(1) NOT A NEW PHENOMENON. [Item by Anne Marble.] If the article quoted in Seanan McGuire’s thread is any indication, the people marketing “romantasy” seem to think they’re the first to publish fantasy novels for women. Or maybe they know better — but they don’t care because they’re trying to market romantasy/romantic fantasy. Bluesky thread starts here.
(2) WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA. Like Abigail Nussbaum says in her headline: “The 2023 Hugo Awards: Somehow, It Got Worse” at Asking the Wrong Questions.
… I’m going to say this again, because it is so shocking that it seems to have taken a lot of people some time to grasp the enormity of it: hundreds, perhaps even thousands of valid, legal nominating ballots were dropped from the final nominating stats, apparently under the pretext of having represented a slate, even though slates are perfectly legal under the Hugo rules. This was done on the orders of the Hugo administrator, with apparently no outside input or discussion, and appears to have elicited so little response from the Hugo team that they are casually mentioning it as if it’s nothing. If these numbers are correct, it’s entirely possible that the whole Hugo ballot should have looked completely different, and that none of the eventual winners in the fiction categories should have even been nominated.
What this means is that the entire 2023 Hugo scandal is something completely different from what we’ve understood it as during the last month. Appalling as it is, the choice to screen English-language nominees for ideological compatibility may, in fact, be a sideshow to the real scandal, which is that hundreds of Chinese voters have been disenfranchised. And—barring even more revelations—this disenfranchisement cannot be blamed on PRC sensibilities and censorship. I truly doubt that it was in the interest of China, or the Chinese business interests who took over Worldcon, to remove Chinese-language nominees from last year’s Hugo ballot. This decision came from the American and Canadian staffers who made up the English-language Hugo team, many of them Worldcon volunteers of long standing.
In this context, it is infuriating to recall just how quickly the response to our original sense of what this scandal was turned to anti-democratic measures and calls to limit the power of rank-and-file Worldcon members. “Elections have consequences!” crowed the people who are still pissed they weren’t allowed to steal the site selection vote in 2021, while others called to limit site selection to those with “skin in the game”—read, those with the wherewithal to travel to US-based conventions. But as it turns out, the call was coming from inside the house. This was never a China problem. It’s an us problem. If the allegations that are now emerging claiming that McCarty has behaved this way in the past, and also harassed other Worldcon staffers, are to be believed (and there is certainly more than enough reason to believe them at this point), it’s a profound failure on the part of Worldcon and its membership to police toxic members, which has now blown up in all our faces….
(3) TCHAIKOVSKY’S STATEMENT ABOUT 2023 HUGO. His Children of Time was announced as winner of the 2023 Best Series Hugo, however, after all the revelations “Adrian Tchaikovsky Will No Longer Cite His 2023 Hugo”.
There are many reasonable points of view about how to deal with the awards. File 770’s goal is to support and respect the recipients’ decisions.
Another author, Samantha Mills, recently made a decision comparable to Tchaikovsky’s, in a blog post titled “’Rabbit Test’ unwins the Hugo”.
(4) THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING. The Hugo Awards scandal has even made it into Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter – “Litteraturpris valde bort kinesiska författare”. The article is behind a paywall, though that’s honestly only a problem if you read Swedish.
(5) RAH VS. PKD. Giant Freakin Robot, in “The Sci-Fi Master Whose Work Has Been Ignored By Hollywood, And That Needs To Change”, feels Robert A. Heinlein deserves the kind of cinematic attention given to Philip K. Dick. (Survey says – *bzzzt*! “Wrong!”)
…Hollywood has had an ongoing love affair with the works of Phillip K. Dick for decades now. Sometimes it’s a healthy relationship, giving us masterworks such as Blade Runner. Sometimes it’s downright abusive when it produces flicks like Screamers or Paycheck. And sometimes it splits the difference and serves up enjoyable silliness such as Total Recall.
Still, as many times as the movies have returned to Dick’s catalog, you’d think he was the only SF writer out there. We all know better, of course, and pretty much any SF fan has their dream list of books they’d love to see brought to the silver screen.
If Hollywood really wants to freshen things up, they should take a closer look at the work of Robert A. Heinlein….
(6) BANNED FROM THE HIGHWAY. [Item by Dann.] Remember when non-genre magazines used to publish SFF stories?
Every automobile begins as the sparkle in someone’s eye. In 1981, Neil Peart and his Rush bandmates introduced the world to a Red Barchetta. Saved in an old white-haired uncle’s barn. A relic from before the Motor Law being chased down by gleaming alloy air cars before being saved by a one-lane bridge
But before that, it was an old MGB roadster. Rendered obsolete by wave after wave of modern automobile safety standards had made surviving car crashes not only likely but predictable. The drivers of the newly designed cars expected to walk away from accidents unscathed. As a result, drivers of these Modern Safety Vehicles began targeting older vehicles leaving them in mangled heaps. Those driving older cars were likely to be left in a similarly mangled condition. The price for driving a classic. And so the driver of the old MGB engages in a race for his life pursued by a pair of MSVs.
The story was “A Nice Morning Drive“. It was written by Richard S. Foster and first published in the November 1973 issue of Road & Track magazine. Neil Peart had encountered the story and was inspired to re-tell it in a more distant future where automobiles were banned. It appeared in 1981 on the quintessential RUSH album, Moving Pictures as the second track, “Red Barchetta“.
The band had tried to contact Richard, but R&T no longer had his current address. They did add a credit note referencing the original story in the liner notes.
It was many years later before a friend pointed out that Neil had been inspired by Richard’s story. And it was a few years after that when Richard began corresponding with Neil. The two eventually planned a motorcycle ride along the East Coast. It turns out that they both owned the same model motorcycle, the BMW R1200GS.
As a footnote, Moving Pictures came out in my junior year of high school when I took an advanced composition class. At some point, a red car entered into the zeitgeist of my classmates. The model would shift to suit the moods and tastes of various authors. Sometimes it was only glimpsed under a protective tarp. Other times it would it would fly along country roads kicking up a stream of fall leaves. Our automobile appreciations lasted about a month before our teacher put a firm but kindly end to our vehicular ruminations.
(7) BACK IN ACTION. Nancy Collins’ February 19 update to her GoFundMe backers is good news indeed: “Fundraiser by Nancy Collins : What Doesn’t Kill Me Leaves Me With Medical Bills”.
I want to take a moment to thank all of you once again for the great kindness and generosity you have shown me in the recent weeks and also update you on my current status and plans.
This coming weekend (February 23rd-25th) I will be a guest at Pensacon 2024 in Pensacola, FL. My doctor says I’m in good enough health to travel as long as I continue to pace myself and take my meds and supplements. And, to be blunt, I can’t afford to pass up what is likely my only comic con appearance for the foreseeable future. So if any of you who have donated are at the convention this coming weekend, please stop by so I can thank you in person. My good friend, Adam–who is the one who talked me into going to the ER instead of gutting it out another 24 hours–will be driving me there and back, as well as helping set-up and run my merchandise table for the weekend, so I have reliable support with me.
I have 3 more weeks, more or less, of blood thinners twice a day ahead of me before I get an idea of whether or not the blood clots were a one-off event or a symptom of something more serious. Until I know one way or another, I will be staying close to home. However, I still plan to be at the Outer Dark Writer’s Symposium in Atlanta next month, health permitting.
(8) LEE AND MILLER PHOTO. Following yesterday’s announcement of Steve Miller’s death, Andrew Porter sent File 770 his photo of the Steve and Sharon at Book Expo.
(9) MARK MERLINO DIES. Mark Merlino, one of the early founders of organized Anime and Furry fandoms in North America, died February 20 at age 71. He suffered a stroke in December, then was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer about two weeks ago.
Merlino was known for organizing ConFurence, the very first furry convention, which laid the groundwork for the community’s expansion and visibility. His influential role was also recognized in the documentary feature The Fandom, showcasing his significant contributions.
(10) RICHARD MATHEWS (1944-2024). Scholar Douglas Anderson pays tribute to a colleague in “R.I.P. Richard Mathews (1944-2024)” at Tolkien and Fantasy.
I just googled to see if my old friend Richard Mathews was still the Director of the University of Tampa Press, only to find out that he died last month.
I met him at the 1987 Mythcon in Milwaukee, where we both appeared on a panel on David Lindsay. We found we had many common interests. Richard had published, with Borgo Press, a short book on Tolkien, Lightning from a Clear Sky (1978), and other short books on William Morris and Brian Aldiss. His most notable work was the Twayne volume Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination (1997; reissued in 2012), which was filled with insights despite the somewhat odd structure of the book (presumably imposed upon him as part of the series it was in). Richard also contributed introductions to some of the William Morris reprints for the Newcastle fantasy series in the 1970s….
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 21, 1946 — Alan Rickman. (Died 2016.) The first time I saw Alan Rickman was in the decidedly not-genre role of German terrorist leader Hans Gruber in Die Hard, a film that’s still high on my list of great thriller films. Great role for him, too. It was amazingly his first film role.
He would won a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I actually did see that film. No, I’ll never watch again. Simon R. Green’s publicist tells me he made a lot of money for writing the novelization.
Rickman went on to play the wizard Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. I can’t say I cared for the character but I don’t think we were supposed to. I never got beyond a hundred pages in the first novel before I gave up reading it, but loved the films.
While in the film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the GalaxyWarwick Davis played Marvin, the android who was clinically depressed and in the novels I thought a royal pain in the ass, it was Alan Rickman who actually voiced the character.
He also voiced Absolem, the Caterpillar in an odd version of Alice in Wonderland. Look it up. Trust me, it’s weird.
And yes, I saved the best first last for last which as you already know is his role in the Hugo Award winning Galaxy Quest which is by far his best genre role. Alexander Dane is a Shakesperean actor who resents his character Dr. Lazarus, the ship’s science officer. His catch phrase? Oh, you know that by heart.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Macanudo shows who really was entitled to say, “How wude!!”
(13) ALL IN THE FOUND FAMILY. [Item by Steven French.] How the story of the ‘Hopkinsville goblins’ led to ET, Gremlins and a bunch of other movies! “The Long, Surprising Legacy of the Hopkinsville Goblins” at Atlas Obscura.
…THE STORY COMES TO US from the local newspaper Kentucky New Era, which, on August 22, 1955, reported strange goings-on the previous night, eight miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. At about 11:00 pm, two cars arrived at the local police station, blasting out of the night filled with at least five adults and several children, all of whom were highly agitated. “We need help,” they told the police. “We’ve been fighting them for nearly four hours.”
Once they’d calmed down enough to talk, they unfurled a strange story. One of the men, Billy Ray Taylor, had been visiting from Pennsylvania. At one point, he went outside to fetch water from the farm’s well. As he walked through the failing light, he saw a circular-shaped object hover through the air before coming to rest in a nearby gully…
… Concerned, Taylor retreated inside and returned with a shotgun to investigate. As he walked into the gloom, a strange, goblin-like thing with glowing eyes appeared and moved toward him. It had “huge eyes,” and hands out of proportion with its body, and looked to be wearing some kind of “metal plate.” Taylor retreated to the house yet again and grabbed a .22 caliber pistol, while Lucky Sutton grabbed a shotgun and joined him.
A creature—whether it was the same one, they didn’t know—appeared in the window, and Sutton unloaded his shotgun at it, blowing out the window screen. When they went outside to see if they’d hit anything, Taylor felt a “huge hand” reach down from the low roof above and grab his hair….
(14) CARVING OUT A PLACE IN SPACE. “Japan to launch world’s first wooden satellite to combat space pollution” – the Guardian has the story.
The LignoSat probe has been built of magnolia wood, which, in experiments carried out on the International Space Station (ISS), was found to be particularly stable and resistant to cracking. Now plans are being finalised for it to be launched on a US rocket this summer.
The timber satellite has been built by researchers at Kyoto University and the logging company Sumitomo Forestry in order to test the idea of using biodegradable materials such as wood to see if they can act as environmentally friendly alternatives to the metals from which all satellites are currently constructed.
“All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.”…
(15) IT’S SUN-GRY. The Guardian reports — “Astronomers discover universe’s brightest object – a quasar powered by a black hole that eats a sun a day”. (“Feed me!”)
The brightest known object in the universe, a quasar 500tn times brighter than our sun, was “hiding in plain sight”, researchers say.
Australian scientists spotted a quasar powered by the fastest growing black hole ever discovered. Its mass is about 17bn times that of our solar system’s sun, and it devours the equivalent of a sun a day.
The light from the celestial object travelled for more than 12bn years to reach Earth….
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Animation Magazine encourages readers: “Watch: Prime Video Sneak Peeks ‘The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy’ in New Clip”. The series debuts February 23.
…In a new exclusive clip shared with Animation Magazine, we get an advance look at the premiere episode. The excerpt features Dr. Klak (Keke Palmer), Dr. Sleech (Stephanie Hsu), Dr. Vlam (Maya Rudolph) and Dr. Plowp (Kieran Culkin). In Season 1, doctors Sleech and Klak take on a highly dangerous and potentially groundbreaking case and, in doing so, put existence itself in jeopardy. (Although considering their dismal personal lives, oblivion might be an improvement.)…
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Taral Wayne, Rich Lynch, Anne Marble, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Jones.]
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(1) Rolls eyes. It’s been running for decades. I’m the wrong person to do so, but perhaps Seanan might write a letter to the Guardian…
(3) To him, and Ms. Mills, it’s nice to see people doing the honorable thing, even if it hurts. And yes, honor isn’t just some thing that only little kids believe in.
(5) As much as I like Heinlein, he’s had films (I’m ignoring Starship Troopers). How about Brunner? How about Zelazy? Lafferty? Andre Norton? Zenna Henderson?
(6) You mean like Boy’s Life, with the series about a time machine?
(7) Wonderful news.
(12) Worldcon, Miami, 1977. Masquerade: I come out as, of course, Obi Wan, pulling a trash can that I’d covered with posterboard, taped on wheel… but it had a flat lid (couldn’t find a round one).”This is R2-D1, everyone knows revolutionary forces are always short on money.” Lift lid, pull out bheer. “Makes a great bheer cooler, too”. I think the MC’s “And the farce be with you” was the first usage of that…
Die Hard not genre, even though it features the Infinite Improbability Drive?(offscreen) Next you will be saying it’s not a Christmas movie.
(1) I’m going to send Jirel of Joiry after those marketers. She’ll be joined by a huge band of women warriors.
(2)-(4) It’s sad that it’s necessary for people to keep writing about this. But I’m also finding some great points of view. (I can’t vouch for the Swedish article.)
(5) Can we have some Dragonriders of Pern first? 🙂 Or Andre Norton, as Mark said.
(11) By Grabthar’s hammer, what a tribute!
(9) My condolences to Mark’s friends and family.
Too many deaths. 🙁
Clickity?
2,3,4:
Things like this DEVALUE the Hugo Awards.
Uh Oh, Warner Brothers are at it AGAIN:
https://deadline.com/2024/02/salems-lot-stephen-king-calls-out-warner-bros-1235832374/#comments
It looks very much like Zaslav is writing off another movie….
Thomas – and people think I’m being unreasonably paranoid worrying, as I have for decades, that one year, some MBA in the agribusiness industry is going to decide that the tax breaks, if they don’t plant 10% or so of their farmland is a better return than planting, and there’s a worldwide famine (and I see that right now, “large scale family farms and agribusiness” are over 63% of all US food production).
5) I would also accept a whole bunch of C.J. Cherryh adaptations. Or Katherine Kurtz.
Brad Templeton says Die Hard not genre, even though it features the Infinite Improbability Drive?(offscreen) Next you will be saying it’s not a Christmas movie.
I did say that Die Hard wasn’t genre as I said “The first time I saw Alan Rickman was in the decidedly not-genre role of German terrorist leader Hans Gruber in Die Hard”, so your point is?
I never considered it a Christmas film despite being set at that time of year as that has no meaningful impact upon the story.
Now I have a pixel gun. Scroll-scroll-scroll.
Another film by Rickman worth seeing is_Dust_, a short in which he plays a character who likes teeth. It’s a 7-minute fantasy, and also stars Jodie Whittaker. Easily findable on youtube,
We’ve been bingeing Resident Alien off Netflix this last week, an SF comedy in which Alan Tudyk plays an alien stuck on Earth. He intends to destroy humanity, but people are slowly changing his mind. The show is hilarious.
(11) We were talking about Versailles not long ago, and now I remember that it was Alan Rickman who directed A Little Chaos and also played Louis XIV. Not genre* but well worth watching.
* unless you count fountain engineering as a science? hmm.
(2) I wish that the people spreading the claim that “hundreds, perhaps even thousands of valid, legal nominating ballots were dropped from the final nominating stats” would consider that claim in the context of the actual trends in nomination numbers and patterns. While there are references from several sources of “slate” nominating ballots being discounted, what we see in the most anomalous categories is quite different and more peculiar than what we’d expect if a large proportion of nominators followed a slate. There are odd absences in the data, but they aren’t absences in the shape of a large number of highly similar ballots. (If only for the reason that the removal of a voting slate would make the nomination data look more normal, not less so.)
(11) My personal favorite Alan Rickman genre role was when he played Colonel Brandon.
@Cat Eldridge,
Au contraire, because the fine folk at Nakatomi Plaza were all gathered in one place, for their CHRISTMAS PARTY, the attackers were able to corral them. So IMO Christmas played a significant role in the way the movie unfolded.
(Why yes, “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie.)
Heather Rose Jones: I wish that the people spreading the claim that “hundreds, perhaps even thousands of valid, legal nominating ballots were dropped from the final nominating stats” would consider that claim in the context of the actual trends in nomination numbers and patterns.
That assumes that the stats document only shows 1 type of WTFery.
The evidence is strong that there are several types of WTFery reflected in the stats document — including an attempt to cover up the fact that the works nominated on 1,000 “slating” ballots were removed.
(3) “There are many reasonable points of view about how to deal with the awards. File 770’s goal is to support and respect the recipients’ decisions.”
Well said.
(11) Rickman played a ghost in Truly, Madly, Deeply. And he was also an excellent stage actor, particularly in Shakespeare. Though I didn’t see him as the first Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, I did see him do Achilles (Troilus and Cressida) and Jacques for the RSC, as well as Antony (with Helen Mirren) at the National Theatre. I didn’t see his Hamlet, staged with the money from Robin Hood (as I’ve heard).
I didn’t know before his death how famous he was within his profession for helping other actors.
(11) Just about my only claim to fame is that I once stood next to Alan Rickman at the urinals of the West Yorkshire Playhouse. A brief manly nod was of course our only interaction,
1) the last time we went through this nonsense was in 2016, which led to Martha Wells fantastic Nebula speech about women being erased from SFF. I got to podcast with Courtney Schafer, Helen Lowe and Kate Elliott.
Everything old is new again, including idiocy.
3) I support the winners who want to keep their awards (like Chris Barkley, “of this parish” as well as Adrian and Samantha, who do not.
Thanks to McCarty and his cadre for making 2023 a gigantic asterisk.
8) Sadly, I never got to speak to Steve in my time in Fandom. My loss. 🙁
(1) I’m not totally sure why McGuire blames the “women don’t like fantasy” attitude on men when all the people quoted in the excerpt she’s reacting to are women!
(2) Thanks for sharing this link, Mike; in the midst of all the Hugo drama, I had missed the degree to which votes were tossed. If I am interpreting the “validation” spreadsheet correctly, it looks like Nettle & Bone, Kaiju Preservation, and Legends & Lattes wouldn’t have even made the ballot without the mass disqualification of “slates.” It boggles my mind that anyone thought this was okay; we endured three years of Hugo misery precisely because everyone agreed it was NOT okay. If admins could just toss slates out, 2015 would have been very different!
(10) I work in the English and Writing Department at the University of Tampa, and actually am associate editor of a journal founded by him and S. T. Joshi. I overlapped with Richard by only a couple years; I regret that in that time I only had a couple meaningful conversations with him, but I found him to be thoughtful and enthusiastic about his work. The UT Press is collecting tributes to Richard that will be published on our blog and shared at a reception (perhaps printed or in a slideshow). To be included, please send tributes to [email protected] by 3/22.
Regarding 2. and asking the wrong questions.
Let me ask a different question:
Based on McCarthy’s supposed Push in 2014 to remove “Slate ballots”
https://bsky.app/profile/peripateticmeg.bsky.social/post/3kjm6dmqk3t2x
The supposed push to remove “Slate ballots” in 2016
https://bsky.app/profile/scifantasy.bsky.social/post/3klnwv4kned2b
And McCarthy’s success in removing “Slate ballots” in 2023 as evidenced by the Validation spreadsheet, and Diane Lacey’s Apology letter.
Did McCarthy Push to remove “Slate votes” in 2018? and if yes, was he successful?
Because it seems like it was just a matter of time before he successfully removed valid ballots – and that it successfully happened to Chinese works is a travesty in and of itself – but did he succeed prior to that?
Quoting Paul Weimer’s comment:
Not just 2023 – in some quarters, doubt is beginning to creep in over all Hugos. Has Dave McCarty ditched ballots before? Have other Hugo administrators? It shouldn’t have been happening, but then again, McCarty is posing this as a perfectly normal practice … Is that just to give himself some cover, or are there really problems elsewhere in the history of the Hugos?
2) I thought this was the most significant part of the Worldcon 2023 imbroglio. I was wondering what was taking so long for this aspect to be centered in the discussion. If the administrators aren’t willing to obey the bylaws, then what is the point of nominating and voting? Do the awards represent the thoughts of the subset of genre readers that make up Worldcon or not?
5) Survey says – yes! And it’s about time. He has a wealth of interesting work just in his short stories alone. Could we also toss Robert Silverberg into the mix?
11) Great reminiscence. But Die Hard is still a Christmas movie.
Regards,
Dann
Never preach harder than you can entertain. – Jim Butcher
(6) I remember running across Stephen King stories in my mother’s issues of “Yankee” magazine. Good time!
I am skeptical that previous tampering happened like it did this year, since this tampering was so inexpertly done that it was not possible to hide, and they highlighted the fact that there was a problem with how long it took them to manufacture evidence (admittedly harder under the new rules)
I am trying not to draw rough political analogies, but it seems that if there was tampering with the vote outcomes, it seems to have been tampering that generally favored the folks who were accusing that tampering was shutting them out. Much like recent US politics, where after loud accusations of vote tampering, almost all the cases found were done to support the very people who claimed they were being victimized.
(okay, maybe I am trying to draw rough political analogies. But I found it maddening that in both the case of the Puppies and in politics, the response to accusations of vote tampering was to vote tamper for real. And I suspect that was the purpose of the lie- to get people to do something inappropriate that they would not otherwise normally do, because the other side had supposedly already done it)
To badly paraphrase George Lucas, history may not always exactly repeat, but it rhymes.
I just keep reeling at how poorly McCarty understood the community he was serving, it seems like he was sure a few months would be enough that nobody would care.
I really liked all the winners. And I am upset that their career highlights are now tainted. I wish it was possible to know who actually won.
Re. “Has Dave McCarty ditched ballots before? Have other Hugo administrators?”, can I point out that when I raised the existence of the SFW recommendation list/slate/whatever here on File 770 seven months ago, Nicholas Whyte posted his own analysis on it on Twitter and on his blog.
I don’t want to put words in Nicholas’ mouth, but when he says “Given the rather low impact of the recommendation list, I would be surprised if the number of voters who followed it can be demonstrated to be more than a couple of dozen …” I take that as meaning that the idea that a large number of nominations were removed was something that never crossed his mind, and so any of the Hugos that he was involved in administering would surely not have involved this sort of shenanigans.
1) This is like that old saw about every generation thinking it’s the one that invented sex… every time there’s a shift in fashion, it’s unprecedented, it’s never been done before, it’s totally new and original – or so the marketers like to claim. I don’t know who I’d send after them to teach them the errors of their ways. Britomart, maybe, from The Faerie Queene? Or maybe H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha (because, whatever the faults of She, the story is clearly Ayesha’s, driven by her needs, her goals, and her tragic flaws.) Yes, I think a short visit from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed should do the trick.
2 – 4) Some people were more than a little concerned about having the Worldcon in an authoritarian state. We consoled ourselves with the notion that, well, at least we’d get to see lots of new and interesting Chinese SF. And now it seems that Dave McCarty took it upon himself to save us from that dreadful fate.
We have a defence against slates. EPH. It was extensively brainstormed in theory, and when it was put to the test (in 2017) it worked in practice. We do not need the Hugo administrators to go through the nominating ballots making entirely subjective value judgements about what is or is not allowed. Process ’em all and let EPH sort ’em out.
How the named winners from 2023 choose to deal with their awards is very much their personal choice, and the rest of us can just respect that and shut up. It’s a grim situation – Children of Time, for example, is exactly the sort of thing that I think ought to win Best Series – but, ultimately, it’s not my opinion that matters. If only the Hugo admins had thought the same way.
We really do need a shake-up of the overall administration process, of course. Glasgow’s declaration of transparency and accountability is a sound step in the right direction, but we need some mechanism for ensuring future votes are run like that.
I suppose the 2023 Hugos are a sign of the times, like Brexit or the Trump presidency. A system can run along quite nicely for a long time, based on general goodwill and “gentlemen’s agreements”, but when someone comes along who says, “Screw all that, I’m doing things my way, and nobody can stop me!”… well, general goodwill doesn’t really stand much of a chance there. And so people like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Dave McCarty get to make their marks on history. (Dave McCarty may not like being lumped in with Trump and Johnson. If so: tough.)
5) Here’s a wild idea: if Hollywood wants to really “freshen things up”, why not try some adaptations of writers who, well, still have a pulse?
11) Haven’t yet seen any mention of Rickman’s role as Metatron in Dogma, so I’ll mention it. What are you going to do about it? Hit me with that fish?… I liked Dogma; it was a very silly movie that managed to handle some very serious themes along the way.
I was part of the Hugo Administration Team in 2017, and I can state with absolute certainty that there were no shenanigans on his watch. Whyte was absolutely meticulous about doing everything the correct way. I will point out that there was a sizable slate of Puppy picks that year — even if it was only one or two entries per category — and those people and works were treated with the utmost courtesy and absolute fairness, the same as all the other finalists.
Nicholas provided the most extensive explanatory notes for every action and decision that was taken as part of that year’s process — more than any Hugo Admin had ever provided — as well as some analysis of how the rankings shook out. Those documents can be accessed on the page for The 2017 Hugo Awards.
@Jos_V – Thanks for sharing that; the thread from Will Frank is vaguely horrifying. Why WAS this guy allowed back after that!?
@Ryan Jones – Part of the issue this year, though, is that (as I understand it) what exposed that some tampering happening was nonsensical EPH tallies. Before 2017, tossed ballots would not have been so obvious when looking at nominations data.
@John S – I forgot about that post from Nicholas. Rereading it, it is almost entirely wrong… but it’s not his fault, who could have predicted such a thing!
@ ErsatzCulture,
What about 2018?
According to thehugoawards.org between, 2014 and 2023, McCarty was on the, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2023 hugo administration teams. Nicholas Whyte wasn’t on 2018 team.
Jos_V: What about 2018? According to thehugoawards.org between, 2014 and 2023, McCarty was on the, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2023 hugo administration teams.
At this point, we’re never going to know if there was funny business in those years – unless someone else on the Hugo team saw it and speaks up. Even if the raw nomination data is still around (which I highly doubt), there’s no way of knowing whether it had previously been tampered with.
I don’t think that speculation about those years is productive. All we can do is blacklist the 2023 Hugo team – including Dave McCarty and Ben Yalow – from ever having anything to do with the Awards again, and fix the rules so that a repeat of this fiasco will not occur.
We have no reason to suspect any Hugoaward administrated by people who weren’t part of Chengdu.
We know that there was some checks on McCarthy in former years, there wasn’t anyone who keept him in check 2023.
We also know that McCarthy isn’t very good at nominating data and not getting caught.
What I find allarming is that Dave still has defenders and that no one had any problem in following orders even if we are talking about very seasoned SMOFS. I agree with JJ that we have to get everyone who is responsible out of the Hugos and Ben Yalow out of his other responsibilitys. We also have to get out (again) of the mentality that if someone misbehaves it should stay private.
From all of that I don’t think that other Hugos were manipulated, they were just to bad at it, so it would have been caught.
It is also worth repeating Camestros Felapton’s week-old notice that none of the previous EPH nominating statistics show any trace of tampering that was absolutely glaring last year.
(4) I do not see any paywall, either from my EU home IP or a random US and Canadian VPN. 11 paragraphs (machine-translatable without serious problems), largely regurgitating the NYT.
1) You’ll never lose money betting on ignorance, and Millenials/Gen Z seem particularly susceptible to the Year Zero/’human history started the day I was born’ school of thought. On the other hand, ‘I reject your reality and substitute my own’ is also a key tenet of marketing.
2) Maybe if WorldCon has any of those wooden asterisks left over, they could hand them out for this year too since it seems like every time it looks like things have hit rock bottom, someone starts to dig.
5) I dunno what methodology that survey used, but it seem deeply flawed if that’s the answer it returned. Heinlein film adaptations would be absolute bangers and the article is correct that his juveniles would do better than say ‘Starship Troopers’ or Stranger.’ ‘Glory Road’, ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ and ‘Friday’ would also do well as films, I think.
On a related note, the edition of ‘Citizen of the Galaxy’ the article used had a cover blurb about how a Heinlein book is better than 99% of the sci-fi produced every year and sixty years later, you could quibble about the percentage but that’s still largely true.
11)
Alan Rickman was the original Valmont in the West End and Broadway of the play that became *Les Liaisons Dangereuses”. He was replaced by Malkovich in the movie. I have held a grudge about this for decades.
@mark–I don’t think you’re paranoid, just underinformed.
I suggest reading AgFunderNews for a while to get a grip on the ag industry at this time. Not only will you pick up some interesting news about agtech that might kick off some ideas (people, there’s TONS of interesting and weird stuff happening in agtech, including legitimate uses of A.I. tech) but you’ll soon see why that notion of yours is unlikely (never say never) to happen, at least in this environment.
Heather Rose Jones:
I think the discussion of the slate ballots being tossed implies they were removed early enough they don’t even show up on the (also fudged) numbers we were given for the things that were counted. And it’s not speculation; it’s something that was said in as many words.
Sadly, unless someone has actually saved the real ballots we’ll never know for sure, and we were told those were tossed wholesale. Dave McCarty made a comment that implies his special proprietary software includes the data of exactly who voted for what, but it will only include the ones he chose to enter; if he dropped a lot of Chinese ones on the floor without entering the data, even that won’t show.
And of course, McCarty could tell us but a: won’t and b: at this point, if he did claim to be coming clean beginning to end, and the entire Norse Pantheon showed up, proved they were real to the most hardened skeptics, THEN attested he was telling the truth, still nobody would trust his honesty.
Without the original ballots, which almost certainly no longer exist, it would be impossible to accurately check the numbers on previous Worldcons.
I disagree with you, JJ, if said ballots did exist: A forensic analysis of previous Worldcons would be useful if those ballots exist if only to put minds at ease regarding any potential manipulation in previous years was done. I think those fears are justified even if the odds of it having happened are low, and to reassure the electorate that it didn’t happen would have been a step in confidence-building.
Given that we do not have them, we can only but go forward at this point. (and yes, this goes to one of my hobby horses that third party independent auditing and verification of nominations and voting is absolutely a requirement for the Hugos to come back from McCarty’s Papal Bull)
LONG COMMENT ADVISORY. TAKE THE NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS.
One of the challenges of the Hugo Awards is that they mean a lot to a large group of people who participate in the awards but have no power to affect how they are run.
The Hugos have two constituencies.
One constituency is the people who go to Worldcons. Their interests are well represented in the WSFS because every decision takes place in person at the Business Meeting at Worldcon. They are also the ones who run everything, including the Hugo Awards. The same people pop up repeatedly in leadership positions. They’re an insular, socially connected group.
The other constituency is people who join Worldcon to vote in the Hugo Awards and rarely (if ever) attend one. They are not well represented and do not get anywhere near running the awards. They don’t get a vote in how the awards are run. They don’t elect anybody to WSFS committees.
Do the people running concoms and the Hugos feel accountable to both of these groups? I’d say no. Dave McCarty and Ben Yalow aren’t acting like they owe anybody any explanations in public. This suggests they would only answer privately to people who put them in power or might do so again in the future.
So if you are one of the Hugo no-goes who is demanding reform, do you have any avenue to make that happen? Not in any way that might make current and future WSFS leaders feel like they must listen.
I don’t think that’s a tenable situation. If the continued participation of Hugo voters who don’t attend Worldcons is important to WSFS, we should have representation in the organization. We should be able to speak collectively, such as through WSFS member-only surveys.
The fact that there are now WSFS members, instead of just individual con members, is a step in the right direction. Another would be the Hugo Awards being run by a WSFS committee instead of individual Worldcons.
But the most important would be the ability to elect some representatives to the Hugo Awards and MPC teams through votes that take place online instead of the business meeting. The awards can’t just be run by the good ol’ SMOF network.
There is a narrow part of the WSFS Constitution that offers the possibility of members making a decision without being present, in the situation where a current or future Worldcon committee becomes incapacitated: “If one of these should be unable to perform its duties, the other selected current or future Worldcon Committee shall determine what action to take, by consulting the Business Meeting or by mail poll of WSFS if there is sufficient time, or by decision of the Committee if there is not sufficient time.”
@Jo Van: That list of administration decisions should be mandated. That’s exactly what we’d want to see in terms of transparency, and my compliments to Nicholas Whyte, you, and the rest of the team for it.
Plus, if you were against presenting that list of administration decision on the awards, well, then, you’ve just (IMHO) disqualified yourself from administering the awards.
@Jan Vanek jr.:
If the tampering-revealing aspects of EPH had been more widely known when EPH was initially discussed, I might be now wondering if opponents of EPH had opposed it for that reason – but from all evidence this year, the people who created the bogus-EPH stats had no idea how obvious meddling would be (so that aspect of EPH was probably less-understood in the debate period too).
@rcade – In the current (ratified in 2023) constitution, it’s Section 2.6, titled “Incapacity of Committees”
It is the “disaster” provision – something happens to a seated concom and they are unable to host the convention anymore. ProTip: Don’t let your whole concom fly on one plane. The case of “the facilities all burned down” would initially be handled by that seated concom, unless, of course, they were in the facilities when it burned down.
It also says the people who make the decision are not the committee that failed (because…well….failed) but the other seated committee, and they should work with the Business Meeting or poll the membership by mail if there’s time. Otherwise, they make the decision. Aside: We should fix that “poll by mail” to include email, etc. – you can see how long ago this provision was written.
It is a way that if a seated concom disappears, we have a mechanism to replace them, or at the very least, get a legal entity in place to close out the convention cleanly and not leave a bunch of unpaid bills and violated facility contacts to hamper later conventions, and of course, if there’s enough lead time, get another site to take over the convention.
IMHO, it would be clearly unconstitutional to attempt to use this provision to replace members of a concom, a simple statement that the concom is not incapacitated by the chair of that concom would basically invalidate activating this provision anyway.
I’d quibble about this a bit. People who attend WorldCon are well represented as long as they don’t have a table they need to staff. Or a panel they’re on. Or an only chance to chat with an old friend. Or a volunteer responsibility that conflicts with the business meeting.
The people who are well represented are those for whom the point of attending WorldCon is the business meeting. This is often presented as a sort of performative sacrifice. That you can tell they care about the community because they give up other parts of WorldCon to participate. But suggestions that the business meeting be reconfigured to make it more accessible or less conflicting with the rest of the rest have been consistently met with pushback from the habitual attendees
@ Inevitable n00b
Invalid according to who? Which really gets to the core of some of the discussion from the past month. It’s been very clear that there is no oversight or higher authority, theoretically or practically. That if a WorldCon does something “wrong”, everyone just has to accept and live with it moving forward.
So, as a practical matter, if the 2024 WorldCon passed a motion and vote of the members saying the 2023 Hugos didn’t count and needed to be re-done. And then the 2025/26 etc agreed… who’s to say if it’s valid or not? Neither WSFS or the MPC has oversight or authority to overrule the conventions. So else else would?
I’m not necessarily advocating for this, although I think the pressure for some sort of equivalent gesture is building.
Ryan H: You’re not wrong about the number of dedicated business meeting regulars for whom it’s a species of LARP. And all the more so as the agenda gets loaded up with Hugo categories and administrative fixes so there is work to do every day.
It’s only human for the participants to wish for a little credit. But is it a sacrifice?
God knows how I like to remind people every now and then that I coauthored the original rule requiring disclosure of the Hugo voting statistics, in 1978. I’m sure to lots of people that sounds the same as Rumpole holding forth about the Penge Bungalow Murders.
And your dramatic cross examination on the subject of blood stain evidence. I toast you with a glass of Chateau Thames Embankment
@Mike:
Hey, I wrote one of the three motions that were combined to make the definition of “Semi-prozine,” but nobody has ever even bought me a copy of coffee for that!
WHERE IS THE RESPECT DUE?
I’m not even in the Worldcon photo exhibit.
Clearly, there should be an annotated edition of the WSFS Constitution footnoting every provision with the names of the people who have modified it.
Personally, though, I never attended a Business Meeting without wishing I could be doing any of several other possible things.