(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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Cora Buhlert says Yes, I’d like to see more variation in the semiprozine category, too. Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, etc… all do great work, but I’d like to see lesser known zines like Luna Station Quarterly or The Dark or Diabolical Plots or Tales from the Magician’s Skull recognised, too. So I will expand the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project to cover semipros, too. And of course, I will continue to feature great fanzines, sites and fancasts.
The catch of course is that they need to get nominated by enough Hugo voters and that requires that sufficient people actually read them. (LOCUS used to win the semi-pro zine year after year because people read it and liked it. There were other semi-pro zines that I think were just as worthy.) The same fanzines get nominated year after year because they have more readers among the Hugo community. It’s as simple as that.
Well, obviously the solution is to drop all the fiction awards (after all, there are plenty of those to go around) and just keep the fan awards… No? I’ll get me coat.
Cora,
I’ve enjoyed your fan category interviews and would love to learn about more semiprozines. (The Dark is a prozine according to the semiprozine directory.)
So The Dark is a prozine now. That’s good to know, since they used to be a semipro.
Only Novel, Novella, Short Story, Fanzine and Pro Artist awards have been handed out in more calendar years than Dramatic Presentation. It’s the category with the sixth-longest history.
I feel very seen.
Agree completely.
Yes, not sure when it happened, but I wanna say it’s been at least a couple years now.
Weirdmage: I find the whole discussion about if it is OK to exclude award nominees from the ceremony where the award they are nominated from is presented very peculiar… It does seem like the people who are against all nominees being present at their ceremony
No one has said this, and it’s very dishonest of you to pretend that they have.
The question is whether finalists which specify several dozen people to be credited need to have reserved space up front for all of those people plus their +1 guests. The question is also how Worldcon can manage the financial and logistical difficulties presented by tripling or quadrupling both the cost of the pre-ceremony Hugo finalist party and the size of the space they have to find in which to host it, in order to accommodate dozens of additional finalists and their +1 guests.
Weirdmage: it would seem a rule change would be the way to go.
And if a rule change were implemented, would the complaints be any less? Surely it’s better to let each Worldcon assess how much space and money they have and base their limits on that.
StefanB: It can be requested, if you are a reviewer.
Stefan, the Hugo NetGalley widgets are unconditional. Any Hugo voter can use the widgets to get copies of the provided books; there is no waitlist or approval process, you click the widget and it gives you the ability to download the book (but you do need to have a NetGalley account).
But people who use their NetGalley accounts as reviewers for other books do need to be aware that the Hugo books they access will count toward their requested/reviewed statistics, so they should probably post something for a review on the Hugo books they obtain, even if it’s just “I received this book from the publisher as part of the Hugo Voter Packet, and I appreciate their generosity in providing this work to me.”
JJ says And if a rule change were implemented, would the complaints be any less? Surely it’s better to let each Worldcon assess how much space and money they have and base their limits on that.
It’s quite reasonable to limit the number of people for each Award nominated to a reasonable number, say three. They can decide among themselves who’s going to be there.
Surely we’re not expecting the entire staff of say Fiyah to attend the Awards if they’re nominated.
FIYAH is actually running a crowdfunding campaign to allow as many of their staff as possible to attend and have a meet-up.
Laura: I remember Alasdair Stuart demonstrating his lack of understanding about how Hugo voting works in an article he put in his packet last year. He got very scoldy about a fellow finalist getting placed under No Award in 2019. Spoiler Alert: that finalist finished well above No Award. (Not to mention that there is absolutely nothing wrong with placing No Award as you see fit.) So I’m not completely surprised to see a lack of understanding about the Hugos and Worldcon in general.
He obviously didn’t realize that he was also under No Award on the ballots of those 86 people.
Cora Buhlert says FIYAH is actually running a crowdfunding campaign to allow as many of their staff as possible to attend and have a meet-up.
And are they all planning on attending the Awards ceremony? I hope that they’ve deputised someone to accept the Award if they win!
It does beg the question if Discon III can and should limit the number of people per nominated Award who can attend.
JJ:
Yup, exactly. 86 people put No Award ahead of all of them. No need to be offended for one person. They all handily beat Noah Ward in the end.
I don’t believe the rules say a concom even has to have a ceremony, let alone dictate how they run it and who they allow in. They have to announce the winners, and give out rockets, but none of that requires a special time and place.
So, since it’s increasingly hard to provide space and whatnot for all the nominees, the obvious thing to do is provide space for none! That’s the only way to be fair! 🙂
The FIYAH folks understand there are limits and just want to use DisCon as an opportunity for their own meet-up, which is a good thing IMO. Their crowdfunding campaign is here BTW.
@JJ @ Laura
I remember being very thrilled last year when the full voting statistics came out that even though 43 people had voted me under “No Award”, that was only two people more than the 41 who No Awarded the entire fan writer category, because they apparently like none of us.
Cat Eldridge:
I don’t see that question being begged at all. I would imagine the only limits for attending members (finalist or otherwise) would be whatever limits and restrictions of the venue at the time. Obviously not every attending member does go to the Hugo ceremony, and there are usually still a few other events taking place at the same time anyway. Have there been issues in the past with the Hugo venue being too small to accommodate those who wanted to attend?
@Cora Buhlert
Yes, sorry – I was trying to pick large groups I’m known to either like or belong to, rather than specifically finalists who have been agitating and that Iiii may have also criticised in the past for Other Reasons. I can see how that would appear to imply sins on the part of the named groups, which was not intended – apologies.
@Cora
I’d guess that most years quite a few of the No Award votes in first place are against a category in general and not necessarily the particular finalists, but I’m sure it’s tough to look at it objectively when you’re one of those finalists!
Laura: Have there been issues in the past with the Hugo venue being too small to accommodate those who wanted to attend?
It seems to have been pretty common in recent years. I remember a bunch of people standing at the back of the room for the 2012 ceremony. And the only reason I got to attend in 2015 when Sasquan announced only a few hours before the ceremony that people who wanted to attend the Hugo ceremony had to go stand in line and get tickets (which ran out), was because a friend of mine managed to get there early enough to get one for themselves and one for me (I had already gone back to my hotel room to get ready when they made the announcement).
At Dublin you had to show up at a certain time earlier in the day to get a wristband to get into the ceremony (and those ran out, too). MidAmeriCon II had a simultaneous video feed to the big food court/bar they called Callahan’s Place, and I think some of the other Worldcons have done that, too.
@Laura
For fan writer, I think the folks who no award the entire category are often very traditionalist fans for whom you’re only a real Fan Writer (TM), if you’ve been published in a print fanzine, preferably one they know and read. You can’t really win those folks over (and nor can you win over the folks who vote against the category, because they want to see it gone), so I just ignore them.
JJ: It seems to have been pretty common in recent years.
Ah, I still don’t imagine Worldcons should put limits specifically on finalists attending the ceremony beyond getting tickets or however they handle it for all other attending members who aren’t in the pre-ceremony reception.
Laura: Ah, I still don’t imagine Worldcons should put limits specifically on finalists attending the ceremony beyond getting tickets or however they handle it for all other attending members who aren’t in the pre-ceremony reception.
They don’t.
How many Hugo finalists can scroll on the head of a pixel?
@JJ:
FYI: Your statement made me angry too.
I am sorry if I let the argument get a bit heated yesterday. I don’t know if I can fairly use the excuse that English is not my first language. I should have put more taughts in at last my second post.
I still think that the rule is mostly a reaction to Strange Horizon and it shouldn’t be a problem for any other fanalist to get the creators to the Hugoceremony.
In my third post, I should have made it clear that I am unconfortable with the role that Adri Joy and Alisdair Stuart play in this. Neither of their nominations should have a problem with getting their nominees there.
There are a few thinks that I still want to point out:
The talk of taking the Hugos away from Worldcon makes me very unconfortable and is a reminder of other people who had the same idea.
In my opinion to ignore that there is a special situation here, is at last from Adri Joy and Alisdair Stuart dishonest.
I am not going to attend this Worldcon but it is also an event for the fans, saying that they are unnesesary or unvelcome is somethink that I strongly disagree with. We all can remember a case in the past, where that probably would be a disaster.
I understand that (taking it away from the concrete ecample) that a lot of people are involved in creating exspecially a fanzine or Semi-Pro. I understand their wish to attend the cerenomy (Yes if mentioned in the nomination or not). I wish them luck but Worldcon has to manage the situation.
From the concrete example away, which people are named in Fanzine and Semi-Pro are up to the nominees. I haven’t done the math but nearly half of the people, who are named are from one Semi-Pro. We all can name a fanzine or Semi-Pro were this would have been a big problem in the past. And I think Discon has to a) keep it managable and b) think about the future.
I hope that was clear. Hopfully not an attack against any communicator.
JJ: They don’t.
Yes, I was saying that in response to Cat’s earlier comment (which prompted my question):
@Cora:
I find it interesting, that 3 awards get more no awardvotes (first place) than you, one tied.
Okay, Best Editor Long, Series and Fancast are controversal for some voters, but I am a bit suprised by Short Story (but perhaps the storys were to dark for that time)
JJ:
It would have been dishonest of me to claim anybody had said that, but I did no such thing.
What I did do was point out, as far as I can see accurately, the consequences of one position on the situation.
There is a massive gulf between “nominees will all sit in the nominee’s area at the ceremony” and “some nominees will have to queue for tickets along with other converntion attendees if they want to attend the awards ceremony”.
The latter reeks of disrespect for those that have been nominated for the award.
If a rule had been in place previously to this year, there would be no legitimate complaint to discuss.
The reason I suggest a rule change is to avoid situations like this in the future.
The comments here suggest it may become a recurring issue, so being slightly pro-active would perhaps be a good idea.
I think it is a spectacularly bad idea to let each Worldcon decide how many nominees are allowed to be in the nominee area, i.e. attend the ceremony as nominees.
Absent any rules limiting how many people have to be accomodated for each nominee I think the only fair way to proceed is to allow all nominees accepted by the awards committee a seat in the nominee area.
As others have pointed out, a Worldcon does not have to hold a Hugo Award ceremony, so if there is an issue with the costs of doing so then they are free to not hold one.
Not holding a ceremony would seem much fairer than excluding some of those nominated the opportunity to attend the ceremony as nominees.
Weirdmage: If a rule had been in place previously to this year, there would be no legitimate complaint to discuss.
You’re joking, right? There would still be the same complaints, rule or no rule. And there would be plenty of complaints should anyone be stupid enough to first try to get such a rule passed through two years of WSFS Business Meetings.
Weirdmage: Absent any rules limiting how many people have to be accomodated for each nominee I think the only fair way to proceed is to allow all nominees accepted by the awards committee a seat in the nominee area.
I’m sure you will be volunteering to serve on Worldcon committees going forward, and help them figure out a way to come up with the money and logistics to enable tripling the size of the Hugo pre-party and finding sufficient space for it, so that all attendees can be ushered out into the reserved space in the auditorium for the ceremony.
steve davidson: FYI: Your statement made me angry too.
Then perhaps you might have just a slight glimmer of how some people here feel every time you post your lengthy rants explaining to them that you are The Definitive Authority On Fandom and They Are Not Real Fans™ And Are Doing Fandom Wrong.
Each Worldcon decides because each Worldcon knows their facilities, budget, and resources. This year was the first time there were no limits on number of names on the ballot. I remember in the past one of the co-editors-in-chief of Strange Horizons was not named on the ballot – presumably to allow another staff member to have a spot. Don’t know what previous Worldcon’s limits have been when it comes to reception/front seating area, but they’ve surely had them.
Ah, so people who want to suggest a rule to remove an issue that looks to be a recurring one are stupid now…
Oh, so we need to find money for a pre-party to have a ceremony now…
Seems like the only thing you don’t take for granted there should be money for is the people nominated to be seated in the nominee area at their own ceremony.
I’ll end this with saying that you are showing yourself to be no less a gatekeeper than Steve Davidson.
You seem to be just as convinced that you are the one who holds the correct opinion too.
Weirdmage: I’ll end this with saying that you are showing yourself to be no less a gatekeeper than Steve Davidson.
I’m trying to explain to you how Worldcon and the Hugo Ceremony work, and what peoples’ reactions would be to your proposed “solution”, based on what their reactions have already repeatedly been.
Weirdmage: Ah, so people who want to suggest a rule to remove an issue that looks to be a recurring one are stupid now…
Such a rule would not “remove the issue”. Which is part of what you don’t understand. Rules don’t stop unhappiness or complaints.
And the reason it would be stupid to propose such a rule is because WSFS members would not pass such a rule through even one, much less the two Business Meetings which would be required to pass it. Which is another part of what you don’t understand. Apart from the Hugo categories and how Site Selection is run, WSFS members don’t dictate rules to individual Worldcons, because they are well aware that individual Worldcons are going to be the ones in the best position to decide what the rules should be for their particular year.
Weirdmage: Oh, so we need to find money for a pre-party to have a ceremony now…Seems like the only thing you don’t take for granted there should be money for is the people nominated to be seated in the nominee area at their own ceremony.
I previously explained to you that was needed, I guess you failed to read that.
I’m explaining to you how the nominees all get seated together at the front of the auditorium. Which is yet another thing you don’t understand. And contrary to your claim, my statement was was made based on the assumption that all of the finalists would go from the party to their seats at the front of the auditorium, which is what happens every year.
The main purpose of the party, apart from giving them a special celebration, is to try to ensure that the finalists get some food in their stomachs and – most importantly – that they are all in one place and ready to go when it’s time for them to be seated together at the front of the auditorium.
Cora: For fan writer, I think the folks who no award the entire category are often very traditionalist fans for whom you’re only a real Fan Writer (TM), if you’ve been published in a print fanzine, preferably one they know and read.
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten the pushback over blogs as fanzines that happened before I got involved with Hugo nominating and voting myself. I remember reading about it on, you guessed it, blogs! It may have been the first time I encountered the word “fanzine”! ;P
JJ on June 21, 2021 at 11:25 am
Just stop with your “you don’t understand”, I have made it pretty clear in previous comments that I do understand the situation. I have addressedseveral of your “points” already
I find your latest comment horribly offensive, and it clearly shows that you are utterly incapable of having a discussion.
If you have an ounce of decency I would like you to never ever talk to me online or in person.
Weirdmage: This is a very bad day to be showing your ass here. Toodles.
Cora:
Those people still exist (and yes I know some of them) but fewer and fewer of them have anything to do with WorldCon (too big, too expensive, and catering to the wrong kind of fans) and thus the Hugos as well. That there would be 41 of them voting in the Hugos seems unlikely now.
So I’m guessing a bunch would be in the “destroy all fan Hugos” camp.
I know Alasdair, and frankly I think he’s fundamentally incapable of dishonesty.
I’ve been avoiding getting drawn into this argument. But ad hominem attacks are not cool Stefan, and are not conducive to a positive outcome from the debate.
Both Adri Joy and Alasdair Stuart have a lot of integrity, and whether or not one always agrees with them, they both have a track record of acting in good faith and working for the good of the community as they see it.
Not going to get into this debate any further, but couldn’t let insults towards these two slide.
<sigh>… clueless people on Twitter who assume that any random commenter here represents and speaks for File 770, Mike Glyer, all of the commenters here, and Worldcon, too. 🙄
I guess they’re all hive-mind dittoheads, so they assume that everyone else is hive-mind dittoheads, too. Reminds me of the Puppies. It’s sad that there are people who think that’s how the world should work.
@Olav Rokne:
I have not said that Alisdair is dishonest, I said that in my opinion the action that he has taken is dishonest. (ignoring somethink that is obvious) I don’t see people as saints, even a fundamental honest person can act dishonest in a certain moment. (Now I won’t speculate about the reasons)
Perhaps my wording is to strong, perhaps I hold Ari Joy and Alistair Stuart to high a standard(which is ironic, because I have and this is somethink I have been upfront about, a lesser opinion of exspecially Adri Joy, than you have), could be.
The other point is that both make it their problem when it isn’t. And fighting a fight for a good goal (here the rights of the nominees) can be dangerous if you got tunnelvision, somethink your post did interesting enough elude to.
I will be clear on both.
I am not convinced that Adri Joy is fighting for the good of the community in this.
I don’t know enough about Alisdair Stuart to make an observation here. I do not trust him enough to give the Hugos to him, somethink his tread does at last imply for me. And in this special case I don’t see the good that they could come from it.
And Mike I am sorry for the damage I have done to File 770 repution, if my post are part of the twitterfight.
Don’t worry, Stefan, we’re all a reactionary hivemind who want to take the Hugos back to the 1950s here and apparently we’re all Steve Davidson as well.
Xtifr on June 20, 2021 at 7:26 pm said:
Correct. Technically, the only program item required by the WSFS Constitution is the WSFS Business Meeting.
Although the Constitution does not explicitly say it, I have interpreted this to mean that every attending member of the convention has the right to attend the Business Meeting, and they cannot be barred from doing so by the organizing committee. Now given that most years only a couple hundred people attend, this typically is not a problem, but it could be. Indeed, in 2015, we had to drop Plan A (the Conference Theater) which would have been lovely but wasn’t big enough. We were on Plan B, which required rejiggering a couple of rooms and involved the extra expense of taking down/putting up an air wall every day to make enough room. That worked, but if more than about 400 people had shown up, I would have had to invoke Plan C (move to the 1500 seat ballroom), and if that still wasn’t enough, Plan D (the INB Performing Arts Center, as it was known at the time — the venue for the Hugo Awards). But even that wouldn’t have seated every attending member, so Plan E, Ghod help us all, would have been to move outside onto the convention center patio and to have the presiding staff work from the floating platform in the Spokane River. And wouldn’t that have been fun with the disaster-area-level wildfires happening during the convention?
JJ on June 20, 2021 at 8:26 pm said:
Definitely. In San Jose things worked out only because we also simulcast the event to the Second Stage in the exhibit hall. That’s how we handled the Masquerade as well, and while I was in the Hugo ceremony doing TheHugoAwards.org’s coverage of the event, I watched the Masquerade from the exhibit hall. (Which also allowed me to eat dinner while watching it.)
It’s nearly impossible to have an event venue that can hold a Worldcon and also have enough seats to seat 100% of the membership in a single space.
When I first started working on Worldcon space usage, it was a rule of thumb that the Masquerade would be the event with the biggest attendance, with the Hugo Awards second. That has reversed, and now we seem to be getting to a point where we are getting more interest in attending than the seating capacity of our largest venues.
Ugh, I shouldn’t have gone to look at Twitter.
Just my take on this sort of thing. There are people who wish they could cancel Trump, or Boris Johnson, or Putin, or the persecutors of the Uighars, etc., whose words have no effect on those issues whatsoever, but who find their attacks are just the right caliber to elicit a satisfying pain response to the pretentious fans who run something called the Worldcon, or somebody who writes something dumb here in the comments section. So they’ve transferred their moral outrage to that more vulnerable target.
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Cora Buhlert: Don’t worry, Stefan, we’re all a reactionary hivemind who want to take the Hugos back to the 1950s here and apparently we’re all Steve Davidson as well.
I am finding a special sense of irony in the caustic tweets coming from the chair of a past failed non-Worldcon convention who fucked things up so badly that a bunch of people are still owed money.
MKS has made it clear in a FB post (while not claiming to speak for SH as a whole) that SH did not expect to send 87 nominees to the ceremony — and that they have every intention of paying for their pins.
It is distressing to see their names being dragged through so much mud.