(1) JUNETEENTH PSA FROM HWA. Today’s holiday is explained by members of the Horror Writers Association in this video. (See transcript below.) — “Juneteenth: An Emancipation Celebration”.
Linda Addison, the Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant Chair, and authors Michelle Renee Lanei, Steven Van Patten, L Marie Wood, Marc Abbott, and Sumiko Saulson, on the Social Media Team for the Horror Writers Association.
(Linda Addison) On behalf of the Horror Writers Association we’d like to congratulate all African Americans on the progress recently made towards making Juneteenth a federally recognized Black Liberation Holiday.
(Nikki Woolfolk) On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution establishing June 19 as Juneteenth, a National Black Independence Day, a US holiday. The House voted 415-14 to make Juneteenth a national holiday commemorating the emancipation of African Americans from slavery in the United States.
(Sumiko Saulson) After this it was sent before President Joe Biden, who approved it on June 17, 2021 making it the first new National Holiday in the United States of America since Martin Luther King Day was established as a Federal Holiday in 1983.
(Steven Van Patten) Juneteenth, an abbreviation of the words June and Nineteenth, commemorates the anniversary of June 19, 1865. That day, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed African Americans there that the Civil War had ended and they were free at last.
(Ace Antonio Hall) Because the United States was still in the middle of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many of those it intended to free remained enslaved for another two and a half years.
(L Marie Wood) For this reason, Juneteenth has long been recognized as Black Independence Day across the nation. It was first celebrated the following year as Jubilee Day in the State of Texas, where it has been a state holiday since 1979.
(Nicole Givens Kurtz) From Toni Morrison’s Beloved to Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, the phantoms of our shared history under slavery and its legacy haunt many African American ghost stories and tales of terror.
(Michelle Renee Lane) Slavery has left its mark on our psyche as a people. We write scary stories about it because vampires, ghosts, werewolves and skeletons are never quite as horrifying as the lived experiences of African Americans under slavery.
(Marc Abbott) Commemorating Juneteenth as a national holiday is a step towards ensuring that we never forget those dark days, never repeat them, and that we as a people, and as a nation can truly heal.
Written/Edited by Sumiko Saulson (6/18/2021) for the Horror Writers Association
(2) AFRICAN SCI-FI. “Animated Anthology ‘Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire’ Brings African Sci-Fi to Disney+” — /Film has the story.
Filmmakers from Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt bring unique animation to Disney+ with Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, a 10-part collection of original films that will premiere on the streaming service next year. Peter Ramsey, co-director of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, serves as executive producer for the anthology, which is comprised of sci-fi and fantasy stories set in a futuristic Africa.
Disney has announced full details for Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, a 10-part series of animated films that hope to take viewers “on a wildly entertaining ride into Africa’s future.” The films are inspired by Africa’s histories and cultures, and promise “action-packed sci-fi and fantasy stories present bold visions of advanced technology, aliens, spirits and monsters imagined from uniquely African perspectives.”
(3) PASSING ALONG WISDOM. The autobiography of Hidden Figures’ Katherine Johnson – My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir – was released May 25, and is reviewed by Ainissa Ramirez in Nature: “Katherine Johnson’s Bold Trajectory”.
When Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) seemed to be the only Black woman affiliated with space travel. Little did society know that, as mathematicians, Black women such as Katherine Johnson actually made space flight possible. Johnson, who was highlighted in the 2016 Hugo Award winning movie Hidden Figures, died last year, aged 101. She left readers a gift – her autobiography…
She entitles her chapters with life lessons — ‘Education Matters’, ‘Ask Brave Questions’, ‘Shoot for the Moon’. Johnson recognizes that she is a role model, and that few women and people of colour see their reflections in the sciences. I felt like I was sitting at the knee of a griot — a historian and storyteller — gaining years of insight into how to use idle times to prepare, to keep moving forwards when life hurts…
(4) FUN VS. CREATING INVENTORY. Dean Wesley Smith says avoid these “Deadly Problems For Writers…”
…Sitting alone in a room and making stuff up should be fun. What else would it be? No one is going to come and hurt you if you write something that doesn’t work for every reader on the planet (a silly goal on its face.) No one is going to die at your hands (besides characters) if you mess something up.
And best of all, no one cares. You are free to sit in that room and make up whatever you want. No one cares.
When you should start thinking about the product is after your write the last line of the story or book AND NOT ONE MOMENT BEFORE.
But if you start caring too much about the product WHILE WRITING, or even thinking about the product, your process becomes no fun and just stops.
SO HOW DOES A WRITER SLIP INTO PRODUCT FOCUSED WHILE WRITING?
Let me list a bunch of ways, and I know I will miss a bunch of major ways. Add them in the comments if you want.
1… Need to make money quickly. It is the “quickly” that is the killer. Your writing, over time, will make you more money than you can imagine if you keep it fun and keep learning. But if you focus on the writing needing to make a lot of money quickly, it will not. If you need extra money, get a part-time day job and take the pressure off the writing.
2… Writing for other people. Setting deadlines for others puts all the focus on the end product. Deadlines for some can be a motivating thing. They often are for me, but I never attach people to that deadline, or do I ever care what any reader, fan, or critic will think. (Anyone who has watched this blog over time knows how often I have failed on deadlines. If the motivation works for a project, great, if not, great….
And Smith supplements the list with a long story about taking his own advice in “Following Up on Yesterday’s Post…”
THANK HEAVENS I never paid attention or cared about how a book or a series was selling. I never cared that the books weren’t selling for years. My measuring stick was the fun in the writing. And if WMG had done that promotion on book three instead of book #9, it would have failed. The fact that I had nine books in the series done gave readers who liked the book something to buy next. (You know, magic bakery thinking.)
So that is a personal story of me practicing what I preached in last night’s blog.
(5) VORKOSIGAN COVER POSTER. Lois McMaster Bujold told her Goodreads followers about a “Vorkosigan e-covers poster still for sale”.
A tidy display of all of artist Ron Miller’s Vorkosigan e-covers, as seen in the background of my new PR photo. Because it’s not like you can place ebooks face-out on your bookshelves…
May still be purchased here:
https://society6.com/product/the-vork…
Sizes available in x-small to x-large, and I see they are even on sale today (6/18).
(6) SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER. Best Fan Writer Hugo nominee Alasdair Stuart opines:
But what prompted him to say so today? It was Adri Joy’s tweet objecting to DisCon III’s efforts to manage space limitations at the Hugo finalist reception and of near-the-stage seating for the ceremony, as documented in this excerpt from the committee’s message:
(7) PANDEMIC HELPS NESFA PRESS SALES. Tim Szczesuil told the May 9 meeting of the New England Science Fiction Association that their book firm’s sales “have been up substantially over the last year; from the beginning of the pandemic. This is probably due to people having more time to read.” Not including ebooks, here are NESFA Press’ total books sold for recent years:
- 2017 — 2948
- 2018 — 3282
- 2019 — 2595
- 2020 — 3599
- 2021 — 1486
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
- June 19, 2013 — On this date in 2013, Dark Horse Comics published the hardcover of Star Wars: Legacy, John Ostrander’s look into the future of the Skywalker family about 100 years after the time of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. I’m not sure it’s considered canon, but it’s awesome none-the-less.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 19, 1911 — Jesse Francis McComas. He was the co-founding editor, with Anthony Boucher, of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. With Boucher, he edited a series of Best from F&SF anthologies. He wrote several stories on his own in the Fifties using both his own name and the pen name Webb Marlowe. He was nominated for Retro Hugo for Best Editor. (Died 1978.)
- Born June 19, 1915 — Julius Schwartz. He’s best known as a longtime editor at DC Comics, where at various times he was primary editor for the Superman and Batman lines. Just as interestingly, he founded the Solar Sales Service literary agency (1934–1944) where Schwartz represented such writers as Bradbury, Bester, Bloch, Weinbaum, and Lovecraft which including some of Bradbury’s very first published work and Lovecraft’s last such work. He also published Time Traveller, one of the first fanzines along with Mort Weisinger and Forrest J Ackerman. (Died 2004.)
- Born June 19, 1921 — Louis Jourdan. Fear No Evil and Ritual of Evil, two tv horror films in the late Sixties, appear to be his first venture into our realm. He’d play Count Dracula in, errr, Count Dracula a few years later. And then comes the role you most likely remember him for, Dr. Anton Arcane in Swamp Thing which he reprised in The Return of Swamp Thing. Definitely popcorn films at their very best. Oh, and let’s not forget he was Kamal Khan, the villain in Octopussy! (Died 2015.)
- Born June 19, 1926 — Josef Nesvadba. A Czech writer, best known in his SF short stories, many of which have appeared in English translation. ISFDB lists a number of stories as appearing in English and two collections of his translated stories were published, In The Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman: Stories of Science and Fantasy and Vampires Ltd.: Stories of Science and Fantasy. Neither’s available from the usual suspects though Cora can read him in German. (Died 2005.)
- Born June 19, 1947 — Salman Rushdie, 74. Everything he does has some elements of magic realism in it. (Let the arguments begin on that statement.) So which of his novels are really genre? I’d say The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Grimus (his first and largely forgotten sf novel), Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. If you’ve not read anything by him, I’d start with The Ground Beneath Her Feet which is by far both one of his best works and one of his most understandable ones as well.
- Born June 19, 1953 — Virginia Hey, 68. Best remembered for her role as Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan in the fantastic Farscape series and playing the Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. She’s also Rubavitch, the mistress of the KGB Head, General Pushkin, in The Living Daylights. She also had a brief appearance as a beautician in The Return of Captain Invincible, an Australian musical comedy superhero film. No, I’ve not seen it.
- Born June 19, 1957 — Jean Rabe, 64. She’s a genre author and editor who has worked on the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Rogue Angel and BattleTech series, as well as many others. Ok I admit to a degree of fascination with such writers as I’m a devotee of the Rogue Angel audiobooks that GraphicAudio does and she’s written according to ISFDB five of the source novels under the house name of Alex Archer.
- Born June 19, 1978 — Zoe Saldana, born with the lovely birth name of Zoë Yadira Saldaña Nazario, age 43. First genre role was Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. She’s Nyota Uhura in the new Trek series, and she’s also Neytiri in the Avatar franchise. She portrays Gamora in the MCU, beginning with Guardians of the Galaxy, a truly great film though I’m far less impressed with the second film by far.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- The Far Side is there when UFO’s are finally (almost) documented!
- Frank and Ernest shares a cheesy pun.
(11) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share sushi with Philip K. Dick Award-winning writer Meg Elison on episode 147 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Even though we’re on opposite coasts of the United States, we ordered takeout sushi to nibble as we pretended we lived in a timeline of our own choosing.
Meg Elison is the author of The Road to Nowhere trilogy, which consists of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (which won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award), The Book of Etta (nominated for both the Philip K. Dick and James Tiptree awards ), and The Book of Flora. Her novelette “The Pill” made the final ballots this year of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. She’s been published in McSweeney’s, Shimmer, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Catapult, Terraform, and many other venues. PM Press recently published the book Big Girl — where “The Pill” first appeared — as a volume in its famed Outspoken Authors series.
We discussed her pre-pandemic prediction for the kind of year 2020 was then shaping up to be, how reading Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” changed her life, using tabletop RPGs to deal with the powerlessness felt during recent times, the way rereading taught her to be a writer, our dual fascination with diaries, when she realized her first novel was actually the start of a trilogy (and the songs which helped her better understand each installment), why she followed that post-apocalyptic trilogy with a contemporary YA novel, and much more.
(12) HORROR WEBINAR SERIES. Skeleton Hour is a new monthly horror literature webinar series presented as a Horror Writers Association event in collaboration with The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. Each panel is an hour long and brings together 3-5 authors to discuss a specific topic in horror with a moderator guiding the discussion. Panels will take place on Zoom, with the audience able to ask questions in the chat window.
The last Skeleton Hour – “Writing Horror in a Post Covid World” — featured Richard Thomas (moderator), Sarah Langan, Usman T. Malik, Josh Malerman, A.C. Wise, and Lucy A. Snyder.
(13) COZY SFF? “A Book Like A Warm Hug: T.J. Klune – The House In The Cerulean Sea“ – a review by Dina at SFF Book Review.
…Starting with the writing style which I immediately fell into and just soaked up because it was everything I wanted, over the characters who not only show Linus that they are deserving of love, no matter how monstrous they may look, but who also totally carved out a spot in my heart, over the world building which reveals itself more and more over the course of the book, to the absolute delight of the found family and the real connections between them. I honestly can’t think of any comparison that would do this book justice. A warm blanket, a much-needed hug, someone holding your hand when you thought you were all alone – it’s kind of like all of those but none of them tell you all that the book is….
(14) EXCESSIVE TWINKLING? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Betelgeuse’s recent behavior has puzzled astronomers. But, as reported in this week’s Nature, they now think there is an explanation.
The red supergiant star is very noticeable in our night sky. For starters, it’s a BIG star 900 times the size of the Sun and if it were our Sun its surface would almost touch Jupiter and it would certainly encompass all the inner Solar system planets. It is also only 724 light years away. As such it is one of the few stars discernible through a telescope as a disc.
The puzzling mystery was that back early in 2020 it began dimming and by mid-February it had become just 35% of its normal brightness. Its southern half was especially dim.
Two theories abounded as to why this happened. First, red giants do see some variation in temperature. Could it be that convection cell change in its southern half could the star to cool?
Secondly, could there have been a cloud of dust temporarily obscuring our view of the star?
Now an international collaboration, led by European astronomers think they have the answer and that this involves both theories in a connected way.
They think the change in convection not only resulted in cooling but also allowed the star to eject a small amount of mass. As this drifted away – towards us in the line of sight – it cooled and condensed out as dust obscuring the star. Mystery solved.
[Note: We looked at this topic a few days ago, but Jonathan’s write-up is so much better!]
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Drum spotlights a video in which “Orlando Bloom & Katy Perry caution against voter suppression in transmission from future”.
…In the new spot, ‘Transmission from the future’, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are reimagined as elderly folks in a post-apocalyptic setting where they are in hiding from a surveillance state. From the belly of a bunker in the year 2055, they transmit a PSA into the past – Americans’ screens in 2021 are interrupted by the bedraggled couple, who urge viewers to take action to protect democracy. “You are our only hope,” the elderly Bloom rasps. “The America you know doesn’t exist in our future. Democracy is dead.” Perry interjects, saying, “It started when voter suppression ran wild all over America. The voting rights bills died in the Senate. Polling places closed. We lost our right to vote.” The stars implore Americans to call their senators and voice their support for the For the People Act….
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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If the Hugo Awards are separated from the Worldcon I give them 4-5 years max before they splutter and die away.
It isn’t so much that the Hugos are too big, as that there are so many small categories with little general interest and some categories with large group nominations (think about how many people you can take, and remember that stages and awards are not infinite).
14) convention cell change ?
P J Evans says It isn’t so much that the Hugos are too big, as that there are so many small categories with little general interest and some categories with large group nominations (think about how many people you can take, and remember that stages and awards are not infinite).
It’s more a matter of how the Hugos are presented more than the sheer number of Awards. And I really don’t like the idea that some of the categories are of little general interest as I am very interested in the fanzines and best related work to name but two categories.
GRRM and the Hugo committee demonstrated that you can royally botch the Hugo presentation. But done properly, there’s room for everything to be presented in a timely fashion.
Now playing: James Keelaghan’s “Number 37”. He’s an artist who always carries a hip flask of Irish whisky with him. And shares it.
(1) A case of Texas history stepping on Delaware history. Legal slavery continued in the US past Juneteenth, but the populations involved were much smaller.
(9) I think my favorite Rushdie is Midnight’s Children, which is along the lines of magic realism, if that means anything beyond “South American fantasy”.
Michael J. Lowrey: Yeah, I guess they’re not having conventions there yet. Probably should be convection.
Convection sounds like a good SF convention name. Is it taken? That kind of thing is hard to Google — I keep getting results about ovens.
A quick click tonight.
More later, probably.
@Cat
I was thinking of pro editor (long form). Not real sure about the proposed game award, either, but that’s not my thing. (Neither are podcasts and dramatic presentations but I doubt anyone would stand for losing those.).
P J Evans says I was thinking of pro editor (long form). Not real sure about the proposed game award, either, but that’s not my thing. (Neither are podcasts and dramatic presentations but I doubt anyone would stand for losing those.).
As I said, it’s more about how the Hugo ceremony is structured than how many Hugo categories are involved. Keep it tight which you can do and there’s time to do everything. Screw around and yes it’ll run on like crap through a Toulouse goose…
(6) I’d think it would be rather obvious that the problem with seating space at this year’s Hugos is that DisCon III can’t plan on it being safe to drop social distancing constraints as soon as this December.
Not having Dora is making it hard to do even the simplest errands without being a wreck at the end of the day. Psych meds are not really an adequate substitute.
“I am interested in [category]” does not, unfortunately, mean that the category is of general interest. That said, there are much bigger awards ceremonies which manage to cope with much bigger groups. Assuming some of these problems are actually significant (which I’m not entirely convinced of), the most sensible approach would seem to me to be to look at how others have solved similar problems.
What I don’t see, though, is how separating Worldcon from Worldcon’s awards would be useful or productive or sensible in any way! 🙂
@Cat
This is indeed true. (Same for masquerades.) Also it’s boring when they’re slow. Keep them moving, and if the costume falls apart or the special effect doesn’t work, don’t take extra time while on stage.
(6) SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER.
There is only one group, Worldcon members, and they own the Hugo Awards. If you don’t consider yourself a Worldcon member, then go start your own awards program and run it the way you want.
If you do consider yourself a Worldcon member, then start figuring out a financially and logistically viable way to make things work better instead of complaining (and issuing demands does not qualify as “figuring out a financially and logistically viable way to make things work better”) – instead of demanding that Worldcon members give their awards program away to someone else. 😐
6) The Hugos are Worldcon’s awards, so separating the Hugos from Worldcon is not possible.
One thing that no one tells you about being a Hugo finalist is that there will inevitably be finalist drama. At any rate, the two years I’ve been a finalist, there was finalist drama.
Regarding the space problem, this year we have a lot of team finalists. However, we also have a lot of people nominated in multiple categories, who obviously cannot attend the ceremony more than once, which frees up seats for others. Also, quite a few finalists won’t be able to attend due to the shift to late December, travel restrictions, concern about international travel during a pandemic, etc.. So most likely, the space problem isn’t going to be as much of an issue as it seems right now. Also, in categories that are team efforts, it’s quite common to get additional members of the team into the reception/ceremony as plus ones..
Anyone who thinks that “the Hugo Awards” and “Worldcon” are separate entities understands neither. Calling them to be separated is like saying you should separate your left leg from your torso so they’ll both go their separate ways and thrive separately. Although to extend that analogy, the Worldcon could go on without the Hugo Awards; after all, there was a Worldcon before there were Hugo Awards.
What these folks seem to be saying to me is, “I want things run my way, so you should give these awards that you spent 50-plus years developing to someone — maybe me — to present.” More likely, they think someone else will come and run them The Right Way and hold them at a Real Convention with 100,000 people at it, or something like that.
(6) Maybe he should start an SF award of his own. We have a lot of info about successful that’s been the past few years.
@lurkertype,
Alasdair Stuart was part of CoNZealand Fringe, so….
I do think that if we are going to keep the Hugo Awards & the accompanying ceremonies, we should be prioritising the whole “honouring the finalists” part of it.
The first & last question should always be, “Does this decision honour the finalists?” Most (if not all) of the kerfuffles could have been avoided by this approach.
Soon Lee: Most (if not all) of the kerfuffles could have been avoided by this approach.
That’s a simplistic summary of the situation. That approach requires significantly larger outlays of money and larger convention spaces, which is why I referred to “a financially and logistically viable way to make things work better”.
For example, how is Worldcon supposed to be able to fund a Hugo Awards ceremony where 88 contributors to Strange Horizons all get to attend the Hugo finalist pre-party with +1 guests? Multiplied by 20 other Semiprozines, Fanzines, Fancasts, and Related Works who also want to do the same?
@JJ,
You’re right, it is a simplistic take. And many times the realities are more nuanced & complex.
But I have also seen the occasions where issues could have been avoided by being (at the very least) mindful of the finalists.
Soon Lee: But I have also seen the occasions where issues could have been avoided by being (at the very least) mindful of the finalists.
Oh, absolutely. There are things like reserving Programming space for Hugo finalists and including extra names on announcements where it doesn’t cost anything but pixels, that haven’t always been done in the past, which would help to honor the finalists.
But then some of the finalists have started demanding to be able to dictate how many panels they get, and on what subjects, and how many people they get to have attend the Hugo pre-party, which is taking a sense of entitlement too far.
My immediate reaction to the Rushdie was also Midnight’s Children, which I would say is the place to start with his work, and which IMO is unambiguously fantasy.
The Hugo’s and the WorldCon go together. If there’s a thing I would change (not going into my least favourite categories, they might not matter to me but they matter to others) it would be a bit less of each committee having to reinvent the process from the ground up.
Al’s actual dissent seems to follow directly from whichever fanzine it was (Strange Horizons?) with 87 team members. Obviously a logistical nightmare should they all need to get up on stage before the rockets can be awarded. Even accepting that should there be a Hugo losers party them GRRM has to have space to host them all along with plus ones of a bit much. That’s more than every fiction nominee.
That said, the concom could probably have announced things better, but I can’t think of any similar announcement that someone hasn’t complained about.
I get there are downsides to Hugo finalists that are a cast of thousands but if they turn up to the Hugo ceremony then they are paying members. So if The Locus of Strange & Uncanny Clark’s World Horizons insisted that 1,000 people involved were all Hugo finalists and needed seats at the Hugo ceremony then that would be 1,000 full memberships surely? Whatever else it is, it is largely a self-funding problem. If the Hugo reception is getting too big then charge $5 to attend and give the money to a fund that supports marginalised people to attend Worldcon.
Camestros Felapton: If the Hugo reception is getting too big then charge $5 to attend and give the money to a fund that supports marginalised people to attend Worldcon.
The problem is that $5 doesn’t come close to covering the cost for food and beverage for one person at the Hugo reception – never mind the additional cost of renting a room that is 2 to 3 times bigger than the size they’re currently renting.
Then $MarginalCostPerPerson+X% with the X% going to a fan fund (including subsidising eligible finalists to attend*). Some finalists can easily afford the cost of a reception and some can’t, so bake that into attending the reception and raise money to help people attend.
Do the same thing with the Hugo Loser’s Party.
*[and I’d do eligibility for finalists on an honour system – if you say you can’t afford it then your eligible to be subsidised]
**[also, in my defence, it’s Sunday night and I have drunk two cans of a rather nice double IPA]
Camestros Felapton: Then $MarginalCostPerPerson+X% with the X% going to a fan fund (including subsidising eligible finalists to attend*). Some finalists can easily afford the cost of a reception and some can’t, so bake that into attending the reception and raise money to help people attend.
There are already dozens, possibly hundreds, of people who can afford their memberships, but who are complaining that they should be comped a free membership in exchange for spending 3 hours on panels. I’ll leave the reaction of Hugo finalists being asked to pay $100+pp to attend the Hugo finalist reception as an exercise for the reader.
@PJ Evans.
And complicated by the fact that the most popular categories are mass media categories, which are as far away from the original focus of the awards as you can get.
The Hugo Awards were originally billed as and thought of as the “Science Fiction Achievement Awards” – NOT the Hollywood (and Georgia) achievement awards.
If we want to re-focus Worldcon and the Hugo Awards to where they belong, potentially eliminate a lot of “out side interference” and take care of Worldcon expense-creep, all at the same time, we’ll vote to get rid of most of the non-literary based awards and re-examine the literary based ones for fitness as well.
My personal recommendations would be:
short fiction
medium fiction
long fiction
extended fiction
Fan writing
fan artist
pro artist
fanzine
amateur (commercial) publication
professional (commercial publication)
editor – periodical
New (writing) talent
Series goes under extended fiction; other fiction lengths should be re-categorized in light of current reality; no special categories reflecting marketing niches – its either good lit or it isn’t; no mass media awards; editor award only in a category accessible to most voters; expansion of publication awards to reflect reality.
One “problem” with the awards that has developed over the past few years is that new award categories have been proposed to reflect what some folks believe would make the awards more popular within a mainstream context (what would work on TV best – best short story or best television episode?), which suggests that the focus and purpose of the award has been increasingly forgotten over the years: Worldcon and the Hugo Awards are NOT for the general public, their purpose is not to make the genre more acceptable to mundanes; its to have something of our own that dismisses mundane concerns and values in favor of our own.
Seems a lot of fans have forgotten the concept that Fandom is ascendant, superior to (in every way) mundanity and the mainstream, has better values, greater creativity, deeper history and stronger convictions than the proles, and that its job is to serve as example for lifting the enlightened few out of the muck and mire of their mundanity – not level the field until everyone is equally nose deep.
I think we should just go back to having the 4 fiction categories, plus the Lodestar and Astounding Awards.
I feel like there are a lot of people who have decided that the Hugo Awards are their personal chew-toy, who spend the entire year, every year, campaigning and logrolling and recruiting people who don’t give a shit about Worldcon to nominate and vote for them – and then, when they manage to campaign themselves onto the ballot, making demands about what they’re entitled to and complaining if Worldcon doesn’t cater to their every demand. (And I note that it seems to be white people doing this.) I feel as though the whole idea of the Hugo Awards, for some people, has turned into just a tool to be used for their own personal aggrandizement. It’s petty and disgusting, and it overshadows the excellence of the fiction which we as Worldcon members are meant to be celebrating.
@JJ,
when I was intimately involved in the Hugo Awards ceremony (managing the banquet) –
I had to pay for the privilege of attending the event I was organizing; those who wanted to attend the banquet (cost+) had to buy a ticket (and space was limited).
I did not question at all the dynamic of having to pay for the privilege of working really, really hard. That’s how conventions are run.
There were some complaints about restricting banquet attendance to the privileged few (who were guests or who could afford it), which we handled by separating the banquet itself (and Silverbob’s still-appreciated toastmastering) from the haning out of the awards by opening up a wall separating two facility rooms at the hotel. Not perfect, but it got the con the additional revenue it needed for the ceremony and let anyone who wanted to attend the actual handing out of the awards.
Surely there will be a simple room capacity limit though?
I’m sensing that you are not fully appreciative of the marginalisation of white middle-class Brits.
JJ says I think we should just go back to having the 4 fiction categories, plus the Lodestar and Astounding Awards.
Looking at the last Hugo voting stats, I note that Best Series outpolled both Novelette and Short Story by decent margins. It had almost as many votes as the Novella category did.
Cat Eldridge: Looking at the last Hugo voting stats, I note that Best Series outpolled both Novelette and Short Story by decent margins.
So did the DP categories. I don’t agree that means any of them should be retained as Hugo categories.
I think attendance considerations of the Hugo Ceremony and limits on same (and the reaction against that as seen in that twitter stream) are uncomfortably reminiscent of what happened at the Hugo Losers Party in recent years, particularly Dublin, and that is, rightfully so, still a very sore point.
There are additional wrinkles and problems this year (hello, Covid) and still, it can be seen to look like Gatekeeping all the same.
rob_matic: I’m sensing that you are not fully appreciative of the marginalisation of white middle-class Brits.
*snort*
The worst part is that the selfish, self-absorbed, and entitled demands of these white people are creating a lot of anger and resentment among Worldcon members that is going to end up impacting BIPOC, quelle suprise 😐 . And I think that’s a huge problem.
Well, it isn’t the BIPOC who are behaving like spoiled babies with an unjustified sense of entitlement, is it? It’s the middle-class white people.
JJ says So did the DP categories. I don’t agree that means any of them should be retained as Hugo categories.
So what’s your ideal Hugo ballot? Novel, novella, novelette and short story I take it, plus Astounding and Lodestar Awards. What for fandom Awards?
There goes that 4 number again, its like the DC III organizers had been thinking about this for a while and tried to determine a good number and how to (a) list and all finalists for the first time ever while (b) respecting the very real space considerations. I’m all ears for actual solutions from the team that threw a tantrum about CZ’s programming yet jacked their name to create their own. Rich to suggest separating the Hugos from Worldcon when you didn’t even feel comfortable separating your fringe from CoNZealand’s name and inherent publicity.
Drama needs dramatic actors to create it.
Cat Eldridge: So what’s your ideal Hugo ballot? Novel, novella, novelette and short story I take it, plus Astounding and Lodestar Awards. What for fandom Awards?
None. It’s the fan awards which have fallen into the “white entitled people who spend all year, every year, logrolling for nominations and votes” abyss.
And that makes me sad, because there are actually some fan creators who consistently produce excellent work, who don’t regard the Hugo Awards as their personal chew-toy, who don’t spend the year logrolling to solicit random nominators and voters, who just spend their time engaging in excellent fan writing for the sheer joy of it, who truly embody the spirit of the Hugo Awards.
But they’re being overshadowed by the entitled self-promoters. The fan awards are no longer simply about excellence in fan works.
I already have 9 people who’ve told me they’d support a proposal to go back to just having the Hugo Awards be the 4 fiction categories plus the Lodestar and the Astounding award – and 3 of them are recent finalists in the fan Hugo categories. What does that tell you?
6) I don’t think the Hugo’s are getting too big for Worldcon. I think the demands and expectations are getting too big for a fan based award run by volunteers.
Accept that as long as it is a moving convention run by volunteers where people should be able to afford to go, there will be limitations on space and costs. Especially during a pandemic year. And set your expectations according to that.
Getting ride of more than ten Hugocategories at once is unrealistic. I don’t mind to drop a few, which is first on my personal list, should be known.
The suposly golden age (sorry JJ) were we only had the fictionawards did never exist, fanzine was first awarded in the second Hugo same as short fiction (and has been with some namechances a part of it).
Now I am not a fan of the fringecrew, so take the following with a grain of salt: We are in a freaking pandamic and so worldcon can’t be sure if there are still rules. And to get a front row for over 100 people per nominee is quite dificult for every convention. Looking were the problem is. Semi-Pro yeah.
For other categorys not so much. The Fringe has six names asocieated with it. Two of them are nominated in their own right in Fanwriter and Fancast.
Adri Joy is also double nominated, for the Fringe and nerds of a feather, flock together (I try to hold this not against the fanzine). In Fanzine they haven’t go that problem from the look of the Hogoanoucement.
Actually, not counting The Skiffy and Fanty show, where the problem is also kind of solved, if Paul takes his own spot for Fanwriter, outside for Semi-Pro we have only Journey Planet left that is the problem.
So the whole problem can be solved either by a) people beeing not so entiteld (here mostly the Fringecrew who haven’t even got the problem or b) abolishing the semi-pro category.
Now I liked what I read last year in semi-pro but it is as not a fancategory or a fictioncategory not that high priority for me.
steve davidson: Seems a lot of fans have forgotten the concept that Fandom is ascendant, superior to (in every way) mundanity and the mainstream, has better values, greater creativity, deeper history and stronger convictions than the proles, and that its job is to serve as example for lifting the enlightened few out of the muck and mire of their mundanity – not level the field until everyone is equally nose deep.
Steve, I have a lot of appreciation for your historic contributions to fandom and to SFF.
But every time you post – every single time you post on this subject – I get angry. Because your idea of fandom is decades old, it doesn’t reflect fandom now, and you are so out of touch with Worldcon fandom, Hugo fandom, and SFF fandom today.
Please just stop with your exclusionism and your gatekeeping. Because it’s wildly inaccurate, it’s wrong, it bears no relationship to the state of Worldcon fandom today, and it reflects really badly on you.
I don’t want you to end up being another S.T. Joshi, who has ruined what should have been an exemplary SFF legacy with his bad behavior. Please stop doing this.
I would never, ever, stay in a fandom who thought it was ascendant or superior to mainstream. But I would be happy to burn it to the ground.
JJ says I already have 9 people who’ve told me they’d support a proposal to go back to just having the Hugo Awards be the 4 fiction categories plus the Lodestar and the Astounding award – and 3 of them are recent finalists in the fan Hugo categories. What does that tell you?
It’s also worth noting that the number of Hugo member who voted for the fan related Awards in 2020 is about a third of those that voted for the four major fiction Awards which means a small number of voters can game them. This is a very good argument for paring down the Awards to what you suggest they should be.
I think what should be in the discusion should be what Worldcon is limiting. Places in the pre-Hugo award reception, front-row seats that are garantied and space on the stage, when accepting the prize. (The last one for safetyreasons)
That doesn’t mean the rest of the finalists are unwelcome, they aren’t garantied a seat. Now Corona is that big questionmark, without it I don’t know how dificult it will be for them to watch the ceremony.
Well, I tried to do something constructive and created a Google sheet to determine how many Hugo finalists or accepters will actually be at DisCon III, since I suspect a lot of people won’t be able to attend because of the shift to December, international travel restrictions, concern about travelling during a pandemic, etc… Plus, we have people nominated in more than one category.
So far, the response has been resounding silence and “But that would have been Discon’s job.” Make of that what you will.
Cora Buhlert: So far, the response has been resounding silence and “But that would have been Discon’s job.” Make of that what you will.
The DisCon III Hugo Admins will have asked of every finalist whether they will be there, and if not, who they are designating to accept for them if they win. That’s standard procedure.
I don’t think we should eliminate the fan awards altogether because of the behavious of a few entitled people (and it’s usually the same ones). The Hugos were born from fandom and one of the things that sets the Hugos apart from the Nebulas, World Fantasy Awards and others is that they honour the unpaid work that fans have done for the love of the genre.
And while most of the uproars and complaints in recent years have come from fan category finalists (though semiprozine also tends to have large teams and generate drama), it’s only a minority of fan category finalists who are complaining. Why should Paul or Jason Sanford or Charles Payseurt or Elsa Sjunneson or I or Olav and Amanda of the Hugo Book Club Blog or everybody in the fan artist category permanently lose the chance to win a Hugo and be recognised for our work because a handful of people keep complaining? If you have issues with Alasdair or Adri or Claire, don’t nominate them and don’t vote for them.
Also, I tried to raise interest in the fan categories by interviewing/featuring fanzines, fansites and fancasts and the people behind them just to show that there is more than the same few familiar names out there (though I interviewed those, too, if they wanted to). The result was that the same familiar names got nominated anyway, Galactic Journey was knocked off the ballot and the only new finalists in fancast were fancasts I had not featured. On the plus side, I found a lot of great fancasts I didn’t know before.
Cora Buhlert: I tried to raise interest in the fan categories by interviewing/featuring fanzines, fansites and fancasts and the people behind them just to show that there is more than the same few familiar names out there.
I absolutely loved your Fan creator series, and it actually affected my Hugo nominations ballot. Thank you so much for doing that. 🙂