(1) MACMILLAN APPLIES LIBRARY EMBARGO ACROSS THE BOARD. Publishers Weekly outlines the expanded policy — “After Tor Experiment, Macmillan Expands Embargo on Library E-books”.
More than a year after imposing a controversial four month “test” embargo on new release e-books in libraries from it’s Tor imprint, Macmillan announced today that it will now impose a two month embargo on library e-books across all of the company’s imprints. The terms take effect November 1.
Under the publisher’s new digital terms of sale for libraries, “library systems” will be now be allowed to purchase a single—that is, one—perpetual access e-book during the first eight weeks of publication for each new Macmillan release, at half price ($30). Additional copies will then be available at full price (generally $60 for new releases) after the eight-week window has passed. All other terms remain the same: e-book licenses will continue to be metered for two years or 52 lends, whichever comes first, on a one copy/one user model. A Macmillan spokesperson confirmed to PW that the single perpetual access copy will be available only for new release titles in the first eight weeks after publication—the option to buy a single perpetual access copy expires after that eight week window, and the offer is not available for backlist titles.
And the American Library Association goes on the warpath: “ALA denounces new Macmillan library lending model, urges library customers to voice objections”.
The American Library Association (ALA) denounces the new library ebook lending model announced today by Macmillan Publishers. Under the new model, a library may purchase one copy upon release of a new title in ebook format, after which the publisher will impose an eight-week embargo on additional copies of that title sold to libraries.
“Macmillan Publishers’ new model for library ebook lending will make it difficult for libraries to fulfill our central mission: ensuring access to information for all,” said ALA President Wanda Brown. “Limiting access to new titles for libraries means limiting access for patrons most dependent on libraries.
“When a library serving many thousands has only a single copy of a new title in ebook format, it’s the library – not the publisher – that feels the heat. It’s the local library that’s perceived as being unresponsive to community needs.
“Macmillan’s new policy is unacceptable,” said Brown. “ALA urges Macmillan to cancel the embargo.”
The new Macmillan ebook lending model is an expansion of an existing policy that went into effect in July 2018, when the company, without warning, issued a four-month embargo applying solely to titles from the company’s Tor imprint. At the time ALA stated that the delay would hurt readers, authors and libraries.
Since last fall, Hachette Book Group (HBG) and Penguin Random House (PRH) have eliminated “perpetual access” for libraries and replaced it with a two-year access model. Simon & Schuster changed from a one-year to two-year access model. While re-evaluating their business models, none of these firms implemented an embargo—deciding that equitable access to information through libraries is also in their business interest. HarperCollins continues with its 26-loan model. Macmillan now stands alone in its embargo policy among the largest (Big 5) publishers….
(2) FOOD OF THE GODZILLA. SYFY Wire browses the latest from Sideshow Collectibles and other toymakers in “Important Toy News: This ramen-eating Godzilla is priceless, Charlie Brown feels shame”.
But all of this money-spending is making us hungry. And what do you do when you’re hungry? That’s right: you eat. You eat ramen, and just like Godzilla, you look so unbelievably adorable when you do it that it makes your face explode and you cry tears of unyielding madness.
(3) BEST RELATED WORK. A writer who goes by “Building Worlds” has written an appeal to voters: “AO3, the Hugos, and Fandom” on Medium.
I’ve seen an argument online that a distinction voters are struggling with regarding AO3 is that they believe it is not noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text (all the fan fiction).
I’d argue that the most noteworthy thing about AO3, /r/Fantasy, and other online fan forums, is that they are venues for users to come together and discuss the speculative fiction they love, run by volunteers. To me, the Hugo Awards and WorldCon itself are about bringing fans together around the work we all love. Ultimately, that’s about the purest reason to vote for a Hugo as any I can think of.
(4) SFF ART GOES UNDER THE HAMMER. Bids are being taken by Heritage Auctions for the August 13 – 14 Glynn and Suzanne Crain Science Fiction Collection Signature Auction. Robert Emil Schulz’ cover for PKD’s The World Jones Made 1956 paperback is the poster for the event.
(5) COLLECTIVE NOUN. New Voices in Orbit #19 asks writers: “What do you call a group of dragons?” Kendall says, “And yes, I’m thinking of Meredith when I send you this. But also everyone.”
(6) SNAPS COURTESY OF THE HUT. Esquire has posted “133 Photos of Comic-Con 2019’s Biggest Celebrities”.
Jay and Silent Bob, Elizabeth Henstridge, Chloe Bennet and more stopped by the Getty Images Portrait Studio delivered by Pizza Hut.
(7) WHEN E.T. COMES TO STAY. Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur episode 196 discusses “Invasive Aliens.”
Alien Invasions have been a staple of science fiction for years, with motherships and UFOs assaulting Earth, but how realistic is such a thing? We’ll take a look at what might motivate an attack, how it might happen, what alternatives might make more sense, and what might prevent extraterrestrials from trying.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- July 27, 1940 — Bugs Bunny made his cartoon debut.
- July 27, 1994 — Test Tube Teens From The Year 2000 went direct to video.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born July 27, 1874 — Frank Shannon. He’s best remembered now as the scientist Dr. Alexis Zarkov in the three Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe between 1936 and 1940. The serials themselves were Flash Gordon, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. (Died 1959.)
- Born July 27, 1938 — Gary Gygax. Game designer and author best known for co-creating Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. In addition to the almost beyond counting gaming modules he wrote, he wrote the Greyhawk Adventure series and the Dangerous Journeys novels. (Died 2008.)
- Born July 27, 1939 — Sydney J. van Scyoc, 80. Her first published story was “Shatter the Wall” in Galaxy in 1962. She continued to write short stories throughout the Sixties and Seventies, and published Saltflower, her first novel in the early Seventies. Over the next twenty years, she published a dozen novels and likewise number of short stories. For all practice purposes, she’s not available in digital format.
- Born July 27, 1948 — Juliet Marillier, 71. She’s a New Zealand-born and Western Australian resident fantasy writer focusing entirely on historical fantasy. She has a number of series including Blackthorn & Grim which at two volumes is a good introduction to her, and Sevenwaters which at seven volumes is a serious reading commitment. She’s a regular contributor to the fiction writing blog, Writer Unboxed.
- Born July 27, 1949 — Robert Rankin, 70. Writer of what I’d call serious comic genre fiction. Best book by him? I’d single out The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse as the best work he ever did bar none. Hell, even the name is absolutely great.
- Born July 27, 1950 — Simon Jones, 69. He’s well known for his portrayals of Arthur Dent, protagonist of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He first portrayed the character on radio for the BBC and again on television for BBC Two. Jones also featured in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film in a cameo role. He’s in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Brazil and 12 Monkeys as well.
- Born July 27, 1968 — Farah Mendlesohn, 51. She’s an historian and prolific writer on genre literature, and an active fan. Best works by her? I really like her newest work on Heinlein which I’m reading now, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein. Her work on Diana Wynne Jones, Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition, is a fascinating read. And I highly recommend her Rhetorics of Fantasy as we don’t get many good theoretical looks at fantasy.
- Born July 27, 1973 — Cassandra Clare, 46. I read at least the first three or four volumes of her Mortal Instruments series which I see means I’ve almost completed it. Damn good series. Anyone read her Magnus Bane series?
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest encounter a vending machine that’s too intelligent.
- When was the last time a B.C. strip made me laugh out loud? July 27….
(11) HE’S THE REASON FOR THE “GOOGLE 15”. Fast Company claims “This snack curator for Google is one of the most powerful people in food”.
…As urban legend has it, Google cofounder Sergey Brin once instructed office architects that “no one should be more than 200 feet away from food.” And so they rarely are. On any given day, the 1,300 “microkitchens” located within Google’s 70 or so offices around the world, from Pittsburgh to Istanbul, brim with dried seaweed, turkey jerky, kombucha, and other eclectic treats that rotate according to season, popularity with employees, local tastes, and food trends.
Google takes its snacking very seriously. That’s why it has a dedicated team overseeing it and a chef named Matt Colgan at the helm at many of its western campuses, where he (along with menu architects, wellness managers, and nutrition specialists at Google Food) has quietly emerged as one of the most powerful gatekeepers in the packaged-food world.
“When you’re feeding this many people,” says Colgan, culinary director for Google’s food operations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, “you encounter every diet imaginable, every request.” You also get bombarded by sales reps at food companies, who are hungering after snackers—and these snackers in particular. They see Google employees, the drivers of Silicon Valley tech innovation, as having the clout, and appetite, to set snack trends.
(12) RIGHT TO THE SOURCE. Michael Cassutt was interviewed by the Washington Post’s Eryn Brown for the obituary of long-time Mission Control director Christoper C. Kraft, Jr., who died on July 22 at age 95.
When Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White lingered during the first U.S. spacewalk in 1965, enjoying the scenery, Mr. Kraft commandeered the communications system and ordered him, “Get back in!” the ship.
“This is the saddest day of my life,” White said, before heading back into the cockpit.
The incident was indicative of the culture that Mr. Kraft set.
“It was, ‘I, the flight director, am in charge. Not you the astronaut, and not the head of NASA. You come to me,’?” said author Michael Cassutt, who writes about the space program. “Much of the NASA culture as we envision it really derives from Chris Kraft.”
(13) BEHIND THE PAYWALL. An article in the July 20 Financial Times by David Cheal tells how musicians are inspired by space and space travel.
“In 2015 the British band Public Service Broadcasting released an album that celebrated the golden era of space travel. The Race for Space knitted together propulsive, often funky music with spoken-word clips (Kennedy: ‘We go to the moon because it is hard’) to recapture the sheer excitement of Sputnik, the Moon landing–and also tragedies such as the deaths of three Apollo 1 astronauts in 1967. The music was refreshing because it eschewed the notion that spsce has to be electronic, using a range of often acoustic instruments. In 2018 the Northern Irish composer and artist Hannah Peel released Mary Casio; Journey to Casiopeia, which follows the dream of a fictional stargazer to travel from her home in Barnsley to the constellation of Cassiopeia. Peel’s music combines synthesizers with brass.
But one band have gone further and faster than any other in their exploration of the possibilities of space and music: Muse. The British trio’s interstellar adventures show how far space-themed pop music has travelled since the early days of Joe Meek: bass and synths that thrum and pulse like gravitational waves, guitars that shriek and howl like the geysers of Enceladus, wailing, otherworldly voices that sing of “Space Dementia,’ ‘Starlight’ and, most epically of all, a ‘Supermassive Black Hole.'”
(14) WHERE ARE YOU IN TIME? Doc Brown drove a DeLorean to his future – now your past! Today they’d like to sell you a watch whose look is inspired by the car — “DeLorean, the Eternal Design”.
(15) KEEPING TRACK OF YOU. Wired points out how “Netflix’s The Great Hack Brings Our Data Nightmare to Life”.
The new documentary about Cambridge Analytica uses thoughtful narration and compelling visuals to create a dystopian horror movie for our times.
If you’d rather not think about how your life is locked in a dystopian web of your own data, don’t watch the new Netflix documentary The Great Hack.
But if you want to see, really see, the way data tracking, harvesting, and targeting takes the strands of information we generate and ties them around us until we are being suffocated by governments and companies, don’t miss the film, which premieres today on the streaming platform and in theaters. […]
(16) THINKING INSIDE THE BOX. Where do you land in this grid of Writing Style Alignments?
(17) ACTING CREDENTIALS. Kittens recreate horror movies. (From 2015.)
You won’t believe how adorable these kitties are as they star in ‘The Purring’ (1980), ‘The Texas Chainpaw Meowsacre’ (1974), ‘Psycat’ (1960), and ‘Cattie’ (1976).
(18) THE POINT. Finland was a magnet for competitors in the inaugural Heavy Metal Knitting Championship.
The AP story: “Purl jam: Finland hosts heavy metal knitting championship”
Armed with needles and a yarn of wool, teams of avid knitters danced Thursday to the deafening sounds of drums beating and guitars slashing at the first-ever Heavy Metal Knitting World Championship in eastern Finland.
With stage names such as Woolfumes, Bunny Bandit and 9? Needles, the participants shared a simple goal: to showcase their knitting skills while dancing to heavy metal music in the most outlandish way possible.
“Heavy Metal Knitting World Champion 2019” was won by “Giga Body Metal” from Japan.
Finland is the promised land of heavy metal music. There are 50 heavy metal bands per 100 000 Finnish citizens, which is astonishingly many and actually more than anywhere else in the whole world. The number of needlework enthusiasts is equally high, as according to even the most modest estimates there are hundreds of thousands of people in Finland who are immersed various kinds of needlework crafts, knitting included. What combines them both is the great joy of creativity. When playing guitar as well as knitting stitches it is all about the pleasure of creating something cool with your hands. And – it’s all about the attitude!
(19) DOUBLE DOWN. Gemini Man Official Trailer 2 has dropped:
Who will save you from yourself? From visionary director Ang Lee, watch the official trailer for Gemini Man, starring Will Smith. In theatres October 11. Gemini Man (#GeminiMan) is an innovative action-thriller starring Will Smith (#WillSmith) as Henry Brogan, an elite assassin, who is suddenly targeted and pursued by a mysterious young operative that seemingly can predict his every move.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, Kendall, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(3) BEST RELATED WORK.
Building Worlds: Note, specifically, that it calls out “related to… fandom” in the description. Recent nominees have included various non-fiction books by and about “the greats” from previous eras of speculative fiction, non-fiction books and collections of essays about modern speculative fiction issues, and a couple years of puppy-related nonsense. There have been a few fandom-focused, but by and large, the “fandom” portion of the eligibility has been ignored… Works by or about fandom, while mentioned in the category, are often neglected.
How absolutely bizarre it is that this person does not recognize non-fiction works about SFF as being about fandom. It’s almost as if they’re trying to define who is a member of fandom based on how they engage with that fandom. 🙄
16
snerk
(I’m over on the right side of that, somewhere. I have scenes, but no plot. Worldbuilding happens, though.)
3
They like AO3, and I think they get it, but that’s not why it’s nominated. (There’s some great fanfic there, too.)
(9) I also enjoyed Pleasant Profession – will have to look for the Jones volume.
(1) Well, at least Macmillan is still offering a perpetual license, instead of the dishonest pretense that print books die and need to be replaced after 26 checkouts. But yes, it’s going to be librarians, not Macmillan, taking the heat for the “only one copy available” when a book is brand new and in demand.
JJ: I don’t quite follow your point. A sercon work about SFF needn’t be “about fandom”. Did you mean to write that it would be “by fandom”?
David Shallcross: I don’t quite follow your point. A sercon work about SFF needn’t be “about fandom”. Did you mean to write that it would be “by fandom”?
What I meant was that Alec Nevala-Lee’s book is just as much related to fandom as AO3 is related to fandom. This person is arguing that such books are not related to fandom — which is absolutely ludicrous.
They seem to have in their mind an extremely limited definition of what fandom is — and they’re arguing that the “related to fandom” part of this category has, by and large, been ignored in terms of the works which have been finalists… when in reality, the finalists in it over the years have been almost exclusively of that nature.
[click]
Very small correction — There’s actually three books in this series.
Scrolling to Montana Soon–Gonna Be a Pixel-Floss Tycoon!
3) I agree with JJ and was really annoyed at the “well, who cares about those stuffy non-fiction books about ‘old’ writers anyway” tone of that piece. It’s all right if the author isn’t interested in the history of our genre, at least the history before Harry Potter came out, but that doesn’t mean that people who do care are less fannish than them. That sneery “But WorldCon is full of old people over 30, how horrible!” attitude is really awful as well. At WorldCon 75, there were people ranging in age from a baby literally at its mother’s breast to a 94-year-old gentleman. And that’s awesome, because fandom is for everyone. Honestly, I think the author of that piece is trying to hit the full bingo card of negative stereotypes about millennials.
In general AO3’s supporters aren’t doing them a favour, because their behaviour has been so annoying that it doesn’t soften my attitude towards AO3 as a misclassified finalist.
Also Astounding is a great book and everybody who is even remotely interested in how our genre got where it is should read it.
Cora Buhlert: It’s all right if the author isn’t interested in the history of our genre, at least the history before Harry Potter came out, but that doesn’t mean that people who do care are less fannish than them.
This person doesn’t need to convince the people who already consider AO3 a legitimate finalist. And they’re not going to convince the people who already believe that AO3 is not a legitimate finalist. So presumably their goal is to convince all of the people in the middle who may not have a definite opinion one way or the other.
Why they thought saying “Your fandom isn’t really a legitimate fandom” to those people would be a persuasive argument is really beyond comprehension. 🙄
And yes, I’ve really had it up to here with all of the poseurs on Twitter who are still proclaiming themselves to be Hugo nominees. That’s just so disrespectful and unfair to the real Hugo Award finalists.
Hey, question everybody:
Where do I buy bookplates?
I have a bunch of authors I’d really love to get a bookscribble from, but no intention of bringing a suitcase full of books to Dublin.
Where do I get something like this? Any suggestions?
(Best of all: What are the odds that there’ll be cool bookplates for sale at Worldcon? That’ll probably be better than what I can get my hands on in the next few weeks…)
(3) As a 32-year-old I suspect I no longer qualify as “young”, but I will say that my eyes rolled at the sentence suggesting that the addition of the Lodestar Award was, by implication, a Big Deal in making the Hugos more welcoming to younger folks. (Possibly I’m biased because I skip that category.) And what exactly does this have to do with making Worldcon more welcoming? How many people base their con attendance decisions based on what the Hugo categories are? I don’t think my college friends who go to AnimeExpo every year (one of whom got me into Vernor Vinge and John Barnes back in the day) aren’t coming to Worldcon because of the presence or absence of a YA award.
Echoing Cora, while I’d say that the Worldcon 76 attendance skewed more on the older side there were definitely plenty of people my age or younger there. (And while I’ve certainly been the youngest person in the room at conventions, this somehow hasn’t stopped me from having good conversations with people. Weird, huh?)
I am also honestly terrified of the proposition that making Related Work into “Best Fannish Community” would be a good thing. That really just sounds like a recipe for unnecessary drama.
As somebody who thinks that (1) AO3 is a very good thing and deserves recognition and (2) it’s not a great fit for, honestly, any Hugo category, at this point I am mostly hoping that it finishes somewhere in the middle of the pack and all of this mostly goes away after the Hugos. I can dream, right?
Martin
who, amusingly, has been reading Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (2003 Hugo Award for Best Related Book) and has gotten plenty of fun gossip about 1940s fandom out of it
(3) BEST RELATED WORK. This is a whole lot of words to highlight the “related to… fandom” in the category definition, and then reiterate that AO3 is related to fandom.
I dunno; I don’t even want to re-start the discussion, because honestly this piece is slight and doesn’t add anything new.
But I will grimace at the idea that the next step is nominating r/Fantasy for Best Related Work. Definitely not a direction I’d like to see.
Goobergunch: I am also honestly terrified of the proposition that making Related Work into “Best Fannish Community” would be a good thing. That really just sounds like a recipe for unnecessary drama.
I think that such a thing would be very, very orthogonal to what the Related Work category is intended to be, and if that started happening, I’d be likely to bring a category re-definition proposal to WSFS that put a stop to it.
Standback: But I will grimace at the idea that the next step is nominating r/Fantasy for Best Related Work. Definitely not a direction I’d like to see.
Nor I. At that point, I’d be likely to pull out No Award.
But the author of the piece is one of the moderators for r/Fantasy, so of course they’d like to get it a Hugo nomination. 🙄
I think that this is just Sad Puppies and 20BooksTo50K under a different name: a special-interest group who wants to snag the cachet of a Hugo Award nomination for themselves, while having very little respect for what the Hugo Awards are actually intended to be.
13: This years Proms season has a general space related theme. Prom 10 was a performance by Public Service Broadcasting of The Race for Space. It was broadcast live on Radio 3 and 6 Music and a TV version was transmitted on Friday. Availability round the globe may vary, although the Proms are usually reasonably unrestricted being a leading example of the BBCs “Inform, Eucate, Entertain” mission.
@JJ:
Yup. That’d be the way to go (and if it comes to that, I’d be happy to assist).
I kind of hope we won’t need to, because drafting proposals on titchy issues and then persuading people is such a headache 😛
Personally, I don’t think it’s quite that.
Certainly not for AO3 — I think it’s inarguable that there’s a huge contingent of Worldcon members who recognize and appreciate AO3 as a real, major, and valuable force in the field. (It doesn’t logically follow that since Worldcon members appreciate it, therefore it is eligible, but set that aside — the point is, not a special-interest group, nor lack of respect.)
But also not really for /r/Fantasy, or my If-This-Goes-On doomsaying of giving the BRW award to Worldcon. I don’t read them (necessarily) as a lack of respect. It’s just, if the category covers these nominees, which a lot of fans are very invested in and respect very much, than why shouldn’t we nominate and campaign for them?
The problem is the category definition, IMO. If you see the BRW as being “meant” for nonfiction, or for “books that aren’t fiction”, or for “non-fiction + art books,” or some such — then the actual category suffers first for being a catch-all category with very blurred boundaries, and second for its meat-and-potatoes eligible items just not being very popular. That combination means that pretty much anything that’s on the blurry boundary but is at least a little popular, can overtake the meat-and-potatoes pieces. That’s not a healthy dynamic, because it works against the meat-and-potatoes even being contenders — leaving the category spiraling away from itself.
@JJ thanks. Spot on.
That piece also goes the route of “numbers” as in ‘Worldcon is small, these other things are HUGE and, therefore…’ which I find just as annoying as most of the rest of “a special-interest group who wants to snag the cachet of a Hugo Award nomination for themselves, while having very little respect for what the Hugo Awards are actually intended to be.”
I’ll second (third? fourth?) a re-write of that category and suggest, as well, that someone, somewhere, put together a study group to figure out how to separate the potential influence of large SIG’s voting numbers from works they produce that may become eligible. They’re different from “puppies” as they probably don’t start with a political agenda but, unlike puppies who tried to build into numbers, they already have the numbers. (A tenth of a percent of AO3’s membership is 18,000 – three times Worldcon Attendance.) And it’s a social group, already set up to broadcast to its members.
But maybe this particular incident will be self-correcting. If AO3 doesn’t win (let alone finish below No Award – which the “I’m a Hugo Finalist” BS has already pushed me to) I expect a wave of “they hate fanfic”, “Worldcon is a bunch of Old people who don’t get it” and “Gatekeepers!” to shortly follow the award announcements.
My personal bias and experience* says that BRW is for critique and academic works, along with the truly unusual neat thing that’s related somehow, not “online communities”. If “communities” of fans are going to be included, I think the first such community to win the award ought to be Fandom itself.
(*I know that’s not the definition. It’s my working interpretation of the category)
I also consider best related work as intended for criticial and academic as well as biographical works related to SFF and art books. Yes, the rules as they currently stand explicitly allow online works, but IMO that was intended to cover things like the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction or ISFDB, not online communities.
The problem is that in recent years, best related work has become a kind of catch-all category for any vaguely related fannish thing. This was okay as long as there was maybe one offbeat or edge finalist per year. But this year, we have three edge case finalists. Of course, everybody only ever talks about AO3 and they are the furthest out on the edge, but the Mexicanx Initiative website/scrapbook and the Hobbit documentary are also edge cases. Having actually looked at their packet contributions, I believe that the Mexicanx Initiative website/scrapbook does absolutely fit into best related work. The Hobbit Duology fits in contentwise, but medium-wise it IMO belongs in dramatic presentation (which has traditionally included documentaries and even the moon landing coverage), where unfortunately it wouldn’t stand a chance. AO3, while a valuable and worthy project, remains very much an edge case.
I see the danger that best related work becomes overrun with these edge cases, especially since it’s traditionally a category with fairly few nominations, so it’s easy for an edge case with a big fan group to get on the ballot. And if you look at the longlist and the recommendation spreadsheets/wikis, etc… you see a lot more edge cases, e.g. the WorldCon 75 restaurant guide, which was awesome and very useful, but still not deserving of a Hugo IMO, and a very tasty Wakandan recipe which shows up on the recommendation lists this year. And for the record, I believe that a fannish cook book would absolutely be a suitable best related work finalist, but a single recipe, no matter how good, is very slight.
Best related work turning into a catch all category is annoying for those of us who enjoy reading genre-related non-fiction and particularly for those who write it. Because given the amount of research that something like Astounding requires, serious non-fiction books can take years to write and their authors maybe get one or two shots at a Hugo in their whole career. And it’s not fair if their hard work gets drowned out by the best fannish thing of year.
Yup. This.
If we don’t have a category for nonfiction/meta/academia/research, well then I want us to have one. Because that’s a category that has some extremely valuable, extremely concrete effects on the field — spotlighting work and insights and analyses about our field, that would otherwise remain confined to a very limited niche.
(Take Astounding this year, which is indeed a fantastic, accessible, and very informative book! I’m so glad it got the attention of making the Hugo ballot!)
There’s absolutely no doubt of the value of fandom organizations and online communities. Worldcon is a fandom organization! But I don’t think they need the sort of boost or spotlight that nonfiction does, or get as much out of it, or benefit from being ranked and compared one against the other.
Cora Buhlert says Best related work turning into a catch all category is annoying for those of us who enjoy reading genre-related non-fiction and particularly for those who write it. Because given the amount of research that something like Astounding requires, serious non-fiction books can take years to write and their authors maybe get one or two shots at a Hugo in their whole career. And it’s not fair if their hard work gets drowned out by the best fannish thing of year.
Given my Birthday write up on Farah Mendlesohn and how much effort she put into the works I cited, it’s bloody unfair if her hard work gets, as Cora perfectly puts it, drowned out by the best fannish thing of the year. I’ve read dozens of related works down the years, many very impressive. I don’t think I’ve read a single fannish work that I can recall that’s impressed me nearly as much as say her Heinlein work. They’re not, and shouldn’t be, considered equivalent.
Contrarius says re Blackthorn & Grim that Very small correction — There’s actually three books in this series.
I used ISFDB as my source and they had two listed. When did the the third novel come out?
fwiw I strongly agree with Cora Buhlert, Standback and others regarding the desirability of a Hugo category focused on critical/biographical nonfiction written work, to the exclusion of the other “related” fannish things that the “related work” category now embraces.
I’m voting for AO3, personally. I’m not particularly into fic myself(*), but it’s obviously a tremendously important part of many fandoms and the SF/F community in general, and I’d like to see that recognised… and it’s good for everyone to break down barriers a bit and mix things up.
(*) Though I do read and enjoy Bujold, Zen Cho, and Anne Leckie, among others.
If we don’t have a category for nonfiction/meta/academia/research, well then I want us to have one. Because that’s a category that has some extremely valuable, extremely concrete effects on the field — spotlighting work and insights and analyses about our field, that would otherwise remain confined to a very limited niche.
So. Much. This. As the kids say these days.
Typing “Blackthorn & Grim” into Google immediately gave me this link, which shows all three books:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/072/blackthorn-and-grim
“Den of Wolves” came out in October 2017.
Maybe what we need is a “Generic” Hugo category, where you nominate a thing and category. The only rule would be it must not be eligible for any other award.
So one person could nominate AO3 for “Best Fanfic Site” and another could nominate the Falcon Heavy for “Best New Rocketship.” You’d pick the finalists based on the name of the entity (not the category), and you’d pick the category based on the most popular suggestion. So if someone nominated Falcon Heavy for “Best Rocketship Ever” we’d both be nominating the same thing.
Then we could add a rule saying that before a new category could be created, it had to win as a Generic at least twice in order to prove enough people cared about it.
Hmmm. This started out as a joke, but I’m half-way starting to think it might not be a bad idea . . .
I was so much in favor of AO3 initially for what it does and has achieved, and so very disturbed now by how its users have responded, including this latest attempt to argue that all the more obvious nominees in this category should not just lose, but be excluded. I won’t be voting the way I originally expected.
It would be like the Seiun Awards’ “Free” category.
Thank you! I know I remembered some award had something like that. An alternative would be to have something a little more specific for things like Mexicanx or AO3. Like “Best Fandom Initiative”, “Best Fandom Work” or “Best Fandom Group Effort”.
But I do feel we already are starting to have Hugo-inflation. Perhaps a catchall would be smarter. Or just giving existing categories a better description.
@Lis:
Ouch. Sorry to hear that :-/
My own two cents, if’n you want ’em: vote on the merits, as you yourself judge them. The most annoying people on the internet are rarely as representative of “the community” as they tend to look — I definitely wouldn’t assume that “most” AO3 nominators are like this particular one (and, TBH, it wouldn’t change my vote even if they were).
And I say all that as somebody who still considers AO3 to be magnificent but ineligible. The point is, it’s my vote to make, and yours is yours, and nobody else’s 🙂
@Cat —
Basically what John said.
Dreamer’s Pool — Roc, November 2014 — Aurealis Award winner
Tower of Thorns — Roc, September 2015 — Aurealis Award nominee
Den of Wolves — Roc, September 2016 — Aurealis Award nominee
I haven’t read Den of Wolves yet, but evidently this is intended as a completed trilogy.
If anyone’s curious: I love Marillier’s prose and characters. I’m not always fond of the way nothing happens for long periods of time. 😉 Oh, and IMHO the beginning of Dreamer’s Pool is maaahhhhhhhhhvelous.
@Cat Eldridge
IMO, one of the great Hugo injustices of recent years is Farah Mendlesohn’s excellent Rhetorics of Fantasy losing out to John Scalzi’s collected blogposts, for which he’d already won a deserved best fanwriter Hugo a few years earlier. But I guess my preference for serious critical or academic non-fiction makes me something of an outlier.
IMO Farah Mendlesohn’s Heinlein book is one of the obvious candidates for best related work next year.
Sort-of Meredith Moment:
Our own T. Kingfisher’s Clocktaur books — Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine — are now available in audio format through Audible.
The “Meredith” part comes in because you can buy each of them for a mere $1.99 if you already own the ebook versions from Amazon. And if you DON’T already own the ebooks, they are available for only $4.99 (book 1) and $3.99 (book 2) at Amazon US. So even if you have to buy the ebooks first, it’s still a steal.
Narrated in audio by Khristine Hvam, who’s a good narrator.
Cora Bulhert says quite correctly IMO, one of the great Hugo injustices of recent years is Farah Mendlesohn’s excellent Rhetorics of Fantasy losing out to John Scalzi’s collected blogposts, for which he’d already won a deserved best fanwriter Hugo a few years earlier. But I guess my preference for serious critical or academic non-fiction makes me something of an outlier.
Oh that was just pure bullshit. Her Rhetorics of Fantasy was the obvious best related work and Scalzi won for, well, being more popular. His blog is a lot of fun but it is not serious related work by any stretch of the imagination.
I thunk I agree with just about everything Cora Buhlert said about the Related Book category. I would probably bow to changing times by allowing a book-length work to be published digitally or otherwise online only. There have been some squirrelly nominees (and a winner or two), but to me this category is meant for lengthy works of biography and scholarship (and that doesn’t necessarily mean academic only). AO3 simply doesn’t fit my definition. If others deem it otherwise, then so be it, but I won’t be happy. Yes, I am old-fashioned. And I wish I han an Old Fashion, to quote Groucho.
And Standback, many bookstores sell bookplates in packets of 25 or so. Check you local indie or B&N. I feel compelled to add, however, that I disapprove of bookplates in general, with the exception of what you want them for, or if the book’s owner is famous themselves! Otherwise, bookplates usually detract from a volume’s value.
If all y’all don’t want AO3 in “best related work”, then all y’all need to find a category for fannish works and websites.
I personally think that as it’s being nominated for its organization, not its contents, it’s in the right category. The award isn’t for the “best scholarly/nonfiction book”, after all.
P J Evans: If all y’all don’t want AO3 in “best related work”, then all y’all need to find a category for fannish works and websites.
Not everything needs to have a Hugo category. I’m not in favor of creating a “Best Short Related Work” category in which paid articles would be eligible. I don’t think such a category is needed, even though those works are plentiful and rarely able to compete against longer works in the Related Work category.
And I really don’t want to see “Best Convention” and “Best Fan Community” be what the Related Work category ends up honoring.
I could support the nomination of AO3 this year because I do believe that the platform is innovative and worthy of one-time recognition. I would not support further nominations of it though, because then it becomes about awarding Best Fan Community. I don’t think r/Fantasy should be eligible at all in Related Work, because it’s not a unique platform, it’s just a fan forum. You could make a case for it in Fanzine, possibly, but it’s not an organized publication the way that File 770 is, it’s just a bunch of people adding posts about things.
The Best Website category was trialled for a couple of years, and then dropped due to lackluster results. I think it would be extremely difficult to define the category such that it excluded “professional” websites, and I think if it were reinstituted, it would very quickly become the same-old, same-old finalists every year.
f@1: I am struck by a library director’s observation (further down the story): it’s designed to reward bestselling authors, while penalizing everyone else. ISTM that’s exactly the wrong way to go; e-publishing, by removing the capital cost of physical books, should make more books available. IIRC, Tor was once hailed as being forward-looking for (e.g.) offering ebooks without DRM locking; I wonder who thought this shift was a good idea, and why.
OBTW — Did Publishers Weekly misuse “it’s” for “its”, or has the usage shifted while I wasn’t paying attention?
@12: I’ve read about the tension between ground-based managers and scientists (some of the latter actively resenting having to deal with an actual human instead of test equipment) and the … independent … test pilots who were most of the early astronauts; I hadn’t realized/remembered that Kraft personally was so on top of it.
@JJ: their definition of fandom may be too narrow, but yours may be too broad; I suspect that Farah Mendlesohn (for an extreme instance) would not consider her discussions of genre to be “of fandom”. (A hasty search finds 5 BRW nominations, 1 winning.) I also think you’re ignoring that the list of topics has an “or” in it; in plain English (as opposed to computer logic), “or” is commonly exclusive, and if the collected nominees were to be sorted into one of the three named bins most would not fall in the bin marked fandom — Nevala-Lee (to take your example) doesn’t sound to me as if it would.
@Cora Buhlert: ISTM that you’re overreading their disregard for literary works; they’re observing the division I suggest above. I have certainly heard of instances of remarkable blindness among younger fans — e.g., the moderately reliable source who said they asked the first MAC 2 bidders, in 2001, why MAC 1 was not referenced, and was told everyone who’d been was dead — but this is not one of those. As for age spectrum: you may have seen a nursing infant at #75, but I have been hearing older fans commenting for a number of years how much greyer Worldcon attendance is compared to what they remember. The writer does not acknowledge that some of the literary nominees are in fact contemporary (e.g., Mendlesohn on Pratchett), or that there is also contemporary commentary (e.g., the writeup of the Mexicanx initiative) — but that isn’t their job; they’re arguing a specific position.
@JJ:
“What the Hugo Awards are intended to be” is the sort of thing you’ll get a dozen answers for if you poll ten random fans; it’s not some monolith. And tarring the AO3 people with the Puppy brush is beyond unfair; for one thing, the Puppies were trying to get awards for that good ole ess-tee-eff, and are generally about exclusion rather than inclusion.
I note that some of my response to the comments comes from my having had to deal with people who IMO massively overvalue the Retro Hugos, claiming they provide necessary history despite their obvious faults.
@Cora Buhlert: I acknowledge that DP once went to the moon landing; that was a one-off, at a time when plausible DP nominees were very thin on the ground. When did it go to a documentary, such as The Hobbit Duology? (I was around for the arguments over the Apollo 13 movie, which would have been called a docudrama had the term existed then; I expect the Apollo 11 documentary to get nominations just-because, but I don’t think it qualifies since it is rigorously factual.) Your argument that tHD belongs in BDP medium-wise is specifically against the sense of WSFS Uninc; there’s a reason BRB became BRW some time ago.
@Chip Hitchcock: ‘Docudrama’ as q term seems to have become popular in the early 1980s well before the Apollo 13 movie.
Chip Hitchcock: their definition of fandom may be too narrow, but yours may be too broad; I suspect that Farah Mendlesohn (for an extreme instance) would not consider her discussions of genre to be “of fandom”.
I don’t think that Mendlesohn would claim that her works are not “related to fandom”, given that the vast majority of people for whom her works have great appeal are fans, and if it weren’t for fandom, the subjects of her works would not be notable enough for her to write those works.
Chip Hitchcock: tarring the AO3 people with the Puppy brush is beyond unfair; for one thing, the Puppies were trying to get awards for that good ole ess-tee-eff, and are generally about exclusion rather than inclusion.
Well, yes and no. No, the AO3 proponents aren’t nearly as toxic as the Puppies, though I have still seen a lot of the same rhetoric (both in this article and on Twitter) about how Worldcon members and Hugo voters are Wrongfans Doing Fandom Wrong. And the person who wrote this article seems to be arguing for exclusion of works which they don’t consider “related to fandom”, simply because they are not related to their fandom.
So I would say that the AO3 proponents, 20BooksTo50K, and the Puppies, both Sad and Rabid, are all on the same spectrum, albeit on different places on that spectrum.
I love the people who are setting themselves up as gatekeepers of what a “related work” is. /S
(This is fandom, where three people will have at least seven opinions on any given matter.)
“Why, sometimes I’ve had as many as six contradictory opinions before breakfast.”
@Chip–
It’s not Tor that’s making this decision. It’s Macmillan. I wouldn’t assume anyone at Tor is necessarily happy about it.
@Andrew,
I am loving your Pixel Scroll title suggestion!
BRW has to be something that isn’t eligible for another category. If the same efforts to justify AO3 as a potential BRW were instead used to justify it as a fanzine, I think the outcome would be less of an edge case. So if AO3 is eligible as a BRW, it is more eligible as a fanzine, and being eligible for fanzine, it is not eligible for BRW. Same for r/Fantasy.
That “Building Worlds” doesn’t recognize some BRW works as being fannish doesn’t mean that his claim that some BRW works are not fannish is wrong. While Jeff Prucher’s “Brave New Words” (winner 2008) references fandom, it isn’t in any sense about fandom. The Heinlein biography (nominated 2011) wasn’t about fandom; if you read it, it’s pretty clear that Heinlein kept fandom at arm’s length during most of his career, and wasn’t particularly involved in it. “Conquest of the Moon” (retro winner for 1954 in 2004) wasn’t fannish. Sure, Nevala-Lee’s book is fannish, but there’s no reason to think that Building Worlds was referring to it.
@Chip Hitchcock — the way I learned it, “it’s” is the contraction for “It is”/”it has”, and “its” is the possessive pronoun. So the usage looks correct to me.
bill: If the same efforts to justify AO3 as a potential BRW were instead used to justify it as a fanzine, I think the outcome would be less of an edge case. So if AO3 is eligible as a BRW, it is more eligible as a fanzine, and being eligible for fanzine, it is not eligible for BRW. Same for r/Fantasy.
I don’t see how either AO3 or r/Fantasy would be eligible as a Fanzine, since neither of them is what can be classified as a “periodical”.
Best Fanzine. Any generally available non-professional periodical publication devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects that by the close of the previous calendar year has published four (4) or more issues (or the equivalent in other media), at least one (1) of which appeared in the previous calendar year, that does not qualify as a semiprozine or a fancast
bill: That “Building Worlds” doesn’t recognize some BRW works as being fannish doesn’t mean that his claim that some BRW works are not fannish is wrong. While Jeff Prucher’s “Brave New Words” (winner 2008) references fandom, it isn’t in any sense about fandom. The Heinlein biography (nominated 2011) wasn’t about fandom; if you read it, it’s pretty clear that Heinlein kept fandom at arm’s length during most of his career, and wasn’t particularly involved in it. “Conquest of the Moon” (retro winner for 1954 in 2004) wasn’t fannish.
It’s not “about fandom”, it’s “related to fandom”. All of those works are related to fandom, for the reasons I previously stated.
JJ: Hasn’t experience shown that the phrase “or the equivalent in other media” is treated by Hugo Administrators as allowing many things besides periodicals to compete in the Best Fanzine category?
@bill
It’s nominated for its structure and tagging, not for its literary/artistic content.
Would you nominate something for “best fanzine” based on its printing and collating?