Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #75

Loncon One 1957 Hugo Award photo by Michael Benveniste

THE (POSSIBLE) FUTURE(S) OF THE HUGO AWARDS 

By Chris M. Barkley: As we all impatiently await the announcement of the Hugo Award Finalists for 2023 by the Chengdu Worldcon, we in the fannish community are facing an interesting conundrum. 

Because for the first time in our fannish history, a majority, or the entirety, of a Hugo Award Finalist ballot may feature works that have not been published in English first.

Over the sixty plus years of the administration of the World Science Fiction Convention’s achievement awards, the Worldcon has been held in cities on four continents, in the countries of Canada, the United Kingdom (including Glasgow, Scotland), the Republic of Ireland, Heidelberg, (West) Germany, Australia, the Hague in the Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Finland, and the United States.

In each and every case, a majority of the nominees and winners have been decidedly anglo-centric and/or American in origin.    

Two of last year’s nominees for Best Fan Editor,  Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne pointed out this disparity in an article posted on their Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blob on Thursday, May 25, “The Word For ‘World’ Isn’t America”.

The main criticism in the essay is:

To date 84.2 per cent of all winners, and 84.5 per cent of the authors represented in the prose categories (short story, novelette, novella, novel and series) were born in the United States. If anything, these statistics understate the level of American dominance, given that the non-American 15 per cent includes figures like Isaac Asimov (born in Russia), Algis Budrys (born in Germany) and Ursula Vernon (born in Japan). If the goal of the Hugo Awards is to represent the best science fiction in the world, then we cannot limit ourselves to works by American authors.

And that is quite valid as far as I’m concerned. For decades, I and a lot of other fans thought that the Hugo Awards were highly representative of the state of sf literature. But, as the essay points out, this is a false dichotomy fed by what is being perceived by others as the voting fans of the United States (who have made up the plurality of participants for decades) whose tendencies to favor American or anglo-centric works and not translated works, which, to be fair, are not readily available in North America. 

Still, as I grew older, and hopefully more worldly (if you’ll pardon the pun), I gradually realized that, at best, the voters of the Hugo Awards could claim to be international connoisseurs of fiction, art and fan activity but in reality, these revered awards were, at best, mainly for works in English.

For example, how else can it be explained that three of the most recent Worldcons held in non-English speaking countries (2007-Yokohama, 2009-Montreal and 2017-Helsinki) featured no nominees from any of the host countries.

Clearly, the problem with the American (and English language) hegemony regarding Hugo Award is the voting base which selects the nominees and recipients, who are, by and large, Americans and anglo-centric readers. 

The Constitution of the World Science Fiction Convention does not concern itself in any way about this disparity, other than this, from The rules directly regarding the Hugo Awards in Article 3, Section 3:

3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.” 

It can (and has been) interpreted that foreign language works which are first published in English for the first time are eligible for nomination in their year of broadcast or publication. (The Constitution does provide relief of an extra year of eligibility for works that had limited distribution, but only through a majority vote by the WSFS Business Meeting.) 

In 2015, two works of fiction by foreign born writers, Cixin Liu’s novel, The Three Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu) and “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” a novelette by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (translated by Lia Belt), made history by winning Hugo Awards in their respective categories.

As progressive as that was, it must be noted that no other translated works have been nominated (or won) since then.

Considering fandom’s current state of artistic, cultural and social upheaval, Ms. Wakaruk and Mr. Rokne concerns should be taken quite seriously.

– Contraction: Restrict the eligibility of nominations to just native born Americans.  I am not in favor of this course of action. We live in the 21st century, not the 18th. Such a move would be seen both here (and abroad as well) as nationalistic, racist and needlessly xenophobic. 

– Promotion: One could just promote a number of other awards, SFWA’s Nebula Awards, the annual Locus Magazine awards, Dragoncon’s Dragon Awards or, extending a friendly hand across the Canadian border, try and persuade the Aurora Awards to expand to encompass all of North America. But I highly suspect each of these organizations state they’re doing just fine thank you very much and would firmly reject their having the judgment of their members and voters being subsumed.

– Utilizing Other Established Conventions: Would it be possible for one of America’s larger regional conventions, such as Westercon, Arisia, Boskone, Norwescon or Balticon to take up the mantle of being the annual “American Convention”? Again, the optics of establishing an “American Convention”, when the nation is divided along political and social lines, would be an open invitation for a prolonged culture war clash. No (sane) convention committee would sanction such a move.

– Establishing A Brand New Convention: A precarious thing to undertake in these precarious economic times and social unrest. Also, see the entry above.

However, after outlining these negative possibilities, I see two possible, and positive ways forward.

The first would be to keep the Hugo Awards as they are currently, and establish a new North American Award, whose nominees would be drawn from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, no matter what language the work was first published in. The convention committee would encourage any of the media outlets countries who choose to participate (especially the United States) to provide translations for stories, non-fiction items and visual media in a number of outlets. It would be a large and arduous task to pull off but it might be worthwhile pursuing by a dedicated (and persistent) group of volunteers. 

I have to confess that the best idea I have seen to date to diminish America’s cultural imperialism came from longtime fan and the former Editor of Amazing Stories, Steve Davidson, who posted the following on Facebook on May 26:

Buzz  surrounding the issue of an “American” SF Achievement award in light of the Hugo’s becoming more truly “international”.

Not going to get into that aspect, but I do want to mention that a major hurdle awaits any “truly” international, fan-based award, unless by such an award you mean moving Worldcon deliberately to different countries so their local population dominates the vote and some local creators get a good (or at least better) chance at being nominated and winning.

The translation issue.

I don’t believe there is any way to come to a global consensus on the best whatever of a given year unless and until eligible works are near-immediately available in every language that is represented in literature.

Not to mention the volume issue.  No way could anyone possibly read enough international works (those from outside of their native language in translation) to be able to make nominations that aren’t some brand of “local”. The volume in single languages is already unmanageable in many cases.

If such a thing were fully realized (you can read or view any published work in your native language via good translation), how could an international vote be anything but a small minority doing the right thing and trying to survey the field, while the rest engage in voting for their own local community – the people and  works they are most familiar with (and ought to show some degree of partisanship for)?

If anything, I think we ought to go in the opposite direction: encourage each country and/or language community to create their own Hugo Award and use Worldcon to elevate the status of those awards….Make the Hugos an English language award, elevate others to the same status.

Indeed. But the Hugo Awards cannot be co-opted by other entities without permission; it would have to be trademarked and licenced (for a nominal fee to the World Science Fiction Society, of course) to any interested (and vetted) international literary organization, which is an easy and manageable solution to this problem. 

The only obstacle to any implementation of any of these plans is the WSFS Business Meeting, which has shown its repeated reluctance to embrace anything that they might perceive as not being in the best interest of the Worldcon. (Which I think is quite strange for an organization that promotes innovative and imaginative fiction and non-fiction.)

But the gauntlet has been thrown down and I do not think it can be ignored.

I hope that the members of the WSFS Business Meeting will take this issue seriously AND strenuously debate this issue in the next several years.

Watch this space…

50 thoughts on “Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #75

  1. I replied to the Hugo Bookclub’s tweet saying that prior to becoming more embroiled in the Hugo Awards, I’d always seen them as an award for broad species of American science fiction, even if that included some British authors. For example, Arthur C Clarke fits that mode but, say, Kingsley Amis or Doris Lessing doesn’t. J.G.Ballard would sit maybe on the edge of that circle.

    This century, the circle of what counts as Hugoish science fiction has expanded both internationally as well as along axes of gender and ethnicity. However, while it’s never had hard boundaries, it’s also never been an award in which all science fiction published in English was in potentially in play.

    These days, I don’t think a single award could encompass the “best” of SFF published in English.

  2. I really don’t think this is the Hugo’s biggest problem. So for once we might have a non US con which reflects the local culture*. That’s fine. Sorry guys, you are not entitled to a rocket.
    The thing I see as a serious weakness is the same old, same old nominee’s every year. It is clear that a substantial number of nominations put forwards the creators they enjoyed from the previous years Hugo packet. The same writers, the same style of stories, the same editors, the same periodicals.
    I have a more radical suggestion. On winning a Hugo Award the creator should be ineligible for nomination for a number of years equal to the number of rockets that person/institution already possess. Let some other choices get some exposure.
    FIYAH had the decency to do this voluntarily. Let’s make it the rule not the exception.

    The thing which would have changed my thinking would be a second Chinese con bidding for 2025 and likely winning. Cuba is big enough that a cycle of Chengdu/Shanghai/Beijing could easily satisfy the 500 mile rule. But that’s not happening.

  3. I have thought about this in the past and wondered why there has never been something like NASFIC, but annually and detached from Worldcon and WSFS, where North American awards could be established.

  4. Plenty of British content creators are routinely nominated for Hugo awards, as have some Australians and others outside of North America whose works are in the English language. If we’re really concerned about the language of the works, we should perhaps limit the Hugos to works in English or translated into English, regardless of the physical location of their creators. I see no reason to limit this to the US or North America. This is pretty much what we’re currently doing, although we don’t explicitly say that we are.

  5. I think restricting the works for the Hugo to only for American writers makes the problem worse not better(sorry),
    The problem is the visibility and that most of us, who don’t have English as our first language, know that it is usless to nominate works that are only avaible in our native language and if a work is translated into english that doesn’t make that mucfh noise in its homecountry.
    One posibility would be a non-Hugo (like the Astounding or Lodestar) for best work translated in english.

  6. It can (and has been) interpreted that foreign language works which are first published in English for the first time are eligible for nomination in their year of broadcast or publication.

    It’s not interpretation: it’s the actual rule, at section 3.4.1 of the WSFS Constitution:

    3.4.1: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation.

    Valoise on June 1, 2023 at 3:00 am said:

    I have thought about this in the past and wondered why there has never been something like NASFIC, but annually and detached from Worldcon and WSFS, where North American awards could be established.

    It’s because virtually nobody with the desire and ability to create such an event/award has taken on the task. People complain about the mere existence of NASFiC, but nobody has managed to get an amendment to the WSFS Consitution passed, let alone ratified, that would delete the award (and abandon the service mark), which would allow anyone else to take it over. There once was a convention called “AmeriCon,” but it was a local comic book convention in San Jose, California.

    And if people are that so concerned about it, why say “North America?” After all, Canada has a national SF convention (Canvention) and its own national SF Awards (the Aurora Awards). If someone really wants to create AmeriCon and the American National Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards, there’s no legal barrier of which I’m aware stopping them from doing so. The only things they can’t do is call it “NASFiC,” or “Worldcon” or given out “Hugo Awards,” because WSFS owns those service marks.

    I think the idea of trying to start a new traveling convention limited to the USA (sort of like Westercon or DeepSouthCon, but with a different geographic remit) would be a hazardous undertaking right now. All SF/F conventions (including commercial gate show type events) are having difficulty. Traveling conventions have more difficulty. And if you try to plant AmeriCon in a single place, run by the same organization every year, and contend that it represented all of the USA, I think you’d have a different issue to address: the USA is much larger than a lot of people from outside of North America realize. (I know of stories of people traveling from outside of the continent coming to, say, Seattle and thinking that it was just a short drive to, say, Boston or Chicago. How true they are, I don’t know.)

    Personally, if I had a million dollars to throw away, I’d rather spend it on a Worldcon than trying to create AmeriCon.

  7. OK. I have a half-baked idea of how a truly international award might be run if we ever wanted to set up a system that tried to represent the true depth and scope of global SFF.

    First, there would have to be national awards (such as Auroras, Seiun, etc.) The voting for works published in the year 20XX would take place in year 20XX+1.

    The international award would be voted on in year 20XX+2 (after all the national awards were complete), and would have a shortlist composed only of winners of the national awards. So the Seiun Award Winner would be on the ballot alongside the BSFA Award Winner and the As-Yet-Nonexistent-USA SFF Award.

    I recognize the problems with setting this up, how much work it would be, and that the current legacy systems would probably not be compatible with the suggestion. It’s a silly idea.

  8. Kevin Standlee on June 1, 2023 at 6:42 am said: I know of stories of people traveling from outside of the continent coming to, say, Seattle and thinking that it was just a short drive to, say, Boston or Chicago. How true they are, I don’t know.

    One of my British relatives visited Calgary in about 1989 and was surprised we couldn’t just drive over to Toronto for a couple of days. Can attest to the fact that there are folks who don’t really grok the distances involved.

  9. Perrianne Lurie on June 1, 2023 at 4:35 am said:
    Plenty of British content creators are routinely nominated for Hugo awards, as have some Australians and others outside of North America whose works are in the English language.

    To date, the only Australians to have been on the Hugo ballot in any of the five fiction categories are: Greg Egan, Shelley Parker-Chan, Sean McMullen, and Margo Lanagan. Of these, only Greg Egan has appeared on the ballot more than once (he has been on the ballot nine times in the fiction categories).

    New Zealand accounts for exactly two Hugo nominations in the fiction categories. Both were Tamsyn Muir.

    There have been 36 Hugo-finalist works of fiction by Canadian-born authors, though seven of those are from Gordon R. Dickson who had moved to Minnesota at the age of 14. The other Canadian-born authors to have appeared on a Hugo ballot in the fiction categories are: Amal El-Mohtar (two nominations), C.L. Polk, Cory Doctorow (three nods), Fonda Lee, Geoff Ryman (two nods), James Alan Garner, Jan Lars Jensen, Kelly Robson, Pat Forde, Peter Watts (three nods), Siobhan Carrol, and Robert J. Sawyer (eleven times on the ballot.)

    By population, Canada accounts for about 11 per cent of the English-speaking portion of North America. Canadian-born authors account for 2.7 per cent of all Hugo nods in fiction categories.

  10. I don’t remember which of the UK conventions this happened but one year I was trying to do my due diligence and read the Hugo nominated novels. I checked my local library which had access to the wonderful SF collection held by a library in Central California. At least one or two of the novels were not available there. So I went to Amazon (I should have tried ABE but did not think of it) Those novels were not available. I asked the mighty Internet and one of the books was available only from a bookstore in New York for an enormous price. It had been published only in the UK.
    Availability of the works may be an issue as it was for that one Worldcon.
    Also, I took German in high school and some in college. I don’t know if I would try to read a German novel or try a Spanish novel but those languages are accessible to many Anglophone people as is French. But Chinese? oh dear. For a non-native learner, the written language is extremely difficult.
    Maybe there could be an award for books published in the Latin alphabet. (I jest)
    But even so, sometimes the books can be difficult to obtain.

  11. One small correction: There actually were two Finnish finalists on the 2017 Hugo ballot. However, they were both nominated for Best Fan Artist and not in any of the fiction categories.

  12. Cora Buhlert on June 1, 2023 at 9:33 am said:
    One small correction: There actually were two Finnish finalists on the 2017 Hugo ballot. However, they were both nominated for Best Fan Artist and not in any of the fiction categories.

    Also for 2009 in Montreal: Cory Doctorow is Canadian (from Ontario) and was on the Hugo ballot that year. Karl Schroeder, who is from Manitoba, was in the Best Dramatic Presentation category that year.

  13. How soon they forget. The Hugo rules as set forth on page 74 of the 1973 Worldcon Program Book (TorCon 2) specify, “Best Novel: a science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more, appearing for the first time in English during the previous calendar year. A work originally issued in a language other than English shall also be eligible in the year it is first issued in English translation”

    That’s how it was for many years. So please don’t confuse today’s rules for those in effect for much of the history of the Hugo Awards.

  14. I don’t understand the main problem that people are trying to solve. Is it that there should be more non American books on the Hugo ballot? The only way to do that is to get more non-American members. Would people be open to a tiered membership fee, where the fee charged is based on your country’s income level? Because something like that would be required.

  15. Chris Barkley,

    You really should have consulted your Canadian friends before putting BOTH feet in it. 🙂

    “For example, how else can it be explained that three of the most recent Worldcons held in non-English speaking countries (2007-Yokohama, 2009-Montreal and 2017-Helsinki) featured no nominees from any of the host countries.”

    Canada’s two official languages, English and French, are a fundamental characteristic of Canadian identity. https://www.clo-ocol.gc.ca/en/language_rights/index

  16. @bookworm: I doubt that this would chance much. To get one example from a recent worldcon (Conzealand because I have the numbers) more than half the members where from the US, even if it is not in the US. The rest are from more than 40 different nation, the largest group from where English is not the first language was Germans with 61 members.
    To get all those groups to nominate from other countrys is ilusionary, I may not be the only German who is more informed about what books are coming out in the US, than lets say France (and can only read books in English and German).
    Edit: Sorry for my Canadianfriends there were 139 Canadians as members of the con, I can’t say however how many of them speak French.

  17. @Nickpheas: “So for once we might have a non US con which reflects the local culture*.”

    There’s got to be a bunch of Chinese authors out there who are (a) really good and (b) un-translated. Seems like any of them who win a Hugo would get a fast track for remedying (b), and that can only be good for me as a reader.

  18. Olav Rokne on June 1, 2023 at 7:26 am said:

    OK. I have a half-baked idea of how a truly international award might be run if we ever wanted to set up a system that tried to represent the true depth and scope of global SFF.

    I like that idea, an award of award winners.

  19. Kevin Standlee on June 1, 2023 at 6:42 am said: (I know of stories of people traveling from outside of the continent coming to, say, Seattle and thinking that it was just a short drive to, say, Boston or Chicago. How true they are, I don’t know.)

    I’m sure it has happened but I doubt it is common – not because people understand the distances involved but because they don’t. A British sense of scale is different from an Australian sense of scale. eg I think of Sydney & Newcastle in NSW as being reasonably close cities. I think of Bristol and London as being in different parts of the country in England. The relative distances are very similar.

    The, I don’t know what to call it, the “cultural gravity”(?) is different in both cases. Newcastle is the next nearest major metropolitan area north of Sydney, whereas, there are all sorts of places between Bristol and London. If I was marginally more awake I would now neatly tie this all back to the Hugo Awards and the nature of science fiction in different regions.

  20. The awards are US-centric because the members and voters are. And while the majority of the 2023 Worldcon’s members are from China, that doesn’t mean they have exercised their WSFS rights. So the results may still be US-centric. There’s no indication if the Chinese members know about or care about the Hugos.

  21. The original post makes no sense at all as far as I’m concerned, because it postulates that the existence of an American award will magically make Hugo voters behave differently. Does anyone really think there’s a pool of US voters thinking “well, I’d like to nominate this German book, but I want to make sure an American author wins, so I better not do that.” I think you just end with American authors winning a different kind of award in addition to the Hugo. People nominate what they know, and so long as you have a plurality of English speaking Americans in the Hugo electorate, that’s what they are going to nominate.

    You change who is nominated for and wins Hugo Awards by changing the electorate – which is why we might see a Chinese-dominant award this year (and possibly for 2024 too, if Chengdu members use their nominating rights again). (You could also change the rules of the Hugo Awards, but that’s not what the original post was about.) Heck, if enough Chinese fans get interested in the Hugo awards and keep buying supporting memberships and nominating, we could have Chinese-dominant awards forever. And then an American award might actually make sense!

  22. @Lisa Hertel

    There’s no indication if the Chinese members know about or care about the Hugos.

    And there’s not indicatation that they don’t. There could be dozens of web pages and chat groups devoted to fans discussing what to nominate for the Hugos, but they are likely to be in Chinese, so not the sort of thing you or I would stumble upon.

    I assume the finalists will be released before too long, and then we’ll all find out.

  23. I think the suggestion to make the Hugos a less Anglocentric and American award will only create an award that is decided by a largely uninformed body of voters. There is a vanishingly small number of people who will ever be in touch with a global body science fiction. At best, republication in different languages may signal the most noteworthy works. At worst, a truly global Hugo could turn into a contest of which languages have the most native speakers. But who would this serve? If the finalists (for novel, let us say) included one work in English, two in Chinese, one in Hindi and a single surprise finalist in Turkish, will this be meaningful to the vast majority of readers in any language? I argue that it will not. The idea of a truly world science fiction award is a chimera.

  24. I appreciate you said ‘majority’ there.

    For myself, I’m not anglo-centric, not sure I read that word as others do, which is fine, I’m not identifying with it at all and in all seriousness the term anglo-phone is also problematic for me, sure, I speak English or Hiberno English or Yeah, no, feck sake English but I’m not identifying with that declining colonialist era term language grab and no word with Anglo in it describes me.

    I did think Anglo centric meant prioritising England. But it’s not me. So not worried. I’m sure it all can be interpreted, just not imposed.

    I noted for myself that Walt Willis, an Irish Fan was awarded Hugo awards 46 years apart, 1958 for “Outstanding Actifan” and in 2004 a retro Hugo for work in 1951 for editing Slant (with Janes White)
    I think he, Walt, was nominated 5 other times, most between those years.

    I may go and look at all the Irish people who have been nominated/finalists out of interest, I honestly don’t think there was a stronger Irish presence on the Hugo finalist list when Worldcon was in Dublin, but I may check that out for myself.

    I noted to some Pals that in my view the Nebula’s are distinctly a US award, they had America in their organisations name until quite recently, and I cannot recall them being awarded outside of North America. Likewise the Locus Awards, feel of the US, and while these awards do recognise international works, which is great, there is commonality. Likewise the BSFA and Clarke feel of Britain, where they’ve been awarded (although maybe in Jersey) and the Chinese Nebulas of China. I appreciate them all. It’s a lot of work, it’s great.

    I look forward to more international Worldcons, I hope they bring new writings and writers to the fore, as well as more fans together. .

  25. How soon they forget. The Hugo rules as set forth on page 74 of the 1973 Worldcon Program Book (TorCon 2) specify, “Best Novel: a science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more, appearing for the first time in English during the previous calendar year. A work originally issued in a language other than English shall also be eligible in the year it is first issued in English translation”

    And that provision was gone by 1976, according to the MidAmeriCon program book.

    Maybe a rule from 50 years ago isn’t exactly germane to this current discussion…?

  26. ” in my view the Nebula’s are distinctly a US award, they had America in their organisations name until quite recently, and I cannot recall them being awarded outside of North America.”

    The very first year, 1965, saw Brian W. Aldiss (UK) take a Best Novella award. Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Moorcock have also won Nebula Awards.

  27. Let me put it another way. There is a view or perhaps an unspoken assumption that the Hugos can or should be the definitive science fiction award. It cannot be. Only a multiplicity of awards can possibly represent the full diversity of the genre(s).

    What the Hugo Awards can do is change organically. There are two errors that they can fall into. Firstly, seeing what the Hugos have been as defining/limiting what they are or can be in the future. Secondly, judging them by a standard that they can’t possibly meet: representing the full diversity of science fiction.

    The way the Hugos functionally operate is as a broad community of people engaging with a wide range of works. That community can only “pay attention to” so many books. That isn’t a question of size: doubling the membership wouldn’t double the number of books about which there can be a collective conversation.

  28. John Lorentz: Whatever happened in the Seventies, this is the current rule now in effect from the WSFS Constitution published by Chicon 8:

    3.4.1: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation.

  29. I do believe that every country mentioned in these comments, including China have a national award. It would be neat to translate, as appropriate, those works into a variety of languages and have them compete against each other.

  30. The way the Hugos functionally operate is as a broad community of people engaging with a wide range of works. That community can only “pay attention to” so many books. That isn’t a question of size: doubling the membership wouldn’t double the number of books about which there can be a collective conversation.

    I agree.
    That said if fandom truly wants an award representing the best SF/Fantasy in the world regardless of language of publication, there’s an existing award show that seems to have a ready made process in place we could copy.

    I am referring to Eurovision.

    Three rounds of eliminattions, people can’t vote for candidates from their own country, and the final awards ceremony will be a visual and auditory spectacle for the ages every year.
    I am kidding of course.
    Or…am I?

  31. Back in 2009, at Anticipation, I put together a presentation of as many international awards as I could find, including awards from Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Poland. Julie Czerneda (our Toastmaster) presented, and while we didn’t fill the room, we had a very healthy turnout in a good-sized room. (If memory serves, one of the winners was present and was acknowledged.) It was my hope that other Worldcons would pick it up and run with it, bringing more attention to authors and works from a wide variety of countries – as I put it at the time, “putting a spotlight on the ‘World’ in ‘Worldcon’.”

    Unfortunately, as far as I know, no Worldcon since then has repeated the event. Maybe having it as a regular thing would increase the amount of attention paid to non-English-language authors and works?

  32. I would like to know who of the participents in this discusion is not from an country where English is an oficial language.
    I checked the Kurt-Laßwitz-Preis on of the Kandidates for the biggest German language SF Awards. Non of the last 4 winners where translated into English. (I stopped looking there, I know the winner of 2012 has been translated, but I haven’t cheked those in between) The languagebarrier is imho the biggest problem and the reason we have not probably never will have a true international award.

    Getting a list of the winners of important awards would be easy, but no voter could read the work because of the languagebarrier.

  33. @Olav Rokne: “By population, Canada accounts for about 11 per cent of the English-speaking portion of North America. Canadian-born authors account for 2.7 per cent of all Hugo nods in fiction categories.”

    It’s as they say, Mexican money, US treaties, and Canadian literature.

  34. “3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.”

    It can (and has been) interpreted that foreign language works which are first published in English for the first time are eligible for nomination in their year of broadcast or publication.

    This obviously tripped me up, recently. I think it is worth mentioning:

    3.4.1: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation.

    Section 3.4.1 does create a greater (appropriately so, IMO) opportunity non-English language works.

    My opinion has shifted a little over the last week or so. Previously, I suggested that the dearth of translated works making it to the list of finalists coupled with the significant success that English language authors mean that there aren’t a lot of worthy works being missed by dint of not being written in English.

    But then I remembered the popular “The Witcher” series by Andrzej Sapkowski. His work has inspired a video game series as well as a Netflix adaptation. He also had a hard time selling his work to Polish publishers. Clearly, there are high-quality, non-English works out there that should have been considered for a Hugo. (And heck, even the Swede-centric Nobel literature committee thought Tolkien’s LotR was “second rate”.)

    The general trend (few translated works making to the finalist stage coupled with success in translated works by English-language authors) is still valid.

    IMO, the problem still remains that attempting to turn the Hugos into a survey of all genre works in all languages will effectively kill it. The number of polyglots is insufficient for that task. (And heck, even constraining it* to English-language publications the awards still overlook a wealth of quality fiction.)

    Contraction: Restrict the eligibility of nominations to just native born Americans. I am not in favor of this course of action. We live in the 21st century, not the 18th. Such a move would be seen both here (and abroad as well) as nationalistic, racist and needlessly xenophobic.

    Nonsense for a bunch of reasons. First, being American is neither racist nor nationalistic. At least I would move very slowly before suggesting that the nomination of works by Rebecca Roanhorse and N.K. Jemisin reflects some sort of latent racist tendency. Or that the nominations of Tamsyn Muir’s works represent some sort of latent American nationalism. Second, speaking/reading/writing English is not nationalistic. There are roughly 1.5 billion people that speak English in the world. That is greater than every other language, significantly outpacing Mandarin at 1.1 billion people.

    *it isn’t officially constrained, but it generally is constrained to English as currently practiced by nominators.

    @Nickpheas

    The thing I see as a serious weakness is the same old, same old nominee’s every year. It is clear that a substantial number of nominations put forwards the creators they enjoyed from the previous years Hugo packet. The same writers, the same style of stories, the same editors, the same periodicals.

    Careful. That’s wandering really close to my perspective on that aspect of the nomination process.

    Regards,
    Dann
    TRC eht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

    [modest apologies for not refreshing the page between when I started writing and when I finished]

  35. Andy, John:

    The rule about first English language publication has always been there: it just moved to WSFS Constitution 3.4.1 during a Constitutional clean-up where we tried to put all of the rules about eligibility extensions into a single section (3.4), instead of scattered around Article 3 the way they were.

    WSFS actually takes multiple steps to recognize and partially counteract the fact that, in most years, the majority of the Hugo Award voters are from the USA: Translations into English create additional eligibility (3.4.1), and first US publication (if the original publication is outside the USA) also creates additional eligibility (3.4.2). All of these things are handicaps against works initially published in English or first published in the USA.

    Anyone advocating for the removal of these rules is (probably unintentionally) advocating for making it more likely that only English-language works published in the USA will make the ballot.

  36. I am from the United States of America and there is no official language.

  37. @Linda Robinett

    Officially/legally? We do not have a specified language.

    Culturally? English is by far the dominant language in the US. It is the language used to craft our laws. It is the language of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And there’s nothing wrong with the arrangement of expecting English but also accommodating other languages in certain circumstances.

    Regards,
    Dann

  38. In California, where I live, a great deal of work is done to accommodate other languages than English so that it doesn’t de facto disenfranchise voters:

    Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires that in certain situations (counties where more than 10,000 or 5% of all total voting-age citizens who are members of a single language minority group, have depressed literacy rates, and do not speak English very well) election materials that are available in English must also be made available in the language of particular minority group. Section 203 targets those language minorities that have suffered a history of exclusion from the political process: Spanish-heritage, Asian, Native American, and Alaskan Native.

    You’d be amazed how many different languages various counties of California have to prepare election instructions in: CA Voting Resources language requirements.

  39. US states have from time to time had language laws that vary from very inclusive to very exclusive-Texas for example published all laws in English, Spanish, German and Norwegian for some time, and at least one President learned English as a second language. We weren’t always a nation with so many monolingual folks.

  40. I am sorry for calling English the oficial language of the USA, but it is a country where most Europeans assume a lot of people speak English (if not nearly all).
    I still stand by my statement that the languagebarrier is the biggest problem of a true international award like Olav sugests.
    Another problem that explains why we see so few international works is that at the time the US Publications arives for a lot of folks the works are old news.

  41. @Mike
    LA MTA has multiple-language notices about rights aboard transit. I see them when I’m riding the Orange Line to visit doctors. There are about 20 languages on the notices, and for several all I can say is that they’re South Asian.

  42. @OGH

    I lived in California for a time (many years ago). I would not be surprised about the number of language-centered communities that exist there.

    I note that naturalized citizens are required to learn English to obtain citizenship. In theory, they should be fluent enough to manage voting in English. Native-born Americans should have been taught enough English in school that they should be able to manage voting in English as well.

    The vast majority of our news coverage is presented in English. Being unable to understand that information makes citizens less capable of expressing an independent choice via the franchise. A person dependent on a single source of information presented in their language of choice is less able to cross-check that source for different perspectives or contradicting information.

    I understand why voting materials are provided in different languages. IMO, we are doing everyone a disservice by encouraging multilingual voting.

    Just to be clear, I’m not questioning the existence of communities that primarily speak languages other than English. I’m not questioning the existence of Spanish language (or other language) radio stations – I used to listen to 89X out of Baja California, Mexico back in the day (and other stations south of the border).

    Nor am I suggesting that non-English language works are ineligible for the Hugos. Per the WSFS Constitution, they clearly are. I do think trying to convert the Hugos into aggressively* multilingual awards would undermine the objective of providing fans with a more reflective means of recognizing superior genre works.

    *as opposed to passively multilingual as is now the case.

    @StefanB

    No need for any apology. It’s a common conception. Heck, if you toured America, you would find several distinct groups speaking a variety of English. There are times when it’s hard for one English speaker to understand another English speaker from a different part of the country.

    Regards,
    Dann
    No man ever listened himself out of a job. – Calvin Coolidge

  43. Dann: “The vast majority of our news coverage is presented in English.”

    Don’t mistake that statistic as meaning there isn’t news available in other languages. In the US, Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language, and there are multiple news services broadcast in Spanish.

    And certainly here in LA there is news in Japanese and Chinese that I know of — there may be more than that.

    And through the internet news services in many more languages can be obtained.

  44. California used to be bilingual and one of our cities actually has an Al Calde. But I agree the expected language is English. (I have known of naturalized citizens who don’t speak English. Reading may be a different thing.)

    Quick translation would be a solution. Let’s say that this year some works in Chinese have been nominated for the Hugo. I would hope that they would be translated into English in an expedient manner.

  45. Ken Liu talked about translation at MileHiCon last year. I probably missed a lot and have forgotten even more, but the gist was that it isn’t an easy task, particularly in the face of large cultural differences. There may be no direct equivalent to the original in the target language or culture, so the translator must choose something else to serve in its place. References and nuances, not to mention jokes, that every Chinese would recognize can easily fly right past most Western readers and vice versa, so the ideal translator needs to be intimately familiar with both cultures. And these days any translation from Chinese to English carries some unpredictable risk of creating trouble for the author at home, placing would-be translators in a moral quandary. I don’t think we can expect a flood of translated Chinese works any time soon.

    In a very real sense, any translation or adaptation is a new work only somewhat related to the original and so arguably eligible for consideration. Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf won a Hugo in 2021, and so did a graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

    Not offering any solutions here, just pointing out that it’s hard.

    P.S. Even in what is supposed to be a common language, works originally published in the U.K. are sometimes changed for U.S. publication, for marketing or cultural reasons. Examples that come to mind are A Clockwork Orange, The Kraken Wakes/Out of the Deep, and Neverwhere.

  46. The language about extended eligibility is the only place where a language is mentioned in the WSFS Constitution, but it clearly implies that the Hugos are an Anglophonic award. Extended eligibility is for the year a work first appears in English. But this implies that the majority of Hugo voters peak English, better yet, READ English.

    This year, that may well not be the case. If the Chinese can organize well enough to run a successful Worldcon bid, they can organize well enough to put their favorite Chinese language authors and artists on the ballot. It may be that “extended eligibility” will apply to work appearing in English in U.S. magazines.

    Nor is this question going to go away after this year’s worldcon. Here are the KNOWN Worldcon bids listed at http://www.worldcon.org:
    2025: Seattle
    2026: Los Angeles or Cairo, Egypt
    2027: Tel Aviv
    2028: Brisbane, Australia or Kampala, Uganda
    2029: Dublin
    2030: No announced bids
    2031: Texas

    That’s five or six years (depending on the 2026 race) between North American bids. In a few of the in-between years, while English is commonly spoken, it won’t be the primary language of the country.

    Of course, there may be a backlash. Years ago, when LA was running against the Netherlands, I did an election poling of site selection voters. My survey was included with the ballot, and over 200 people responded. The main questions (aside from some demographics) were: Which site did you vote for and why.

    I never published the results. I didn’t like the tone. Far too many of the responses were:
    Los Angeles; because we’ve got to get the Worldcon back in America.
    or
    Netherlands; because we’ve got to get the Worldcon away from the Americans.

    Okay, I chickened out. I should have published the results, maybe after the convention was held, but I didn’t. And I don’t remember the results. The data was lost years ago, so I can’t publish it now.

    I mention this as a cautionary tale in the hopes that whatever happens, decisions are made calmly, rationally, and fairly. I believe that can happen, but, then again, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy.

  47. @OGH

    Thanks very much.

    I used that phrasing precisely because there are places (including beyond California) where non-English micro-communities are not large enough to support competitive media in their language of choice.

    Given the ongoing siloing in American culture, I’m not sure the Internet is as much of a “fix” as you suggest.

    Regards,
    Dann
    In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

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