(1) ONE STOP SHOPPING. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] SF2 Concatenation’s Autumn 2019 edition is up. Voluminous seasonal news and reviews page of both SF and science which includes the major UK SF/fantasy imprint book releases between now and New Year. (Many of these will be available as imports in N. America and elsewhere.)
- Newscast for the Autumn 2019. This includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films; and TV; as well as science. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
- My Top Ten Scientists – Dominic Dulley (software engineer)
- CERN – Science or Tourism? — Jane O’Reilly
- The Shoestringcon [1]: Polycon 1979 story — Pete Gilligan
- Dublin – The 2019 World SF Convention – Sue Burke
- Ytterbium 2019 – The 2019 British Eastercon — Peter Tyers
- GeyserCon – New Zealand’s 2019 national convention — Alan Robson
(2) LEM V. DICK. [Editor’s note: I apologize for what amounts to misspelling, but characters that WordPress would display as question marks have been changed to a letter of the alphabet without marks.]
[Item by Jan Vanek Jr.] Yesterday the English-language website of the Polish magazine Przekrój published (and started promoting on Facebook, hence my knowledge) the translation of a 2,700-word excerpt (not a self-contained “chapter” as they claim) from Wojciech Orlinski’s 2017 biography of Stanislaw Lem detailing what led to “the famous Lem-Dick imbroglio” with PKD’s “famous Lem report to the FBI”: “access to previously unpublished letters […] resulted in what is likely the first accurate description of the incident, as well as the ultimate explanation as to how the concept of ‘foreign royalties under communism’ is almost as much of a mess as ‘fine dining under communism’ (but not quite as fine a mess)”:
…It all began with Lem’s depiction of Dick – in the third of his great essay collections, Science Fiction and Futurology as little more than a talentless hack. Lem had a poor opinion of almost all American authors, and never thought much of the literary genre of which he himself was an exponent (think of his equally critical view of Pirx the Pilot, for example, or Return from the Stars)….
I found it a quite informative and interesting read, although “Lem’s unfortunate expulsion from the SFWA” that ensued is mentioned only briefly and I think misleadingly (I have checked the Polish book and there is nothing more about it, but it has been described in American sources, many of them online).
(3) ABOUT AO3’S HUGO AWARD. The Organization for Transformative Works has clarified to Archive of Our Own participants — “Hugo Award – What it Means”.
We’re as excited as you are about the AO3’s Hugo win, and we are shouting it to the rafters! We are grateful to the World Science Fiction Society for recognizing the AO3 with the award, as well as to the many OTW volunteers who build and maintain the site, and all of the amazing fans who post and enjoy works on it.
The World Science Fiction Society has asked us to help them get the word out about what the award represented—specifically, they want to make sure people know that the Hugo was awarded to the AO3, and not to any particular work(s) hosted on it. Therefore, while we can all be proud of the AO3’s Hugo win and we can all be proud of what we contributed to making it possible, the award does not make any individual fanwork or creator “Hugo winners”—the WSFS awarded that distinction to the AO3 as a whole. In particular, the WSFS asked us to convey this reminder so that no one mistakenly describes themselves as having personally won a Hugo Award.
Thanks for sharing our enthusiasm, and consider yourselves reminded! We appreciate every one of your contributions.
So far there are 80 comments, any number by Kevin Standlee making Absolutely Clear Everybody Must Understand Things Exactly The Way He Does. One reply says, “You aren’t doing a particularly good job of reading the room here.”
(4) ARISIA PERSISTED. Arisia 2020 has issued its first online Progress Report. Key points: (1) It’s happening! (2) It’s (back) at the Westin Boston Waterfront. (3) The headliners are Cadwell Turnbull, Author Guest of Honor, Kristina Carroll, Artist Guest of Honor, and Arthur Chu, Fan Guest of Honor.
(5) BOO! LAist primes fans for Universal Studios’ Halloween mazes: “Halloween Horror Nights: A Photo Tour Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ & ‘Us’ Mazes At Universal Studios”.
Halloween’s almost here… well, OK, it’s more than a month away, but that means it’s time for Halloween haunts — aka Halloween mazes, aka scary Halloween things at theme parks and the like, to start.
Halloween Horror Nights has been taking over Universal Studios Hollywood for 21 years, and we got the chance to take a behind-the-scenes tour of two of the brand new mazes, Ghostbusters and Us. We were guided through by Creative Director John Murdy, the man in charge of creating the stories and the scares inside all of the mazes.
He works with an art director to design every moment, writing treatments for each attraction than can run up to 100 pages.
“It’s a narrative from the guest’s POV — everything I see, hear, smell, etcetera, as if I’m going through the maze,” Murdy said. “But it also has a very elaborate technical breakdown by scene, by discipline, down to the timecode of the audio cues.”
(6) DUBLIN 2019. Cora Buhlert’s report begins with — “WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 1: The Good…”. There’s also a shorter version for the Speculative Fiction Showcase: “Cora’s Adventures at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland”. Each has lots of photos.
…On Wednesday, the day before WorldCon officially started, I helped with move in and set-up at Point Square. This involved carrying boxes, assembling shelves for the staff lounge and crafting area, taping down table cloths and helping to set up the Raksura Colony Tree model. This was my first time volunteering at a WorldCon and it was a great experience. Not only do you get to help to make a great project like WorldCon happen, no, you also get to meet a lot of lovely people while volunteering. Especially if you’re new to WorldCon and don’t know anybody yet, I recommend volunteering as a way to meet people and make friends. What is more, I also got a handful of groats (which I used to buy a very pretty necklace in the dealers room) and a cool t-shirt.
(7) MEMORIAL. Jim C. Hines tweeted the link to his post about the Memorial held for his wife, Amy, on September 8, a touching and highly personal tribute.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- September 14, 2008 — The Hunger Games novel hit bookstores. (For some reason, the bookstores did not hit back.)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born September 14, 1915 — Douglas Kennedy. No major SFF roles that I see but he’s been in a number of films of a genre nature: The Way of All Flesh, The Ghost Breakers, The Mars Invaders, The Land Unknown, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, The Alligator People and The Amazing Transparent Man. Series wise, he had one-offs on Alcoa Presents, Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Outer Limits. (Died 1973.)
- Born September 14, 1919 — Claire P. Beck. Editor of the Science Fiction Critic, a fanzine which published in four issues Hammer and Tongs, the first work of criticism devoted to American SF. It was written by his brother Clyde F. Beck. Science Fiction Critic was published from 1935 to 1938. (Died 1999.)
- Born September 14, 1927 — Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one in the Buck Rogers one as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels as well. (Died 1997.)
- Born September 14, 1932 — Joyce Taylor, 87. She first shows as Princess Antillia in Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Later genre appearances were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first English language Beauty and the Beast film, the horror film Twice-Told Tales and the Men into Space SF series.
- Born September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig, 83. Best-known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in the original Trek franchise and Alfred Bester on Babylon 5. Moontrap, a SF film with him and Bruce Campbell, would garner a 28% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and InAlienable which he executive produced, wrote and acts in has no rating there.
- Born September 14, 1941 — Bruce Hyde. Patterns emerge in doing these Birthdays. One of these patterns is that original Trek had a lot of secondary performers who had really short acting careers. He certainly did. He portrayed Lt. Kevin Riley in two episodes, “The Naked Time” and “The Conscience of the King” and the rest of his acting career consisted of eight appearances, four of them as Dr. Jeff Brenner. He acted for less than two years in ‘65 and ‘66, before returning to acting thirty-four years later to be in The Confession of Lee Harvey Oswald which is his final role. (Died 2015.)
- Born September 14, 1947 — Sam Neill, 72. Best known for role of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park which he reprised in Jurassic Park III. He was also in Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Bicentennial Man, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, Thor: Ragnarok and Peter Rabbit.
- Born September 14, 1961 — Justin Richards, 58. Clute at ESF says “Richards is fast and competent.” Well I can certain say he’s fast as he’s turned out thirty-five Doctor Who novels which Clute thinks are for the YA market between 1994 and 2016. And he has other series going as well! Another nineteen novels written, and then there’s the Doctor Who non-fiction which runs to over a half dozen works.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest ask deep questions about Pokémon.
- A Tom Gauld cartoon about The Testaments launch in The Guardian.
(11) LUCAS MUSEUM. George Lucas, his wife Mellody Hobson, and the mayor dropped by the site yesterday to see how things are going: “Force Is With Them! Construction Of George Lucas Museum In Full Swing”.
Construction of the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is in full swing.
On Friday, Lucas — along with his wife and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — watched as construction crews helped bring his vision to life.
And he thanked them for the tireless effort.
“You’re doing the impossible — thank you so much,” Lucas said.
“Millions of people will be inspired by this building. We were just in our board meeting for the museum and George said you are the artists so you’re the artists of this art museum,” says Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the museum’s co-founder.
(12) LISTEN TO LIEN. Henry Lien is the Special Guest Star on this week’s episode of The Write Process podcast, hosted by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program — “Henry Lien on Worldbuilding, Puzzle Stories, Middle Grade, & Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions”
Henry Lien teaches law and creative writing at UCLA Extension. A private art dealer, he is the author of the Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which received New York Times acclaim and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist.
(13) COSPLAY ID’S. SYFY Wire has collected all the tweeted photos — “Detroit high school encourages students to dress as pop culture icons for ID photos”.
High school can be a turbulent time for any budding teenager, but when you’re allowed to dress up as your favorite movie or television character, facing picture day isn’t the daunting challenge it once was. Per a report from The Huffington Post, North Farmington High School in the suburbs of Detroit allowed its senior pupils to assume the persona of their favorite pop culture icon for the sake of ID photographs. What followed was a parade of Woodys (Toy Story), Shuris (Black Panther) Fionas (Shrek), creepy twins (The Shining), and so many more!
(14) GUTS. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles YA graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, whose autobiographical graphic novels have sold 13.5 million copies and who attracted an audience of 4,000 to her talk at the National Book Festival. “Raina Telgemeier became a hero to millions of readers by showing how uncomfortable growing up can be”.
…Now, because her fans kept asking, she is getting more personal than ever. The Eisner Award-winning author who launched her publishing empire with 2010?s “Smile,” about her years-long dental adventures as a kid, is prepared to bare new parts of her interior world with “Guts,” available Tuesday, which centers on how fear affected her body.
“This is the reality of my life,” Telgemeier told her fans. She quickly got to the heart and GI tract of the matter: “I was subject to panic attacks and [was] worrying that something was really wrong with me.”…
(15) SIGNAL BOOST. Naomi Kritzer offers an incentive for supporting a cause that needs a cash infusion.
(16) MARATHON SITTINGS. The Hollywood Reporter considers “The Long Game: Super-Sized Movies Are Testing the Patience of Audiences”.
And there may be a financial cost. Over the Sept. 6-8 weekend, New Line and director Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two opened to $91 million domestically, a 26 percent decline from the first It, which debuted to $123.4 million on the same weekend in 2017. The sequel ran a hefty 169 minutes, 34 minutes longer than its predecessor.
“Andy had a lot of story to tell in concluding his adaptation of Stephen King’s book, which is more than 1,100 pages,” says Jeff Goldstein, chief of distribution for Warner Bros., New Line’s parent. “We strategically added more shows and locations to counterbalance losing a show on each screen.”
Adds a rival studio executive regarding It: Chapter Two, “look, $91 million is a great number. But anytime the second film in a hoped-for franchise goes down — and not up — that’s not what you wish for. And I do think the fact that it was so long didn’t help.”
(17) COLBERT. Stephen Colbert’s “Meanwhile…” news roundup includes a furry joke related to the movie Cats, and a bit on “The 5D Porn Cinema No One Asked For.” These items start at 2.02 — here on YouTube.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Cinema verite of author Liz Hand on Vimeo. A 5-minute video of Hand at work and play
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]
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Rose Fox: So are you going to stay the way you are, or are you going to change? Not the Hugo rules, not even the Hugo customs—your understanding of who’s a creator and who’s not.
Rose, I am well aware that all of these people are creators, that they are worthy, and valued. You keep insisting that since I don’t agree with you that the Hugo Awards should now allow millions of people to call themselves official Hugo Award Winners, that it means that I don’t understand collaborative communities or the wide range of people who can genuinely be considered creators who should be and are valued.
It’s not an either/or question. I can both understand collaborative communities and the value of creators, while still not agreeing that millions of people should be allowed to call themselves Hugo Award Winners.
What you want is for the term “Hugo Award Winner” to become meaningless. Far from giving recognition to the people you want to recognize, it would just give them a meaningless title which a bunch of people would roll their eyes at, knowing how meaningless the title has become.
Can we please have a stop to all of the claims that “None of the AO3 authors actually believes that they’re a Hugo Award Winner” now?
@JJ
You keep bringing up the 2006 Time Person of the Year, but I don’t think it’s the proof of your argument that you think it is. Subsequent Persons of the Year are considered no less noteworthy because the 2006 Person of the Year was “you” and people can claim that for themselves. They haven’t been de-valued because of that one win or people getting to say, “I’m 2006 Time Person of the Year!” (I don’t use “prestigious” here, because PotY is more about influence and effect on the world, both good and bad, than “prestige”.)
@Rose Fox
I don’t really have anything to add, but these are some excellent, thoughtful comments.
TMax, when millions of people can call themselves “Hugo Award Winner”, the term and the honor become meaningless.
Perhaps the AO3 members and the OTW Board should consider creating their own awards, ones which can be designed to recognize all of the individuals in an extremely large collaborative group. I’m being absolutely genuine here. The Hugo Awards aren’t the right awards to do what AO3 members want, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to create a set of awards which can do it, and do it well.
@ JJ
What you want is for the term “Hugo Award Winner” to become meaningless. Far from giving recognition to the people you want to recognize, it would just give them a meaningless title which a bunch of people would roll their eyes at, knowing how meaningless the title has become.
That’s what would happen if AO3 abuses the term. From what I understand, we need to preserve the integrity of the Hugo Award, which means that a Hugo Award is given to the recipient for a specific reason and is given recognition by the Hugos for that reason. AO3’s technology was given the Hugo Award, not the members of AO3. When AO3 users start to take credit for a Hugo they did not earn, that’s when trademark dilution happens.
It is not up to me to determine what happens next (I am just a File 770 regular), but I am trying to warn the great majority of AO3 users that they could seriously damage one of SF fandom’s greatest achievements.
From reading the comments it’s evident to me that people understand JJ’s point of view, they just don’t agree with it. And I don’t think, JJ, that you’re going to change their mind with further arguments. It appears to me you’re just entrenching their positions. Perhaps it’s time to stop.
If you think there’s a concern, take it to the Mark Protection Committee. Though I urge them to find a very good and diplomatic spokesperson before they reply in public.
@JJ
Maybe it does to you, but what many, many, many people have been saying and you’ve been stubbornly ignoring is that it really, really doesn’t to a lot of people. Including all of the Hugo winners who I’ve seen make public statements saying as much. I actually have yet to see a winner say they do feel like an AO3 author putting “Hugo Winning Fanfic Author” in their Twitter handle devalues their award, but the Internet is vast, so please feel free to link them here if you have seen this. This is exactly like me being able to say “I’m a Time 2006 Person of the Year!” doesn’t devalue that title in future years, which is a claim you’ve also repeatedly made.
And for all your talk of “I have nothing against fanfiction! I read fanfiction myself!”, saying that there should be a seperate award for fanfic authors on AO3 because the Hugo’s are far too prestigious to honor all AO3 authors as part of AO3’s collective win…kind of implies that. And just saying you read and write fanfic and professing how much you love AO3 doesn’t mean you haven’t been being incredibly condescending and acting like a gatekeeper, just like me saying “But I’m a woman!” wouldn’t make something misogynistic that I’ve said or done less so.
TMax: And for all your talk of “I have nothing against fanfiction! I read fanfiction myself!”, saying that there should be a seperate award for fanfic authors on AO3 because the Hugo’s are far too prestigious to honor all AO3 authors as part of AO3’s collective win…kind of implies that.
What it actually implies is that I think all of these arguments about the Hugo Awards needing to allow millions of people to call themselves Hugo Award Winners are really about trying to make a box serve as a cloud, or a glass serve as a knife. It’s trying to re-purpose something into something else which it’s just not suited to be.
Because of course, I can’t genuinely have these thoughts and feelings, without it meaning that I must be a misogynist and a gatekeeper, instead of maybe just being somebody who thinks that people are trying to force the Hugo Awards into being something they’re not.
So the argument about the Hugo win for AO3 seems to have three components:
1) some question over what AO3 is: platform, coding project, fanfic, community, etc., with the concomitant question of whether that something DESERVES a Hugo and/or fits the Best Related Work category
2) whether AO3 users can claim that they won a Hugo or merely claim to have been a part of something (AO3, however it is defined) that won a Hugo
3) whether AO3 users declaring themselves to be Hugo award winners (be it in jest, in earnest, in celebration, or out of sheer bloody minded reaction to their perception that some portions of WSFS wants to spoil their fun or does not consider them a part of fandom) is an infringement or dilution of the Hugo trademark
I don’t believe anyone on any side of the argument disputes that individuals creating merchandise trading on the Hugo award and AO3’s win thereof are violating the trademark and need to knock it off, no matter how innocent or joyous their intentions in creating that merchandise might have been.
The question of whether individuals claiming to be Hugo winners is a dilution of the trademark is where the argument lies. Some WSFS parties are adamant that it does (see also Kevin Standlee), some (I’m thinking of Will Frank’s post on AO3 here) are disinclined to commit either way, and some argue that these claims fall into the fair use portion of trademark case law (rahaeli, aka synechdocic, aka Denise of Deamwidth and previously Livejournal).
Those are the primary areas of the argument as I perceive them, but I think they’re being complicated by an emotional undercurrent that I rather think is fundamentally unresolvable. On the one side, you have folks who are fiercely protective of the Hugo award and fear to see its value tarnished. On the other, you have a set of fans who have a long history of feeling sidelined/marginalized/unwelcome in SFF fandom due to the shape their fandom takes (fanfic).
I’m going to argue that, aside from the issue of whether AO3 deserved a Hugo or the Hugo awarded was in the most appropriate category for whatever AO3 actually is, the real argument is this emotional conflict. One side seems to fear that two million fanficcers claiming to have won a Hugo will diminish the prestige of the award and seems to perceive that even non-earnest claims to have done so (jests or enthusiastic glee for the win or self-deprecating humor or whatever else) is a diminishment of that prestige. The fanficcers on the other side seem to be baffled by this perception, because they are celebrating the award by laying claim to it (in their various ways). To this way of thinking, therefore, there’s no harm to the prestige of the Hugos because it’s a celebration. If anything, this is an enhancement of the award’s prestige and an expansion of its influence as the portion of AO3’s user base who were not previously aware of AO3’s finalist position, let alone WorldCon, WSFS, or the Hugos learned of these things.
This disjuncture in how to read the “I am a Hugo-winning fanficcer”/“My tentacle pornwon a Hugo” claims come down to this divide. One side finds these jokes to be unwelcome, in poor taste, offensive, and/or an outright attack on the Hugos. The other side is in disbelief that anyone could miss the joke that badly or fail to see that it’s all in well-meaning good fun, and perceive the requests to stop as another round of fandom gatekeeping, which they in turn find offensive. On top of that, individuals on all sides of the issue have used heated rhetoric and flung accusations and assumptions that are, shall we say, based in the least charitable readings possible of the other parties’ words.
I don’t know whether this disjuncture can be resolved. I don’t have any answers. I doubt throwing these words at the question will do any good and am pretty sure the end result of them will be, at best, neutral. But I’ve been following the discussions here and in the AO3 news post for the past several days and needed to sort through my thoughts somehow, so here we are.
@JJ
I didn’t meant to imply you were a misogynist, but I can see how it might read that way, so my apologies for that. I made that particular comparison because it was the first to come to mind that could apply to myself. I could have also used an “I can’t be homophobic, I’m a lesbian!” comparison.
I think you can read and even like fanfic, and still be a condescending gatekeeper about it and its authors. Which is exactly how you’ve been coming across. This seems very much to be less about how the majority of people view the award (including multiple winners) than how you view the award, and needing very much for your view of it and what makes it prestigious to be right.
Based on my earlier conversations with Farusha, who was a really good example, I’m trying to be really patient and kind here, so rather than snap back with my first instinctive response, I’m going to try to be more measured.
What I feel like is happening now is that the thinking is “Dammit, we can’t come up with logical counter-arguments to the rational arguments she’s made. Let’s try an ad hominem attack instead; maybe we can shame her into agreeing with us.” That may not be what’s going on, but it sure feels like it.
Look, I’m not going to convince you to stop trying to make the Hugo Awards allow millions of people to officially call themselves winners, and you’re not going to be able to convince me that that would be a good thing for the future of the Hugo Awards. So perhaps the attempts to cast aspersions on my character and motivations can be dropped, and we’ll just accept that we’re never going to agree on this.
I thought the jokes were good for the Hugo’s, if I’m being totally honest about my feelings. People were overjoyed to share, there were people interested in the Hugo’s and the WSFS… I saw more questions and interest from the fannish side of the fence than ever. Now that this happened, that goodwill has just evaporated. “Oh. More of that, then, is it?”
And to be fair, almost all the WSFS members I’ve seen have been upset on the AO3 members behalf, even those who don’t write fanfiction, so I still feel in good company. But this entire thing has done nothing to actually protect the trademark, has only hurt the WSFS’ reputation, and caused a ton of hurt and anger. Everyone in the comments here has had great discourse, and I have actually changed my mind and now feel good and safe that AO3 users do get to claim the win as fully earned when I was on the other side of it before. Thank you, everyone.
@JJ:
It does seem to be coming to a point of needing to agree to disagree. That said: I would gently suggest that if this is the route you wish to take, you should also consider refraining from making additional statements casting aspersions on the motivations of those on the opposite side of the debate, such as “What you want is for the term “Hugo Award Winner” to become meaningless.”
MRM: you should also consider refraining from making additional statements casting aspersions on the motivations of those on the opposite side of the debate, such as “What you want is for the term “Hugo Award Winner” to become meaningless.”
Fair enough. I’ll rephrase.
What they want is to allow millions of people to be able to claim to be official Hugo Award Winners, which I believe will render that designation utterly meaningless. If everyone was able to say they are a Hugo Award Winner, then being a Hugo Award Winner would be nothing special, and there wouldn’t be any point in continuing to give out the Hugo Awards.
@JJ
Did awarding the 2006 Time Person of the Year Award to “You” (that is, everybody on the web) dilute the award? Nah. When it was announced for 2007 and after, it was just as big a deal as it had been in 2005 and before.
So it doesn’t seem likely that if AO3 people continue to call themselves “Hugo Winners”, it will dilute the prestige of people who “really” won the awards. (in fact, the main criticism I see of the 2006 TIme award is of Time itself, for giving it — which may suggest that the long-term fallout from this will be more about the 2019 Worldcon for giving the award to something that is much less a “work” than the books, etc. that have traditionally been given the award)
bill: So it doesn’t seem likely that if AO3 people continue to call themselves “Hugo Winners”, it will dilute the prestige of people who “really” won the awards.
But that isn’t what the discussion is now. The goalposts have been moved. It’s no longer “people who jokingly call themselves Hugo Award Winners aren’t hurting anything”. The discussion now is that all two million AO3 members should be considered to have genuinely won Hugo Awards, and that they should all be able to officially call themselves Hugo Award Winners.
(11) Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really like museums that are filled with complete fiction. Museums are places to learn about things that are real.
@JJ
This, right there, is why so many people are disagreeing with you. There can be several, even several thousand cool things in the world. It doesn’t take away from the worth of a single-handedly won (if there can be such a thing because there are editors and publishers and and and) Hugo. It adds to it. And again you are uncarefully implying that the inclusion of more people lessens the Award, nay, you say it makes it worthless.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the rest of the WSFS decided to agree all two million people could actually say that, you say you wouldn’t care about the Hugo Awards anymore. Maybe it’s not just the future ones, but even past ones are rendered obsolete in that mindset.
Maybe I pegged you wrong, but this is in line with the sort of sentiment you have been communicating before. For me, it is a very extreme sentiment to express that the inclusion of more people would ruin an award.
For the anthology example MexicanX, what would the harm have been to include them all? Especially because I’m pretty sure not English native speakers get fewer opportunities like this. You don’t need to engrave them, we could just save all the names in a proper file in it would barely be a blip.
It seems to me, you would rather cut off the nose to spite the face in this. Four people per Hugo per year, that’s the limit there. And this alienates people from projects that are more communal or have bigger reach because… if we do let in this many people, we violate the fire code. Only in this example, the WSFS makes the fire code by voting on it and by custom and it can change just like this.
@JJ: Bill’s comparison to the effect of the TPotY 2006 seems perfectly in line with the comparison to AO3 folks calling themselves winners sincerely or not, actually.
I would also point out:
This is untrue. The only people saying they’ve won Hugo Awards are the ones such as RedWombat who have won multiple Hugo Awards. What they’ve been saying is that: all two million AO3 members should be considered to have genuinely won a Hugo Award: that is, all members of the collective have won a collective, singular award, ergo making them all winners of the one, singular award.
This idea of individuals being part of the collective is central to their argument, and representing that argument as being that millions of individuals have separately won individual awards is setting up a straw-man.
MRM, you should catch up on Rose Fox’s comments in this thread. She is seriously arguing that all two million AO3 members should be considered to have genuinely won Hugo Awards, and that they should all be able to officially call themselves Hugo Award Winners, which means that they could market themselves that way professionally.
@JJ
It’s not that all two million “should be considered to have” won; it’s that out of a population of 2 million, the vanishingly small number of those who do call themselves “Hugo Winners” (dozens? hundreds?) may not be wrong to do so. She’s not advocating that they all should do so, nor that most will.
The Time 2006 analogy still holds – after the award, the possibility of hundreds of millions of people (much of present company included!) calling themselves “Time’s 2006 Person of the Year” existed (and still exists), but that possibility didn’t dilute the award, and the small number of people who actually claimed to be “Time’s Person of the Year” for 2006 didn’t dilute the award.
“Millions of AO3 users” is your go-to diluting population, but it isn’t realistic, and won’t be. The actual number of relevant AO3 people stating outwardly (on Twitter, Tumbler, etc.) that they are “Hugo winners” is probably on the order of dozens, and stating so inwardly (on AO3 fora, and directly to each other) is probably on the order of hundreds (but if you can show otherwise, I’ll happily back off these numbers). Regardless, this won’t dilute the Hugos.
And Rose Fox addressed this, but it’s worth repeating. You’ve mentioned a number of times “this isn’t how the Hugos work”. We’re in uncharted territory here. No Hugo has ever been given to something created by such a broad-based group. You said “But nominator/voter intent is not what determines how the Hugo Awards work. The rules determine that.” The rules don’t say who gets credit when the award goes to a work. They certainly do not say “Individual creators of a corporately-created work cannot claim to be an award winner”, yet you often and vigorously are saying that is the standard.
Maybe that is a failing of the rules as they exist, and maybe the constitution should be amended with that in mind (to my way of thinking, BRW should be restricted to traditionally published books or similar works [documentaries, etc.]; and if the membership wants to give an award to something that doesn’t fall under that category, do a Special Hugo).
But WSFS opened this can of worms by giving an award to a “work”, thinking it was one thing and would be received that way, when the creators of that “work” received it thinking it was another thing and receiving it in another way. And it was certainly mentioned here broadly that, “hey, this might be a problem, AO3 isn’t like the other works” back during nominations and before final voting. Further, I think that a number of AO3 people joined Worldcon specifically to support the AO3 ballot, and Wordcon/WSFS was so happy for the new members (both their dollars and their bodies) that they overlooked the fact that they were bringing with them their own cultural mindsets. [it would be interesting to know how many AO3 voters had never been Worldcon members before, and to track in future years how many of them continue to be Worldcon members; I suspect the fractions are small].
A housekeeping comment. One individual is tweeting that their comment hasn’t posted here who I wrote to using the email address they registered with. If that email is not responded to, their comment will not be posted.
Every person’s first comment goes through moderation. Some I accept out of hand. A few fail — because of abuse or trolling, most often — and are discarded. Another few, for different reasons, I contact the person at their registration email to see if we can resolve why their comment wasn’t immediately accepted.
I think if someone tries to market themselves professionally as a Hugo Winner, anyone is going to want more context than that, since whether it’s for best novel or best professional artist would also make a difference if you were looking for someone to illustrate a book cover.
@JJ: I’m quite caught up with Rose Fox’s remarks, actually. But there are indeed a lot of people in these comments who are reading too hastily or misreading what other people are saying, and perhaps I’m being one of them at the moment. Could you please quote or link to their comment where they express that all two million users have won Hugo Awards? As opposed to all two million users being winners of the singular award, given to the collective.
If anything, that was my own feeling. Something that would grow our community. At worse, in respect to the service mark, I regarded them as mere background noise. In wading into AO3’s comments section, the Mark Protection Committee could not have chosen a response more certain to make a bunch of people act out in retaliation by doing precisely the thing they want to deter.
@arioch
For me that is a kind of a strange thing to say. What the WSFS is is a movable feast.
Membership of WSFS is the membership of the current Worldcon (which is now CoNZealand). It is not the same as the membership of the last Worldcon (Dublin) although there is obviously a fair overlap. WSFS instructs the Mark Protection Committee to act throughout the year (this is in the constitution).
Also trying to get over 6900 people to agree on anything seems to be unlikely. However there are no mechanisms at all to do this during the year. It would have to be done through the business meeting (which any attending member of the current Worldcon can attend) and then ratified the next year at the next business meeting.
Now you may think that is overly bureaucratic, and I guess it does look that way. But Worldcon fandom probably puts more stock in tradtion than your part of fandom and the rules about business meetings means that rash changes cannot be made.
If people want the status-quo of a small limit on the names changed (and what does that mean for physical trophies) then they are quite free to turn up at the business meeting (and probably the subsequent year’s meeting) and try and get that change through.
bill: But WSFS opened this can of worms by giving an award to a “work”, thinking it was one thing and would be received that way, when the creators of that “work” received it thinking it was another thing and receiving it in another way. And it was certainly mentioned here broadly that, “hey, this might be a problem, AO3 isn’t like the other works” back during nominations and before final voting. Further, I think that a number of AO3 people joined Worldcon specifically to support the AO3 ballot, and Wordcon/WSFS was so happy for the new members (both their dollars and their bodies) that they overlooked the fact that they were bringing with them their own cultural mindsets.
bill, I think this is a completely incorrect characterization. I’m not sure if it’s because you don’t clearly understand how the Hugo Awards work, or what, but this is something that I’ve seen said by AO3 members who don’t understand how the Hugo Awards work, and it looks to me as though you’re just repeating what you saw someone else say.
WSFS did not give an award to anything. Worldcon members did. The Hugo Administrators evaluated AO3 and determined, according to their notes,
“Best Related Work: the Administrators determined that Archive of Our Own is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text that it hosts, and therefore qualifies for the 2019 Hugos.”
WSFS did not “think” anything. The Hugo Administrators were responsible for ruling AO3 eligible on the Hugo ballot (and I think that was an absolutely correct decision; I think that AO3’s innovative platform and user interface are a worthy related work). There is a significant overlap between AO3 fandom and Worldcon fandom, and I don’t believe for a moment that the Hugo Administrators were unaware that AO3 is its own community with its own culture.
I’ve seen AO3 members, over and over, claim that this is some sort of “buyer’s remorse” on the part of Worldcon or WSFS, or that WSFS was forced against their will to include AO3 on the ballot. I don’t beieve that. There was a work refused inclusion from the Hugo Voter Packet based on what I and a lot of other people saw as a completely contradictory and false claim that it was not eligible according to the rules, when it clearly was. If the Hugo Administrators did not want AO3 to be on the ballot, it would have been easy enough for them to say “Nope — fiction”, and disqualify it. They would have been entirely within their rights to do so, and no one would have known until after the ceremony was held and the statistics were released that this had occurred. And a solid case could have been made that that would have been a justifiable decision.
The only “remorse” involved is that a number of AO3 members chose to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable behavior in the Worldcon community regarding claiming credit for the Hugo Awards, as well as some attempts to create and sell unauthorized merchandise.
This is indeed how the Hugo Awards work. The credited individuals get their names on the trophies, and in the official Hugo Award records. Those individuals are the ones who get to call themselves Hugo Award Winners. It’s been this way for decades. No group this large has been a Hugo finalist before, but large groups have been finalists such that not every member of the group was credited by name; for example the MexicanX Initiative this year, for which 4 people out of 50 are credited in the official records.
If your name is not on the ballot and the official records, if you were not contacted and asked whether you wished to accept or decline the nomination, then you are not an official Hugo Award Finalist / Winner.
There is no “failing” in the rules, because anything that is not explicitly covered by the rules is allocated to the Hugo Award Administrator. Their decision on what appears on the ballot is final (although they have occasionally revised the ballot upon discovering that certain nominees were ineligible).
So whatever the Hugo Admin put on the ballot — including the individual names associated with Finalists — that is the official ruling.
Assume that 1/10 of 2 million AO3 members decide to put their self-published fiction on Amazon labelled “Hugo Award Winner”. That’s 200,000 books using the Hugo mark. You may not consider that dilution. I do.
Ultimately, all of these discussions are academic. The Dublin 2019 Worldcon is over, all of its staff including the Hugo Administrators effectively discharged from their roles, no one else is permitted to make any changes to this year’s Hugo results, and no retroactive changes will be made to the official Hugo Award records for 2019, because they are now set in stone. It’s done. Even if something is changed about how large group finalists are handled in the future, it won’t affect the AO3 win, because the records have been recorded and finalized.
Klio: As an autistic woman, there’s really nothing I love better than someone making excuses for a cishet white man’s bad behavior because he might be autistic. Especially since girls and women are woefully underdiagnosed, and we never, ever get that benefit of the doubt — we’re the ones who are “supposed to” smooth over all social disturbances, and how dare we not fulfill that role! Has it occurred to you that just because AO3 isn’t dominated by cishet white guys, that doesn’t mean a lot of its users aren’t on the spectrum?
In other observations, it was really interesting to note that JJ didn’t bother to reply to Abi Sunderland’s extremely kind, extremely generous advice. Nor did Contrarius bother to acknowledge the women calling her out for her internalized misogyny. As for Hampus’s comparisons of AO3 people disagreeing with him, and refusing to grovel to the WSFS’s authority, to Puppies and 4channers: we weren’t the ones who harassed and brigaded a queer woman off Twitter.
@Olav Rokne:
Speaking as a visual artist, I beg to differ.
There is more than one kind of museum, for more than one muse.
This is a museum of art.
There is, one might say, a precedent for such things to exist and to be considered of value, even when the art displayed references fiction.
JJ: Rosefox is saying two million users won ONE Hugo award , not that two million users won two million individual Hugo Awards.
Everything else is the debate over whether the correct term for individual contributors to use for that collective win is “Hugo Winner” or something else. This can get weird, because the fact that two million people all won the same chunk of metal does weird the phrasing.
A:”I won a Hugo!” B””And I won the exact same Hugo!” C,D, E: “And so did we!” Alphabet: (Holding up rocket) (Unison): “This is my Hugo!”
The opening three statements can sound like the respective winners (Two individuals and a 3-way collaboration) of, for example, the Best Fan Writer Hugo from three consecutive years talking. Only the last statement makes it clear to the general public that there’s a collective and a singular award involved.
A question for rosefox and all: Is there a reason the oft-suggested phrasings “Contributed to a Hugo-winning project”/”Participant in the Hugo-Winning AO3” does NOT scratch the collectivist itch? To ME, and maybe I’m just not enough into the collective mindset, it feels like it fits my own contribution to AO3 better than calling myself a flat Hugo winner does.
Lenora Rose, I would very much agree with
(Unison): “This is our Hugo!”
Olav Rokne: Re: (11): A key difference is that the Creation Museum tries to pass its lies off as factual, and pretends to be a factual educational museum when it is not. But plenty of museums store creative works without trying to pass them off as anything but a creative work, and others store the artifacts behind the creation of works of fiction, and that’s what this is. You can criticize Lucas for a vanity project and I’d be right with you, but he’s not trying to make people believe his fiction really happened, he’s trying to celebrate the fiction as fiction and show the work that went into making it.
@Lenora I had that mindset when this first started, but over the course of arguments, the distinction between “Hugo Award winner” and “contributor to a Hugo Winner” started to seem sillier and sillier. I truly cannot fathom why one is more okay than the other if they’re both essentially the same claim. To a lot of people, the difference is only semantic and not practical, so why bother making the distinction in the first place? That’s part of the argument, I feel, and personally it’s where I’m starting to lean. Contributor to a Hugo Winner is being a winner; the trademark is not in a position to legally claim dilution; all that’s left is some people might personally feel that it’s undeserved, and some people personally feel it is deserved. I’m shrugging at all this.
JJ: I phrased it with 26 individual voices saying in unison “This is MY Hugo” for a reason. Did you change it intentionally?
Lenora Rose, yes. You said “Only the last statement makes it clear to the general public that there’s a collective and a singular award involved.” It seems to me that “This is our Hugo!” states that more clearly.
@ LectionaryStan
I had that mindset when this first started, but over the course of arguments, the distinction between “Hugo Award winner” and “contributor to a Hugo Winner” started to seem sillier and sillier.
But language is all about technicalities. We can change “hero” to “zero” in a blink of an eye! Sometimes changing a phrase can have legal and even moral consequences. I don’t buy your charge that “there is no difference,” not when one undermines trademark and the other doesn’t.
@Rob But it’s not a fact that this undermines trademark. That is an unconfirmed belief that some, not all, WSFS members may have. Having strong feelings about it doesn’t make it true.
@JJ — Your main disagreement with what I said in the 1st para that you quote is my assessment of “WSFS , , , giving” (or at least that what it seems to be, since you are “correcting” me on that basis).
“WSFS did not give an award to anything” — this is simply not true. From the WSFS constitution: “WSFS is an unincorporated literary society whose
functions are: To choose the recipients of the annual Hugo Awards .” No one else gives the awards. WSFS delegates certain responsibilities for intermediate steps in the process to a sub-group of the WSFS, but the actual choosing of the recipient — the giving of the award — is done by vote of the WSFS at large. Further, the selection of nominees is also done by WSFS members. All the Hugo Administrators do is tally votes cast by WSFS members who vote (a purely mechanical process, requiring no choice-making or judgement), and validate (or not) choices made by WSFS members who nominate (and the strong historical bias has been to “let the voters decide”, with the admins refusing as much as possible to do something like “deciding” — the decision to allow AO3 as a BRW is strong evidence of this). You know as well as I that every time an opportunity comes up to remove choice-making power from the WSFS membership and give it to a jury, or a committee to pre-select, the decision is always “NO.” The WSFS absolutely gave the award to AO3, and no one else, no external group nor sub-group, did.
“This is indeed how the Hugo Awards work.” – you keep describing custom and what has happened in the past as if it is determinative of who can claim to be a Hugo award winner. That is an unresolved question, not addressed by the only document that counts — the WSFS Constitution. WSFS/Worldcon custom and tradition may bind WSFS (or, more properly, WSFS members may accept as binding WSFS norms), but there is no reason to expect that they will bind people who are not of the WSFS culture.
If WSFS had given the award to AO3 provisional on accepting certain WSFS rules (as the AMPAAS does when giving Oscars), then they could constrain the recipient. They didn’t.
LectionaryStan: Semantics is where I live, though. Someone said something about the difference between the right word and the almost right word? Never underestimate the pickiness of a word* nerd.
Regardless what my first paragraph sounds like, your comment does help me get an idea of the thinking, so thanks.
For me “Contributor to” indicates I did SOMETHING to make it happen (Mostly posted a couple fics, bookmarked some, and gave some kudos) without the bizarre image of me holding a curled shaving of metal and saying “This is my 1 millionth of a Hugo.” Just like the image of a million people somehow all managing, (through the warping of space-time) to hold the same Hugo up in the same moment in all their hands and say “This is my Hugo” fits how collectivism works better than the idea of a bunch of people all saying to and of one another “This is our Hugo” does.
*I dislike grammar nerd these days because so many self proclaimed grammar nerd types are very prescriptivist in the “Dangling modifiers are bad and therefore Star Trek is all wrong**” way.
** sic.
Olav: Fair enough.
If I was going to try and raise another point from the actual Pixel Scroll, it would have been the effort to help fund Scarleteen – though the deadline for Naomi’s contest incentive is 3 days ago now, and they got an excellent response to their plea already.
LectionaryStan: Having strong feelings about it doesn’t make it true.
Having strong feelings that “I ought to be able to call myself a Hugo Award Winner” does not make it true, either.
Look, the official results from this year have been recorded. There are no individual names listed with AO3 — it doesn’t even say “the AO3 Members”. It says “The Organization for Transformational Works”.
So no matter how much you might want to call yourself a Hugo Award Winner, you aren’t officially one — and while no one can probably stop you as long as you don’t try to slap it on your books or other merchandise, it’s just a really tacky thing to do.
It’s really an amazing thing to be able to say “Member of AO3, a Hugo Award Winner for Best Related Work” or “Contributor to a Hugo Award-Winning Project” or “Member of the Hugo-Award-Winning AO3”. You should be hugely proud of being able to say that!
bill, I’m distinguishing between WSFS and WSFS members because to me, they are two different things. WSFS is an organization which exists and has rules. WSFS members (or Worldcon members) actually do things like nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards according to those rules.
@LectionaryStan
Friend was part of the Hugo process in 1972, and has one of the spare trophies (still had the paper over the plaque, last I saw it). He likes to claim it’s for “best unpublished short story”. (Yes, it sits in a place of honor. There was, and still is, a lot of work involved in getting those done.)
I’m sure some of the people here will not appreciate that.
@ LectionaryStan:
Having strong feelings about it doesn’t make it true.
Ah, but my points are backed by the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (i.e. Kevin Standlee). Regardless of what you think about him, he knows what he is talking about. Do you have any sources?
@Andy Leighton
Ok, correct the premise to, let’s say, 70% of voting WSFS members. I’m asking this theoretically, but a lot of WSFS members I have seen contribute to this discussion, many higher profile ones as well as Hugo Award winners, seem to be of this mindset. I don’t know all of the places where this discussion is happening, but so far I haven’t anyone link a winner that would consider it a devaluation.
And as mentioned above, WSFS members are the votes and their attitudes also shape the unwritten customs of the Hugos. It’s not illusory to think the majority mindset on this could change.
@Lenora Rose
Sadly, for me contributor comes to mind for how scientific paper handle it. People called contributor are traditionally not on the title page. Often women folk and others who did huge labour in form of transcribing and editing papers for, for example, their husbands were even left out completely. And that’s if they didn’t contribute significant writings of their own to it.
With these associatings, I find contributor to be very different and it carries the sort of unseen labour with it. Science, at least in STEM parts, moved away from this now and papers usually have several to many authors. It’s not a bad paradigm shift in my mind.
@JJ And I am! But the semantic wrangling of saying I contributed to a winning project but don’t get to say I’m a winner is what doesn’t make sense to me. That isn’t a technical difference that divides winners and not-winners, or at least, it doesn’t have to. Claiming that they are technically different statements is fine, but claiming that the difference means one is an enormous harm to the brand and one is not is really out there to me.
Didn’t Kevin leave the WPC in the last few days? For second, something I’ve learned in my research into becoming a WSFS member since Sept 14 is that even the WPC doesn’t get to override or clarify what the Dublin awarding members gave out, so the WPC are not allowed to make that clarification by the WSFS’ own rules. For third, the WPC hasn’t even made an official statement! They passed on a message to OTW that didn’t even mention trademark whatsoever, so there isn’t even any source to say what the WPC thinks.
@Rob Thornton:
This would be worth more if
the MPCKevin Standlee (Edit: LectionaryStan is correct in saying the MPC itself has made no such statement) had given any indication of consulting an actual expert in the law. Instead they appear to be giving every indication that such has not occurred, as they can’t afford it. So far the only lawyer who has weighed in has spoken only of commercial use, and has specifically declined to advise on non-commercial use.I really think this is a bit disingenuous of you to be asking for sources on this as if it is some kind of ‘gotcha’. I can understand not wanting to page through the previous comments for links that have already been introduced and discussed, but if you do that, then your lack of knowledge is on you. At the very least it would behoove you to make some attempt at refutation of the sources clearly provided to you already before demanding more.
LectionaryStan: Didn’t Kevin leave the WPC in the last few days? For second, something I’ve learned in my research into becoming a WSFS member since Sept 14 is that even the WPC doesn’t get to override or clarify what the Dublin awarding members gave out, so the WPC are not allowed to make that clarification by the WSFS’ own rules.
As far as I’m aware, Kevin is still on the Mark Protection Committee. He was chair, but stepped down from that role in August since he’s chair of a big upcoming convention.
As far as overrides, you’re kind of right and kind of wrong. Nobody gets to change the official Dublin 2019 Hugo Award Results now that they’ve been submitted by this year’s Hugo Administrator. So the MPC can’t change anything on the official results page.
The MPC does, however, have full power to enforce WSFS’ marks and can decide whether something is or is not a trademark infringement that they wish to pursue. Since the individual AO3 members are not listed on the official Hugo Award results, and “the AO3 members” is not even listed on the official Hugo Award results, it is within the MPC’s remit to decide whether they wish to pursue cases where individual AO3 members claim to be a Hugo Award Winner.
…I think my brain mixed up WSFS and MPC, so sorry about that retroactively. Oops.
@JJ
I’m going to say this bluntly—but hopefully not harshly—and then drop it. You know the brief discussion we had quite a ways back now, about who’s an AO3 user? It’s pretty noticeable to me that you still haven’t been including yourself in that group when you talk about AO3 users in general. If you don’t want to use “we/us” and would rather keep saying “they/them,” then you certainly don’t have to (and you can just say it straight out that you don’t want to—in fact I’d prefer that to talking like you’re cool with that and then acting like you’re really, really not). I find it factually inaccurate and actually fairly insulting, but I don’t think you’re obliged to talk about us fellow AO3 users in ways that won’t hurt my feelings.