320 thoughts on “Comments Continue 8/24

  1. Lenora Rose, yes, I’ve read Heather Rose Jones’ novels and enjoyed them, and I’m cis het. By their logic, I shouldn’t have read and enjoyed any Golden Age SF, because it was mostly written for guys…

  2. Lenora Rose on August 26, 2016 at 9:53 am said:
    That’s “Wait, what?” reasoning. Have they never bought books online or in a bookstore? No one asks your orientation.
    (Like Cassy B, I’ve read and enjoyed HRJ’s work, while being cis/het.)

  3. @Cassy B – By their logic, I shouldn’t have read and enjoyed any Golden Age SF, because it was mostly written for guys…

    Well, but that’s the default so, yes, you should have read and enjoyed all the Golden Age SF. It’s the fringe stuff where the audience is presumed to look or be like the creators and/or the characters.

    I think. The logic is actually a little beyond me, probably because neither my gender nor my sexual preference is the assumed default and so I’m used to reading things with characters not like me.

  4. Lenora Rose:

    I don’t think it works that way. If a work was disqualified because the year it was voted for was not its year of eligibility, then it did not show up on the ballot, and the situation isn’t triggered

    That sounds sensible to me, but in that case what on earth is the rule about? Of course, in the normal run of things, something that got enough nominations for shortlisting last year isn’t eligible this year, because it wasn’t published at the right time to be eligible this year: you don’t need a special rule for that. So if this doesn’t relate to things nominated in error, I don’t know what it does relate to.

  5. Another thing I found interesting about that blog was how he thought Pat Cadigan did such a bad job as host for the Hugos, when most people think she did a great job. (Also, apparently she is ruder on a scooter.)

  6. lurkerype: 2015 UK, 2016 US, but how does that relate to eligibility for a Worldcon in neither of those countries?

    I believe that US publication gives a new year of eligibility, no matter where the con is.

  7. @Andrew M. at 11:46 am: rule scenario:

    The novel Case Nightmare Green is published in the UK in 2017, but USA publication is delayed until 2018. After the UK publication, the novel is nominated for the Hugos and is a finalist for the awards of the 2018 Worldcon, but Case Nightmare Green does not win.

    C.M.G., having been a legit Hugo finalist once, cannot then be a second-time finalist based on its USA publication in 2018.

  8. @ Lenora Rose

    I was saddened by the bits in their comments about how they (commentor, not OP, but OP seemed to agree) couldn’t buy your books because lesbian, and it was a pity you didn’t write for the mainstream…

    I missed that. Well, their loss. And they’re wrong. I do write for the mainstream. But perhaps not for them.

  9. Ha, having read the comment noted above, apparently the commenter would have been fine with buying my books as long as the lesbian characters were intended as male-gaze porn. It was the non-porny nature that made them not appropriate for “mainstream” readers.

  10. The definition of “mainstream” there is a bit on the odd side.
    Dang it, your characters aren’t being lesbian at them.
    Fail!

  11. @Andrew M
    lurkertype: “2015 UK, 2016 US, but how does that relate to eligibility for a Worldcon in neither of those countries?”

    I believe that US publication gives a new year of eligibility, no matter where the con is.

    See sec 3.4.2. The 2016 US publication makes it eligible for a 2017 Hugo.

    @Lenora Rose
    Bill: “Unfortunately [Captain America] won’t be eligible next year either:
    ‘3.2.2: A work shall not be eligible if in a prior year it received sufficient nominations to appear on the final award ballot.’
    It got enough to appear this year, and was DQ’ed. So it can’t be on it next year.”

    I don’t think it works that way. If a work was disqualified because the year it was voted for was not its year of eligibility, then it did not show up on the ballot, and the situation isn’t triggered.

    You are reading things into the rule that aren’t there. The only thing that triggers the situation is the sufficiency of nominations, not whether the work ever made it to the ballot. I think Andrew is correct — that it refers to things nominated in error. (If this rule was established in conventions where there are business meeting minutes extant, this question might be settleable. I haven’t looked that deep.)

    The rule you were citing is in case a work published in the UK or Japan or the like is popular enough to make the short list in its initial release, then comes out 2 years later with a US publication, not to ban things which were erroneously nominated in the wrong year (and which have therefore not yet had their legitimate shot at the award).

    If the rule I cited had appeared in the section that talks about what you are referring to (Sec 3.4, Extended Eligibility), I’d be more inclined to see it that way. But it is in Sec 3.2, which is far more general, and not limited to the particular circumstances that 3.4 deals with.

    I can’t imagine that this specific situation was ever contemplated by whoever drafted those rules. It is a perfect storm of Retro-Hugo, plus a work popular enough to be a legitimate candidate for short list, and an initially wrong assumption of year of eligibility leading to a post-hoc disqualification. Part of the problem is that there are some de-facto differences in Hugos and Retro-Hugos, but the rules for Hugos are simply assumed to cover Retro-Hugos and the fit is not quite exact. Another problem is that Retro nominators are much more likely to consider and nominate works based on their feelings about the work (nostalgia, sense of historical impact), rather than their reaction to having recently read it. 75 year old comic books, while available, simply aren’t as accessible as last year’s short stories, and I would wager that many (most?) of the graphic story nominees were not read by the nominators at large, or even their particular nominators (raise your hand if you’ve read More Fun Comics #53 lately). If the bulk of the membership had in fact recently read Captain America #1, they would be much more aware of its eligibility status and it would have been removed from the ballot far earlier in the process (in fact, it probably would not have been widely discussed as a potential nominee), it never would have made the ballot, and it would not have had to have been DQ’ed.

    So, if the situation wasn’t considered when the rules were written, and we have no “legislative intent” to guide edge cases, all we have is the rules themselves. In this case they are pretty explicit, and I don’t see how CA#1 can be eligible for a Retro-Hugo next year.

    (Has it been announced that Worldcon 75 will in fact award Retro Hugos?)

    Another issue regarding Retro Hugos, that isn’t a huge deal, but sticks out to me as “something wrong on the internet” which should be addressed:

    Fans, nominees, ballots, and voters for Graphic Story Retro-Hugos have conflated individual stories with the comic books they come in. The award is for a single Graphic Story, not a collection. The final ballot for MACon2 included Batman #1 (a comic book collecting several stories), and several individual stories. This is like a short story ballot which has several named short stories, competing with a whole issue of Asimov’s containing several stories. Which story in Batman #1 is being recognized? The 2 page origin of Batman story? The story with the first appearance of Selina Kyle (Catwoman)? The story with the first appearance of the Joker?

    Nominating ballots should specify a story (although in many cases it would be obvious which one is the “right” one). All of the important comic stories from the retro years are well-indexed on the internet, and it isn’t too hard to find the relevant name and title.

  12. Just to deal with the question of whether Worldcon 75 will award Retro Hugos: it can’t. Under current rules, no more Retro Hugos can be awarded until 2022 (75 years after the 1947 Worldcon, ie for works and activity of 1946). There were no Worldcons in 1942, 1943, 1944 or 1945, and Retro Hugos for 1946 were awarded in 1996.

    However, this year’s WSFS Business Meeting passed a change which would allow Retro Hugos also to be awarded for the missing WW2 years. If that is ratified next year, the 2019 Worldcon could decide to hold Retro Hugos for 1944 (ie celebrating work of 1943).

  13. Bill, my understanding is that the issue is related to extended eligibility. However it is not (particularly) for works that have appeared on the ballot. Suppose that a work appears in the UK in 2015 and will appear in the US in 2017. After the UK publication, there are enough nominations to appear on the final list. When consulted, the author might feel that it is more likely to win after US publication and decline the nomination in hopes of winning later. This rule says that having had sufficient nominations on first publication excludes it from the later ballot even though it was not actually in the earlier final list.

  14. I specifically mentioned Tuesdays with Molakesh the Destroyer for a reason: It was on the 2015 Sad Puppy slate, but was published in January 2015, not December 2014. (This might also be a perfect storm of publication date on a magazine versus physically read by people timing). The nomination wasn’t declined, it was disqualified.

    It got enough votes to be on the longlist this year, and if it had made the last few votes, I doubt it would have been kicked off the list this second time, because it wasn’t Grey declining it that removed it from eligibility in 2015. She didn’t even get the choice.

  15. @Kurt Busiek: I nominated some comic strips this year! Flash Gordon (or was it Buck Rogers?) and Prince Valiant.

    Why Puppies wanna stay in their own boxes (too much crate training?), I don’t know, it seems sad. Particularly in the genres built upon wild imaginings. Poor HRJ, rejected for NOT writing porn. Is this a guy thing or a Puppy thing? I mean, I read books with gay men in ’em that don’t have them sexing all over.

    Hi Meredith!

  16. @lurkertype:

    As to your question, it’s not, so far as I know, “a guy thing”. I read and enjoy novels and stories with gay and lesbian characters (straight characters and characters with no defined preferences at all as well) without expecting the plot to become Debbie Does Peoria. I want a well-written story, period.

    Good to have Meredith sightings in this thread! 🙂

  17. @ lurkertype

    Poor HRJ, rejected for NOT writing porn. Is this a guy thing or a Puppy thing?

    I dropped a comment on the blog in question yesterday saying I was glad they’d had an enjoyable time at Worldcon and that I hoped I’d contributed to making them feel welcome. I got a very positive reply in response that also repudiated porn-comment-guy’s position.

    There is a hazard in spinning what-if stories about people’s opinions and motives based on isolated snapshots. I’m also going to point out that porn-comment-guy said a lot of nice things about me as a person and about my research and scholarship. I have no idea who he is in person, but clearly we had a conversation about Old Norse poetics at some point. He also appears to have read at least a few of my stories in Sword & Sorceress (although he seems to have missed the fact that two of the female protagonists in that series are also in a romantic relationship).

    Life is complicated, and human beings even more so. I imagine that many Filers who don’t have the time or inclination to go chasing after links have sketched out a narrative about the blogger and the commenter based solely on references here. That narrative will be over-simplified. The blogger had a good time at his first Worldcon and says that my enthusiastic welcome was a high point. I repeat this not as a “gotcha” but because this is how kindness defeats its adversaries.

  18. @James Davis Nicoll – in re Only A Mother – I wondered if we were reading the same story..

    Perhaps an unwillingness to allow one to submerge in story?

    I can certainly see a modern reader being knocked about by the gendered norms, and, for a newly published story *now* that would be a definite downtick, but if you factor in this story being written “in its time” those assumptions provide momentum to the story

    I was intrigued by the one reviewer who gave a 3/10 on the writing

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