By Chris M. Barkley
“When the mind is free, magic happens.”
— Young Adult author C.G. Rousing
“Harry Potter” blew the roof off of children’s literature. But that doesn’t mean the work is done — for YA authors, it just means more scope for the imagination.”
— Huffington Post reporter Claire Fallon, June 2017
Reading is one of the great pleasures in life. For a time in our modern age, it is seems as though young grade and high school kids had abandoned reading books.
Then, in 1997, along came J.K. Rowling and her creation, the world of Harry Potter. And now, after twenty-one years, it’s hard to imagine what might have happened to entire generation of young readers if Bloomsbury and Scholastic Books hadn’t taken a chance on the saga of a young wizard and his friends and deadly enemies.
The Harry Potter novels, which continue to sell, provided a mighty tide that raised the fortunes of a great many writers; new authors such as Suzanne Collins, Garth Nix, Veronica Roth, Rick Riordan and Tamora Pierce, led story hungry children to the older works of seasoned professionals like Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Madeline L’Engle, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein.
In 2006, The Science Fiction and Fantasy writers of America created the Andre Norton Award, which is given to the author of the best young adult or middle grade science fiction or fantasy work published in the United States in the preceding year.
Five years later, a serious effort was started to establish a Hugo Award for young adult books. The World Science Fiction Convention Business Meeting, which governs the WSFS Constitution that administers the Hugo Awards, several committees over several years, determined that the proposed award would better be served as a separate category, to be on par with the other non-Hugo category, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The amendment to add the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book to the WSFS Constitution was first ratified last summer at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland by the members of the Business Meeting and must be ratified a second time at this year’s Worldcon in San Jose, California to begin it’s official trial run as a category.
This year’s Worldcon Convention Committee (headed by Kevin Roche) has graciously accepted to administer the Young Adult Book award in addition to the new Best Series and Campbell Awards.
The nomination period for the Hugos, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer opened February 5.
We, the undersigned, wish to congratulate the various YA Committee for reaching a consensus with their diligent work in crafting the parameters of the YA Award for the World Science Fiction Convention. However, we also think that the name of this new award should have a name which not only should be universally recognizable, but have an equivalent weight to the name of John W. Campbell, Jr.
We, the undersigned, will respectfully submit a new name for the Young Adult Book Award at the Preliminary Session of the Worldcon 76 Business Meeting on August 17, 2018 as a strike though substitution for the name ‘Lodestar’, under the rules governing the WSFS Business Meeting.
We will also embargo the name until the start of the Preliminary Session.
There is very good reason why the name will not be revealed at this time and that explanation will also be given at that time.
While we also understand that while this motion may cause a great deal of consternation, we also feel that this would be an excellent opportunity to generate a great deal of interest about the Worldcon and bring MORE attention to this new award to potential nominators, readers of all ages, booksellers and the public at large.
The proposed name will forever be known and honored in perpetuity with the Hugo Awards, the John W. Campbell Award, and the World Science Fiction Convention.
Proposed by Worldcon 76 Attending Members:
Juli Marr
Robert J. Sawyer
Steven H. Silver
Chris M. Barkley
Update 03/07/2018: Removed Melinda Snodgrass and Juliette Wade as signers. Also removed Vincent Docherty, who said in a comment his name was included in error, he never was a signer. // Subsequently, Shawna McCarthy and Pablo Vasquez have asked to have their names removed.
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I’m kind of wondering if maybe Chris isn’t too familiar with how the Business Meeting works and all the work that went into getting consensus for “Lodestone”? I could see somebody blundering into this, well-intentioned.
Chris, if you’re reading here, I sincerely hope you’ve reassessed whether this is a good idea, and how to go about it. I hope you’ll reconsider and publicly withdraw the proposal — setting aside both merit and effort already expended, I think the current effort is positioned to be an unfortunate, harmful internet fight, more than anything else. Mistakes happen; better to nip them in the bud than to let them fester.
Just a couple of things:
I personally really like Lodestar. Probably because of reading ElfQuest over and over (and over) again as a kid. It also brings to mind the memories of books that set me on the path towards science, science fiction and fantasy. The name made me remember aching for the stars at night while buried in my books.
Second, a big thank you to the YA committee which has fought tooth and nail for this award for years. I barely got to see y’all in Spokane because you were buried in the business meeting.
Third, this will be the first WorldCon that I’m attending that I don’t have to work the whole time supporting the New Orleans bid. Congrats to San Jose and THANK YOU for doing all the work so I can go to the Hugos! :p This brings me to my final point and question:
Can anyone tell me how much time I’m going to have to take out of WorldCon to sit in the business meeting over this? @krask? @Christine? @MikeVanHelder? If the only place I get to see y’all is in there, I’ll be there. 🙁
@Kevin Standlee Technically, Worldcons don’t have to administer the JW Campbell Award (the wording in the Constitution just says we’re allowed to use the Hugo Ballot to do so),
Not sure I follow this. The Campbell award is mentioned twice in the Constitution (sec 3.7.3 and 3.11.2), and both times the Constitution says the Worldcon Committee “shall” — the Committee shall solicit nominations, and the award ballot shall list the YA book. This doesn’t seem optional to me.
but the YA Book Award is a WSFS award defined in the Constitution.
Yes. It is listed in sec 3.8, “Categories”, as one of many, all of the others being “Hugo” awards. So for this reason I don’t see why it is not considered a Hugo award — the Constitution treats it as such. The JWC is not similarly listed, so I can see the distinction there.
(note: The Constitution, immediately after sec. 3.3.18, makes reference to secs. 3.7.3 and 3.10.2. I believe that “3.10.2” is a mistake, and should read “3.11.2.”)
Chip Hitchcock on March 6, 2018 at 7:02 pm said:
Yes, and it’s also mentioned in the Standing Rules (see rule 5.10). However, it only applies to main motions (like new constitutional amendments; ratification cannot be OTC’d). You can’t apply OTC or its cousin Postpone Indefinitely (rule 5.3) to an amendment to a proposal. The announced proposal is not a new proposal. It’s an amendment to ratification of a pending constitutional amendment. That’s why it’s legal the way they’re doing it. WSFS allows amendments to ratification, although if they increase the scope of the proposal, they trigger an additional year of ratification.
The Parliamentarian cannot “rule” on anything. Only the Chair can do so. The Parliamentarian, when present, is there to advise the Chair. The Chair makes rulings. The Parliamentarian gives opinions.
As noted above, because the motion is not a new proposal, but an amendment to a ratification, it would be in order. They didn’t have to say anything in advance, and could have simply shown up on the day and proposed the change. You can make motions to amend a pending main motion (including a constitutional ratification) from the floor. This happens all the time. This is why WSFS rules currently talk about how an amendment can be only partially ratified (the stuff about “to the extent that it is ratified”).
@Joanna, lately it’s been four mornings, starting from 10am and going to around 1pm. The first day is the Preliminary meeting, where debate times are set, agenda items approved (or not), and reports accepted. There is a particular very orderly style to the way business is done (Robert’s Rules as modified by WSFS), but the head table is usually very helpful and nobody gets upset if you don’t say something exactly right. It’s also one speaker at a time, usually at the front of the room, which as a partially deaf person I really appreciate, and the last few years were also live captioned.
Before Puppies I believe the fourth day was usually unnecessary. May it become so again!
I’m not going to be able to attend Worldcon this year, but I hope you will go. I actually find it quite interesting and will be sad to miss it.
Bill on March 7, 2018 at 10:25 am said:
You’re right. I’m misremembering. At one time (before my time, actually), when WSFS was trying to stop the creep of non-Hugo Awards onto the Hugo Award ballot, the JWC was “grandfathered” into “awards that can appear on the Hugo Ballot but are not Hugo Awards,” and that meant they were allowed but not required. However, somewhere along the way, the JWC got moved to a requirement, not an option. One wonders what would happen if the award sponsor ever decided to stop sponsoring it.
Section 3.3 is Categories, not 3.8. The distinction is the way that it’s actually listed. All of the other categories are listed just by their category name, which means that they are Hugo Awards. 3.3.18 is listed as “Award for Best Young Adult Book.” Possibly we should have added a new section rather than putting it at the end of the list of Hugo Award Categories, because the YA Award is not actually a Hugo Award Category. (If it was, then works that made the shortlist wouldn’t be eligible in, say, Best Novel. Keeping it as a separate award administered by WSFS but not a Hugo Award is intentional.)
Almost certainly. Probably got zapped during one of the renumbering spells caused by other amendments. I’ll bring this to the attention of the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee, and if they agree, we’ll fix it on WSFS.org and I’ll send a new copy over to Worldcon 76. The copy that was published in their PR 2 is already out the door, of course.
Joanna Rivers on March 7, 2018 at 10:22 am said:
As Lenore said, the scheduled times are (probably) 10 AM to 1 PM on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and (if necessary) Monday. There is no meeting on Thursday. Also, the times are not absolutely confirmed at the moment, because we have to work with Programming and some other things that need the same room as we’re using for technical reasons.
Amendments to a pending constitutional amendment (like the naming of the YA Award) cannot come up any sooner than the Saturday meeting, for procedural reasons. (I expect that it will come up on Saturday.) The only thing that will happen at the Friday meeting regarding the YA Award is setting the debate time limit. It would be possible for the Preliminary Meeting on Friday to schedule a specific time, but this is unlikely. Attempts to schedule the meeting so that items are scheduled for “not before time X” (like tennis matches) are met with a lot of resistance, generally because of the perception that it makes it too easy to “pack” the meeting. You can get a general idea based on the printed agenda, which will be published before the convention.
Watch the convention newsletter as well, which will, to the extent they can fit the news, include developments and announcements.
If you want to see what the meeting is like, you can watch the videos of the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting on YouTube. Previous years’ meetings are also available on that same YouTube channel.
Thanks @Lenore! Sorry you won’t make it to WorldCon this year. I really do NOT want to sit in the BM for 4 days, but this award is important to me, so there I shall sit.
This is a bad idea…but I haven’t heard the proposed name yet! Which is another reason why this is a bad idea.
If you want to provoke a discussion on an alternate then tell us the name you are proposing. – if not then all I’m seeing here is a proposal to redo a discussion that was already had and which reached a conclusion.
That wasn’t a discussion I was particularly invested in but the outcome was reasonable and the rationale given was sound.
The proposal above implies (intentionally or not) a lack of trust in the people who participated in the last discussion by the dual impact of suggesting the previous decision was wrong or suboptimal (otherwise why change it) but without saying why or offering a clear critique.
This is unwise.
I think in years to come, this will be held up as a perfect example of how to torpedo a proposal through the very act of making it.the YA committee members have a right to be angry at this high-handed attempt to do an end-run around their work.
Kind of assume that the secret name thing is because UKL’s literary executors haven’t agreed to it yet.
In case it’s useful, Alex Acks/Wells has a liveblog of the original business meeting debate of the name Lodestar.
NickPheas, it seems to me that if that’s the case they should have held off on the announcement until they had all their ducks in a row, and permission for the motion from LeGuin’s executors. Just my two cents.
@Elizabeth
Thanks for that link, it’s very helpful. It shows there was extensive debate with multiple amendments, including a positive vote to adopt Lodestar as recommended by the YA committee, and the defeat of several attempts to delay or rename the award (to L’Engle at one point).
If the super secret name is Le Guin then I’m still against this proposal both in general (Lodestar is fine – don’t waste people’s time) and specifically (naming it after Le Guin is not a good name for the award and its a poor memorial for Le Guin)
Rather interestingly, from the liveblog:
This means that the proposed name change would delay it having any name at all for an extra year. I’m not sure if this ruling is technically binding on the next BM (Kevin?) but it seems likely that we’d get the same ruling again even if it wasn’t.
This makes the whole thing seem even less wise.
I think they may have done it this way because it will probably take a while to get permission from the estate (or non-permission), but they realized they were coming up against the deadline of the business meeting and wanted to alert people that something was coming. They could have waited until next year, of course, but maybe they were too impatient. This doesn’t mean I think they acted wisely — I’m just trying to figure out their motives.
I like Lodestar (once I looked it up), but I’m too sick to be coherent about why.
Nobody knew what the significance of the Newbery and Caldecott names were when those awards were first instituted.
But now pretty much every library and bookstore and teacher knows what they mean, and a lot of children know, too.
Lodestar is a fine name, and if we as Worldcon members do a good job of ensuring that we recruit and retain young adult members and members with good knowledge of YA literature, the Lodestar will win its own reputation in time just as the Hugo did.
The people who worked on the YA not-a-Hugo proposal for years, with a lot of discussion and effort, and finally got it over the line, did a fantastic job, and I am deeply grateful for their dedication and contribution.
Mark,
Exactly right….if Lodestar is ratified, if will be called that in 2019. If they decide to change to Le Guin or any other name, it will still be the Award for Best Young Adult Book in 2019.
Kevin confirmed that early in this thread:
As you can see in the meeting minutes/videos, people were not very happy with this first year without a name. But decided it was a better option than continuing to wait.
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Maybe this is a minor point, but Tamora Pierce isn’t a new author. Alanna: The First Adventure was 1983, and there are plenty of authors today who grew up reading Tammy’s stuff… honestly, it may seem like a small point, but it seems weird to include someone who’d had two successful trilogies before JK Rowling was working as someone whose career was launched by her…
It seems to me more appropriate that Le Guin’s estate and family decide if they want to have an award in her honour or not, and if so what form it would take. Thinking of Nicola Griffith’s remembrances of Le Guin, my suggested category would be an SFF award for first novels by women, which was her criteria for offering blurbs back in the day.
I also think Loadstar is a lovely name that had a lot of thought put into it, and that this proposal is disrespectful and disingenuous. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to try out the business meeting (I’m very fond of that kind of thing, but it’s my first attending WorldCon, and I don’t want to miss anything!). However, it seems like it might be worth it to put a word in for voting it down.
Chris has been attending Business Meetings for years, one of the people who care enough that they skip much of the convention to attend the Business Meeting, slogging through the trenches instead. Being up, compos mentis, and working on serious matters first thing in the morning. I respect him and like him a lot (he’s one of the people who always gets a hello hug when I see him each year). I do get irritated with him sometimes because of his obsessing on one thing. On the other hand his methods, determination, and enthusiasm has resulted in sorting out some Hugo categories a while back, and resulted in a YA Award, giving attention to something I love.
So I expect that instead of something nefarious it’s his enthusiasm that lead to his making this colossal mistake. He’s a good person who’s done a lot of good work but let his enthusiasm for what he though to be the right thing get ahead of him. Which isn’t to say that I’m not seriously angry about what he did and the uproar he caused. A reason for doing it is not an excuse. But this isn’t the place for me to chew him out about it.
Can’t we just put a stake through its heart, once and for all? We waited months to find out how popular voting for a YA novel was almost 4 years ago at NASFiC–and found it wasn’t popular, the vote totals were anemic. This proposal was voted down at least two years running. Now we have this coy announcement that is against the voter’s intent that the award should be named for a common noun, not a person. Please provide some proof that even just a bare majority of the membership wants this award.
Concerning renaming the Award: it’s been pretty much confirmed that the proposal is/was to name it after Le Guin, and that a lot of people were blindsided by the announcement.
I’m perfectly happy with naming something after LeGuin, but not sure why it should be the YA Award. Or why something has to be named now.
This is not a hurry. It could be done in five yours or ten years or twenty years. And if people are worried she would be forgotten by then – well – then perhaps nothing should have been named after her.
***
Lodestar is a common used expression in Sweden for a person that has been an inspiration. It doesn’t have to be a person though, it can be a concept, saying or anything. Just something/someone that leads the way for you or for others.
After having thought about it, I find that fitting both for a YA Award and a very good way to give praise to a work.
Half of the original undersigned have now requested removal.
Eva Whitley: Can’t we just put a stake through its heart, once and for all? We waited months to find out how popular voting for a YA novel was almost 4 years ago at NASFiC–and found it wasn’t popular, the vote totals were anemic. This proposal was voted down at least two years running. Now we have this coy announcement that is against the voter’s intent that the award should be named for a common noun, not a person. Please provide some proof that even just a bare majority of the membership wants this award.
The award is a done deal. It exists. It was approved at last year’s WSFS meeting. It is on this year’s Hugo ballot.
This attempt to shoehorn in a different name for it is a separate thing, instigated by a person who was unhappy with the name which was chosen last year, Lodestar, and which is up for final ratification this year.
Eva,
We will see how voting goes this year and for the next few. The award will have to be re-ratified in 2021. Worldcon members determine the rules…so there was obviously enough interest to get this far.
@Eva Whitley
A “bare majority” isn’t a very useful criteria; not even Novel got a majority of members voting last year so should we get rid of everything?
Some of the categories are a bit niche – e.g. fancast gets a low turnout – but still represent a valuable segment of the community.
I don’t know if the YA award will be a success but it got voted in fairly so it deserves its chance.
Eva Whitley:
How can it be against the voter’s intent when the voters voted for an award not named after a person?
Mark on March 7, 2018 at 12:44 pm said:
Such precedents are not specifically binding (although the ruling was sustained by last year’s meeting), but IMO it would deeply unwise to attempt to overrule it. I am not on the head table this year. The Chair is Tim Illingworth. I won’t speak for him.
Eva Whitley on March 7, 2018 at 2:06 pm said:
Eva, that’s an argument against having the award at all, and that’s not even on the table right now. WSFS, through two consecutive Business Meetings, added this award, and it will stay there (under any or no name) until at least 2021, where the Business Meeting there will have to re-ratify it or else it will lapse and be removed. The appropriate venue for arguing whether there such be such an award is the 2021 Business Meeting. Although I will not be presiding this year, if I were and if anyone were to get up to argue against the concept of having a YA Book Award, I would rule the debate out of order as not germane to the question on the floor, which is “what (if any) name, should this award have?”
Based on the number of members participating in the nominating process, you cannot prove that a bare majority of the membership wants the Hugo Awards at all, so I suggest that this is not a particularly strong argument.
The membership of WSFS as a whole does not vote on changes to the WSFS Constitution (including the Hugo Awards). The Business Meeting does. A majority of the members voting at the past two WSFS Business Meetings voted to add this category and to give it a trial run at the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Worldcons.
I’ve been reading Mr. Barkley’s Facebook page. The final paragraph of my comment is:
“Right now I’m too damn angry to say more. And I definitely have a problem: I just crafted several paragraphs on File 770 stating your good qualities and that you did all of this in mistaken enthusiasm. Which means that I need to denounce you just as publicly. On a personal level It hurts tremendously that my long-held opinion of a friend turns out to be so utterly wrong.”
I still don’t think his action was for nefarious reasons. It turns out that it’s because of major flaws in his character. Again, I am too angry to start listing them. Meanwhile I spoke of his contributions and he has now shown that he has absolutely no respect for . . .
It’s time for me to shut up. And remain silent unless I regain some of my temper.
Regarding the question why Le Guin’s name should be associated with YA in particular, I’m fairly sure that in the great wide world, as opposed to fandom, the Earthsea books are by quite a long way what she is most famous for.
On the other hand, I’m sorry to mount my hobbyhorse yet again, but I should point out that when I first knew the Earthsea books they were being sold as children’s books (published by Puffin, which is a children’s imprint), and that booksellers in the UK, at least, are still selling them as children’s books. Now, I would love it if this were an award for the whole range of young people’s fiction – which some of the earlier proposals that led to this one did indeed make it – but the rule as currently formulated makes it specifically an award for YA, and one may wonder if Le Guin is the right patron for that.
Thanks again for pointing out the cross-reference error in the WSFS Consitution. The Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee agreed that this was a non-substantive error (and one of us spotted a different numbering error at the same time) not requiring a constitutional amendment to correct, so we’ve updated the WSFS Constitution at the WSFS Rules page.
@Andrew M. I’d think that she’s better known for Left Hand of Darkness, but in either case, Earthsea Trilogy would likely be classed as Middle Grade now, and my understanding is that MG books are eligible under the current Lodestar Award rules.
Le Guin also wrote the Tales of the Eastern Shore trilogy, which I think is firmly classed as YA. And a lot of science fiction. And some adult fantasy. And Ruritanian romances. And contemporary fiction. And poetry. And non-fiction.
As mentioned in my earlier comment, I wouldn’t peg her to as narrow a area as YA or YA/MG, even though I love those genres.
In any case, there’s nothing wrong with Lodestar, and I’m sorry such a contentious proposal has come up.
I never entirely bought the arguments about how names age – I’m fairly sure most people don’t know who the Hugos or the Campbell are named after, and I’m really sure most young people don’t know who Carnegie, Greenaway, Newbery, or Caldecott were, and yet those children’s lit awards seem to be doing more than fine. And I’m whelmed by Lodestar rather than having strong feelings about it, but then, as I just established the names don’t really matter.
I’d much rather, if t’were named after a person, t’were named after Diana Wynne Jones, who is excellent and primarily a writer for children and young adults. Le Guin is wonderful, and Earthsea is certainly one of if not the best known of her works, but Diana Wynne Jones is just as wonderful and more appropriate.
Either way, I have higher priorities for things I’d like to see changed. Lodestar is fine. Ursula K. Le Guin would be fine. So would Diana Wynne Jones. Or Madeleine L’Engle. The proof is in the pudding, not the name. (Otherwise Sussex Pond Pudding would be highly unappetising.)
Personally, I like “Lodestar”. For me, it evokes the image of the award winner as a guiding light, illuminating the path for younger readers, lighting the path into the wonderful world of skiffy. That’s how I think of it, anyway. Others don’t feel the same; well, that’s fine too, it’s a free country and all that.
For that matter, although I personally like the name, the bottom wouldn’t drop out of my world if the business meeting decided to call it something else. And if the “something else” were to involve Le Guin… well, it wouldn’t be the worst way to honour her, and she deserves to be honoured.
Really, I could live with this proposal… it’s just the way it’s been made that, well, grates. The peculiar coyness, the odd tone. It all adds up to something that feels wrong, to me. Purely a subjective impression, I know.
Meredith: Ursula K. Le Guin would be fine. So would Diana Wynne Jones. Or Madeleine L’Engle.
The problem is that none of those authors’ works would be considered today as ubiquitous Young Adult SFF works. I’ve never read a Diana Wynne Jones book in my life — and I’m of the age where she theoretically would have been a seminal author for me. I enjoyed the Wrinkle in Time series, but L’Engle’s works are controversial because of their Christian conversion aspect. Le Guin is not really a Young Adult author, and even though she wrote a few YA books, they are no longer the “must-reads” they once were for young readers. And 10 years from now, the name recognition of those authors will be even lower among Young Adults.
Eva Whitley on March 7, 2018 at 2:06 pm said:
If a majority of the Business Meeting attendees didn’t want this award, two years in a row, it wouldn’t have passed. So yes, a majority of those who voted want this award. IIRC it was more than a bare majority.
And more than a Majority also voted to call it the Lodestar award.
@JJ
Sure, but I spent the first paragraph saying I don’t care and don’t think that matters, with examples of major awards from the YA and children’s lit field, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing up the same argument. 🙂 Awards get named after people. Those people get forgotten in time. The award lives or dies on its own reputation rather than whoever people wished to honour, but it doesn’t make any of those people less worth honouring, and it certainly doesn’t hurt the award to name it after someone – or not to name it after someone.
The name just doesn’t matter that much, so the business meeting should just pick the one they like best. As it stands, that’s Lodestar. Which will be fine.
The YA Committee put in a lot of time, effort, discussion, thought, and research into a multitude of aspects regarding naming the award. They worked with the YA community, including actual Young Adults reading in the field today.
I highly commend their efforts. It was impressive. I’m in awe and so very grateful for all that incredible work.
Thus I, personally, am not inclined to toss that out and go against their well informed suggestion.
And if in the beginning the name is used to confer prestige on the award, in time it is also becomes a memorial to the person.
@Mike Glyer
Which is a pretty good argument for naming it after someone who’s worth it, should the mood take the business meeting. Like, say, Ursula K. Le Guin. 🙂 I also quite like the idea of prompting curious young people to look at older works in the genre. Although I suspect the reaction to this post has rather soured the chances of it being anything other than Lodestar.
I’ll still be quietly rooting for Diana Wynne Jones if the business meet8ng does decide to go for a person, but, you know, I won’t be there to propose or vote so it doesn’t really matter.
The award will be fine whatever we end up calling it, so long as we nominate and vote for good stuff.
Meredith: I’ll still be quietly rooting for Diana Wynne Jones if the business meet8ng does decide to go for a person, but, you know, I won’t be there to propose or vote so it doesn’t really matter.
I think that Barkley has (deliberately) given you the mistaken impression that the name of the award is still “up for grabs”, even though it isn’t. This is why I made the point about the author names in my last post.
The name Lodestar was chosen by the membership last year and is up for final ratification this year. Yes, there is always a possibility that they won’t ratify it, but that is extremely slim. The question of it being named after a person was pretty much put to bed last year. And based on the vast majority of the reactions I’ve seen on the part of Worldcon members, it’s still firmly tucked into bed.
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Yes, I’d pretty much considered the ratification of Lodestar a mere formality. Why have the committee work so long to make a recommendation and not follow it? I know the Business Meeting isn’t bound by it, but there’s really no good reason not to follow their very well researched advice.
I’m fine with the award not being named after a person. It avoids the problem of finding out at a later date that the person was in the habit of eating babies stuffed with kittens.
I’m also having a hard time getting past calling Tamora Pierce a new writer when her first novel is old enough to no longer be in the target demographic for YA novels.
Meredith on March 7, 2018 at 4:22 pm said:
Absolutely! I’ve been voting for the Hugos for decades, and been a fan of the award for even longer, and I can’t tell you much more about Hugo Gernsback except his name. Never been particularly tempted to investigate. But I respect the fact that he was someone the founders of the award wanted to honor, and I think that’s a fine thing. That’s what you expect from an award name. All this stuff about “the kiddies won’t know who Le Guin/whoever is” is just nonsense.
That said, I support “Lodestar” for now, even though I think it’s a terrible name, because it’s better than using “the award that doesn’t yet have a name” for another year.
But the name just smacks of half-hearted compromise chosen after a lengthy and brutal battle by a deadlocked committee. Which is sort of like “chosen by committee”, but so much worse! And, of course, that’s what it is. And, of course, that’s why people are so touchy about suggestions of alternatives–they’ve been through the lengthy and brutal battle, and don’t want to repeat the experience. To those people, all I can say is, grow up! You know it was nobody’s first choice! Stop pretending it was a wonderful, perfect decision, when you know it was simply the least worst option you had left after all those bloody battles. And admit that people have perfectly good reasons for disliking it. In fact, I’m sure many of you committee members are secretly not that happy with it yourselves, even if you’d rather sit on a bed of rusty nails than admit it at this point.
So stop being surprised when people want to rename the award. It’s not a good name. It’s a half-assed compromise. An ok name at best. And the fact that you all have PTSD from the last sets of committee meetings is not actually a good reason for not honoring someone we want to honor. Because honoring someone we want to honor is always better than going with some bland, innocuous compromise.
@JJ: I’ve never read a Diana Wynne Jones book in my life — and I’m of the age where she theoretically would have been a seminal author for me. Jones got very poor publication/distribution in the US until fairly late in her career. If I were supporting a person’s name on the award at all, I’d certainly take hers seriously, both for her work and because it would be nice to have one non-US name on the awards.