Memphis Worldcon Bidders: Won’t Run Retros If They Win; Address Diversity and Inclusion Policies

Memphis in 2023
Memphis in 2023

The Memphis in 2023 Worldcon bid chairs Kate Secor and Cliff Dunn have posted a statement about their plans for averting some of the high profile controversies that overshadowed the recently completed Worldcon: “Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion”. The full statement is at the link.

Given recent circumstances, now that CoNZealand has (officially) closed we feel that a well-though-out response is merited to questions asked of us over the last few days. We have chosen this format to try and respond in full; to quote a mutual friend, you can’t tweet nuance.

RETRO HUGOS. The 2023 Worldcon will have the choice to award the 1948 Retro Hugos; Memphis won’t exercise that option.

The easiest question to answer is whether or not we intend to run Retro Hugo Awards: No, we do not. While we understand that some family members very much appreciate getting Hugos for the work their parents (or grandparents) did, the reaction to the Retros has been increasingly mixed. On balance, we therefore believe it is time to move on from these, at least for the time being.

CODE OF CONDUCT. The Memphis bidders describe ways they would use their Code of Conduct as part of their answer to the question, “What do you intend to do to make marginalized people comfortable at your convention?”

Beyond communicating the Code of Conduct to staff, panelists, emcees and guests of honor, they say —

…Most importantly, for major speakers and guests (e.g., ToastPerson for the Hugos, and Guests of Honor), we intend to have a serious discussion with them well in advance of their events to ensure that they are comfortable with the Code of Conduct and that any questions are answered. We will do our best to vet any remarks which are to be delivered at major convention events in advance.

More to the point, if we cannot come to an understanding with a guest or speaker regarding the Code of Conduct, then we will not put that guest in a position where they feel they cannot comply with it. If we are sent an advance recording of non-compliant remarks, we will either edit them, or we simply won’t run the remarks.

As to “live” material –

…While we intend to be proactive (see above), we know that the odds are good that we will have to respond. So we intend to communicate the consequences for breaking the Code of Conduct as well. These may include, depending on the exact circumstances (i.e. seriousness of the breach, whether it was or seems to be premeditated, etc.), anything from a reprimand, to the premature termination of a speaking opportunity, to removal from programming and/or the convention.

PROGRAMMING. Doubtless with the “Statement of 2020 Hugo Finalists re: Worldcon Programming” and similar criticisms in mind, Secor and Dunn also say —

We intend to be as proactive and attentive as we can be regarding the makeup of panels and making sure that panelists are not “miscast” out of the blue or placed with people they know they do not get along with. We will also do our best to ensure that a broad range of topics are covered, and to work with various marginalized groups to ensure that their views are represented.


Memphis, TN (USA) and Chengdu, China are the two declared bids to host the 2023 Worldcon.

168 thoughts on “Memphis Worldcon Bidders: Won’t Run Retros If They Win; Address Diversity and Inclusion Policies

  1. rcade: I fail to see why we’ve decided voters aren’t sufficiently informed about the Retro Hugos when we have no idea whether most Hugo voters are informed about the current field either.

    Nice attempt at whataboutism. The relevance of the current-day Hugo Awards is a completely different subject. If that’s a discussion you want to have, great — but don’t try to drag it into the Retro Hugo discussion.

     
    rcade: The Retro Hugos are more likely to have informed voters today than ever. Old works from the relevant year are more widely available for free than ever before and people like Cora have done a great job at raising the profile of eligible works and creators.

    Except that the nominators and voters, by and large, ignored the efforts of Cora, Steve J. Wright (no relation), Olav Rokne, and others who worked so hard to raise awareness of the eligible works and do reviews on them.

    I read Cora’s and Steve’s columns reviewing the various eligible works, and I saw Cora’s immense disappointment at the nominations and wins of inferior works. So no, I don’t think the vast majority of the people who voted on the Retro Hugos this year were “well-informed”. I think that many of them remember the old works fondly, and that’s why they voted, but they didn’t actually do the hard work of going back and reading everything and making decisions based on quality. I think that many of them voted based on name recognition. And that’s why I don’t think the Retro Hugos are serving the purpose they were intended to serve.

     
    rcade: Memphis has overreacted to social media criticism of the Retros

    That’s an incredibly arrogant and condescending thing to say. The Memphis bid chairs are experienced and knowledgeable about Worldcon and The Hugo Awards. They’re not newbies who are afraid of negative publicity. They are seasoned Worldcon members who’ve made a judgment call, based on several years of observations, on what would be in the best interests of their Worldcon and their members, should their bid win.

    Memphis made a decision that the positive aspects of running the Retro Hugos are far outweighed by the negative aspects. And that is wholly their call to make.

  2. JJ: I think that many of them voted based on name recognition.

    How would you go about proving that? You must have a method in mind, and are not just inferring a cause from the result.

  3. JJ: The Memphis co-chairs told us that they based the decision on negative publicity:

    the reaction to the Retros has been increasingly mixed. On balance, we therefore believe it is time to move on from these, at least for the time being.

    Negative publicity — that “increasingly mixed” reaction — is in fact the ONLY reason given for the decision.

  4. Mike Glyer: How would you go about proving that? You must have a method in mind, and are not just inferring a cause from the result.

    Past years? Silverberg and Freas are obvious examples. This year? Cora’s reaction post; this assessment is coming from someone who is extremely well-read in the works of the time, as well as at writing cogent analyses of the pros and cons of those works.

     
    Mike Glyer: Negative publicity — that “increasingly mixed” reaction — is in fact the ONLY reason given for the decision.

    You’re mistakenly inferring that by “reaction” they mean “social media reaction”. I read it as “reaction” which includes not only social media response, but the level of participation by nominators and voters (very low), and the way that name recognition rather than sheer quality is clearly playing some part in the results.

  5. Cora’s reaction post; this assessment is coming from someone who is extremely well-read in the works of the time, as well as at writing cogent analyses of the pros and cons of those works.

    Using Cora to bolster the case for not holding the Retro Hugos is a neat rhetorical sleight of hand since she is clearly 110% in favor of holding them.

    If that’s a discussion you want to have, great — but don’t try to drag it into the Retro Hugo discussion.

    It’s the same pool of voters voting during the same year at the same convention. If we’re worth the trust of picking good Hugo winners we should be just as trusted in the Retro Hugos.

    I think that many of them voted based on name recognition.

    I think awards are always easy to malign if you don’t like some of the winners, but overall this Retro year had a good batting average in terms of quality.

    That’s an incredibly arrogant and condescending thing to say. The Memphis bid chairs are experienced and knowledgeable about Worldcon and The Hugo Awards. They’re not newbies who are afraid of negative publicity. They are seasoned Worldcon members who’ve made a judgment call, based on several years of observations, on what would be in the best interests of their Worldcon and their members, should their bid win.

    They said the decision was because of the “reaction to the Retros.” They didn’t say it was based on several years of observation or the best interests of their Worldcon. They didn’t say they’re unafraid of bad publicity. It’s odd you would significantly embellish what they said while objecting to my own narrow characterization that they overreacted.

    Based on their statement, the Memphis organizers seem to think the Retro Hugos matter primarily to the family members of the deceased winners. If they’re as experienced and knowledgeable as you believe, they should have realized that the Retros matter far more to the people who nominate and vote on them than to the relatives who can be found to accept the rockets after the con. Some rockets don’t ever find a home because a suitable accepter can’t be found. The Retros are for the fans.

    And that is wholly their call to make.

    And it’s ours to decide whether they get a Worldcon.

  6. Having been Hugo Administrator for last year’s 1944 Retro Hugos, and deputy Hugo Administrator for this year’s 1945 Retro Hugos, I very much sympathise with and understand the Memphis team’s decision.

    The diversion of resources for the Retro Hugos is significant. Eligibility checking and attempts to locate the finalists’ heirs are inevitably more time-consuming than the same processes for the current year. They need trophies and separate bases, which cost money. They need time carved out of the convention for a ceremony to announce the awards, which no winner will actually be present to receive. Efforts need to be made to educate voters about what there is to vote for.

    I very much appreciate the work done by Cora, by Steve Wright, and by my colleague Ian Moore, and others in that regard; and they can be legitimately disappointed that the pattern of results doesn’t seem to reflect their educational efforts.

    In my own view, the results are also disappointing numerically.
    In 2014 there were 233 nominating votes and 1307 on the final ballot for the 1939 Retros. (Regular 2014 Hugos: 1923 and 3587.)
    In 2016 there were 481 nominating votes and 869 votes cast on the final ballot for the 1941 Retros. (Regular 2016 Hugos: 4032 and 3130, but this was the second Puppy year.)
    In 2018 there were 204 nominating votes and 703 votes cast for the final ballot for the 1943 Retros. (Regular 2018 Hugos: 1813 and 2828.)
    In 2019 there were 217 nominating ballots and 834 final ballot votes for the 1944 Retros. (Regular 2019 Hugos: 1800 and 3097.)
    In 2020 there were 120 nominating ballots and 521 on the final ballot for the 1945 Retros. (Regular 2020 Hugos: 1584 and 2221.)

    Some winners are being awarded trophies with a very low number of votes. It’s legitimate to ask if the results are actually meaningful enough to deserve the recognition that we are giving them.

    I find the low level of participation at nominations stage particularly significant. A lot of people will happily cast a vote if you give them a choice of options; the number actually willing to do the research and make some nominations of their own is really quite small, and not growing.

    Almost everything that Worldcon does is optional and needs to be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis (the exceptions are administering the Hugo Awards and running the Business Meeting – even the regular Hugo ceremony is optional). Any Worldcon must look at its available resources and say, well, if we do this thing, we will make a certain number of people happy at a cost; is the cost worth it? And the cost includes, but is far from limited to, the number of other people who will be made unhappy by doing that thing. I really cannot blame the Memphis bid for making the decision that they have, as early as they have.

  7. Actually, I think there are other criticisms of the Retro-Hugos that may be more important to some people. Specifically, the issue of whether or not you can ignore the inherent sexism, racism, etc., of the works of the era. Do you judge them by modern standards or contemporary ones? That’s one question when you’re talking about the quality of the writing, and quite a different one when you’re talking about the quality of the hate! And remember, “it’s an honor just to be nominated!” The RHs mean we as a group are honoring works that make many of us as individuals quite uncomfortable. Heck, Lovecraft was a finalist as recently as last year!

    While I have been, up till now, one of the people who simply ignores the RHs, not a complainer (you’re welcome, Cora), I think that in the wake of the fallout from this year’s Hugo ceremony, giving the retros a year off is not a bad idea at all. It’s not like we’ve decided to get rid of them forever.

    I think one year–One. Single. Year.–where we don’t honor John Campbell or his era is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

    (If you want to get rid of the retros entirely, I’ll go back to my neutral corner, but one year, for the sake of a lot of marginalized newcomers who are doing excellent work, and not finding fandom anywhere near as welcoming a place as they might have hoped, doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.)

  8. … I think that in the wake of the fallout from this year’s Hugo ceremony, giving the retros a year off is not a bad idea at all. It’s not like we’ve decided to get rid of them forever.

    There are only six Retro Hugos left to be run.

    If Memphis wins, today’s decision means no 1948 Retro Hugos for another 25 years.

    There are five Retro Hugos that could be run this decade: 1947 in 2022, 1948 in 2023, 1949 in 2024 and 1950 in 2025. There are only two others that could be run: 1940 in 2040 and 1942 in 2042.

    If other con bids follow the example of Memphis, it could mean no more of them until the 2040s, when the perception there just isn’t enough familiarity to vote on them will be even stronger than it is today.

  9. rcade: Using Cora to bolster the case for not holding the Retro Hugos is a neat rhetorical sleight of hand since she is clearly 110% in favor of holding them.

    That would The Law of Unintended Consequences. She’s openly admitted that she doesn’t think that a lot of the voters are basing their decisions based on quality.

     
    rcade: It’s the same pool of voters voting during the same year at the same convention. If we’re worth the trust of picking good Hugo winners we should be just as trusted in the Retro Hugos.

    No, it’s not the same thing at all. Talk about “a neat rhetorical sleight of hand”! Because the nominators and voters on the current-day Hugos are basing their judgments on the here-and-now, not with the advantage (or, as I see it, disadvantage) of 50 or 75 years of hindsight.

     
    rcade: They said the decision was because of the “reaction to the Retros.” They didn’t say it was based on several years of observation or the best interests of their Worldcon.

    They didn’t say “social media reaction to the Retro Hugos in the last 3 weeks”. They said “the reaction to the Retros has been increasingly mixed”, which very much indicates that they are talking about a span of years rather than a span of 3 weeks (since the reaction during the last 3 weeks has been very much overwhelmingly negative). You’re the one doing the embellishment here.

    And of course they are basing their decision on what they believe would be in the best interests of their Worldcon. Nobody donates hundreds/thousands of hours and effort and dollars to a project without always having that project’s best interests in mind.

    “a neat rhetorical sleight of hand”, indeed. 🙄

  10. @Nicholas Whyte
    As I said before, I have sympathy for the con com saying, “The Retro Hugos are a lot of work and don’t get a lot of engagement, so we have decided not to hold them.”

    But that’s not what Memphis did. Instead, they basically told those of us who do care about the Retros that we’re making other people feel unwelcome.

    @Xtifr
    John W. Campbell was not the only editor working in the 1940s and Astounding was not the only SFF magazine. It’s perfectly possible to fill a whole Retro Hugo ballot with works Campbell never touched except maybe to reject them. Also, there were plenty of stories published in the 1940s that were not racist, sexist, etc… You even find some explicitly critical texts.

    As for some fans feeling unwelcome merely because other people are discussing works they don’t approve of, sorry, but that’s over the top. Plenty of works I don’t like or find problematic have been discussed at WorldCons I have attended. Some of them have even won Hugos and yet I did not feel unwelcome at the respective WorldCons. But if merely mentioning Campbell or Lovecraft or anything written before 2000 is considered offensive now, that’s a WorldCon where I would no longer feel welcome.

  11. JJ: I read it as “reaction” which includes not only social media response, but the level of participation by nominators and voters (very low), and the way that name recognition rather than sheer quality is clearly playing some part in the results.

    What you’re “reading” isn’t in their statement. It’s in your comments here.

  12. JJ: Nobody donates hundreds/thousands of hours and effort and dollars to a project without always having that project’s best interests in mind.

    So you haven’t worked with Worldcon committees before?

  13. Mike Glyer: What you’re “reading” isn’t in their statement. It’s in your comments here.

    The key word in their statement is “increasingly”. They’re not talking about a span of 3 weeks (since the reaction during the last 3 weeks has been very much overwhelmingly negative). They’re talking about a period of years.

  14. Ah, what a pity.
    I had wanted to nominate Captain Future again. There aren’t many more Retro-Hugos were that’s possible.

  15. Because the nominators and voters on the current-day Hugos are basing their judgments on the here-and-now, not with the advantage (or, as I see it, disadvantage) of 50 or 75 years of hindsight.

    If there’s an advantage to all that hindsight in Retro Hugo voting it didn’t stop some people from hating our choices.

    I participate in the Retro Hugos the same way I do the Hugos. I pick works I like and sometimes take the opportunity to elevate somebody I feel has been unjustly overlooked. Giving someone their first Hugo is more exciting than their fifth.

    So when you make the argument there’s a fundamental difference between Hugo participation and Retro Hugo participation — and we’re collectively good at one and bad at the other — I am not feeling that at all. In both cases the results are a product of the era in which we voted. The 1951 Retros are a product of 2001. If we’d waited to do them until 2026 there would’ve been significant differences in the results (that ballot was a total sausage fest).

  16. JJ: The Memphis committee chose to say something now, when there was no requirement to say anything and they could have deferred the decision about the Retros indefinitely, like until they had a Worldcon to run. They are not doing a budgetary analysis this week. The co-chairs evidently think there are site selection votes to be gained by staking out this no-Retros position. Where did they get that idea? From the social media uproar about Campbell and Lovecraft winning Retros.

    And the problem confronting Memphis’ campaign isn’t just to avoid giving Campbell another Retro Hugo. This is an issue and a moment in time they can leverage to distinguish themselves from the competition. It’s increasingly easy to find UK and Canadian writers on Twitter who have declared the US and China to be below the bar in terms of human rights. It’s no longer enough for Memphis to be not-China — especially when China has invested years courting the heads of professional sff writer groups and Worldcon runners and (to judge from what those people have said) made considerable headway. Dumping the Retros in August 2020 is a calculated political decision.

  17. Kevin Standlee:

    “If “holding the Retro-Hugos” is that crucial a feature for some folks, I suggest that they form a Worldcon bid with an avowed aim of holding them at their 2023 Worldcon should they win. This probably sounds sarcastic, but I mean it.”

    The effect is just nasty and sarcastic, however you meant it. Every time you use that argument, it is like you are slapping people in the face, saying we don’t have to care about your feelings.

    Seeing how you are always met with anger whenevers you use it, I’d thought you’d learned by now.

  18. Mike Glyer: It’s no longer enough for Memphis to be not-China — especially when China has invested years courting the heads of professional sff writer groups and Worldcon runners and (to judge from what those people have said) made considerable headway. Dumping the Retros in August 2020 is a calculated political decision.

    I do agree with this. While their decision may have been one that would have eventually occurred anyway, the choice to make an announcement now is certainly a strategic one (just as DisCon III’s and Chicon 8’s announcements of their toastmasters are). It’s my understanding that CoNZealand was not wanting to host the Retro Hugos and was pressured into doing so. So I think this has been building for a long time, it’s just come to a head now.

  19. It’s my understanding that CoNZealand was not wanting to host the Retro Hugos and was pressured into doing so

    As this year’s Hugo Administrator, Tammy Coxen, has previously said on File 770, the Hugo Admin team advised against running the Retro Hugos this year, but the chairs decided otherwise. If they were under pressure from others, we were not made aware of that.

  20. The Memphis committee chose to say something now, when there was no requirement to say anything and they could have deferred the decision about the Retros indefinitely, like until they had a Worldcon to run.

    They also could have acted like the opinion of fans who participate in the Retro Hugos matter to them, instead of announcing the decision as a fait accompli. They end the statement with “we welcome input and feedback on our plans” but didn’t open this plan up to any discussion at all.

  21. @Mike
    I agree that the timing and the context of the announcement that Memphis won’t be holding Retro Hugos is absolutely political. Because no one expected any announcement about the Retro Hugos at this point anyway. Chicago hasn’t said anything one way or another and CoNZealand didn’t announce that they were doing Retro Hugos until a few months beforehand. And making the announcement in the context of a statement on their “Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion” really feels like a slap in the face.

    @Hampus @Kevin Standlee
    Like I said above, it would probably be possible to organise a counterbid until the deadline sometime next year. Such a bid might even have a chance, if only because it’s not Chengdu and not in the US.

    However, the result would be a crappy WorldCon, because the time is too short to organise a good WorldCon. And unlike certain other people, I don’t want to take away something other people enjoy just to make a point.

  22. @Cora Buhlert:

    As for some fans feeling unwelcome merely because other people are discussing works they don’t approve of, sorry, but that’s over the top.

    Ok, I’m still trying to form an opinion of this whole thing, but there’s a huge difference between discussing and honoring! We gave H. P. Lovecraft the honor of being a finalist last year! H. P. Lovecraft. In 2019!

    (And yes, Campbell wasn’t the only editor at the time, but he was hugely influential, and he was far from the only racist, sexist, homophobic bastard around!)

    And I know you put a lot of work into trying to make the Retros better, and I’m not unsympathetic. But I’m more sympathetic towards Jeanette Ng and R.F. Kuang, and a bunch of others who were made to feel like second-class citizens at an event intended to honor them! And who had to listen to a couple of old white dudes ramble on and on about a bunch of other mostly old dead white dudes who had nothing to do with anything.

    Is it really so important that we continue to honor a bunch of old dead white men (and women) who mostly already have plenty of accolades, for the sake of small percentage of our membership? (See Nicholas Whyte’s participation numbers.) While ignoring another percentage who may be hurt? (Justifiably or not, and I’m too white to be comfortable judging the justifiability, but I also don’t plan to give much weight to opinions about the justifiablity from other white folks.)

    rcade on August 19, 2020 at 11:09 pm said:

    If Memphis wins, today’s decision means no 1948 Retro Hugos for another 25 years.

    And I spent most of my life thinking there’d be no Hugos for 1948, period. I didn’t think it was a tragedy then, and I don’t think it’s one now. Though it’s certainly a factor worth considering. I don’t think it’s one I’ll give much weight, but I’ll toss it on the pile while I continue to ruminate. 🙂

  23. Xtifr:

    “Is it really so important that we continue to honor a bunch of old dead white men (and women) who mostly already have plenty of accolades, for the sake of small percentage of our membership? (See Nicholas Whyte’s participation numbers.)”

    You are thinking of Leigh Brackett who won her first Hugo? Or is it Margaret Brundage who you think was honoured wrongly as an old dead white man? In what way do you think she has been honoured too much before?

    Why do people insist on making women invisible again, even in 2020, when they have won Hugos?

  24. Hullo, Memphis bid co-chair here.

    If anyone wants to come talk to us about this (or anything else), we’re at NASFiC this weekend and have a channel, come on by!

    ::returns to lurkerdom::

  25. And I spent most of my life thinking there’d be no Hugos for 1948, period. I didn’t think it was a tragedy then, and I don’t think it’s one now.

    You don’t care, but you’d still like them not to happen in spite of the fact that other fans do care and want them to happen. That’s a pretty good summation of the position of the social media critics who didn’t like the awards. They weren’t people who showed any interest in them beyond finding out a few were won by reviled figures, one of whom was only a nominee because others continued his series after his death and made it one of the most popular and enduring settings in SF/F history.

  26. @Xtifr

    Ok, I’m still trying to form an opinion of this whole thing, but there’s a huge difference between discussing and honoring! We gave H. P. Lovecraft the honor of being a finalist last year! H. P. Lovecraft. In 2019!

    Well, Lovecraftian fiction still has a lot of fans and “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” is a well known story. You’ll also note that it didn’t win, but lost out to “The Little Prince”, a beloved classic which is generally viewed as being critical of fascism and has a positive, inclusive outlook.

    (And yes, Campbell wasn’t the only editor at the time, but he was hugely influential, and he was far from the only racist, sexist, homophobic bastard around!)

    Dorothy McIlwraith saved Weird Tales and published more women than pretty much any other SFF magazine of the pulp era. Mary Gnaedinger edited Famous Fantastic Mysteries where many stories Campbell rejected found a home. Babette Rosmond edited The Shadow and Doc Savage and was also a writer in her own right (ironically, Campbell published her debut story in Unknown) and she was also an activist for breast cancer survivors who advocated for less radical surgery, when this was still very uncommon. A lot of women, very likely including women you know, have reason to be grateful to Babette Rosmond. The worst you can say for Raymond F. Palmer of Amazing is that he fell for the Shaver Mystery nonsense. There are no “genocide is good” stories in Amazing either. I’ve never heard a bad word about Oscar J. Friend of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories and Wilbur S. Peacock of Planet Stories either. You also find a remarkable number of explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist stories in the magazines they edited. So which of these people are the racist, sexist and homophobic bastards?

    And I know you put a lot of work into trying to make the Retros better, and I’m not unsympathetic. But I’m more sympathetic towards Jeanette Ng and R.F. Kuang, and a bunch of others who were made to feel like second-class citizens at an event intended to honor them! And who had to listen to a couple of old white dudes ramble on and on about a bunch of other mostly old dead white dudes who had nothing to do with anything.

    I was a 2020 Hugo finalist. I had to sit through the same endlessly rambling ceremony as Jeannette Ng and R.F. Kuang. I had my name mispronounced as well. Okay, Jeannette Ng theoretically had to wait for longer, because her category came up after mine, but we were all in the same boat. I’ve also criticised the 2020 Hugo ceremony, the mispronounciation of names and the endless reminiscences of the past as inappropriate for a Hugo ceremony that is supposed to honour the best SFF of the current year.

    However, the Retro Hugos are awarded in a separate ceremony (tacked together with the Sir Julius Vogel Awards this year, which was also unfair towards the Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists). I also haven’t heard Jeannette Ng or R.F. Kuang complain about the existence of the Retro Hugos. The only 2020 Hugo finalist who complained about the Retro Hugos wins for Campbell and Cthulhu was Alasdair Stuart (who’s white) and even he didn’t have a problem with the existence of the Retro Hugos, just with two winners.

    Is it really so important that we continue to honor a bunch of old dead white men (and women) who mostly already have plenty of accolades, for the sake of small percentage of our membership? (See Nicholas Whyte’s participation numbers.) While ignoring another percentage who may be hurt? (Justifiably or not, and I’m too white to be comfortable judging the justifiability, but I also don’t plan to give much weight to opinions about the justifiablity from other white folks.)

    I do find it important to remember and honour writers, artists and filmmakers, who never got a chance to win a Hugo during their lifetimes. People like Leigh Brackett, Margaret Brundage, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, Antoine de Saint-Exuspery, Michael J. Rosenblum, Myrtle Douglas a.k.a. Morojo, Dorothy McIlwraith, Mary Gnaedinger, E. Mayne Hull and the many comic artists and writers who often weren’t even credited for their own work. Not to mention the writers whose work was (often unfairly) forgotten, because they have never been reprinted. Unsurprisingly, many of those were women.

    I specifically did not vote for Campbell, both because Astounding was not the best magazine of 1944 and because he got plenty of accolades during his lifetime and doesn’t need any posthumous ones.

    Also, it’s perfectly fine not to care about the Retro Hugos. But insulting those who do care is not okay.

  27. You are thinking of Leigh Brackett who won her first Hugo? Or is it Margaret Brundage who you think was honoured wrongly as an old dead white man? In what way do you think she has been honoured too much before?

    Why do people insist on making women invisible again, even in 2020, when they have won Hugos?

    Margaret Brundage was not just a great artist, she was also a leftist, pro-union activist and taught free classes for poor black children in Chicago. She was also very likely not straight.

    Leigh Brackett’s stories of the 1940s have a strong anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist bend, though she moved politically towards the right later in life. Leigh Brackett’s stories also have a lot of sympathy for exploited and oppressed indigenous people. Plus, several of her stories have protagonists of colour at a time when this was very rare indeed. She didn’t get along with John W. Campbell either and wasn’t shy about it.

  28. rcade: You don’t care, but you’d still like them not to happen in spite of the fact that other fans do care and want them to happen. That’s a pretty good summation of the position of the social media critics who didn’t like the awards.

    You seem to have the impression that the debate over the Retro Hugos is entirely the result of recent social media reactions.

    The reality is that, within WSFS, there have been intensive discussions going on for years now about whether the Retro Hugos are really achieving what they were intended to do, and whether the lackluster participation in them merited the massive amount of time, effort, and money that has been expended on them (hence why CoNZealand came close to not having them).

    Has the recent social media reaction brought them under increased scrutiny and debate? Undoubtedly. But they were already under intense scrutiny and debate for years, even if you haven’t been aware of it.

  29. Cora Buhlert on August 20, 2020 at 12:22 am said:

    …it would probably be possible to organise a counterbid until the deadline sometime next year. Such a bid might even have a chance, if only because it’s not Chengdu and not in the US. However, the result would be a crappy WorldCon, because the time is too short to organise a good WorldCon.

    The deadline for filing bids to be put on the ballot was moved from “the end of the previous Worldcon” to “180 days prior to the start of the administering Worldcon” precisely to give such short-run bids a change to “sprint,” and in the case that triggered that change, the Hawaii in ’93 Worldcon came in second (behind San Francisco) even though they had to run as a write-in. Their bid changed from a hoax to real in the December before the vote after all three filed bids put on a terrible performance at SMOFCon (I was on a committee and in the audience and had to agree with the assessment), and speaking as one of the members of the San Francisco in ’93 committee who was on the ground in the Netherlands where the vote happened, I suspect Hawaii would have won had they been on the ballot.

    I’d been expecting another 2023 bidder to come along, because all three (now two, with Nice having dropped out) bids had flaws in them. I’m guessing that the pandemic has scuppered such plans, but there’s still a few months until the deadline.

    I disagree with the assertion that sites should spend a decade bidding (even though I did it myself for 2002). But if people are convinced that we should be bidding for many, many years, then why not start choosing sites even farther in advance instead of only two years?

  30. @JJ
    I have sympathy for the argument that the Retro Hugos are a lot of work and expenses for a given Worldcon that get comparatively little interest.

    However, that’s not the argument that the Memphis bid com made, even if that was likely the true reasoning behind their decision.

    Instead, their decision looks very much like a response to the noisy social media complainers who paid zero attention to the Retro Hugos until they decided they didn’t like two and a half winners.

  31. Cora Buhlert: However, that’s not the argument that the Memphis bid com made, even if that was likely the true reasoning behind their decision.

    I agree that there was likely a lot more to their decision-making process than their post indicates – and that they should have done a better job of indicating that.

    Sasquan chose not to have the 1940 Retro Hugo Awards, for the reasons I’ve discussed (and I don’t remember there being anywhere near this amount of outcry about it — or really any outcry at all). I would be very surprised if there wasn’t a great deal of debate behind the scenes for Worldcon 76 and Dublin 2019, as well, as to whether the Retro Hugos should be held.

    The reality, I think, is that this has been coming down the pike for a long time now, and the controversy this year has finally just brought it to a head.

    And right now I’m just so angry about all of the hard work you and others did, Cora, which seemed to have been mostly ignored by the few people who did nominate and vote in this year’s Retro Hugos. Your voter guides and reviews were really wonderful (I read them all, even though I didn’t have the time to read the actual works). 🙁

  32. The reality is that, within WSFS, there have been intensive discussions going on for years now about whether the Retro Hugos are really achieving what they were intended to do, and whether the lackluster participation in them merited the massive amount of time, effort, and money that has been expended on them (hence why CoNZealand came close to not having them).

    If that was the concern being voiced by Memphis or any other group within WSFS, it is something that could be addressed by having more people volunteer to work on them. A con could make that a part of their public requests for help. Then if the volunteers do not step up, those of us who care the most about the Retro Hugos could be told “then why didn’t you volunteer?” We would quietly slink away from the argument with the proper amount of shame.

    In my experience as someone who has made efforts to help the Hugos — on software development around the time of Sasquan and more recently on tracking down suitable recipients for Retro Hugos rockets when a past con couldn’t find somebody — it hasn’t been possible to become part of the “within WSFS” that does the work necessary to make them happen.

    But I’ve signed up to volunteer for DisCon and if Memphis changes its mind would be happy to help on the Retros for their prospective con.

    P.s. Since I brought it up, if a con has been stuck with a Retro Hugo rocket for several years with no luck finding a relative of the winner, I think it should be sent to a public library in the winner’s hometown that has indicated they will accept and display the award.

  33. rcade: If that was the concern being voiced by Memphis or any other group within WSFS, it is something that could be addressed by having more people volunteer to work on them.

    Having more volunteers still wouldn’t fix the problem of few people nominating and voting in the Retro Hugos, and of many of them doing so more by name recognition than by the actual works.

    This is why I’m so angry — on behalf of Cora and Steve and all of the people who put so much effort this year into trying to get an engaged, educated electorate, to very little avail. They did the work. What they did should have made more difference than it did.

    This is why we can’t have nice things.

  34. @OGH:

    If I was on a Worldcon bidding committee, I would know better than to go out of my way to urge people to organize a rival bid based on their desire to do something my own bid committee was refusing to do.

    Some of us care more for a clean process than for victory-at-any-cost. (It’s also not clear to me that Kevin is in the bid committee, rather than being pre-promised to a convention task; maybe he’ll elucidate.) I admit that the idea of Memphis over Labor Day doesn’t appeal to someone who finds even Boston summers sometimes oppressive — but the likelihood of my going to another Worldcon keeps going down.

    @Cora Buhlert: ISTM that “not voting” does not mean “paying no attention”; the Retro Hugos have been controversial for a long time. ISTM that you’re taking this more personally than it’s meant, and being loose with facts ?because of it? — e.g., the Derleth novelettes were what made the Cthulhu Mythos eligible this year, but they’re a trivial fraction of the body of work that the award recognizes.

    However, not quite three years is too short to organise a good Worldcon, especially with an inexperienced team. Even Memphis’ start-up time of four years is short.

    Note that the time between selection and convention was reduced from 3 years to 2 because the extra year was an extra strain on committees for no good result; it had been added in the hope that getting facilities would be easier, but that hope quickly vanished. (The change became effective in 1986; in 1989 the DC bid had to shut down because it was asked to sign a contract ~3.4 years out — and that was just the first subsequent case of a facility demanding a long lead time; Boston slipped from 1998 to 2001 because it was asked to sign ~5.5 years out.) At the time the reduction was being discussed, some people claimed that actually organizing a Worldcon took only 18 months. (That was for people with experience; for people with no experience and unwillingness to get lots of outside advice, no time may be long enough.) Announcing 2 years out, as Memphis did, is good way to reduce committee burnout (says someone from a bid that effectively ran 6 years).

    @Cora Buhlert: But that’s not what Memphis did. Instead, they basically told those of us who do care about the Retros that we’re making other people feel unwelcome. That is not anywhere in the published text; it is in recent discussion by other parties, none of whom (AFAICT) are part of the Memphis bid.

  35. … the Derleth novelettes were what made the Cthulhu Mythos eligible this year, but they’re a trivial fraction of the body of work that the award recognizes.

    If the rules allow for Best Series eligibility based on a new contribution, it shouldn’t matter whether the new work is only a small part of the whole. If nominators or voters feel the new work is trivial they can vote accordingly.

    I think the argument that Derleth’s contributions were consequential is pretty easy to make. This Retro Hugo is his first Hugo. He had to wait 59 years of eternity but it finally happened for him. That’s pretty cool. The poor guy hasn’t even won a Derleth!

  36. @Chip Hitchcock
    Maybe that’s not the impression Memphis wanted to give (and up to now, all of my interactions with the Memphis bid com have been pleasant), but making the announcement that they’re not planning to hold Retro Hugos in the context of a statement on their “commitment to diversity and inclusion” very much gives that impression. Also, they didn’t have to say anything about whether they plan to hold Retro Hugos at this point at all, because no one expected an announcement now. CoNZealand didn’t announce that they were going to hold Retro Hugos until a few months before the fact.

    @rcade
    August Derleth did a lot of good work keeping various vintage fantasy authors (mostly Weird Tales authors and people from Lovecraft’s circle, but also others) in print and available, until the success of Lord of the Rings set off a fantasy reprint boom in the mid 1960s. Without Derleth’s work, many authors (including Robert E. Howard and maybe even H.P. Lovecraft himself) would be forgotten these days. And I think he does deserve recognition for that, no matter how one feels about his Cthulhu novelettes.

  37. Xtifr on August 19, 2020 at 10:53 pm said:
    Actually, I think there are other criticisms of the Retro-Hugos that may be more important to some people. Specifically, the issue of whether or not you can ignore the inherent sexism, racism, etc., of the works of the era.

    Uh. I was arguing hard to recognize some of the works that actively buck the trends of the day. They exist if you bother to do the reading.

    Personally, over the past few years I read literally hundreds of issues of comic books from 1943-1945 trying to figure out what deserved nomination. It’s hard work. If you’re interested, I’d check out the first year’s worth of Nelvana Of The Northern Lights, which introduces the first female super-powered comic book hero — she fights to protect the environment, and is an Indigenous American to boot. (I’ll note that some later volumes have WW2-related xenophobia, but the first year’s worth is good.)

    Personally? I think the Retros should be modified to end a few of the categories that don’t work due to the warped perspective of time. Get rid of “Retro Best Series,” “Retro Editor,” and “Retro Graphic Story” IMHO the number of people who are able to make informed nominations in these categories is negligible.

    Except that the nominators and voters, by and large, ignored the efforts of Cora, Steve J. Wright (no relation), Olav Rokne, and others who worked so hard to raise awareness of the eligible works and do reviews on them.

    blushes Thank you for the complement, @JJ.

    Cora Buhlert on August 20, 2020 at 7:21 am said:
    @Kevin Standlee
    You really do want me to organise a bid for BremCon or OLCon, do you?

    Cora, if you start a bid for a Worldcon in Bremen, I pledge $500 immediately towards that bid and will do everything I can as a volunteer and a promoter. I <3 Northern Germany, from the Ruhrgebiet to the River Weser.

  38. MODERATOR’S NOTE TO “ANONYMOUS”: Come back and leave that comment using a name or handle.

  39. Chip Hitchcock: Some of us care more for a clean process than for victory-at-any-cost.

    That’s a very slimy remark and unwarranted.

  40. @Cora Buhlert Not HamCon? 😉
    BremCon would be interesting. Does somebody know of viable facilities. I don’t know about Bremen, but I couldn’t come up with something fitting in Berlin, Leipzig or Munich.

  41. The Retro Hugos have been controversial, not for the past few weeks, but from the beginning. I used to think they were fun. But, with each successive year, it gets worse. The people who don’t like the Retros are unhappy with what wins. The people who support the Retros–are often unhappy with what actually wins.

    Increasingly, I look at the amount of reading to be done for the Hugos, and the additional reading to be done for the Retros, and have the sinking feeling that if I vote in the Retros, I will, in the end, be left feeling that I Voted Wrong. It’s not fun anymore. So I concentrate on the Hugos, and ignore the Retros.

    Which would be fine, if it were just me. It’s not. Participation in the Retros is very low, apparently no one is having fun or enjoying the results–and right now, in this discussion, I’m getting the feeling from a number of comments that the worst thing you can do is say this isn’t an asset to the Hugos or the Worldcon. That we should stop doing this, and start having fun again.

  42. … apparently no one is having fun or enjoying the results …

    Not sure where you got that idea. No one would be fighting to save them if we didn’t enjoy them. I have fun in every aspect of the awards and Cora made them much more entertaining this year with her tireless efforts.

  43. To say a few thinks: Of course I would be down for a German Worldcon. 🙂 Sometime in the future and not rushed, interesting that Cora allready has a potential location. MunMunMunCon (re Andrew(not Werdna) would be very near…

    Just a small corection for JJ: re Chicon 8’s announcements of their toastmasters, they anouced them right after they won the bid together with the GoHs. That was before the Hugoceronomy. I find it a bit unfair to call it strategic.

    Re Retro-Hugos: For me the normal Hugos were more fun then the retros. I made it easy for myself and voted only in the catagorys I was interested in, Series and Best Editor weren’t on that list. (I finished best retro-Novel 3 days before deadline, and starting another catagory was not something I thought made sense)

    I see both sides: Plus yeah a lot of people have put a lot of work in this (thanks to you), yeah we have some worthy winners, we discovered work that deserved rediscovery.

    Con: They made some people really unhappy, entusiasment is not that great, there are a lot of work for the worldcon.

    I find it also very fascinating, what people could read it Memphis statement. I mean “reaction to the Retros has been increasingly mixed”, is very nonspecific. (Could mean the firestorm this year or general not so sucesful as we liked) I do agree that “Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion” including a statement to not hold the Retros as if it were conected is if this was intended a slap in the face of people who cared about them.

    But is if naive for me to think that this was not really what Memphis did intend? I see this more as an atempt to get all news out.

  44. This may sound odd.
    There are things I like about the retro Hugos and there are things I appreciate about them (Cora’s work for example) but I definitely don’t have the time to do the reading to vote on them AND I’m never particularly interested in who wins in the end.

    So maybe the Retros should just skip the final vote. Have nominations, have an activity around them that can focus on discussion, legacy, influence etc but don’t have a winner and don’t hand out the rockets.

  45. So maybe the Retros should just skip the final vote. Have nominations, have an activity around them that can focus on discussion, legacy, influence etc but don’t have a winner and don’t hand out the rockets.

    Intriguing. This would produce something like a Retro-Hugos Reading List, which would encourage the sort of reflection and discussion and discovery that Cora has worked so hard to promote, without that final vote that so often comes across like a great big “Nah” in response to all that work. Since there would be no final vote, the only thing to focus on would be the reading list and discussion. Which could be the basis of a small series of WorldCon panels, passible. And the “who gets honored” question can be answered more broadly and with more nuance. I like it.

  46. Camestros Felapton: So maybe the Retros should just skip the final vote. Have nominations, have an activity around them that can focus on discussion, legacy, influence etc but don’t have a winner and don’t hand out the rockets.

    It’s eerie how that synchs up with my own feeling that the Retro winners don’t really matter. I like to see the spotlight thrown on these creators and fans of years gone by, especially if they didn’t get their share at the time. Once the list is out there, I’m satisfied. However, without there being a vote and hardware given out, I suspect the stimulus to participate goes way down. There’s even less reason to pay any attention to a 75-year-old reading list.

  47. I honestly have had more times to read the Retro-Hugos than the ordinary Hugo’s. I have read more of the works before and the novels are typically much shorter.

    And I don’t believe in this “Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion”. Kevin was just here making clear that he was only willing to listen to connected people with time, money and ability enough to put up a Worldcon bid. That’s hardly a commitment to diversity and inclusion.

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