2021 Site Selection Confirms Washington DC

Washington D.C.’s unopposed bid to host the 2021 Worldcon was officially voted in this weekend at Dublin 2019. The name of the convention will be DisCon III. Bill Lawhorn and Colette H. Fozard are the co-chairs.

The committee announced their current guests are: Nancy Kress, Author GoH; Malka Older, Special Guest; Sheree Renée Thomas, Special Guest; Toni Weisskopf, Editor GoH; and Ben Yalow, Fan GoH.

Total valid votes: 878

DC in 2021 798
None of the Above 18
Miscellaneous write-ins 26
No Preference 36
Invalid ballots 2

The complete details (with all write-ins) are here [PDF file.]

Pixel Scroll 2/5/19 Recycling Day: Leave Your Blue Bins On The Shoulders Of Orion Tomorrow

(1) FANTASY LIST. ReedsyDiscovery offers its list of “The 100 Best Fantasy Series Ever”. It’s in alphabetical order by title – I was briefly worried, because if somebody wanted to put A Song of Ice and Fire in first place for some reason that could make sense, but it took me a moment to understand why Lord of the Rings was down around number 60.

I’ve read a dozen of these – you’re bound to do better!

(2) NEW BOOKS OUT. Vulture features “A Conversation With Marlon James and Victor LaValle”.

The other day, Victor LaValle, a Queens-born author who employs the form of the fairy tale as a barbed hook to lure readers into serious treatments of race, parenting, and the internet, ordered dim sum with Marlon James, a Jamaican author of sweeping social epics that delight in challenging all the conventions of narrative. Both have book projects out this week. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is James’s highly anticipated follow-up to the Man Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. LaValle has co-edited a new speculative anthology, A People’s Future of the United States, prompting 25 of today’s biggest SFF writers to contemplate the future — and dark present — of the country….

MJ: I gotta say, that’s maybe the first time anybody’s ever mentioned that I write about sex. I actually kinda screamed.

VL: Did you feel all right with me talking about that aspect of it?

MJ: Absolutely! I don’t mind people writing about the violence, but it tends to be all they write about.

VL: For a black writer writing about gangsters, violence is almost the go-to. But sex is absolutely a part of your work in such a big and vital way, as another form of — not just violence but as communion, communication. I was talking about this with my wife, and she pointed out that none of the reviews of your last book mentioned sex at all. So as I was reading this one, I was like, It’s here, too. I just need to say, people should talk about sex.

MJ: Literary realism has this sort of indie-film attitude toward sex. Violence is violent, but sex isn’t sexy. It’s compulsive; nobody’s happy; they enjoy the cigarette way more than the sex. Sometimes I read these novels, none of which I’ll name, and I go, It’s not that hard to enjoy sex, people.

(3) KLAGES INTERVIEW. Juliette Wade and her team take another Dive Into Worldbuilding with “Ellen Klages and Passing Strange”. See the interview in video (below) or read the synopsis at the link.

I asked Ellen what had been the initial seed of this novella. As it turns out, the novella has a very long history! Ellen told us that she started writing a novel or a short story or something in 1977 when she was 22 or 23, and had just moved to San Francisco, and just figured out that she was queer. She ended up wandering around a lot, learning about Mona’s and many of the other locations that appear in the novella. She did a lot of research and did what she described as cosplaying Haskel and Netterfield with her love of the time. She told us she thought it would be a novel. She had four scenes typed, and would read the scenes every few years and say to herself, “Damn, I should do something with that.”

Then, years later, Jonathan Strand asked her for a novella for Tor.com. By that point, Ellen says, she had four or five folders full of notes and photographs put together from all her years of research. At that point she did 3 1/2 more months of research before writing. She read about a dozen books on Chinatown. She said she started there because it was “the thing I knew I had to get right.” She filled eighty pages with notes, most of which didn’t get used. One page, which she showed us on video, was filled with Haskel’s signature. She explored the gay and lesbian historical archives about Mona’s.

Three of the characters in the story, Babs, Polly, and Franny, have appeared in other works of Ellen’s fiction. In “Out of Left Field,” Babs and Franny appear as relatives of the main characters. Polly appears in “Hey, Presto!” and Franny in “Caligo Lane.”

(4) EARLY MERLIN. Text of a source probably used by Malory when writing his Arthurian legends has been found: “Centuries lost ‘Bristol Merlin’ uncovered at city’s Central Library”

A chance discovery, hidden away in a series of 16th-century books deep in the archive of Bristol Central Library, has revealed original manuscript fragments from the Middle Ages which tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend.  

Academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham are now analysing the seven parchment fragments which are thought to come from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, dating back to the 13th century.

Parts of the Vulgate Cycle were probably used by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) as a source for his Le Morte D’Arthur (published in 1485 by William Caxton) which is itself the main source text for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend in English, but no one version known so far has proven to be exactly alike with what he appears to have used.

(5) ONE FOR THE FILES. Colette H. Fozard, Co-Chair of the DC in 2021 Worldcon bid, writes:

I wanted to let you know that we made our bid filing with Dublin 2019 Site Selection and it has been accepted as complete by the Site Selection Administrator.

(6) ANNIE BELLET 10 YEARS IN SFF. Celebratory thread starts here.

(7) EMSHWILLER OBIT. Author Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019), winner of World Fantasy Con’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2005) has died. The SFWA Blog has an obituary:

Author Carol Emshwiller (b.Carol Fries, April 12, 1921) died on February 2nd, 2019.   Ms. Emshwiller began publishing science fiction in 1954, with the story “Built for Pleasure.”  Emshwiller built a reputation as a short fiction author and Ursula Le Guin said that she had “one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.”

…SFWA President Cat Rambo remembers,

Carol Emshwiller was one of the greats of short story writing, right up there with Grace Paley, James Tiptree Jr., Ursula K. Le Guin, and R.A. Lafferty, and she pushed its edges in order to do amazing, delightful, and illuminating things–just as she did with her longer work. As a short story lover, I am gutted by this loss to the writing community and plan to spend part of today re-reading Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, with its beautifully incisive and unflinching stories.

This photo from Melissa C. Beckman shows the author in front of a portrait of her painted by her late husband Ed Emshwiller.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 5, 1904 William S. Burroughs. I’m going to confess that I’ve read nothing by him so everything I know about I’ve absorbed by reading about him and seeing his fiction turned into films. So though ISFDB lists a number of his works as SF, I’ve not a clue what they’re like. So educate me please. (Died 1997.)
  • Born February 5, 1922 Peter Leslie. Writer in a number of media franchises including The Avengers, The New Avengers (and yes they are different franchises), The Man from U.N.C.L.E.The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. ISFDB also lists has writing in the Father Hayes series but I don’t recognize that series. (Died 2007.)
  • Born February 5, 1934 Malcolm Willits, 95. Author of The Wonderful Edison Time Machine: A Celebration of Life and Shakespeare’s Cat: A Play in Three Acts which he filmed as Shakespeare’s Cat. He also co-edited Destiny, an early Fifties fanzine with Jim Bradley.
  • Born February 5, 1940 H.R. Giger. Conceptual designer in whole or part for Aliens, Alien³Species and Alien: Resurrection to name a few films he’s been involved in. Did you know there are two Giger Bars designed by him, both in Switzerland? And yes they’re really weird. (Died 2014.)
  • Born February 5, 1964 Laura Linney, 55. She first shows up in our corner of the Universe as Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill on The Truman Show before playing Officer Connie Mills in The Mothman Prophecies (BARF!) and then Erin Bruner in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She plays Mrs. Munro In Mr. Holmes, a film best described as stink, stank and stunk when it comes to all things Holmesian. Her last SF was as Rebecca Vincent in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

(9) LEAPING V. LOOKING BEFORE. Jason Heller tells other dreamers not to wait. His thread starts here.

https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092832459719200769
https://twitter.com/jason_m_heller/status/1092840756589383682

A bunch of sff authors begged to differ.

(10) ON THE RADIO. Genre was shut out at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2019 but there’s the link in case you want to see the results. However, the winner in the Best Actress category is known to fans from her work on Torchwood.

BEST ACTRESS

WINNER: Eve Myles, 19 Weeks, director Helen Perry, BBC Cymru Wales, BBC Radio 4

(11) KLINGON CUTLERY. Police in Northwest England raided the home of a teenager and seized a cache of weapons including one that was … more esoteric. The BBC reports “A replica of a weapon wielded by a race of alien warriors in the sci-fi TV show Star Trek has been seized by police from a 17-year-old boy’s bedroom.” They did not, however find a ChonnaQ or D’k tahg. “Star Trek Klingon blade seized from Widnes teen’s bedroom”

The Widnes Police also posted about the raid on their Facebook page — some of the comments are quite amusing:

Nina : This is what happens when you remove Kahless from schools and everything else! Thoughts and prayers.

Michael Z. Williamson: Remember when young British males were REQUIRED to have a longbow? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

(12) OH, THE HUMANITIES. “Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds” by Julie Philips is the cover story on the new issue of Humanities, published by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

When she found her way into science fiction and fantasy, those genres turned out to be well suited to her imagination, her curiosity, and her subversive suspicion that man was not the measure of all things. From the very beginning, in interviews and essays, Le Guin championed science fiction’s literary value. She did it most memorably in a 2014 speech when she accepted the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (or what writer China Miéville in the documentary calls “the welcome-to-the-canon award”). In that speech, she described herself and her colleagues as “realists of a larger reality.”

(13) I FEEL PRETTY. Call it a more modern take on the Island of Misfit Toys (SYFY Wire:Second trailer for musical UglyDolls movie feels like a mix of Trolls, Toy Story, and Inside Out”).

STX Entertainment has unveiled the second trailer for its animated UglyDolls movie via The Ellen Show, and the message of what looks to be a Trolls redo is actually very resonant for us all: Don’t shy away from what makes you different; embrace it.

The new trailer also explains where the singing UglyDolls come from — they’re factory rejects compared to the “normal” dolls of our world, and are left discarded in a town all their own. They’re all pretty much happy until a renegade by the name of Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson) wants to explore the wider world and find the kid who will love her. Along with her friends, Moxy will travel to the Institute of Perfection, which pairs dolls with humans.

[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Juliette Wade, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, rcade, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day microtherion.]

Pixel Scroll 1/8/19 Hey, Babe, Take A Scroll On The File Side

(1) PRINT HUGO NOMINATING BALLOT AVAILABLE. The print version of this year’s Hugo nomination form has been released as part of Dublin 2019 Progress Report 3 [PDF File].

(2) CAPTAIN MARVEL. A “special look” at the forthcoming Captain Marvel movie.

Hope begins with a hero. Check out this special look at Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel! In theaters March 8.

(3) FIYAH RESTARTER. Charles Payseur brings news as well as short fiction reviews in “Quick Sips – Fiyah Literary Magazine #9”.

A new year means a new issue from Fiyah Literary Magazine. Which comes with some news. Namely, that co-executive editor Justina Ireland is stepping down and leaving the publication and DaVaun Sanders is stepping up into that role. The issue also steps back from the tradition of centering around a specific theme, though that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few that sneak in. Namely, a lot of the works look at infection, disease, and affliction. They map the devastation that pandemics create, whether the plagues are medical, magical, or moral. And they find characters who are faced with the sicknesses draining their worlds and have to decide what to do about it. Fight back? Seek a cure? Flee? Or weather the storm as much as possible? It’s an issue full of defiance and strength, though it recognizes that sometimes even that isn’t enough. There’s four short stories, one novelette, and two poems to get to, so let’s dive right into the reviews!

(4) DC IN 2021 WORLDCON BID NEWS. If the (currently unopposed) bid to hold the 2021 Worldcon in Washington DC succeeds, here’s who will chair —

The Baltimore-Washington Area Worldcon Association, Inc. (BWAWA) the sponsoring organization of the DC in 2021 Worldcon bid elected Bill Lawhorn and Colette H. Fozard as the co-chairs of the resulting Worldcon should we win site selection.  Bill has been very active in local DC fandom for many years, and was recent co-chair of the World Fantasy Convention in 2018 in Baltimore. Colette has been working and running volunteer-run genre conventions for over 20 years, and was most recently one of the Vice Chairs of Worldcon 75 in Helsinki in 2017.

(5) WORLDBUILDING. At Juliette Wade’s Dive Into Worldbuilding, “Alex White and A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy takes up author White’s second novel. You can see the video interview, and read a summary at the link.

… Alex really likes to explore the practical aspect of magic. They say, for example, that the arsonist’s mark is not very useful. You might get stuck in the military, but even there, it’s not super-useful to throw fireballs. Magic doesn’t get busted out every ten minutes, either. When you’re young, you want to magic up the place. But Alex compares it to how adults typically don’t climb stairs for no reason.

Some forms of magic are inherently unethical. There’s no good way to torture and kill.

Amplification technology can magnify magic power. Suddenly the fireball you can cast becomes huge. They describe the differences between magical marks as creating a caste system. Some marks are worth lots of money. Datamancy, which allows you to instantly correlate and get answers from any database, can get you rich. Even within the group of people who possess the same mark, there is diversity, as in other social groups. There are lots of common, easily recognizable marks. You only get one type of mark, and having no mark (called Arcana dystotia) is vanishingly rare. People are spiritual about their magic, and afraid of losing it….

(6) GAIMAN. Neil Gaiman will be among those honored with the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award at a ceremony on March 7. Poets & Writers has the story:

The Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award celebrates authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community. The award, which is presented each year at Poets & Writers’ annual dinner, is named for Barnes & Noble in appreciation of its long-standing support.

Recipients of the 2019 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award are Reginald Dwayne Betts (for mentoring individuals involved in the criminal and juvenile justice systems and for his efforts to reform these systems); Neil Gaiman (for advocating for freedom of expression worldwide and inspiring countless writers); and Roxana Robinson (for her long-standing, fierce, and outspoken advocacy on behalf of authors).

[Via Locus Online.]

(7) PRISONER ON RADIO. BBC Radio 4 is dramatizing for radio the iconic 1960s television mystery series The Prisoner as a series of audio plays.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 8, 1908 William Hartnell. The very first Doctor who first appeared when Doctor Who firstaired on November 23rd, 1963. He would be the Doctor for three years leaving when a new Showrunner came on. He played The Doctor once more during the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors (aired 1972–73) which was the last thing he filmed before his death. I scanned through the usual sources but didn’t find any other genre listing for him. Is that correct? (Died 1975.)
  • Born January 8, 1925 Steve Holland. Did you know there was a short lived Flash Gordon series, thirty one episodes in 1954 – 1955 to be precise? I didn’t until I discovered the Birthday for the lead in this show today. Except for four minor roles, this was his entire tv career. Biography in “Flash Gordon: Journey to Greatness” would devote an entire show to him and this series. (Died 1997.)
  • Born January 8, 1941  — Boris Vallejo, 78. Illustrator whose artwork has appeared on myriad genre publications. Subjects of his paintings were gods, hideous monsters, well-muscled male swordsmen and scantily clad females. Early illustrations of Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian and Doc Savage established him as an illustrator.
  • Born January 8, 1942 Stephen Hawking. Y’all know who he is, but did you know that Nimoy was responsible for his appearance as a holographic representation of himself in the “Descent” episode?  He was also guest starred in Futuruma and had  a recurring role on The Big Bang Theory. Just before his death, he was the voice of The Book on the new version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series. (Died 2018.)
  • Born January 8, 1947 David Bowie. First SF role was as Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. He next shows up in The Hunger, an erotic and kinky film worth seeing. He plays The Shark in Yellowbeard, a film that Monty Python could have produced but didn’t. Next up is the superb Labyrinth where he was Jareth the Goblin King, a role perfect for him. He shows up again in The Hunger later on as The Host. From that role, he went on to being Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ, an amazing role by the way. He was in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me  as FBI Agent Phillip Jeffries, a role which was his last role when he appeared later in the Twin Peaks series.  He also played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige from Christopher Priest’s novel of the same name. (Died 2016.)
  • Born January 8, 1977 Amber Benson, 42. Best known for her role as Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her post-BtVS genre credits are scant with a bit of work on Supernatural, a truly shitty Sci-fi Channel film called Gryphon, a web series called The Morganville Vampires and, I kid you not, a film called One-Eyed Monster which is about an adult film crew encountering monsters. She is by the way a rather good writer. She’s written a number of books, some with Christopher Golden such as the Ghosts of Albion series and The Seven Whistlers novel which I read when Subterranean Press sent it to Green Man for review. Her Calliope Reaper-Jones series is quite excellent too.
  • Born January 8, 1979  — Sarah Polley, 40. H’h what did I first see her in? Ahhhh she was in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen! Let’s see what else she’s done… She’s been in the animated Babar: The MovieExistenzNo Such Thing (which is based very loosely on Beowulf), Dawn of the DeadBeowulf & Grendel (well sort of based on the poem but, errr, artistic license was taken) and Mr. Nobody.

(9) RE-RUN. In case you missed it, the winning entry in the 1984 Bulwer-Lytton contest was –

‘The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, ‘Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you’ll feel my steel through your last meal.”

(10) TESS DISCOVERY. “NASA spacecraft spots gaseous planet 23 times the size of Earth”  — The Guardian has the story.

Three new planets and six supernovae outside our solar system have been observed by Nasa’s planet-hunting Tess mission in its first three months.

Since it started surveying the sky in July, the MIT-led Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite project has identified Pi Mensae b, a “super-Earth” that travels around its star every six days, and LHS 3844b, a rocky world with an orbit of only 11 hours.

The most recent discovery, an exoplanet named HD 21749b, has the longest orbital period at 36 days. It orbits a bright, nearby dwarf star about 53 light years away in the Reticulum constellation, and is thought to have a surface temperature of about 1,650C (3,000F). This is relatively cool considering its proximity to its star.

(11) ICONIC LITTLE LIBRARY. The Bookshelf blog has a photo of a cute-as-the-dickens “Tardis Little Library”. Click to see.

(12) PORTALS. Joe Sherry has some great insights as part of “Microreview [book]: In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire” at Nerds of a Feather.

…The genius of Seanan McGuire is how tightly she is able to wrap barbed spikes around the narrative so that as the reader is pulled in closer and closer that those barbs pierce our hearts and we don’t mind one bit. McGuire so perfectly captures the painful alienation of children….

(13) SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS MOCCA ARTS FESTIVAL. The featured artists for this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival have produced a keynote artwork for the event:

Peter and Maria Hoey are brother and sister artists. Their illustrations appear in newspapers and magazines, commercials, and advertising worldwide. Since 2007 they have independently published their comics under the name COIN-OP. The first hardcover collection of their work: Coin-Op Comics Anthology 1997-2017, published by Top Shelf Productions / IDW Publishing, is out now. Their early comics appeared in many issues of the legendary BLAB! Magazine. They are currently hard at work on their first full length graphic novel. Peter and Maria Hoey are represented by Rapp | Art.

The Hoeys will be attending the Fest as Featured Artists. Further scheduling information about their attendance will be available in future announcements. The MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 6 – 7th, 2019 from 11AM – 7PM on Saturday and 11AM – 6PM on Sunday. Mere steps from the Hudson River Greenway and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, MoCCA’s host venue, Metropolitan West, will encompass two floors of exhibitor tables, demo lounges, a gallery of original art showcasing the work of special guests, and a café providing beverages, snacks, and entrées. To learn more about this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival click here.

The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting workshops, lectures and film screenings, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education.

The 2019 MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 6-7th, 2019 at Metropolitan West in New York City with programming mere steps away at Ink48 (653 11th Ave).  Applications to exhibit at the Fest will be available during the month of December. 

(14) EVOLUTION IN ACTION. NPR invites you to “Meet The Granary Weevil, The Pantry Monster Of Our Own Creation”.

If you store grains in your pantry, you’ve probably had the unfortunate experience of opening a package or jar to find tiny bugs living inside.

You’re not alone — there are more than 200 species of these pesky grain insects ruining dinner plans around the world on a daily basis. It’s no accident that they’ve made a home in your pantry — they’ve evolved along with humans. In a way, they contain a fascinating natural history of our own domestication.

This is particularly true of the granary weevil. A reddish-brown beetle that turns up in oats, rice, corn, dry pasta and more, it’s the only grain insect that has never been found outside of human food-storage situations.

Most grain insects are equal opportunity pests — feasting on animals’ food supplies in addition to our own. But the granary weevil has outplayed the others with a special adaptation that at first appears to be a disadvantage: It can’t fly. Its wings have fused together, encasing it in a solid exoskeleton. (Imagine getting knocked around by grains the size of your own body — you’d definitely want a protective suit like the granary weevils’.) But that also makes it hard to get anywhere outside its pile of grain.

(15) CONVERTIBLE. “Hyundai shows off ‘walking car’ at CES” — includes short puffy video — looks like animation rather than live-action.

Hyundai has shown off a small model of a car it says can activate robotic legs to walk at 3mph (5km/h) over rough terrain.

Also able to climb a 5ft (1.5m) wall and jump a 5ft gap, the Hyundai Elevate could be useful for emergency rescues following natural disasters, it said.

It was part of a project exploring “beyond the range of wheels”, it added.

The concept has been in development for three years and was unveiled at the CES technology fair in Las Vegas.

“When a tsunami or earthquake hits, current rescue vehicles can only deliver first responders to the edge of the debris field. They have to go the rest of the way by foot,” said Hyundai vice-president John Suh.

“Elevate can drive to the scene and climb right over flood debris or crumbled concrete.”

(16) BOHEMIAN ELEMENTARY. Daniel Dern says, “Although I’m still fond of the Suicide Squad trailer and several other renditions…,” he calls attention to John Lewis & Partners + Waitrose & Partners Ad – Bohemian Rhapsody, adding: “Not to mention the best stage-crew recruitment ad (not its purpose) ever…”

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Juliette Wade, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael J. Walsh, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Pixel Scroll 6/8/18 Near A File By A Pixel There’s A Scroll In The Ground

(1) WORLDCON 75 BONUS. 2017 Worldcon Vice-chair Colette H. Fozard sent an update about the printed souvenir books people are looking forward to receiving.

We have the list of people to send the printed souvenir book to, and we’re sorry for the delay but it is due to a bonus!  We’re doing a limited-run reprint of our short story anthology, Giants at the End of the World – A Showcase of Finnish Weird, and that book will be included with the mailed souvenir books. We ran out at con, so we’re printing more to include with this mailing. We expect the printing and mailing to be done by the end of June.  Thanks so much for your patience!

(2) ANIMATED SPIDER-MAN TRAILER. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is coming from Sony Pictures Entertainment this Christmas.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative minds behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, bring their unique talents to a fresh vision of a different Spider-Man Universe, with a groundbreaking visual style that’s the first of its kind. Spider-Man™: Into the Spider-Verse introduces Brooklyn teen Miles Morales, and the limitless possibilities of the Spider-Verse, where more than one can wear the mask.

 

(3) VOTING. WIRED’s Adam Rogers, in “Elections Don’t Work at All. You Can Blame the Math”, examines voting systems, and in particular Instant Runoff Voting as it applies to electing a new mayor for San Francisco. This is comparable to the system used for Hugo voting prior to EPH, except that SF voters are only allowed to rank 3 candidates while Worldcon voters can rank all available candidates (including No Award). Among other things, it’s apparently slowing the determination of the outcome as paper ballots could be postmarked as late as election day.

…See, the San Francisco mayoral election isn’t just another whoever-gets-the-most-votes-wins sort of deal. No, this race was another example of the kind of cultural innovation that California occasionally looses upon an unsuspecting America, like smartphones and fancy toast. Surprise, you guys! We don’t even vote like y’all out here.

The way it worked is called ranked choice voting, also known as an instant runoff. Voters rank three choices in order of preference. The counting process drops the person with the fewest first-choice votes, reallocates that candidate’s votes to all his or her voters’ second choices, and then repeats. Does this sound insane? Actually, it’s genius. It is also insane.

(4) MANITOBA BOOK AWARDS. Craig Russell writes, “I’m pleased to say that Fragment is on the shortlist for The Michael Van Rooy Award!” (See all the award categories on the Manitoba Book Award shortlist.)

The Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction

  • The Bootlegger’s Confession by Allan Levine, published by Ravenstone Press, an imprint of Turnstone Press
  • Fragment by Craig Russell, published by Thistledown Press
  • The Mermaid’s Tale by D.G. Valdron, published by Five River Publishing
  • Strangers – Book 1 of The Reckoner Series by David A. Robertson, published by HighWater Press, an imprint of Portage & Main Press

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild ceremony for the upcoming Manitoba Book Awards will be held on Friday, June 15.

(5) BOURDAIN OBIT. Culinary explorer and TV personality Anthony Bourdain died of suicide on June 8. The Huffington Post explores his genre connection in “Anthony Bourdain’s Boyhood Dream Was To Make Comics. Few People Know He Did.”.

Bourdain once told CNN that he was a serious comic book collector as a kid. “At the end of the day, I’m a super nerdy fanboy,” he said. He admitted to Jimmy Fallon that, unfortunately, he sold his collection for drugs back in the 1980s.

In 2012, Bourdain co-wrote his first comic with author Joel Rose. It was called “Get Jiro!” The setting is the not-so-distant “Bourdainian” future.
Foodies have taken over and celebrity chefs not unlike mob bosses run the world. The mysterious Jiro-San is the new hotshot sushi chef in town. The city’s warring culinary factions have each given him an ultimatum: Join our
side or die.

(6) BERTIN OBIT. Horror writer Eddy C. Bertin died May 22 reports his publisher David Sutton.

Very sadly I have to report that veteran horror and Cthulhu Mythos writer, Eddy C. Bertin, died on 22nd May while on holiday on the island of Crete. My association with Eddy goes back to my fanzine Shadow, in 1968, for which he wrote many articles on a variety of horror topics, including on the Cthulhu Mythos and European horror writers. His distinctive short stories were picked up by The Pan Book of Horror,The Year’s Best Horror Stories and many more anthologies and magazines over the years. He was born in Germany, but later moved to Ghent and wrote in Dutch, Flemish, German and English.I am proud to have published a collection of his stories in 2013, The Whispering Horror.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • June 9, 19491984 was first printed, in London.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born June 8, 1910 — John W. Campbell, Jr.
  • Born June 8, 1928 – Kate Wilhelm
  • Born June 8, 1943 – Colin Baker

(9) MAGICAL MYSTERY THEATER TOUR. Coast-to-coast, north to south, “MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour” could be coming to a venue near you. Or not. Check it out at the link.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 announces the MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour featuring, for the first time in 25 years, original host and MST3K creator Joel Hodgson back in the red jumpsuit as Joel Robinson. Alongside new MST3K host Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray), Joel, Jonah and the Bots will bring new movies and all new riffs and sketches live to the stage across U.S. cities this fall. The MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour kicks off October 9 in Portland, ME and hits 29 cities to perform 42 shows across the U.S. Tickets for all dates go on sale Friday, June 8 via AXS.com and local venue box offices.

Of the upcoming tour, Hodgson says, “The craziest and most exciting thing for me is that I am putting on my old jumpsuit and will be riffing live, shoulder to shoulder with Jonah, Crow, and Tom Servo for two incredibly strange feature films. I’m going to have to go into training to get caught up to the skill level of Jonah and this new cast. If you saw last year’s tour you have some idea just how talented these young movie riffers are.”

 

(10) LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION FIGURE. You have truly made it when you have your own action figure. Entertainment Weekly has the story: Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro has an action figure — here’s your first look”.

NECA’s Guillermo del Toro action figures

(11) ROCKET STACK RANK. Eric Wong sent a link to RSR’s “Outstanding LGBT Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2017” article. He notes —

June is Pride Month, and here are 45 outstanding stories with LGBT characters from 2017 that were either finalists for major SF/F awards, included in “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, or recommended by prolific reviewers in short fiction (see Q&A).

This list could be useful for making nominations for the 2018 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for Best Short Fiction (published in 2010-2017). Anyone can nominate through June 30, 2018. Stories from 2017 are below. See Outstanding LGBT Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2015-2016 for earlier stories.

Observations

  • 31 of the 45 stories are free online.
  • 16 of the stories earned 33 of the 82 available finalist slots for the Eugie(1/5), Hugo (9/18), Locus (11/30), Nebula (8/18), and Sturgeon (4/11) awards. That’s 40% of the award finalist slots even though LGBT stories were only 10% of all stories reviewed by RSR in 2017 (81 out of 810) and 35% of award finalist stories (16 out of 45).
  • Authors with the most stories here are JY Yang (3), Sam J. Miller (2) and Sarah Pinsker (2).
  • Four of the stories were written by Campbell Award-eligible writers.
  • Prolific reviewers with the most recommendations here are RSR (18), RHorton (17) and GDozois (15).
  • Each of the 11 magazines covered by RSR had at least one recommended LGBT story, with Clarkesworld having the most with 7 stories among the 45.

(12) GALLOWAY SETTLEMENT. The January 15 Pixel Scroll linked to an op-ed by Margaret Atwood (“Am I a bad feminist?”) regarding University of British Columbia professor Steven Galloway, who had an affair with a student and was accused of sexual misconduct.

Galloway has received a settlement from the university — the CBC has the story: “Author Steven Galloway awarded $167K in damages following UBC firing”.

Author Steven Galloway, fired by the University of British Columbia in 2016, has been awarded $167,000 in damages following arbitration.

Galloway admitted to having an affair with a student but was also critical of the university’s handling of the case, which sparked a divisive debate on campus and in the country’s literary community.

On Friday, an arbitrator on the case said that some communications by the school contravened Galloway’s privacy rights and caused harm to his reputation.

In his four-page decision, John B. Hall writes mostly about the process of the arbitration with little detail about what specific communications were damaging….

(13) CAP LAUNCHES AGAIN. Marvel has created a trailer for Captain America #1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates & Leinil Yu.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Danse Exquise on Vimeo is an absurd animation from Miyu Productions, set to the music of Claude Debussy, that includes a dancing crab and a political rooster.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Eric Wong, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Bill, Craig Russell, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs  to File 770 contributing editor of the day Christian Brunschen.]

Worldcon 75 Posts PR#6, Souvenir Book, Hugo Ceremony Video

The 2017 Worldcon issued this news blast today —

They have published a sixth Progress Report 6, with a recap of convention activities, photographs, and membership and attendance statistics. Available online only —

Worldcon 75 has reopened its merchandise webshop for orders until February 28. A last chance to buy your Worldcon 75 keepsake.

The Worldcon 75 Souvenir Book is being made available to all members who were not in Helsinki. You need your membership login info, then you can choose these options —

  • An electronic copy is available for download by all members from the W75 membership site.
  • If you did not attend the convention, but would like a paper copy of the Souvenir Book, sign in to the member site and edit your personal information to include your paper pubs mailing address by February 28. They expect to have the paper copies mailed out shortly thereafter.

Finally, W75 Vice-Chair Colette H. Fozard stated in a comment today the Hugo Ceremony video is coming this week:

I can also announce that I have been informed that the Hugo Ceremony Video has been uploaded into Worldcon 75’s YouTube channel with a scheduled “go live” date of 16 February at 18.00 EEST (Finnish time).

Here is the link to Worldcon 75’s YouTube channel.

Worldcon 75 Pass Along Funds

The Helsinki committee announced at Smofcon they will be distributing surplus funds from Worldcon 75. Also, members will soon get an email telling how those who weren’t at the con can receive an electronic and/or paper copy of the souvenir book by post.

Initial pass along funds:

  • €12,000 to Worldcon 76;
  • €12,000 to Dublin in 2019;
  • €12,000 to Worldcon 2020

Donations:

  • €1,200 to the WSFS Mark Protection Committee
  • €1,000 to Worldcon Heritage
  • €25,000 to Finnish fan groups

Worldcon 75 also announced that it would be doing staff reimbursements of €95 per staffer.

Vice-chair Colette H. Fozard confirmed the above amounts and added:

An e-mail will be going out within the next week to all members that will have the following information:

(a) notice of the publication of PR6 – a wrap up report;

(b) reopening of Worldcon 75’s online merchandise shop for a short time; and

(c) information on how to receive electronic and/or paper copy of the souvenir book by post.

Worldcon 75 Adds Two Vice Chairs

Worldcon 75 Convention Chair Jukka Halme has appointed two Vice Chairs to assist him, Karoliina Leikomaa and Colette H. Fozard.

The online bios of the two new Vice Chairs show they have a wealth of conrunning experience.

Karo Leikomaa

Karo Leikomaa

Karo Leikomaa has been organising events since the late 90s. Since 2008 Karo has been on the committee for several Finncons, in roles such as Vice Chair, Finance, Venue and Logistics, Gophers and Security, and GoH Liaison. She has chaired three Tampere Kuplii Comic Book Festivals and one Åcon. Karo worked for several conventions every year in Finland before moving to London, UK, in 2014. She has been active in Soroptimists International Finland since 2011. She is currently studying towards her MA at University College London.

 

Colette H. Fozard

Colette H. Fozard

Colette H. Fozard has been helping to keep SF and anime conventions running for over twenty years. She has served as Convention Chair or other senior staff of several US East Coast cons including Arisia, Balticon, MAGFest and Zenkaikon, as well as many others. Her love of working at conventions has blossomed into a professional career in event planning. She is the Director of Operations for the Sakura Matsuri – Japanese Street Festival in Washington, DC each spring – the largest one-day celebration of Japanese Culture in the United States. She also serves as venue liaison for several other clients.

Worldcon 75 started out with three co-chairs, Jukka Halme, Saija Aro, and Crystal Huff. Aro resigned in May 2016 and Huff resigned in November 2016.

The Helsinki committee has also announced their next rate rise is at the end of January. Adult attending rates will increase from €145 to €170, and Youth rates from €90 to €100.

[Thanks to JJ for the story.]

The 1980 Timewarp Finalists

By Nicholas Whyte and Colette Fozard: Over the last two weeks of October 2016, Worldcon 75 organised the 1980 Timewarp Project to test the new systems we have been developing for the new Hugo rules.We asked people to revisit of the sf and fantasy of 1979, and submit nominations as if they had been voting in the 1980 Hugos. 33 people did so, including numerous Anders and commenters on the previous File 770 post on this topic. This is our initial report of what would have been on the final ballot, if the nominations submitted had been processed by today’s rules. This does not, of course, in any way replace the real Hugo Final Ballot from 1980, which is firmly embedded in history.

There are some major differences between today’s Hugo rules and those in force in 1980. Each category has at least six finalists, and there are several more categories – Best Professional Editor and Best Dramatic Presentation have been split, and Best Fancast, Best Semiprozine and (for this year at least) Best Series have been added. The new EPH counting system means that the top six vote-getters are not necessarily the six finalists. We also had to invoke the new rule barring more than two stories from the same TV show from appearing on the final ballot. Not surprisingly, there were not enough nominations in Best Fancast category to make it worth while proceeding with it for Timewarp purposes.

In several categories, one or more nominees received sufficient nominations to qualify as a finalist, but which would have been omitted from the final ballot under the current rules if they had been in force in 1980. The normal practice for the Hugos is to publish notes on such removals only after the Hugo votes have taken place and the awards presented. As there will be no such vote in the 1980 Timewarp project, the Timewarp Coordinators are publishing the notes on eligibility decisions now.

The Timewarp Coordinators are still finalising the presentation of the full EPH counts of the last ten rounds for each category, and anticipate being able to publish them soon. Meanwhile, here is the final ballot as it would have emerged from the nominations submitted in the 1980 Timewarp Project.

BEST NOVEL

  • The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke (Gollancz /
    Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
  • Harpist in the Wind, by Patricia A. McKillip (Atheneum Books)
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (Pan Books)
  • Titan, by John Varley (Berkley/Putnam)
  • Kindred, by Octavia Butler (Doubleday)
  • Roadmarks, by Roger Zelazny (Del Rey / Ballantine)

(30 ballots submitted, 40 works nominated)

Comment: The real 1980 Hugo ballot included The Fountains of Paradise (which won), Harpist in the Wind and Titan, but also Jem by Frederik Pohl and On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch.

BEST NOVELLA

  • “Enemy Mine”, by Barry B. Longyear (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, September 1979)
  • “Far Rainbow”, by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (first US publication, in 1979, was Far Rainbow / The Second Invasion From Mars, Macmillan; originally published by Mir in 1963)
  • “Mars Masked”, by Frederik Pohl (Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, March 1979)
  • “The Moon Goddess and Son”, by Donald Kingsbury (Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, December 1979)
  • “Palely Loitering”, by Christopher Priest (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1979)
  • “The Tale of Gorgik”, by Samuel R. Delany (Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine, Summer 1979; Tales of Neveryon, Bantam Books)

(22 ballots submitted, 18 works nominated)

Notes:
“Fireship”, by Joan D. Vinge (Analog) received enough nominations to be on the final ballot, but is ineligible due to 1978 publication.
“Palely Loitering” received nominations both for Best Novella and for Best Novelette, in both 1980 and in the Timewarp. In 1980 it received more nominations in the Best Novelette category, and the Hugo administrators therefore located it there, commenting that this was the appropriate length. For the 1980 Timewarp, however, it received more nominations for Best Novella than for Best Novelette, and in addition the Timewarp Coordinators believe that it is within the permitted length variation for Best Novella, so it is included in that category instead.

Comment: “Enemy Mine” (which won) and “The Moon Goddess and the Son” were on the real 1980 Hugo ballot for Best Novella; so were “Songhouse” by Orson Scott Card, “Ker-Plop” by Ted Reynolds and “The Battle of the Abaco Reefs” by Hilbert Schenck. As noted above, “Palely Loitering” was a Best Novelette finalist in 1980.

BEST NOVELETTE

  • “The Ancient Mind At Work”, by Suzy McKee Charnas (Omni, February 1979)
  • “Fireflood”, by Vonda N. McIntyre (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1979)
  • “Galatea Galanta”, by Alfred Bester (Omni, April 1979)
  • “Out There Where The Big Ships Go”, by Richard Cowper (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1979)
  • “The Pathways of Desire”, by Ursula K. Le Guin (New Dimensions Science Fiction Number 9, ed. Robert Silverberg, Harper & Row)
  • “Sandkings”, by George R. R. Martin (Omni, August 1979)
  • “The Woman Who Loved the Moon”, by Elizabeth A. Lynn (Amazons!, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, DAW Books)

(22 ballots submitted, nominating 24 works)

Note:
A tie for sixth place meant seven finalists in this category.

Comment: The real 1980 ballot had six finalists, including “Sandkings” (which won) and “Firefloood”. The other four were “Options”, by John Varley,  “Homecoming” by Barry B. Longyear, “The Locusts” by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes and “Palely Loitering” by Christopher Priest (see above).

BEST SHORT STORY

  • “Daisy, in the Sun”, by Connie Willis” (Galileo, November 1979)
  • “The Extraordinary Voyages of Amélie Bertrand”, by Joanna Russ (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1979)
  • “Red as Blood”, by Tanith Lee (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1979)
  • “Unaccompanied Sonata”, by Orson Scott Card (Omni, March 1979)
  • “War Beneath the Tree”, by Gene Wolfe (Omni, December 1979)
  • “The Way of Cross and Dragon”, by George R. R. Martin (Omni, June 1979)

(18 ballots submitted, nominating 23 works)

Comment: Again, the real 1980 ballot had three of these, “The Way of Cross and Dragon” (which won), “Unaccompanied Sonata” and “Daisy, in the Sun”. It also included “Can These Bones Live?” by Ted Reynolds and “giANTS” by Edward Bryant.

BEST RELATED WORK

  • Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, by Wayne Douglas Barlowe and Ian Summers (Workman Publishing)
  • In Memory Yet Green : The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954, by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday)
  • The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends , by Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin)
  • The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction , by Ursula K. Le Guin, edited and with introductions by Susan Wood (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
  • The Science Fiction Encyclopedia / The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z, ed. Peter Nicholls (Doubleday / Granada)
  • The World of Science Fiction: 1926-1976: The History of a Subculture, by Lester del Rey (Del Rey / Ballantine)

(20 ballots submitted, nominating 19 works)

Comment: The real 1980 ballot for Best Related Non-Fiction Book included The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (which won), In Memory Yet Green, Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials by Wayne Barlowe and Ian Summers and The Language of the Night ; it also included Wonderworks by Michael Whelan.

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

  • Alien: The Illustrated Story, by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson (Heavy Metal)
  • The Day The Law Died, by John Wagner” 2000 AD (86-95)”
  • Invincible Iron Man 129-137: Demon In A Bottle, by David Micheline, Bob Layton & John Romita Jr (Marvel)
  • Jeremiah, by Herman Huppen (Le Lombard)
  • Micronauts #1-12, by Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden
  • Valhalla: Cry Wolf, by Peter Madsen
  • X-Men 125-8: The Proteus Saga, by Chris Claremont & John Byrne (Marvel)

(9 ballots submitted, nominating 18 works)

Notes:
Superman vs Muhammad Ali, by Denny O’Neil, and “X-Men #111”, by Chris Claremont, both received enough nominations to be on the final ballot but are ineligible due to 1978 publication.
The Uncanny X-Men as a series received enough nominations to be on the final ballot, but is deemed ineligible because an internal X-Men story line also qualified for the final ballot with more votes.

Comment: there was no equivalent category in 1980.

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

  • Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler and Walter Hill, screenplay by Dan O’Bannon (20th Century Fox)
  • Mad Max, directed by George Miller, produced by Byron Kennedy, screenplay by James McCausland and George Miller (Kennedy Miller Productions/Mad Max Films/Crossroads)
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture, directed by Robert Wise, produced by Gene Roddenberry, screenplay by Harold Livingston (Paramount)
  • Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, produced by Aleksandra Demidova, written by Arkadi Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky (Mosfilm)
  • The Muppet Movie directed by James Frawley, produced by Jim Henson, written by Jack Burns and Jerry Juhl (Associated Film)
  • Time After Time directed by Nicholas Meyer, produced by Herb Jaffe, screenplay by Nicholas Meyer (Warner Brothers)

(23 ballots submitted, nominating 24 works)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

  • Battlestar Galactica: The Hand of God, produced by Glen A. Larson, directed and written by Donald Bellisario (ABC)
  • Blake’s 7: Star One produced (and directed) by David Maloney, written by Chris Boucher (BBC)
  • Doctor Who: City of Death produced by Graham Williams, directed by    Michael Hayes, written by “David Agnew” (pseudonym for David Fisher, Douglas Adams and Graham Williams) (BBC)
  • Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks produced by Graham Williams, directed by Ken Grieve, written by Terry Nation (BBC)
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Snare produced by James D. Parritt, directed by Frank Orsatti, written by Richard Matheson & Thomas E. Szollosi (Universal Television)
  • Sapphire & Steel: Escape Through a Crack in Time: Part 1 produced and directed by Shaun O’Riordan, written by P.J. Hammond (Associated Television)

(10 ballots submitted, nominating 21 works)

Notes:

Mad Max, perhaps surprisingly, is less than 90 minutes in length. However, all of its nominations were in the Long Form category and the Timewarp Coordinators decided to keep it there.

Doctor Who: City of Death, Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks and Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden all received equal numbers of nominations in both Long Form and Short Form categories. In keeping with recent Hugo tradition, although all three are longer than 90 minutes, the Timewarp Coordinators moved them to Short Form.

We then faced another problem: both Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks and Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden received enough nominations to be on the final ballot in joint sixth place. (One for casual, one for best, perhaps.) But Doctor Who: City of Death received rather more nominations than either, and also (easily) qualified for the final ballot . Under the new rules, no more than two stories from any one show are allowed to be on the ballot.

In a real life Hugo situation, we would have consulted the show-runners, but unfortunately neither Graham Williams nor Douglas Adams is now available for consultation. The 1980 Timewarp Coordinators therefore chose Destiny of the Daleks rather than Nightmare of Eden for the 1980 Timewarp final ballot, because we like it better. (No offense meant at all!)

Comment: The real 1980 Hugo ballot for Best Dramatic Presentation included five feature-length films. Four of these made it as Timewarp finalists for Long Form category – Alien (which won the 1980 Hugo), Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Muppet Movie. The other was Disney’s The Black Hole.

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

  • Ben Bova
  • Terry Carr
  • Edward Ferman
  • David Hartwell
  • Stanley Schmidt
  • George H. Scithers

(7 ballots submitted, nominating 12 candidates)

Note:
Robert Asprin received enough nominations to be on the final ballot, but had published only one anthology by 1979 and is therefore ineligible.
David Hartwell scrapes into eligibility thanks to acknowledged editorial work on L.W. Currey’s 1979 collection, Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Selected Nonfiction.

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

  • Jim Baen
  • Terry Carr
  • Judith Lynn Del-Rey
  • Lester Del Rey
  • David G. Hartwell
  • Pat LoBrutto
  • Terri Windling
  • Donald A. Wollheim

(4 ballots submitted, nominating 9 candidates)

Note: Beth Meacham received enough nominations to be on the final ballot, but did not edit any books in 1979 and is therefore ineligible. (The Timewarp Coordinators are grateful to Ms Meacham and to Pat LoBrutto for clarifying their eligibility status for us.)

Comment: Four of the finalists for the real 1980 Hugo Best Professional Editor ballot are on the Short Form list above – they are George H. Scithers (who won in 1980), Edward L. Ferman, Ben Bova and Stanley Schmidt. The fifth of the real 1980 finalists, James P. Baen, is on the Long Form list above.

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

  • Christopher Foss
  • Frank Kelly Freas
  • H.R. Giger
  • Rowena Morrill
  • Boris Vallejo
  • Michael Whelan

(13 ballots submitted, nominating 20 candidates)

Comment: The real 1980 Hugo ballot included Michael Whelan (who won) and Boris Vallejo. It also included Vincent Di Fate, Stephen Fabian and Paul Lehr.

BEST SEMIPROZINE

  • Fantasy Tales, edited by Stephen Jones and David A Sutton
  • Locus, edited by Charlie Brown
  • Science Fiction Chronicle, edited by Andrew Porter
  • Science Fiction Review, edited by Richard E. Geis
  • Starlog, edited by Howard Zimmerman
  • Thrust, edited by D. Douglas Fratz
  • Science Literature, edited by Yang Xiao

(11 ballots submitted, nominating 10 candidates)

BEST FANZINE

  • Ansible, edited by David Langford
  • File 770, edited by Mike Glyer
  • Janus, edited by Janice Bogstad and Jeanne Gomoll
  • Pyrotechnics, edited by Jeff Duntemann
  • Rune, edited by Lee Pelton and Carol Kennedy
  • Starship, edited by Andrew Porter

(12 ballots submitted, nominating 13 candidates)

Notes:
Best Semiprozine and Best Fanzine caused us the most trouble by far of any categories.
Science Literature is the magazine now known as Science Fiction World, aka Sci Fi World and its one nomination – enough to get it on the final ballot – was made under the current title rather than the 1979 title.
File 770 received enough votes to received enough nominations to qualify for the final ballot in both Best Fanzine and Best Semiprozine. The Timewarp Coordinators believe that it falls under the current Fanzine definition, even in 1979.
Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle and Science Fiction Review all received enough nominations to qualify for the final ballot in both Best Fanzine and Best Semiprozine. The Timewarp Coordinators believe that they fall under the current Semiprozine definition, even in 1979.
Thrust was nominated only in Best Fanzine, but was clearly a semiprozine under current definition by 1979, and the Timewarp Coordinators have therefore re-located its nomination to Best Semiprozine.

Comment: All of the real 1980 finalists for Best Fanzine appear on one or other of the above lists – Locus (which won), Science Fiction Review and Thrust as Best Semiprozine finalists, and File 770 and Janus as Best Fanzine finalists.

BEST FANCAST

Insufficient nominations, not very surprisingly.
(3 ballots submitted, nominating 4 candidates)

BEST FAN WRITER

  • Richard E. Geis
  • Mike Glyer
  • Arthur D. Hlavaty
  • David Langford
  • Bob Shaw
  • Susan Wood

(13 ballots submitted, nominating 10 candidates)

Comment:  The above list adds Susan Wood to the real 1980 Hugo ballot in this category. Bob Shaw won in real life.

BEST FAN ARTIST

  • Alexis Gilliland
  • Jeanne Gomoll
  • Joan Hanke-Woods
  • Lars “LON” Olsson
  • Victoria Poyser
  • Bill Rotsler

(8 ballots submitted, nominating 11 candidates)

Note:
Michael Whelan received enough nominations to be on the final ballot in this category, but was clearly a professional artist by 1978, and received more nominations as such.

Comment: The real 1980 Hugo ballot in this category had six finalists – all of the above, with the exception of Lars “LON” Olsson and the addition of Stu Shiffman. Alexis Gilliland was the winner.

BEST SERIES (and qualifying 1979 volume)

  • The Count of Saint Germain (Blood Games), by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (St. Martin’s Press)
  • The Dragonriders of Pern (Dragondrums), by Anne McCaffrey (Del Rey / Atheneum)
  • The Faded Sun (The Faded Sun: Kutath), by C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
  • The Merlin series (The Last Enchantment), by Mary Stewart (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • The Morgaine cycle (Fires of Azeroth), by C. J. Cherryh (DAW)
  • The Riddle-Master trilogy (Harpist in the Wind), by Patricia MacKillip (Atheneum)

(11 ballots cast for 18 candidates)

Comment: There was no Best Series category in the real 1980 Hugo ballot.

BEST NEW WRITER

  • Lynn Abbey
  • Diane Duane
  • Karen G. Jollie
  • Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb)
  • Barry B. Longyear
  • Somtow Sucharitkul / S.P. Somtow

(13 ballots submitted, nominating 11 candidates)

Comment: The real 1980 John W. Campbell Award for best New Writer went to Barry B. Longyear. The six finalists were the above, plus Alan Ryan and minus what in retrospect seems a surprising oversight: Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb), whose first story was published in 1979.

The Timewarp Coordinators are grateful to all who participated in this exercise, and particularly to the DevOps Division of Worldcon 75 for innovative coding solutions.

[File 770 editor’s note: Whyte and Fozard included several renderings of titles in Chinese and Russian, but unfortunately Wordpress reproduces Chinese and Cyrillic characters as question marks, therefore I have not been able to include them in the posted version.]

The 1980 Timewarp Project

1980 Hugo Award. Photo by Michael Benveniste, via The Hugo Awards website.

1980 Hugo Award. Photo by Michael Benveniste, via The Hugo Awards website.

By Nicholas Whyte and Colette Fozard, Worldcon 75 Hugo Administration: Next year’s Hugo nominations will be the most complex ever, with six finalists for each award, a new tallying system, and a special category for Best Series. We are developing new software solutions for the Hugos – and we need to test them.

We are therefore looking back as well as looking forward – and we are inviting Filers to think themselves back to 1979, and the SF and Fantasy of that year, for the purpose of giving us fresh data to test the software with.

In order to avoid any confusion about the purpose of the exercise — specifically, to avert any suggestion that this might be a re-do of the 1980 Hugos — we are not pushing the 1980 Timewarp Project more widely on social media. At the same time feel free to quietly invite others to participate.

Please direct any comments or queries to [email protected].

Why 1980?

This was, frankly, a fairly arbitrary decision. We wanted to choose a year which was not too far back in the mists of time, but also not so recent as to reopen unnecessary controversy. By fortunate coincidence, the full counting details from 1980, including the long lists, have been preserved at smofinfo.com/wsfs/Hugos/1980%20–%20Hugo%20voting%20details.pdf so we can see what fans at the time nominated. (Of course there were different categories then — the soon-to-be-abandoned Gandalf Award, only one Dramatic Presentation category, only one Professional Editor category, “Non-Fiction” rather than “Related Work”, no Graphic Story, no Semiprozine, no Fancast, no Series.)

The 1980 Timewarp Project obviously doesn’t replace or in any way invalidate the real historic 1980 Hugo nominations, final ballot or winners, least of all our gracious host here at File 770 – it just helps the Worldcon 75 Hugo administrators test the systems in advance of the 2017 nominations and vote. The Hugo Awards for 1980 were presented at Noreascon Two in Boston; those rewards remain part of history and will never be changed.

So what are you doing?

From 17 to 31 October, you are invited to make nominations for the Hugo categories under the rules for 2017, but with respect to the state of the genre and fandom of 1979. Anyone can nominate, but only electronic nominations will be accepted.

We will publish the full dataset of submitted nominations (though without submitters’ names attached) and the final Timewarp Ballot that would have emerged from those nominations if the current rules had been in force in 1980. We will not then proceed to any further vote – the Timewarp Ballot, and the dataset of nominations, are the end of the process.

Please go ahead and get your participation login at https://1980.worldcon.fi/ – comments welcome here or via the email address above.

MEMORY-JOGGING RESOURCES

And more generally:

Hugo Voting Rules Proposals Sponsored By Harris, Buff, Standlee, Others

Mini Hugo rocket carried into space and photgraphed by astronaut Kjell Lindgren in 2015.

Mini Hugo rocket carried into space and photgraphed by astronaut Kjell Lindgren in 2015.

Apart from the discussions Jameson Quinn has been leading here, another group of fans has been working on ideas for reforming the Hugo voting process. Yesterday they published the drafts of their three main motions and an amendment to EPH (given its first passage last year) as a Google document.

The three main motions do these things:

(1) Change the deadline you must be a Worldcon member to be eligible to nominate from January 31 to December 31 of the previous year.

(2) Restrict eligibility to nominate to members of the current and preceding Worldcon.

(3) Add a second round that allows members to vote out something that makes the initial long list (“Three Stage Voting”).

Colin Harris (co-chair of the 2005 Worldcon), Warren Buff, Kevin Standlee (co-chair of the 2002 Worldcon), Nicholas Whyte, and Colette Fozard each sponsor at least one of the several motions. Harris explains:

We plan to submit the motions officially in about a week; we are publishing them now to encourage discussion, rather than because we expect to change the text — but of course if people point out important things we’ve missed, we’ll take the opportunity to fix any issues.

Commenting specifically about the Three-Stage-Voting proposal, Harris says:

To be clear, my stance as the main mover on 3SV is simple. I wish this change was not necessary, but I believe that EPH and the other proposals already in hand will not achieve the necessary outcomes. In particular, I believe that guaranteeing a couple of broadly acceptable finalists per category is simply not a high enough bar for “success” in restoring the integrity, reputation and stability of the awards. I do not know if 3SV will pass, but I believe that the Business Meeting should have the opportunity to discuss this more direct option for tackling manipulation of the nomination process.

The text of the proposals follows the jump.

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