analysis is primarily focused on the overall dynamics of what is nominated for the category rather than individual works, one additional observation related to nomination data is interesting: is the work with the largest number of nominations the eventual Winner?

Due to the scarcity of nomination data in the Non-Fiction Book era, no solid conclusion can be offered, but in 3 out of 4 years when data is available, the answer was yes. In the 12 years of the Related Book era, 6 top nominees won and 6 did not. In the 16 years of the Related Work era, 1 top nominee won and 15 did not. Visibility and popularity leading to high nomination numbers will get a work on the ballot, but increasingly it provides no prediction of the final result.

Summary

Overall, the data suggest that general interest in the Best Related category has not been affected by changes to the category definition, but rather has reflected overall changes in nominator interest in the Hugos as a whole. In contrast, the expansion of the category scope in the Related Work era may have had an effect on the increasing number of distinct works being nominated and consequently a lowering of the threshold of nominations required for key thresholds. However the impact of larger community issues (that presumably affected all Hugo categories) make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about any overall trends for Related Work. As the general expansion of nominator numbers coincides with the Related Work era, it’s possible that the expansion of distinct works and decrease in thresholds is a general phenomenon and not tied to the Related Work scope change at all. Further study would be needed to answer this.

[1]. In general, I’ve kept first-person comments confined to the footnotes, but this one belongs in the main text.

[2]. See the Hugo-Finalist Essay “Charting the Cliff” by Camestros Felapton and myself. https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSsNSBeLmp6MIuJX3ZEVTlw-Xj2A....

[3] This approach can produce anomalous results in the context of slate nominating, so attention must be paid to the years 2015, 2016, and 2023, when nomination slates are either known or suspected to have been present.

[4] Properly speaking, Figures 5a, 5b, and 5c should have had sequential numbers, but I expanded the analysis late in the write-up and didn’t want to renumber the subsequent 37 Figures.

[5] All other factors are rarely equal, but as seen in Figure 5a, the absolute number of distinct works in this period is relatively stable, so the simple explanation is probably correct.

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(Segment VI will cover Part 3 Historic Trends, Section 3.1 General Trends, Chapters 3.1.1 Introduction and 3.1.2 Basic Nomination Data.)

The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment V

Wednesday, March 25, 2026 - 09:45

thetheoryof-600wide.jpeg

[The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

by Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here.)

Contents

Part 2: Methodology

2.4 Categorization Process

2.4.1 Analysis Process

2.4.2 Gender

2.4.3 Media

2.4.4 Category

2.4.5 Specific Topics

Part 2: Methodology

2.4 Categorization Process

2.4.1 Analysis Process

For each year, the following comparison data has been identified or calculated.

Number of nominees in the data set for: Finalists, Long List (i.e., Finalists plus typically the next 10 nominees), all available nominees. Prior to EPH, there are 5 Finalists unless there is a tie for final place, after EPH there are 6 Finalists and ties are highly unlikely due to the process. In the post-EPH data, the Long List may have 15 or 16 nominees. In a few years, a more extensive list of nominees is available, however these are not useful for trend comparisons due to the infrequency. If a more extensive set of nominees is available, they have been included in the Long List data only if the number is equivalent to larger sets produced due to ties.
Maximum number of nominations for any one item. (The largest number is used even if the nominee with the largest number was determined to be ineligible.)
Minimum number of nominations for that group (i.e., Finalist or Long List). Before EPH, the simple count of nominations is used. Under EPH, it’s hypothetically possible that a nominee that did not become a Finalist had more absolute nominations than a Finalist. However, for the Finalist group, the lowest number of absolute nominations among the Finalists is used. For the Long List, the lowest number of nominations within the group defined as the Long List is used.[1]
Did that year’s Winner have the highest number of nominating ballots?
Average gender fraction for the group. (See the chapter on Gender in this section for how this was determined.)
Gender fraction of the Winner.
Average number of credited authors/creators per work.[2]
Fraction of nominees that were single-author.
Count of each type of Media represented in the group. (See the chapter on Media in this section for how this was determined.) Only 1 Media tag is assigned to each work.
Media of the Winner.
Count of each type of Category represented in the group. (See the chapter on Category in this section for how this was assigned.) Many nominees are associated with more than one Category, therefore the counts will often add up to more than the number of nominees in the group.
Categor(ies) of the Winner.
Other data tags, such as the People or Property that is the subject of the work, whether the work primarily concerns science fiction, fantasy, or horror,[3] Publisher, and whether the work is part of an identified publication Series. (See the chapter on Specific Topics in this section for an explanation of these items.)

2.4.2 Gender

Coding of Gender

The best effort was made to identify the public gender of each person listed as a creator of the work from generally reliable references (Wikipedia, SF Encyclopedia, Fancyclopedia) or from personal social media or biographies, with other methods as a less preferred choice.

Gender tags are based on the pronouns used or the use of other gendered language to refer to the person, unless there an explicit reference to the person being non-binary or gender-fluid while using gendered pronouns. In a very few cases, gender has been assumed based on the apparent gender of the name,[4] or gender has been identified from personal information provided by knowledgeable parties. In the case of people whose current gender is different from that assigned at birth, their public gender identity at the time of nomination has been used. People who identify as non-binary or gender fluid or any other similar term have been categorized as “non-binary.” It’s worth noting that (as far as can be determined) all nominees categorized as non-binary or gender-fluid were assigned female at birth and read as female to the non-knowledgeable observer. For this reason, as the analysis is interested in how perceived gender influences nomination, the discussion is presented in terms of “male” and “non-male” (which also simplifies the discussion significantly).[5]

In one case, it was not possible to assign author gender as only initials were used and the person is too obscure to show up in reference works. In isolated cases, only corporate authorship was listed or no named author was given. For these, no gender was assigned and the item was not included in calculations. In one case of multi-person authorship where social media handles were used, a very rough estimate of overall gender ratios was calculated based on subjective perception of the gender presentation of the handles.[6]

Proportional Gender Fraction

For each work, the proportional author gender per work was calculated, and for each analytical group (Finalists, Long List, or all) an overall average of these proportions was calculated. So, for example, in a 5-work Finalist set, if 2 works had single male authors, 1 work had two male authors, 1 work had 3 female authors, and 1 work had 2 male authors and 1 female author, the overall gender fraction would be calculated as:

M = (1 + 1 + 2/2 + 0 + 2/3)/5 = 3.67/5 = 0.73
F = (0 + 0 + 0 + 3/3 + 1/3)/5 = 1.33/5 = 0.27

Occasionally, the proportions won’t add up to 1 due to non-gendered creators or simply the vagaries of rounding. Gender distribution is calculated for both the Finalists and the entire Long List. (During the Non-Fiction Book era, there were only a few years where more data than the Finalists was given and those sets are treated as if they were Long Lists.)

2.4.3 Media

Nominees have been categorized as one of the following types of Media. This classification is intended to track the format or distribution method of the content. Each work is assigned only one Media tag, although in the case of some works this may be an arbitrary choice.

Book—This includes works published as a physical text object in bound form, even if other distribution methods are available. It could include works published only in electronic text format that are presented as a Book (as opposed to a Website or Blog), but no such examples appear. While it may include individual works that are part of a Series (such as the Spectrum Art Books), it does not include items better classified as Periodicals, even if the specific nominee is a “special issue” of the Periodical. This is, unsurprisingly, the largest Media type comprising 85% of the data set. (Detailed comparison statistics will be discussed later.)

In alphabetical order, the other Media types are:

Album (musical)—An audio compilation of musical pieces, released as a single coherent work.

Article/Blog—An individual short non-fiction prose work, typically distributed electronically via the internet. (Collections of Articles would generally fall under Book.)

Dissertation—A non-fiction research project created for an academic degree not distributed through standard publication channels.[7]

Ephemera—Printed matter (or electronic versions of material that historically has been printed matter) produced for a specific and transient context and not distributed through traditional publication mechanisms. Generally, this applies to Convention-related publications.

Event—An organized, time-bound, interactive experience, such as a Convention or a specific activity held within the context of such an Event.

Game—A work for which the consumer interaction and input shapes and affects the nature and outcome of the experience.[8]

Periodical—One or more issues of a publication issued, well, periodically. This is distinguished from Book in that the nominee is from an ongoing sequence of related material rather than being a complete and finished entity. In this group, it is possible that awareness of the ongoing Series contributed to the nomination of specific issues.

Podcast—An audio periodical.[9] In theory this could include isolated, single, non-musical recordings, but there weren’t any of those so the familiar term is used.

Social Media—A work appearing in the form of a Social Media posting that doesn’t conform to the look-and-feel of another Media type such as Article/Blog.

Speech—A work appearing originally as a live verbal presentation even if later appearing in the form of another Media type such as Article/Blog.

Video—A work presented in visual format, comprising both audio and non-static visual elements.

Website—A work where interaction is with complex elements of a web interface (as contrasted with a specific static text presentation appearing as part of a Website). In general, the site will be dynamic to some degree.

Some of these Media classifications cover a very small number of nominees, as will be discussed in the Historic Trends section.

In addition, Media formats were grouped into 3 supersets:

Text—Book, Article/Blog, Dissertation, Periodical

Audio-Visual—Album, Podcast, Video

Other—Ephemera, Event, Game, Social Media, Speech, Website

2.4.4 Category

Category tags operate independently from Media tags and are more varied. Effort has been made to keep this level of classification relatively objective, however in most cases it has been based on the most accessible public summary of the work’s contents. Some Categories have very fuzzy boundaries. More than one Category is frequently assigned in order to better represent the scope of the contents. These are presented in alphabetical order.

Art—Display, discussion, or criticism where the primary content is visual Art. This would not include discussions of art or artists where the inclusion of images is not the main focus.

Autobiography—A narrative (generally chronological) presentation of a person’s life written by the subject. (This is categorized separately from Memoir and Letters, but all 3 have been grouped for analysis.)

Biography—A narrative (generally chronological) presentation of a person’s life not written by the subject.

Convention—An organized, time-bound, structured multi-person experience. This may be an isolated instance but generally represents one of an ongoing series of instances.

Convention Publications—An informational publication put out by a specific Convention and related to activities at that Convention.

Craft—A work intended to provide advice or guidance about a profession or activity.

Criticism—An analytical discussion of a subject or work that generally relates it to a larger framework of ideas or experiences. This Category can have very fuzzy boundaries with Essays, Reviews, and some others.

Essays—A discussion or presentation, generally on a specific topic, usually expressing some degree of personal opinion by the author. This Category can have very fuzzy boundaries with Criticism, Reviews, and some others.

Experience—An experience that does not rely on a specific structured interactive space but is generally time-bound in some fashion. This is a rather eclectic group of items that didn’t fit well elsewhere and the label is somewhat arbitrary.[10]

Fiction—A work of imaginative prose. As the Best Related Work description indicates, “if fictional, [the nominee] is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.” There is further discussion of eligibility around this Category in both the Eligibility Notes chapter under Data and Eligibility, and the Fiction chapter in the Category section.

Graphic—A work in which a narrative (fictional or non-fictional) strongly relies on sequential art.

History—A work presenting and discussing the History or historic context of a topic. (Compare to Journalism.)

Humor—A work intended for humorous entertainment.

Interviews—Similar to Biography or Memoir but elicited in the form of an interactive Interview and often being a collection of Interviews of various people.

Journalism—Investigation, analysis, or communication about an ongoing or contemporary event or situation. This has very fuzzy boundaries with History, but is used to tag works with more immediacy, where the work may be “breaking news” as it were.

Letters—Collections of correspondence of documentary value where the text of the Letters (rather than an analysis of them) is the primary content. (This has been combined with Autobiography for analytic purposes.)

Memoir—Non-chronological anecdotes or discussions of a person’s life, generally written by the subject or via Interview with a second party. (This has been combined with Autobiography for analytic purposes.)

Music—Musical performance.[11]

Photography—A presentation of photographic works, where any accompanying text is less significant.

Poetry—A work of Poetry.[12]

Reference—A work of organized information, typically not presented in narrative form.

Reviews—A collection of discussions of specific works. There can be overlap between this Category and Criticism.

Role Playing Game—An interactive Game in which players take on character roles.[13]

Science—A work examining or explaining some aspect of real-world or speculative Science.

Supercategories

For some purposes, it has made sense to combine content Categories into more general groupings to make trends more obvious. Each work has been classified with respect to the predominant content and only one Supercategory is assigned. The following Supercategories have been used:

Analysis: Craft, Criticism, Essays, Journalism, Reviews
Associated: Convention, Convention Publications, Experience, Fiction, Graphic, Humor, Music, Poetry, Role Playing Game
Image: Art, Photography
Information: History, Reference, Science
People: Autobiography, Biography, Interviews, Letters, Memoir

2.4.5 Specific Topics

In addition to the Category tags, information about the specific Topic of the work has been identified, when relevant. Not all works will have a Topic. For example, a work may be a collection of the Reviews, Essays, and Criticism by a specific author on a variety of topics. Or a work may be a collection of Essays and Criticism by various authors on a specific media Property. The latter would have a Topic tag while the former would not.

This additional information, has been structured using four fields:

Person—This indicates the person who is the subject of a work. If more than one person is the subject, it is tagged “various authors” or “various artists” as appropriate to indicate that the subject is individuals but a full list would be unwieldy. Multi-person subjects have not been analyzed in terms of statistics. For works with a single subject, the gender of the subject has been identified using the same process as for identifying the gender of authors/creators. Doing a gender analysis for multi-subject works would require reviewing the works in detail and has not been done.
Property—This indicates the specific media Property that is the subject of a work, if relevant. There may be some fuzziness with Person when the work concerns several Properties associated with a specific creator.
Genre—When the title or description of a work indicates it has a focus on science fiction or fantasy or horror generally (but not when it focuses on a specific Person or Property in one of those fields) it is tagged as such.[14]
Specific Topic—This identifies if a work has a predominant Topic other than a Person or media Property. This field is also used to flag if the work is tagged for a Person or Property.[15] This data has been used anecdotally but is not useful for meaningful trending.[16]

In addition to these tags, the Publisher has been identified and note has been taken of whether the work is part of an ongoing Series. This could be an annual publication such as the Spectrum Art Books. It could be part of an academic press Series such as the “Modern Masters of Science Fiction” Biography Series. It could be a periodic Essay on a continuing Topic such as the #BlackSpecFic Report.[17]

[1]. It would have been desirable to track how the maximum and minimum numbers compared to the total number of nominating ballots for all categories, however this number was not consistently available.

[2]. This is either based on the official Hugo Award website data or in some cases based on credited contributors in the publication. Therefore, there may be inconsistency in whether minor contributors (e.g., for introductions) are counted.

[3]. As this coding was not consistent and largely relied on information in the work’s title, it was not used for analysis.

[4]. The perceived name gender approach has generally only been necessary with older data where the creator doesn’t appear in online references, which makes it somewhat more likely to be accurate.

[5]. It is acknowledged that this has the unfortunate side-effect of making maleness more visible in the write-up.

[6] Undoubtedly this approach includes multiple errors.

[7]. The Dissertation format label is included even though there is only one member, as it speaks to the diversity of Media being nominated. It might have made more sense simply to classify this as a Book but as far as can be determined it was never “published” in the usual sense. It is available for download.

[8]. The definition of Game from the Best Game Hugo boils down to “interactive work” but a more specific definition is used for this study as “interactive work” might apply to Events as well.

[9]. In this case, the definition from Best Fancast can’t be used as the present study distinguishes audio and video works, but does not distinguish professional and non-professional works.

[10]. In some cases, the distinction between Convention and Experience may seem arbitrary and relies on the principle of “I know it when I see it.”

[11]. There is a one-to-one correspondence of Media=Album and Category=Music.

[12]. A special category Hugo for Best Poem was trialed in 2025 and is being repeated in 2026. The process to establish Best Poem as a constitutional category has begun.

[13]. There is a one-to-one correspondence of Media=Game and Category=Role Playing Game

[14]. As noted previously, this tag was not used in analysis as the information was too incomplete.

[15]. This last is purely for spreadsheet management purposes and is not used for analysis.

[16]. The general principle when doing data coding is to go one level more specific than is expected to be useful, because it’s easier to ignore tags than to review all the works again to add them.

[17]. This information is based either on a Series indication in the title of the work or on repeat appearance in the data. Therefore, some Series members may not have been identified.

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The Conclusion of Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 10:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

This finishes up the deep dive into the General History of the Pyrates, the narrative it presents about Bonny and Read, the contemporary sources for elements of that narrative, and the basis for disbelieving the factual nature of the vast majority of the narrative. It isn't that I enjoy debunking potential sapphic encounters in history--after all, the Project is focused on historical fiction, and the General History is a whopper of a historical fiction--but I'm strongly invested in keeping track of the boundaries between history and wishful thinking. Bonny and Read's "sapphic encounter" tells us a great deal about how people of their time viewed such possibilities, though it tells us less about how such encounters might have actually played out. Is this a good inspiration for endless fictional retellings of Bonny and Read as a lesbian historic romance? There are certainly worse inspirations. Just don't confused the fictions with historic fact.

If you're interested in the "fictional afterlife" of Bonny and Read, I recommend listening to podcast episode 338. I don't yet have a transcript of the discussion with Helen Rodriguez, but the audio is worth the time to listen.

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LHMP #547h Johnson 1724 A General History of the Pyrates Part 8

(Segment V will cover Part 2 Methodology, Section 2.4 Categorization Process.)

Full citation:

Johnson, Charles (pseudonym). 1724. A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present time. With the remarkable actions and adventures of the two female pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny ... To which is added. A short abstract of the statute and civil law, in relation to pyracy. London: T. Warner.

Publication summary:

A presentation and analysis of material related to Anne Bonny and Mary Read in the General History of the Pyrates, with additional material from journalistic and legal records.

Part 8: The General History 2nd Edition, Conclusions, and Bibliography

The Second Edition Material

The appendix to the second edition is described as follows on the title page. Note that there was very little time between the presumed date of the first edition and the date when this additional material was published. It’s possible that this was information that had been solicited earlier but not received in time. But at least one account in the 2nd edition specifically indicates that the initial publication and planned second volume was what inspired the informant to come forward, suggesting an incredibly compressed timeline for this alleged process.

“An APPENDIX, which compleats the Lives of the first Volume, corrects some Mistakes; and contains the Tryal and Execution of the Pyrates at Providence; under Governor Rogers; with some other necessary Insertions, which did not come to Hand till after the Publication of the first Volume, and which makes up what was defective. Collected from Journals of Pyrates, brought away by a Person who was taken by, and forc’d to live with them 12 Years; and from those of Commanders, who had fallen into their Hands, some of whom have permitted their Names to be made use of, as a Proof of the Veracity of what we have published. The Whole instructive and entertaining.”

Here Johnson seems quite concerned with offering the documentary basis for his information. The sections that are presented as journals and accounts often have a preface where the purported author is writing to “Captain Johnson” stating that they’ve heard that he plans a second volume and therefore they are making bold to send him additional material to include.

The following bolded items in the table of contents relate to Bonny and Read in what appears to be a miscellaneous section that adds details to the biographies of individuals already covered previously. This section is not attributed to any specific contributor.

Rackham and Vane part, 281.
Rackham’s Ship taken, he and his Crew escape ashore, 283.
Rackham gets to Providence, and is allowed the Benefit of the King’s Pardon, 284.
Anne Bonny proposes to her Husband his selling her to Rackham, 286.
Rackham seizes a Sloop, 287.
He forces some of Turnley’s Men, 289
Governor Rogers his Sloops seized, 292
Turnley, &c. maroon’d, 294
Their Hardships, 295 to 303
The Pyrates catch a Tartar, 303
They are all taken, the forced Men sent to Providence, 304
Governor Rogers sends to fetch the maroon’d Men, 305
The Pyrates who escaped on Shore intrap’d by Governor Rogers 306 to 308.
Rounsival’s Generosity, 309.

The relevant part of the narrative starts when Rackham, who has been quartermaster on Vane’s ship takes charge of a newly acquired vessel as captain. The two then had a falling out and went separate ways. In volume 1 this is dated to late November 1718. Rackham and his crew decided to take advantage of Rogers’ pardon offer, but the negotiations fell through (possibly related to the fact that the original deadline for taking the King’s Pardon was September 5, 1718) and Rackham’s ship was seized with the crew escaping on shore. There had been two women on board who had been kidnapped in a previous interaction (which, the text notes, was against usual practice), but they were left on board when the pirates fled. (With this new information, we can eliminate the kidnapped women from our attempts to sort out the various numbers given for Rackham’s crew when later captured.) After being picked up by Vane, Rackham and his crew again determined to go to Providence to take advantage of the pardon, which was accomplished in May 1719. It was shortly after this that Rackham is said to have first encountered Anne Bonny, and here we begin quoting from the original text.

# # #

But Rackam, as Captain, having a much larger Share than any of the rest, his Money held out a little longer; but happening about this Time to come acquainted with Anne Bonny, that made him very extravagant. Anne Bonny, as has been taken Notice of in the first Volume, was married to James Bonny, one of the pardoned Pyrates, a likely young Fellow, and of a sober Life, considering he had been a Pyrate; but Anne, who was very young, soon turned a Libertine upon his Hands, so that he once surpriz’d her lying in a Hammock with another Man. Rackam made his Addresses to her till his Money was all spent; but as he found there was no carrying on an Amour with empty Pockets, he ingaged himself with Captain Burghess, lately a Pyrate, but pardoned, who had received a Commission to privateer upon the Spaniards. This Cruize proved successful; they took several Prizes, amongst the rest, two of considerable Value, one loaded with Cocoa Nut, and another with Sugar. They brought them into Providence, and found Purchasers amongst the Factors, who came from other Places for that Purpose. The Dividend was considerable, and as soon as possible disposed of: Burghess sailed out in Quest of new Purchase; but Rackam, who had nothing but Anne Bonny in his Head, staid behind to spend his Money, and enjoy his Mistress.

Rackam lived in all Manner of Luxury, spending his Money liberally upon Anne Bonny, who was so taken with his Generosity, that she had the Assurance to propose to her Husband to quit him, in order to cohabit with John Rackam; and that Rackam should give him a Sum of Money, in Consideration he should resign her to the said Rackam by a Writing in Form, and she even spoke to some Persons to witness the said Writing.

The Story made some Noise, so that the Governor hearing of it, sent for her and one Anne Fulworth, who came with her from Carolina, and pass’d for her Mother, and was privy to all her loose Behaviour, and examining them both upon it, and finding they could not deny it, he threaten’d if they proceeded further in it, to commit them both to Prison, and order them to be whipp’d, and that Rackam, himself, should be their Executioner.

These Menaces made her promise to be very good, to live with her Husband, and to keep loose Company no more; but all this was Dissimulation, for Rackam and she consulting together, and finding they could not by fair Means enjoy each other’s Company with Freedom, resolved to run away together, and enjoy it in Spight of all the World.

To this Purpose they plotted together to seize a Sloop which then lay in the Harbour, and Rackam drew some brisk young Fellows into the Conspiracy; they were of the Number of the Pyrates lately pardoned, and who, he knew, were weary of working on Shore, and long’d to be again at their old Trade.

The Sloop they made choice of was betwixt thirty and forty Tun, and one of the swiftest Sailors that ever was built of that Kind; she belong’d to one John Haman, who lived upon a little Island not far from Providence, which was inhabited by no humane Creature except himself and his Family, (for he had a Wife and Children) his Livelihood and constant Employment was to plunder and pillage the Spaniards, whose Sloops and Launces he had often surprized about Cuba and Hispaniola, and sometimes brought off a considerable Booty, always escaping by a good Pair of Heels, insomuch that it become a Bye-Word to say, There goes John Haman, catch him if you can. His Business to Providence now was to bring his Family there, in order to live and settle, being weary, perhaps, of living in that Solitude, or else apprehensive if any of the Spaniards should discover his Habitation, they might land, and be revenged of him for all his Pranks.

Anne Bonny was observed to go several times on Board this Sloop; she pretended to have some Business with John Haman, therefore she always went when he was on Shore, for her true Errand was to discover how many Hands were aboard, and what kind of Watch they kept, and to know the Passages and Ways of the Vessel.

She discovered as much as was necessary; she found there were but two Hands on Board; that John Haman lay on Shore every Night: She inquired of them, Whether they watch’d? Where they lay? And ask’d many other Questions; to all which they readily answered her, as thinking she had no Design but common Curiosity.

She acquainted Rackam with every Particular, who resolved to lose no Time, and therefore, acquainting his Associates, who were eight in Number, they appointed an Hour for meeting at Night, which was at twelve o’Clock. They were all true to the Roguery, and Anne Bonny was as punctual as the most resolute, and being all well armed, they took a Boat and rowed to the Sloop, which was very near the Shore.

The Night seemed to favour the Attempt, for it was both dark and rainy. As soon as they got on Board, Anne Bonny, having a drawn Sword in one Hand and a Pistol in the other, attended by one of the Men, went strait to the Cabin where the two Fellows lay who belonged to the Sloop; the Noise waked them, which she observing, swore, that if they pretended to resist, or make a Noise, she would blow out their Brains, (that was the Term she used.)

In the mean Time Rackam and the rest were busy heaving in the Cables, one of which they soon got up, and, for Expedition sake, they slipped the other, and so drove down the Harbour: They passed pretty near the Fort, which hailed them, as did also the Guardship, asking them where they were going; they answered, their Cable had parted, and that they had nothing but a Grappling on Board, which would not hold them. Immediately after which they put out a small Sail, just to give them steerage Way. When they came to the Harbour’s Mouth, and thought they could not be seen by any of the Ships, because of the Darkness of the Night, they hoisted all the Sail they had, and stood to Sea; then calling up the two Men, they asked them if they would be of their Party; but finding them not inclined, they gave them a Boat to row themselves ashore, ordering them to give their Service to Haman, and to tell him, they would send him his Sloop again when they had done with it.

Rackam and Anne Bonny, both bore a great Spleen to one Richard Turnley, whom Anne had ask’d to be a Witness to the Writing, which James Bonny, her Husband, was to give to Rackam, by which she was to be resigned to him; Turnley refused his Hand upon that Occasion, and was the Person who acquainted the Governor with the Story, for which they vowed Revenge against him. He was gone from Providence a turtling before they made their Escape, and they knowing what Island he was upon, made to the Place. They saw the Sloop about a League from the Shore a fishing, and went aboard with six Hands; but Turnley, with his Boy, by good Luck, happened to be ashore salting some wild Hogs they killed the Day before; they inquired for him, and hearing where he was, rowed ashore in Search of him.

Turnley from the Land saw the Sloop boarded, and observed the Men afterwards making for the Shore, and being apprehensive of Pyrates, which are very common in those Parts, he, with his Boy, fled into a neighbouring Wood. The Surf was very great, so that they could not bring the Boat to Shore; they waded up to the Arm-Pits, and Turnley, peeping through the Trees, saw them bring Arms on Shore: Upon the whole, not liking their Appearance, he, with his Boy, lay snug in the Bushes.

When they had looked about and could not see him, they hollow’d, and call’d him by his Name; but he not appearing, they thought it Time lost to look for him in such a Wilderness, and therefore they returned to their Boat, but rowed again back to the Sloop, and took away the Sails, and several other Things. They also carried away with them three of the Hands, viz. Richard Connor the Mate, John Davis, and John Howel, but rejected David Soward the fourth Hand, tho’ he had been an old experienced Pyrate, because he was lame, and disabled by a Wound he had formerly received.

When they had done thus much, they cut down the Main-Mast, and towing the Vessel into deep Water, sunk her, having first put David Soward into a Boat to shift for himself; he made Shift to get ashore, and after some Time, having found out Turnley, he told him, that Rackam and Mary Stead [Note: “Mary Stead” is clearly an error for Anne Bonny, but is what the original text has.] were determined, if they could have found him, to have whipp’d him to Death, as he heard them vow with many bitter Oaths and Imprecations; for whipping was the Punishment the Governor had threatened her with by his Information. From thence they stretch’d over to the Bury Islands, plundering all the Sloops they met, and strengthening their Company with several additional Hands, and so went on till they were taken and executed at Port Royal, as has been told in the first Volume.

# # #

There are no other references to Rackham, Bonny, or Read.

One major thing these additions do is to thoroughly undermine the idea that Bonny’s sex was unknown to the pirate community she moved in. She is openly living with Rackham as his lover, after what is claimed to be a notorious incident where she convinces him to “buy” her from her husband. She becomes pregnant with his child, and yet this must all be in the same timeframe as the supposed “plausibly deniable” sapphic encounter with Mary Read. To reiterate, based on the few specific dates given in the text, the following events must be compressed into the 16 months between May 1719 and September 1720, though it’s impossible to determine the exact sequence.

Rackham meets Anne while she is married to former pirate James Bonny and begins courting her.
Anne arranges for Rackham to “buy” her from her husband. One of the requested witnesses to this, Richard Turnley, reports the events to the Governor.
The Governor (Rogers?) condemns Anne’s loose morals and orders her to be whipped.
To avoid these consequences, Rackham and Anne steal a sloop belonging to John Haman.
Anne goes to sea with Rackham wearing men’s clothes.
Anne and Rackham go on a revenge quest against Turnley and destroy his boat but fail to achieve their goal of punishing him.
Mary joins Rackham’s crew, also in male disguise.
Anne makes a pass at the disguised Mary and they mutually reveal their sex.
Anne becomes pregnant with Rackham’s child, is left with friends in Cuba to bear the child, then rejoins Rackham.
Rackham takes the King’s Pardon, but after trying his hand at privateering returns to piracy.
Mary is attracted to one of the pirates, reveals herself to him, and they become lovers. She fights a duel on his behalf and becomes pregnant by him.

Other than trying to assemble a timeline that would account for all the reported events, there’s nothing new to comment on with regard to the plausibility of the General History account. The additional information entirely concerns the period when Anne is part of Rackham’s crew, therefore it doesn’t raise any new questions about information transmission or the lack of corroborating information in more reliable records. There is still the question of who was left alive to report the level of detail that is recorded. Some of the events involved people not involved in the piracy trials, but other details did not.

If Anne had a previous encounter with the law over her unruly sexual behavior, one might expect that to be brought up during her trial, but one could counter-argue that the trial was concerned specifically with piracy and had sufficient evidence to condemn her on that point, therefore there was no reason to bring in any prior record. There is an implication that the complaint and threat didn’t rise to the level of a formal legal action (that would leave a record), but in that case there would need to have been someone relaying the information to Johnson.

Neither of the described attacks on Haman or Turnley appear anywhere in the official trial report, but as noted previously, the trials appear to be concerned entirely with events in the September-October 1720 timeframe, therefore the absence of these two needn’t be meaningful.

So overall this material adds nothing to the previous analysis beyond additional contradictions to the logic of the narrative.

Conclusions

The point of this presentation of documents and analysis is two-fold: to lay out the basic case of distrusting the veracity of any information about Anne Bonny and Mary Read found only in the General History, and to point out the cultural context for the elements introduced by the General History. The “sapphic encounter” is almost the least of these. It is presented as a humorous mistaken identity scenario, experienced entirely through a heterosexual lens—consistent with similar pop culture narratives found in literature, ballads, and stage drama. While passing women stories were popular during this era—both authentic and fictionalized—the assertion in the General History that Anne and Mary successfully concealed their sex is consistently undermined by other information in the publication, and is completely contradicted by the evidence given in their trial. And yet, the motif of “lesbian Anne Bonny and Mary Read” seems to be the story that will not die.

Bibliography

(Anonymous). 1721. The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and Other Pirates. Jamaica; Robert Baldwin. (https://archive.org/details/the-tryals-of-captain-john-rackham)

Dekker, Rudolf M. and van de Pol, Lotte C. 1989. The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe. Macmillan, London. ISBN 0-333-41253-2 (For LHMP blog, see: https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/4358)

Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4 (For LHMP blog, see: https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/4359)

Dugaw, Dianne. 1989. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry 1650-1850. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-16916-2 (For LHMP blog, see: https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/4361)

Klein, Ula Lukszo. 2021. “Busty Buccaneers and Sapphic Swashbucklers” in Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843 edited by Misty Kreuger. Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press. (For LHMP blog, see: https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/6788)

Molenaar, Jillian. (Website accessed 2025/07/09) Depictions of John Rackam, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. (https://jillianmolenaar.home.blog/)

Walen, Denise A. 2005. Constructions of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6875-3 (For LHMP blog, see: https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/4373)

Time period:

Place:

Misc tags:

sexual/romantic desire

primary sources

Event / person:

Anne Bonny

Mary Read

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The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment IV

Monday, March 23, 2026 - 16:30

thetheoryof-600wide.jpeg

The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

by Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here.)

Contents

Part 2: Methodology

2.3 Data and Eligibility

2.3.1 Data Sources and Available Data

2.3.2 Eligibility Notes

Part 2: Methodology

2.3 Data and Eligibility

2.3.1 Data Sources and Available Data

Data Sources

This section documents the sources of the data used, the types of data available, and any administrative requirements that affected that availability, concluding with a discussion of how the available data determines the types of comparisons that will be made across the several identifiable “eras” of the award category.

Lists of Best Related Work nominees were taken from the official Hugo Award website (www.thehugoawards.org) and documents linked there. The documents at the Hugo Awards website are generally copies (either electronic or scanned) of reports released after the awards ceremony. Other than reports of Finalists and Winners, reports of this type may not have been created prior to the administrative requirement for reporting the Long List, and the type of data included on these reports is variable. The most complete possible data would be:

Total number of Hugo nominating ballots
For each Hugo category, the number of ballots including at least one nomination in that category
For each Hugo category, the number of different works nominated
The number of nominating ballots each work was included on
Any disqualifications, exclusions, or transfer of nominations to another category
The name/title of the work, the name(s) of the author(s) or creator(s), and in the case of published Books, the Publisher

After the application of the E Pluribus Hugo nomination processing system, the report also shows the calculation data that produces the “score” for determining Finalists.

From this, each work was then researched online to confirm the correct and complete title, author(s), and publication date, as well as to assign tags for the Media type and subject matter Categories of the work.[1] It is also noted if a nominee is part of an ongoing Series of some type, or is a repeat nominee with different content. Whenever possible, a URL link has been identified for reference purposes.[2]

The basic accuracy of the official Hugo Award website is assumed with regard to the nominee lists. Additional details including full titles and full credits have been researched in Wikipedia and archive.org, as well as sites relevant to the individual works.

A reasonable effort has been made to identify the gender of all authors and subjects, as reflected in public information. (See the section on Categorization Process in the chapter on Gender for details of this process.)

Ideally, individuals would also be tagged for nationality, ethnicity, or other identity factors, however as these cannot be consistently determined from publicly available data, the results would not be statistically meaningful.

History of the Administrative Reporting Requirements

While Finalist data is available for all years, the availability of additional nominee data is affected by changes in the reporting requirements for this data. In 1980 (Worldcon 38, Noreascon Two), when the Best Related category first appeared, it is coincidental that a new amendment appears in the business meeting minutes[3] requiring reporting of the final voting data (presumably rather than a simple report of the results). There is no reference to nomination data in this proposal and the existing constitution did not require reporting of extended nomination data. The requirement to report final voting data was ratified in 1981 (Worldcon 39, Denvention Two) and made part of the WSFS constitution.[4] The present study focuses on nomination data rather than the final voting process, therefore the voting data is not relevant here.

The 1994 (Worldcon 52, ConAdian) business meeting minutes[5] include the following proposed amendment affecting the available nomination data.

Release of Hugo Nomination Totals

MOVED, to add the following to the end of Section 2.9.4 of the WSFS Constitution: During the same period the nomination voting totals shall also be published, including in each category the vote counts for at least the 15 highest vote-getters and any other candidates receiving a number of votes equal to at least 5% of the nomination ballots cast in that category.

(submitted by Mark L. Olson, Rick Katze, Anthony Lewis, and Sharon Sbarsky)

(The rules now require the publication of the final-ballot Hugo voting counts. (It is not presently required that nomination totals be released, though it has become customary for Worldcons to release them.)[6] This motion would require that the nomination counts also be published, including runners-up down to 15th place or 5%, whichever represents fewer votes.)

After some debate regarding whether this requirement should be a resolution or an amendment, the original amendment passed its initial vote. The amendment was ratified at the 1995 (Worldcon 53, Intersection) business meeting.[7]

This requirement was therefore in place officially starting in 1996. Data consistent with this requirement is available at HugoAwards.org for 1996, not for 1997, then consistently thereafter starting in 1998.[8] Note that in years when data is available for both the total number of nominating ballots for Best Related and the number of nominations received by the 15th place nominee, the 15th place work always received fewer nominations than 5% of the total nominating ballots in the category, therefore it should never have been the case that additional nominees were listed below 15th place because they were on at least 5% of the nominating ballots. Additional nominees are sometimes listed, but not for this reason.

The approved version of the nominee reporting requirement is documented in the archived 1999 version of the WSFS constitution[9] which has the following text. (No archived business meeting documents are available for 1998.)

3.11.4: The complete numerical vote totals, including all preliminary tallies for first, second, ... places, shall be made public by the Worldcon Committee within ninety (90) days after the Worldcon. During the same period the nomination voting totals shall also be published, including in each category the vote counts for at least the fifteen highest vote-getters and any other candidate receiving a number of votes equal to at least five percent (5%) of the nomination ballots cast in that category.

The next change to relevant reporting requirements was proposed in the 2007 business meeting.[10] This involved some sort of change to the Long List of nominees, but the specific text is not included in the minutes that year. The amendment passed and was ratified in 2008 Worldcon 66, Denvention 3)[11] as follows (new text is underlined), becoming effective in 2009:

Moved, To amend section 3.11.4 of the Constitution by adding the following words to the end of Section 3.11.4: During the same period the nomination voting totals shall also be published, including in each category the vote counts for at least the fifteen highest vote-getters and any other candidate receiving a number of votes equal to at least five percent (5%) of the nomination ballots cast in that category, but not including any candidate receiving fewer than five (5) votes.[12]

For years when the full Long List nomination statistics are available, there appear to be only 2 years when the “not less than 5” rule would need to have been invoked. In 1998 (before the requirement of “at least 5 votes”), there was a tie for 11-14th place with 4 votes each and, as noted previously, the 15th ranked nominee (which presumably was a tie for items with 3 votes) was not listed. In 2007, the year the 5-vote restriction was first proposed, there was a tie for 15-19th place with 4 votes each.

Note that in 2007 a far more extensive Long List than usual was published. For Best Related, the list included every item receiving at least 2 votes. (Other categories reporting extended nominee lists that year had different minimums.) The data reporting for this year was unusual in other ways, in that it did not include nomination data for total ballots, ballots for each category, or distinct works in each category, which data had been fairly standard in the previous decade. This means it’s not possible to calculate how the more extensive Long List relates to the 5%-of-category cut-off.[13] The business meeting would have occurred prior to the nominee data being published, though the data reports were almost certainly prepared earlier. It seems likely that the extended nominee lists were related in some way to the debate over reporting requirements, but in that case, the omission of the category totals is baffling.

In 2009, the first year the revised reporting requirements were effective, there was also an unusually extensive Long List reported. All categories reported every nominee that received 5 or more nominations. For Best Related, this included works down to 25th place, which had 6 nominations.[14] The 5% cut-off that year would be 13 nominations. It isn’t clear whether this was a deliberate choice to publish non-required data using only the “at least 5 nominations” rule or whether it was a misreading of the requirements of the new rule.[15]

Changes to the nomination process under E Pluribus Hugo[16] affected data reporting primarily in that it functionally eliminated ties during the evaluation of nominees.[17] As noted previously, the two changes to the nomination process (6 rather than 5 Finalists and use of EPH) combined with the reporting requirements for nominees appears to have been generally interpreted as “Finalists plus 10 runners up,” i.e., a total of 16 works, however the occasional year reporting 15 items on the Long List may be following the letter of the requirement to report the top 15 items.

Timeline of the Available Data and the Effects of Reporting Requirements

Overall, here is the timeline of reporting requirements and actual available data, as it relates to the changes in the category name/scope. (The requirement for at least 5 votes isn’t included as it had no statutory effect on the data.)

1980-1995: Best Non-Fiction Book, only Finalists required to be reported
- Additional nominees reported in 1980 (10 total), 1989 (12 total), and 1993 (8 total) but otherwise only Finalists, which may be 5 or 6, presumably due to ties. (Actual nomination numbers are not consistently reported.)
1996-1997: Best Non-Fiction Book, Long List required to be reported
- Long List omitted in 1997, otherwise requirements are followed.
1998-2009: Best Related Book, Long List required to be reported
- Reporting as required with the following items noted:
  - 1998 only lists 14 items (see discussion above).
  - In 4 years, there was a tie involving 15th place and therefore more nominees were listed (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004).
  - 1999 16 nominees reported with no tie for 15th place, therefore this was not required.
  - 2002 17 nominees reported with a tie between 16 & 17, which should not have required this addition.
  - 2006 17 nominees reported with a tie between 16 & 17, which should not have required this addition.
  - 2007 All nominees with at least 2 votes reported for a total of 40 items.
  - 2009 All nominees with at least 5 votes reported for a total of 25 items.[18]
2010-2016: Best Related Work, Long List required to be reported
- 2 years involved a tie for 15th place (2011, 2013) and therefore listed more than 15 nominees.
- 2010 23 nominees listed with the lowest number of votes being 8. As the number of ballots for each category was not reported, the 5% threshold cannot be calculated. Votes for 15th place were 13. Therefore, it does not appear that this more extensive list was based on reporting requirements.
2017-Present: Best Related Work, EPH in effect
- Long List consists of either 15 or 16 items (see discussion above).

Reporting is more erratic for the total number of Hugo nominating ballots, the number of ballots including each specific category, and the number of distinct works nominated in each category. It isn’t clear that any of this data is required to be reported. The incompleteness of this data will be relevant when tracking certain trends in nomination data.[19]

Total nominating ballots is available for 4 of the Non-Fiction years (22%), 9 of the Related Book years (75%), and 8 of the Related Work years (50%).
Nominating ballots including Best Related works is available for 2 of the Non-Fiction years (11%), 11 of the Related Book years (92%), and 15 of the Related Work years (94%).
Number of distinct works for Best Related is available for 1 of the Non-Fiction years (6%), 9 of the Related Book years (75%), and 7 of the Related Work years (44%).
Overall, only 13 years (28%) report all 3 types of data.

Due to certain coincidences of timing regarding changes to the category and changes to reporting practices, we can conveniently group the data into the following comparison sets.

Best Non-Fiction Book

Finalist data is complete
Only minimal Long List data is available, therefore Long List data during this period will be considered anecdotally but not used for between-group comparisons.

Best Related Book

Finalist data is complete
Required Long List data (through #15) is functionally complete.
Additional, non-required data is available for several years but in most cases is equivalent to the number of required nominees in other years due to ties for #15.
One year is anomalous listing all 40 nominees with at least 2 votes while 20 nominees have 3 or more votes. One year lists all nominees with at least 5 votes. As the number of nominees receiving 3+ and 5+ votes respectively are roughly equivalent to the Long List size for years with large ties for #15, they will be included in Long List comparisons, with the remainder being analyzed anecdotally.

Best Related Work

Finalist data is complete
Required Long List data is complete
One year has additional non-required nominees, however the numbers are similar to those included in Long List sets under Best Related Book and will be included in group comparisons.

Comparison Sets

Therefore, the analysis will include the following:

Finalist data will be compared across all three eras.
Finalist + Long List data will be compared between Best Related Book and Best Related Work. This provides a useful comparison for the effects of the increased scope of formats.
Within the Related Book and Related Work eras, year-by-year differences in Finalist + Long List will be analyzed and compared to the overall group to identify any directional shifts.
Any year with an anomalously large data set will be compared to its truncated data set(s) to find anecdotal differences in content of the long tail.

2.3.2 Eligibility Notes

Eligibility Questions

Works that make the nomination cut-off for Finalist are evaluated to confirm that they meet eligibility requirements for release date, format, categorization, etc. Some aspects of this evaluation are clear-cut while others can be subjective. Works on the Long List that don’t make the Finalist cut-off are not necessarily evaluated for eligibility, although in some cases there are notes indicating a Long List work would not be eligible. Therefore, the two data sets (Finalists and cumulative Long List) answer slightly different questions. Finalist data tells us what eligible works have been nominated, but Long List data can tell us what the nominators think should be eligible, or perhaps what their impression of the category’s scope is without reference to the eligibility rules.

When a clearly ineligible work appears on the Long List, it could be a sign that nominators aren’t studying the eligibility requirements carefully, or that they are unaware of key information (such as publication date), but it could also indicate that nominators think the work should be recognized in some way regardless of whether it fits the eligibility requirements at the time.[20] This last motivation would be difficult to identify in the absence of documented discussions on the topic. Given that ambiguous works (especially during the Related Work era), when such discussions are well-documented, can show a conscious interest in exploring and stretching the boundaries of the category’s scope, it’s probably best to assume similar motivations in cases where the motivations aren’t well documented. For example, when works of Fiction or Fiction collections are nominated, it should be presumed that nominators considered the work to be significant for some other aspect. It can’t entirely be ruled out that there may have been organized bad-faith campaigns to nominate works that the nominators knew to be out of scope, yet nominated anyway. But this study gives the benefit of the doubt, given the regular appearance of clearly ambiguous works.

Eligibility in Multiple Years

That said, there are contexts in which apparent eligibility concerns can be explained. Works are sometimes nominated in more than one year, or in a different year than the year of creation, due to the allowance for extended eligibility or circumstances which allowed renewed eligibility.

If a new edition of a Book was published, the new edition might be nominated as a substantially new work. This is the case for the following works:

Anatomy of Wonder, Second Edition (Finalist in 1982), Anatomy of Wonder, Third Edition (Finalist in 1988).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, unnumbered 1st Edition (Finalist and Winner in 1994), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3rd Edition (Finalist and Winner in 2012)

Some works seem to appear twice based on a short version of the title, but on further examination this is due to different volumes of a multi-volume work being nominated.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1: (1907–1948): Learning Curve (Finalist in 2011) and Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better: 1948-1988 (Long List in 2015).
In 2024, nominations were received for both Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History vol. 3 (中国科幻口述史第三卷) (Long List), and Chinese SF: An Oral History vols. 2 & 3 (中国科幻口述史, 第二卷, 第三卷) (Finalist). The usual approach when both a work and its subset are nominated (which happens more often in the Graphic Work or Dramatic Presentation categories) is a process to transfer nominations to best reflect the overall intent of the nominators. In this case, the Hugo voting report notes that as the combined volumes 2 & 3 nomination made the Finalist list on its own, no nomination transfers were considered. (The prohibition on a work appearing more than once on the ballot was moot, as there were insufficient nominations for volume 3 alone to be considered as a Finalist.)

During the Related Work era, certain ongoing projects have been nominated in multiple years based on continually changing content, essentially functioning as a new edition. This is the case for the following works:

Writing Excuses, Podcast (Long List in 2010, Finalist in 2011, 2012, 2014, Finalist and Winner in 2013)
Archive of Our Own, Website (Long List in 2014, 2017, and 2018, Finalist and Winner in 2019)
FIYAHCON, Event (Finalist in 2021, Long List in 2022)

The question of whether the Archive of Our Own site was sufficiently different from year to year for re-nomination was discussed within the fannish community and raised some interesting philosophical issues. The fact that the site only made Finalist once, and then was not re-nominated after it won that year, has contributed to leaving these issues unresolved. The Event and Podcast nominees can more clearly be considered discrete works in different years. There have been other ongoing projects that could raise the same questions, such as The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction website, where the lack of multiple appearances has made the question moot.

Extended Eligibility

When a specific work is nominated in a year other than its official year of eligibility, it is typically the following year, either based on extended eligibility or possibly a mistaken assumption that eligibility would be extended. Eligibility may be extended if a work had limited availability in its release year, or specifically had limited availability to English-speaking readers in the USA.

While it’s common for Dramatic Presentations to have petitions for extended eligibility[21] it’s far less common for other types of works. Fictional works originally published in non-English languages have a different allowance for the year of first publication in English, due to the Anglocentric nature of the Worldcon nominators. Similarly, due to the USA-centric nature of the Worldcon nominators, there is an allowance to renew eligibility in the first year of USA publication for works originally published outside the USA.

The following shows the timeline that can explain dual appearances in adjacent years due to extension:

In Year X: work is released.
Early in Year X+1: nominations are made for year X.
Summer of Year X+1: petition is submitted to the business meeting and approved for extended eligibility by 2/3 of the business meeting.
Early Year X+2: nominations are made for year X+1 and works with extended eligibility are included in consideration.[22]

One exception to these allowances is that if a work was a Finalist in a previous year, it cannot receive extended eligibility regardless of other considerations.[23]

Extension of eligibility may be documented in the Business Meeting minutes (if voted on) or may be determined by the Hugo administrators and documented in the Hugo voting report (if procedural), but this latter isn’t always explicitly stated. In some cases, no written documentation for an apparent extension could be identified.

One work was nominated early (i.e., nominated in the same year as creation rather than nominated in the following year) as well as being nominated in its eligible year.

The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion, (published in 2024 in which year it was declared ineligible for the Long List, Finalist in 2025).

A somewhat unusual case is a work nominated in translation after its original publication date, but as the original publication was English/USA, the translation did not get extended eligibility.

The Art of Ghost of Tsushima, original English publication in 2020, Chinese translation published in 2022 (nominated in 2023, but deemed ineligible due to the prior publication, per the Hugo voting report).[24]

The following works appear as nominees in the year after the eligible year (i.e., 2 years after publication) and there is specific documentation that eligibility was extended.

The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, published in the UK in 2003 (Long List in 2004, Finalist and Winner in 2005 based on extended eligibility, per the author).
The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod, published in the UK in 2003, extended eligibility in 2004 based on the USA publication date, per the Business Meeting minutes. (Long List in 2003 and 2004.)
Up Through an Empty House of Stars, published in the UK in 2003 (Long List in 2004, extended eligibility in 2005 based on initial non-USA publication, per the Business Meeting minutes, when it also made the Long List).
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, film, released in 2018 (Long List in 2019, given extended eligibility due to limited release in 2020, per the Business Meeting minutes, when it was a Finalist).

The following works appear as nominees for the year after the eligible year (i.e., 2 years after publication) and may have been given extended eligibility but there is no documentation to that effect.[25]

Algernon, Charlie and I: A Writer's Journey, has a copyright date of 1999, appears on the Long List in 2001 with no commentary. It appears that the original publication in 1999 was by Challcrest Press Books, which may have been determined to have low enough distribution to allow for extended eligibility.[26] It was republished in 2000 by an imprint of Harcourt Books.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, published in 2000 (Long List in 2001 the year of official eligibility, Finalist in 2002). Presumably there was extended eligibility but no documentation of this was identified as the Business Meeting minutes for 2001 are not available. The work was published by HarperCollins and won 2001 World Fantasy and Mythopoeic awards, which would seem to suggest that limited distribution was not an issue. The reason for it not being disqualified is a mystery.
The Arrival, published (in Australia) in 2006 (Long List in 2007, Finalist in 2008). This would automatically be eligible for extension due to the initial publication being outside the USA, but there is no specific documentation of this.
The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, published in 2008 (Long List in 2009 and 2010). It was published by Wesleyan University Press, a US company, but may have been considered to have had limited distribution. There is no specific documentation of extended eligibility.

Extended eligibility is not always documented even when it appears to have been granted. However, in some cases a lack of extended eligibility is specifically documented, as for the following.

The Way the Future Was: A Memoir, published in 1978, (would have been on the Long List in 1980 but noted as ineligible, per the Hugo voting report, due to the publication date).
Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, published in 1987 (would have been on the Long List in 1989 but noted as ineligible due to the publication date, per the Hugo voting report).
Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, published in 2005 (listed among the extended list of nominees in 2007 with the publication date called out, but it would not have been on an official Long List). It’s unclear whether the note highlighting the publication date was intended to be understood as an ineligibility comment.
The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren of Voltaire, published in 2010 (would have been a Finalist in 2012 but noted as ineligible in the Hugo voting report due to publication date).

Extended eligibility is excluded if a work has been a Finalist in its official year of eligibility. That’s the situation for the following, though the notes on ineligibility do not mention the prior Finalist status.

Imagination: The Art & Technique of David A. Cherry, published in 1987 (Finalist in 1988, Long List in 1989 but noted as ineligible in the Hugo voting report).

It is much rarer for a work to be nominated later than the year after official eligibility, however the following item appears in the data set.

Greetings From Lake Wu, published with very limited distribution in 2003 (appears in the extended list of nominees in 2007 with the publication date noted but it would not have been on an official Long List, therefore there is no reason why it would have been vetted for publication date).[27]

Other Disqualifiations

There are several other reasons why nominated works might be disqualified. The following additional works have disqualification reasons listed.

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (would have been a Finalist in 1989 but the Hugo voting report notes it as “ineligible - withdrawn” with no reason given).
Visions in Light and Shadow (would have been on the Long List in 2001). There is no ruling in the Hugo voting results regarding eligibility, presumably because it didn’t meet the threshold for Finalist, but this is a collection of short Fiction and therefore should not be eligible.
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XVII (would have been a Finalist in 2002 but ruled ineligible as it is classified as Fiction and does not meet the requirement for being notable for some other reason).
The Return of the Black Widowers (Long List in 2004 but ruled ineligible, per the Hugo voting report, as it is a collection of Fiction).
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: The First 25 Years (would have been on the Long List for 2011). There is no specific note in the Hugo voting results regarding disqualification, presumably because it didn’t meet the threshold for Finalist, but the same ruling as the previous would apply.
20 世纪中国科幻⼩说史 (Er Shi Shi Ji Zhong Guo Ke Huan Xiao Shuo Shi) / History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century (would have been a Finalist in 2023 but ruled ineligible due to conflict of interest as one of the authors was on the Hugo subcommittee that year).

Eligibility and the Data Analysis

Voluntary withdrawals have not been counted as disqualification and are not reported specifically as they do not speak to nomination patterns and the reason for withdrawal may not be known.

All works included in the nomination reports are included in the topical data analysis for Long List and full data sets, regardless of eligibility rulings or withdrawals, as they speak to patterns of nomination and the nominators’ intent.

[1]. Personal note: All coding regarding format, genre/nature, and subject are from my own analysis and any errors or misinterpretations are my responsibility.

[2]. Permanence of the links cannot be guaranteed. In order of priority, links refer to the work itself (in the case of online publications), a listing for the work by the author or publisher, a copy of the work at archive.org, or a listing for the work at a reference site such as Wikipedia, Goodreads, or The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (isfdb.org).

[3]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-38-1980/ accessed 2025/08/25.

[4]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-39-1981/, accessed 2025/08/25.

[5]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-52-1994/, accessed 2025/08/25.

[6]. It isn’t clear from the materials at the HugoAward.org website that this was actually the case, unless the nomination data was being released but was not available to the compilers of the website. For Best Related, prior to 1994, non-Finalist nomination data is only available on the website for 1980 and 1989.

[7]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-53-1995/, accessed 2025/08/25.

[8]. The 1998 data lists only 14 nominees, however #14 received 4 nominations. It is possible that the rule was interpreted in a way that excluded the next tier (items receiving 3 nominations) due to exceeding 15 items, but this is entirely speculation. In general, ties for 15th place result in listing all tied items.

[9]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-57-1999/; accessed 2025/06/19.

[10]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-of-wsfs-rules/wsfs-rules-as-of-worldcon-65-2007/; accessed 2025/08/26.

[11]. See: https://www.wsfs.org/rules-of-the-world-science-fiction-society/archive-... accessed 2025/06/19.

[12]. Commentary in the meeting minutes indicates that reporting nominees with fewer than 5 nominations is not forbidden but is not mandatory.

[13]. The 5% cutoff in the several years before and after 2007 ran around 8-13 nominations, therefore it is highly unlikely that the extended list was based on a 5% rule.

[14]. Possibly no work had exactly 5 nominations.

[15]. For anyone wanting to study typical nomination distribution patterns, the 2007 and 2009 data sets provide a wealth of data beyond the typical.

[16]. See the Administrative History section under Changes to the Nomination Process.

[17]. It’s still theoretically possible to have a tie between works at any stage in the process, but mathematically it is far less likely to happen due to the nature of the calculations.

[18]. As a result of all these exceptions, in the 12 years of this group, only 2 years reported exactly 15 Long List nominees.

[19]. See the section on Historic Trends under Basic Nomination Data.

[20] The non-trivial number of nominations required to make the Long List means that presence on that list indicates more than an individual nominator oversight or error.

[21]. This is particularly relevant due to the rationale behind limited release of some works just before the end of the year.

[22]. Note that the timing requires that a request for extension be submitted at a time when full nomination statistics are not yet released.

[23]. The requirement for business meeting approval also functions as a gate for evaluating whether a work has had fair consideration. There was a case where an extended eligibility request for a Dramatic Presentation (Godzilla Minus One) had been approved, but then after the full nomination statistics were available and it was observed that the work had come very close to making the Finalist list, the decision was reversed on the basis that clearly it had been fairly considered in its first year.

[24]. This example points out the biases inherent in the procedural extension allowances. In 2023, a substantial proportion of the nominating body were Chinese nationals, due to the location of Worldcon that year, and might not have had access to the prior English-language publication. There is an argument to be made for updating such allowances based on an increasingly more international Worldcon membership, and this is a topic under community discussion.

[25] For works that were not Finalists, it’s possible that no evaluation was made for extended eligibility.

[26]. An online search for Challcrest Press Books does not turn up any other titles associated with this press, suggesting it may have been a self-publishing imprint for this one work.

[27] The stimulus for this delayed nomination in 2007 appears to have been re-publication of the book in a deluxe signed and numbered edition from Traife Buffet in 2006. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Lake)

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Analyzing Anne Bonny's Timeline

Sunday, March 22, 2026 - 08:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Even more than Mary Read's "origin story," the backstory given for Anne Bonny's birth is complicated, farcical, and implausible. Similarly to Read, she is given an excuse for later cross-dressing in having been disguised as a boy at an early age. (This motif shows up in other cross-dressing biographies and is a way of absolving the woman of deliberate gender transgression. But the details of Anne's pirate career include massive contradictions, especially around her gender presentation and the timelines of her supposed pregnancy(s). I mean, if your pirate boyfriend drops you off in Cuba to give birth to his baby, doesn't that rather imply that the entire crew would know you were a woman? Anyway...

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LHMP #547g Johnson 1724 A General History of the Pyrates Part 7