Pixel Scroll 12/19/21 Who Put The Clarke In The Rama Lama File Scroll?

(1) THE HUGO RUNOFFS. The Hugo Awards official site has the 2021 voting results online. (But you already know that, right?)

  • Final ballot placements and detailed voting counts are available here (PDF).
  • Nominating details are here (PDF).

(2) CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS. Nicholas Whyte’s “2021 Hugos in detail” gives his analysis of the voting statistics released after last night’s ceremony. Here’s a narrative hook for you –

Four categories saw the total number of votes for finalists other than No Award dip below 30% of the total poll – Best Fan Writer (28.8%), Best Professional Editor (Long Form) (28.2%), Best Fanzine (27.2%), and Best Fancast (26.8%). Best Fancast was within 43 votes of not being awarded at all, due to dropping below the 25% threshold….

His comments on the Best Related Work category include:

Unusually, DisCon 3 published No Award runoff figures for every place in every category (the constitution only specifies that this should be done in determining the winner). The numbers for No Award here were particularly high in the last four places, with 358 preferring No Award to 753 who preferred George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun….

Pat Cadigan shared her opinion of the result in that category with her Facebook readers.  

Also relieved that the tirade against George RR Martin did not win the Hugo. I am still baffled as to how a screed like that could have been nominated in a category that has included complex, book-length works of biography, scholarship, art, and other far more worthy examples of associated work.

I don’t care what you think of George RR Martin. I don’t care if you think the author was right. That’s not my point. A blog entry or single article is not in any way equivalent to the winner, which is a translation of Beowulf by Maria Dhavana Headley. Translating requires a lot more care, actual knowledge, and hard work than merely venting your spleen.

That would-be polemic was the Donald Trump of Hugo nominations: unworthy.

(3) MASQUERADE PHOTOS. Kevin Roche responded to a request in comments for links to DisCon III Masquerade photos.

(4) CAVALCADE OF FORMER CHAIRS. The 2021 Worldcon Chairs Photo Session is online at YouTube. Nearly all of those present at DisCon III made it to the session. Also includes current chair Mary Robinette Kowal, and a Chengdu representative.

The traditional gathering of chairs of the World Science Fiction Convention, held at DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention, in Washington DC. Videography by Lisa Hayes.

(5) CORRECTION TO DISCON III ART SHOW SALES. “DisCon III regrets that there was an error in how sales tax was calculated for sales in the Art Show,” says today’s news release:

Instead of the correct 6% rate, it was being calculated as 10%. If you were mischarged, we are providing you two options. 

(1) You can consider the additional 4% as a bonus to the artist. We will pay the correct sales tax amount to the District of Columbia, with all of the remaining amount going to the artist.

(2) You can request a refund of the 4% overcharge by sending an email to [email protected]. Please submit your request by Wednesday, December 29 as we cannot pay the artists for their sales until we know the amount due them. If you have any questions or concerns about this issue, also address them to the Finance team.

(6) THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Kevin Standlee reports in “Worldcon 2021 Day 4: Final Business Meeting Results” what the meeting decided about seven new amendments to the WSFS Constitution that were taken up after the Site Selection report was made at Saturday’s business meeting. You can read the text of items F.1 to F.7 in the business meeting Agenda on pages 36-41. See Kevin’s post for his commentary about the proceedings.

  • F.1 One Episode per Series –– failed on a show of hands
  • F.2 30 Days Hath New Business — passed 34-15.
  • F.3 The Statue of Liberty Play — passed on a show of hands.
  • F.4 Shut Up and Take My Money — referred to a special committee 
  • F.5 A Matter of Days — adopted by unanimous consent
  • F.6 Non-transferrability of Voting Rights — adopted on a 35-22 vote
  • F.7 Best Audiobook — referred the proposal to the Hugo Awards Study Committee on a vote by show of hands.

(7) WHICH ONE IS THE FILER? Andrew (not Werdna) assures us, “I’m the non-Narn in this picture.” But he also knew that merely saying we could tell who he was by his distinctive headgear wasn’t going to be enough: “I was right — I ran into another guy with a button covered bucket hat.”

(8) RAYTHEON PRESENCE AT HUGOS. Gizmodo’s Justin Carter used his platform to presume that his opinion represents all fans’ opinions: “The Hugo Awards Face Backlash for Raytheon Sponsorship”.  But it’s true that some are protesting the decision.

…At time of writing, DisCon has yet to speak on the partnership with Raytheon for the event. For now, fans are left feeling soured that a night that should’ve been about a genre they loved had to brush up against a reality they hate.

(9) YOUR TURN IN THE BARREL. Amber Benson advises SFWA Blog readers about “Managing A Creator’s Public Profile and Navigating Audience Entitlement”.

….What happens when you step out of fandom into the pole position? A.k.a., ‘I’ve written a thing and it’s been published and now people are talking about it and me on the internet’?

Well, I’m not going to lie. You may be in for a very overwhelming and unsettling experience. Because all those feelings of ownership you had as a fan, well, they are now going to be applied to you and your work. By people you have never met before who have no compunction about @replying to you on social media in order to say mean things about you.

To a lot of these people, you have ceased to be a real live human being with feelings. You are now a “public figure” and that comes with many caveats, including being physically and emotionally vulnerable in a way that fans, with their ability to remain anonymous, are not. It also means you will be open to ridicule, judgement, and disdain online (and sometimes to your face). In balance, you will also be loved, put on a pedestal, and maybe even called a “genius.”

You and your work now belong to the world at large. And that world contains three kinds of people: fans who love what you create, critics who hate your output—and everyone else in the world who could give a crap that you make art. And between you and me, I’m not sure what’s more painful: the armchair critics who think you stink (at least they’re thinking about you) or the fact that 90 percent of the world, upon hearing your name, will only mutter: Who . . . ?

So how do you handle all of the attention—both positive, negative, and ambivalent—when you finally put your work out into this very complicated world? I have my thoughts on the subject and I will share them with you below….

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1938 [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Eighty-three years ago, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas was first published by the Collins Crime Club. In the States, it bore first the title of Murder for Christmas and later A Holiday fur Murder when published in paperback.

Critics generally thought it was one of her best mysteries. The New York Times Book Review critic Issac Anderson said of it that “Poirot has solved some puzzling mysteries in his time, but never has his mighty brain functioned more brilliantly than in Murder for Christmas.”

The story was adapted for television in an episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, first aired in the UK on Christmas 1994. The BBC has produced it twice for radio with it first being broadcast on Christmas Eve 1975 with John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot. A second production was broadcast on Christmas Eve 1986 featuring Peter Sallis as Poirot. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 19, 1902 Sir Ralph Richardson. God in Time Bandits but also Earl of Greystoke in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (which gets a remarkably great rating at Rotten Tomatoes in my opinion) and Chief Rabbit in Watership Down. Also the Head Librarian in Rollerball which I’ll admit I’ve never seen and have no desire to do so. And a caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And Satan in the Tales from the Crypt film. Oh, my he has had an interesting genre film career! (Died 1983.)
  • Born December 19, 1952 Linda Woolverton, 69. She’s the first woman to have written a Disney animated feature, Beauty and the Beast, which was the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. She also co-wrote The Lion King screenplay (along with Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts). 
  • Born December 19, 1960 Dave Hutchinson, 61. Best known for his Fractured Europe series which won a BSFA Award for the third novel, Europe in WinterEurope at Midnight was nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Clarke as well. I’ve listened to the entire series and it’s quite fascinating. He’s got some other genre fiction as well but I’ve not delved into any of those yet. 
  • Born December 19, 1961 Matthew Waterhouse, 60. He’s best known as Adric, companion to the Fourth and Fifth Doctors. He was the youngest actor in that role at the time. And yes, he too shows up in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Theatre wise, he’s appeared in productions of Peter PanA Midsummer Night’s Dream (as Puck), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Hamlet. Oddly enough, he’s not, to my knowledge, done any Who work at Big Finish.
  • Born December 19, 1969 Kristy Swanson, 53. Her first starring genre  film role was in Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, but no doubt her best known genre role was as the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She also shows up in Alfred Hitchcock PresentsThe PhantomNot Quite Human and The Black Hole. For the record, I like her version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! 
  • Born December 19, 1972 Alyssa Milano, 49. Phoebe Halliwell in the long running original Charmed series. Other genre appearances include on Outer Limits, the second Fantasy Island series, Embrace of the VampireDouble Dragon, the Young Justice animated series as the voice of Poison Ivy and more voice work in DC’s The Spectre excellent animated short as a spoiled rich young thing with a murderous vent who comes to a most fitting and quite bloody end.
  • Born December 19, 1975 Brandon Sanderson, 46. He is best known for the Cosmere universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, which was nominatedfor a Best Series Hugo at Worldcon 76, are set. He finished Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. He’s got several Hugos, both at LoneStarCon 3 for his “The Emperor’s Soul” novella and also for a Best Related Work Hugo for Writing Excuses, Season Seven
  • Born December 19, 1979 Robin Sloan, 42. Author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore which definitely has fantasy elements in it and is a damn fine read. His second novel which he sent me to consider reviewing, Sourdough or, Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market, is also probably genre adjacent but is also weirdly about food as well. And he’s a really nice person.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Edd Lai is the guy – “Guy Creates Terrifying Comics That Don’t End as You’d Expect” at Pupperish.

Over the last decade or so there has been a good selection of web comics that tell some brilliant stories in a variety of different art styles. From Shen to Yehuda Devir, these brilliant comics have gained a bunch of recognition. One artist named Edd Lai has made some uplifting comics that set themselves up as horror comics and surprise you with their endings. Here are a selection of these brilliant comics. Let’s give them the recognition they deserve.

(14) WHERE IS IT? We’ve heard of unwritten codes – now Marvel gives us non-written codes. So to speak: “Marvel Comics Overhauls Digital Copy Redemption Program” at CBR.com.

Readers were taken aback this week when Marvel’s new releases did not include the traditional stickers in them that can be removed to reveal a special code that can be used to redeem a digital copy of the issue online using the Marvel Comics app. When someone inquired with Marvel as to whether it was simply a printing error, a Marvel representative revealed that it was not.

The representative explained, “Hi, Chris. It’s not a misprint, but a process update. Please follow the instructions on that code page, they will tell you step-by-step how to get codes for your comics, and any other details you need to know. Thanks!”

…If customers just have to go through a different system to get the same digital copies, this is not that significant, but fans are naturally wondering whether this is the first step towards once again stopping the digital redemption program.

(15) WITHOUT LIMITS. James Davis Nicoll tells Tor.com readers about “5 Stories in Which Great Power Is Not Always Used Responsibly”.

Imagine, if you will, that fate has imbued you with extraordinary power. Would you use that power responsibly? Would you even know what “responsibly” means? It’s easy to set out with the best of intentions, only to discover too late one has fallen into profound error. Consider these five novels.

(16) TIMELESS. [Item by Hampus Eckerman.] Not sure why this movie about a man travelling in time to celebrate Christmas in the year 2020 is listed as a Comedy. A tragedy seems more fitting. IMDb listing for the Hallmark Channel’s A Timeless Christmas.

Charles Whitley travels from 1903 to 2020 where he meets Megan Turner and experiences a 21st Century Christmas.

(17) TOP DOLLAR. An Edward Gorey illustration for a Frank Belknap Long sff collection set an auction record. Goreyana has the story: “A New Record for Gorey Art at Auction”.

…This was followed shortly thereafter by a new record auction price for original artwork by Edward Gorey – $27,500.00 (hammer price plus buyer’s premium) for a 1964  pen & ink book cover design for The Dark Beasts, a paperback collection of stories by Frank Belknap Long (this piece has not been added to my collection)….

(18) LOAD THE CANON. StarWars.com tells comics fans to mark the date: “Marvel’s Han Solo & Chewbacca Series Coming March 2022”.

The galaxy’s greatest smuggler and his Wookiee co-pilot are taking on a new job: starring in their own comic.

Han Solo & Chewbacca, a new series from Marvel, will launch in March 2022, StarWars.com can exclusively reveal. Written by Marc Guggenheim and pencilled by David Messina, the monthly comic follows Han and Chewie a few years before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, as the duo teams up with Greedo — in better times, apparently — on a heist for Jabba the Hutt….

 The comic’s writer does a Q&A in the post:

…StarWars.com: And Chewie?

Marc Guggenheim: Chewbacca’s been alive hundreds of years longer than Han. He tries to offer Han the benefit of his experience, to offer a more evolved perspective on things, but Han usually goes his own way. And the thing is, Chewie is just fine with that. He’s good to go with the flow and let Han call the shots because he knows that, no matter what, Han’s got his back. Chewie’s an interesting character to write, obviously, because he only speaks Shyriiwook, so a lot of this I have to get out by dint of the circumstances Han and Chewie find themselves in, as well as Han’s reactions to what Chewie is saying.

I’m gonna be doing a future issue exclusively from Chewbacca’s point of view, so that should be a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can get into Chewie’s head in a way we never have seen before….

(19) STARSHIP TITANIC. Michael Palin’s Starship Titanic is available to listen to at BBC Radio 4 beginning today. It will be online for another 29 days.

Michael Palin stars in an exclusive adaptation of Terry Jones’s comic novel. A tale of interstellar skulduggery, romance and unhinged robots based in Douglas Adams’s universe.

Far off in the centre of one of the less well-chartered quadrants of the universe, a vast civilisation is preparing to launch the most technologically advanced starship ever – Starship Titanic While the galaxy’s media looks on, it unfortunately undergoes SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure) and disappears. Leovinus, the designer of the ship, uncovers shoddy workmanship, poor cybernetics and a series of increasingly eccentric robots. The owners, Scraliontis and Brobostigan, were intent on destroying the ship and claiming the insurance.

Meanwhile in Oxfordshire, four humans are inspecting a property they intend buying, only to see it crushed under the re-materialising Starship. This disaster is swiftly followed by an invitation from an over-attentive robot to come aboard, and Lucy, Dan and Nettie are catapulted into a series of increasingly bizarre encounters.

Stylistically emulating the work of the great Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the late Terry Jones weaves a fabulously mad and comic tale, adapted by Ian Billings and directed by Dirk Maggs, who also directed the last four editions of the Hitchhiker’s sagas.

VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Last night’s Saturday Night Live was mostly repeats because of Covid.  They rebroadcast a 1991 holiday special on global warming featuring Tom Hanks as Dean Martin and Mike Myers as Carl Sagan.  The news is that Isaac Asimov was a character, played by Phil Hartman (who arrives at the 5:00-minute mark). I thought George RR Martin was the only sf writer parodied on SNL, but Asimov was caricatured at least once.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Sheila Addison, Dann, Nicholas Whyte, Andrew (not Werdna), Kevin Roche, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

131 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/19/21 Who Put The Clarke In The Rama Lama File Scroll?

  1. @ Bob Roehm:

    I agree that in an ideal world, it would not have been a finalist. But I can’t see any ideal world where it would not have been eligible as a finalist, given enough nominations. I also can’t find any good formulation that would exclude it, without also excluding things that probably should be let through,

    It’s actually an interesting problem. Is it even possible to write non-gameable name/content policies for Best related Work? Or any of the other work-centric cetgories? And if we do it for them, should we then have a list of criteria for the person-centric categories?

  2. Best related has accepted speeches and relatively short singular essays in the past, so they couldn’t say it didn’t qualify on format.

  3. (2) The Best Related Work category seems … odd. Virtual conventions, websites, and blog posts versus… books and documentaries. But all those things can be impactful, even just a single speech or a single blog post. (The year 2014 comes to mind.) So I don’t want to leave them out. Serious nonfiction about the genre is still important, but all those other things can be important as well. I would throw up my hands in despair… But didn’t Robert Bloch already make a grotesque pun about that?

    Also, I’m pretty sure we don’t want to add a “Best Post” and “Best Comment” category to the Hugos. That might work for the Stabbies (because those categories are limited to one forum on one website), but I’m assuming it would not work for the Hugos. 🙂

    (11) Ralph Richardson was also in “The Ghoul” in 1933 (with Karloff and others) and in “Frankenstein: The True Story” in the 1970s. I hope Richardson’s radio plays have not been lost because he played in lots of genre and genre-adjacent classics (such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”).

    I went through a Richardson/Gielgud period in college, and thanks to the college library, I got a chance to listen to Richardson play the Duke (with Gielgud as Angelo) in “Measure for Measure” on record. With Margaret Leighton as Isabella!

  4. Lenora Rose says Beat related has accepted speeches and relatively short singular essays in the past, so they couldn’t say it didn’t qualify on format.

    I stand corrected but I still don’t like it and that’s not to say that I’m defending the awful performance of GRRM which I’m most decidedly not.

    My delightful task of this month has been quizzing Farhia, my Somali personal service assistant, using the Civics Flash Cards before she has her first Citizenship interview.

  5. One could probably get some support at the WSFS Business Meeting for reworking the Best Related Work category, but it would be a long haul effort. Anything new actually passed in Chicago would have to be ratified in Chengdu. And rules on format (e.g., no conventions) seem more likely than rules on content.

    Worldcons do make financial reports to the Business Meetings each year their accounts are open. This year, DisCon III’s Financial Statement has line items for “Donations” and “Advertisements”, but doesn’t go into details of sponsorships.

  6. (More on Sponsorships)
    WorldCon76 (San Jose) reported an income item labeled “Sponsorships” with no further breakdown.
    Dublin 2019 reported grants from Failte Ireland and UNESCO/DCC.
    ConZealand reported “Tourism NZ Support” and “Sponsorship: US Embassy to NZ”.
    Chicon 8’s only income reported so far is from membership sales, and “Chicago Worldcon Community Fund”.

  7. Now that Discon’s set the precedent, I look forward (not really) to Chengdu being sponsored by NORINCO and Huawei.

  8. If genre fandom is serious about establishing a culture of inclusion and justice, welcoming people from all over the world, then it’s a sick joke to accept the sponsorship of a military contractor whose hardware and software are used for global murder and surveillance. I understand that there is a long history of collaboration between sci-fi writers and the comically named defense industry. That doesn’t bespeak to me any need to maintain this tradition or respect it as precedent.

    A Worldcon that welcomes Raytheon is not welcoming people who have been harmed by the American war machine. It is a deliberate political choice and it’s cowardice to pretend otherwise.

    At a bare minimum, given that Raytheon creates AI facial recognition software which they sell to military & police all over the world, the appropriate Worldcon body needs to confirm whether the photos taken on the red carpet will be used in that program. Members should be able to opt out of having their faces used to train the surveillance programs used to profile and imprison people, and if they don’t have the option to do that, the board needs to come clean about the consequence of their sponsorship choices.

  9. Mike Glyer on December 19, 2021 at 10:08 pm said:

    Camestros Felapton: Would you say that the procedures airline passengers go through before being allowed on planes are meaningful, or “security theater” as some have accused. Because the threat from organizations that caused those screening procedures to be put in place ultimately relates to the government’s decision to attack the threat where the operations are mounted. But your opinion is such action is “only tangentially related to the actual defense of the USA.”

    That is an excellent illustration of the issue.

    The devastating mass murder committed by Al-Qaeda on September 11 2001 led to the enhanced security at airports. It also led to the sprawling war on terror which has been used to justify a range of policies actions (including drone attacks). I do not believe that has made America or the world safer.

    Those drone attacks and policy actions include US support for the Saudi Arabian led war in Yemen against Houthi rebels.

    The US is NOT fighting against Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

    Actually, it is worse than that. The Saudi forces are allied with Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
    “Key figures in the deal-making said the United States was aware of the arrangements and held off on drone attacks against the armed group, which was created by Osama bin Laden in 1988.

    The deals uncovered by the AP investigation reflect the contradictory interests of the two wars being waged simultaneously in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

    In one conflict, the US is working with its Arab allies – particularly the UAE – with the aim of eliminating al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). But the larger mission is to win the civil war against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

    And in that fight, al-Qaeda fighters are effectively on the same side as the Saudi-led coalition and, by extension, the US.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/8/6/report-saudi-uae-coalition-cut-deals-with-al-qaeda-in-yemen

    Sure, the US drone wars are portrayed as a kind of brutal necessity against the terrorists who attacked the US but it is as misleading as the invasion of Iraq was. The threat of terrorism is used as a public face for a continuing military involvement that just keeps repeating the same geo-political errors and abuses that the US (and my own countries) have been making for decades. It simply is not about making Americans safe from terrorism.

  10. I was about to say “at least this time she isn’t using it as an opportunity to complain about that time she had an extremely silly take on fanfic and got criticised for it” but NO she IS. Wow.

    I only ever read her Twitter, whenever she and her goons have a freak-out, but yes, she did bring up the fanfic thing again.

    Anyway, I don’t know what the deal of this group is except that they are pretty unpleasant people.

  11. Belated thanks for the title credit.

    @Bruce Arthurs: I vaguely recall an old story by Ron Goulart, “The Hellhound Project”, with a similar idea. Don’t recall how it identified the individual.

  12. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:

    Cora, can you give me a hint to who this is?

    Editing this just in case…

    And now I’m off to tackle a shopping list for my Mothership (who is feeling somewhat better after hurting her back).

  13. Actually, it’s someone with the initialy RSB but the person with the initials GFM has also been active in sharing bad takes and they appear to be part of the same clique.

  14. I think the Best Related Work category is broken. Glad that an appropriate work won this time (though I have no opinion on its merits as a Beowulf translation); disappointed that the other nominee people are talking about got so much support.

  15. Meredith: This is the first time I have ever been able to read rot13 without a key. I’m gaining fluency! (Not really…)

  16. GFM = Tergpura Sryxre-Znegva, I think. Which is honestly a most excellent rot13’d version of a name for absurd purposes and I’m keeping it.

    @Mike Glyer

    I’m sure you’ll get two for two!

  17. The unidirectional condemnation of Raytheon is kind of interesting. What remains unexamined is how things might have turned out if America had opted to bring all our forces home. How differently might things have turned out if a region (or regions) was dominated by Al Queda and their fellow travelers?

    Sometimes a bad choice is the best of the available options.

    There is a longer, personal story behind that sentiment, but it is way off-topic.

    Separately, thanks to OGH for tolerating/welcoming perspectives with which he personally disagrees.

    Regards,
    Dann
    To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am – M.C. Escher

  18. Dann665:

    Well, as US has supported Al Qaida in both Syria and Yemen, the likelihood of them dominating an area goes up with US involvement.

  19. I had one of them blocked since before for unknown reason. Checked her flow and found another to block. While I do agree with them on their opinions of Raytheon, I’m extremely annoyed at them blaming authors in their own head space after first winning a Hugo unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a Raytheon-logo.

    I think organizers should be blamed (even of it might as well have been someone who resigned), but the authors I see more as victims. They shouldn’t have their night of celebration destroyed by the fault of someone else.

  20. @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

    I broadly agree with GFM on at least one issue (that compulsory trigger warnings would be both a bad idea and ineffective), to be fair to her. But there’s a group of them that tend to have an approach to social media presence which I find deeply tiresome more often than not. Very antagonistic, very our-enemies-are-a(n-establishment)-hivemind, very convinced of being the noble upstarts.

  21. @Mike — could you update the post to reflect that the masquerade photos are by Olav Rokne (no c in the name) and Amanda Wakaruk? They are every bit as much her work as mine.

  22. the masquerade photos are by Olav Rokne (no c in the name) and Amanda Wakaruk? They are every bit as much her work as mine.

    Oops, sorry I missed that, Olav! Since I’d been messaging with you directly earlier I missed that subtlety. My apologies.

  23. Dann665 on December 20, 2021 at 11:12 am said:

    The unidirectional condemnation of Raytheon is kind of interesting. What remains unexamined is how things might have turned out if America had opted to bring all our forces home. How differently might things have turned out if a region (or regions) was dominated by Al Queda and their fellow travelers?

    Ummmm…did you read what I posted above? The US (using Raytheon drone technology) is supporting a Saudi government-led war in Yemen where the Saudi forces are allying with Al Qaeda.

  24. Next year, Hugo Awards ceremony is sponsored by Al Qaeda. Money is money, as some say.

  25. It’s like the sponsor sheds cooties on everything. I expect better of all y’all. (And find out how much it costs to run a Worldcon. I know Mike knows.)

  26. I really enjoyed Quillifer.

    I had a moment at Worldcon during my “Stroll with the Stars” where I got to say hi to Walter Jon Williams, which pleased me.

  27. Kevin Roche on December 20, 2021 at 1:30 pm said:
    the masquerade photos are by Olav Rokne (no c in the name) and Amanda Wakaruk? They are every bit as much her work as mine.

    Oops, sorry I missed that, Olav! Since I’d been messaging with you directly earlier I missed that subtlety. My apologies.

    Now that I look at it, the automatically-generated Adobe gallery lists only me. But that’s only because the Adobe account is in my name.

    When I put them on a Google drive link for the Pettingers (and subsequently tweet that link so the contestants can access their photos as they wish), I’ll make sure it’s clear.

  28. It’s like the sponsor sheds cooties on everything.

    The Raytheon sponsorship is a cudgel that’s being used to bash the Hugo Awards, Worldcon and people who won rockets Saturday. There’s a negative story about it on Gizmodo and others may follow.

    People attending the ceremony who wanted a red carpet photo of themselves looking sharp were posed in front of a giant banner with Raytheon logos all over it and if you shared your photo on social media you caught hell for it.

    DisCon III did a lot of great things but this decision was a complete disaster. I haven’t seen anyone in the Worldcon community defend the sponsorship, aside from a rageblogging nominee who called accepting the support a “grey” area before receiving so much heat you’d think she’d been yeeted into the sun.

  29. Screens on the walls of some Berlin subway stations feature snippets of news. On the way home tonight, I saw one that mentioned the Hugo awards. The brief text assumed that a passerby would know what they were, just as they would know what Oscars and Emmys (and various German awards) are.

    Granted, the snippet was about Hades winning Best Video Game, so it also shows the power and cultural reach of video games. But our beloved genre is a big thing.

  30. @Camestros Felapton

    Ummmm…did you read what I posted above?

    I did. And I am certain that you know that the Houthis in Yemen are being supported/sponsored by the Iranian government to create trouble in Yemen. If the Iranians had simply stayed on their side of the Persian Gulf, then there wouldn’t be any war in Yemen. And less conflict in Iraq, less conflict in Syria, less conflict in Lebanon…

    These discussions remind me of the Cold War when the US was blamed for a wide variety of sins by folks that conveniently “forgot” that the Soviet Union was demonstrably working to export their schemes of systematic oppression, impoverishment, starvation, and murder. We made a bunch of mistakes in the Cold War. Opposing expansionist communism wasn’t one of them.

    @Hampus Eckerman

    Next year, Hugo Awards ceremony is sponsored by Al Qaeda. Money is money, as some say.

    I’ll skip the snark this time and just observe that there is a significant amount of false equivalency in that statement.

    Unless there is something new/interesting to be said, I’ll leave my end of it at that.

    Regards,
    Dann
    I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. – Isaac Asimov

  31. rcade says The Raytheon sponsorship is a cudgel that’s being used to bash the Hugo Awards, Worldcon and people who won rockets Saturday. There’s a negative story about it on Gizmodo and others may follow.

    Gizmodo is one one of the worst bottom feeders out there. If they can find a way to put a negative spin on a story, they’ll find a way to do so and quite frankly revel in it.

  32. Dann665:

    “I’ll skip the snark this time and just observe that there is a significant amount of false equivalency in that statement.”

    True. Raytheon is objectively worse than Al Qaeda. Their lobbying for genocidal wars and profiteering on bombed children have lead to more deaths than Al Qaeda have been capable of. The war in Yemen by itself is closing in on 400 000 deaths.

    But there’s nothing new in you cheering on US schemes for systematic oppression, impoverishment, starvation, and murder.

  33. It sounds to me like there may be some confusion over what the Best Related Work category is for (and thus what’s eligible). Here’s how the WSFS Constitution defines the category:

    3.3.6: Best Related Work. Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category.

    That’s a very broad definition; it essentially says that any nonfiction work related to sf is eligible.

    (…Which is why some of us were surprised by Beowulf being nominated in that category. I loved Headley’s translation, and I put it in my #1 spot on the ballot, but imo it doesn’t fit the category definition as well as the other items on this year’s ballot. I raise this point not to relitigate whether it should’ve been on the ballot, but rather to note (in response to a previous commenter) that I feel that the GRRM piece fit the category definition better than Beowulf did.)

  34. I was glad to see that a piece of literary scholarship won. I think the category definition needs work.

  35. I did. And I am certain that you know that the Houthis in Yemen are being supported/sponsored by the Iranian government to create trouble in Yemen. If the Iranians had simply stayed on their side of the Persian Gulf, then there wouldn’t be any war in Yemen. And less conflict in Iraq, less conflict in Syria, less conflict in Lebanon…

    These discussions remind me of the Cold War when the US was blamed for a wide variety of sins by folks that conveniently “forgot” that the Soviet Union was demonstrably working to export their schemes of systematic oppression, impoverishment, starvation, and murder. We made a bunch of mistakes in the Cold War. Opposing expansionist communism wasn’t one of them.

    Ow, my neck!

  36. Here’s Nicholas Whyte’s take on why Beowulf was eligible:

    The translated poem caused a bit more head-scratching. But it is noteworthy for being a new translation, rather than for the fictional content as such; the poem was first published in 1786, first published in English translation in 1837, and first published in the USA in 1882, which means that it’s not eligible in any of the fiction categories, as all of those dates are substantially earlier than 2020. So in fact the case for its eligibility in Best Related Work this year is clear.

    There’s lots of other great stuff in there about Best Related Work over the years.

  37. Cat Eldridge on December 20, 2021 at 4:17 am said:

    Ok so how was the Raytheon sponsorship visible? … Did they have a nifty little booth there to hawk their wares? (Being facetious there.)

    I’m told they did have a table in the exhibit hall, where they were recruiting people to work there. Google once did recruitment at a Worldcon, as I recall.

    Worldcons are expensive: they are million-dollar operations, with most, but not all, of the cost borne by the members. People already complain bitterly about how much memberships cost and claim it’s too much. I wonder how much more those same people complaining about the cost would they be willing to pay to make it so that Worldcons don’t have to have any outside sponsorships?

    Cat Eldridge on December 20, 2021 at 6:08 am said:

    Ok, so will a detailed Worldcon financial report be forthcoming? It’d be interesting to know how much both Google and Raytheon actually paid in sponsorship. I’m assuming one is, because it is fandom and we don’t blackbox such things, do we?

    Worldcons are required by the WSFS Constitution to submit annual reports of their income and expense to the WSFS Business Meeting until such time as they have spent all of their income. Their most-recent report (November 18) is on page 22 of the final version of the 2021 Business Meeting Agenda, which was published on the DisCon III website.

    (When I get a chance, I will be archiving that version on wsfs.org so that it will be available there indefinitely. I’m only halfway through a month-long trip back and forth across the USA by train, so this might not happen immediately, but I wouldn’t expect the DisCon III website to vanish in the next three weeks.)

    Their next report is due to the 2022 Business Meeting in Chicago.

    Once Worldcons and NASFiCs have spent all of their money (even if they still have bills due), their reporting requirements to WSFS are completed. For example, paying for the loss incurred by the 2021 World Fantasy Convention completed the reporting requirements for Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon. Both conventions were part of CanSMOF, a Canadian non-profit corporation. Anticipation had spent years doing grants and funding scholarships to SMOFcon and other conrunning events, and now it’s all spent, and then some.

  38. Dann665 on December 20, 2021 at 3:44 pm said:

    @Camestros Felapton

    Ummmm…did you read what I posted above?

    I did. And I am certain that you know that the Houthis in Yemen are being supported/sponsored by the Iranian government to create trouble in Yemen. If the Iranians had simply stayed on their side of the Persian Gulf, then there wouldn’t be any war in Yemen. And less conflict in Iraq, less conflict in Syria, less conflict in Lebanon…

    Yes…but your question was “How differently might things have turned out if a region (or regions) was dominated by Al Queda and their fellow travelers?” and the answer isn’t very different from what has actually happened WITH US involvement.

    There’s a moral case for acting against terror groups and authoritarian states but that moral case is very much based on ends justifying means. If the ENDS aren’t accomplished then the means aren’t well justified.

  39. I wonder how much more those same people complaining about the cost would they be willing to pay to make it so that Worldcons don’t have to have any outside sponsorships?

    I’m just one person who didn’t go this year, but would happily contribute a little extra on my next membership if it were specifically earmarked for the No Arms Dealer Sponsorships Ever Fund. Like one of those restaurants that charges you extra after the minimum wage goes up in their area and makes sure there’s a note on their menu that tells you why.

  40. I’d be happy to see Best Related Work changed to best non-fictional or documentary work or something like that. Best Researched Work? Something to reward more scholarly endeavours..

  41. I love that Best Related Work can be a grab bag, and I’ve loved some of the essays and other documents and oddballs (yay Ao3!) that have been finalists and winners, but… At this point I’d probably get behind a rule change for minimum word count (for text) and minimum duration (for documentary/video/sound).

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