(1) KUANG ON BABEL’S HUGO INELIGIBILITY. Rebecca F. Kuang decided that saying nothing isn’t an option. “Rebecca F. Kuang: ‘statement’” at Bluesky.
(2) ANOTHER WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD. Answering some writers’ renewed cry that the Hugo Awards be taken away from the Worldcon, Cheryl Morgan has drafted a proposal. It’s explained in “Decoupling the Hugos” at Cheryl’s Mewsings. Morgan’s draft can be downloaded at “Independent-Hugo-Administration.pdf”.
In amongst all of the discussion as to what to do about the Chengdu Hugo issue has been one suggestion that can actually be implemented, albeit over a number of years. That is decoupling Hugo Award Administration from the host Worldcon, so that the laws of the host country cannot interfere with the voting process….
… WSFS already has an organization called the Mark Protection Committee (MPC), which is responsible for maintaining the service marks that WSFS owns (in particular “Hugo Award” and the logo). I suggest renaming this the Independent Hugo Award Administration Committee (IHAAC) and giving it, rather than Worldcon, the job of administering the voting process. The IHAAC would recruit experienced administrators in much the same way that Worldcon does, but there would be a lot more consistency from year to year.
Worldcon would still have the option of staging a Hugo Award ceremony, and creating a distinctive trophy base, but equally it could decline to do that and pass the job back to the IHAAC.
Kevin [Standlee] and I cannot take this proposal forward ourselves. Kevin is a member of the MPC, and I effectively work for them in maintaining the WSFS websites, so we both have a vested interest. Our involvement could easily be portrayed as a power grab. But we are happy to provide help and advice to anyone who does want to take this forward at Glasgow….
(3) DON’T MAKE CHANGES THAT TAKE VOLUNTEERS FOR GRANTED. Abigail Nussbaum has a remarkably insightful post about the current crisis: “The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk” at Asking the Wrong Questions.
… Even taking this most charitable view of events, however, there comes a point where honest mistakes corrupt a result too thoroughly to be distinguishable from malice, and that’s before we even get into those three still-unexplained ineligibility rulings. Unless Chengdu steps forward with more information, there is, unfortunately, no avoiding the conclusion that the 2023 Hugo results are irreparably tainted.
On the matter of those three disqualifications, the assumption that many people are making—and which, again, seems like the most plausible conclusion until and unless Chengdu starts answering questions—is that all three were struck off for political reasons. This might mean outright government interference, or someone on the Hugo team complying in advance, or an independent but politically-motivated actor among the award’s administrators striking off work they don’t approve of. This may also explain the silence from the Hugo team, who may fear reprisals towards themselves or their teammates. At this point it is possible that we will never know the whole story of what happened to the 2023 Hugo Awards. Which means the important question before us is how to move forward.
That question is complicated by the erratic, increasingly rickety superstructure of the Hugos and the Worldcon as a whole. Put simply, there is no Worldcon organization. Each convention is its own corporate entity charged with holding the convention and administering the Hugos, and bound only by the WSFS constitution. Said constitution is discussed and amended in the annual Business Meeting, a sclerotic, multi-day affair administered under rules that seem designed to baffle new participants and slow change to a creeping pace. What this means, among other things, is that there is no actual oversight over any individual Worldcon’s behavior, and no mechanism to claw back either the convention or the Hugos if it appears that they are being mismanaged.
It’s not at all surprising that the reaction of many people upon learning these facts, and especially in the present context, is to immediately leap to the conclusion that this entire system should be scrapped and replaced with a centralized authority. This, I think, is to ignore some very basic facts: the Worldcon is a fully volunteer-run organization. The free labor that goes into administering it, and the Hugos specifically, probably runs to tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of dollars in value. The idea that one can simply erect a super-organization under those same conditions is hard to imagine….
(4) LECKIE ON THE HUGOS. If you happen to be on Bluesky, Ann Leckie has a thread with a lively discussion. It begins:
(5) MORE CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Some more anonymized online reactions to social media posts about the Hugo nomination report, some of which are based on coverage of the continued Anglosphere reactions, such as John Scalzi’s blog post about Babel.
English translations are all via Google Translate unless otherwise indicated, with minor edits or commentary in square parentheses. Some of the smileys haven’t come through, so bear in mind that some of these should be read in a sarcastic tone.
怎么感觉雨果奖次次都有瓜
Why does it feel like the Hugo’s have a melon every time? [Note: “melon” is Chinese slang – maybe “drama” is a reasonable translation in this context? Also, this translation is via DeepL; Google Translate comes up with a less literal result, but which I think is incorrect]
2023这次应该是“中国雨果奖”吧。
This time in 2023 it should be the “China Hugo Award”. 
雨果奖到底怎么了
What happened to the Hugo Awards?
看到这新闻心里没有一丝波澜，甚至觉的这事发生在这里太正常辣，出现正面新闻才令人惊讶呢。外国人对真实的种花家还是了解太少
When I saw this news, I didn’t feel any emotion at all. I even thought it was too normal for this to happen here. It was surprising to see positive news. Foreigners still know too little about real flower growers [Note: “flower growers” = China]
太可惜了
What a pity
然而巴别塔还在国内出中译了，就很神奇 很迷惑
However, [Tower of] Babel has been translated into Chinese in China, which is amazing and confusing
到底为什么呀怎么感觉这么大的事情国内平台都没几个声？？
Why on earth do you feel that there are not many domestic platforms talking about such a big thing? ?
因为雨果奖怎么样并不算大事，国内的雨果奖获奖作品能给媒体带来多少收入才是大事
[replying to previous comment] Because it’s not a big deal how the Hugo Award is, but how much income the domestic Hugo Award-winning works can bring to the media is a big deal
真实了，我记得之前国内作者获得雨果奖的时候大小媒体都在采访
[A further reply] It’s real. I remember when a domestic author won the Hugo Award, all the media were interviewing him.
我推测并不是CN康的审查而是主办方自身某种私心（虽然我不知道具体是什么动机），要知道《巴别塔》本身有一种强烈的“早产的列宁主义”的意味，在这边不要太正确。当然，我坚决拥护斯卡尔齐老师对办会章程的建议！
I speculate that it is not CN Kang’s censorship but some selfish motives of the organizer (although I don’t know the specific motivation). You must know that “[Tower of] Babel” itself has a strong sense of “premature Leninism”. Don’t be too correct. Of course, I firmly support Mr. Scalzi’s suggestion on the rules of the conference! [I’m not sure what “CN康” is, Wikipedia says “CN” is “virgin”, but that doesn’t seem to make any sense in this context.]
????所以呢？在其他地方举办世界科幻大会没有按国外的审美标准就是存在疑问及不适合的？
????So what? Is it questionable and inappropriate to hold the World Science Fiction Convention elsewhere if it does not follow foreign aesthetic standards?
毕竟是有关国家信誉的大事，别只写获奖不写争议吧咱就说
After all, it is a major matter related to the credibility of the country. Don’t just write about the awards and not the controversies. Let’s just say [This comment cced in half-a-dozen news organizations, some of which are ones that I recognize from earlier coverage of the con, I think some of which was linked in prior Scrolls]
《巴别塔》批判殖民主义，还以英国为背景，咋不猜是英国通过某些手段干预了提名[smiley]
“[Tower of] Babel” criticizes colonialism and is set in the United Kingdom. Why don’t you guess that the United Kingdom interfered with the nomination through certain means [smiley]
去年看的巴别塔，前不久看的Yellowface，Rebecca F. Kuang就是很灵秀啊，23年雨果奖怎么搞的评委最清楚啦
I [read] [Tower of] Babel last year and Yellowface not long ago. Rebecca F. Kuang is so smart. The judges of the [2023] Hugo Awards know best
《巴别塔》明明是歌颂中国人民反殖民主义的努力的啊，被雨果奖错过太可惜了
“[Tower of] Babel” obviously praises the Chinese people’s anti-colonial efforts. It would be a pity to miss out on the Hugo Award.
这，别人也倒罢了，她不是参与过联名抵制成都科幻大会吗？现在觉得自己被除名还应该给个具体原因了？
[Re. Xiran Jay Zhao] This is just for others. Didn’t [they] participate in a joint boycott of the Chengdu Science Fiction Conference? Now you feel like you should [be given] a specific reason for being removed?
赵希然，写武则天开机甲的那个华裔女科幻作家。她说唐代是中国的荡妇时代。
Zhao Xiran, the Chinese science fiction writer who wrote about Wu Zetian’s mecha. [They] said that the Tang Dynasty was the era of sluts in China. [referring to this Tweet]
Kuang特别棒 熬夜读完了1/4的巴别塔
Kuang is awesome. I stayed up late and read 1/4 of Tower of Babel.
(6) MAP CANNON. Yesterday’s China roundup by Ersatz Culture included the term “map cannon”, for which made an approximate English translation. Thanks to Gareth Jelley for finding a Baidu Encylopedia article that explains it in detail.
The map cannon originally refers to a map attack type weapon in the “Super Robot Wars” series. It first appeared in the “Second Super Robot Wars” in the Magic Machine God’s Sebastian , and was later used to refer to some mass destruction weapons. weapons or magic. On the Internet, the extended meaning of “map cannon” is the act of verbally attacking a certain group. On the Internet, it often refers to geographical attackers , or the behavior of a few people is used to deny the behavior of a certain group.
Since in many anime works, the map cannon exists as a weapon with great power and large area of destruction, so in some forums (such as NGA), the map cannon is extended to large-scale indiscriminate deletion of posts, banning IDs, and punishing users. Behaviors such as this also often refer to some moderators who often delete and ban people on a large scale and indiscriminately.
It can also express prejudice against certain things. There is often a label that summarizes the whole based on the characteristics of the part. Prejudice against different groups of people will always exist. However, there are also some “facialization” who are willing to be accepted by others – if they think they are at the top of the discrimination chain. The rise of the Internet has redefined the standards of “us” and “them” for the first time.
(7) COMIC RELIEF KERFUFFLE. Doctor Who fandom blew up yesterday. The first one got almost 300K views. The second is one of the more entertaining replies.
(8) YOUR SF TAXONOMY. Horst Smokowski lists “All the Types of Science Fiction”: at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. There are fifty of them. The first three are:
1. Check this place out, it’s dope
2. Technology solves problems ???? (future good)
3. Technology creates problems ???? (future bad)
(9) EXTREME SUFFRAGE. Looking for more sff awards you can vote for? (Oh, you glutton for punishment!) Rocket Stack Rank has a roundup here: “SF/F Ballots For Stories From 2023”.
Here are links to ballots for various SF/F awards, 5 that are open to all, and 4 that are open to members of a convention or association. Highlighted awards are currently open for voting.
The magazine-specific awards come with a longlist link to all stories published by each magazine, with blurbs to help you remember the ones you’ve read and scores to guide further reading….
(10) FREE READ. Marie Brennan’s “Embers Burning in the Night” is a free-to-read story at Sunday Morning Transport, offered to encourage new subscriptions.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 22, 1970 — Alex Ross, 54. So Alex Ross, eh? A fantastic, in all senses of that word, comic book illustrator and writer whose first work with comic book writer Kurt Busiek, the four-issue The Marvels for, er, Marvel Comics would been a highlight of anyone else’s career.
Not Ross though. Another four-issue run, Kingdom Come, this time for DC, under their Elseworlds imprint, told of an aleternate DC universe that might have happened. One of my favorite DC stories. It was written by Mark Waid and him.
Yes, he can do pulp as he illustrated the John Layman written series, Red Sonja/Claw: the Unconquered Devil’s Hands, that was co-published with Dynamite Entertainment where Red Sonja and Claw, a cursed warrior I had never heard of before this, had a series of adventures that showed Red Sonja’s assets very well.
He’s just not interested in the costumed superheroes. Over at his website, you’ll find the prints he’s done for the Universal Monsters – Dracula, Wolf Man and so forth, they’re all there. The prints look fantastic bad they can be yours if your pocket change is deep.
Here’s my favorite piece of art by him.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Frazz is for editors.
- Last Kiss breaks the fourth wall.
- Annie mentions science fiction, and also might be a reference to this B.C. strip.
(13) THE SGT. MAJOR’S MARSCON REPORT. [Item by Dann.] Mike Burke is a retired US Marine Corps Sergeant Major. Mike operated under the nom de plume (or perhaps nom de guerre) of “America’s Sergeant Major” for several years. He has led Marines in peace and in war. Since his retirement, he has written fiction and nonfiction for the US Naval Institute. The USNI is a non-profit organization with the purpose of providing an “independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.”
Sgt. Maj. Burke has started writing on Substack as Spearman Burke and is a self-professed “noob” at the profession of writing.
He recently attended Marscon in Norfolk, VA and has a report from the con. He was able to meet Ben Yalow, David Weber, Kacey Ezell, and a few other notable authors. One of Kacey’s stories was what inspired Mike to pursue his next career as a genre author. He scored a contract to submit a short story for an anthology at the con.
(14) CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. AP News says “Reformed mobster who stole Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from ‘Oz’ wanted one last score”. Now they’re about to drop the big house on him.
The aging reformed mobster who has admitted stealing a pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz” gave into the temptation of “one last score” after an old mob associate led him to believe the famous shoes must be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value.
Terry Jon Martin’s defense attorney finally revealed the 76-year-old’s motive for the 2005 theft from the Judy Garland Museum in the late actor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in a new memo filed ahead of his Jan. 29 sentencing in Duluth, Minnesota.
The FBI recovered the shoes in 2018 when someone else tried to claim an insurance reward on them, but Martin wasn’t charged with stealing them until last year….
(15) ROBERT BLOCH WEBSITE UPDATE. Jim Nemeth of the Robert Bloch Official Website announced a major update.
At the (fantastic) suggestion and immense help of Mr. David J Schow (DJS) we now have a new Gallery page, showing just about every/all sides of our beloved Bob.
(16) THE REMNANT OF HUMANITY IS COMING HOME. Friends of Fred Lerner will be excited to hear that his book In Memoriam will be released by Fantastic Books And Gray Rabbit Publications on July 2.
David Bernstein is a 17-year-old member of the Remnant of Terra, the descendants of the 2,000 people who survived the Cataclysm that destroyed human life on Earth. For two centuries the Remnant has lived among the Wyneri, who rescued the few survivors and brought them to their world. Although the Wyneri are physically and psychologically very similar to Terrans, the two species interact only when they must. The Remnant earn their keep among their alien hosts, but otherwise remain apart, devoting themselves to preserving the cultural heritage of Terra.
David, however, is fascinated with the Wyneri and their culture, an interest shared by none of his contemporaries. Attending a Wyneri performance he meets a Wyneri girl his own age, and he and Harari strike up a taboo friendship.
While David learns about his Terran heritage, he feels very much alone in trying to also learn about the history of the Terran-Wyneri relationship. Violent Wyneri xenophobia drives David to intensify his studies, and to dig into the mysteries surrounding the Cataclysm, the rescue, and the ensuing two centuries of cover-ups. He begins to suspect a long-lived cabal that has spent the years working in secret, preparing for a return to Earth.
Harari’s murder crystallizes David’s need to explore the Terran-Wyneri history. Her posthumous message proving that the Cataclysm was caused by rogue Wyneri military personnel leads David to the Remnant’s leaders, who confirm it as genuine. Their conclusion? The time has come for Terrans to separate from the Wyneri. They enlist David’s help to persuade the Remnant to return to Earth, and to encourage the Wyneri to help them.
(17) RED PLANET WINGS. “Nasa plans to fly giant solar-powered Mars plane to look for water on Red Planet” reports The Independent.
Nasa has received its first set of funding to develop a giant airplane that could fly high in the planet’s atmosphere and look for signs of water on the Red Planet.
The solar-powered vehicle, called Mars Aerial and Ground Intelligent Explorer or Maggie, is expected to fly in the Martian atmosphere with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability similar to Nasa’s pioneering Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
With fully charged batteries, the Mars airplane could fly at an altitude of 1,000m for about 180km with its total range over a year on Mars expected to be over 16,000 km, the space agency said earlier this month.
Using the aircraft, Nasa hopes to conduct three studies on the Red Planet’s atmosphere and geophysical features, including the hunt for water, research on the origin of the planet’s weak magnetic field as well as tracing the elusive source of methane signals on Mars….
(18) HIDDEN HISTORY. Constellation comes to Apple TV+ on February 21.
“Constellation” stars Noomi Rapace as Jo — an astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space — only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing. The action-packed space adventure is an exploration of the dark edges of human psychology, and one woman’s desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all that she has lost.
(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Isaac Arthurs has just had his monthly sci-fi weekend and asks who would win: robot or alien?
We often worry that humanity might be attacked by Aliens or AI, but which is worse and which would win in a battle between them?
[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Andrew (not Werdna), Gareth Jelley, Dann, Rich Lynch, Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Henley.]
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Rebecca Kuang’s statement is classy as always. I believe she will be writing good books for quite some time to come.
In this case, publishing well is the best revenge.
1st!!!!!
Jetpack seems to be taking another night off. Maybe it’s as consumed by the Hugo controversy as the rest of us?
(7) I agree. But then, I dislike sci fi, though we forgave 4SJ in the last millenium.
(8) 30. Fear & Loathing in Arcturus… ok, I’m considering whether I need to write that one.
(17) Why not an airship?
(1) to (5)
I have a lot of reading ahead of me tomorrow.
(8) I’ve read books in some of those categories…
(14) That sounds like a heist movie.
Jetpack has flown off for the night.
This would be a great time for me to read “Babel.” But I’m trying to stick to cozy stuff (cozy mysteries, the new Valdemar book, cozy fantasy…) because of a death in the family. 🙁
(9) RSR is such a great resource for short fiction, but I was wondering if there are any similar databases for novel-length works, i.e., compiling recommendations, additions to lists, etc. Something like how Literary Hub made a list of books (in all genres) that appeared on best of the year lists.
elf on dreamwidth has been collecting links as well, as the Hugo Awards story breaks into successively wider circles. Start placing bets on when it hits the NYTimes, I’m guessing Friday at the latest.
I’m personally waiting for the Washington Post’s take on how the Hugo Awards debacle hurts Biden’s chances.
In the introduction to Ann Leckie’s comments, Mike wrote, “If you happen to be on Bluesky…”
Bluesky posts and threads are now publicly readable. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, without a Bluesky account.
I keep a notepad page of folks I want to “follow”, since Bluesky has no place to save my interests.
(11) Alex Ross is doing the covers for the current runs of Fantastic Four and The Immortal Thor, among others.
Yes, this means that we have an Alex Ross painting of Doctor Doom riding his dinosaur-universe counterpart.
@mark re: 17) the atmosphere of Mars is too tenuous for a lighter-than-air vessel to be practical. (I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would certainly take a lot more work than a functioning Martian airplane.)
I’ve got those inbox already full of comments but I’m still gonna click here Blues…
@Rose & @DrSci – “Hugo Awards Rocked By Controversy. Here’s Why That’s Bad for Biden.”
(7) I am only calling it Doccy Who from now on. People taking the show too seriously is hilarious.
Couple of Bluesky codes for anyone who wants to get in on that conversation
bsky-social-yxbrq-4t3tb
bsky-social-n2hhu-altlm
2) I agree that a soft “divorce” of the Hugos from the yearly Worldcon committee needs to take place. Cheryl Morgan has some great ideas that I support. I had thought of the idea of a committee that slowly revolves. Member’s position would be set so that every year the new Worldcon committee could appoint one person to replace the outgoing oldest serving member, thereby allowing a slow turnover, keeping experienced committee members long enough to train incoming ones, and keeping one Worldcon committee from having too much influence while still having a voice on the committee.
There are of course many other models to consider, but I think we need a solution that allows a controlled turnover in admins, isolates the admins from any theoretical interference from a hosting country, and gives a hosting committee input without total control.
Ken Josenhans ad 4): I just wanted to say the same thing; apparently it was a Chtristmas gift. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/22/24012862/bluesky-posts-visible-not-logged-in-new-logo
I entirely oppose the Morgan-Standlee proposal.
Transferring the power to make terrible mistakes from one group of practically unaccountable people to another group of practically unaccountable people is at best a lateral move. At worse it adds even more opportunity for failure, with the addition of now requiring transfer, administration and distribution of significant sums of money.
No thank you. Particularly considering that the MPC and it’s Chair have not covered themselves in glory.
I have already made the suggestion of establishing an appointed Audit panel. One that had the power to ballot the current WSFS membership to remove Hugo Administrators, members of the MPC. One that had the power to appoint an external auditor to check that votes had proceeded correctly, accounts were correct, and possibly even ballot membership on removing someone who had screwed up.
However, it may be too late to restore any confidence in the Hugo Awards and Worldcon. It’s already apparent from the state of future bids that the WSFS has lost confidence of the people who run conventions.
It’s quite possible that the WSFS might be reduced to begging other conventions to hold the Hugo Awards.
With apologies that I can’t read all the posts about this right now and so I may be asking a question that would be answered if I could do that:
It’s my understanding that Dave McArty has been the Hugo awards admin for a number of years (at least 4). At the moment, and after reading facebook screenshots which are circulating around, he seems to be either entirely to blame for this debacle, or determined to take the blame for it. I’m not familiar enough with WSFS/WorldCon to know how one becomes a Hugo admin or what that entails. Cheryl Morgan posits that “experienced administrators” would help prevent this problem from happening again, but McArty is an experienced administrator. So what would this fix?
I really hope that somebody can pin down what happened, because without knowing what happened, we’re all going to be tilting at windmills trying to fix it.
@Ryan H – many thanks, used #1. I rarely comment much these days, but have been following the Hugo stuff with a queasy post-puppies sense of deja-vu, and was wanting to see more of the Bluesky discussions.
I think the idea of a committee is good, but I think it should be a special-purpose committee, elected via the same means as our Hugo voting. I also think we need to bite the bullet and spend the money to have a professional 3rd party actually count the votes.
Here’s my detailed proposal.
@Chris Gerrib
I’ve also suggested and support the idea of being able to hand over operation and audit of the Hugos to a third party.
I suggest that the matter of funding by handled in a simple way… It’s the cost of the licence fee for use of the WSFS’s trademarks, paid for by the incoming Worldcon when they win a bid.
This would require reform of the MPC as well, but the MPC needs some reform.
Give me some time to write something up.
Rebecca Kuang will continue to write good books, and some of them may even be nominated for awards inside the SF community, but she’s well enough known outside it now that the community needs her, not the other way around, and she knows it.
“Renders the whole process and organization illegitimate. Pity.”
That’s a dismissal, and I don’t expect she’ll be at any cons anytime soon.
Nice going, those involved in creating this debacle.
Or…you know, we could dispense with awards entirely.
Semi-serious about this suggestion. The sheer volume of works available today means that excellent work that doesn’t manage to hit the sweet spot on the promotional wheel may end up completely ignored, especially if written by someone who is from a less-represented population, or from a non-European population.
Or else, instead of big awards, focus instead on smaller, more regional awards.
Two more Bluesky invites:
bsky-social-porv4-6jalt
bsky-social-jd26z-tdl74
When you get on, ignore the “suggested groups¨. Find someone you know of to follow, and then look at who that person follows.
Am I correct in thinking that Dave McCarty has been the Hugo Administrator four times in total, but not the past four years consecutively? I thought that Nicholas Whyte was the Hugo Admin for some of those years.
Jerry Kaufman: You’re right, his four times have been spread out, not consecutive.
The invites have now been used. Have fun over there, lucky people!
I just got half way through writing up the proposal I promised Chris Gerrib, and then realised this was an awful lot of tiring work on writing up a complicated proposal, that was mainly going to get me shouted at, and it looks like the Worldcon is already so discredited that it feels like bailing out the titanic.
So I’m left asking my self do I want to put any more energy into this? And the answer is starting to turn back to “No, you should have stuck to your first instincts and washed your hands of this mess”.
On Mastodon, Paul Weimer says (or at least strongly implies) that a reporter from the Guardian has talked to him for a story on the Hugo controversy.
I, too, have Bluesky invite codes for the interested
I also have BlueSky codes.
Following some of the discussions between Mike Dunford, Connor Lynch, and Courtney Milan is convincing me that the days of WorldCon and the Hugos being able to get away with being run like a local book club is coming to a distinct middle
… if an unsuccessful con bid declares itself to be the successful bid and schisms, they may have no recourse at all…
We’re telling you what you need to be doing now if you have any interest in attempting to retain protection for the Hugo mark
This is the google-docs link where I started my half finished first draft proposal. I’ve opened it up for public editing, so you can all finish it if you want to. I’d gotten the basics down, but would need to do a lot of more fine work, and supporting changes to the lots of other clauses that refer to the MPC. I’m happy to see the folks of File 770 see if they can agree amongst themsleves to editing, or entirely changing, this proposal.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SiJcv9legnDlomUJxFvSGUEaNcULaYbGZPubW8PJvc4/edit?usp=sharing
Hugo awards with Chinese characteristics, as Deng Xiaoping didn’t quite say.
@Ryan H
An entire thread of Intellectual Property Lawyers being horrified at his actions, suggests Mr Standlee aught consider his position.
via Metafilter, 2 more Bluesky (rhymes with brewski) comments worth sharing:
Jameson Quinn speculates plausible causes for the hinky numbers
And this from Meg Frank:
@ Jay Blanc
I did appreciate the almost instant fannish consensus that any schism convention needs to be called AvigCon
@Ryah H
I for one think Original Joe’s Hugo Awards are the best Hugo Awards on the upper east side.
I think the most entertaining part of this is watching the disbelief of con-runners from other fandoms over how Worldcon/WSFS is set up. For some reason the Furries seem particularly horrified and baffled that it’s staggered along as long as it has.
It seems to me painfully obvious that whatever happens with the Hugos going forward, EVERYONE on the 2023 Hugo Committee needs to be blackballed from the Hugo Awards process indefinitely, no backsies.
I am serious. It is now obvious that the nomination numbers (at least!) weren’t counted correctly. It’s blatantly obvious that people & works were stricken from the ballot arbitrarily. Because we don’t know what happened, because it’s likely we’ll never know what happened, because none of the people on the committee came forth promptly to Tell All, all of them have to be assumed to be such bad and/or incompetent and/or uncaring actors that their presence will taint any future Hugo Awards Administration.
@Ryan H
In another time, under another persona, I was a Furry Fandom Journalist for an award winning outlet, and investigated and reported on such things as Hotel Trashing, Nazi takeovers, and Shenanigans with the IRS in Cons that were being run by people who should not have been trusted. Those cons folded after, began the process of being wound up, or collapsed shortly before my reports. In the case of the IRS shenanigans, it was between filing the report, and it being published, that the Con announced it’s permanent closure. Other con-runners learned from those examples, and in general Furry Cons are very well run organisations. In my experience, a lot better than the average Worldcon due to persistent experience and institutional knowledge.
Right now I’m getting those old “Dead Convention Walking” feelings from my fandom reporter days.
@Doctor Science
The Hugo story has broken out to Esquire magazine, at least. A reporter was over on McCarty’s thread on Facebook, asking for an interview.
(I just had to visit and shake my head over Dave’s arrogance and jackassery.)
I think that Worldcon has been doing the zombie shuffle for a while now, with the limbs still twitching not knowing the brain is dead. SMOFs have succeeded in wrapping it in so much kudzu that you couldn’t extricate it with a backhoe.
I’ve been thinking the tabulation should be handed over to some professional accounting-type group too. They wouldn’t have a dog in the fight, they’d just take their money, run the stats, and there you go.
In any case, Dave’s made an… interesting choice to go out in flames, insulting and probably lying to everyone. Did he really think he’d get away with hinky stats and appealing to “rules” that appear nowhere in the constitution? In a crowd of nitpicky nerds/geeks who do math for fun?
I’m glad more people are reading “Babel”, whoever and wherever they are.
@Doctor Science: This is the MINIMUM that should be done.
21st Century Pixel Fan
The Pixels will continue until morale improves
I’ve made some more pretty graphs, poking at distribution analysis. Nothing groundshakingly different from what I posted previously, but slicing and dicing from some different angles and looking more exhaustively at all the categories. I’ve also once again dropped the spreadsheet it’s based on into Google Docs for others to play with (see link in blog).
https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distribution-statistics-part-2
Lurkertype on January 23, 2024 at 2:45 pm said:
Are we prepared to massively increase the cost of administering the Hugo Awards? At the moment, Hugo Administration (not the ceremony) is all but a rounding error in most Worldcon budgets. For example, according to their reports to WSFS, 2021 DC spent about $26,500 on all of WSFS (excluding the Hugo Awards Ceremony, which is an Event, not part of WSFS) out of about $845,000 total expenditures: about 3% of the total convention cost. 2022 Chicago reported about $11,500 out of about $792,000 for all of WSFS (about 1.5%).
In the Goode Olde Dayes™, the cost of the Hugo Awards (i.e. the trophies themselves) were a significant chunk of the Worldcon’s total expenses. Today, they’re lost in the noise, because we do it ourselves and don’t charge for the labor. I reckon that Hiring Professionals would massively increase that cost. By how much, I do not know, but it would not surprise me if it would add another zero to the end of the figure.
Besides, right now a significant chunk of the administration cannot be reasonably outsources to some random accounting firm: the institutional knowledge involved in normalizing the nominations. People don’t just pick works from a checklist when they submit free-form nominations, after all; they write stuff and the administrators have to try and collapse things into canonical names. Even those of us inside the field don’t always get this right. To my great embarrassment in 2009, someone who should have been shortlisted was not because people nominated the work in three different ways, and we did not canonically name them the same, so their nominations were split at least three ways, with none of them making the cut. Do you really expect a random accounting firm to make this work if our own people can’t?
In any event, the root cause of the current issue is that WSFS, through its site selection process, selected a Worldcon held in a place where the same sort of freedom of expression that most of us take for granted does not exist. We can’t fix the past, but we can work on fixing the future. Not only should we consider real, achievable ways of never letting the convention go to a place where it’s seriously susceptible to this, but we should consider ways of putting Hugo administration (not necessarily the ceremony) in a place unlikely to be susceptible to interference by a government entity or an overbearing convention. Neither of these fixes are likely to be popular, particularly with people who really like the way we’ve been doing things for 80 years.
If we really think the Worldcon has a future, and we aren’t just resigned to it dissolving sometime in the next decade or so, we need to be willing to consider solutions that work, and not stop rejecting workable, good-enough fixes because they don’t meet the platonic idea.
@Kevin Standlee
We had a lot of not-really-fun in 1984, standardizing the nominees. (“Space & Thyme” was the biggest problem I remember.)
As for professionals – do they understand ranked-preference voting? Are they willing to spend time on a very small election?
My memory of 1984 is something like “Oh Ghu, please keep me from screwing this up” – for 9 months. You’re at the heart of fandom for that time, and you’re both proud and scared.
I would suggest that making the awards auditable is a first and necessary step. The raw ballots should be archived in a way that the Hugo administrators can’t tamper with, and which would allow auditors to compare a random sample (or, if necessary, every ballot) to the normalized ballots produced by the administrators. This need not necessarily involve any significant additional expense, but it would allow WSFS to take action in cases such as this one where the integrity of the process has been called into question.