Glasgow 2024 today opened nominations for the 2024 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The nomination period will close on Saturday, March 9, at 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time.
Glasgow 2024 will administer the eighteen Hugo Award categories specified in the WSFS Constitution. This will include the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work, which is being presented for the first time this year. (A category of Best Video Game was previously presented in 2021 on a trial basis). Glasgow 2024 will also administer the ballots for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented by Dell Magazines. There will be no special category Hugo Award in 2024.
Nominations can be submitted by all individuals who hold WSFS Memberships in either the 2023 (Chengdu) or 2024 (Glasgow) Worldcons as of 11.59 p.m. Glasgow time on January 31, 2024. To facilitate the participation of 2023 Worldcon members, many of who are Chinese-language speakers, the committee will be making the nominating ballot available in Chinese as well as English.
More information about the Hugo Awards, including full instructions on how to complete and submit a nominating ballot can be found on the Glasgow 2024 website. They have also provided a PDF version of the paper nominating ballot which can be downloaded by members who prefer to submit their nominations by postal mail. All ballots, whether submitted electronically or by postal mail, must be received by the deadline of 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time on Saturday, March 9, 2024.
Instructions have also been sent to all eligible WSFS Members by email, using the email address associated with their membership. They encourage members to check their junk/spam/promotions folders for this email if they do not appear to have received it. Voter notification messages may be flagged as spam by some email systems. Worldcon members who are uncertain of their status or who experience problems with the online nominating form should contact the committee at [email protected].
The committee’s press release states:
The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We encourage all eligible members to nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favourites from 2023. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations. At that time we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.
It will be interesting to learn whether this satisfies the call from John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Ann Leckie, and many others for Glasgow to make a statement about the integrity of the process. [Update: Neil Gaiman said of the same announcement on Bluesky, “This whole thread is reassuring. It needed to be said.” John Scalzi has written a post supporting the statement.]
While members of both the 2023 and 2024 Worldcons can nominate for the 2024 Awards, only members of the 2024 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot. If you are not yet a member of Glasgow 2024, see the convention’s Membership Page for information about joining.
Any questions about the administration of the 2024 Hugo Awards should be directed to [email protected].
[Based on a press release.]
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I think it is a good statement. I get why they aren’t directly acknowledging 2023 because there is a lack of clear facts and explanations. Focusing on what they will do that is different is a good way forward.
Stiil it feels like whiplash to shift my head to 2024 nominations when I’ve been stuck in the weeds of 2023.
I appreciate their transparency
Good for me. It’s exactly what I was asking for.
I’ve updated the post with a link to your statement on Bluesky.
Another cool thing. The nomination page includes:
Good move.
Nice. I have made my first nominations as a 2023 Chengdu member and received email confirmation. The nominations page seems very clear and helpful as to how it all works.
Can anyone remind me where the eligibility spreadsheet is? Thanks
Once more, with feeling.
@Laura, that’s nice to hear. I have spent nontrivial chunks of my spare time in the last month building NomNom (the nomination system itself), and it’s really gratifying to see it being used and that it is meeting expectations!
I’m liking that name for the system. 🙂
If anyone’s interested in the technical side of it — it is fully open source, and contributions are welcome — I’ve put up some more details here: https://wandering.shop/@offby1/111829531336731515
@Chris R
Wow, great job!
Excellent! Glad to see the nominations open (and the promise of explicit statements about disqualified works). Now to my work of actually selecting works to nominate.
Renay’s The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom for 2024 is here https://bit.ly/hugoaward2024
Ok, just realized they are not only giving reasons if necessary, but they are doing it around the time of the finalist announcement. I was so excited about the promise of answers that I totally missed that we won’t even have to wait for the longlist to see any DQs or withdrawals.
Also nice to see:
Sounds like they plan to have all stats ready that evening. No waiting 3 months. And I have confidence because of Kat Jones as Hugo Admin who was also Chicon 8’s Hugo Admin.
Scalzi has responded favorably.
I am glad to see the transparency.
And hey, I guess I should (and have) do an Eligibility Post
https://www.patreon.com/posts/hugo-eligibility-97317482
Hate to say it, but the Chinese committee was decently transparent. They said in their July progress report that they would only be allowing nominees that complied with local (Chinese) rules. No, they haven’t cited the number of the specific Chinese rules which eliminated nominees violated, but is that truly anybody’s major concern, which particular rule? Do we want to debate whether the given works truly are critical of China or not? No, what we don’t like is that local Chinese censorship principles were applied at all. They were fully transparent about doing that, long ago. And some people noticed (including here on File 770) but there was only modest comment.
Glasgow has also said that works with sufficient nominations will move to the final ballot, which is good, but it has not said that works which violate local law will nonetheless move onto the ballot in spite of that. That’s what I want, not a promise that I will be told which rules are used in elimination. (I hope that the “sufficient nominations” pledge is a pledge of that sort, but of course it doesn’t mention that works published the wrong year, or nominated in the wrong category etc. with sufficient nominations may not make the ballot.)
Of course, can a convention pledge that works which violate local law will be on the final ballot? Could a German one pledge that a work that promotes Naziism will not be disqualified? Hate speech is illegal in the UK, could a work of hate speech be removed from the ballot, unlikely as it is to win? Or is it just a promise to name the law under which it was removed?
(I would like to hope that in the west, even if a book is illegal, that this would not prohibit its title from appearing on a list or it being voted for in or winning an award, as the title is not the book, but are we sure of that?)
In other words, this is a sticky problem, and transparency is nice, and I think it’s very good that Glasgow promises to tell us any reasons for elimination, but the lack of transparency is just a side issue of what happened at Chengdu. If Dave McCarty has said, “We eliminated Babel under Chinese speech code 123.45 section 2” I would not feel much better about it.
No, they haven’t cited the number of the specific Chinese rules which eliminated nominees violated, but is that truly anybody’s major concern, which particular rule?
Yes. It is my major concern.
It’s been pointed out to me that other people who were finalists last year have been far more vocal than anything I’ve ever said in regards to China. Transparency demands that I know what rule I violated and I don’t think that transparency from Chengdu is unreasonable.
Without that citation, all it looks like is capriciousness on the part of Chengdu. Decently transparent? HARDLY.
Babel didn’t have any content remotely resembling criticism of China’s government.
Many people have been a lot more critical of the Chinese government than Paul Weimer or Rebecca Kuang and still got published there.
Also, without clarity — and based on Dave’s own statement of “no one from the government told us to remove anything” (or words to that effect), we really have no idea if the disqualified works or people actually broke local laws, or if it was just that Dave had vibes that they did, or if he was pre-criming that they would if given the opportunity to speak on a live stage in China. Or if he just did it on his own wild whim. We know nothing of why, and giving Dave et al the benefit of excuses when they don’t give the courtesy of explanation is a waste of the effort it takes to type it out.
@Paul Weimer I will certainly concede that you in particular have reason to know which particular rules you violated, as do the others who were barred. I would in your position, but I also would hope you have little interest in changing your behaviour to comply with these rules should you learn what they were. Of course, rules of this sort are usually opaque, even to those living in the country, even those enforcing them. They want to create a chilling effect. So yes, if there are going to be censorship laws, it would be nice if they were precise and clear, but it would be much nicer if they weren’t at all.
As I wrote I would not feel much better knowing those details, even though knowing them would be nicer than not knowing.
I don’t suspect that McCarty really did this all on his own, no matter what he has written. I do suspect it was done from fear. Knowing the details of that fear would be good, but I still say that’s not the real issue.
In some ways I would feel better if it was just one Hugo admin’s caprice, frankly! That could be resolved and put into the past easily.
No, what McCarty did was gaslighting. He said works were not eligible that we absolutely know were eligible. He refused to give any reason but because he said so. Everything else has been speculation.
@Brad Templeton. No the Chinese Committee was not adequately transparent. Set aside the unexplained ineligibility rulings and we still have the issue of why the nomination stats are still a mess. Those stats should have been – and need to have been – in a better state when the ballot was finalised. That they are still a mess 90 days after the con closed is a matter for serious concern. And we have no explanation at all, or even an admission of the problem.
The double-listing of In the Serpant’s Wake in Lodestar was never corrected. Other really obvious errors and just typos like all of the series finalists ranked “1” at the nominations stage make it obvious it was just held back to make everyone wait and put off the backlash.
Although Renay’s spreadsheet of doom is pretty good it doesn’t contain everything eligible. For example I’ve just added a couple of novels and a series today (at least one will be going on my nomination form).
That would be an impossibly large spreadsheet! But it is a good place to see if other people think something is eligible and what category it best fits in.
But it is a good place to see if other people think something is eligible and what category it best fits in.
Sure it was just a heads-up that if you think something is eligible but it is not on the spreadsheet don’t automatically discount it. Just do a bit more research.
Admittedly there are some categories where I do rely on the spreadsheet.
Feel like this came too soon. I have three novels so far that on my list; Witchking, He who drowned the world and Terraformers. For best series I have; Children of Time, the Taltos series, and the Hands of the Emperor series. Should get to work finding books for the rest.
As of this morning, nominations seem to be closed again. I got the following message when I tried to go back in to my ballot in progress:
“We are aware of an issue with nominations. We are investigating and have taken the nominations system offline as a precaution. We are engaging with our UK software provider to deliver us with a solution and a full report. We share your concerns and will provide an update in 48 hours. We are grateful for your patience.
Last updated: 2024-01-28 17:57 UTC”
@bookworm1398
Children of Time series? Different than last year’s winner?