Hugo: Best Fanzine

George R. R. Martin just endorsed Pat's Fantasy Hotlist for the Hugo Best Fanzine category and I'll agree with Martin that the days of the ditto and hekto are gone and one of the grassroots projects that have taken their place today are the webzines.

Now for me, there are two kinds of webzines. The first is actually similar to the magazine format except that it's on the web. I'm not exactly sure if The Green Man Review qualifies as a fanzine, but that's one example of that model. The other is that of the webzine blog, which is what Martin cited when he recommended Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. There's a lot of these going around and Grasping the Wind's book reviewers meme is an example of this new phenomenon.

While the Best Fanzine category might be the closest applicable category to recognize the webzines, the Hugo's criteria for what constitutes a Best Fanzine doesn't really applies to the blogs. For example, it mentions that the fanzine must have at least four issues but what constitutes an issue? A week's worth of blog entries (and if so, what's the minimum number of posts?). I'm not saying that Pat's Fantasy Hotlist shouldn't qualify (and I think he's been posting consistently enough that frequency isn't an issue) but I think there should be concrete standards so that everyone, whether you're a new or old blogger, knows how to meet the qualifications.

Of course if Martin is just going to recommend such sites as eligible, my current favorites are The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. and Ecstatic Days.