Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was at the top of the news all month long. Early in August some anonymous bloggers drew his ire for discounting his work as a reprint anthologist. Then, two weeks ago it looked like the Hugo finalist’s plans to attend Chicon 8 had been derailed by the lack of a visa. Yesterday he got a second chance – with help from a world of people including two U.S. Senators – and he has been greenlighted to go to Chicago.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of August 2022 according to Google Analytics.
Widely respected author and editor Eric Flint died July 17 and his passing was mourned by many in the sff field, contributing to his obituary being the most-read post of July.
Two days later Worldcon members got a partial look at proposed rules changes and other issues that will come up at the Chicon 8 Business meeting when the first draft of the agenda was unveiled. This included a new motion from the Hugo Study Committee designed to head off the “Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal” introduced by Olav Rokne and many co-signers, the subject of another widely-read post.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of July 2022 according to Google Analytics.
The handling of code of conduct issues at conventions produced some of the most-followed news stories of the month of June.
New information, commentary, and further apologies for Balticon’s treatment of Stephanie Burke were the theme of four of the top ten posts.
Another widely read post concerned an assault allegation against author Faith Hunter made at JordanCon which was resolved with an apology, followed by Hunter’s decision to cancel her convention appearances for the rest of the year.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of June 2022 according to Google Analytics.
May was a month unexpectedly filled with sad and controversial news items. The most widely read story told how SFWA removed Mercedes Lackey from the annual Nebula Conference for a code of conduct violation the day after celebrating her as their latest Grand Master.
In the second most-read story, Balticon 56 Chair Yakira Heistand apologized for staff’s mistreatment of Stephanie Burke, an author taken off panels following a CoC complaint by what Heistand calls an “overzealous volunteer” who Burke says spoke to her “with much disrespect” and then “proceeded to yell at me.”
Thoroughly overshadowed was what started out to be the month’s top story. Jon Del Arroz’ attempt to join the Game Manufacturers Association was met with protest from members, resulting in his ouster. And shortly afterwards JDA also was bounced from Twitter (“JDA Out of GAMA, Suspended by Twitter”).
Here are the 10 most-read posts of May 2022 according to Google Analytics.
The Hugo Award finalists were the biggest story of the month, and that was good news, especially for Filers Chris Barkley and Cora Buhlert. However, there was some sad news on the other side of the ledger, with Chicon 8 GoH Charles de Lint needing to step down, and centenarian actor Nehemiah Persoff dying, which brought a lot of readers to Steve Vertlieb’s article about his 102nd birthday last August.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of April 2022 according to Google Analytics.
For years the “special characters” that are common to some European languages have been rendered as question marks by my WordPress. And many times commenters have suggested what seemed like obvious solutions. Like, enter the HTML code for the character directly in the post (which would always look perfect in draft, then upon publication would become a question mark.) Or use a plugin — written by a Filer! — to insert the special character in the post. Followed by my looking none-too-bright as I explained I hadn’t been able to get these technically reasonable ideas to work. I have routinely had to use either of my two workarounds, substituting a Latin character and apologizing in an endnote, or creating a graphic of the name or title to be wedged into place that never looked like it belonged.
Adam Szedlak, a couple of months ago, planted the idea that it was a database problem. The database is not part of the WordPress program I can see, it’s not something I have dashboard controls to modify. I would have to enlist the help of my ISP’s customer support. So I procrastinated.
Then the Ignyte Awards finalists came out last week. Camestros Felapton got the news posted on his WordPress blog ahead of me, and I noticed one of the nominated magazines had multiple special characters in its title. His WordPress rendered the name correctly, whereas in my post with the same list that title was riddled with question marks. Even though we all know Camestros is a genius, I suspected he hadn’t had to do anything extra to produce the right result, the explanation was that his WordPress was set up correctly and something was wrong with mine. I finally set aside time to work with customer support.
At first, the biggest problem was convincing them I had a problem. I use workarounds, I don’t put up posts and let the question marks fall where they may. I needed to create an example for them to diagnose, which I did.
Then, while my ISP was casting about for a solution, they twice changed something and caused most of the apostrophes, quote marks, and hyphens to appear as black diamonds with a question mark in the middle. Bruce Arthurs commented when he saw that the other night.
But as of this morning they have fixed the problem by making the right modifications to a WordPress table and charset.
So let’s celebrate! Here are examples of names and titles that I have had to work around this year which will now display correctly. Pour yourself your favorite beverage!
By JJ: This thread is for posts about 2022-published works, which people have read and recommend to other Filers.
There will be no tallying of recommendations done in this thread; its purpose is to provide a source of recommendations for people who want to find something to read which will be eligible for the Hugos or other awards (Nebula, Locus, Asimov’s, etc.) next year.
If you’re recommending for an award other than / in addition to the Hugo Awards which has different categories than the Hugos (such as Locus Awards’ First Novel), then be sure to specify the award and category.
You don’t have to stop recommending works in Pixel Scrolls, please don’t! But it would be nice if you also post here, to capture the information for other readers.
The Suggested Format for posts is:
Title, Author, Published by / Published in (Anthology, Collection, Website, or Magazine + Issue)
Hugo or other Award Category: (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Graphic Novel, Lodestar, Astounding, etc)
link (if available to read/view online)
optional “Brief, spoiler-free description of story premise:”
Two different groups of sff writers have banded together in separate public letters to lead readers in directions they think they should go. One wants to oust China as host of the 2023 Worldcon. Another encouraged the Russian army to “denazify and demilitarize the state of Ukraine.” Posts reporting on those two letters were the two most widely-read here in the month of March. And in a disturbing coincidence, the leading signer of the anti-Ukraine letter is a Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, Sergey Lukianenko.
File 770 also hosted a letter from an unnamed fan in Moscow, now disillusioned, who asked, “please don’t leave us on our own; fight with us for freedoms.”
And Ukranian fan Borys Sydiuk shared that SFWA rejected a call to boycott Russia. However, two weeks after the Authors Guild and Horror Writers Association had already done so, they did announce “SFWA Stands with Ukraine”.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of March 2022 according to Google Analytics.
The BSFA Awards Shortlist announcement needed only the last few hours of February 28th to become the month’s most-read post. This was also a rare month where the majority of items in the Top 10 are news articles and opinion pieces, outshowing the daily Pixel Scrolls 6-4.
Here are the 10 most-read posts of February 2022 according to Google Analytics.
Have File 770’s top three stories of the month ever all been good news before? It happened in January.
David Gerrold’s good news about winning the 2022 Robert A. Heinlein Award was widely celebrated – by thousands of fans who read it here, and many more around the world.
Don Blyly’s announcement that he’s found a new home for Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore – the previous one lost to vandalism in 2020 – has been universally cheered.
And what else can I say but congratulations again to Nehemiah Persoff, who celebrated another birthday last August, his 103rd. Did the Baltimore Jewish Times profile that appeared in December send people Googling for more, and lead another large audience to Steve Vertlieb’s 2021 tribute written for his previous birthday? Don’t know. Something did!
Here are the 10 most-read posts of January 2022 according to Google Analytics.
