(1) JUNETEENTH PSA FROM HWA. Today’s holiday is explained by members of the Horror Writers Association in this video. (See transcript below.) — “Juneteenth: An Emancipation Celebration”.
Linda Addison, the Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant Chair, and authors Michelle Renee Lanei, Steven Van Patten, L Marie Wood, Marc Abbott, and Sumiko Saulson, on the Social Media Team for the Horror Writers Association.
(Linda Addison) On behalf of the Horror Writers Association we’d like to congratulate all African Americans on the progress recently made towards making Juneteenth a federally recognized Black Liberation Holiday.
(Nikki Woolfolk) On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution establishing June 19 as Juneteenth, a National Black Independence Day, a US holiday. The House voted 415-14 to make Juneteenth a national holiday commemorating the emancipation of African Americans from slavery in the United States.
(Sumiko Saulson) After this it was sent before President Joe Biden, who approved it on June 17, 2021 making it the first new National Holiday in the United States of America since Martin Luther King Day was established as a Federal Holiday in 1983.
(Steven Van Patten) Juneteenth, an abbreviation of the words June and Nineteenth, commemorates the anniversary of June 19, 1865. That day, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed African Americans there that the Civil War had ended and they were free at last.
(Ace Antonio Hall) Because the United States was still in the middle of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many of those it intended to free remained enslaved for another two and a half years.
(L Marie Wood) For this reason, Juneteenth has long been recognized as Black Independence Day across the nation. It was first celebrated the following year as Jubilee Day in the State of Texas, where it has been a state holiday since 1979.
(Nicole Givens Kurtz) From Toni Morrison’s Beloved to Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, the phantoms of our shared history under slavery and its legacy haunt many African American ghost stories and tales of terror.
(Michelle Renee Lane) Slavery has left its mark on our psyche as a people. We write scary stories about it because vampires, ghosts, werewolves and skeletons are never quite as horrifying as the lived experiences of African Americans under slavery.
(Marc Abbott) Commemorating Juneteenth as a national holiday is a step towards ensuring that we never forget those dark days, never repeat them, and that we as a people, and as a nation can truly heal.
Written/Edited by Sumiko Saulson (6/18/2021) for the Horror Writers Association
(2) AFRICAN SCI-FI. “Animated Anthology ‘Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire’ Brings African Sci-Fi to Disney+” — /Film has the story.
Filmmakers from Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt bring unique animation to Disney+ with Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, a 10-part collection of original films that will premiere on the streaming service next year. Peter Ramsey, co-director of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, serves as executive producer for the anthology, which is comprised of sci-fi and fantasy stories set in a futuristic Africa.
Disney has announced full details for Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, a 10-part series of animated films that hope to take viewers “on a wildly entertaining ride into Africa’s future.” The films are inspired by Africa’s histories and cultures, and promise “action-packed sci-fi and fantasy stories present bold visions of advanced technology, aliens, spirits and monsters imagined from uniquely African perspectives.”
(3) PASSING ALONG WISDOM. The autobiography of Hidden Figures’ Katherine Johnson – My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir – was released May 25, and is reviewed by Ainissa Ramirez in Nature: “Katherine Johnson’s Bold Trajectory”.
When Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) seemed to be the only Black woman affiliated with space travel. Little did society know that, as mathematicians, Black women such as Katherine Johnson actually made space flight possible. Johnson, who was highlighted in the 2016 Hugo Award winning movie Hidden Figures, died last year, aged 101. She left readers a gift – her autobiography…
She entitles her chapters with life lessons — ‘Education Matters’, ‘Ask Brave Questions’, ‘Shoot for the Moon’. Johnson recognizes that she is a role model, and that few women and people of colour see their reflections in the sciences. I felt like I was sitting at the knee of a griot — a historian and storyteller — gaining years of insight into how to use idle times to prepare, to keep moving forwards when life hurts…
(4) FUN VS. CREATING INVENTORY. Dean Wesley Smith says avoid these “Deadly Problems For Writers…”
…Sitting alone in a room and making stuff up should be fun. What else would it be? No one is going to come and hurt you if you write something that doesn’t work for every reader on the planet (a silly goal on its face.) No one is going to die at your hands (besides characters) if you mess something up.
And best of all, no one cares. You are free to sit in that room and make up whatever you want. No one cares.
When you should start thinking about the product is after your write the last line of the story or book AND NOT ONE MOMENT BEFORE.
But if you start caring too much about the product WHILE WRITING, or even thinking about the product, your process becomes no fun and just stops.
SO HOW DOES A WRITER SLIP INTO PRODUCT FOCUSED WHILE WRITING?
Let me list a bunch of ways, and I know I will miss a bunch of major ways. Add them in the comments if you want.
1… Need to make money quickly. It is the “quickly” that is the killer. Your writing, over time, will make you more money than you can imagine if you keep it fun and keep learning. But if you focus on the writing needing to make a lot of money quickly, it will not. If you need extra money, get a part-time day job and take the pressure off the writing.
2… Writing for other people. Setting deadlines for others puts all the focus on the end product. Deadlines for some can be a motivating thing. They often are for me, but I never attach people to that deadline, or do I ever care what any reader, fan, or critic will think. (Anyone who has watched this blog over time knows how often I have failed on deadlines. If the motivation works for a project, great, if not, great….
And Smith supplements the list with a long story about taking his own advice in “Following Up on Yesterday’s Post…”
THANK HEAVENS I never paid attention or cared about how a book or a series was selling. I never cared that the books weren’t selling for years. My measuring stick was the fun in the writing. And if WMG had done that promotion on book three instead of book #9, it would have failed. The fact that I had nine books in the series done gave readers who liked the book something to buy next. (You know, magic bakery thinking.)
So that is a personal story of me practicing what I preached in last night’s blog.
(5) VORKOSIGAN COVER POSTER. Lois McMaster Bujold told her Goodreads followers about a “Vorkosigan e-covers poster still for sale”.
A tidy display of all of artist Ron Miller’s Vorkosigan e-covers, as seen in the background of my new PR photo. Because it’s not like you can place ebooks face-out on your bookshelves…
May still be purchased here:
https://society6.com/product/the-vork…
Sizes available in x-small to x-large, and I see they are even on sale today (6/18).
(6) SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER. Best Fan Writer Hugo nominee Alasdair Stuart opines:
But what prompted him to say so today? It was Adri Joy’s tweet objecting to DisCon III’s efforts to manage space limitations at the Hugo finalist reception and of near-the-stage seating for the ceremony, as documented in this excerpt from the committee’s message:
(7) PANDEMIC HELPS NESFA PRESS SALES. Tim Szczesuil told the May 9 meeting of the New England Science Fiction Association that their book firm’s sales “have been up substantially over the last year; from the beginning of the pandemic. This is probably due to people having more time to read.” Not including ebooks, here are NESFA Press’ total books sold for recent years:
- 2017 — 2948
- 2018 — 3282
- 2019 — 2595
- 2020 — 3599
- 2021 — 1486
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
- June 19, 2013 — On this date in 2013, Dark Horse Comics published the hardcover of Star Wars: Legacy, John Ostrander’s look into the future of the Skywalker family about 100 years after the time of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. I’m not sure it’s considered canon, but it’s awesome none-the-less.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 19, 1911 — Jesse Francis McComas. He was the co-founding editor, with Anthony Boucher, of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. With Boucher, he edited a series of Best from F&SF anthologies. He wrote several stories on his own in the Fifties using both his own name and the pen name Webb Marlowe. He was nominated for Retro Hugo for Best Editor. (Died 1978.)
- Born June 19, 1915 — Julius Schwartz. He’s best known as a longtime editor at DC Comics, where at various times he was primary editor for the Superman and Batman lines. Just as interestingly, he founded the Solar Sales Service literary agency (1934–1944) where Schwartz represented such writers as Bradbury, Bester, Bloch, Weinbaum, and Lovecraft which including some of Bradbury’s very first published work and Lovecraft’s last such work. He also published Time Traveller, one of the first fanzines along with Mort Weisinger and Forrest J Ackerman. (Died 2004.)
- Born June 19, 1921 — Louis Jourdan. Fear No Evil and Ritual of Evil, two tv horror films in the late Sixties, appear to be his first venture into our realm. He’d play Count Dracula in, errr, Count Dracula a few years later. And then comes the role you most likely remember him for, Dr. Anton Arcane in Swamp Thing which he reprised in The Return of Swamp Thing. Definitely popcorn films at their very best. Oh, and let’s not forget he was Kamal Khan, the villain in Octopussy! (Died 2015.)
- Born June 19, 1926 — Josef Nesvadba. A Czech writer, best known in his SF short stories, many of which have appeared in English translation. ISFDB lists a number of stories as appearing in English and two collections of his translated stories were published, In The Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman: Stories of Science and Fantasy and Vampires Ltd.: Stories of Science and Fantasy. Neither’s available from the usual suspects though Cora can read him in German. (Died 2005.)
- Born June 19, 1947 — Salman Rushdie, 74. Everything he does has some elements of magic realism in it. (Let the arguments begin on that statement.) So which of his novels are really genre? I’d say The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Grimus (his first and largely forgotten sf novel), Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. If you’ve not read anything by him, I’d start with The Ground Beneath Her Feet which is by far both one of his best works and one of his most understandable ones as well.
- Born June 19, 1953 — Virginia Hey, 68. Best remembered for her role as Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan in the fantastic Farscape series and playing the Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. She’s also Rubavitch, the mistress of the KGB Head, General Pushkin, in The Living Daylights. She also had a brief appearance as a beautician in The Return of Captain Invincible, an Australian musical comedy superhero film. No, I’ve not seen it.
- Born June 19, 1957 — Jean Rabe, 64. She’s a genre author and editor who has worked on the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Rogue Angel and BattleTech series, as well as many others. Ok I admit to a degree of fascination with such writers as I’m a devotee of the Rogue Angel audiobooks that GraphicAudio does and she’s written according to ISFDB five of the source novels under the house name of Alex Archer.
- Born June 19, 1978 — Zoe Saldana, born with the lovely birth name of Zoë Yadira Saldaña Nazario, age 43. First genre role was Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. She’s Nyota Uhura in the new Trek series, and she’s also Neytiri in the Avatar franchise. She portrays Gamora in the MCU, beginning with Guardians of the Galaxy, a truly great film though I’m far less impressed with the second film by far.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- The Far Side is there when UFO’s are finally (almost) documented!
- Frank and Ernest shares a cheesy pun.
(11) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to share sushi with Philip K. Dick Award-winning writer Meg Elison on episode 147 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Even though we’re on opposite coasts of the United States, we ordered takeout sushi to nibble as we pretended we lived in a timeline of our own choosing.
Meg Elison is the author of The Road to Nowhere trilogy, which consists of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (which won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award), The Book of Etta (nominated for both the Philip K. Dick and James Tiptree awards ), and The Book of Flora. Her novelette “The Pill” made the final ballots this year of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. She’s been published in McSweeney’s, Shimmer, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Catapult, Terraform, and many other venues. PM Press recently published the book Big Girl — where “The Pill” first appeared — as a volume in its famed Outspoken Authors series.
We discussed her pre-pandemic prediction for the kind of year 2020 was then shaping up to be, how reading Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” changed her life, using tabletop RPGs to deal with the powerlessness felt during recent times, the way rereading taught her to be a writer, our dual fascination with diaries, when she realized her first novel was actually the start of a trilogy (and the songs which helped her better understand each installment), why she followed that post-apocalyptic trilogy with a contemporary YA novel, and much more.
(12) HORROR WEBINAR SERIES. Skeleton Hour is a new monthly horror literature webinar series presented as a Horror Writers Association event in collaboration with The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. Each panel is an hour long and brings together 3-5 authors to discuss a specific topic in horror with a moderator guiding the discussion. Panels will take place on Zoom, with the audience able to ask questions in the chat window.
The last Skeleton Hour – “Writing Horror in a Post Covid World” — featured Richard Thomas (moderator), Sarah Langan, Usman T. Malik, Josh Malerman, A.C. Wise, and Lucy A. Snyder.
(13) COZY SFF? “A Book Like A Warm Hug: T.J. Klune – The House In The Cerulean Sea“ – a review by Dina at SFF Book Review.
…Starting with the writing style which I immediately fell into and just soaked up because it was everything I wanted, over the characters who not only show Linus that they are deserving of love, no matter how monstrous they may look, but who also totally carved out a spot in my heart, over the world building which reveals itself more and more over the course of the book, to the absolute delight of the found family and the real connections between them. I honestly can’t think of any comparison that would do this book justice. A warm blanket, a much-needed hug, someone holding your hand when you thought you were all alone – it’s kind of like all of those but none of them tell you all that the book is….
(14) EXCESSIVE TWINKLING? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Betelgeuse’s recent behavior has puzzled astronomers. But, as reported in this week’s Nature, they now think there is an explanation.
The red supergiant star is very noticeable in our night sky. For starters, it’s a BIG star 900 times the size of the Sun and if it were our Sun its surface would almost touch Jupiter and it would certainly encompass all the inner Solar system planets. It is also only 724 light years away. As such it is one of the few stars discernible through a telescope as a disc.
The puzzling mystery was that back early in 2020 it began dimming and by mid-February it had become just 35% of its normal brightness. Its southern half was especially dim.
Two theories abounded as to why this happened. First, red giants do see some variation in temperature. Could it be that convection cell change in its southern half could the star to cool?
Secondly, could there have been a cloud of dust temporarily obscuring our view of the star?
Now an international collaboration, led by European astronomers think they have the answer and that this involves both theories in a connected way.
They think the change in convection not only resulted in cooling but also allowed the star to eject a small amount of mass. As this drifted away – towards us in the line of sight – it cooled and condensed out as dust obscuring the star. Mystery solved.
[Note: We looked at this topic a few days ago, but Jonathan’s write-up is so much better!]
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. The Drum spotlights a video in which “Orlando Bloom & Katy Perry caution against voter suppression in transmission from future”.
…In the new spot, ‘Transmission from the future’, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are reimagined as elderly folks in a post-apocalyptic setting where they are in hiding from a surveillance state. From the belly of a bunker in the year 2055, they transmit a PSA into the past – Americans’ screens in 2021 are interrupted by the bedraggled couple, who urge viewers to take action to protect democracy. “You are our only hope,” the elderly Bloom rasps. “The America you know doesn’t exist in our future. Democracy is dead.” Perry interjects, saying, “It started when voter suppression ran wild all over America. The voting rights bills died in the Senate. Polling places closed. We lost our right to vote.” The stars implore Americans to call their senators and voice their support for the For the People Act….
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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They probably will ask eventually, but so far they haven’t. Though I have told the Discon finalist liaison as soon as they announced the shift to December that I cannot attend in person and don’t have a designated accepter and asked whether it will be possible to accept virtually, which the e-mail (the one that caused this uproar) confirmed will be possible. I also prefer to resolve problems (and for me it was important to be able to accept virtually, should I win) privately and without yelling on Twitter.
It has affected mine as well and almost completely changed my fancast ballot.
I’ll also continue the project on an irregular basis and may expand to the smaller semiprozines, who do good work, but get drowned out by what are essentially prozines that are classified as fanzines on technicalities. In fact, one of the podcasts I interviewed turned out to be actually a semipro.
Re Cat Eldridge:
If I go with the numbers from last years voting and the nominations this year, exspecially fanzine has a big problem. This year it had the second lowest nominations after fanartist and last year in the voting it was pretty near to loose to no award, because of low participation.
So the problem there seems to be the biggest.
Your fantastic work in promoting fan work, Cora, is a major reason why you yourself are a Hugo Finalist. 🙂
On a whim, I began reading the first book in Kevin Hearn’s Iron Druid series and it has been surprisingly pleasant. His world building feels more coherent than Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and its inevitable ex machinas feel a little more credible than Butcher as well. For what Hearn is trying to do—modern pulp fantasy—he seems to be doing a good job.
Beg pardon for interrupting the conversation. I started my post looking at the few posts on the new page, not realizing a whole page of discussion already happened.
Rob Thornton says On a whim, I began reading the first book in Kevin Hearn’s Iron Druid series and it has been surprisingly pleasant. His world building feels more coherent than Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and its inevitable ex machinas feel a little more credible than Butcher as well. For what Hearn is trying to do—modern pulp fantasy—he seems to be doing a good job.
I also find the fiction created by Herne just a more pleasant place to visit than that of Butcher. It’s not that bad things don’t happen in Herne’s fiction as they do, but Herne doesn’t dwell on them like Butcher does. And besides, he’s got talking canines which beats enchanted skulls in my book.
Rob Thornton: Beg pardon for interrupting the conversation
No such thing here, there’s just “being part of the conversation”! 🙂
I remember on File 770, books are allways part of the discusion and talking about them, is always welcome.
Reading the expert from The Vanishing Birds at the moment, I like it, not enough to buy it right now I think, so that is the problem with excerpts. I don’t feel forced to buy them to vote in the Hugos.
StefanB: Reading the excerpt from The Vanished Birds at the moment, I like it, not enough to buy it right now I think
StefanB, I loved The Vanished Birds, so much so that it was on my Hugo Best Novel ballot and Simon Jimenez was on my Astounding ballot, and if you e-mail me on jjfile770 at the googlemail place, I will buy the e-book for you. 🙂
@Rob I do enjoy Hearne’s work, particularly the Iron Druid novels. I also liked PLAGUE OF GIANTS
Pingback: AMAZING NEWS FROM FANDOM: 6/20/21 - Amazing Stories
JJ: That is a big recomandation and I could have sworn the book was more expensive than it is now. Okay bough (along a few other thinks)
Sorry Meredithmoments: The Book of Koli for under 1 €? Rosewater for under 2€? A book by Claire North for 3€?
StefanB: That is a big recomandation and I could have sworn the book was more expensive than it is now. Okay bought (along a few other things)
MWAHAHAHAHAHA 😀
I hope you will post your reaction/review of the book here. I thought it was a really good, big idea, big space adventure – exactly the sort of work the Hugo Awards tends to recognize.
StefanB: Sorry Meredith Moments
It will be a sad, sad day when anyone needs to apologize for a Meredith Moment here! 😀
For those interested, the pre-recorded 4th Street Fantasy panel I participated in,
Choosing what Matters: Concepts of Heroism in The Curse of Chalion
is now live and available to all:
I think the issue with the Hugos is that we have winners that are produced as group efforts and a desire for the entire group – no matter how large to share full6 in the recognition. I can understand that, but as a practical matter there must be limits (and the organisers are the people best placed to decide what those limits should be). I think of the Oscars – how many of the people who contributed to the “Best Picture” get the full acknowledgment?
And a question for the historians of fandom – did any APAs ever win a Hugo, and if they did, how was the award handled?
So, to offer my own opinions, for whatever they’re worth. I think limiting the number of people on stage is absolutely necessary, limiting the number of guaranteed seats at the ceremony is a compromise, but probably the right compromise – exact numbers depending on the venue capacity (which may be reduced by COVID precautions). Names on Rockets are limited by physical space but otherwise everyone should be accommodated. Pins – if handled by the Hugo organisers (I seem to recall otherwise ?) – should be awarded to all unless the numbers start getting really silly. The Hugo organisers should also try to find some way of acknowledging the rest of a winning team – maybe offering the option of displaying a group photograph or playing a short (time is also at a premium) video when the award is announced? Or just the option of live video for the acceptance?
Paul King: No APA was ever eligible for Best Fanzine because they have restricted circulation.
It is for the Astounding Award the last one, execpt two of them, I like this years new writers.
Micaiah Johnson’s The Space between Worlds, was the breakout book for me. Note it already has a german translation anounced not somethink that even every nominee for Best Novel manages. Parallel Universes can be confusing, this was not. I really liked the maincharacter and it was a pageturner for me. The ending had perhaps not enough closure for me, but this is a minor point, but that book worked beatifully. If you are a worldconmember and don’t take a look it’s your own fault.
Jen Lyons:
If you like epic fantasy well worth a look. This is for the first book, because I have caught up on other thinks than reading up on sequels to last years readings. It is fun with perhaps a few more revelations that you can exspect in the first book of a series. (or any other book) I wouldn’t nominate the book for a best novel award, but Jen Lyons is definitly a writer to watch if you like this part of the genere.
Emily Tesch: Now we come to a writer I can’t say much. I liked her first novella just fine. It was fun but didn’t knock my socks of. I like the carakterwork but it is (minus the nice represantion) a story that is good but imho not special. (I may revise it, but that won’t propably chance my ranking) Strangly enough that last year, their was a Kindleversion of the Ebook in the package.
Lindsay Elis: That one didn’t work for me. I don’t even can’t say why, because the story is not that uninteresting. I think the first part was to long, before the alien appeared. Parts were more interesting, but it just didn’t work for me that much. There is a huh decision for my, why let the book happen in an alternative 2007? Generel speaking, I wanted to like this more than I did.
A.K.Larkwood: I tryed this one some months ago, but either it was not a good time, or not a good book for me. I bounced of, will probably try it again before the deadline.
Next Murderbot that I am reading in German, because all 4 novellas in one book are for me a good idea, before the novel (have read the first before and Murderbot!!!) and the last book for the Astoundingaward will be after Murderbot or perhaps one or two novellas to finish that category.
P-Edit: APA?
@ Paul King – yes, the Oscar analogy occurred to me, too. Also, I presume the cast and crew of Dr Who won’t all be showing up at the Hugos.
StefanB asks P-Edit: APA?
An amateur press association is a group of people who contribute a certain number of pages or zines that are sent to a an individual for printing, collation and distribution to all members of the group. The first science fiction APA was the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA) formed by a group of fans in 1937. It continues to be active today.
@Paul King
Three, except any of the three may be a pair of producers who routinely work as a partnership.
“The individual(s) who shall be credited for Academy Award purposes must have screen credit of “producer” or “produced by.” . . . The nominees will be those three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing functions. In determining the number of producers eligible for nomination, a bona fide team of not more than two people shall be considered to be a single “producer” if the two individuals have had an established producing partnership as determined by the PGA’s Producing Partnership Panel.”
Other categories have hard limits on how many people can be named for an award (do a CTRL-F for “maximum” to find them at the linked rules).
Thanks for the link, Paul! Great panel!
A full copy of The Vanished Birds can be obtained through the packet. There’s a NetGalley link in the excerpt. It does say it’s an uncorrected proof so it may not be exactly like the final published version.
I remember Alasdair Stuart demonstrating his lack of understanding about how Hugo voting works in an article he put in his packet last year. He got very scoldy about a fellow finalist getting placed under No Award in 2019. Spoiler Alert: that finalist finished well above No Award. (Not to mention that there is absolutely nothing wrong with placing No Award as you see fit.) So I’m not completely surprised to see a lack of understanding about the Hugos and Worldcon in general.
Laura: It can be requested, if you are a reviewer. Currently there is a wishbottom. I am not a good writer, so I wouldn’t dare trying to do it. (I still have to apologise to a friend, who I sent a novel I have written, first try)
I find the whole discussion about if it is OK to exclude award nominees from the ceremony where the award they are nominated from is presented very peculiar.
It does seem like the people who are against all nominees being present at their ceremony are having a completely different discussion than those who think it is a given nominees are offered space to be present, although it is hard to get a grip on what those against it think they are discussing.
I can’t see that there are more than two groups that have to be present at any awards ceremony; the nominees and the award presenters.
Arguably, the latter group could be confined to the backstage area when they are not in the process of presenting.
Unless the venue is unable to accomodate the number of people nominated, I don’t see any issue with them all being present.
As far as I have seen there has never been any suggestion that the venue for this year’s Hugo Award ceremony cannot fit all the nominees.
The issue seems to be that there is an unwillingness by the award ceremony’s organizers to reserve space for all the nominees at the ceremony.
There has been absolutely no suggestion of not having non-nominees present at the ceremony to ensure room for nominees that I have seen, and surely that should be done if there is a lack of physical space at the event.
So, to sum up, unless there is something everyone seems to have missed, the issue with the number of nominees in a nominee area at the Hugo Awards ceremony is one of unwillingness to make the nominee are large enough to accomodate the nominees rather than the lack of physical space to accomodate them.
To me it seem this is something that everyone who puts any value on the Hugo Awards should be up in arms about.
I think what you are missing is that for example one finalist:
Strange Horizons, Vanessa Aguirre, Joseph Aitken, Rachel Ayers, M H Ayinde, Tierney Bailey, Scott Beggs, Drew Matthew Beyer, Gautam Bhatia, S. K. Campbell, Zhui Ning Chang, Rita Chen, Tania Chen, Joyce Chng, Liz Christman, Linda H. Codega, Kristian Wilson Colyard, Yelena Crane, Bruhad Dave, Sarah Davidson, Tahlia Day, Arinn Dembo, Nathaniel Eakman, Belen Edwards, George Tom Elavathingal, Rebecca Evans, Ciro Faienza, Courtney Floyd, Lila Garrott, Colette Grecco, Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright, Julia Gunnison, Dan Hartland, Sydney Hilton, Angela Hinck, Stephen Ira, Amanda Jean, Ai Jiang, Sean Joyce-Farley, Erika Kanda, Anna Krepinsky, Kat Kourbeti, Clayton Kroh, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Catherine Krahe, Natasha Leullier, A.Z. Louise, Dante Luiz, Gui Machiavelli, Cameron Mack, Samantha Manaktola, Marisa Manuel, Jean McConnell, Heather McDougal, Maria Morabe, Amelia Moriarty, Emory Noakes, Sara Noakes, Aidan Oatway, AJ Odasso, Joel Oliver-Cormier, Kristina Palmer, Karintha Parker, Anjali Patel, Vanessa Rose Phin, Nicasio Reed, Belicia Rhea, Endria Richardson, Natalie Ritter, Abbey Schlanz, Clark Seanor, Elijah Rain Smith, Hebe Stanton, Melody Steiner, Romie Stott, Yejin Suh, Kwan-Ann Tan, Luke Tolvaj, Ben Tyrrell, Renee Van Siclen, Kathryn Weaver, Liza Wemakor, Aigner Loren Wilson, E.M. Wright, Vicki Xu, Fred G. Yost, staff members who prefer not to be named, and guest editor Libia Brenda with guest first reader Raquel González-Franco Alva for the Mexicanx special issue
There seems to be on one side a settled question: Obviously the finalists, however many there may be to a near-infinite amount, should be prioritised! They’re the finalists!
(One wonders how that would have gone if the AO3 had tried to enforce their existence as a true collective to the logical conclusion of every single one of our members being individually listed…)
I’m… not so sure that’s a settled question. The Hugos have finalists who we think are pretty shiny and want to give pretty shiny rockets to match, yes, but the Hugos are held for and by Worldcon and the WSFS, not just the finalists. There are a lot of attending members of Worldcon who would presumably also like at least the possibility of a chance to attend the ceremony, and I’m not wholly convinced that the ability of Strange Horizons – or the AO3 – to effectively reserve the entire auditorium should be prioritised over the possibility of any non-finalist member ever getting a chance at a seat.
Which I can say with a total lack of self-interest, since the likelihood of me ever actually physically attending either Worldcon or the Ceremony hovers only slightly above zero.
@StefanB, I’ll assume you are talking to me, even though your assumption that I am missing that there is a lot of people under some of the nominees is a bit offensive.
It does not matter how many people are part of one nominee, whether it be 1 or 97 (as someone stated the number is), it is whether all nominees should be reserved space in the nominee area during the ceremony.
Of course, if there is only room at the awards ceremony venue for 500 people and there is more than 500 people nominated, then there will have to be some restrictions, but as I already mentioned that does not seem to be the case. (If it is, then I am happy to be corrected on that point.)
If anyone feels the issue is one of too many people allowed under one nominee, then that would seem to be an issue with the Hugo Award rules.
Campaigning for a limit on the people allowed as part of one nominee seems to be the way to go – not telling a certain number of people nominated this year that they should not have a place at the award ceremony where they might win an award.
For example, an obvious solution in the case of a nominee like Strange Horizons would be to nominate the editor(s) only, or if that leaves a too high number the (legal) publisher and/or owner.
@Weirdmage: You were talking about somethink that was missing. And crunching the numbers, if people use the +1 for nominees (and I don’t know if that is possible, I hope it is), Strange Horizon is really the only nominee that has mathematicly a problem with that rule. So perhaps I was rude in pointing at the elephant in the room you were ignoring.
And what is a problem is that Worldcon is talking about garantied places in the front row, place that is limited per say.
And it is not the job of worldcon to make space for one nominee that needs more space than 12 categorys. I have sympathy for that beeing a problem for Discon.
And the complaining is not coming from Strange Horrizon it is coming from people who should have no problem even without the +1 rule to get their nominees in the front row and the reception and who want to take away the Hugo from worldcon, which is more a reason that people are angry.
@StefanB
Ah, so I point out I find it rude you are assuming I was missing something I was aware of, and you double down and accuse me of deliberately ignoring it, despite me going on quite a bit about how there seems to be no issue with physical space at the venue in my first comment.
Well, I now know that anything you say can be safely ignored as you have absolutely no intention of actually having a debate that stays on subject.
A long time ago, when Fanac won the Best Fanzine Hugo, there was only one award given out. So Terry Carr and Ron Ellik shared the single statuette. They would meet at the next year’s worldcon, and pass the award off to the other, who would have possession for a single year.
But now, with award creep—and enormous amounts of nominees for a single nomination, you have multiple awards going for a single winner.
Also, this thing where you have zillions of people all nominated for the single possible winning title, things look like they’ve just Got Out of Hand.
Oh, and I absolutely endorse what Kevin Standlee wrote: the Worldcon and the Hugos are inseparable.
@Weidmage. You’re being rude to someone whose first language is not English. Try harder next time. (Also, try working on a con sometime. You’ll learn a lot about all the things that the committee(s) have to deal with.)
The Hugo banquet was eliminated because it was no longer viable. Some people miss it, but it’s gone now. If the Hugo reception or the ceremony itself have become too difficult to manage, maybe they should be eliminated too. The winners could just be listed in the daily newszine and the Worldcon wouldn’t have to spend so much of its resources on just this one aspect of the con.
@Mike Glyer, thanks. @Bill, likewise.
@Meredith I think it’s settled that the winners should be represented and each winning entry should have some reserved seats. I don’t think that it’s at all settled that this number of reserved seats should be unlimited, or limited only by the space available.
It’s a WorldCon event, ordinary WorldCon members should have a chance to attend and it certainly seems unfair that one entrant should be able to nab over a hundred seats.
After reading this entire thread…I’m glad I’ve retired from acting as the Hugo administrator…
I’d feel obligated to review if I was requesting an Advanced Review Copy. For the NetGalley links in the packet, I feel it’s mainly to allow publishers to provide DRMed books for Hugo consideration.
Strictly speaking, only for five of the categories are the nominees actually people. (Well, Best Related Work could be a person under some very unusual circumstances.)
@David Shallcross
I’d be delighted to nominate the first extraterrestrial ambassador, the first artificial lifeform or the first AI personage as “Best Related Work” (hmm. An AI book might even be more appropriate).
@Cora
I’ll also continue the project on an irregular basis and may expand to the smaller semiprozines, who do good work, but get drowned out by what are essentially prozines that are classified as fanzines on technicalities.
I would love to see that. I mean, I know Uncanny puts out stellar work, but I’m so tired of seeing it win over and over again. (I did not nominate it this year.) I would love to see some smaller magazine like Luna Station Quarterly make the ballot. (I also wish Uncanny would follow the example of Lady Business and some others and recuse themselves, at least for a year.)
@P J Evans
My first language is not English.
But, language is beside the point here.
Calling me rude for pointing out someone is being dishonest is a bit weird, and more than a bit offensive.
I see several people saying words to the effect that Strange Horizons are trying to grab seats at the Hugo Awards ceremony.
Are people suggesting they have been dishonest about who should have been nominated for the magazine, or is it just that you feel that a nominee should not have that many people attached to it?
If it is the former, then that would surely be an issue for this year’s Hugo Award administartor/s.
If the latter, then it would seem a rule change would be the way to go.
I have however not seen anybody suggets any of those two ways of dealing with this year’s issue.
I must admit I can’t fully take the argument that ordinary Worldcon attendees should be prioritised over the nominees at the Hugo Award ceremony seriously.
I can understand where the argument comes from, I see a lot of people strongly associate themselves with Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, but I can’t really get from that to the point where the nominees should not be able to attend the ceremony they could win an award at, if there is physical space for all the nominees at the venue, without the importance of the awards themselves being abandoned in the process.
Thank you for your efforts lifting up the lesser known fan contributors, Cora! Definitely very appreciated from me also.
The question isn’t how many finalists are allowed in the ceremony at all. The debate is over the number of seats at the front reserved for finalists. And how many invites to the pre-ceremony reception for finalists.
The communication from DC III made it clear what those quantities would be and why. Whinging ensued. Part of the reason for setting these standards is to not reward the complainers at the cost of treating folks evenly.
Apologies to everybody who already knows this, but just in case someone doesn’t, this latest uproar was caused by an e-mail sent out to all Hugo finalists specifying that every finalist could attend the ceremony with at most four people plus guests, i.e. eight maximum. This is both because of the reserved seating at the ceremony (and it’s never just the front row. In Dublin, the first five or six rows were reserved for finalists) and because of space constraints at the Hugo reception.
This led to some complaints from finalists who were part of larger teams, mainly in the fanzine, fancast and semiprozine category, that they would have to choose which four of their people would get to go. And yes, it’s absolutely common to use the “plus one” to get extra members of a team into the ceremony. And notably, the complaints came not from Strange Horizons, but mainly from the CoNZealand Fringe team.
I have no idea what the facilities in Washington and the local covid restrictions are like. However, I suspect that a hard four person plus guest limit might not be necessary, because several people are nominated in more than one category (e.g. Alasdair Stuart is nominated in four categories, but can obviously attend only once). Plus, a lot of people won’t be able to attend in person anyway due to international travel restrictions, financial issues, time conflicts because of the shift to December, concerns about international travel during a pandemic, etc… Strange Horizons’ big team is spread out around the world and a lot of their members won’t be able to attend. That’s also why I tried to crowdsource how many finalists and/or accepters would actually be there, so we know how many warm bodies Discon has to deal with at a maximum.
I’m one of the 2021 finalists who cannot attend in person and don’t mind if my seat is given to a team finalist which has more than four members on site.
I’m also not sure if we really need to pre-Hugo reception, especially since most finalists are too nervous to eat or drink much anyway. But apparently, the reception is needed for organisational purposes to make sure everybody is where they are supposed to be.
Though at least at the Dublin Hugo reception, there were quite a few people who were neither finalists nor accepters nor presenters. Most of them were editors and big name writers. I don’t necessarily want to kick out GRRM or John Scalzi or Betsy Wollheim or the Nielsen-Haydens, considering everything they have done for Worldcon and the genre in general, but I still think finalists should be prioritised.
Weirdmage on June 20, 2021 at 1:57 pm said:
plonk
@Bonnie McDaniel
Yes, I’d like to see more variation in the semiprozine category, too. Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, etc… all do great work, but I’d like to see lesser known zines like Luna Station Quarterly or The Dark or Diabolical Plots or Tales from the Magician’s Skull recognised, too. So I will expand the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project to cover semipros, too. And of course, I will continue to feature great fanzines, sites and fancasts.
@Colette
Thank you. I’ll be very interested to see the Hugo longlist, once the full nomination stats come out in December, to see if any of the lesser known fanzines or fancasts I featured made the longlist.
Collette,
My comment was in response to Weirdmage who seemed to think the question was how many finalists could attend the Hugo ceremony itself.