While I was in an elevator leaving the Hugo ceremonies, Frank somebody looked me in the eye and said “How’d you like that. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it,” in a surly voice. Since he was being rude I told him to get off my case.
But let me answer Frank’s question now. The whole situation is a tragedy. It would have been a worse tragedy if any of these slate nominees had been rewarded with a Hugo. For that reason, yes, the outcome was what I voted for.
That should not detract from the accomplishment of Hugo ceremony hosts David Gerrold and Tananarive Due in pulling off a ceremony that was often funny, rich in creativity, and somber when appropriate (Gerrold was reduced to tears by seeing Nimoy on the in memoriam list).
Things began with a giant grim reaper figure lumbering onstage accompanied by an evil assistant. Three Star Trek redshirts, led by Due, battled with them and the lone survivor, Due, cleared the stage so that a reluctant David Gerrold could follow her out.
Some other highlights were Robert Silverberg’s “blessing of the Hugos” — a reminiscence of the “tension, apprehension and dissension” that plagued the 1968 Worldcon, including intermittent clouds of tear gas drifting up from downtown Berkeley, and to dispel similar tensions in 2015 he ended by taking out a tambourine and performing the Hare Krishna chant sung by street-roaming initiates back then.
Later, Connie Willis took a turn on stage, talking about her experience being bitten by a bat, and a mild concern about possible vampirism. Then she reassured Gerrold and Due about the challenges of emceeing the Hugos, remembering half a dozen things that have actually gone wrong at Worldcons, and suggesting a couple more that haven’t gone wrong yet but could, all of which despite being comedy seemed to leave Gerrold and Due a little more shaky than before she started.
During the introduction, Linda Deneroff of Sasquan’s WSFS Division laid the foundation for Hugo voters exercising the no award option. And it came up several times in the pro categories, as you know, though at the beginning there was a whole string of fan categories which had winners and the night seemed darned near normal for a little while.
TAFF delegate Nina Horvath was the presenter of all the fan categories. Gerrold personally handled most of the categories where there was no winner (though not ONLY those categories, so it wasn’t entirely a tell.) And for the dramatic categories he was assisted by a lifesize Dalek, which provided considerable amusement.
The acceptances were fun, best of which was Pat Cadigan reading Thomas Heuvelt’s speech from a tablet, with her characteristic asides and humorous timing. Campbell winner Wesley Chu obviously enjoyed himself, spontaneously falling to his knees before the bearer of the Campbell tiara so it could be placed on his brow.
Although I had a press seat in the balcony, the house lights were so low I couldn’t see a screen or write a note. Thus the File 770 Hugo coverage was provided by commenters watching the livestream — you all did a hell of a job, and extra credit for finding links to the voting stats and other commentary!
Definitely buying a tablet or something before I tackle another Worldcon though. This hotel computer is so limited — can’t edit or post photos, can’t copy between windows, etc. etc. But I will recharge my Kindle and be back at work in the morning.
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“I just think it’s worth saying that the last TruWho was Tom Baker.”
I have a real fondness for Peter Cushing. Which is how I encountered the Doctor in 1969 (?) (memory gets a tad hazy).
> “‘There was a Doctor before Christopher Eccleston?’ — Wait, WHAT?”
Yeah, Paul McGann played him once before Eccleston did, in a TV movie. That’s why he showed up in that one YouTube video thing that went up right before Day Of The Doctor. Don’t be ashamed for not knowing that, though, it’s really just a piece of trivia. Most people have no idea that there was one Doctor before Eccleston.
All kidding aside, though, everyone knows the thirteen people who have actually played the Doctor on TV: Richard Hurndall, Adrian Gibbs, Michael Jayston, Geoffrey Hughes, Brian Proudfoot, Edmund Warwick, Albert Ward, Gordon Craig, Chris Jeffries, Tommy Laird, John Guilor, Daniel Anthony, and Toby Jones.
Who are your favorites? I’d vote for Michael Jayston for Classic Who and Daniel Anthony for New Who.
I will confess here that I am just funning with my (Puppy-inspired) remarks about truWho (or, as we night owls like to say to wit truWho….).
“Cindy TruWho, who was no more than two…”
I have a real fondness for Peter Cushing. Which is how I encountered the Doctor in 1969 (?) (memory gets a tad hazy).
Yes, Cushing played The Doctor in at least one movie, perhaps two, with Bernard Cribbins as his companion.
I’ve always been a fan of John Pertwee’s Doctor, he dressed like a dandy, knew kung fu and drove about in a fantastic yellow car (Bessie)
Two movies: Dr. Who and the Daleks and Invasion Earth 2150AD. Roy Castle was the lead companion in one of them and Bernard Cribbins the other. Apparently there were plans for a third Dalek movie (adapting the Chase), but it never happened.
For trivia fun, Cushing’s character isn’t the Doctor, he’s a human inventor named Doctor Who.
ETA: I’m a big Pertwee fan myself. Largely from the repeats of many of his serials on BBC 2 when I was a teenager
Catching up, several quick thoughts:
Torgerson: Can you imagine the level of screeching if “Vile 770” or some other blog changed HIS comments?
Sanderson: My only thought on reading her blog was “What a drama queen.”
JCW: You know, if you are going to say something like “I am, in all modesty, a skilled author, one of the finest writing today,” with a straight face, you really should proofread your own blog entry so that something like “extent to him the olive branch of peace” doesn’t slip through. Ditto “Rapid Puppies” and “Issac Asimov”.
Modesty indeed. I don’t think Harlan Ellison on his most bombastic day ever publicly called himself “one of the finest [authors] writing today.” Although he probably thought it to himself plenty of times.
ETA: I clicked back to the blog entry and read again the reference to “the short and girlish figure of my meek and gentle wife.” Ugh, seriously? As Uncle Harlan would say, the gorge becomes buoyant.
Regardless of any ability (and I remain completely unimpressed by most of the main puppies’ work that I’ve read, except for Correia’s entertaining hackery*) the Puppies have shown themselves to be mostly small, mean-spirited, ugly-on-the-inside people. They have really made themselves anathema to many fans.
*I don’t mean hackery in a bad way. I like good hackery, meaning commercial books, competently written, that get in, tell a story, and get out. If I ever do write any fiction, honest hackery that I can make a living with is pretty much the level I aspire to. I’m in awe of people who reach higher and get to those heights. Not everyone can do it, but I respect the authors who know where their sweet spot is and hit it. The extensive gun descriptions annoy me, but so do women’s fiction books that wax on about designer clothes and shoes. I get it, you’re heavily armed (or wearing clothing)…get on with the story.
@edwin:
I have to speak about this meme of “how dare you school Brad Torgerson because he’s a soldier and …. Fighting ISIS and …. Well you SJW just can’t say anything nice about our brave, courageous soldier-heroes and they are too heroic for you to even really breathe the same air.” (Paraphrase mine)
Dude – I grew up on Army bases. Soldiers are JUST ORDINARY PEOPLE. Just like you and me. When I was a kid, almost every man I knew was a war veteran and a professional soldier. Every one of them had human flaws and room to learn to be a better person. Some of them were nice guys. Some of them were not.
Some of them lacked integrity. Including the guy my dad saw arrange it so he’d get another man’s Purple Heart for bravery in battle.
Soldiers battle cowardice, greed, fear, hate as much as anybody. The only difference between a soldier and anybody else is they’ve been trained to give orders and follow orders and do really hard shit under really shitty circumstances DESPITE their inner weaknesses.
You can respect soldiers for their service, they deserve that. Don’t make the mistake of hero-worshipping a schmuck just because he puts on a uniform, picks up a gun and goes into a war zone. Don’t put Brad Torgerson or anybody on a pedestal like that.
You don’t know the day-to-day of their behavior over there. It would be nice if the uniform ensured integrity but it does not.
I am finally caught up on a week of File 770. I actually held off finding out who won the Hugos for hours and hours so I could read it all in order.
I gather James Bacon’s speech was great, and I see on Twitter that some part of it was in Irish. Really hoping he said “Tá an-áthas orm an corn seo a glacadh” (hard to explain why it would be so funny – it’s how victorious All-Ireland Gaelic football/hurling team captains traditionally start their speeches and is a cliché in that totally different context. Means “I am delighted to accept this trophy”).
A pity there’s no recorded feed of the ceremony that I can locate 🙁
Lots of other bits sound great too.
What a bummer that no recording of the ceremony is available. I’m glad I stayed up for it, thought I felt a little silly when I was completely useless almost all day yesterday.
Edwin says: “The contempt armchair SJWs have toward soldiers like him is telling.”
I don’t know about “armchair SJWs” but the contempt that soldiers have for those of us who continually attempt to use their jobs to justify why they deserve special privilege, or should be free to be an asshole, is something I can definitely talk to. Especially when you’re some POG who hangs out on the FOB, writing blog post about what a great service you’re doing. Being a soldier doesn’t give you the moral high ground.
As for Wright and Nielsen Hayden,
First, interesting that Wright refuses to refer to PNH as Mr. Nielsen Hayden, because “Please do not treat personal preferences and quirks, fads and stage names, as being of the same dignity with long established traditions, laws, and facts.” but has no issues referring to Beale as Vox Day. Seems like sort of a disconnect there, doesn’t it?
Secondly, I’m willing to bet that anyone else seeing the “confrontation” between PNH and Lamplighter would have a far, far different characterization.
Third, good. If you consider yourself a man of morals and principles, you should have the moral courage to take a stand. You don’t like Tor and want to campaign against Tor? Great. Cut your business relationship with them. This weird “I’m published by them , but I’d prefer you pirate my books and pay me directly” thing is bullshit.
I’d enjoy seeing one of the Puppies trying to jerksplain to CWO Jim Wright, the gentleman who made and presented the wooden asterisks, about just how much automatic deference Torgerson’s service buys him. He’s a far better writer than myself, so while I’d probably say something about five bucks and Starbucks, I’m sure he’d be both more firm and more entertaining. http://www.stonekettle.com/2015/01/how-heroes-die.html
There was no Doctor before Eccleston.
There were just people who played the Doctor.
And I was there when the time wars started. Should I come back in 500 comments 🙂
I left a comment on that post, linking to File770, but I have no doubt it will never leave the moderation queue.
This was a really rewarding comment.
I think Brad tries to brand himself as “Nice Conservative Who Wishes Everyone Could Just Get Along But Darn It Those SJWs Are So Unreasonable”, if only because Vox, Larry, Tank and MZW all brand themselves as variations on the more familiar “Mean Right-Wing Bastard You’d Better Not Cross”. But sometimes the mask slips, and what’s under it is a lot closer to them than you might imagine from reading just one or two of his blog posts.
Also, I keep seeing comments on some of the Puppies blogs from supporters saying, “Those awful SJWs have destroyed the Hugos in preference to letting a Puppy nominee win.” What is the thought process behind this? Do they mean that now Vox will unleash his minions full force and ensure that No Award keeps winning every year? I don’t think he can pull that off, but at least it makes sense. Otherwise, how are five No Awards going to destroy anything?
Oh look the woman who called me promiscuous feels injured that she came out sixth in a field of five and people cheered.
Well, that’s a thing.
“…and all the widows of the palaces, mansions, and fanes were empty as the eyes of skulls.”
And the person who was supposed to be editing this story wanted a Hugo, even though he missed the fact that the author probably meant to say the ‘windows’ were empty, not the ‘widows’. Moron.
Unless it was: Their husbands lay lifeless on the battlefield and all the widows of the palaces, mansions, and fanes were empty as the eyes of skulls.
Although “felt empty” or “seemed empty” might work better.
I’m surprised that this Cedar person thinks she was The token woman, in a field with Amanda Green. I would have granted her “token tree”.
@cnm:
Sasquan’s twitter account was telling Abi Sutherland last night that there was no recording, but last I saw, Meg Frank was saying that Ops did have one. So maybe one will be uploaded eventually.
In case I missed it being shared, a really good piece by Foz Meadows:
Hugos & Puppies: Peeling The Onion
By that reasoning since Richard Nixon got more votes for US president than Abraham Lincoln did that means the former was a better leader, right? Cheer up, JCW: you can now slap “Multiple Hugo nominee” all over your publications without fear of contradiction.
Bromeliad-shaped room? There are lots of different bromeliads, but the most common one is the pineapple. I’m having problems with this mental picture.
Correcting myself: the original quote referred to a “bromeliad-shaped palace”, which makes a little more sense – but I’d still fire the architect!
As for Whos – #5 is still the best in my book. Too bad he didn’t get many good story lines.
Gene Lim: Given the Wright family’s apparent financial difficulties, I feel very sorry for JCW’s children. JCW and his wife – they’re adults, so not so much.
When people talk about being worried about feeding their children, and then spend the money to travel all the way across the country and stay there several days on an utterly non-essential vanity trip — well, I have a great deal of sympathy for their children. Because clearly their parents’ priorities are way out-of-whack.
And doing such an expensive vanity trip when the only way you were able to pay your mortgage the next month is through donations? You’ve got to be effing kidding me.
It would fill up when it rains. Unless…it is an upside-down-bromeliad-shaped palace. Moe smacks Curly on the back of the head – you had the plans upside down you knucklehead!
For what it’s worth, here’s my take on Invisible being almost-nominated…
The Invisible Hugo
@Gmarie wrote —
“I have to speak about this meme of “how dare you school Brad Torgerson because he’s a soldier and …. Fighting ISIS and …. Well you SJW just can’t say anything nice about our brave, courageous soldier-heroes and they are too heroic for you to even really breathe the same air.” (Paraphrase mine)”
Don’t get mad. I am not the one making him look good! Among a community of middle aged children, he looks like a giant! Perhaps among grown-ups he would look more normal-sized.
Adam Roberts on the Hugo’s, and Teddy, well mostly Teddy. Always interesting. Apologies if someone’s posted it.
http://sibilantfricative.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/last-chronicles-of-hugo.html?m=1
@JJ: Apparently Wright’s trip was paid for by other parties with money earmarked specifically for the trip. We know that now, and not earlier today, but it doesn’t matter. It was never for us to speculate about.
@Alexvdl wrote,
“I don’t know about “armchair SJWs” but the contempt that soldiers have for those of us who continually attempt to use their jobs to justify why they deserve special privilege, or should be free to be an asshole, is something I can definitely talk to.”
Hey don’t blame Torgersen. He certainly didn’t have a choice to be off fighting ISIS right about now, and he certainly isn’t saying much about it. I (not him) was the one who observed that one party is actually fighting real bad guys, while a bunch of others are fighting for pretend on the Internet. Among normals, fighting ISIS is actually something worthy of praise.
I see by the Hugo hashtag on Twitter that Correia is saying stuff. Much, much stuff.
‘Crowing imbeciles,’ he greets us civilly. I paraphrase because it won’t let me cut’n’paste, but that’s a quote. Only for Beale’s incompetence keeping Three Body Problem off the slate ‘YOU WOULD HAVE NO AWARDED IT.’ (sic cpslck.) Basically, I think he’s agreeing that the real tragedy would have been if Beale had accidentally slated something award-worthy.
oops wrong thread
And yet you know so little about it that you call it by the name they decided to award themselves, instead of the name the actual people fighting them on the ground use, which is Daesh.
I agree— considering the breadth of the controversy and tension in fandom, the ceremony went well and I credit the emcees.
As for tackling live-blogging the Hugos, we live-tweeted them this year from the orchestra level. I manned the feed via phone while my GeekyLibrary co-conspirator Taylor took photos.
I had my laptop with me and tethered to my phone… but in the low-light, I was concerned the bright screen (despite being dimmed all the way) would distract other members of the audience so I didn’t end up using it.
I love my Macbook air, but a tablet might be less distracting.
oops wrong thread
I took the list of stories that would have been Hugo nominees, if not for the Puppy slates, and added links, so that hopefully more people will read those stories.
I know I’m probably not the first person to do this, and apologies if a list-with-links like this has already been posted here. But I couldn’t find such a list, and I figured having more than one person circulating the links couldn’t hurt.
The Stories That Should Have Been 2015 Hugo Nominees, With Links | Alas, a Blog
Jim Henley: Apparently Wright’s trip was paid for by other parties with money earmarked specifically for the trip. We know that now, and not earlier today, but it doesn’t matter. It was never for us to speculate about.
If I were having trouble feeding my kids and paying my mortgage, I’d have said, “I really appreciate that you all are doing this, but my children are what’s most important — would you be willing to permit me to use this money for that?”
It’s just unbelieveable to me that anyone would refuse that sort of humanitarian request — or that the Wrights would fail to make it.
JJ, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if some Puppies with deep enough pockets wanted Wright to be at Sasquan in person badly enough to spring for his trip expenses, or that Wright might accept the offer. The “Con or Bust” funds that are raised to help pay expenses for fans who couldn’t otherwise come to a con I’m sure could be used for other purposes too, but the goal is to have them come have fun at the con, no?
Dave Freer weighs in. Nothing novel, although he moans on about F770 and selective quoting quite a lot. Looking at other MGC posts, it looks like one of their new talking points is that Gerrold asking for no boos was Gerrold “banning” pro-puppies from booing at No Award.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote,
“And yet you know so little about it that you call it by the name they decided to award themselves, instead of the name the actual people fighting them on the ground use, which is Daesh.”
ISIS is the term that non-soldiers who are normal use when talking to other normals. Even in the news media ISIS is used more than Daesh by a factor of 100 to 1 (Google News).
In the future, I recommend to use the word ISIS since you are obviously not a soldier, so that you do not come across as awkward. Hope that helps!
ISIS is a term that recognizes them as a legitimate national government, Edwin. If you’re determined to take a stand that knowledge is bad, at least go with ISIL. I mean, unless you want to come across as thinking they are a legitimate national government. Hope that helps!
Edwin, you might want to recognize that you’re way the heck off topic as well as being offensive.
No one here has dissed Torgersen’s service. His whining about that, and other things, yes: those are fair game.
I’m persona-non-grata everywhere in the Puppylands now it seems.
Assume I wrote devastatingly witty and insightful comments everywhere.
@Camestros
I will, but what’s the context for this particular set? No posting rights at MGC for syllogisms?
brightglance, cmm, apparently in past years it’s taken several days for a video to go up on the Hugo ceremonies. So don’t necessarily write it off just yet. We might still get one. (I hope we do; I fell asleep right after the very moving Jay Lake tribute.)
Any nominee sitting in the audience, offended to hear No Award applauded, was in fact, usurping the place of a deserving, legitimately proposed candidate.
Remember, a few brilliantly ethical folks made a better choice and removed themselves from the ballot.
Of course, you can’t require self-sacrifice or high-minded behavior, but there is no need to honor or respect its absence.
While clearly initially the puppies were lax about notifying some candidates as to the nature of the slate, by Sasqun no one could have any doubt about where these nomination came from.
The best I can grant is that they told themselves some tale of how Robin Hood had stolen the ballot from the evil sheriff and dropped it into their laps.
Or mentally they shrugged, and thought a nomination was a nomination, regardless, and they can label themselves as nominated, and perhaps even get a Hugo out of it, and the rest would come out in the wash.
Well, reality tends to be a lot colder than gratifying fantasy.
Surprise, fans found the attempted Hugo heist highly offensive, and couldn’t be forced to award prizes unmerited.
Long and short of it, I’m fine with the audience cheering No Award.
They were applauding survival of the integrity of the award.
A lot of people got off their asses and moved to prevent a debacle.
That is a good thing.
I’m not sure what the alternative would have been?
Dead silence?
No one is happy that deserving candidates didn’t take home 2014 Hugos, but a lot of people are really happy that dreck wasn’t rewarded by default.
And, frankly, I can’t summon up much compassion for the feelings of folks who didn’t manage to receive stolen goods.