(1) ONE STOP SHOPPING. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] SF2 Concatenation’s Autumn 2019 edition is up. Voluminous seasonal news and reviews page of both SF and science which includes the major UK SF/fantasy imprint book releases between now and New Year. (Many of these will be available as imports in N. America and elsewhere.)
- Newscast for the Autumn 2019. This includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films; and TV; as well as science. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
- My Top Ten Scientists – Dominic Dulley (software engineer)
- CERN – Science or Tourism? — Jane O’Reilly
- The Shoestringcon [1]: Polycon 1979 story — Pete Gilligan
- Dublin – The 2019 World SF Convention – Sue Burke
- Ytterbium 2019 – The 2019 British Eastercon — Peter Tyers
- GeyserCon – New Zealand’s 2019 national convention — Alan Robson
(2) LEM V. DICK. [Editor’s note: I apologize for what amounts to misspelling, but characters that WordPress would display as question marks have been changed to a letter of the alphabet without marks.]
[Item by Jan Vanek Jr.] Yesterday the English-language website of the Polish magazine Przekrój published (and started promoting on Facebook, hence my knowledge) the translation of a 2,700-word excerpt (not a self-contained “chapter” as they claim) from Wojciech Orlinski’s 2017 biography of Stanislaw Lem detailing what led to “the famous Lem-Dick imbroglio” with PKD’s “famous Lem report to the FBI”: “access to previously unpublished letters […] resulted in what is likely the first accurate description of the incident, as well as the ultimate explanation as to how the concept of ‘foreign royalties under communism’ is almost as much of a mess as ‘fine dining under communism’ (but not quite as fine a mess)”:
…It all began with Lem’s depiction of Dick – in the third of his great essay collections, Science Fiction and Futurology as little more than a talentless hack. Lem had a poor opinion of almost all American authors, and never thought much of the literary genre of which he himself was an exponent (think of his equally critical view of Pirx the Pilot, for example, or Return from the Stars)….
I found it a quite informative and interesting read, although “Lem’s unfortunate expulsion from the SFWA” that ensued is mentioned only briefly and I think misleadingly (I have checked the Polish book and there is nothing more about it, but it has been described in American sources, many of them online).
(3) ABOUT AO3’S HUGO AWARD. The Organization for Transformative Works has clarified to Archive of Our Own participants — “Hugo Award – What it Means”.
We’re as excited as you are about the AO3’s Hugo win, and we are shouting it to the rafters! We are grateful to the World Science Fiction Society for recognizing the AO3 with the award, as well as to the many OTW volunteers who build and maintain the site, and all of the amazing fans who post and enjoy works on it.
The World Science Fiction Society has asked us to help them get the word out about what the award represented—specifically, they want to make sure people know that the Hugo was awarded to the AO3, and not to any particular work(s) hosted on it. Therefore, while we can all be proud of the AO3’s Hugo win and we can all be proud of what we contributed to making it possible, the award does not make any individual fanwork or creator “Hugo winners”—the WSFS awarded that distinction to the AO3 as a whole. In particular, the WSFS asked us to convey this reminder so that no one mistakenly describes themselves as having personally won a Hugo Award.
Thanks for sharing our enthusiasm, and consider yourselves reminded! We appreciate every one of your contributions.
So far there are 80 comments, any number by Kevin Standlee making Absolutely Clear Everybody Must Understand Things Exactly The Way He Does. One reply says, “You aren’t doing a particularly good job of reading the room here.”
(4) ARISIA PERSISTED. Arisia 2020 has issued its first online Progress Report. Key points: (1) It’s happening! (2) It’s (back) at the Westin Boston Waterfront. (3) The headliners are Cadwell Turnbull, Author Guest of Honor, Kristina Carroll, Artist Guest of Honor, and Arthur Chu, Fan Guest of Honor.
(5) BOO! LAist primes fans for Universal Studios’ Halloween mazes: “Halloween Horror Nights: A Photo Tour Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ & ‘Us’ Mazes At Universal Studios”.
Halloween’s almost here… well, OK, it’s more than a month away, but that means it’s time for Halloween haunts — aka Halloween mazes, aka scary Halloween things at theme parks and the like, to start.
Halloween Horror Nights has been taking over Universal Studios Hollywood for 21 years, and we got the chance to take a behind-the-scenes tour of two of the brand new mazes, Ghostbusters and Us. We were guided through by Creative Director John Murdy, the man in charge of creating the stories and the scares inside all of the mazes.
He works with an art director to design every moment, writing treatments for each attraction than can run up to 100 pages.
“It’s a narrative from the guest’s POV — everything I see, hear, smell, etcetera, as if I’m going through the maze,” Murdy said. “But it also has a very elaborate technical breakdown by scene, by discipline, down to the timecode of the audio cues.”
(6) DUBLIN 2019. Cora Buhlert’s report begins with — “WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 1: The Good…”. There’s also a shorter version for the Speculative Fiction Showcase: “Cora’s Adventures at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland”. Each has lots of photos.
…On Wednesday, the day before WorldCon officially started, I helped with move in and set-up at Point Square. This involved carrying boxes, assembling shelves for the staff lounge and crafting area, taping down table cloths and helping to set up the Raksura Colony Tree model. This was my first time volunteering at a WorldCon and it was a great experience. Not only do you get to help to make a great project like WorldCon happen, no, you also get to meet a lot of lovely people while volunteering. Especially if you’re new to WorldCon and don’t know anybody yet, I recommend volunteering as a way to meet people and make friends. What is more, I also got a handful of groats (which I used to buy a very pretty necklace in the dealers room) and a cool t-shirt.
(7) MEMORIAL. Jim C. Hines tweeted the link to his post about the Memorial held for his wife, Amy, on September 8, a touching and highly personal tribute.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- September 14, 2008 — The Hunger Games novel hit bookstores. (For some reason, the bookstores did not hit back.)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born September 14, 1915 — Douglas Kennedy. No major SFF roles that I see but he’s been in a number of films of a genre nature: The Way of All Flesh, The Ghost Breakers, The Mars Invaders, The Land Unknown, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, The Alligator People and The Amazing Transparent Man. Series wise, he had one-offs on Alcoa Presents, Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Outer Limits. (Died 1973.)
- Born September 14, 1919 — Claire P. Beck. Editor of the Science Fiction Critic, a fanzine which published in four issues Hammer and Tongs, the first work of criticism devoted to American SF. It was written by his brother Clyde F. Beck. Science Fiction Critic was published from 1935 to 1938. (Died 1999.)
- Born September 14, 1927 — Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one in the Buck Rogers one as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels as well. (Died 1997.)
- Born September 14, 1932 — Joyce Taylor, 87. She first shows as Princess Antillia in Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Later genre appearances were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first English language Beauty and the Beast film, the horror film Twice-Told Tales and the Men into Space SF series.
- Born September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig, 83. Best-known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in the original Trek franchise and Alfred Bester on Babylon 5. Moontrap, a SF film with him and Bruce Campbell, would garner a 28% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and InAlienable which he executive produced, wrote and acts in has no rating there.
- Born September 14, 1941 — Bruce Hyde. Patterns emerge in doing these Birthdays. One of these patterns is that original Trek had a lot of secondary performers who had really short acting careers. He certainly did. He portrayed Lt. Kevin Riley in two episodes, “The Naked Time” and “The Conscience of the King” and the rest of his acting career consisted of eight appearances, four of them as Dr. Jeff Brenner. He acted for less than two years in ‘65 and ‘66, before returning to acting thirty-four years later to be in The Confession of Lee Harvey Oswald which is his final role. (Died 2015.)
- Born September 14, 1947 — Sam Neill, 72. Best known for role of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park which he reprised in Jurassic Park III. He was also in Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Bicentennial Man, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, Thor: Ragnarok and Peter Rabbit.
- Born September 14, 1961 — Justin Richards, 58. Clute at ESF says “Richards is fast and competent.” Well I can certain say he’s fast as he’s turned out thirty-five Doctor Who novels which Clute thinks are for the YA market between 1994 and 2016. And he has other series going as well! Another nineteen novels written, and then there’s the Doctor Who non-fiction which runs to over a half dozen works.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest ask deep questions about Pokémon.
- A Tom Gauld cartoon about The Testaments launch in The Guardian.
(11) LUCAS MUSEUM. George Lucas, his wife Mellody Hobson, and the mayor dropped by the site yesterday to see how things are going: “Force Is With Them! Construction Of George Lucas Museum In Full Swing”.
Construction of the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is in full swing.
On Friday, Lucas — along with his wife and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — watched as construction crews helped bring his vision to life.
And he thanked them for the tireless effort.
“You’re doing the impossible — thank you so much,” Lucas said.
“Millions of people will be inspired by this building. We were just in our board meeting for the museum and George said you are the artists so you’re the artists of this art museum,” says Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the museum’s co-founder.
(12) LISTEN TO LIEN. Henry Lien is the Special Guest Star on this week’s episode of The Write Process podcast, hosted by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program — “Henry Lien on Worldbuilding, Puzzle Stories, Middle Grade, & Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions”
Henry Lien teaches law and creative writing at UCLA Extension. A private art dealer, he is the author of the Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which received New York Times acclaim and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist.
(13) COSPLAY ID’S. SYFY Wire has collected all the tweeted photos — “Detroit high school encourages students to dress as pop culture icons for ID photos”.
High school can be a turbulent time for any budding teenager, but when you’re allowed to dress up as your favorite movie or television character, facing picture day isn’t the daunting challenge it once was. Per a report from The Huffington Post, North Farmington High School in the suburbs of Detroit allowed its senior pupils to assume the persona of their favorite pop culture icon for the sake of ID photographs. What followed was a parade of Woodys (Toy Story), Shuris (Black Panther) Fionas (Shrek), creepy twins (The Shining), and so many more!
(14) GUTS. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles YA graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, whose autobiographical graphic novels have sold 13.5 million copies and who attracted an audience of 4,000 to her talk at the National Book Festival. “Raina Telgemeier became a hero to millions of readers by showing how uncomfortable growing up can be”.
…Now, because her fans kept asking, she is getting more personal than ever. The Eisner Award-winning author who launched her publishing empire with 2010?s “Smile,” about her years-long dental adventures as a kid, is prepared to bare new parts of her interior world with “Guts,” available Tuesday, which centers on how fear affected her body.
“This is the reality of my life,” Telgemeier told her fans. She quickly got to the heart and GI tract of the matter: “I was subject to panic attacks and [was] worrying that something was really wrong with me.”…
(15) SIGNAL BOOST. Naomi Kritzer offers an incentive for supporting a cause that needs a cash infusion.
(16) MARATHON SITTINGS. The Hollywood Reporter considers “The Long Game: Super-Sized Movies Are Testing the Patience of Audiences”.
And there may be a financial cost. Over the Sept. 6-8 weekend, New Line and director Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two opened to $91 million domestically, a 26 percent decline from the first It, which debuted to $123.4 million on the same weekend in 2017. The sequel ran a hefty 169 minutes, 34 minutes longer than its predecessor.
“Andy had a lot of story to tell in concluding his adaptation of Stephen King’s book, which is more than 1,100 pages,” says Jeff Goldstein, chief of distribution for Warner Bros., New Line’s parent. “We strategically added more shows and locations to counterbalance losing a show on each screen.”
Adds a rival studio executive regarding It: Chapter Two, “look, $91 million is a great number. But anytime the second film in a hoped-for franchise goes down — and not up — that’s not what you wish for. And I do think the fact that it was so long didn’t help.”
(17) COLBERT. Stephen Colbert’s “Meanwhile…” news roundup includes a furry joke related to the movie Cats, and a bit on “The 5D Porn Cinema No One Asked For.” These items start at 2.02 — here on YouTube.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Cinema verite of author Liz Hand on Vimeo. A 5-minute video of Hand at work and play
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
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Don’t have much of a dog in this fight other than to note tow things.
The first is that I’ve had the sense that the knives were out for the AO3 folks from the day the nominations were announced, and secondly if you find yourself on the other side of a fight from @RedWombat, you might want to check your suppositions.
To be fair, so would the ones on the top; freezing and suffocating is a very nasty way to die.
And the ones in the middle would fall to their deaths when the wind knocked the stack over or the ones below them collapsed.
Basically, all AO3 authors would die.
And you’re an AO3 author!
Don’t do it, RW. Back away from this crazy murder/suicide plan!
You don’t want to end up with an award problematically named after you, do you?
Kiya Nicoll: Do y’all have a hobby of changing up your twitter bios on a weekly basis or something?
I post about a dozen tweets a year on Twitter, I’ve changed my bio once since I created it years ago, and despite having spent hundreds of hours doing research and creating content over the last 4 years for a Hugo-winning fanzine, it would never occur to me to think that I should put “Hugo Winner” in my Twitter bio, so I can’t answer that question for you.
Kiya Nicoll: Jon Del Arroz changes his every week or two. Not that JDA doing something would commend the practice to anyone else.
(Related admission: I did once ask Mike Glyer if he would leave me one of his Hugo Awards in his will. I figure I’m on a long waitlist. 😉 )
Copious free time, I guess. I hesitate to speculate beyond that.
Far as I know the only reason for most people updating a twitter bio is having a new and better joke. (Which is why I have now moved on to boggling that I am apparently the only person to have ever tweeted “30-50 feral Hugo Awards”.)
I like it.
@RedWombat,
I do agree with you. Context does matter.
(When I saw the announcement at AO3, I cringed. The follow-up comments by Kevin made me facepalm (and I like Kevin for all he does, but sometimes his earnestness doesn’t work in his favour. This has been one of those instances.)
Maybe if we all took a bit more effort to see the situation from the other’s PoV, we wouldn’t have ended up in this mess.)
But what if the 30-50 feral Hugo awards swarm in my yard and attack my kids? What then?
katster: But what if the 30-50 feral Hugo awards swarm in my yard and attack my kids? What then?
That’s when you get out your semi-automatic assault Nebula Award and blast ’em! 😀
Whew! The farm-raised ones are bad enough!
@ rcade:
Speaking (as always) only for myself, it was because I had this 100% brilliant idea for a fic set in Stross’ laundryverse, and I wrote it, and then I wanted to put it where it could be read, and AO3 sounded like the best choice.
Then, a while later, I decided that my Blues Brothers / LoTR cross-over (that started as a joke on IRC, then mostly happened on LiveJournal) could go live there as well.
You’d have to search on the secret version of my first name to find either by author, though (just feed it through rot13).
@ JJ:
Darn! I don’t have any Nebulas. Is it OK if I use my fully-automatic Tuck Chingle[1] Novelty Combat Wobbly Launcher, or does that only work for seagulls?
Let’s try that again, and hope that the internets stay up and the creak don’t rise.
Hi, I’m FayJay, and I’m apparently toxic. Glorious.
(Here endeth the AA intro.)
I’ve also moved beyond a mindset of “are you F*CKING KIDDING ME with this s#£&?” to a deeper curiosity as to how the devil, as assorted word nerds, we are all failing so badly to communicate with one another. Largely because the Oviraptors fic made me laugh my ass off – and it so perfectly reflected the whole “…WTF?” experience this has been from my end of fandom.
(4 minute podfic version available here, if your curiosity is piqued:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676233 )
I have several thought wrt the ways in which we seem to be viewing things differently, but first, I must address this heroic little sally:
“And I will continue to call it toxic as long as people are totally ok with burning down the Hugo’s, instead spending time tone policing me for being upset.”
My dude – NOBODY is talking about burning down the Hugos. I realise that it’s probably very enjoyable to frame matters thus, and present yourself as a valiant knight defending fair Hugo from the slavering trolls, but – my dude. That isn’t happening. I’m apparently the most universally toxic and despised person you can all agree on from the AO3 thread (it was the “suck my dck” line, I take it? Or perhaps the Tingle allusion?) and even Disney Villain level monstrous *I have zero interest in burning down the Hugos.
(Like – my dude. I just want to read & write my fic in peace, and cry over Untamed vids. Let a b*tch live.)
There are millions of people in our community. I have FINALLY, today, and only, through your discussion here, discovered what this copyright-infringing thing is that’s apparently driven some people stark staring insane, and it’s…some excited chick selling a cute pin.
Look, I absolutely get it – Fanfic people know fine well about lines in the sand wrt copyright infringement and profiting from others’ work/brand, and that ISN’T actually our jam. Nobody over at the AO3 that I saw had any quibbles at all with you folks telling someone to stop making money from using your brand.
If there are people in the AO3 thread screaming for blood and vowing to burn down the Hugos, by all means link to them – maybe I missed that. Most of the responses I saw seemed more to mirror my own sense of “well THOSE guys can f*ck allllll the way off” rather than this whole rabid “faster pussycat! Kill! Kill!” thing that is being imputed to us.
@Hampus substantiated his accusation by linking to a girl reblogging this Terrible Pin, and taunted her thus:
“Yes, yes. Lets be the new puppies and burn the Hugo’s to the ground. The best way is to make them lose their trademark, so the award will be cancelled. Then you can celebrate with the white supremacists for having accomplished their goal.“
Which…I mean, you clearly don’t think that this sounds absolutely foamingly craycray, but it really does?
She’s literally saying she was happy about the AO3 win and still wants to buy a pin. Are you leaping from the fact that she’s describing her bitterness over the “stop having fun” message & her petulant reluctance to do so aaaaall the way to the unsubstantiated assumption that therefore she is ALSO feeling vengeful and destructive and has hatched a nefarious plot to burn the Hugos to the ground by stealthily destroying your trademark?
Really?
And then you’re leaping from that imputation about that ONE person (whose humble tweet garnered one comment, ie yours, and a measly 4 retweets) to these wild claims that this community of however many gazillion people are rabid NuPuppies bent on destruction?
My dude. Breathe.
The situation is very much less dramatic than you’re making it out to be.
(I mean, I DO get it – I was in a similarly “these guys are all total asshats” self righteous headspace myself, yesterday. It’s nice to think you’re the good guy. But life tends to be more complex.)
Ah, sorry, that went on far longer than planned – brevity is not my best thing.
The real reason I ventured over here was because I really do think that there is a fundamental communication failure going on. And I think it’s tied in with how our respective cultures work.
The fannish space I inhabit is almost entirely female, and largely LGBTQ+, and somewhat diverse beyond that. And it is built around SHARED creativity. It is not built around the adulation of stand-alone texts or stand-alone creators. It is built around group endeavours, and communication. Because every piece of fanfic, every fanvid, every podfic, every piece of fanart or meta – they are ALL part of a vast, sprawling conversation. Every piece of fanfic is a RESPONSE. Nothing exists in isolation. We are not writing, vidding, podding, drawing, crafting, composing, whatevering in isolation – it’s ALL part of a community effort.
And the AO3 is a tangible representation of that. We built it, we funded it, we maintain it, we people it, we fill it. It IS us. We are the AO3. In a 21st century twist on Virginia Woolf, it is an Archive of OUR Own.
Thus when the AO3 is awarded a Hugo – yes, that’s us. We are the AO3.
I know you don’t WANT to grapple with that, but Naomi’s acceptance speech was unambiguous, and although I gather that some of you translated her words as “Proper writer graciously pretends icky peasants helped her win a thing” – no. She meant what she said. The AO3 is genuinely a communal work.
And so those people gleefully announcing themselves to be “Hugo Award Winners” – no, they don’t think they, personally, won a solo Hugo for their own contribution.
They think (with what had been delight, and is now more distaste and disappointment) that THEIR COMMUNITY won the Hugo for their COMBINED contribution. That we, together, are Hugo Winners.
(Arguably our involvement is a lot more direct than that of the hypothetical Oviraptors fans, since we are the ones who do all the work – but nevertheless, in a community of such size, we’re acutely aware that this is a group effort, not a vanity project.)
Look, nobody is in any way forcing the WSFS to nominate or award prizes to group endeavours. If the prospect of a whole community being recognised for a remarkable group achievement really irks you, then I guess that it’s easy enough to just NOT nominate groups, and avoid diluting the prestige of the phrase “Hugo Winning” to cover a vast group effort.
But…here we are, and now you’re mad that there are human beings who believe that their work was being recognised and celebrated.
I mean – if your intention was to take the enthusiasm and glee felt by your fellow nerds in an adjacent community, construe it as an attack and ensure that they are thoroughly disheartened & alienated – good job? I guess?
But I have to ask – what was your ideal outcome? For NOBODY to feel that they were being recognised & celebrated by the award? Just for the abstract concept of the AO3 to pat itself on the back and then hurry off out the door before the blessed Chuck Tingle could write a tingler about it, and for all the actual humans who built, maintain, finance, fill, code, tag-wrangle, translate, debug etc etc to just…feel nothing?
Speaking as a 2012 Nobel Peace Prize winner…
And if we stacked all the AO3 authors vertically, the ones on the bottom would die.
The ones on the top would be writing situational joke porn until the lack of oxygen got them.
@Kurt Busiek You can’t stop me, copper! The day of the Terminal Stack is at hand!
lays down in field and waits
Re: previous Hugo-nominated transformative works.
Check the Best Dramatic categories. I see Flesh Gordon and Young Frankenstein, which clearly qualify. And works by Firesign Theatre, Monty Python, and the Retro-Hugo WB cartoons all have parodic elements.
And re: the AO3 stuff. Several have suggested that if only Kevin/WSFS had made a clear distinction between egregious infringement (stomp on it) and joking infringement (turn a blind eye), that people wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. I’m not sure that Trademark Law works like that. The system is such that Trademark owners are strongly encouraged to err on the side of saying “don’t use our TM” no matter the context. Without addressing tone or phrasing, I think Kevin was just as justified in addressing those who jokingly said “I’m a [fractional] Hugo Winner” as he was in addressing those who said in all seriousness “I won a Hugo.”
I’m looking at this mess, and remembering the post–Boskone-from-Hell mess of 32 years ago (and the ways a problematic letter could have been changed — ways that seemed obvious not that long after it had gone out), and wondering whether we’ll ever learn about the weaknesses of written communication (and the value of putting something aside for thought, and of getting an independent crosscheck). I can’t tell from this distance (and I have no intention of getting closer) whether there would have been any better light::heat ratio if OTW hadn’t (AFAICT) published a paraphrase; it’s possible that the details and the original tone would have canceled each other out.
Peter Watts’ Hugo-nominated “The Things” was fanfic of the John Carptenter movie.
Regarding Hugo-nominated fanfic:
In addition to the works named above, I would also mention Mike Resnick’s “The Bride of Frankenstein” (2010 short story finalist) and John Kessel’s “Pride and Prometheus” (2009 novelette finalist).
Martin
@FayJay–Part of the problem here is that trademark law isn’t copyright law. Copyright holders can’t lose their copyright by choosing not to go after every instance of copyright infringement they become aware of. Then can decide, “That one’s harmless, so we won’t bother about it,” and still be able to go after other instances that they decide aren’t harmless, that do either take money from them or damage their reputation.
Trademark holders can lose their trademark, and their ability to stop harmful or exploitive uses of the trademark, if they ignore too many “harmless” uses of it. They don’t have to be moneymaking violations. They don’t have to be reputation-damaging violations. They just have to be violations that the trademark holder is aware of–especially if it’s clear that lots of other people, especially in the relevant “market,” are also aware of it.
The fact that trademark law works this way actively encourages trademark holders to have what would otherwise seem to be an irrationally hair-trigger response, especially by the standards of related and superficially similar copyright law, where the holder of the infringed copyright may often be moved to chortle quietly and murmur “free publicity,” if it’s not an infringement that’s hurting sales.
The Mark Protection Committee, and specifically Kevin Standlee, tried to handle this without bringing the hammer down in the form of cease-and-desist letters. Unfortunately, as is all too common in fandom (see Chip Hitchcock’s comment, about an example painfully familiar to him and to me, in the aftermath of The Boskone From Hell), he did it very earnestly and with a sadly tin ear for tone, and achieved exactly the opposite of what he was hoping to achieve, a friendly explanation of why this “harmless” stuff wasn’t harmless.
This is really, really unfortunate, but no, it didn’t stem from malice, contempt, disrespect, or any of the other bad motives being inferred.
And I’m going to stop now, because I think a large part of the problem has been people over-explaining their positions with the result of reducing rather than increasing clarity.
@FayJay —
First, I’m kind of amused that you’re trying to act like the voice of reason over here while you’ve been making comments like “F* being in their clubhouse” and “We don’t need their small, frightened, smug clubhouse” over on AO3, just to quote two of the more polite things you’ve been saying over there.
Nonetheless —
Actually, a few are pretty much doing just that. For example, this branch of the discussion:
https://archiveofourown.org/comments/251304809
Except that’s exactly what you’re doing, every time you (generic “you”) call yourself a Hugo winner when you aren’t. With or without the monetary gain.
See above.
See, it’s kind of hard to have sympathy for folks who are telling us to f* right off when those same folks keep insisting on LYING about us.
In this instance: there was absolutely no “stop having fun” message. There were some “you need to stop infringing our trademark” messages, which is not at all the same thing.
One of the lies being repeatedly told over there that reaaaaaaally sets me off is that supposedly the sff awards community is somehow anti-LGBT/diversity/female. I mean, one of the AO3 commenters even came here to 770 to promulgate that same lie (see LS’s comment here). I mean, seriously?? Has anyone over there even bothered to LOOK AT the Hugo nominees and winners over the last few years??
You’re lying again. Please stop that.
Their personal beliefs are irrelevant. What’s relevant is that every time a non-Hugo-winner uses the label “Hugo winner”, they are weakening the Hugo trademark and reputation. And that can easily become a serious legal issue.
Again — please stop lying.
This whole discussion could easily be a lot more productive if AO3 members who are commenting on it could just STOP LYING.
Incidentally — I haven’t read every comment in the AO3 thread, but the user called Topaz Eyes seems to be very reasonable. You might want to check out some of their posts.
Regarding Hugo-nominated fanfic… So can I kill off this progression to absurdity by naming Farmer’s To Your Scattered Bodies Go, which includes the Alice of Alice in Wonderland (because she was also a historic person)?
Virgil’s Aeneid was Homer fanfic. Dante wrote Bible fanfic. So did Milton – and his was, probably, also Dante fanfic. I won’t even get into Shakespeare. Fanfic is an ancient and honorable tradition.
I get how FayJay feels, and what they’re talking about.
I don’t get the people who keep complaining because others aren’t doing it the way they think it should be done. That’s the same behavior as the juvenile canines, so can we STOP with it?
A thing I said on the tweeters while I was mulling over 30-50 feral Hugos and which I’ll repeat here (using more words) thanks to FayJay’s long comment:
Way back before the Death of Usenet , when I had the basic mores of convention fandom explained to me, it was made Absolutely Clear that something near the pinnacle of duel-to-the-rhetorical-death insult was “You’re not really a part of that convention, you just bought a ticket.”
Saying such a thing was proof not only of the most vile denigrations of collective fannish culture but proof that one was intrinsically an outsider who had not grasped the fundamental basic fact that con attendance was a matter of membership, not audience; that, at some level, everyone was on level ground, that there was no in-group vs. out-group here because everyone is a member.
I can’t say that I feel convention fandom has always lived up to this ethos, but it has always, in my experience of the last twenty years at least, been expressed in those terms. Buying a membership is a matter of contributing to the shared pot of resources for the community; some people do more than that, and gaining community status involves doing so, yes, but that does not mean that other people are not members of the community.
Someone who claimed that a member of a convention just bought tickets would be, correctly, interpreted as someone who either wanted to deliver a dire insult to the legitimacy of the targeted party or as someone who was astonishingly ignorant of social norms and in desperate need of an education, which would likely be delivered Very Crankily.
(I have in fact delivered that cranky lecture in non-fannish spaces, because I have attended conventions that were explicitly modeled on SFF cons but where some fraction of the people did not understand that everyone contributes resources to make the thing go and were Very Peeved that their involvement was not recognized with comped attendance. The idea that these things are built by a community of members who freely contribute resources for the enjoyment and edification of all, including panelists and such, was not, alas, as widespread as I thought it ought to be. “I’m on a panel, I should get my membership refunded” proclamations went over… poorly with those of the organizers and members who come from convention fandom, to say the least. There was a lot of “we’re not here to be your brand-building experience, if you think you’re better than the community you can fuck right off, we don’t need you” muttering.)
So, basically, my default expectation is that convention fandom expects that conventions operate as a collective community based on the shared resource pooling of several hundred to several thousand people, depending on the size of the con and its influence, and that people who are part of that collective community are, well, part of that collective community.
Which means I am really struck oddly by approaches to AO3 that explicitly presume that AO3 is operated fundamentally differently than a convention. OTW is basically the concom; the membership is the membership, and contributing resources, organizing fic exchanges and whatever the term is for putting together sub-archives of shared interest (direct parallel to panel moderation), wrangling documentation, and filling the world with comments and questions and more-a-comment-than-a-questions. There’s the Yuletide programming track! And some other things I’ve heard about vaguely from knowing people who are involved with them! (My actual involvement with this end of things is homeopathic.)
It’s basically a giant transformative fic con, only you don’t have to pay $50 to attend or arrange for crash space, and you don’t have to decide between the three awesome things that were scheduled at 2pm. The way to be counted as a member is to … generously contribute resources to the shared community.
And “You’re not really part of AO3, you just write fic” is pretty much exactly the same insult as “You’re not really part of the convention, you just bought a ticket.”
I’m pretty much agnostic on the whole question here, I just keep getting neurodivergently snagged on space alien shit like “… people seriously think people take references out of their twitter bios before they come up with a joke they like better?”, but this idea that there’s some sort of clean, obvious distinction between AO3-the-entity and the vast membership thereof is the sort of mishegas that I have the distinct impression would (and almost certainly has) produce thirty-year feuds in convention fandom equivalences.
I saw people in some of these threads (and I’ve read here, and I’ve read at AO3, and I’ve read at FFA, and I’ve read on twitter, and I don’t remember where I saw half of this anymore) basically going:
“Okay, if you don’t mean the whole con gets the award, who do you mean? Just the chair? The concom? Where’s the line you’re drawing?”
“No, no, no, you don’t get it, it’s for the CON.”
“Who do you mean? The con is made up of the membership and its actions on behalf of the con. If you’re drawing a distinction, are you meaning the concom?”
“NO THAT IS A SILLY CONCLUSION. IT. IS. FOR. THE. CON.”
“But you also said that it’s not for the membership? Which is what the con is?”
“But it’s for the con!”
“Um… we are the con? The chair accepted the award on behalf of the con, and acknowledged the membership thereof? We built this con, you can see in the name that it says ‘our own’? Words mean things?”
And so it goes around in circles, because there’s this notion somehow that there’s some sort of con/AO3/thing that is meaningfully distinct from its membership and fanac, that can be pointed at, which does not look like pointing at the membership and fanac.
Historical note:
I’m not really a ficcer, so I haven’t been personally involved in these things at all, but I remember Strikethrough, I remember people trying to figure out if the fannish community had the power to build spaces by fen, for fen, where transformative fanac would not be constantly at risk of being erased by moral panics or outsiders who didn’t understand it. I remember watching AO3 get founded, and DreamWidth, and other responses to that rather tumultuous time. These things were carved out by angry, scared, dedicated people who understood intimately that if fen didn’t control the architecture their creative efforts would always be at risk of some corporation deciding bowing to right-wing culture warriors brought in more cash than hosting fic.
I feel that if the Hugo award for AO3 means anything, it means recognizing that fans saw a need for community architecture and built the damn thing, and have maintained it for… I guess a decade now, Strikethrough was 2007? Not bad for a convention that runs all year, doesn’t have membership dues, and where a substantial fraction of the membership thinks half the decisions the concom makes are stupid.
I feel that if the Hugo award for AO3 means anything, it means recognizing that fans saw a need for community architecture and built the damn thing, and have maintained it for… I guess a decade now, Strikethrough was 2007? Not bad for a convention that runs all year, doesn’t have membership dues, and where a substantial fraction of the membership thinks half the decisions the concom makes are stupid.
That was one of the problems with this award. AO3 was nominated for Best Related Work on the basis of its technological updates and that was it. But then when it won, people concluded that AO3 deserved the Hugo due to its accomplishments as a culture and community. For the record, I AM NOT judging AO3 in any way, positively or negatively. Thus the stage was set for this collision.
If you are talking about the Divine Comedy, you are wrong.
It’s an Aeneid/Catholic theology crossover fic with author self-insert. (It’s important to be precise, right? 🙂 )
@Rob —
That’s one of the big problems. The justification given for AO3 fitting into BRW was a sham from the beginning. I would have very happily voted to give AO3 a special Hugo — it’s a great resource, a great community, and a great part of sff — but it didn’t belong in BRW, and shoehorning it in just made everything that followed more contentious.
@ Contrarius
I totally agree with everything you just wrote.
@nancy – Okay, I was doing a quick version. But it’s also self-insert fanfic, which I really did forget. [g]
Philip José Farmer’s greatest fanfic, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, was tragically not nominated for anything.
I really like that book.
@Contrarius: That…is not a threat to “burn down the Hugos.” Kevin Standlee indicated in his own comments that fanfic was a nominatable under standing WSFS rules for content length. The commentariat here has gone to somewhat tortured lengths to indicate that commercially published transformative fiction aka fanfic has been nominated at appropriate lengths, albeit it has rarely won. If someone actually nominates fanfic at the appropriate lengths I would expect it to be treated as any other nominee and voted up or down on its literary merits.
@rochrist: You aren’t wrong about the knives being out from the start.
Another +1 for The Other Log of Phineas Fogg…and really, about all of Farmer’s “fanfic” I’ve read.
@Nagaina —
Which part of “….I actually like the idea of trying to flood the Hugos with epublished works, fanfictions of canons whose copyright have expired and original works hosted on fanfiction archives like this” is NOT threatening to burn down the Hugos?
Certainly. Individual works, individual votes. NOT mass flooding of the nominations just to see our heads explode. That’s been tried before, remember?
The knives were out from the start, so to say, because while AO3 is many things, a related work it is not. The best related work category has become something of a catch all category for anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere – not just AO3, but we’ve also seen podcasts, filk CDs and a documentary film nominated there. Those of us who read and appreciate genre-related non-fiction are not particularly happy about this category drift.
If AO3 had been given a special Hugo or if any WorldCon had created a special Hugo for best fannish community with AO3 one of the finalists, I would have had zero issues with that.
Also, speaking as someone who was in the auditorium in Dublin, I had no idea that the woman who held the acceptance speech for AO3 was Naomi Novik, because while I have read a few of her books, I have no idea what she looks like. And in fact, several of the people sitting around me had no idea who the accepters for AO3 were either. We assumed they were OTW members who happened to be at WorldCon.
Finally, some of the AO3 members commenting here are not doing a good job at convincing us they’re not toxic. Also, a lot of Filers are women and/or LGBTQ folks.
I thank all of those of you who actually read and understood what I said, rather than trying to read malicious meanings into it.
@Kevin —
You meant well — and the uproar would have been a bazillion times worse if you had come straight at them with C&D letters.
The real tragedy is that you may still be forced to issue those C&Ds, because they aren’t taking the issue seriously.
Incidentally, did you notice that there is still at least one kickstarter up using the “Hugo winner” label?
ah, fuck it, I’m going into this instead of sitting on the sidelines.
@Kiya Nicoll Nailed. It. Thats exactly how the ao3 part feels rn. Them fighting words, basically.
Ok, let me try to spew words and see if they make sense before going back to other commenters.
So, both parties over all agree that a trademark infringement, intended or not, is understandably something the WSFS has to address. No hard feelings, but its the lawyery facts, correct?
Now, the contested part is whether ao3 people can call themselves jokingly (or not so) Hugo Award Winners in semi-public spaces. Well, obviously I don’t know shit about US Trademark law, but I have a good analogy:
The Oscars. Those awards are trademarked til hell and back, correct? Now, I bet there isn’t a single person here who hasn’t seen at least one joke online that starts with “and the oscar for best actor goes to…” and ends with a dog dramatically collapsing because its nails are getting clipped. It’s usually either an animal or a toddler. Now, as far as I know, people don’t get in trouble for this, legally. For me the jokes scan all most one to one – prestigious award (Oscar, hugo) goes to over the top thing that is still beloved (dramatic kid or pet, favourite pwp.) And if the academy went after these jokes, we would know pretty fast because it is understood as a joke.
So, I am not a lawyer, but with that comparission, why would jokes in that vein damage the trademark of the Hugos? Because I have seen that claim, but noone has explained it to my satisfaction. Mostly because it is told as a sort of “it is known”, which I’m sure it is on here, but if I and others could follow the logical steps here, that would be great.
So, about the pins. Let’s go in with the premise that they are infringing. First thing I think should be noted and that I learned from artist friends: I doubt there is much profit being made. Kickstarters like these are often for printing and mailing costs and not much else. I think it is much more accurate to see it as a passion project to celebrate the victory with fellow fans.
This is also underscored by the artist pledging 25% of the money to go to ao3. I guess this is where the “ao3 is profiting at expense of the hugos” vibe came from, but it’s really not. Ao3 is not officially involved and neither is the OTW. Idk how involved the artist is in these venues, but it’s grassroots.
I can understand that neither of these are helpful with the trademark. But what I would at least try is talking to them. Maybe a deal can be made where the WSFS okays the kickstarter and gets half of the donation currently marked for ao3. That way people can get their silly merch if they want, the legal stuff is ok and the Hugos get profit. People have been correctly saying that the WSFS missed a huge recruiting opportunity with this and this could maybe help mend things for both parties. And if not, I think the direct approach can at least make sure everyone is on the same page about the issue, because right now no one is.
Now, about who won that Hugo aka. me actually showing spine and taking position:
@contrarius First off, I get that people feel slighted about the categorisation of the nomination. In fact, all of us could tell. I do think at least for some this is still an issue and that’s why you and others are bothered in the first place and seem to ascribe the worst intentions. To reiterate: Noone wants to burn the Hugos down. And nominating favourite fics certainly isnt a slight against the Hugos. Cut those SadPuppy comparisions out, you are getting annoyed comments for the passive-aggression and then lash back.
And back on topic: If the Archive (of OUR OWN) was nominated for the specific changes in code and tech… who made that happen? Volunteer coders? The current OTW commitees deciding which projects and updates to pursue next? And who pays for it, but members of the OTW and everyone who gives to the donation drives? Kiya’s comment got it exactly right. The Con doesn’t organize itself, people did that. And the refusal to point to anyone specific is getting old. Kevin, in his enthusiatic way, made it clear it was up to the people “in charge” who they considered part. Naomi Novik named the community. They are the volunteers, they give the money, they stress test the system, they wrangle the tags. The writers and other fanwork makers aren’t celebrating their fictional works winning through their content, but through the community building they do by writing and having responders. To hit this home, reviewers also make the thing go round, because they rec fics, they give feed back and keysmashes. They give kudos and the people posting are right to give kudos right back at them.
Your refusal to acknowledge what it means to have a community on there and how it would be a hollow husk is annoying. These takes just make people double down, and honestly? I don’t blame them. I would think someone with a name like “contrarius” would understand this impulse.
I vividly remember the amazement on my first reading of “Extracts from the Memoirs of “Lord Greystoke”” and a couple others. I’m unclear on how the works were authorized? (I have a vague idea the Tarzan material was, but probably the reality was complicated.)
Of course Farmer also blazed a trail with explicit writing (having been Hugo-nominated for a story about sex with an alien in the 50s).
“Rip van Winkle’s Long Wet Dream” which combined that with Washington Irving and The Shadow did get print published, but surely it helped that Irving had been dead for 120 years and that since Margo Lane first appeared on the radio in 1937 perhaps the copyrights were a mess.
Does make one wonder, if Farmer were alive today, what would he be publishing and in what form (and if he sold pins on Etsy wouldn’t you totally buy one).
@Contrarius:
Why don’t they just say “Contributor to a Hugo-winning project”? That’s true and almost as good PR as the untruth.
@John —
I think Farasha’s comment from yesterday lays it out more honestly than anyone else has yet:
Spite. That’s the root of the problem.
Contrarius said:
As one of the people who nominated AO3 for BRW on the strength of its tagging system, search and filter functions, and the Open Doors Project: no, it really wasn’t a sham, not for me, and I resent being accused of engaging in such an underhanded practice.
(And now I suppose I get to adopt your shtick and accuse you of lying, too.)
@CeeV —
Did you hear Naomi Novik applauding the tagging and search functions in her acceptance speech, or did you hear her applauding the community and the fiction they write? Did you hear the award announcer saying “And the winner is…. the tagging and search functions of AO3”? Do you see the AO3 web techies crowing about being Hugo winners, or do you see the fic writers crowing about being Hugo winners?
I’ll repeat: I would have loved to vote on AO3 winning a special Hugo. But it didn’t belong in BRW.
AO3 was nominated and won in BRW. Ipso facto, it was nominated and won because it was “noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text”. Under the circumstances, there’s no reason for the award announcer to specify that the award was for those aspects, any more than an award announcer needs to specify that an award for Best Novel is granted on the basis of the text rather than the cover art or the typeface.
CeeV: Yes, I think we have to proceed on the basis that by the time AO3 was getting a Hugo, the awards administrators — the people competent and authorized to make this decision — had decided it met the requirements of the category definition.
@CeeV —
And….. if it was awarded the Hugo for “other than fictional text”, then why do the fic writers persist in believing that it’s their fictional text that actually won the award?
Do you see the AO3 web techies crowing about being Hugo winners, or do you see the fic writers crowing about being Hugo winners?
A point of clarification: virtually all of the AO3 “web technies” are also fic writers (or podfic recorders, or fanartists, or vidders). There’s no outside group that coded the AO3 and then turned it over to fic writers. AO3 was coded by thousands of contributors who wanted a place to host their fanworks, and were kind enough to allow the rest of us slacker non-coders to share in the fruits of their labors. So, yes, I am seeing AO3 coders crowing about the Hugo awarded to their project. It’s just that they tend to be known more prominently for the fanworks they’ve created than for the infrastructure they’ve built, because stories have author names up front and center while database functions (unless you’re inclined to dig into the code comments) don’t.
So I’ve waited several hours to post another comment on this because I was pretty angry.
The Hugos matter a LOT to me. So do WSFS’s trademarks. So please hear me as I say this.
Every single person who nominated AO3 for Best Related Work, and every single person who voted for it was a member of WSFS. WSFS doesn’t hate AO3 or the Organization for Transformative Works.
Though granted, you would be hard pressed to remember that through the disappointing rhetoric I’ve seen from some folks in this comment thread. They won a bloody Hugo Award! Celebrate the vast, vast majority of them who aren’t infringing our Trademarks. AO3 is a pretty special community with an awesome interface. Pop the champagne!