Ulrika O’Brien launches BEAM 14 with an editorial that might have gone unnoticed outside the circle of FAAn Award voters if she hadn’t (1) given John Scalzi the KTF treatment and (2) Scalzi hadn’t tweeted a link to the zine to his 165,000 Twitter followers.
…But once a year, like clockwork, the Fan Hugo short list comes out and somehow I can never quite avoid seeing it. When I do see it, I increasingly find a bunch of total strangers who’ve not visibly participated in fandom, and I see red all over again. I will inevitably be told that the failing is in me, that were I to educate myself, I would discover their merit. As often as not, whatever merit is involved, what I actually discover are more neo-pros doing nothing remotely to do with fandom as we know it, or if they do, only in pursuit of making money off us. So thanks, Scalzi. Fuck you. Wait, what now? Why am I still on about John Scalzi’s Fan Writer Hugo, eleven years after the parade? Because it was John Scalzi who finally broke the Fan Hugos, that’s why. And he didn’t do the rest of the Hugos any favors, either, as it turns out….
John Scalzi’s mild answer starts here.
Responses include Camestros Felapton’s “I Guess I’m Talking About John Scalzi Today”.
Taking two steps back and looking at the bigger picture and the actual societal changes occuring in the relevant time period, what do we see? Nothing mysterious and nothing secretly controlled by John Scalzi but rather the increasing and inevitable online nature of fandom, along with generational change. The period of 2000 to 2020, was always going to be one in which fandom would have the kind of generational change that fandom is always having because people get older and people from a younger generation become more influential. To use tired generational-terms, a shift from Baby Boomers to Gen-X with (now) more Millennials (and younger).
The accompanying shift was technological with blogs, blogging networks (particularly Live Journal at one point), social media platforms and commerical pop-culture media sites changing where fan-related discourse was happening. This was a cross-generational change (e.g. GRRM’s Live Journal or how influential Mike Glyer’s File770 fanzine-turned-blog became during the Puppy Debarkle).
Doc Rocket’s tweet is especially interesting for its “no one, really” conclusion —
Alexandra Erin’s thread starts here.
Michi Trota observed:
And Kameron Hurley doesn’t want to be left out –
In fact, seeing people say they’re sorry that Ulrika didn’t cuss them out, too, reminds me of the Watergate days when everyone wanted to be added to Nixon’s enemies list!
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Finally caught up on reading the comments. Nothing to add, other than if I did post a comment now using my ‘real’ name I’d be more anonymous.
It’s cool you have a fan history going back to 1960, won multiple Hugos and a Big Heart award. Science Fiction Chronicle was a great zine. But using yourself as a measuring stick for whether people know anything about fandom is a bit much.
I could drop all kinds of names that show I’ve read up on SF fandom going back to the 1930s (Walt Willis, Francis Towner Laney, Bob Tucker, Jack Speer, and so on praise Ghu). Before I looked you up today, I only had a vague familiarity I knew about you from someplace. Fan fame is fleeting.
I’ve been a fan since the 70s. Here’s what I remember about the early days: being annoyed that if I made a joke, someone would say “Oh, that’s the same joke ol’ Flem Spudnik made in GOBBAGOO 23, back in ’62. Only Flem did it better, of course.” I was always either tripping over what felt like dead history or running up against people who claimed I was misquoting some petrified witticism that now had to be recited in full every time, using only the approved wording.
Now, of course, most of that is firmly ingrained and feels like second nature. Yet I resist the impulse (at least I think I resist it) to gently correct the young folks and set them straight about these vital matters, preferring obscurity to over-explanation.
If only everyone else could be as enlightened as me. (And I must modestly point out that I’ve had at least twenty minutes of fame, spread out over six or eight shorter terms. But you try and tell that to the young people of today. They won’t believe you.)
Kip Williams: Hey, I remember when Andy Porter didn’t know who I was! Of course, that was when I met him for the first time. We all have to start somewhere.
Honestly, the idea that legal name is your only “real” name is so fundamentally strange to me I can’t really understand where people who espouse it are coming from.
As a Young Person On The Internet (under 10) in the 90s it was basic internet safety not to advertise that you were a Young Person On The Internet, so I didn’t share my name or my age if I didn’t have to, and at the time I was into Redwall RP so I just went by a suitably Redwallish pseud. Same for transformative works fandom: It was very much underground at the time so another (less Redwallish) pseud for that, and in online gaming pretty much no-one exclusively uses their actual name so I have a pseud for that, too. It’s actually sort of a novelty for me that I’m using my first name as a public ID on the internet for File770.
I’ve always been a real person and all of those names were just as real. I have friends who are perfectly aware of what my full name is but still call me by one of my pseuds sometimes. They’re just nicknames, really, when you come right down to it.
None of my IDs have ever had wikipedia pages, but then most people don’t, so using it as any kind of measure of realness is a bit, uh, “don’t you know who I am” ish, isn’t it? As well as not being useful verification for most.
The “ask [person]” thing isn’t much better — firstly, while I’m pretty sure Hampus has met Mike in the flesh and could therefore trust the chain of definite-fleshy-meetings, not everyFiler has, so first you’d have to know someone who’d met Mike in the flesh and could verify Mike’s definitely-who-he-says-he-is, and at a certain point the more geographically and financially challenged Filers a) can’t be real, and b) can’t consider anyone else to be real, either. That’s… not a sensible way to approach the internet.
Persistent ID within a community matters, but what you decide to use for your persistent ID does not.
Meredith, I first met OGH in early 1979, and I can point at other people who also know him. (I think I’m real. At least, you can find my name in a program book. Or several, if they have a member list.)
“Mike Glyer” is actually the pseudonym of an unknown fan. “Mike” gives me $5 a month and allows me to post on “his” blog as payment for me periodically commenting that I have met “him” in person (I have not).
My personal belief is that “Mike Glyer” is a little old lady from Schenectady who has been having you all on for decades. 😀
Wait, the same Schenectady where story ideas come from? It truly must be a glorious place!
@P J Evans
Sure, but not everyone here or likely to visit here has met you in real life, either! That’s my point: If meatspace connections are a qualifier for “person” on the internet then at some point that chain will break down. It’s just not a practical system, and certainly isn’t an argument for the superiority of those who use legal names (I don’t think you were arguing the latter, but it’s been a Thing in the thread).
Legal names or pseudonyms, everyone’s real to me until proven sockish. I don’t need to know what name is on a Filer’s passport to know who they are.
I’m just gonna wander in with my pseudonym which none of you fools will ever trace back to the real me! Never!
Uh, we’re still on for the meetup in Dublin though, right?
RedWombat: Uh, we’re still on for the meetup in Dublin though, right?
It’s been relocated to Schenectady. Check your File 770 Sooper Sekrit Inbox for the date, time, and location. 😀
Soon Lee: Wait, the same Schenectady where story ideas come from? It truly must be a glorious place!
Who do you think is sending out the story ideas? 😉
Several filers have met me in person, so I am reasonably sure that I am real.
Paul Weimer: Several filers have met me in person, so I am reasonably sure that I am real.
I would confirm that I have met you in person, but you haven’t sent me my $5 yet this month.
RedWombat: Wait, that’s a pseudonym?
I continue to maintain that I may or may not be a stack of dragons in a trenchcoat. But all of the dragons are definitely 100% real.
I have met RedWombat in person (at Windycon), but no other filers that I know of. Well, other than my identical twin, of course. But Cally’s not been posting here recently.
Cassy B. I have met… no other filers that I know of… other than my identical twin, of course.
I have met your identical twin in person*. You, I’m pretty sure, are a figment of your imagination.**
* this is actually a true fact
** I still haven’t gotten your $5 this month yet
JJ, are the dollars NZ or US or AU or CA? Or all of them? Not sure I can afford all of those choices.
Lenore Jones / jonesnori: are the dollars NZ or US or AU or CA? Or all of them?
Whatever’s most convenenient. I also accept lemon tarts or wine. 🍷
The first time I was on the internet was in the end of the 70:s. I recognize I was cheating a bit as a seven year old, but my godfather was working at the ArpaNet at the time. I had a great time playing Adventure over teleprinter though.
I think the first time I used a nick on an electronic forum was around -86. At that time it was standard to use on the BBS:es in Sweden. Didn’t mean we didn’t know who the others were. We had meetups every Saturday at a restaurant in Stockholm. This is where I first met Ahrvid Engholm, writer of the Swedish version of File 770 at the time, and started to subscribe to his newsletter. He did heck of a good work. I was kind of sad when he stopped writing it, but it must have been an enormous amount of work, so I can’t blame him.
Nicks were standard in those forums. They still are in the internet forums where I spend the most time, i e forums for the kinkster world. And we still have meetups. I have been the host for some of those meetups since 2012. Making sure that newcomers have someone to talk to and won’t sit alone at a table. There are several people I have met over hundred of times and still only know the nick for. I might have been told the real name sometime, but nicks are easier to remember than yet another “Johan” or “Anders”.
And then we of course have the time when I went to Slovenia to meet a friend I’d played World of Warcraft with. It is still his nick I remember, not his real name.
Making a thing about “real names” mostly show to me that someone was late to electronic forums and never have been much part of internet culture.
So. Welcome to the Internet all of you. Hope you have a good time.
Meredith:
No, I have not met Mike yet, and it irritates me. Mike, dammit, we will have to sponsor you somehow to get you to a Worldcon overseas. If your health permits that is.
But I have met several others here which in their turn have met Mike. So I have good reason to believe he exists.
@JJ, do you accept rice crispy treats in lieu of cash? I make a mean rice crispy treat…
@Hampus, I was online (I can’t say “on the internet”) in BBSes and ddials in, um, 1981? 1982? something like that.(An acquaintance was on ArpaNet, so I saw it, but wasn’t on it.) And I found out really damned fast that you didn’t want to have a female, or female-sounding name, out there in public. As toxic as things can be for women online today, it has nothing on how toxic it was then. Not to mention, home computers were rare enough that even men were cautioned against using real names; one heard stories (never knew if they were real or urban legends, but they were pervasive and scary) about people whose houses were broken into to steal their computers because they were tracked down through the phone book. Early malicious doxxing, if you will.
I was “Clone” for years and years, in the ephemeral online communities pre-web. But we used to have regular ddial meatspace meetups; none of us knew the real names of anyone else but that didn’t matter, because we all knew each other’s nicks.)
“Cas-cat” and “Cassy B”. came with GEnie and CompuServe,I’ve been both since about 1990 or 1991. I have a very consistent online footprint. And quite a lot of people now know my real name so I’m sure it woudn’t be difficult to dox me, but I still don’t feel comfortable putting it out there. Almost forty years of experience tells me it would be a Bad Idea.
Meredith, you might know people who have met me but won’t remember it – I was at Worldcon in Brighton in 79. (I enjoyed it, and the other places i visited.)
(I also buy cone-wound knitting yarn from a place in Leicester.)
@Ken Josenhans: One can still have that insular experience with olde tyme friends; other people gaining things have not made your or O’Brien lose that, IMHO. Sure, it’s a hell of a lot easier to continue that experience online, but that’s not a bad thing – and you don’t have to.
“Now, though, performing a fan activity can become almost as easy as breathing.” – Again, why is that a bad thing, except to gatekeepers like O’Brien?
@nickphease: “JJ, do you not understand? If there isn’t a mimeograph involved then it’s not fandom.”
::snort:: 😛
@James Davis Nicoll: “Only about 260, I am afraid.” – Shirker! It’s online, thus it by definition takes no effort whatsoever, don’tcha know? So clearly you should be doing more.
I’M KIDDING! Lordy, the reviews, your blog, the Old/Young thing, your Tor.com blog posts – I don’t know how you can do so much, TBH.
@CassyB Interesting! I was on Usenet in ’82 IIRC (it may have been ’83), using my own name, as we did in those days and that context, and I don’t remember ever having a problem. It probably helped that if somebody behaved egregiously, you could often complain to their sysadmin, university, or employer and get results.
I began using a pseud when I began writing fic, something you really didn’t want to show up in your search results. I wouldn’t dream of going pseudless now.
@Andrew I. Porter: You’ve completely missed my point, which was not “I’ve never heard of Porter.” BTW many people use photos in Gravatar that are not of them, or at least, are not easy to tell if they are. Hell, I could comment on a blog using your photo and name. So? But I expect you to miss the point again.
If it’ll help you sleep better at night, I’ve read SF Chronicle and am happy for you re. winning a Hugo. Does this make my shoes less hobnail? Who the hell cares; you’re not the arbiter of SFF and fandom any more than O’Brien is. Does it make your comments less absurd or your assumptions about me and why I said what I did or what I do/don’t know about SFF fannish history any less foolish or any less ill-informed?! Nah.
BTW you’ve forgotten your own fannish lore, which is riddled with pseudonyms. Filthy Pierre, Wombat, et al. Surprise, nicknames/handles/pseudonyms are not new with the internet! ::prepares for you to miss this point, too::
@Meredith: As usual, you say the thing and say it clearly (re. persistent ID, and the rest of your comment). Thank you.
@Various: I won’t trot out bona fides; it feel like supporting reactionary fans like Porter, O’Brien, et al. But I’ll mention re. handles/nicknames, I used one early on at dial-up BBSs and on FidoNet due to participating in GLBT BBSs and echoes. (Non-SFF stuff, but just as relevant to the discussion, IMHO.) Even now, some people have to do this (versus choosing to, which people also sometimes do BTW and is perfectly valid, too).
[ I split my comments into three loosely-connected sets; this is the last from me for now, don’t worry. 😉 ]
@Various: Oh, come on, you couldn’t make @Mike Glyer up! Who would believe it?! 😛
@JJ: I would happily share some wine with you, my treat. 😀
@Cassy B.: Wait, if you were “Clone,” was your twin “Original”? 😉 (Sorry, no doubt an old joke in response to your handle.)
@Kendall I wasn’t trying to trot out my bona fides. My point was that yes, I had specific reasons for using my full name here, and have benefited from that–but if someone else doesn’t think they would benefit from doing the same, that’s also a fine choice, and I’m not going to demand reasons, in any direction.
Like Meredith, I think that consistent handles are valuable, when a person can maintain them. A couple of years ago I had an online interaction in which someone, recognizing my consistent handle, carefully dropped enough clues for me to figure out where I knew them from, without alerting a stalker. I didn’t think “why didn’t they just tell me their name?” but rather “I’m glad they were willing and able to give me that information safely.”
(Oor Wombat has explained why she’s using that handle here.)
Honestly, I was trotting out my bona fides regarding communication on the net, because I was irritated about someone using his age as a proof of something something and totally disregarding long time internet culture. I do not usually do this (mostly because in forums like this, I’m one of double-fifth dozens), but this time I was tired of how my friends were being attacked for their usage of nicks.
Oceania has always used nicks on the internet.
When I got involved with fandom in 1966, the main ways (not quite the only ways) fans communicated were through fanzines. The people who created the Fan Writer and Fan Artist Hugo categories assumed that this would always be the case. I was one of them. I was also one who absorbed the fanzine culture by interacting with fanzine publishers, writers and artists, as well as borrowing older fanzines. I particularly loved that zines didn’t limit themselves to writing about sf but also about fans themselves. But fandom was smaller and much less diverse along many axes.
To be honest, I don’t like that fanzines as a form are no longer important to fandom at large, and fanzine activity is mostly invisible. There’s still interesting writing and some delicious art being published in them. But the Fan categories as originally conceived and understood are just not relevant to the Worldcon community and the diverse ways all its subsets of interest have of communicating and participating. So the awards have followed those efforts on websites, in blogs, and so forth.
Being a fanzine type, I plan to write directly to BEAM editors Nic Farey and Ulrika O’Brien with more detailed comments. I haven’t read the current issue beyond Ulrika’s piece, but based on previous issues, I expect to find other material in it funny, informative, even moving, with lively exchanges in the (traditional) letter column. Plus, the ‘zine’s design inspires me to do better with any further fanzines I publish myself.
Spirit of the back staircase. When I said in ‘graph one, “I was one of them,” I meant that I shared the assumption about fanzines, not that I was one of the people who created the Fan categories. I believe those people were the New York fans who ran the 1967 Worldcon. (They were mostly fanzine publishers themselves, the Fanoclasts.)
Cassy B.: do you accept rice crispy treats in lieu of cash? I make a mean rice crispy treat…
Mmmmm… rice krispie treats…
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that I have met Cassy in person and she is real. 😀
@nickpheas:JJ, do you not understand? If there isn’t a mimeograph involved then it’s not fandom. leaves out the fans who published by letterpress; I’ve heard of at least two sets, and have wondered (given fannish tempers) whether there was ever friction/snobbery between them, as I hear there has been between CAMRA and SPAW.
@ULTRAGOTHA: you missed where Ken said “travelled to cons” as a minimum; I read that as including all con activity.
@Sophie Jane:
The common counter-argument is that the effort required to put ones thoughts out meant that those thoughts were more weighed/edited. (Note that this is highly general, not just applying to fandom.) Considering that I spent a couple of mid-1970’s years typing and mimeographing several thousand words a month for an apa which went to a couple of dozen people, I doubt the generality of this argument; youth and enthusiasm can overwhelm barriers-of-effort. There are times I wonder whether some sort of effort barrier (“You must retype this paragraph to get this posted”) would at least reduce the notorious September Effect (which I suspect is no longer a thing, given modern ISPs), but I doubt it.
@Andrew I. Porter:
Bull. The boots are rare (not seen here, although I have run into them), and largely unnoticed by the oldpharts; occcasionally somebody like Ulrika pulls their head out of their self-absorption long enough to notice they’re not being worshipped, and flames about it — often with about as much connection to fact as Majel Roddenberry’s claim (at LAcon 2, IIRC) that “none of you would be here if it weren’t for my husband!” Fandom has many sources; the idea that it came all from one place, and that all of us are standing on the shoulders of somebody’s list of giants, has always been nonsense. As for your contributions to fandom: how many other people had to make the kind of complaint I made to you 40 years ago, about a lack of accuracy bordering on deliberate lying?
I saw RedWombt, or at least a person who said they were RedWombat, accept a Hugo in Helsinki. I shook her hand and congratulated her afterwards.
But mostly I remember a person named Kevin Sonny wandering around in a daze muttering “My wife is a two-time Hugo winner. MY wife is a two-time Hugo winner. My WIFE is a two-time Hugo winner. My wife is a two-time HUGO winner.” and it was adorable.
Pretty sure she exists. Regardless of name.
“@ULTRAGOTHA: you missed where Ken said “travelled to cons” as a minimum; I read that as including all con activity.”
Chip, The vast majority of my conrunning activity–indeed the vast majority of many connrunners’ activities–occur on line. Where it’s evidently “as easy as breathing”.
My lack of productivity haunts me. I did 329 in 2015….
Hey, I’m a little old lady who used to live in Schenectady (for all of about 3 months in 1962), and I was born in 1953! Maybe I’m Mike Glyer!
Anne Sheller: Hey, I’m a little old lady who used to live in Schenectady (for all of about 3 months in 1962), and I was born in 1953! Maybe I’m Mike Glyer!
I still haven’t gotten your $5 yet this month, either. 😀
Anne Sheller, be careful. You might get bitten by a Were-Glyer and start to write pixel scrolls at full moon.
@Ultragotha – And hiring a stunt husband for international travel is expensive! (It was adorable, though, wasn’t it? God, I love that guy.)
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@Kendall; I was “Clone”; my twin was “Doppelganger”.
Which, looking back on it, was probably reversed from what it should have been, since my standard answer to “are you twins” is “no, she’s my clone; I keep her around for spare parts” and her standard answer to the same question is “no, she walked out of a mirror one day and I’ve been trying to shove her back in ever since….”
JJ: Since people are paying you to be verified as me, maybe I should get in on the market myself by renting them Hugos? (Think how much room thaat would free up at my place, too.)
RedWombat –
If you win again this year, you bet I’m tracking down Kevin during the photos just to see what he’s saying. 😉
.
I have a friend in the SCA who came to events so often without her husband (he traveled) that on the few occasions he did show up, we accused her of hiring a stunt husband.
Mike, if you ever want to get rid of a Hugo rocket to free up space … let’s just say I’m more than wiling to pay postage. 🙂
@Vicki Rosenzweig, @Hampus Eckerman, & @Various: Sorry. I started to write some of my own fannish history, then realized it bothered me – why did I feel I had to do that (several reasons, really)? So instead, I explained part of why I wasn’t. In retrospect, that was irrelevant and I should’ve just gone on with what I did want to say, and left that line out.
@Cassy B.: “Doppelganger” – Excellent! 🙂
@Mike Glyer: I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hugo rental today. I’m getting confused, though; do I pay @JJ or you?! Or is that the same thing???
“I’m Mike Glyer and so can you!”
Thinking now that if Bob Shaw had gotten a Hugo, they could have made it out of wood.
Kip Williams: That reminds me of a story Kelly Freas told me in 1989 —
Mike, that reminds me of a Mimosa article I illustrated, back in the day. Luckily for me, Kelly was a local fan at the time, and I could draw him from memory.
Joe Mayhew told me a few years later that he liked the Rockethenge concept. I might have had a local landmark in mind when I drew it: the then-somewhat-decrepit Air Power Park in Hampton, with its giant rocket bodies lounging randomly off to the side of a road I used to sometimes take to work. When I finally took a trip just to see the place, it turned out to be strangely hard to get to it.