The 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report posted today on the official Hugo Awards website revealed that the Chengdu Worldcon’s Hugo award subcommittee made many startling and sometimes unexplained rulings.
R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, winner of the 2023 Nebula and Locus Awards, was ruled “not eligible” without explanation, even though it had the third most nominations. The EPH point calculation used to determine the Hugo finalists shows the count for Babel was stopped in the first round, and it accrued no more points when other works were eliminated in the automatic runoff.
(The Google Translate rendering of the Chinese is “Not eligible for nomination.”)
Paul Weimer was another “not eligible” kept off the ballot without explanation, despite having been a Best Fan Writer finalist for the past three years. Weimer had the third most nominating votes this year – and in that category the EPH calculation was completed, showing he ended up with the second highest point-count.
A third such “not eligible” was Xiran Jay Zhao, ruled out of the Astounding Award. As noted here in a comment on the announcement post, it should be impossible for a first-year-of-eligibility Astounding Award finalist to be ineligible the following year unless either they already won the award or the original Hugo committee (Chicon 8) erred in their eligibility determination.
And episode 6 of Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman (“The Sound of Her Wings”) was labeled “not eligible” without explanation, while the series itself was disqualified from Best Dramatic – Long Form under Rule 3.8.3. The WSFS Constitution’s rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to whichever gets the most nominating votes. Once the episode was removed there was no longer a rule 3.8.3 conflict. Keeping Neil Gaiman’s work off the ballot entirely was the result, however explained.
File 770 asked Dave McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, the reason for these “not eligible” rulings. He replied:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
File 770 then asked Kevin Standlee, among the best-known interpreters of the WSFS Constitution, what rules there could be in addition to the Constitution. Standlee pointed me to his article posted today, “Elections Have Consequences”.
…An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions….
…When it comes to local law, this could end up applying anywhere. Here’s an example I can use because as far as I know, there are no Worldcon bids for Florida at this time. Imagine a Worldcon held in Florida. It would be subject to US and Florida law (and any smaller government subdivision). Given legislation passed by Florida, it would not surprise me if such a hypothetical Florida Worldcon’s Hugo Administration Subcommittee would disqualify any work with LGBTQ+ content, any work with an LGBTQ+ author, or any LGBTQ+ individual, because the state has declared them all illegal under things like their “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws and related legislation….
Fans are clearly expected to infer these Hugo eligibility decisions were made to comply with Chinese rules or authority, but no one is saying what Chinese rules the Hugo subcommittee was operating under, unlike Standlee’s hypothetical which is based on Florida laws and policies that can actually be pointed to. Another unaddressed question is whether the administrators made these decisions on their own, voluntarily, because they were afraid not to disqualify certain people, or because they were told by someone in authority that’s what they should do.
Paul Weimer has written a response to being ruled ineligible on his Patreon – “Chengdu, I want some answers. Dave McCarty, I want an explanation. I am owed one.”
OTHER RULINGS. In a few cases, the report explains an item’s ineligibility in a footnote.
Best Related Work – The History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century was disqualified because one of the authors was on the Hugo subcommittee.
The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was first published in 2020.
Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form – Andor (Season 1) and Sandman – Rule 3.8.3 (knocked off the ballot because individual episodes got more votes in the Short Form category)
(And yet down below the individual episode of Sandman was knocked off the ballot as an unexplained “not eligible.” What kind of Catch-22 is that?)
Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form – The Severance episode was a Rule 3.8.3 disqualification going the other direction (the series made the ballot).
The Deep. — Deep Sea, which is the Chinese translation given in the report, is said in a Chinese footnote to have been “published years ago.” (Alternatively, this could refer to the animated movie Deep Sea, whose release date per IMDB was 2023, later than the eligibility period.)
In one case it is possible to deduce the likely reason for the “not eligible” ruling though not explicitly said in the report.
Novelette – “Color the World” by Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu was first published in 2019 (see “Stories 小说 – Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu”).
But it is not explained why Hai Ya’s “Fogong Temple Pagoda” was ineligible for Best Short Story, although the problem must not have been with the author because his “Space-Time Painter” won the Best Novella Hugo.
DECLINED NOMINATIONS. S. B. Divya’s public announcement about declining two Hugo nominations encouraged speculation at the time that many more people were following suit as a political protest. In fact there were not that many refusals, and it’s not demonstrable that any of the others were protests.
Who declined?
Becky Chambers — (Novella – “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”)
S. B. Divya — (Novelette “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”; also removed her name from the list of Hugo-nominated semiprozine Escape Pod’s team members. See “Why S. B. Divya Declined Two Hugo Nominations”.)
Prey – (film – from Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form)
Guo Jian – (from Best Professional Artist)
CUI BONO. Who got on because people declined?
Novella – Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire – which went on to win the Best Novella Hugo.
Novelette – “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S. L. Huang
Best Professional Artist – Zhang Jian
Who got on where works or people were declared “not eligible” for one reason or another?
Best Novel – The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Best Novelette – “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu
Best Short Story – “Resurrection” by Ren Qing
Best Related Work – The Ghost of Workshops Past by S.L. Huang and Buffalito World Outreach Project by Lawrence M. Schoen
Best Dramatic Presentation – Avatar: Way of Water; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Severance (season 1)
Best Fan Writer — HeavenDule
ERROR WILL BE CORRECTED. In the Best Novelette category “Turing Food Court” appears on two different lines of the report. Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty explained, “It 100% is a copy/paste error that I missed in the dozens of back and forths between me and the Chinese folks handling translations.”
UPDATE 01/20/2024. The amended report is now up. Here is the corrected Novelette page. (Thanks to Mr. Octopus for the story.)
Update 01/28/2024: Added a paragraph to make the ineligibility of Neil Gaiman’s works part of the lede. That had only been discussed in the category analyses.
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Mike Glyer
Fair enough. Look, I’m the noob here, so let me give you my background. I’m obviously not a WSFS person. But I am lunatic enough to have done a full PhD on copyright and fanfic. I’m not totally unfamiliar with how things are organized (or not) in fannish circles.
I’m also probably slightly more informed than the average lawyer on copyright and trademark, especially as applied to fandom. (I better be, given my practice.)
I’m not banging on the trademark drum to be a pain in the ass. I keep hitting that note because what I am seeing alarms me.
Mike Dunford: We had a donnybrook here a couple years ago discussing these marks and all (Jay Blanc, me, Kevin, and all the ships at sea). I thought I knew more than I did. Maybe I will get lucky and learn some more this time around, too.
I only know superficially about the trademark and copyright laws, however, imagine another group tries to take the Hugo award name away, and they will probably be met with the collective wraith of a thousand nerdy, persistent, very smart fan.
@Richard Man
At some point between the Site Selection vote, and Chendgu 2023, the entire convention was transferred from the original Bid Committee, to an entirely new group of people, a new company, a new date, a new location…
It is actually unclear if the organisation that won the site selection, is the organisation that operated the Hugo awards.
Bob Eggleton wrote, “I see it this way, I had my fun in it years ago, and moved on, though I watch it all from the sidelines occasionally. I wish the whole thing luck….”
I feel the same way, though I also feel distressed for those unfairly ruled ineligible.
I can remember 2007, when the initial slate came out, I commented that it was strange that PAN’S LABYRINTH didn’t make the cut. A few days later, a revised slate was issued, with PAN’S LABYRINTH on it, and an apology for mis-counting the ballots.
I can remember 1992, when LAN’S LANTERN was mistakenly announced as the Best Fanzine–it was actually MIMOSA. (So we had our own MOONLIGHT moment 25 years ahead of the Oscars.)
And who can forget the Beese/Hamilton controversy of 1989?
@Mike Dunford
Considering that the location, time, organisation and holding company are all different than those of the original winning bid, and now there’s been allegations that the Convention was essentially taken over by a Chinese Publisher – I’ve asked Kevin Standlee what due diligence the Marks Protection Committee performed to identify that the group using the marks were the same group that had been authorised to do so. Of course I assume there will be a positive answer to that.
I have been trying to come up with something someone could do to intentionally destroy the Hugos as a credible award that would be more damaging than what McCarty is doing right now by effectively stonewalling all questions about the ineligibility decisions.
And I just can’t.
@Jay Blanc
It goes beyond that issue. Trademark is not like copyright. One does not simply assign a trademark. The trademark has to remain associated with the “goodwill” that goes with it – if you transfer one but not the other, it can be Very Bad. And if you do not maintain control over the quality of the goods or services associated with the mark, it can be Very Bad.
@Jay Blanc:
Your claims about the bid vs con teams are incorrect.
Here’s a copy of the (Chinese language) bid team page, as captured on March 2022 (so after site selection, but I don’t believe there had been any changes since then): https://web.archive.org/web/20220313223933/http://www.worldconinchina.com/kh/team.html
I wonder who had the foresight to think to archive a copy of that? 😉
If you compare those names to the ones on the PRs or Chengdu site, you’ll find that most of the people from Chengdu Business/Commercial/Economic Daily/Times, SF World or 8 Light Minutes are on both lists.
That’s not to say there aren’t any shenanigans about where the power really lies, but officially at least, the idea that a completely different set of people ran the con versus the people who bid for it isn’t supported by the documentary evidence.
If you want a more profitable avenue to explore, try to find out why Jiang Zhenyu is listed on the bid team, and was listed on PRs as head of the Hugo division (ahead of Dave McCarty, although that might be irrelevant), yet when the con came around, he didn’t present any Hugos, unlike most of the other people on the Hugo team (see the Locus con report for the details on who presented which award).
This topic was raised with Dave McCarty on FB back around November time, and he got very pissy and completely failed to address it.
@Jay Blanc: I have a strong feeling the response will be ¯_(?)_/¯. I think it’s pretty clear that the WSFA is completely out of its depth in the modern era, due to it’s deliberately anarchic and hidebound governing system.
These problems are not going to go away. Upcoming we have Israel in 2027, and possibly Uganda and Texas. What is the WSFA going to do with a con that drops all LGBTQ authors, or anyone that’s pro-Palestinian, or bans people of color from the convention? Will there be anything besides ¯_(?)_/¯ and “Gosh, we hope it doesn’t happen next time”?
@Rose Embolism: The Uganda bid has no chance of winning. Not just the horrible, bad discriminatory politics in Uganda, the fan group is too small. An African bid could have a chance with a site in South Africa.
Texas, I’m more worried about our friends who live there. The regressive state policies have a much larger impact on residents than on visitors. Visitors don’t have to put their kids in Texas schools. Visitors are not likely to need an abortion in Texas. Visitors don’t have their political representation taken away by the gerrymandering.
What is WSFS going to do? We are WSFS. The 2023 site selection election between Winnipeg and Chengdu had low participation from WSFS members, except for the Chinese fans who bought supporting memberships. They got a Worldcon because they supported and voted for it. If you care about Worldcon, buy a WSFS membership, whether you’ve going or not, and always vote in site selection.
@Tom Becker: you would think so, except they are currently the only bid. If there is no competing bid, how would they not win?
And unless some of those fans are trademark and/or copyright lawyers, or arrange to hire them, that’s gonna do fuck-all. There is nothing that makes SFF fans better equipped to deal with a very specific legal challenge than any other group. (Possibly less equipped, since so many of us are convinced that either we’re smarter than lawyers, or that if we just all sat down and talked like reasonable people, we could fix things.)
Hypothetically, if I was part of a concom, we had the con, and it ended—what stops me from selling Hugo merch after the fact, because hey, that implicit license didn’t include things like end dates? Or, for that matter, from selling Hugo merch during the con, including stuff that some people might not want to see the brand associated with? I.e. if a Worldcon decides to sell silicone rocket ship sex toys, is there any mechanism to stop them, or is it just “well, we trust people not to do that?”
There is also a Brisbane, Australia bid listed on Worldcon.org and there is “none of the above”.
@Tom Becker
I assume that, as so often happens, we are all relying on some fans overburdened with the Responsibility Gene to put together something in opposition at the last minute.
Agreed. We need to change this. While I will be at Glasgow, I’m hardly a regular Worldcon attendee able to propose constitutional changes and drive them through the Business Meeting process. Still, I have an outline of the structure I’d want:
1.The WSFS becomes an entity with legal personality. We have some guidelines for how to create such, which basically amount to “pick a jurisdiction which is compatible with the constitution of WSFS and the likely future amendments and which is sufficiently politically stable to remain so, and which WSFS can rely on having people physically located in for the foreseeable future” (which is going to be California, let’s be honest, but there should be guidelines so they know when they have to move somewhere else).
2.WSFS is run by an elected executive committee, elected by a ballot (postal or electronic of all members). Probably electing a third or a quarter of the committee each year for three or four year terms. (will many people care? Not most of the time. But if there is a big controversy, then will turnout go up? Yes, and that will give people a mandate to change things, but it also means that a one-year surge in enthusiasm can’t overturn everything).
3.WSFS executive committee authorises people (as volunteers or employees) to run a membership system for WSFS, taking in membership fees, and administering the Hugo Awards nominations and voting, also administering Site Selection and elections to the WSFS executive committee. WSFS executive committee members must be voluntary, they can be paid reasonable expenses, but no more.
4.Attending fees for a Worldcon are paid directly to the Worldcon.
5.A percentage of each membership fee is retained by WSFS to pay for the running costs of the membership and voting systems and to pay for any staff, or reimburse personal expenses for volunteers, the remainder is then transferred to the Worldcon for the year.
6.Worldcons can’t sell attending tickets to people who aren’t WSFS members, but they can sell a ticket+membership package, in which case they pay the WSFS percentage for the membership to WSFS, and transfer data on the WSFS member to WSFS (they must collect whatever WSFS requires)
7.A member without an attending fee (a “supporting member” as was) has no connection to the Con at all and the con gets no access to that person’s data; when you register as attending the con, you give them your membership details and WSFS supplies them with access to a secure API they can use to verify that you are a paid-up member of WSFS. The con can supply WSFS with progress report to send to WSFS members who have not paid to attend the con, and WSFS will then pass them on to all WSFS members or all non-attending WSFS members.
8.To vote in site selection, you have to be a WSFS member for the year that the con will take place; for this purpose, WSFS sells memberships for calendar years and you can buy them up to two years in advance. This makes site selection much easier to administer, as instead of paying a fee alongside your vote, you buy a WSFS membership for the future year and then get sent a ballot. You can either do that electronically before the con, or in-person at the WSFS booth at the Worldcon.
9.WSFS will be on-site at the Worldcon to deal with membership queries, site selection, etc.
10.WSFS conducts the Hugo Awards voting based on dates determined by the WorldCon. Worldcon gets handed results and Worldcon then conducts an award ceremony using the results that WSFS made. This means that WSFS, not the Worldcon, determines eligibility questions. It also means there is continuity from year to year and it makes sense to build an actually good voting system instead of each worldcon putting something together a one-off system.
11.The WSFS committee has supervision over the Worldcon and the right to ensure that it is conducted in accordance with the WSFS constitution and the right to protect the brand value of the Worldcon Intellectual Property, so they can overrule the Worldcon committee if the Worldcon committee breaches the constitution or does something that would damage the value of the IP under WSFS ownership. They are also obligated to draw up a licensing agreement for the IP that each Worldcon bidder must sign in order to be seated as a Worldcon.
12.The business meeting continues to meet and continues to be the only way to amend the constitution. Ideally it would change its working practices so it draws up a timetable and sticks to it, and it requires amendments to be submitted in advance, so people can check the motions and amendments, determine when things they are interested in are being debated, and come in just to attend those debates, rather than requiring people to spend hours in a BM every day waiting for the bit they care about to come up.
13.The BM also gets some new duties: it determines what percentage of the WSFS membership fee for the calendar year two years ahead (ie the year that the Worldcon just chosen via site selection will actually happen) will be retained by WSFS and what percentage transferred to the Worldcon. The actual WSFS membership fee is determined by the executive committee. The BM also receives accounts from WSFS as well as those from past, present and future Worldcons and has the right to question a representative of the executive committee and of each of the Worldcons. Finally, it has the right to vote no confidence in any member of the WSFS executive, which creates a vacancy to be filled for the remainder of their term by a ballot of all members to take place ASAP after the con.
Essentially, what this does (ie TLDR) is:
*Convert WSFS from a direct democracy into a representative democracy
*Now that these functions are conducted primarily online rather than at the physical con, transfer various WSFS functions to a permanent team at WSFS rather than each con dealing with them separately.
*Create some actual supervision over each con so there is someone who can do something about egregious breaches of trust by a Worldcon committee.
*Have some accountability after the fact. Right now, the moment the Worldcon ends, there’s nothing anyone can meaningfully do (other than, perhaps, in court) to apply accountability to anyone running it. Now, the WSFS committee can step in, and if they don’t, then they can be held accountable, in the usual ways of any democracy (ie not re-electing them and also the BM can remove them by a vote of no confidence).
@Tom Becker:
Not unless they’re the victims of very unlucky timing. But also keep in mind that “abortion care” (and inaccessibility thereof) also impact reproductive care as well, and can extend to the rest of the body of a person with generally female plumbing. (I know women with zero desire for kids who have had medical care denied, or suboptimal alternatives offered, because of a perceived risk to a theoretically possible current or future pregnancy.)
As a person with a uterus (or perceived to be a person with a uterus) I would find it very hard to trust any medical care available in Texas.
(This is not to take away from your point that residents are in an actually dire situation.)
Well, that was nicely formatted when I typed it. I hope it’s still readable, anyway.
@Laura to the best of my knowledge the Brisbane bid is MIA; they didn’t present at SMOFCon this year in the Q&A and haven’t been active.
@Aaron Pound
I dont see it quite so strongly, but if many people feel like this: Wouldnt it be possible to add the media that hit the numbers, but didnt get nominated for ungiven reasons to add to the ballott this year? I.e. Having the normal number of nominations PLUS the odd one from this year. And then vote on that ballott.
Yes, that would set a precedent and yes the histpric record might show a book winning a hugo a year too late, but except for OC, this effect would be far below the damage this clusterfudge has done.
Well, apparently McCarty has clarified on Facebook that there was no government influence, he made the decisions, but he refuses to say why, except that he followed the rules and there his responsibility ends.
Bluesky link with screenshots, not sure if there’s another place to view it. https://bsky.app/profile/hernibsen.bsky.social/post/3kjlm2ayill2f
Dave McCarty was “just following orders” I guess?
seen on oor wombat’s feed.
https://bsky.app/profile/hernibsen.bsky.social/post/3kjlm2ayill2f
Meredith on January 21, 2024 at 8:58 pm said:
Cheryl Morgan, responding to people asking her if there was any specific sort of action that could be done, drew up a list of things that those reformers appear to want and asked me to draw up an acutal proposal to create an Independent Hugo Award Administration Committee by changing the name of and assigning substantial additional responsibility to the Mark Protection Committee. This is mainly because starting with an existing entity that is also mostly independent (its members are elected by Worldcon members and appointed by individual Worldcons and NASFiCs, but no one group controls the entire MPC) is much easier than trying to create a new one from scratch. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to work out the specific wording and to deal with the issues I think it would raise. (For example, because of the no-new-financial obligations clause, it couldn’t take effect until two years after ratification.)
Cheryl wrote about this today in a post title Decoupling the Hugos.
As she said, “Neither Kevin nor I are wedded to any particular version of this. We are simply putting it out there to help people get started on a change that at least some people appear to want.”
RedWombat on January 21, 2024 at 9:23 pm said:
While is not a feature to me, I suspect you may be right about it being so to others. Remember that just because I intimately know how the rules work, don’t assume that I agree with all of them. Note just how much opposition there was back in the late 2000s to the merely recording and making available video of the WSFS Busienss Meeting. We eventually adopted a rule explicitly regulating it, but there was substantial opposition to it. I note that is appears that many of the people who opposed the rule explicitly authorizing recording and publishing the Business Meeting video have stopped attending Business Meetings.
No kidding. Let me ask you what you think of what I’ve called the Council of WSFS:
Instead of a mass meeting (or Town Meeting if you like) of all of the attending WSFS members who want to show up, all of the things currently the responsibility of the Business Meeting would be handled by an elected Council of WSFS. (I tenatively have proposed a membership of about 21 people, 18 elected in three groups of three-year terms, with others appointed by Worldcon and NASFiC committee, which means the total membership would vary from year to year.)
Any Constitutional changes adopted by the Council of WSFS in year N would be submitted to a vote of all WSFS members of the Worldcon in year N+1 for ratification. Any proposal that gets more yes votes than no votes would be ratified and take effect the following year (unless otherwise provided). This is somewhat like how some states require that amendments to their constitutions be ratified by a popluar vote of their citizens.
The “This was a Signal!” defence has aged like fine milk.
Because people keep referencing the Incapacity Clause of the WSFS Constitution, and because not everyone knows where everything is in that document, I thought it might be helpful to quote it (emphasis other than the section title mine):
So I’ll jump into the conversation. I do think we need to decouple the Hugos from the sitting con but I’m not in favor of assigning it to an existing committee. I think we should create a new one, an idea which I discuss here.
Related can of worms (and sorry if I’ve missed the answer elsewhere): is Dell’s sponsorship/licensing/whatever for the Astoundings directly with Worldcon? (That’s what it sounds like on the Astounding page, but I’m well aware that a descriptive paragraph != actual binding agreement between entities.)
@Standlee
I think it can’t be worse than what we’re currently dealing with, and, depending on the powers of said group, might actually allow some accountability, if said group was allowed to do things like (to use an example taken completely at random) call an Administrator on the carpet and demand to know WHY certain nominees were declared ineligible.
But I would also want an honest to god lawyer involved in drafting the articles of incorporation or whatever, because “we’re smart, we can figure it out!” has led to untold grief over the years.
@Kevin Standlee
With all due respect, the current Marks Committee needs to be removed and replaced, not granted new powers. It is not fit for purpose having failed to properly defend devaluing of the Marks. The failure to perform due-diligence, have properly assigned licence agreements, and lack of any maintenance of legal ‘goodwill’, might well have invalidated the marks entirely.
And yes, your defence is that “The Way the Worldcons Work doesn’t allow for that”, but the answer to that was to explain to the WSFS that the “The Way the Worldcons Work” was incomparable with protecting the trademarks. And if you wanted the Trademarks protected, the way it works had to change.
They’re bidding for 2028, which won’t be voted on for another 2 1/2 years.
Somehow, I suspect there will be more bid(s) by then.
For those who can read Bluesky links, Rebecca Kuang has posted a statement (complete with alt-text):
https://bsky.app/profile/rfkuang.bsky.social/post/3kjljukyow42o
The alt-text is:
“I initially planned to say nothing about Babel’s inexplicable disqualification from the Hugo Awards. But I believe that these cases thrive on ambiguities, the lingering question marks, the answers that aren’t answers. I wish to clarify that no reason for Babel’s ineligibility was given to me or my team. I did not decline a nomination, as no nomination was offered.
Until one is provided that explains why the book was eligible for the Nebula and Locus awards, which it won, and not the Hugos, I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility. Excluding “undesirable” work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate. Pity.
That’s all from me. I have books to write.”
Note: If anyone needs a Bluesky code, I have a few…
@RedWombat
The current WSFS Marks Committee takes the view that it can not be held directly responsible for any of their actions by the WSFS, and can only be directed by a properly two-year ratified amendment to the WSFS constitution.
I am loath to give them any more power, since they shuck responsibility.
I’d like to have a dollar for every time Kevin has explained the Council of WSFS idea here.
And every time I read about it the thing that crosses my mind is that the first people who will get voted onto it are Kevin, Ben, Dave, and half a dozen other business meeting veterans. It will only make official the fan political influence they already wield.
I wonder if there might be grounds for the disqualified authors to sue Dave McCarty here in the U.S., as he has taken responsibility for disqualifying them.
Has anyone ever suggested a vote-by-mail scheme? Very generally, a kind of WSFS apa where amendments are proposed, if they get enough people voting to consider them, they are put to the convention membership via an email or paper ballot? Maybe a hybrid, where details get hashed out at a business meeting, but ratification is done by issuing ballots to the entire membership? I dunno. Probably also a bad idea. But the “council” thing sounds like it entrenches the current power structure, is less democratic, but does add some possible accountability, in that there are specific people you can point at. Over all, not a fan of the council theory.
@Lydia Nickerson
I once suggested an email sent when people registered for Worldcon saying “Welcome to the WSFS! Did you know there’s a business meeting that you can attend and make your voice heard?” but was told that was out of the question because people hate getting more email. I suspect a proposed vote by email would run into the same perceived problem, even though I think it’s quite a good idea. We manage to vote on the Hugos, so obviously the membership as a whole can handle an e-ballot without exploding.
Ah, I wondered why I didn’t remember hearing about them. Well, if Uganda is still in it and nothing else steps in, “none of the above” is the other option. Noone but Tel Aviv is currently bidding for 2027 and they are MIA as well.
@Lydia Nickerson
@Red Wombat
The WSFS Constitution was explicitly amended to prevent and impose a complete ban on any kind of remote participation in the WSFS Business meeting. We’re only allowed to live in the Future of the 1950s.
@Laura
If we’re really getting to the point that the only people who want to put the effort into hosting a Worldcon, are people who probably should not host a Worldcon… Then the Worldcon is probably dying.
@Jay re: the Mark Protection Committee … I’m not sure what you’d expect them to be able to do, since as a committee they were not arrogated the authority to act in the way you’re describing.
I realize, given that you’ve already pre-formed your opinions on the subject, I’m just blowing into the gale of your disregard here, but perhaps you could tuck away your indignation for a bit and look for incremental improvements where they are more apt to be found. You’re not entirely wrong, but you are kinda being an asshole about it.
@Jay Blanc
Well, I’m…not actually shocked at all, come to think of it.
The removal of any possibility of remote participation in the BM is something that yeah, happened this past WorldCon, and yeah, is straight up bullshit.
I am sincerely hoping that Glasgow and Seattle collectively can unbreak that.
“ Joshua K. on January 22, 2024 at 12:02 pm said:
I wonder if there might be grounds for the disqualified authors to sue Dave McCarty here in the U.S., as he has taken responsibility for disqualifying them.”
That’s unlikely. What quantifiable damage have the DQ’d suffered due to the DQ? I agree this smells to high heaven I simply think it would be difficult to prove damages.
I love R.F. Kuang’s statement. I hate that it needed to be said.
Congratulations to Dave McCarty for single-handedly proving the Puppies prescient! I would quite seriously like to see him banned for life from WSFS.
AdamTesh: On top of that, one would expect a lawyer to warn their client how much this would cost to litigate, and that they could expect to collect nothing in the end. The victims here are likely to decide they’d rather spend their money another way.
While CBS can afford to sue fans who want to make Star Trek movies, it’s extremely unusual for individuals in the sff community to burn a pile of money that way — like John Van Stry did when he sued someone who pirated his books. (Unless you can get a lawyer to work pro bono, like Jon Del Arroz did when he sued the corporation that ran the 2018 Worldcon).
Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
I was not part of the in-crowd who knew how the Hugo Awards operated in 1989(or much else until maybe 20XX when i read incrementally more and more about its processes on the internet, particularly maybe on Whatever and/or Making Light, then here on File770(here from 2015 onward, i think).
It took me some googling to know about Beese/Hamilton a few years back and i forgot who were nominated just a short while later, before looking at complete nomination/winners list at hugoawards.com.
Thing is if i couldnt even retain the names i searched for when i first heard about it for longer than it took me to search, i doubt anyone not there in 1989 will a) look for info on 1989 (b) find the records [which are seemingly buried/hidden from prying/searching eyes & (c) retain it for very long.
I only know as much as i do because i’m very interested (at a long distance) in science fiction stuff, and persevered [twice] to google search for the details. While this might be retained on isfdb/eosf/fanac.org or other places, the fact of nobody knowing to even look for it is telling(in an interesting way-to me at least).
Sad/rabid puppies, grrm kerfuffles at worldcon, david gerrold and the wooden asterisks at hugo ceremony(which is also less searchable due to key word asterisk/hugo/gerrold being fundamental and highly important to remember but also susceptible due to the vagaries of memory, i for one needed to search for the author’s name who presented at the hugo ceremony) , r*cefail, and other matters being more recent are better documented/searchable on the internet much more easily-er than pre-2000 stuff which is less well known outside a diminishing few insiders(non-derogatorily used by me, just descriptively).
In a few(5 or so years-or maybe 10 years), the 2023 hugo awards eligibility issues might be remembered only by those who are currently reading or commenting on it, and be lost to the sands of time for those who haven’t come across it yet; whether they are current or future hugo-awards-interested humans.
Srry, for the incoherent train of thought, its 6am here and im not able to edit this later into more comprehensible post/comment(as in literally cannot, im unpractised in organizing an essay/post this long)
Mike Glyer:
I’m not going to dispute your analysis of the risk of an economically rational lawsuit being filed, at least not without doing several hours of legal research that I don’t have the time for. But rational litigation is only part of the risk. The recent fan-related legal landscape includes multiple crowdfunded spite-driven lawsuits of dubious merit. Not something I approve of or would be involved in, but it does increase the overall litigation risk.
@Chris R.
This problem can’t be incrementally fixed. The fundamental structure of the Marks Committee was always broken, and they interpreted the way they were established as meaning they could not be directly held responsible by the WSFS. And attempts to structure methods of maintaining better continuity and standards of the Hugo Awards were dismissed out of hand with indication that any attempt to progress them would be derailed.
The problem with a “bolt the door after the hose has fled” attitude to fixing things, is that dilution of a Trademark’s good will and protection can’t be fixed in retrospect.
As regards to the ban on remote participation, this amendment was added in the 2010 and 2011 business meetings. Prior to this, remote voting was actually allowed if little used, since ‘a vote delivered for a natural person’ could still be counted, so someone could actually attend a Buisness Meeting by phone, or a letter voting against a particular amendment that was expected to be proposed. This added wording explicitly restricting it. It was added onto the end of an Amendment allowing Electronic voting for the other WSFS functions. No reason is disclosed in the minutes for why the specific ban was added onto it. From the Minutes, “Mr. Standlee spoke in favor of the motion.” so perhaps he can explain why this ban exists.