Glasgow 2024 Opens Nominations for the 2024 Hugo Awards

Glasgow 2024 today opened nominations for the 2024 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The nomination period will close on Saturday, March 9, at 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time.
 
Glasgow 2024 will administer the eighteen Hugo Award categories specified in the WSFS Constitution. This will include the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work, which is being presented for the first time this year. (A category of Best Video Game was previously presented in 2021 on a trial basis). Glasgow 2024 will also administer the ballots for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented by Dell Magazines. There will be no special category Hugo Award in 2024.
 
Nominations can be submitted by all individuals who hold WSFS Memberships in either the 2023 (Chengdu) or 2024 (Glasgow) Worldcons as of 11.59 p.m. Glasgow time on January 31, 2024. To facilitate the participation of 2023 Worldcon members, many of who are Chinese-language speakers, the committee will be making the nominating ballot available in Chinese as well as English.
 
More information about the Hugo Awards, including full instructions on how to complete and submit a nominating ballot can be found on the Glasgow 2024 website. They have also provided a PDF version of the paper nominating ballot which can be downloaded by members who prefer to submit their nominations by postal mail. All ballots, whether submitted electronically or by postal mail, must be received by the deadline of 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time on Saturday, March 9, 2024.
 
Instructions have also been sent to all eligible WSFS Members by email, using the email address associated with their membership. They encourage members to check their junk/spam/promotions folders for this email if they do not appear to have received it. Voter notification messages may be flagged as spam by some email systems. Worldcon members who are uncertain of their status or who experience problems with the online nominating form should contact the committee at [email protected].

The committee’s press release states:

The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We encourage all eligible members to nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favourites from 2023. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations. At that time we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.

It will be interesting to learn whether this satisfies the call from John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Ann Leckie, and many others for Glasgow to make a statement about the integrity of the process. [Update: Neil Gaiman said of the same announcement on Bluesky, “This whole thread is reassuring. It needed to be said.” John Scalzi has written a post supporting the statement.]
 
While members of both the 2023 and 2024 Worldcons can nominate for the 2024 Awards, only members of the 2024 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot. If you are not yet a member of Glasgow 2024, see the convention’s Membership Page for information about joining.
 
Any questions about the administration of the 2024 Hugo Awards should be directed to [email protected].

[Based on a press release.]

In Case You Were Curious: Checking the Redacted 2023 Hugo Ballot

Vincent Villafranca casting the 2013 Hugo Award base.

TL;DR SUMMARY: The differences between the redacted and the final 2023 Hugo ballots involved three items and were due to rules applications as explained in the 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report.

The “ineligibles” were not on the redacted ballot, either. If you don’t know what the redacted ballot was, keep reading.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. Last July 2 the Chengdu Worldcon released a version of the Hugo final ballot, then within hours took it offline and asked news outlets to remove it. File 770 honored the request (see “2023 Hugo Finalists [Redacted]” – which reported what happened, but you won’t find the old list there).

Committee member Helen Montgomery explained at the time, “Official statement is that the list was posted in error by IT as part of their set up / testing process, but it is an earlier version of the ballot and is not correct.”

On July 6 the corrected ballot was posted: “2023 Hugo Finalists”.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE REDACTED VERSION? The redacted version still included three items that should have been adjudicated off the ballot under Rule 3.8.3 or for another technical reason (as discussed in “2023 Hugo Nomination Report Has Unexplained Ineligibility Rulings; Also Reveals Who Declined”).

Rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to which ever got the most nominating votes.

WERE THE INELIGIBLES ON THE OLD BALLOT? No, the “ineligibles” – R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, Neil Gaiman’s series Sandman and one of the episodes, fan writer Paul Weimer, and author Xiran Jay Zhao (in their second year of Astounding Award eligibility) – were not on the redacted ballot, either.

DETAILED COMPARISON.

Best Novel – same finalists

Best Novella – same finalists

Best Novelette – same finalists; a comma typo corrected on final

Best Short Story – same finalists

Best Series – same finalists

Best Graphic Story or Comic – same finalists

Best Related Work

ON REDACTED (Item published in 2020.)

  • THE ART OF GHOST OF TSUSHIMA, Sucker Punch Productions|对马岛之魂艺术设定集 突袭游戏工作室|海南出版社

ON FINAL

  • Buffalito World Outreach Project, by Lawrence M. Schoen (Paper Golem LLC)

Best Dramatic – Long Form

ON REDACTED (Rule 3.8.3)

  • Andor (Season 1) Directed by Toby Haynes, Susanna White, Ben Caron|安多(第一季) 导演:托比•海恩斯、苏珊娜•怀特、本•卡隆|

ON FINAL

  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, screenplay by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, directed by Ryan Coogler (Marvel Studios)

Best Dramatic – Short Form

ON REDACTED (Rule 3.8.3)

  • Severence, S1.E9, The We We Are, Writtten by Dan Erickson, Anna Ouyang Moench Directed by Ben Stiller|人生切割术(第一季第九集): 编剧:丹•埃里克森、安娜•欧阳•莫恩奇 导演:本•斯蒂勒

ON FINAL

  • She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: “Whose Show is This?”, written by Jessica Gao, Francesca Gailes, and Jacqueline Gailes, directed by Kat Coiro (Marvel Entertainment)

Best Editor – Long Form – same finalists, order of Chinese names was changed (e.g. from Yao Haijun to Haijun Yao)

Best Editor – Short Form – same finalists, order of Chinese names was changed

Best Professional Artist – same finalists

Best Fanzine – same finalists; (And Journey Planet had 15 team members listed on both versions.)

Best Fancast – same finalists

Best Fan Writer – same finalists (including same typo in “Bitter Karelia”)

Best Fan Artist – same finalists

Lodestar Award – same finalists

Astounding Award – same finalists, order of the Chinese names was changed

Chengdu Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty Fields Questions on Facebook

Dave McCarty’s Facebook page is where some are trying – without success – to get full explanations for the ineligibility rulings in the 2023 Hugo Nomination Report released on January 20.

McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, previously gave File 770 this reason for ruling R. F. Kuang’s Babel, fan writer Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman tv series, and second-year Astounding Award nominee Xiran Jay Zhao as “not eligible”:

After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.

People have been trying to pry more information out of McCarty in a prodigious exchange on his Facebook page. Initially he referred them to the original reply above. And slapped back at one fellow who persisted in questioning with “Asked and answered.” Then, when that didn’t silence the questioner:

And

Clearly, Joseph Finn isn’t Tom Cruise, and Dave McCarty isn’t Jack Nicholson.

Yet it’s an innate part of human psychology to want to be understood and accepted by other people. The need is so strong that even the formidable McCarty had to make some effort to answer this question.

Neil Gaiman has been quite upset about what is essentially a Catch-22 explanation – the Sandman series was a Rule 3.8.3 casualty, but the individual episode that triggered the rule was also tossed as “not eligible”.  Earlier today he had this exchange:

Silvia Moreno-Garcia replied:

When Jon Nepsha tried to lay some guilt on McCarty his friend Tammy Coxen stepped in with a heavy hint that there’s a more noble explanation, it’s just not being said out loud.

But McCarty himself has taken the opposite tack by defending the adequacy of the report.

2023 Hugo Nomination Report Has Unexplained Ineligibility Rulings; Also Reveals Who Declined

The 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report posted today on the official Hugo Awards website revealed that the Chengdu Worldcon’s Hugo award subcommittee made many startling and sometimes unexplained rulings.

R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, winner of the 2023 Nebula and Locus Awards, was ruled “not eligible” without explanation, even though it had the third most nominations. The EPH point calculation used to determine the Hugo finalists shows the count for Babel was stopped in the first round, and it accrued no more points when other works were eliminated in the automatic runoff.

(The Google Translate rendering of the Chinese is “Not eligible for nomination.”)

Paul Weimer was another “not eligible” kept off the ballot without explanation, despite having been a Best Fan Writer finalist for the past three years. Weimer had the third most nominating votes this year – and in that category the EPH calculation was completed, showing he ended up with the second highest point-count.

A third such “not eligible” was Xiran Jay Zhao, ruled out of the Astounding Award. As noted here in a comment on the announcement post, it should be impossible for a first-year-of-eligibility Astounding Award finalist to be ineligible the following year unless either they already won the award or the original Hugo committee (Chicon 8) erred in their eligibility determination.

And episode 6 of Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman (“The Sound of Her Wings”) was labeled “not eligible” without explanation, while the series itself was disqualified from Best Dramatic – Long Form under Rule 3.8.3. The WSFS Constitution’s rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to whichever gets the most nominating votes. Once the episode was removed there was no longer a rule 3.8.3 conflict. Keeping Neil Gaiman’s work off the ballot entirely was the result, however explained.

File 770 asked Dave McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, the reason for these “not eligible” rulings. He replied:

After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.

File 770 then asked Kevin Standlee, among the best-known interpreters of the WSFS Constitution, what rules there could be in addition to the Constitution. Standlee pointed me to his article posted today, “Elections Have Consequences”.

…An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions….

…When it comes to local law, this could end up applying anywhere. Here’s an example I can use because as far as I know, there are no Worldcon bids for Florida at this time. Imagine a Worldcon held in Florida. It would be subject to US and Florida law (and any smaller government subdivision). Given legislation passed by Florida, it would not surprise me if such a hypothetical Florida Worldcon’s Hugo Administration Subcommittee would disqualify any work with LGBTQ+ content, any work with an LGBTQ+ author, or any LGBTQ+ individual, because the state has declared them all illegal under things like their “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws and related legislation….

Fans are clearly expected to infer these Hugo eligibility decisions were made to comply with Chinese rules or authority, but no one is saying what Chinese rules the Hugo subcommittee was operating under, unlike Standlee’s hypothetical which is based on Florida laws and policies that can actually be pointed to. Another unaddressed question is whether the administrators made these decisions on their own, voluntarily, because they were afraid not to disqualify certain people, or because they were told by someone in authority that’s what they should do.

Paul Weimer has written a response to being ruled ineligible on his Patreon – “Chengdu, I want some answers. Dave McCarty, I want an explanation. I am owed one.”

OTHER RULINGS. In a few cases, the report explains an item’s ineligibility in a footnote.

Best Related WorkThe History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century was disqualified because one of the authors was on the Hugo subcommittee. 

The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was first published in 2020.

Best Dramatic Presentation – Long FormAndor (Season 1) and Sandman – Rule 3.8.3 (knocked off the ballot because individual episodes got more votes in the Short Form category)

(And yet down below the individual episode of Sandman was knocked off the ballot as an unexplained “not eligible.” What kind of Catch-22 is that?)

Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form – The Severance episode was a Rule 3.8.3 disqualification going the other direction (the series made the ballot).

The Deep. — Deep Sea, which is the Chinese translation given in the report, is said in a Chinese footnote to have been “published years ago.” (Alternatively, this could refer to the animated movie Deep Sea, whose release date per IMDB was 2023, later than the eligibility period.)

In one case it is possible to deduce the likely reason for the “not eligible” ruling though not explicitly said in the report.

Novelette – “Color the World” by Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu was first published in 2019 (see “Stories 小说 – Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu”).

But it is not explained why Hai Ya’s “Fogong Temple Pagoda” was ineligible for Best Short Story, although the problem must not have been with the author because his “Space-Time Painter” won the Best Novella Hugo.

DECLINED NOMINATIONS. S. B. Divya’s public announcement about declining two Hugo nominations encouraged speculation at the time that many more people were following suit as a political protest. In fact there were not that many refusals, and it’s not demonstrable that any of the others were protests.

Who declined?

Becky Chambers — (Novella – “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”)

S. B. Divya — (Novelette “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”; also removed her name from the list of Hugo-nominated semiprozine Escape Pod’s team members. See “Why S. B. Divya Declined Two Hugo Nominations”.)

Prey – (film – from Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form)

Guo Jian – (from Best Professional Artist)

CUI BONO. Who got on because people declined?

Novella Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire – which went on to win the Best Novella Hugo.

Novelette – “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S. L. Huang

Best Professional Artist – Zhang Jian

Who got on where works or people were declared “not eligible” for one reason or another?

Best NovelThe Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Best Novelette – “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu

Best Short Story – “Resurrection” by Ren Qing

Best Related WorkThe Ghost of Workshops Past by S.L. Huang and Buffalito World Outreach Project by Lawrence M. Schoen

Best Dramatic PresentationAvatar: Way of Water; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Severance (season 1)

Best Fan Writer — HeavenDule

ERROR WILL BE CORRECTED. In the Best Novelette category “Turing Food Court” appears on two different lines of the report. Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty explained, “It 100% is a copy/paste error that I missed in the dozens of back and forths between me and the Chinese folks handling translations.”

UPDATE 01/20/2024. The amended report is now up. Here is the corrected Novelette page. (Thanks to Mr. Octopus for the story.)


Update 01/28/2024: Added a paragraph to make the ineligibility of Neil Gaiman’s works part of the lede. That had only been discussed in the category analyses.

Chengdu Worldcon Releases 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics

The official Hugo Awards website posted the 2023 Hugo nomination voting statistics today.  

Detailed statistics for the nominating and final ballots are available in the 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final PDF file.

The document includes several unexplained rulings by the Hugo Administrator that works like R.F. Kuang’s Babel or people like fan writer Paul Weimer, who otherwise would have made the final ballot, were “not eligible”.

2024 Recommended SF/F List

Baldura. Photo by Bruce D. Arthurs.

This thread is for posts about 2024-published works, which people have read and recommend to other Filers.

There will be no tallying of recommendations done in this thread; its purpose is to provide a source of recommendations for people who want to find something to read which will be eligible for the Hugos or other awards (Nebula, Locus, Asimov’s, etc.) next year.

If you’re recommending for an award other than / in addition to the Hugo Awards which has different categories than the Hugos (such as Locus Awards’ First Novel), then be sure to specify the award and category.

You don’t have to stop recommending works in Pixel Scrolls, please don’t! But it would be nice if you also post here, to capture the information for other readers.

The Suggested Format for posts is:

  • Title, Author, Published by / Published in (Anthology, Collection, Website, or Magazine + Issue)
  • Hugo or other Award Category: (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Graphic Novel, Lodestar, Astounding, etc)
  • link (if available to read/view online)
  • optional “Brief, spoiler-free description of story premise:”
  • “What I liked / didn’t like about it:”
  • (Please rot-13 any spoilers.)

There is a permalink to this thread in the blog header.

[Based on a post by JJ.]

Inside the 2023 Hugo Finalist Voting Statistics

1953: The first Hugo Award

The 2023 Hugo Finalist Voting statistics were released today by the Chengdu Worldcon committee. The nominating ballot numbers will follow later. Here are some of the stories to be told from those figures.

VOTER TURNOUT. There were 1,674 valid ballots cast, the lowest number in the past decade, and over 500 fewer final ballots cast than in 2022.

And although over the past ten years the number of final Hugo ballots cast has far exceeded the amount of nominating ballots in every year except 2016, Chengdu’s turnout for the nominating vote was 1,847, meaning participation diminished in the final round. This is, in hindsight, certainly unexpected after the record-smashing attendance at the Chengdu Worldcon.

BEST NOVEL. The winner, Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, ran away with the category. It began with 252 more first-place votes than the eventual runner-up, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It clinched a win in the fifth round of the automatic runoff, finishing 348 votes ahead.

DOMINATING WINS. Although in 2023 a category could have as many as six runoff rounds if the result remained in doubt ’til the end, three Hugos were decided in the first round.

Samantha Mills’ “Rabbit Test” registered a first round majority win in the Best Short Story category. So did Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday) in the Best Related Work category. And Enze Zhao in Best Professional Artist did likewise.

Almost half the categories had decided favorites, with only three needing to go the distance. Here are the number of runoff rounds required to determine the winners in each category:

  • One – Best Short Story, Best Related Work, Best Professional Artist
  • Two – Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form, Best Fancast, Astounding Award
  • Three – Best Graphic Story, Best Editor – Short Form
  • Four – Best Series, Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form
  • Five – Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Editor – Long Form, Best Fan Artist, Lodestar
  • Six – Best Novelette, Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine, Best Fan Writer

CLOSE CALLS. There were, nevertheless, three tightly-contested races.

Chris Barkley won the Best Fan Writer Hugo over RiverFlow by a single vote. After the fifth round of the runoff, when Arthur Liu with 139 votes was eliminated, 103 of his votes went to RiverFlow and 17 went to Barkley, with the remaining 19 having no further preference recorded.

Hugo finalists Arthur Liu and RiverFlow, File 770 contributor SanFeng aka Feng Zhang.

Best Fanzine winner Zero Gravity Newspaper finished eight votes ahead of Journey Planet. Interestingly, when Nerds of a Feather was eliminated after the fifth round it had 128 votes, but 42 of those votes had no further preference. The rest of its votes went to the remaining pair of finalists, Zero Gravity Newspaper getting 21 while Journey Planet inherited 65. Makes you wonder how it would have played out if more Nerds backers had an opinion about the other finalists.

In the other close call, Uncanny won the Best Semiprozine race by 18 votes after trailing Strange Horizons in every previous round. Both finalists picked up votes when FIYAH was eliminated, with Uncanny getting 49 and Strange Horizons 28, which made the difference.

ENDNOTE. As the Hugo Book Club Blog noted, none of the categories was in jeopardy of being cancelled under the 25% rule (see “Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal”.)

2023 Hugo Finalist Voting Statistics Posted

The 2023 Hugo Awards were presented October 21 during a ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon. Today the committee released the voting statistics for the finalists, which show how the winners were determined.  The report is available here: https://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/2023-Hugo-Awards-Stats.pdf.

Still due to be released are the voting figures from the nominating ballots.  Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty wrote on Facebook, “We will definitely have them out before the deadline of 90 days post convention, but right now ‘No, I don’t have an expected release date.’’”

Two 2023 Fan Hugo Winners Say One Will Be Enough

Two first-time fan Hugo winners honored at the Chengdu Worldcon have permanently recused themselves from future consideration.

Best Fancast winner Hugo, Girl! told readers:

And Chris M. Barkley said in his Best Fan Writer acceptance speech:

For more examples of fans who have, in recent years, recused themselves temporarily or permanently from Hugo contention, read here.

2023 Hugo Award Winners

The 2023 Hugo Awards were presented October 21 during a ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon.

BEST NOVEL

  • Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)

BEST NOVELLA

  • Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

BEST NOVELETTE

  •  “The Space-Time Painter”, by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)

BEST SERIES

  • Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY OR COMIC

  • Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski (Dark Horse Books)

BEST RELATED WORK

  • Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

  • Everything Everywhere All at Once, screenplay by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert (IAC Films / Gozie AGBO)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

  • The Expanse: “Babylon’s Ashes”, written by Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner (Alcon Entertainment)

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

  • Neil Clarke

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

  • Lindsey Hall

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

  • Enzhe Zhao

BEST SEMIPROZINE

  • Uncanny Magazine, publishers and editors-in-chief: Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; managing/poetry editor Chimedum Ohaegbu; managing editor Monte Lin; nonfiction editor Meg Elison; podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

BEST FANZINE

  • Zero Gravity Newspaper, by RiverFlow and Ling Shizhen

BEST FANCAST

  • Hugo, Girl!, by Haley Zapal, Amy Salley, Lori Anderson, and Kevin Anderson

BEST FAN WRITER

  • Chris M. Barkley  

BEST FAN ARTIST

  • Richard Man

LODESTAR AWARD FOR BEST YOUNG ADULT  BOOK

  • Akata Woman (The Nsibidi Scripts), by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)

ASTOUNDING AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER

  • Travis Baldree  

Also presented during the ceremony.

BIG HEART AWARD

  • Bobbi Armbruster

[Thanks to Nicholas Whyte for livetweeting the results.]