(0) My brother, his wife, and I unexpectedly spent the day binge-watching The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, so I am staying over another night. Therefore this will be a short-short Scroll assembled on his Mac tablet. Looks like I have figured out what I need to do despite the unfamiliar software. (He uses the Brave browser – tell me, does my text always look so bleached out to you?)
(1) MORE MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE HUGO REPORT.
The New York Times — “Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why.” is paywalled. But this gift link will get you in – thanks to Susan.
What did the leaked emails reveal?
The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.
The email correspondence published in the report showed that Dave McCarty, one of the Hugo administrators, had advised other members to vet the finalists and “highlight anything of a sensitive political nature” in China, including works that focused “on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other topics that may be an issue in China.” Such works, he added, might not be safe to put on the ballot.
“This really just cut to the core of the awards,” Sanford said. “For a genre that believes so deeply in free speech to willingly take part in doing research on political issues of awards finalists, knowing that it’s going to be used to eliminate some of those finalists, it’s outrageous.”…
Salon – “Hugo Awards scandal: Why the prestigious sci-fi literary awards is under fire for censorship”
The Hill – Chris Barkley tells me, “The Hill is a conservative news site that’s KNOWN for its lightweight coverage on cultural issues. And here’s a prime example. I would not even bother posting this piece of fluff…” I disobeyed: “Neil Gaiman, Paul Weimer among writers excluded from Hugo Awards over fear of offending China”. (Besides, I’ll bet Paul likes the idea of being named in a headline along with Neil Gaiman, even though he said it annoys him that his name is misspelled in the URL)
(2) HOW HE MET MRS. WEIRD AL. [Item by Dann] Craig Ferguson recently hosted “Weird Al” Yankovic on his JOY podcast. (There’s also a full transcript at the link.) Within the wide-ranging discussion, Al revealed that he was introduced to his wife by Art Barnes.
Al was on the Doctor Demento Show when he met Art. They got on pretty well and Art invited Al to his place in the Hollywood hills.
Looking around the place, Al sees a ton of Lost in Space memorability. He thinks to himself that Art is really into Lost in Space. And there was a ton of Will Robinson/Billy Mumy collectibles. Art must have been a superfan!
Sort of.
Art Barnes was half of the musical team known as Barnes & Barnes. One of their most known songs was “Fish Heads”.
Of course, Art Barnes was actually Billy Mumy himself. That should make the whole superfan of Will Robinson thing a bit less creepy.
Billy set Al up on several blind dates. But one time, he told Al that he had to date this woman from 20th Century Fox. Billy told Al that Al had to marry her.
And that’s how things worked out.
The rest of the podcast was pretty good.
(3) MEMORY LANE.
February 17, 1912 — Andre Norton. (Died 2005.) I always think of Andre Norton with some fondness. She always write things that as an individual that I just liked. Warning: this is not complete listing by any stretch of the imagination.
The title of her first novel, The Prince Commands, being sundry adventures of Michael Karl, sometime crown prince & pretender to the throne of Morvania, could have easily been that of a fantasy novel or a mainstream swashbuckler novel. Well, it’s the latter — ninety years old this year, it’s still quite readable.
She was twice nominated for the Hugo Award, at Pacificon II for Witch World, a favorite of mind, and then again at NyCon 3 for her “Wizard’s World” novelette which appeared in the June 1967 issue of If.
Her first fantasy novel, Huon of The Horn, the 13th-century story of Huon, Duke of Bordeaux, and adds in Oberon, to create one delightful tale.
Her first SF novel, Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D, was published at the same time over seventy-five years ago. I’ve not read it, so opinions please. Star Rangers which followed I’ve read and I did like that novel.
After Gary Gygax inviting her to play Dungeons & Dragons in his Greyhawk world, she wrote two novels based in two setting, Quag Keep and Return to Quag Keep. They’re fun, not very serious, but definitely fun.
And than there Catseye in which a man finds work in a pet shop where there’s ex-spacer owner, and xeno-animals who might be stranger than he knows.
Her final novel that she actually wrote was the rather excellent Three Hands for Scorpio. Tor, which never passed after a chance to make another a dollar or two, or even a lot more, had Jean Rabe write two more crediting her as co-author, Dragon Mage and Taste of Magic.
No, I’ve not forgotten her Awards. She won an Ohioan, given for lterature by writers from Ohio and about Ohio, for Sword in Sheath, a Gandalf, Grandmaster of Fantasy; an Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction; a Nebula, a Grand Master Award; a World Fantasy Award, Special Convention Award; First Fandom Hall of Fame Award; a Workd Fantasy Award Award Award for Lifetime Achievement; and three Sir Julius Vogels with Lyn McConchie — Beast Master’s Circus, Beast Master’s Ark and The Duke’s Ballad.
I take my leave now. I need to see Catseye was ever made into audiobook as it’d make a delightful listening experience.
(4) COMICS SECTION.
- Arlo and Janis have crossover problems.
- Wallace the Brave demonstrates how easy it is to lapse into childhood obsessions.
- Carpe Diem has the woes of a second job.
(5) SIGNAL BOOST. New Zealand fans are far from alone in experiencing the problems described in “A message from the current committee of Continuity 2024” ay SFFANZ.
For the past three years a small but hardy bunch of fans have tried to revitalise conventions in New Zealand in the wake of the pandemic and CoNZealand. The former has made conventions difficult to host, and the latter made those who’d run events want to hide in a corner going wibble.
Sadly, that’s meant that a very small number of people, who are also members of the SFFANZ board, have been left holding the baby that is Continuity 2024. We’ve asked for assistance from fandom at large, and whilst a few volunteers put their hands up, they suddenly lost interest or ability to help when we had our first meeting. Now we who are left are running out of steam, and wondering if we have the spirit and time to continue. We want conventions in New Zealand to continue as we see value in them. We want to gather with friends to discuss our passion for the genre. But we can’t do it alone.
For the past three years we’ve hosted a revitalising fandom discussion, which has been robust, but every year the same thing happens. People want, want, want, but there’s no give, give, give.
At a recent fannish gathering, a number of fen asked what plans were for Continuity 2024, when bookings could be made etc. Not one person offered to put their hand up to help or run anything. It seemed to that people wanted to be entertained rather than to participate. Oh, and we have to make the event as long as possible (meaning we need to find more information/panels/events to entertain people) so that it makes it worthwhile to attend, otherwise they won’t. And, not unnaturally given the times, everyone expects that events will be both in person and online making the effort involved greater again.
There are many conflicting issues going on here, we realise. Fandom, as a group, is not getting any younger. We all have lives, and things we want to do, but unless more of us put in an effort to keep momentum in conventions alive, then SF cons in New Zealand will go the way of the dodo.
We do have some ideas, such as holding a SMOFcon South, a con-running event, alongside a day where we celebrate fandom in New Zealand, but this idea is in its infancy. We’ve got a date, a venue, ideas for guests, events, and of course the Sir Julius Vogel Awards to host. But we need ideas, fresh ones, to assist us to get this plan across the line. And we need more people to volunteer to make that happen.
We will be hosting a meeting on February 25 at 10am to discuss where we go from here with Continuity 2024. I invite you to register here for the zoho meeting. If we don’t get sufficient interest, we will be turning Continuity 2024 into a one-day event again, and that will be it. We won’t try again.
Fandom is what you put into it. It requires active engagement and participation to make it thrive and grow. This is where you come in, yes YOU.
We hope to see you on the 25th.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Elusis, JJ, Paul Weimer, Dann, Susan, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]
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I read my first Andre Norton book in high schoo back in the 50s. It was her western “Stand to Horse,” set in pre-Civil War Arizona. Cavalrymen fighting Apaches might not be as acceptable today but the story holds up well because she had a terrific natural gift for storytelling. When I resumed reading sf in grad school, my future husband lent me “Starguard” and I was hooked. (“Starguard,” like David Drake’s “Forlorn Hope,” is based on Xenophon’s “Anabasis.”)
Little did I foresee that I would grow up to write Introductions to two Gregg Press sets of her novels and package other ones for Baen Books, much less become friends with the Great Lady herself (and her cats). She was indeed a Great Lady of the field as well as a gracious mentor of younger female writers.
Can we give Andre credit for writing about minorities back in the 50s when that was rare? Would she be ‘allowed’ to create African fantasy worlds today? I suppose her American Indian characters could be permitted inasmuch as she herself was of Indian descent. Let’s appreciate the breadth of Andre’s achievements and resist putting writers in narrow ethnic and other identity boxes.
JerryK: the Time Traders series was really good (I can almost picture the cover of the second book without going to look for it).
And the Beaker People? I’ll have you know that I was inducted into the Beaker People Libation Front (honoring our ancestors by emptying as many beakers as possible…), thanks to both Brian Burley and Patia the inimitable. And my membership card just happens to be here on my desk.
When I was…the “golden age of SF”, reading juveniles, my favorites were Heinlein and Norton. When I was around 20 I went back and re-read some favorites of my youth, and found that, for me, Norton held up a whole lot better than Heinlein!
Decades later, I’m still mad that she was never considered one of the “big three” of that (or any) era. She totally deserved to be, in my not-at-all-humble opinion. 🙂
For me conventions are about the panels and presentations, the art show and the dealers’ room. I don’t actually go to conventions to socialize all that much.
I see that there are parties and people enjoy them, which sounds great for them. It’s just not really my thing.
It is a little baffling to me as a convention organizer to see a lot of folks take such a hard-line stance against sponsorships.
I’ve mentioned it in previous comments, but I’m volunteer staff on a long-running anime convention, and we’ve had sponsors for many years. Sure, we set aside some programming space for the sponsors, but it doesn’t take up much of the schedule and the vast majority of programming is still fan panels – fans sign up to lead their own panels, anything from cosplay tutorials to discussions of anime or JRPGs to KPop singalongs.
Part of the reason for this, I suppose, is what the fans demand out of an anime convention. Fans want industry guests, musical performances, they WANT a dealer’s room and an artist’s alley (fanart is a huge part of the anime convention scene, just like the artist’s alley is of huge importance to furry cons), they want a big arcade gaming space and tournaments with prizes. In the early days our sponsors were essentially just boxes of prize swag from local comic shops and arcades. Nowadays our sponsors pay for the audio/video vendors who set up the main stage concert spaces and plane tickets for industry guests from Japan. Venues are expensive, production is expensive, logistics are expensive – coming from my end of things where the most interaction I had with any sponsor (as production manager) was the branding slideshow that ran passively on our screens in between panels, it doesn’t make much sense to completely exclude a huge avenue for stepping up what a convention can offer to attendees (and therefore attract more attendees to be able to offer bigger and better things).
@Farasha–WorldCon isn’t an anime convention. It comes from a different tradition, and has a different culture and different customs.
That ought to be okay with you. Is it?
I can’t go to WorldCon very often, because I can’t travel the world. I go when I can.
The local cons I go to aren’t anime cons, either. That’s not where my interests lie, or the kind of event I enjoy.
And even leaving aside the Hugo fiasco, what happened at Chengdu, with all the big decisions, including dates, location, and even programming decisions being made by the sponsors, is a really powerful argument about relying more heavily than we have so for, to provide splash and pizzazz that aren’t part of the core purpose of getting together with other fans to enjoy, celebrate, and talk about the genre we love.
Run your conventions the way you enjoy them! Have fun!
I want fans, not sponsors, deciding the schedule, panelists, and events.
As well as, you know, the dates and location, not changing those things after the site selection voters have already voted, based on different dates and a different location.
@Lis Carey
Well yes, of course I do know that different events are targeted to different audiences, and I’m not saying there should never be any concerns about sponsors – they should always be vetted, both to determine their interest in the event (make sure they’re not planning on hijacking, as happened in Chengdu), and that they fit the morals and mission of the event (so, not Raytheon). I was just surprised to see a general vibe that sponsors are the worst thing that could ever happen to an event and would inevitably corporatize it. I was providing an alternate view that it’s entirely possible to have an event still be fan-centered and primarily fan-driven while also accepting some monetary help from sponsors.
The thing is, WorldCon is not fan-centered or fan-driven. It’s fan-run. It is a community effort. It doesn’t sell tickets, it sells memberships. I know a lot f people, mainly peripheral to fandom, who treat it as a consumer event: you pay your money and you get entertainment in return. That is a way of getting very little from the convention, because as entertainment, it sucks. It is not something you are supposed to sit down and enjoy, it is something you are supposed to co-create. To quote Le Guin:
“You cannot buy the WorldCon. You cannot sell the WorldCon. You can only be the WorldCon. It is inside you, or it is nowhere.”
Andre Norton was definitely a major gateway author to SFF for me. I have no idea what my first Norton was or when I read it, because that was back in the days when I was reading my way from one end of the library to the other and not always paying attention to authors. When I started buying books for myself, in the late ’70s, I had the ambition to “collect the whole set” though in the days before Wikipedia it was much harder to track down just what “the whole set” would consist of. (I recall once seeing a special “boxed set” of Andre Norton works with one title for each letter of the alphabet.) I don’t think I came close, but she does occupy at least two shelves of my book cases.
Funny misunderstanding: at some point, knowing the Andre Norton’s original name was Alice Mary Norton, I got her confused in my head with Mary Norton, author of the Borrowers series. (Based on the disambiguation note in Wikipedia, I wasn’t the only one!)
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
Fan-driven and fan-run are a distinction without a difference for me – I suspect I was using “fan-driven” in the same way you’re using “fan-run,” because I was using it to mean “put on entirely by fans for other fans.” I’d define any convention, even a traveling one like Worldcon, that is managed by fans on a volunteer basis in this same way. Lord knows it would be nice to collect a paycheck for all the hours I pour into this!
I also think I didn’t explain enough the context I was approaching this from, which was within the context of seeing other people discuss things like attendance shrinkage and demographics and how a newer generation of fans might want different things out of a convention. So I was speaking from experience, as one of those younger fans (I may have also cut my teeth on Heinlein juveniles but the writers of my generation are, among others, Xiran Jay Zhou) who is also in the fan-run convention space. I just wanted to point out that there are spaces out there that are still all-volunteer, fan-run, who manage not to have their con hijacked by the people who give us some money in exchange for a panel or two on the schedule and some branding on the backdrops, and that maybe it’s possible to look at how sponsorships can be used in responsible ways by future Worldcons. It seems inevitable that another Worldcon will at some point reach out to a sponsor to fill a monetary gap, since it’s happened before.
It is worth remembering that the “media versus literary versus gaming” convention (and fandom) splits of the 1970s and early 1980s are further away from today than those events were from the first WorldCon.
Someone could have spent a lifetime in fandom, and specifically in a con-running fandom, completely absent from the direct fandom heritage that puts on WorldCon. It might be worthwhile to give those people a listen; doesn’t mean that you’ll want to do things the way they do, but it would seem highly unlikely that they haven’t got knowledge to share.
@Dave Weinstein–And should we just be listening? Do we have nothing to offer that, to pick a random example, anime conrunning might benefit from?
I mean, leaving aside the tone-deafness of “Moar sponsorships!” while we’re realizing just how badly excessive corporate sponsorships distorted and damaged Chengdu.
@Lis Carey
I was never advocating “Moar Sponsorships!” in the face of Chengdu. I was saying it’s startling to find that there’s a complete hard-line stance against the idea of sponsors. Maybe it’s the hard-line stance against that discourages transparency around the situations where sponsorships have been involved?
I’m also saying that, given that a situation where the membership strongly disagreed with how sponsorships were handled by concoms has happened at least twice (that I’m aware of), it’s completely possible other concoms in the future might do this as well. It’d be a good idea to have a discussion that lays out the things the community doesn’t like about sponsors or events with them (like sponsor input on programming – I agree I wouldn’t want to go to a con where 90% of the programming is corporate, which is why I don’t attend ComicCons). I was also saying that it’s possible to strike a balance, because it is, and because the complete lack of interest in enforcing limitations of what sponsors were allowed input on is another particular failure of how Chengdu was run.
@Lis Carey: I don’t know. But I’m not the person to ask about that anyway. My con-running days are long over (and that was in the literary con tradition, for what it’s worth), and honestly, given the past few years, even my con-attending days are not looking all that likely.
But, you do have someone here from another parallel tradition to talk to. So, go ahead and talk. What is WorldCon doing really well these past few years that other fannish con-running traditions could learn from?
@Farasha–It’s not “a complete hard-line stance against sponsorships. There have long been sponsorships.
They just haven’t been from big, shiny, not-connected-to-sf-and-fandom corporations, there to promote things unrelated to sf and fandom.
I suspect even the Raytheon mistake was due to thinking of Raytheon in terms of space, and not asking enough questions.
What we need to do now is ask more hard questions and demand more transparency, not toss out the practice of having sponsorships actually tied to connections to our community rather than just companies that want to advertise at us.
Or, in the case of Chengdu, use us to advertise to a much larger audience. Didn’t really see that coming, but obviously we’ll be needing to be alert for it in the future.
No, this is really not the time to be lecturing us to toss out our caution about sponsorships. ????
Not if you want a receptive audience.
Because we did have the most recent WorldCon hijacked by sponsors.
Honestly? Probably not in any meaningful way. The Anime con community is operating at a scale significantly larger than anything the Worldcon community of fandom ever has. In a multitude of ways.
In any decent sized city you can go to a dozen anime conventions/related events a year. Easily. And they’re going to be everything from several dozen fans doing something completely volunteer driven to massive tens of thousands of people events run by professional organizers with international attendees and guests.
There was a post here a few days ago about New Zealand fandom really struggling right now and hoping to re-start a few small events and work their way back up. I just did a quick google and found a dozen large Anime events coming up in New Zealand.
At the moment there is probably a literal order of magnitude more convention experience in just the Anime community than all of the Worldcon related fandom. They run more events of every sort, including completely non-corporate fan-driven ones, in a year than this community does in a decade.
And they talk to everybody. As someone who wanders between a few different communities the lack of cross-pollination in the Worldcon related fandom is striking. Striking and basically unique to this fandom. Just about all the other convention running fandoms are all up in each other’s business.
Those are all commercial for-profit, not fan-run events. One of them pretends to be fan-run, but is actually put on by 3 business people who own an Anime/Manga store and use volunteers to provide labour for their event.
The only actual fan-run conventions in Aotearoa are those affiliated with SFFANZ or clubs which are affiliated with SFFANZ.
The numbers are not shrinking as far as WorldCon goes. And the graying is also not really real, it’s an artefact of people who were once young and saw lots of young people around and now they are pushing sixty and so are all their friends – it’s hard to notice the people three generations ahead because as a rule you don’t socialise with them.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: The numbers are not shrinking as far as WorldCon goes. And the graying is also not really real
I think that’s a common misconception among people who attend the larger cons, who assume that the smaller size of Worldcon is obvious evidence of a problem — and that everyone who attends Worldcon would like it to be much larger and therefore “more successful”.
The reality is that Worldcon has been roughly the same size (avg 4,500-6,500) for many years, since the mid-80s.
And a lot of us really like it being that size. It’s large enough to have the abillity to do multiple programming tracks which scratch a variety of fannish itches, but small enough that authors can attend wearing both fan and pro hats. The authors are often willing to chat in the hallway or the bar. They’ll pose for photos for/with you, or give you autographs, without expecting you to pay for it. Because Worldcon is small, everyone can relax and be a fan there.
So many people compare Worldcon and say “Look at how successful DragonCon is! Look how many people attend ComiCon!”
And if you’re an author who is trying to make a name for yourself, I can see why you’d think bigger is better. If you love the massive crowd events, I can see why you’d think bigger is better.
But if Worldcon got a lot larger, I would stop attending. Massive events with mile-long lines and crowds of many thousands of people are not something I would enjoy at all.
In 2009 I wrote a long analysis about why the Worldcon isn’t a bigger convention — “Sowing Dragon’s Teeth”. TL;DR version: It’s precisely because we center it on text sf and writers that it’s not bigger. Which also has been the attraction for those who follow it year after year.
@Lis Carey: “Do we have nothing to offer that, to pick a random example, anime conrunning might benefit from?”
Given the last decade or so it’s hard to see what those would be.
Cassy B. on February 18, 2024 at 9:29 am said:
@Paul Weimer, if you wouldn’t mind saying, is it WEEmer or WYmer? I’ve heard “ei” in names pronounced both ways and I’d prefer to get it correct if possible.
As my colleague at SKiffy and Fanty, Trish Matson (who did that poem about the Hugos recently) coined it sometime back. “Weimer as in Dreamer”
@Paul Weimer
Thanks for that — as someone whose “ei” is pronounced the other way, I definitely have been getting it wrong all this time.
“You may say that I’m a Weimer, but I’m not the only one “