By Kevin Black: I have been following the discussion of the Hugo Award artist categories here by Tammy Coxen and Colin Harris closely, as well as the Facebook discussion threads on JOF. I am not a fan artist, although my spouse is–I do, however, amend code professionally, as senior counsel for a chamber of a state legislative body in the U.S. I have become convinced that it is important to reject ratification of the “F.18–Cleaning up the Art Categories” amendment which the business meeting in Glasgow passed forward to Seattle, but that there is a significant problem which needs addressing, which is the retitling of the Best Professional Artist Hugo category to Best Artist in the Field of Professional Illustration. It is time to solve the Fan vs. Pro Artist conundrum by cutting the Gordian Knot. The amendment which I recommend is set forth in full below, followed by explanation.
End the False Binary
Moved, to amend the WSFS constitution as follows:
3.3.13: Best Professional Artist in the Field of Professional Illustration. An illustratorartist whose illustrative work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy has appeared in a professional publication during the previous calendar year.
3.3.18: Best Fan Artist. An artist or cartoonist whose work related to science fiction, fantasy, or science fiction or fantasy fandom has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, non-professional, display (including at a convention or conventions, posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution) during the previous calendar year (including in semiprozine or fanzines, at a convention or conventions, posting on the internet, or in online or print-on-demand shops where the benefit from direct sales inure to the artist or the artist’s business instead of to a second party to whom the artist has sold or licensed their work).
3.10.2 In the Best Professional Artist in the Field of Professional Illustration category, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works first published in the eligible year.
Explanation: Recent fan scholarship reveals remarkable stability in the Hugo Award categories of Best Professional Artist (awarded since 1955, first published description in 1968) and Best Fan Artist (awarded since 1967, first published description in 1972), until recent turbulence and Glasgow’s approval of “F.18–Cleaning up the Art Categories” for ratification in Seattle has threatened to overthrow the community’s understanding of what these categories are, and what work and artists should be recognized in each category. This amendment takes a measured approach by respecting the code we have and the community’s long-held understanding of the scope of the categories, while finding opportunities to more carefully and respectfully describe the differences between the artist categories.
The wellspring of angst, I argue, is the title of the Best Professional Artist category, which commits a multitude of sins:
It creates a false dichotomy between professional artists and fan artists, implying we should be able to defensibly sort artists into one category or another. But “professional” and “fan” are not opposites (or we would not allow artists to qualify in the same year in both categories). It should be obvious and understood that artists making fan art may operate and conduct themselves as professionals, and may produce work which is of professional quality.
It’s misleading.The Best Professional Artist category has been limited by its description to illustrators since 1975, but art is not limited to illustration, and professional artists exist who are not professional illustrators.
It’s insulting. By labeling only one form of art as “professional,” it implies that professional illustration is the only form of art the community values, and has the feeling of casting shade. Because one opposite of professional is unprofessional.
So, we should rename the category to reflect what it is actually for, Best Artist in the Field of Professional Illustration. I differ from some other commenters by believing that it makes evident and eminent sense to continue this community’s 70-year tradition of honoring professional illustration, based on its singular importance to our genre. Nor would it be fair or sporting to expect the artists producing fan art, which we equally revere with its own Hugo Award, to compete against beloved professional illustrators whose work receives mass market distribution and is attached to products and IP that we love. The amendment makes a small change to the category description by repositioning “has appeared in a professional publication” to make it clearer that genre illustrations may be counted for award consideration if they appear in a range of professional publications, including not just novels and magazines but other things like game cards and postage stamps.
No change is made to the Best Fan Artist category title, which respects our community’s tradition of recognizing and esteem for fan work. The changes made to the description in this category are almost entirely nonsubstantive and for the purpose of cleaning up convoluted language. The few substantive additions specify that the work must relate to “science fiction, fantasy, or science fiction or fantasy fandom,” and that if the work is for sale in an online or print-on-demand shop, the benefit from direct sales must inure to the artist or the artist’s business instead of to a second party to whom the artist has sold or licensed their work.
The Best Fan Artist amendments leave the scope of the category essentially unchanged since the last amendments to it were ratified in 2021, and arguably since “or other public display” was added to the description in 1974. Fan art itself has changed in the past 50 years, which has had an impact on what kind of artists get recognition in the category, but the category itself really hasn’t. The only period in which the category was limited to fanzine art was 1972-1974. Professional illustrators were recognized as fan artists all the way back in the 1970s and 80s. Fan art, understood as the kind of genre art appealing to fans which is commonly (but not exclusively) found at SFF conventions, is more prominent and important than ever–as reflected by the ability of some artists to reportedly make money producing it! Meanwhile art donated to fanzines and conventions continues to exist alongside these creations, and continues to receive Hugo Award recognition. This is no time to try to roll back the clock or put the genie back in the bottle. It will be easy to think of technically eligible artwork which does not feel like fan art to you–in which case, don’t nominate it! Don’t vote for it if it becomes a finalist! Ultimately it is the community, and not the business meeting or Hugo Administrator, which should continue to decide what merits the title of Best Fan Art.
These amendments maintain the Hugo Award artist category framework, which has worked for this community 98% of the time, while making a few small changes and one big change in retitling the Best Professional Artist category. They should end the reductive fan vs. pro artist debates. Free your mind from the pro vs. fan artist binary!
By Colin Harris: INTRODUCTION: A follow-on to Tammy Coxen’s “Evolution of the Art Hugo Categories”. I am very grateful to Tammy and Meg Frank in particular for their input, and also to everyone who has contributed to the online debate for their ideas and comments.
In its earliest form, the Fan Artist category (first awarded in 1967) was defined purely by context – it was art that appeared in amateur magazines (later redefined into fanzines and semiprozines). But over the years there was a gradual expansion of that context, starting in 1974 with the addition of “other public display.” in 2014 “public display” was updated to “non-professional public display” and to specify that this included display at conventions. In 2019 (ratified in 2021) the definition was expanded further to include “posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution.”
Until recent years, none of the definitions of Fan Artist mentioned whether the work in question was paid for. The economic context of the work was implicit in the language defining, first, amateur magazines, and then, fanzines and semiprozines, where the art would be appearing. The later changes around public display made it clear however that “selling fan art at a convention did not make it a professional sale”.
Meanwhile, while the definition of Fan Artist has evolved over time, Professional Artist is still quite a narrow category that includes only illustrators and works published in a professional publication.
As Tammy pointed out, this adds up to a world where a person who makes their living by posting full resolution images of their media-inspired art on a print-on-demand shop would qualify as a Fan Artist, but not a Professional Artist. And conversely, if the language passed in 2024 were to be ratified, then a person who creates art for their local convention to use for free and sells the originals in the art show in the same year would NOT qualify as a Fan Artist but would qualify as a Professional Artist, even if none of that art sells. And neither of these really make sense, which is why there have been so many attempts to clarify these categories through the years.
Clearly, a relatively simple distinction has become very messy indeed. How do we untangle the mess? Perhaps it’s time to step back a bit …
THE ARTIST OR THE WORK. Here’s a fundamental question: is a Fan Artist someone who creates Fan Art, or is Fan Art something made by a Fan Artist? Similarly, is a Professional Artist someone who created Professional work, or is Professional work something made by a Professional Artist?
This might seem simple – but it gets to the heart of the matter. If we want to start from the work, then we need to focus our definition on the work. Do we then want to just define the work by economic context (was it for sale?) and where it was presented? Or is there something more fundamental about either the intent behind it, or the nature (aesthetics) of the work itself? Remember that in earlier days, the professional artist definition referred to “illustrator” while fan artist referred to “an artist or cartoonist”. And until the last decade, the list of Fan Artist Hugo winners remained full of “traditional” fan artists who were working for fanzines and convention publications: Teddy Harvia, Brad Foster, Sue Mason, Frank Wu and before that, Ian Gunn, Bill Rotsler, George Barr and various others.
It is only since 2013 that this has shifted, with more winners who are illustrating for semiprozines (rather than fanzines) or who are progressing towards professional careers. Many of the finalists produce work which is on the cusp between Fan and Pro categories; sometimes it’s just about visibility to the community and how they are perceived in a particular year. (Galen Dara won best Fan Artist in 2013 and was a finalist for Professional Artist in 2014 – I’m not sure how much their work or where it appeared actually changed between those years).
Conversely, there are still occasions where an established professional artist produces work which is clearly fan art. Lee Moyer won Best Fan Artist in 2022 for his “Small Gods” series which appears at conventions and online (https://www.smallgodseries.com/). And this seems like a tradition to hang on to – dating back to Jack Gaughan’s dual win in 1967 and more recently to cases where professional writers including Fred Pohl and John Scalzi have won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer.
It seems then, that we must allow for the question of intent, which may be reflected in the content and aesthetics of the work or the way it is published (or sold). The problem is that we also need a simple definition which will be intuitive to thousands of Hugo nominators, and we’re not getting that. Instead, we’re getting progressively more complex definitions which are just leading to progressively more dubious results (see above!).
We are in fact trying to maintain a bright white line between pro and fan art which no longer exists. Go back 50 years, and book / magazine covers vs. fanzine illos and cartoons was a genuine and simple proxy for this white line. In the age of the Internet, where pro and fan artists have equally polished websites, pros and fans both sell work at conventions, and where fans may be supporting themselves financially through e.g. Patreon, we are just tying ourselves in knots.
FAILURES OF DEFINITION – WHERE HUGOS GO WRONG. There’s a couple of routes by which Hugo categories become messy. One is the desire to have a Hugo for everything – because every part of the field should have a chance to be honoured. Of course this is understandable, given the prestige of the award and the recognition that goes with it; and when people advocate for an “overlooked” area they do it because they have a passion for that part of the genre.
The second route is the tendency for highly invested people to get lost in the detail when trying to come up with “clear” definitions, or to focus excessively on edge cases. Over-thinking is a real risk, and it’s easy to end up with a cumbersome definition in an attempt to address every edge case and scenario.
The third route is drift, which we’ve see in the Fan Artist definitions (thanks again Tammy!). Each change is small and made in response to perceived issues of the time, but over time the cumulative effect is to move away from the intent behind the award, or at least clutter it so much that it ceases to be intuitive.
So what makes a Good Hugo Category? I believe there are four over-riding considerations:
It should be compact in that it should bring together broadly similar works which can reasonably be compared on merit
It should be distinct in that it should be clearly separated from the other categories
It should be intuitive in that the average nominator should find it easy to identify whether works qualify or not.
It should have depth in that there needs to be enough good candidates to make a solid long list of 15 credible finalists.
Intuitiveness is essential. People who are directly involved in discussions about a category may spend a long time on considered analysis; vast majority of nominators don’t do that, especially if they don’t have ready access to the required information about a work (Was it for sale? Where was it first displayed? Why was it created?). Of course, we want to help the Administrators with clear guidance on what works should be eligible for a Hugo – but I believe the pendulum has swung too far in a number of the current category definitions. I plead for a return to simpler, more intuitive definitions and trust the nominators to act in line with the spirit of those definitions.
WHY ARE THE ARTIST CATEGORIES PARTICULARLY PROBLEMATIC? Building on the above, why then are the Artist categories (especially Fan Artist) particularly problematic? Simply because the natural proxies for identifying professional vs. fan contexts don’t work anymore or are too limiting.
By Alexis Gilliland
What I mean is that the original definition had a very intuitive proxy (was something for a book/magazine or a fanzine/convention) that covered most of the art fans saw. And of course, that distinction is still helpful – but it’s no longer enough because of all the other ways people display their art (as recognised by the evolving definition since 1974).
Proxies based simply on whether something is for sale don’t work for multiple reasons. Pros and fans both sell their work – including side by side in conventions. Fan artists like Sara Felix and Iain Clark create amazing art for conventions (for free) but then sell prints or even originals of those works. Professional artists create personal pieces which are not for sale, but that does not make them fan artists.
Relying on paywall access is also not useful. A fan artist may reasonably operate a Patreon. A professional artist may put high resolution copies of their art on their website.
The field is getting broader. The distribution channels are getting broader. The answer cannot be to make long and longer definitions, especially ones which clearly give rise to absurd options.
WHAT OUTCOMES DO WE WANT? Perhaps the best approach is to agree the outcome – what we want to achieve – and THEN use that to test any proposed definition. Here’s some suggested outcomes for starters …
A single artist (or collective) can produce both Pro and Fan art in the same year
Intent matters; fannish work is primarily work created for and made available to the community for free or for nominal cost
Intent matters: a professional artist remains a professional artist even if their work is not for sale, or is only shown at conventions, if it’s part of their professional body of work …
excepting that a (normally) professional artist can also produce fannish work and qualify for fan artist in the same year
Nominators should not need to know the economic circumstances of the artist to judge whether they are professional or fan.
It is a bad outcome if the typical bodies of work in pro and fan artists are essentially indistinguishable apart from their economic context, or rely on marginal considerations of where someone is in their career. (Per above: a good Hugo category is compact, distinct and intuitive!)
This last point is important. The Hugos recognise work. In some categories we recognise individual works like fictional stories; in others (Editor, Artist, Fan Writer) we recognise the person for the body of work they’ve produced in a year. It feels inherently dubious if we’re going to have two categories for essentially similar bodies of work.
It’s clear, however, that we do not even have consensus on what outcomes we want – the comments on Tammy’s article and related Facebook posts present polarised views from “anyone who is making art to sell should be a professional” to “anyone who only sells their art through direct sales within the community is a fan artist, even if it’s their main source of income.”
These divergent views are all valid – these are subjective matters – but they become problematic when the category definitions are pulled first one way and then the other by amendments. We will never satisfy everyone; but we need a majority consensus that can be clearly articulated to future nominators. It’s also important to acknowledge that there will ALWAYS be examples that don’t fit well with any definition; we need to accept that, as long as we are comfortable with the lists of finalists and winners. To paraphrase Voltaire, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. Current definition (October 2023): “An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.”
This works in that the definition is simple and results in finalists who clearly belong there. The questions are whether the category should be broader to include other forms of visual art than illustration (almost certainly!) and whether it should also include more of the people who are making a professional living from their art without working for books and magazines. (The latter takes us back to the maze of what constitutes a professional sale, if it’s not the place it appears or the price tag.)
Artist Meg Frank suggests that professional art is distinguished by its client being a commercial entity, which seems helpful. In fact, this is a direct broadening of “appeared in a professional publication” to also cover work done for advertising, galleries and exhibitions.
Hence a new definition might be:
“An individual visual artist or visual artist collective creating work for sale or use by business or public sector entities in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year. These entities include, but are not limited to, publishers, advertisers, galleries and museums, but do not include direct-to-consumer sales, print-on-demand websites or similar.”
This would seem to offer several improvements:
Allows for artist collectives
Uses visual artist rather than illustrator, extending the category to 3D and other related art forms
Emphasises the commercial nature of the work and that it is being done for an organisation rather than direct sale. Includes public sector entities (and we assume here people will understand that this is not intended to include conventions!) because of artwork produced for NASA, the USPS etc.
Deliberately moves us away from the words professional publication which carry significant baggage in the Hugo vocabulary – also because we want to avoid any sense that professional vs. fan is somehow related to quality of the work
Avoids considerations of the channel through which the work was presented, whether it was actually for public purchase, and how the artist makes a living.
Note that this would generally put much semiprozine art into the professional category, but this does not seem unreasonable given that most semiprozines are closer to professional magazines than fanzines both in appearance and being for sale.
BEST FAN ARTIST. There are several options for the Fan Artist category, and I have chosen to set out principles rather than specific wording here to avoid the “but what about …” comments. We need to agree on the principles and outcomes we want first, THEN worry about the detailed wording!
Option A – “Everything Is Eligible Somewhere”
This option maintains the status quo where Pro and Fan Artist are complementary categories which essentially cover the whole field. The definition probably refers to work produced for free distribution or direct sale within the community, placing Etsy shops, Patreons and convention sales firmly in the Fan Artist category. The lack of an intermediary, commercial client who commissions or buys and then uses the work is what stops it being professional.
Option B – “It’s A Fan Category”
With this option Fan Artist sits alongside Fan Writer, Fanzine, and Fancast as awards given to works created by and for fans and fandom. The definition would emphasise that the work is essentially created for and gifted to the community. Nominees would revert to being people creating art mainly for Fanzines, Webzines and Conventions, as was typically the case up to 2013. The category would be clearly and narrowly defined. The two potential issues would be (1) would the category still have enough depth to be credible (2) the many artists who produce work and merchandise for personal sale (sometimes making a living from it) on the convention circuit or Internet would not longer fall in either category.
Option C – “It’s Like SemiProzine”
If you think Option A is too vague and Option B too exclusive, this may be the option for you. Why not have three Awards: Best Professional Artist, Best Semi-Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist. Best Semi-Professional Artist would be the category for all those people who are producing work for direct sale to the community or online, but not for commercial and business clients. This covers an ever-growing number of artists. This would however leave the question of whether the narrower Fan Artist category would still have sufficient depth.
At the end of the day, I go back to an earlier point. The boundaries between these categories are no longer simple things with easy proxies. Certainly, we need clearly articulated definitions, but let’s keep them simple and intuitive, and trust voters to understand and nominate based on the spirit of those definitions rather than tortuous legalese!
By Tammy Coxen: The Worldcon has been trying to define how to categorize and recognize artwork of various kinds since the 1950s. In 2024 the latest attempt to do so received first passage at Glasgow. Immediately upon passage many fan artists began objecting to the wording as passed, once again debating how these categories should or should not be defined. This document was created to inform that debate and show how we have arrived at the category definitions that we have now. And as long as it is (and it is LONG) it STILL does not cover all the attempts that have been made to adjust these categories through the years. Prior to 2018 it only includes amendments that actually made their way into the constitution. From 2018 on, it also includes proposals that did not actually pass, because these provide needed context for understanding the most recent decisions.
SUMMARY & THOUGHTS. In its earliest iterations, the Fan Artist category (first awarded in 1967) is about context — it’s art that appears in amateur magazines (later redefined into fanzines and semiprozines). But over the years there’s a gradual expansion of that context. The earliest of these came in 1974 with the addition of “other public display.” Sadly, there are no detailed business meeting minutes to say why that was added (although there is speculation, see below). But it has certainly contributed to the muddiness of the category over the years, as the options for “other public display” grew.
Until relatively recently, none of the definitions of Fan Artist made any mention of whether the work in question had been paid for. The economic context of the work was implicit in the language defining, first, amateur magazines, and then, fanzines and semiprozines, where the art would be appearing. But in 2014 language was added to change “public display” to “non-professional public display” and to specify that this included display at conventions, with the argument being made that “selling fan art at a convention did not make it a professional sale”. So there is precedent to say that art “for sale” is not necessarily disqualified as Fan Art.
In 2019 (ratified in 2021) the definition was expanded further to include “posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full resolution.” For some, the inclusion of print-on-demand shops seems contradictory to “non-professional public display,” but others see this as no different than purchasing fan art in the context of a convention.
At the same time that the possibilities for public display were expanding (both definitionally and due to the Internet), the very definition of the phrase “Fan Art” was also changing – at least in the wider community. Outside of Worldcon and related fandom, the term “Fan Art” is akin to “fanfic” – art created in response to or inspired by a particular show, movie or written work.
And while the definition of Fan Artist has changed a lot over the decades, the Professional Artist category remained the same, retaining a narrow definition that includes only illustrators and works that are published in a professional publication.
All of this adds up to a world where, currently, a person who makes their living by posting full resolution images of their media-inspired art on a print-on-demand shop would qualify as a Fan Artist, but not a Professional Artist. And conversely, if the language passed in 2024 were to be ratified, then a person who creates art for their local convention to use for free and sells the originals in the art show in the same year would NOT qualify as a Fan Artist but would qualify as a Professional Artist, even if none of that art sells. And neither of these really make sense, which is why there have been so many attempts to clarify these categories through the years.
The thinking has been that Fan Art is a little like porn – you just know it when you see it. But given the existence of completely different definitions of the term “Fan Art,” this approach is definitely not working. Until we as a community agree on what Fan Art is, we won’t be able to agree on how to define it.
The lines have also gotten blurry about what it means to be a Professional Artist, now that we live in a world where individuals have the means to display their own work publicly and formal “publication” of art is no longer desirable or necessary for many who earn their living through art. And how do services such as Patreon fit in when considering if someone is a Professional Artist or not?
In my deep dive through the history of the categories, it seems clear that the change proposed and passed in 2024 was primarily about expanding the Professional Artist category, and really didn’t take into account the impact on, and particularly context of, the Fan Artist category. In particular, there’s a mismatch between the idea that Fan Art is only free and the historical precedent that selling Fan Art is not necessarily disqualifying.
I don’t claim to have the answers, but I’m hoping that this document will shed some light on how we got where we are, so that maybe we can figure out where we should go next!
HOW TO READ THIS DOCUMENT. I used (Fan) or (Pro) or (Both) next to the dates so it’s clear what I’m talking about when. (Context) is used when there is something not related to creating a new definition, but which is relevant. Category definition text in bold & italic was passed, ratified and used. Category definition text only in bold was introduced and may have received first passage, but has not yet been ratified or put into use.
By ATom
1953-1968 (Pro) – In the Beginning
The Hugos launch with two categories for art in 1953: Best Cover Artist and Best Interior Illustrator. Starting in 1955, the second time the Hugos were awarded, there was the single Best Professional Artist category which has continued to the present day except for Loncon in 1957 (which awarded only magazine Hugos) and Solacon in 1958 which called the category Outstanding Artist.
1967 (Fan) – Let There Be Fan Artist Hugos
Best Fan Artist is introduced, with no definition. Jack Gaughan won both Best Fan Artist and Best Pro Artist that year.
1968-2024 (Pro) – Refining the Definition
There are a variety of similar definitions in use during this time. I do not have exact start or end dates for them.
In 1968, the definition of Best Professional Artist was: “A professional artist whose work was presented in some form in the science fiction or fantasy field during the previous calendar year.”
By 1975, two changes had been introduced. It now specifies “illustrator” rather than artist, and puts the professional part on the publication rather than the individual. “An illustrator whose work has appeared in the field of professionally published science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.”
By 1995, another change had been made, replacing “the field of professionally published SFF” with “a professional publication.” “An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.”
While a couple of proposals were made to change the definition of Professional Artist (see below), none of them passed before 2024, and the 1995 definition remained in place until then.
1972 (Fan) – First Definition
First published definition of Best Fan Artist. “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared, during the previous calendar year, in magazines of the type defined under Article 2.08. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the Professional Artist category will not be eligible for the Fan Artist award for that year.” 2:08 defined Best Amateur Magazine: “Any generally available non-professional magazine devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects, which has published four or more issues, at least one appearing in the previous calendar year.”
1974 (Fan) – Adding “Other Public Display”
The definition was updated to make work outside of those defined on the Amateur Magazines Hugo category eligible by adding the words “or through other public display.” So the definition became: “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared, during the previous calendar year, in magazines of the type defined under Article 2.08, or through other public display. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the Professional Artist category will not be eligible for the Fan Artist award for that year.”
Sadly, I can’t find any minutes to say why that was added, or what they meant by it. However, Mike Glyer was an active fan at the time and offers this speculation:
“Tim Kirk mounted an exhibit of paintings he’d done for his masters degree at the 1972 Westercon. Although Kirk did illos for leading fanzines like Science Fiction Review, so had eligible work, I know we discussed at the time that people weren’t going to unsee this impressive unpublished work, and it seemed silly for it to have to be disregarded. (As if people would.) That could have lent impetus to the rules change.
1984 (Fan) – Adapting to Semiprozine
Best Amateur Magazine was split up into Best Fanzine and Best Semiprozine, and the Fan Artist category definition was adapted to match. “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public display during the previous calendar year. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the Professional Artist category will not be eligible for the Fan Artist award for that year.”
By Marc Schirmeister
1990-1996 (Best Original Artwork Hugo) – Trying Another Way
A Hugo for Best Original Artwork was given as a special committee award in 1990. It was then added as a regular Hugo Award and awarded from 1992-1996. In 1995, an amendment to remove the category received first passage, and in 1996 it was ratified. The definition text was: “Any original piece of Science Fiction or Fantasy artwork first published during the previous calendar year.”
Commentary from Fancyclopedia:
The category was intended to honor individual pieces of art, whether or not published and whether or not cover art. (Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist honor the artist for a body of work, not an individual piece.)
The category ultimately failed for two reasons: First, there were too many potential, worthy, nominees and the nomination votes received tended to be wide and flat with many pieces each getting only a few nominations. As a consequence, which pieces that actually got onto the final ballot tended to be due mostly to chance. (Additionally, a category which requires few votes to put a work onto the final ballot is very sensitive to a group of friends getting together and bloc voting.) Secondly, in the pre-WWW era, it was difficult to give most Hugo voters an opportunity to see what they were voting for, since the art tended to be widely scattered in where it appeared.
2007-2008 (Fan) – Removing Restrictions
In 2007 an amendment was introduced to remove the restriction about not being able to appear on the ballot as both a fan and a pro. The proposal commentary includes: “This restriction goes against the basic model underlying fandom — that being a pro is not an attribute of a person that takes them outside of fandom, nor is fandom some sort of junior league that fan artists graduate from to become pro artists. Just as we don’t stop pros from running as fan writers, if that’s what they’re doing (and, in some cases, winning the Hugo for Best Fan Writer and a fiction Hugo in the same year), we should not impose that restriction on fan vs pro artists. If people are doing both (and there have been, and still are artists who are doing both kinds of work), then they should be eligible in both categories.”
The amendment is adopted with no debate in either year. The Fan Artist category definition is now “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public display during the previous calendar year.”
By Marc Schirmeister
2013 – 2014 (Fan) – Broadening and Defining
In 2013 the first proposal was submitted to the business meeting to expand the Fan Artist category to include other kinds of art by adding “working in any visual or performance medium.” This was not adopted, but other additions to the definition were. This included specifying that “other public display” had to be non-professional, and specifically calling out conventions as an example. This addition was made by Colin Harris who wanted the amendment to be clear that “selling fan art at a convention did not make it a professional sale.” Read more of the discussion here starting on page 6 here.
The 2013 amendment was ratified in 2014. The category definition was updated to: “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, nonprofessional display (including at a convention or conventions), during the previous calendar year.”
2017 (Both) – Creating HASC
The Hugo Awards Study Committee (HASC) was created, and one of its remits was to look at the Art Categories. In fact, the original proposal by Nicholas Whyte and Kathryn Duval was for a committee that would look only at the Art categories, but this was broadened out to cover the Hugos as a whole.
2017 (Context) – Disqualifying Sculpture
Tomek Radziewicz, a sculptor, received enough nominations to be a finalist for Best Professional Artist, but was declared ineligible because, as a sculptor, his work did not appear in a professional publication. Nicholas Whyte was the administrator that year, and stands by his decision as being in accordance with the rules, but saw this as evidence that the categories were not working as intended and something should be done.
2018 (Both) – Attempting a Radical Rethinking
HASC brought a proposal to the business meeting. However, even among the committee it was heavily debated, and a second competing proposal was considered but not introduced.
The proposed new definitions were:
Best Professional Artist. An artist who has produced work related to science fiction or fantasy which has been published or publicly displayed for the first time during the previous calendar year, and which does not qualify as Fan Art under the Best Fan Artist category definition.
Best Fan Artist. An artist who has produced work related to science fiction or fantasy which has appeared in fanzines or other public, non-professional display for the first time during the previous calendar year, and for which the rights to reproduce that artwork have been given without direct compensation to one or more non-commercial publications or for use at or by non-profit science fiction or fantasy conventions. Art which has been made available for reproduction only for the purpose of advertising the artist or their work, including art provided to a convention by a Guest of Honor, is not eligible as fan art.
The commentary attached to the proposal really gets at why we’re STILL having this conversation now.
Historical Context
Fan Artist originally meant people who had their art published in fanzines and/or convention publications. Sometimes the originals of that art may also have been sold (typically in convention art shows), and some of it was produced by people who made their living selling SF/Fantasy art professionally but who also donated the right to use art to fannish causes – but only the donated artwork, and not the sold artwork, was considered for the eligibility of the fan artwork.
A person can be both a professional artist (for work being sold), and a fan artist (for work for which the right to reproduce is donated elsewhere for free). In past history, Jack Gaughan won both of the art Hugo Awards in the same year, for work in a year in which he both did a great deal of professional art (magazine and book covers and interior art) and fan art (many dozens of sketches that he donated to fanzines for them to use as interior art).
In recent years, Fan Artist nominations have spread to include artists whose material is visible on the web without direct payment to view. This has been welcomed by some as an expansion of the field but decried by others as not meeting the historical expectations of fan art – that the right to reproduce the art (and often, but not necessarily, the physical artwork) be donated for free to someone else, for use in the other person’s fan publications (including websites).
Philosophical Context:
Hugo voters want to recognize artists who create speculative art which mirrors, complements, and inspires the stories we read and watch.
Hugo voters want to recognize artists who make special charitable contributions of art for the furtherance of fannish activities such as fanzines and conventions.
Hugo voters have decided that these are two distinct forms of art, and have created two categories to recognize those forms of art.
Additional Commentary:
These two artist categories are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible for one artist to be eligible for both Professional and Fan categories in any given year.
No attempt will be made to define “professional artist” as opposed to “nonprofessional artist”. If works do not meet the eligibility requirements for Fan Art, then they are considered to be Professional Art.
Eligible work includes art in physical or digital form, including illustration, painting, book and magazine covers, photography, three-dimensional work such as sculpture, jewelry, mixed media work, and costumes, and other visual artwork such as website graphics, animated gifs, and game art.
“Public display” includes art shows, dealer tables, panel presentations, other convention display, websites, and any other type of display that is generally available to the public.
“Without direct compensation” means that the artist has not been compensated for the art in question, but does not disqualify them on the basis of compensation otherwise received (such as a discounted or free membership at the convention given on the basis of having served on multiple panels in line with standard policy for that convention).
Artwork which has been “given for free to one or more non-commercial publications” includes artwork which has been made freely available for use via a Creative Commons (or similar) license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license.
This proposal was heavily debated in the business meeting, and ultimately referred back to a new committee which (spoiler) failed to act. I will not attempt to summarize the debate here, but I recommend you read it for yourself starting on page 22. https://www.wsfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2018-WSFS-Minutes.pdf
Ariela Housman was nominated as Best Fan Artist. One of the works she submitted to the Hugo Voter’s Packet was not allowed to appear because it was only exhibited online and not published or exhibited at a convention, as the definition requires. In her Hugo eligibility post for that year, she expresses frustration that “you can make a living entirely for years by selling your SF art directly to other people and still not be considered a Professional Artist” under the Hugo definitions. From my read, this blog post drives a lot of the direction of the changes made over the next few years, so it’s worth reviewing in its entirety. “2018 Hugo Eligibility Post: Best Fan Artist” — Geek Calligraphy.
2019 (Fan) – Defining Public Display
Ariela Housman and her business partner Terri Ash submitted an amendment to define “public, non-professional display” in the Fan Artist category by adding “posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full resolution.” An attempt was made to refer this to the HASC but failed. With little discussion on the actual amendment the motion passed and got sent on for ratification.
2019 (Both) – Passing it Back to HASC
The new committee created in 2018 to work on the art categories did not meet or submit a report. The topic was referred back to HASC by the 2019 Business Meeting.
2021 (Fan) – Debating Public Display
The 2019 ratification came up for amendment (due to ConNZealand in 2020 passing all business forward). Discussion against the amendment included:
The addition of “in online or print-on-demand shops” means art that is for sale. Just because you can see it for free doesn’t make it fan art. Saying that art that is for sale is eligible for the fan art Hugo Award goes against the spirit of what fan art is.
The traditional definition of fan art is art that is made available for fannish activities, such as fanzines and conventions. All art is professional. It’s making it available for use for fannish activity that makes it fan art and, thus, a fan artist.
Discussion in favor of the amendment included:
Fan art has always appeared in convention art shows, where it has always been for sale. You could see it at a convention, but if you wanted to keep it you had to pay. The same rule for art on the internet is fine and keeping with the spirit of fan art,
Fan art online, which is made by fans for fans to celebrate fannish things, needs to be celebrated with the Fan Artist Hugo Award.
The amendment ultimately passed, and the new definition was: “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, non-professional, display (including at a convention or conventions, posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution), during the previous calendar year.”
2022 (Both) – Trying Again to Radically Rethink
The HASC submitted another amendment to resolve these categories. Having failed to define “fan” first and pro in opposition to that, they now tried to do it the other way around.
Best Professional Artist. One or more collaborators on a body of work first displayed during the previous calendar year and created as i) work for hire, ii) on paid commission, or iii) for sale (either directly or via a paywall-like structure).
Best Fan Artist. One or more collaborators on a body of work first displayed during the previous calendar year in a fashion that did not qualify for Best Professional Artist, i.e., neither work for hire, nor commissioned for pay, nor for sale.
In the commentary HASC says:
There was also a clear consensus that the pool of potential nominees in the Best Professional Artist category needs to be widened – the current definition effectively restricts eligibility to illustrators of magazines and book covers – but in a way that does not risk potential Best Fan Artist nominees discovering that they have been deemed to be professional by a quirk of the rules. Much fannish art is sold, after all.
The subcommittee discussed this dilemma at some length, and also touched on the inclusion of art other than images in Best Professional Artist, the requirement for artists to provide proof of eligibility to administrators (which under current rules applies to Best Professional Artist but not Best Fan Artist), and whether or not groups of artists should be eligible.
Ultimately the subcommittee decided that eligibility for both categories should be decided by the existence (or not) of a qualifying body of work by the creators in the previous year – i.e., someone who has produced sufficient professional art should be eligible in Best Professional Artist, and someone who has produced sufficient fannish art should be eligible in Best Fan Artist.
An attempt was made to amend the proposal to remove the words “for sale.” This was then, and remains today, at the heart of the matter. For example, both of these people were speaking on behalf of artists who sell their artwork, but one thought that should give them the right to be considered Professional Artists and the other thought that sales should not be considered germane to whether the art is Fan Art.
Ms. Ash then spoke in favor of F.6 and said the artist categories have been so fundamentally devoted to publishing for so long that the community of those considered professional artists is very small and does not reflect the current state of science fiction and fantasy art as it is currently exhibited, produced, and sold. She said “sold” was the operative word. Fan artists are not necessarily making fanzine covers or convention souvenir book covers. They are putting their work out in the world to sell it and make money. That means that they should be given the grace to have their art considered as professional, just like someone who has had the luck to get noticed by a publisher and have their work on a book cover or a magazine cover. DAW, for example, isn’t coming to the art show to find new people, and it is much harder to break into that market than it’s ever been.
Lisa Hertel (she/they) objected to the “for sale” portion of the motion. She supports herself as an artist, but even non-professional artists come to art shows and put their work up for sale. Their prices may not be very high; they certainly are not making a living by it. Even Ms. Hertel, a professional artist, isn’t making a living by her art.
The amendment to remove “for sale” failed, with the discussion including people noting that it would make obviously professional artists like Phil Foglio or John Picacio eligible for Fan Artist. After additional discussion (starting on page 70 here) the proposal was referred to a new committee (the HASC having been disbanded that same year). That committee has not done any work as of this writing.
2022 (Context) – Defining Pro vs Fan Everywhere
In addition to the proposal to define Pro vs Fan in the Hugo categories, the HASC also put forth a proposal to better define what is meant by the term professional globally, though this proposal was not supported by the majority of the HASC members and was proposed to the Business Meeting without their consent. The constitution already defined the concept of a “Professional Publication” since it was used in other existing categories, like Professional Artist. The existing description was:
A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two criteria: (1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or, (2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner.
The proposal was to change that to:
A professional publication is a publication produced by professional activity. Any category including language pertaining to non-professional or professional activity will be understood to use the definitions in 3.2.X and 3.2.Y.
3.2.X: Professional activity shall be that which was undertaken with the expectation of sale or other direct profit (by the creator or any co-creators), or which can only be accessed after a payment is made (other than incidental fees, e.g., convention membership fees).
3.2.Y: Non-professional activity shall be that which was not undertaken with the expectation of sale or other direct profit (by the creator or any co-creators), and which can be accessed in a full and final version without any payment.
3.2.Z: All activity shall be considered either Professional or Non-Professional. In cases where there is some doubt as to which category applies to a given work or activity, the will of the nominators should be considered, as should the greater need to protect fan (non-professional) activity against professional activity than the reverse.
The proposal was referred to the new committee looking at the Artist categories with the following instructions:
(a) to consider NOT defining fan vs. pro based on an expectation that an item would be for sale or not for sale, but perhaps based on first usage or presentation;
(b) to consider whether a global definition of fan vs. pro is necessary or whether it is preferable to have a category-by-category definition;
(c) to consider that things have multiple uses over their life, such as fan art or fan writing, and later sales do not disqualify them from being fannish; things can be both fan and pro;
(d) to consider the distinction between collecting money for expenses related to the work vs. for the benefit of the creator, and
(e) to ensure that all activity be defined either fan and/or pro (i.e., all works be defined as fan, or pro, or both fan and pro, but that no work should be considered neither).
This section of the minutes also includes the following, which feels like an important point.
Kent Bloom made a motion against referring F5 to the F.6 committee. He said that many things had changed in the science fiction community since 1983, when we first started debating fan versus pro. Mr. Bloom felt that the internet has made the definition of fan vs. pro obsolete, and that things like Patreon had rendered it impossible to decide if someone was an amateur or professional (in terms of monetary remuneration). He thought we should wait a few years and see what comes out of the new artwork definition.
As previously noted, the committee tasked with both of these 2022 proposals did not do any work or submit a report.
2022 (Fan) – Old Words, New Meaning – Fan Art vs Fan Art
In the discussion about the 2022 proposal, for the first time in the recorded discussion a new issue gets raised. For many people, the term “Fan Art” has a specific meaning that is entirely different from the historic Hugo definition.
Diana Castillo (she/her) spoke in favor. She felt the previous speaker had an old understanding of what fan art is. Fan artists bring their own passion, but they have the reality of needing to pay their rent, food, supplies, etc. Eliminating the “for sale” acknowledges these realities and brings this motion into reality and makes it so that someone who might be creating fan art of their favorite show can offer prints for sale and still be seen as a fan artist and not be lumped into the professional artist category. She urged passage of the amendment.
Alex Acks (they/them) said this is a definition problem. Speaking as a millennial, they said their understanding of fan artist is “I make art of other people’s intellectual property (‘IP’).” But if we are shifting more to that focus on the understanding that fan art is art that you are making of somebody else’s IP, you are getting into a very sticky place because fan artists and fan writers of that definition live in a space where they are not supposed to be making money off it and can be sued or killed by the “Mouse assassins”. They added that it is dangerous to focus on people making money off others’ IP due to patent/trademark laws.
2024 (Both) – Rerunning 2022
A group of people including Terri Ash submitted an amendment with the same language which had come out of the HASC in 2022. Following discussion, it is amended to specify that it concerns artwork (rather than just work) and in the field of science fiction or fantasy. The amendment was passed on for ratification with the text below:
Best Professional Artist. One or more collaborators on a body of artwork in the field of science fiction or fantasy first displayed during the previous calendar year and created as i) work for hire, ii) on paid commission, or iii) for sale (either directly or via a paywall-like structure).
Best Fan Artist. One or more collaborators on a body of artwork in the field of science fiction or fantasy first displayed during the previous calendar year in a fashion that did not qualify for Best Professional Artist, i.e., neither work for hire, nor commissioned for pay, nor for sale.
The commentary continues the themes of the 2022, but also adds in an acknowledgement that the definition of “fan art” has changed in the public eye.
The current definitions are extremely narrow and focused almost entirely on 2-D art. They also ignore the entire vibrant field of “science fiction art for sale” that is not appearing in a print (or web) publication. Those artists with careers in SFF art who do not or cannot or do not want to appear in a “publication” still deserve recognition for their professional achievements.
The definition of “Fan Artist” maintains the tradition in the Worldcon community of defining “fan” works as those which are created and freely offered to the community, regardless of whether they are derivative or original works. While this is an older usage of the word “fan” in context, we believe that keeping this spirit of community contribution alive is important.
The language also makes it clearer that it is possible for the same artist(s) to appear in both categories in the same year (as in Fan Writer and the written work categories), and that it is allowable for a collaboration to be nominated as a single nominee. We have also added a requirement for Fan Artists to have a portfolio in the same way as professional artists.
The newly proposed language not only makes it clearer what to nominate in each category, but also opens up the “Professional Artist” category to a whole new generation of artists who are creating amazing works, and cannot currently qualify in either category.
As the proposer, Terri Ash’s speech makes it clear that the motivation for the change is mostly about expanding the Professional Artist category. She makes the following points:
The current state of the Professional Artist and Fan Artist categories currently relegates most artists who sell their work to Fan Artist, because of the requirement for publication.
This is not the state of science fiction and fantasy art today. Convention art shows are filled with people who make their livelihood from selling their art in ways other than book covers. They are Professional Artists and deserve to be recognized in that category.
While we call it Best Artist, the award refers to a portfolio of work in a given year. Adding body of work language positions it more like Best Novel and not Best Author.
The body of work language also means that someone can qualify in both categories, providing they produced work that is donated to the fan community and thus qualifies as Fan Art.
In the debate that follows (summarized below), it’s clear that there’s a mismatch between the idea that Fan Art should be free, and the historical precedent that selling fan art is not necessarily disqualifying.
Points against:
Do we really want to put people like Sara Felix into the same category as Bob Eggleton?
There are many fan artists who make some proceeds from the sale of Fan Art after publication in a convention publication, but they’re not making money on it, it’s just defraying costs
If you offer something for sale every day of the year, but never sell anything, are you Professional Artist?
If I make tote bags with rockets on them and sell them in the art show for $40, does that make me a Professional Artist? It makes no sense.
Points in favor:
There are many kinds of art beyond just book covers, including things like 3-D art. The current Professional Artist definition doesn’t do enough to reflect the breadth of the field.
The “body of work” distinctions, as proposed, should be enough to protect Fan Artists from being pushed into the Professional Artist category.
This is closer to right than what we currently have, we’ve been trying to get it right forever. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Someone trying to sell art and not succeeding is still a Professional Artist, they’re just not good at it.
By Brad Foster
Appendix: Just The Fan Artist Text Through the Years
1967 – category established, but no official definition
1972 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared, during the previous calendar year, in magazines of the type defined under Article 2.08. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the professional Artist category will not be eligible for the fan artist award for that year.”
1974 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared, during the previous calendar year, in magazines of the type defined under Article 2.08, or through other public display. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the professional Artist category will not be eligible for the fan artist award for that year.”
1984 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public display during the previous calendar year. Anyone whose name appears on the final ballot for a given year under the professional Artist category will not be eligible for the fan artist award for that year.”
2008 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public display during the previous calendar year.”
2014 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, nonprofessional display (including at a convention or conventions), during the previous calendar year.”
2018 (proposed, did not pass) – “An artist who has produced work related to science fiction or fantasy which has appeared in fanzines or other public, non-professional display for the first time during the previous calendar year, and for which the rights to reproduce that artwork have been given without direct compensation to one or more non-commercial publications or for use at or by non-profit science fiction or fantasy conventions. Art which has been made available for reproduction only for the purpose of advertising the artist or their work, including art provided to a convention by a Guest of Honor, is not eligible as fan art.”
2021 – “An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, non-professional, display (including at a convention or conventions, posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution), during the previous calendar year.”
2022 (proposed, did not pass) – “One or more collaborators on a body of work first displayed during the previous calendar year in a fashion that did not qualify for Best Professional Artist, i.e., neither work for hire, nor commissioned for pay, nor for sale.”
2024 (passed on to be ratified) – “One or more collaborators on a body of artwork in the field of science fiction or fantasy first displayed during the previous calendar year in a fashion that did not qualify for Best Professional Artist, i.e., neither work for hire, nor commissioned for pay, nor for sale.”
Byline & Acknowledgements. Compiled and written by Tammy Coxen, with feedback and editing assistance from Nicholas Whyte, Colin Harris, Lisa Hertel, Sara Felix and Mike Glyer. Special thanks to Gary Farber for providing the inspiration by posting some prior definitions in a comment on JOFs. Also, thanks to the editors and contributors to my primary research sites, Fancyclopedia 3, fanac.org and wsfs.org.
INTRODUCTION. The deadline to submit proposals to the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting was July 10. The formal agenda will be out soon, but in the meantime the movers of 15 submitted items have provided copies for publication and discussion on File 770.
The fourth of these items proposes to redefine eligibility for the Best Professional Artist Hugo to encompass work done under three different compensation arrangements. It discards the current standard “appeared in a professional publication”. And the motion also redefines eligibility for Best Fan Artist to depend on work not done
The motion also provides for collaborators on a body of work to be treated as a single finalist.
SHORT TITLE: CLEANING UP THE ART CATEGORIES
Moved, to amend the WSFS constitution by adding and removing text as follows:
3.3.13: Best Professional Artist.An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.One or more collaborators on a body of work first displayed during the previous calendar year and created as i) work for hire, ii) on paid commission, or iii) for sale (either directly or via a paywall-like structure).
3.3.17: Best Fan Artist. An artist or cartoonist whose work has appeared through publication in semiprozines or fanzines or through other public, non-professional, display (including at a convention or conventions, posting on the internet, in online or print-on-demand shops, or in another setting not requiring a fee to see the image in full-resolution) during the previous calendar year. One or more collaborators on a body of work first displayed during the previous calendar year in a fashion that did not qualify for Best Professional Artist – i.e., neither work for hire, nor commissioned for pay, nor for sale. Free copies of a publication in which an artist is published shall not constitute “pay” unless they are supplied with the expectation of resale by the artist.
3.10.2: In the Best Professional Artist category and Best Fan Artist categories, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works that were first displayed in the eligible year.
SPONSORS: Terri Ash, Kate Secor, Kevin Sonney
DISCUSSION: The current definitions are extremely narrow and focused almost entirely on 2-D art. They also ignore the entire vibrant field of “science fiction art for sale” that is not appearing in a print (or web) publication. Those artists with careers in SFF art who do not or cannot or do not want to appear in a “publication” still deserve recognition for their professional achievements.
The definition of “Fan Artist” maintains the tradition in the Worldcon community of defining “fan” works as those which are created and freely offered to the community, regardless of whether they are derivative or original works. While this is an older usage of the word “fan” in context, we believe that keeping this spirit of community contribution alive is important.
The language also makes it clearer that it is possible for the same artist(s) to appear in both categories in the same year (as in Fan Writer and the written work categories), and that it is allowable for a collaboration to be nominated as a single nominee. We have also added a requirement for Fan Artists to have a portfolio in the same way as professional artists.
The newly proposed language not only makes it clearer what to nominate in each category, but also opens up the “Professional Artist” category to a whole new generation of artists who are creating amazing works, and cannot currently qualify in either category.
By JJ: To assist Hugo nominators, this post provides information on the artists and designers of more than 800 works which appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy for the first time in 2020.
These credits have been accumulated over the course of the year from dust jackets, Acknowledgments sections and copyright pages in works, cover reveal blog posts, and other sources on the internet. This year, Filers Martin Pyne and Karen B. also collected this information, and though we had a lot of overlap, their extra entries have greatly increased the information we are able to provide you. My profound thanks go to Martin and Karen for all of their hard work.
You can see the full combined spreadsheet of Editor and Artist credits here (I will be continuing to update this as I get more information).
In this post I will display up to 8 images of artworks for each artist for whom I have identified 3 or more works which appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy for the first time in 2020. Clicking on the thumbnail will open a full-screen version of each work; where I could find a version of the work without titles, that is the image which is linked.
3.3.12: Best Professional Artist. An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.
3.2.11: A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two criteria:
(1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or,
(2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner.
3.10.2: In the Best Professional Artist category, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works first published in the eligible year.
Under the current rules, artwork for semiprozines and fanzines is not eligible in this category. You can check whether a publication is a prozine or a semiprozine in this directory (the semiprozine list is at the top of the page, and the prozine directory is at the bottom).
Please be sure to check the spreadsheet first; but then, if you are able to confirm credits missing 2020-original works and the names of their artists from Acknowledgments sections, copyright pages, or by contacting authors and/or artists, go ahead and add them in comments, and I will get them included in the spreadsheet, and if the artist is credited with at least 3 works, in this post. If you have questions or corrections, please add those also. Please note that works may or may not be added to the list at my discretion.
PLEASE DON’T ADD GUESSES.
Artists, Authors, Editors and Publishers are welcome to post in comments here, or to send their lists to jjfile770 [at] gmail [dot] com.
(warning: this post is heavily image-intensive, and will probably not work well on mobile devices: flee now, or prepare to meet your doom extremely slow page download)
By JJ: To assist Hugo nominators, this post provides information on the artists and designers of more than 660 works which appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy for the first time in 2019.
These credits have been accumulated over the course of the year from dust jackets, Acknowledgments sections and copyright pages in works, as well as other sources on the internet. This year, Filer Goobergunch also collected this information, and though we had a lot of overlap, his extra entries have greatly increasead the information we are able to provide you. My profound thanks go to Goobergunch for all of his hard work.
You can see the full combined spreadsheet of Editor and Artist credits here (I will be continuing to update this as I get more information).
In this post I will display up to 8 images of artworks for each artist for whom I have identified 3 or more works which appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy for the first time in 2019.
3.3.12: Best Professional Artist. An illustrator whose work has appeared in a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy during the previous calendar year.
3.2.11: A Professional Publication is one which meets at least one of the following two criteria:
(1) it provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or,
(2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner.
3.10.2: In the Best Professional Artist category, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works first published in the eligible year.
Under the current rules, artwork for semiprozines and fanzines is not eligible in this category. You can check whether a publication is a prozine or a semiprozine in this directory (the semiprozine list is at the top of the page, and the prozine directory is at the bottom).
Please be sure to check the spreadsheet first; but then, if you are able to confirm credits missing 2019-original works and the names of their artists from Acknowledgments sections, copyright pages, or by contacting authors and/or artists, go ahead and add them in comments, and I will get them included in the spreadsheet, and if the artist is credited with at least 4 works, in this post. If you have questions or corrections, please add those also. Please note that works may or may not be added to the list at my discretion.
PLEASE DON’T ADD GUESSES.
Artists, Authors, Editors and Publishers are welcome to post in comments here, or to send their lists to jjfile770 [at] gmail [dot] com.
(warning: this post is heavily image-intensive, and will probably not work well on mobile devices: flee now, or prepare to meet your doom extremely slow page download)
The world still thought Coriolanus rich, but his only real currency was charm, which he spread liberally as he made his way through the crowd. Faces lit up as he gave friendly hellos to students and teachers alike, asking about family members, dropping compliments here and there. “Your lecture on district retaliation haunts me.” “Love the bangs!” “How did your mother’s back surgery go? Well, tell her she’s my hero.”
(2) HELP NAME THE ROVER. NASA’s Name the Rover contest—for their next Mars
rover—has published its list of nine finalists. Students around the
country sent in over 28,000 essays supporting their suggested names.
Now the public is invited to chime in — “You Can
Help Name the Mars 2020 Rover!” The polls are open for another five
days. Each finalist comes with a
link to the essay describing why the nominators think it should win.
(3) NEW EDITOR. Galaxy’s
Edge publisher, Shahid Mahmud, has
announced Lezli Robyn will take over as editor.
As many of you know, Mike Resnick passed away recently.
He pretty much single handedly created this magazine with the aim to give writers, particularly newer writers, a new venue for their stories. He was known in the industry as someone who loved helping younger aspiring authors and there is a large group of writers out there who proudly call themselves Mike’s Writer Children.
One of his writer children was Lezli Robyn, who also works for me as my assistant publisher. During the last year she also helped Mike with the magazine, particularly as his illness started taking a greater toll on his health.
Lezli is an award-winning writer in her own right and has also collaborated with Mike on a number of stories. She will now be taking over as editor of the magazine. I know Mike was very pleased with that decision…to have someone who was very close to him take over something he put so much of his heart into.
Since the two of them were working together on the magazine for the last few months, the transition should be smooth and we expect issue 43 to be available on time, on March 1, 2020.
(4) GALLERY OF HUGO ELIGIBLE ARTISTS. Rocket Stack Rank has
posted their annual gallery of pro artists who are
eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist. “2020 Professional Artists”.
It has 300+ images from 100+ pro artists whose art was
used for short fiction, magazine covers, and novel covers.
However, there is this note –
Thumbnail images with a highlighted link are professional works done in 2019. Thumbnails without a highlighted link were done earlier (shown in last year’s list), later (show in next year’s list) or fan art (published in a semi-prozine) and included to give more examples of the artist’s style.
(5) STET, I REPEAT, STET. Ursula Vernon fights back against
the Copyedits of Doom. Thread starts here.
I just wrote "STET and shame on you" so that's where we're at now.
6) All this being said, Copyeditor Wot Thinks They’re A Co-Author is a known phenomenon. (I don’t think that’s what happened here, actually, but I’ve had that one too.) This must be crushed immediately and with prejudice lest, like the Joker, they escape and harm others.
7) Always remember, your editor bought the book because they liked what you wrote. If the copyeditor is rampaging through that rather than just sprinkling magic correction dust and catching little glitches, they are probably not doing what the editor wants.
It’s fine with me if the thriller pace slows down. I like your meditative stuff. so nice to have you doing real SF again! “Slash is electric once more.”
I love how Netherton is expecting to be in a superhero iron man peripheral, and then it’s squat and small, like part of an oil filled radiator. He’s a good anti hero, and you have fun tormenting him. He still works as a character being sober, still has the same outside attitude. When I had my character Sta-Hi be sober in Realware, some of my older fans were mad about it, grumbled that “Rucker has gone religious, he’s no fun anymore, etc.” But if they’d notice, Sta-Hi stays exactly as crazy as before, as does Netherton.
WG===
For me, what took over for Netherton in this book was his co-parenting! My first POV character with a baby to take care of! When I discovered how different that felt to write, I guess I decided to roll with it, getting some perverse satisfaction out of imagining poor fuckers who bought the book in an airport, just before jumping on an 8-hour flight, expecting to get the generic thriller hand-job, and bang, they’re parenting!
(7) VOTING AGAINST THE MUTANT REGISTRATION ACT. The National
Post’s “Rookies
of Parliament Hill” spotlights a new Canadian legislator with a link to
X-Men.
Lenore Zann, best known to the SFF community as the voice of Rogue in the classic X-Men cartoon series of the 1990s has a new role: as a legislator in the Canadian parliament. The 61-year-old actress was elected last autumn as part of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.
“X-Men is a deep show about deep themes that are universal. They’re almost like our Greek gods and goddesses — they’re like mythology for young people,” said Zann. “I sit on a plane watching what people are looking at on their TV screens in front of them. Most of them are watching stuff like that.”
Born in North Wales, Jones read English at Oxford University, where he met his long-term collaborator and friend, Michael Palin. The two would star together in the college’s comedy troupe The Oxford Revue, and after graduation, they appeared in the 1967 TV sketch comedy Twice a Fortnight.
Two years later, they created The Complete and Utter History of Britain, which featured comedy sketches from history as if TV had been around at the time. It was on the show Do Not Adjust Your Set where they would be introduced to fellow comic Eric Idle, who had starred alongside John Cleese and Graham Chapman in productions mounted by the Cambridge University theatrical club the Footlights.
The five — together with Terry Gilliam, whom Cleese had met in New York — would quickly pool their talents for a new show. Monty Python’s Flying Circus was born and ran on the BBC for four seasons between 1969 and 1974, with Jones driving much of the show’s early innovation.
Jones is a noted history buff who has written on Chaucer and hosted a number of documentaries, including one on the Crusades. He directed Life of Brian and Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life; apart from Monty Python he has directed the films Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows and written several children’s books. The son of a bank clerk, he was born in North Wales and attended Oxford University. He and his wife, a biochemist, live in London and have a son and a daughter. Jones regularly appeared nude (playing the organ) in the opening credits of the Monty Python television series; he also played the obscenely fat, vomit-spewing Mr. Creosote in The Meaning of Life.
36 years ago I met Terry Jones. I was meant to interview him. I asked for tea, so he opened a bottle of Chablis & got me drunk. He was funny, brilliant and honest. He was irrepressible and is seen here repressing the very young me. Rest in Peace, Terry. You were an inspiration. pic.twitter.com/fNBJZwOFcX
January 22, 2000 — Cleopatra 2525 first aired in syndication. It was created by R.J. Stewart and Robert G. Tapert. Many who aired it do so as part of the Back2Back Action Hour, along with Jack of All Trades. The primary cast of this SF with chicks not wearing much series was Gina Torres of later Firefly fame, Victoria Pratt and Jennifer Sky. (A sexist statement? We think you should take a look at the show.) it would last two seasons and twenty episodes, six episodes longer than Jack of All Trades. (Chicks rule?) it gets a 100% rating by its reviewers at a Rotten Tomatoes though the aggregate critics score is a much lower 40%.
January 22, 1984 — Airwolf would premiere on CBS where it would run for three seasons before ending its run on USA with a fourth season. Airwolf was created by Donald P. Bellisario who was also behind Quantum Leap and Tales of The Golden Monkey, two other SFF series. It starred Jan-Michael Vincent, Jean Bruce Scott. Ernest Borgnine, and Alex Cord. It airs sporadically in syndication and apparently has not developed enough of a following to get a Rotten Tomatoes rating.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 22, 1858 — Charles H. M. Kerr. He’s best remembered for illustrating the pulp novels of H. Rider Haggard. Some of his other genre-specific work includes the Andrew Lang-edited The True Story Book, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Wrong Box and Arthur Conan Doyle‘s “The Sign of the Four”. You can see the one of the H. Rider Haggard novels he did here. (Died 1907.)
Born January 22, 1906 — Robert E. Howard. He’s best remembered for his characters Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane, less so for Kull, and is widely regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. His Cthulhu mythos stories are quite good. I believe all of these were published in Weird Tales. If you’re interested in reading him on your slate, you’re in luck as all the ebook publishers are deep stockers of him at very reasonable prices. (Died 1936.)
Born January 22, 1925 — Katherine MacLean. She received a Nebula Award for “The Missing Man” novella originally published in Analog, March of 1971. She was a Professional Guest of Honor at the first WisCon. Short fiction was her forte and her two collections, The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy and The Trouble with You Earth People, are brilliant. I can’t speak to her three novels, all written in the Seventies and now out of print, as I’ve not read them. (Died 2019.)
Born January 22, 1940 — John Hurt. I rarely grieve over the death of one individual but his death really stung. I liked him. It’s rare that someone comes along like Hurt who is both talented and is genuinely good person that’s easy to like. If we count his role as Tom Rawlings in The Ghoul, Hurt had an almost fifty-year span in genre films and series. He next did voice work in Watership Down as General Woundwort and in The Lord of the Rings as the voice of Aragon before appearing as Kane, the first victim, in Alien. Though not genre, I must comment his role as Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man — simply remarkable. He had the lead as Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four and had a cameo as that character in Spaceballs. He narrates Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound and will later be one of two of the narrators of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. That role is simply magnificent. Ok, I’m just at 1994. He’s about to be S.R. Hadden in Contact. Did you remember he played Garrick Ollivander In Harry Potter films? You certainly remember him as Trevor Bruttenholm in the Hellboy films, all four of them in total. He’s in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as Dr. Harold Oxley, one of the few decent things about that film. Series wise, he’s been around. I’ve got him in Spectre, a Roddenberry occult detective pilot that I’ve not seen. On the Merlin live action series, he provides the voice of the Great Dragon. It’s an amazing role for him. And fitting that he’s a dragon, isn’t it? And of course he played The War Doctor. It, despite the brevity of the screen time, was a role that he seemed destined to play. Oh, for an entire series of stories about His Doctor! Big Finish, the audiobook company, had the singular honor of having him flesh out his character in a series of stories that he did with them just before his death. I’ve heard some, they’re quite remarkable. If I’ve missed anything about him that you feel I should’ve touched upon, do tell me. (Died 2017.)
Born January 22, 1959 — Tyrone Power Jr., 61. Yes, son of that actor. He is the fourth actor to bear the name Tyrone Power. If you remember him at all, it’s as Pillsbury, one of the aliens, in the Cocoon films. Other than Soulmates, a horrid sounding sort of personal zombie film, in which he had a role, that’s it for his SFF creds.
Born January 22, 1959 — Linda Blair, 61. Best known for her role as the possessed child, Regan, in The Exorcist. She reprised her role in Exorcist II: The Heretic. (I saw the first, I had no desire to see the second film.) Right after those films she started she started starring in a lot of the really bad horror films. Let’s see… Stranger in Our House, Hell Night (fraternity slasher film), Grotesque, Witchery, Dead Sleep and Scream to name a few of these films. She even starred in Repossessed, a comedy parody of The Exorcist.
Born January 22, 1969 — Olivia d’Abo, 51. She makes the Birthday Honors list for being Amanda Rogers, a female Q, in the “True Q” episode on Next Generation. Setting that gig aside, she’s got a long and extensive SFF series history. Conan the Destroyer, Beyond the Stars, Asterix Conquers America, Tarzan & Jane and Justice League Doom are some of her film work, while her series work includes Fantasy Island, Batman Beyond, Twilight Zone, Eureka and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Born January 22, 1996 — Blanca Blanco, 24. She’s here today because she’s on one of those Trek video fanfics that seem to have proliferated a few years back. This one had her planning on playing someone on Star Trek Equinox: The Night Of Time but the funding never materialized. I’m fascinated by this one as a certain actor was reprising his Gary Mitchell role here. If it was decided that an audio series would be made instead but I can’t find any sign of that being done either. Any of you spotted it?
(11) WHEN THE GALAXY IS OUT OF ORDER YOU CALL… Guardians of
the Galaxy!
Someone has to guard the galaxy – but who will accept the mission? And will they survive it? See who answers the call in the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1 trailer featuring writer Al Ewing, Editor in Chief CB Cebulski, and Editor Darren Shan!
Cosmic peace is hanging by a thread as the major galactic empires bristle against each other. Amidst the chaos, the Gods of Olympus have returned — harbingers of a new age of war, reborn to burn their mark on the stars themselves! The legendary Star-Lord leads Rocket Raccoon, Nova, Marvel Boy, Phyla-Vell, and Moondragon on a mission to restore order to the stars!
“The galaxy is just one bad day away from complete and total collapse, and that day is here,” teases Shan.
“Guardians of the Galaxy is where the Marvel cosmic universe, as we know it, comes alive. Marvel space is about to come crashing into the Marvel Universe in a big way,” says Ewing.
… Take the recent Star Wars trilogy, whose entire existence is predicated on the revelation that Han, Leia and Luke all had a miserable old time of it after the events of Return of the Jedi. Before, any fan with R2-D2 on their jim-jams could envisage the three of them growing old together, with a grey-muzzled Chewbacca snoozing contentedly by a crackling hearth. The new films suddenly forced them to confront a new reality in which Han and Leia are estranged because their son became a mass-murderer, and a PTSD-ravaged Luke lives a life of solitude on a remote skerry somewhere uncannily reminiscent of Ireland. And what happens next? Oh, they all die. Miserably. Great. Thanks.
More than a century after the RMS Titanic sank to bottom of the sea — and nearly a quarter-century after its memory was dredged up for a Hollywood blockbuster — the U.S. and U.K. have implemented a formal agreement on how to safeguard and manage the ill-fated steamship’s remains.
British Maritime Minister Nusrat Ghani confirmed the news Tuesday during a visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the ship was built before setting off from the English port city of Southampton in 1912.
…”This momentous agreement with the United States to preserve the wreck means it will be treated with the sensitivity and respect owed to the final resting place of more than 1,500 lives,” Ghani said in remarks released Tuesday by the Maritime Ministry.
Ghani’s comments cap a long and winding journey for the deal, which representatives from the U.K., the U.S., Canada and France officially agreed to as part of a 2003 treaty. The Agreement Concerning the Shipwrecked Vessel RMS Titanic sought to sort out and regulate public access, artifact conservation and salvage rights within 1 kilometer of the wreck site, situated hundreds of miles off the coast of Canada in the North Atlantic.
But since the countries negotiated the treaty, the document has largely languished. It requires the ratification of at least two of the four countries to enter into force, and while the U.K. quickly ratified the agreement, both Canada and France have yet to do so. The formal approval of the U.S. government looked long in doubt, as well.
It isn’t just languages that are endangered: dozens of alphabets around the world are at risk. And they could have even more to tell us.
On his first two days of school, in a village above the Bangladeshi port of Chittagong, Maung Nyeu was hit with a cane. This was not because he was naughty. It was simply that Nyeu could not understand what the teacher was saying, or what was written in his textbooks. Although 98% of Bangladeshis speak Bengali as a first language, Nyeu grew up with Marma, one of several minority tongues in the region. Written, it is all curls, like messy locks of hair.
Eventually Nyeu managed to escape this cycle of bewilderment and beatings. After learning Bengali at home, he returned to school and went to university. Now he is pursuing a doctorate at Harvard. Yet Nyeu never forgot his early schooldays. He spends much of his time in the hills where he grew up, where he founded Our Golden Hour – a nonprofit fighting to keep Marma and a flurry of other scripts alive.
There are between 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world. Yet 96% are spoken by just 3% of the global population. And 85% are endangered, like Marma.
Along with the spoken words, something else is also at risk: each language’s individual script. When we talk about “endangered languages”, most of us think of the spoken versions first. But our alphabets can tell us huge amounts about the cultures they came from. Just as impressive is the length people will go to save their scripts – or invent whole new alphabets and spread them to the world.
The UK is going to lead a space mission to get an absolute measurement of the light reflected off Earth’s surface.
The information will be used to calibrate the observations of other satellites, allowing their data to be compared more easily.
Called Truths, the new spacecraft was approved for development by European Space Agency member states in November.
Proponents of the mission expect its data to help reduce the uncertainty in projections of future climate change.
Scientists and engineers met on Tuesday to begin planning the project. Industry representatives from Britain, Switzerland, Greece, the Czech Republic and Romania gathered at Esa’s technical centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire.
Last night, the National Weather Service called for lows in the 30s and 40s with a chance of falling iguanas. Apparently, the lizards can fall into a deeper slumber in the cold, and it is not uncommon for them to tumble from trees. The advice for you is watch your heads, and don’t bug the iguanas after they land. I mean, do you like being bothered when you’re just getting up?
Biologists say invasive green iguanas have been spreading in Florida, and they’re a major nuisance. The state encourages homeowners to kill iguanas on their property.
And for “historical context.” Bob & Ray “The
Komodo Dragon” (Live at Carnegie Hall, 1984)
[Thanks to Olav Rokne, JJ, Cliff Ramshaw, Martin Morse Wooster,
Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew
Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing
editor of the day Rick Moen.]
(1) SINGING ABOUT PEASPROUT
CHEN. Lightspeed Magazine’s interview
with Henry Lien brought out a fascinating
musical connection —
You’re the first author I’ve interviewed who’s had a Broadway singer perform at the book launch for their debut novel. I watched the promotional video of the one and only Idina Menzel performing the theme song from the first book of your Peasprout Chen series, Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, with you. That’s so cool! What’s the backstory? How did that happen?
We’re represented by the same agency, ICM. She got a hold of the advance reader copy of the first Peasprout Chen book and flipped over it. She asked ICM if they could arrange for her to meet me. After I finished screaming into my pillow, I said, “Oh, well, let me see if I can find a slot in my calendar to squeeze in lunch with Idina Freeggin’ Menzel.” Then I screamed into my pillow some more. We met and really hit it off. She has become a dear friend. So I asked her to sing the theme song for the book at the launch. She said yes. Then I died of shock, and thus am conducting this interview with you from the Beyond.
Scott H. Andrews, founder and editor and publisher of the online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, celebrated the 10th anniversary of that magazine by hosting a party at the recent World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, Maryland — which made it seem like the right time for us to discuss that first decade. So we raised a pint at Red’s Table in Reston, Virginia.
Well, he raised a pint — of bourbon-barrel aged Gold Cup Russian Imperial Stout from Old Bust Head Brewery in Fauquier County, Virginia — while I downed my usual bottle of Pellagrino. And as we sipped, we chatted about that work on Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which has so far earned him six World Fantasy Award nominations and six Hugo Award nominations — and won him a British Fantasy Award. He’s a writer as well, with his own fiction appearing in Weird Tales, Space and Time, On Spec, and other magazines.
We discussed the treatment he received as a writer which taught him what he wanted to do (and didn’t want to do) as an editor, how his time as member of a band helped him come up with the name for his magazine, why science fiction’s public perception as a literary genre is decades ahead of fantasy, what it takes for a submission to rise to the level of receiving a rewrite request, the time he made an editor cry (and why he was able to do it), how he felt being a student at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and then returning as a teacher, the phrase he tends to overuse in his personalized rejection letters (and the reason why it appears so often), the way magazine editing makes him like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, why writers shouldn’t worry about the ratio of submitted stories to purchased ones, the reason he’ll probably never edit novels, what anyone considering starting a magazine of their own needs to know, and much more.
(3) GET ILLUMINATED. “Sacred Texts: Codices Far, Far Away” – Two University of Pennsylvania scholars are doing a
series of videos about the ancient Jedi texts until
Star Wars Episode 9 is released on December 20.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Luke Skywalker gathered a small library of ancient Jedi texts and placed them in an uneti tree on Ahch-To.
On October 8, 2018, Dr. Brandon Hawk and curator Dot Porter met to talk about these ancient books, and to compare them with manuscripts from the collection of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.
The New Horizons probe has sent back its best picture yet of the small, icy object Ultima Thule, which it flew past on New Year’s Day.
The image was acquired when the Nasa spacecraft was just 6,700km from its target, which scientists think is two bodies lightly fused together – giving the look of a snowman.
Surface details are now much clearer.
New Horizons’ data is coming back very slowly, over the next 20 months.
This is partly to do with the great distance involved (the separation is 6.5 billion km) but is also limited by the small power output of the probe’s transmitter and the size (and availability) of the receive antennas here on Earth. It all makes for glacial bit rates.
The new image was obtained with New Horizons’ wide-angle Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) and gives a resolution of 135m per pixel. There is another version of this scene taken at even higher resolution by the probe’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), but this has not yet been downlinked from the probe.
(5) RSR PRO ARTIST
RESOURCE. Rocket Stack Rank’s Greg
Hullender says, “Based on the discussion on File770, we did the experiment of
expanding our Pro Artist list using the ISFDB info. This actually expands it hugely. We ended up not trying to merge the lists for
this year, but we posted the ISFDB data separately just so people could have it
as a resource. It’s awfully nice data, if a bit overwhelming, and it’d be great
to find a good way to use it. We’re hoping people will look at it and offer
some ideas for how to make it a bit more manageable.” — “Pro
Artists from ISFDB Novels 2018”.
Based on some conversations on File 770 about better ways to find candidates for the Best Professional Artist Hugo Award, we decided to try using the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) as a source. The result is spectacular, but maybe a bit overwhelming, so we decided not to try to integrate it with our regular Pro Artists page this year. Instead, we’re treating this as an experiment and inviting feedback on how we might best use this wealth of data in the future to help people who’re trying to find professional artists to nominate.
(6) FRANKENSTEIN
AND ROBOTS. In
the Winter 2019 Beloit College Magazine,
Susan Kasten (“Why
Frankenstein Will Never Die”) discusses how an English professor, an
anthropologist, a physicist, and a professor of cognitive science team-taught Frankenstein in a class called
“Frankenstein 200: Monster, Myth, and Meme.”
Robin Zebrowski, a professor of cognitive science, pointed out that the themes of Frankenstein — of creation, difference, empathy, monstrosity, and control–are the memes of artificial intelligence. Zebrowski pointed out that early robot stories are about Frankenstein. ‘They’re about building something no one can control once it’s unleashed,’ she said. She noted that the first work of literature ever written about robots–a 1923 Czech play called R.U.R.–is a story about a robot uprising.
(Incidentally,
Professor Zebrowski believes she is not
related to sff author George Zebrowski.)
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.
January 25, 1915 — First transcontinental telephone call was made, between New York and San Francisco; Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Thomas A. Watson exchanged greetings.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled
by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 25, 1918 – King Donovan. His first first SF film have him as Dr. Dan Forbes in the 1953 The Magnetic Monster and as Dr. Ingersoll In The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The very next year, he plays James O’Herli in Riders to the Stars. And now we get to the film that you know him from — Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which he playsJack Belicec. After that, I show him only in Nothing Lasts Forever which has never been released here in the States. (Died 1987.)
Born January 25, 1943 – Tobe Hooper. Director of such such genre films as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (the original of course), Poltergeist (damn scary film) Invaders from Mars and Djinn, his final film. He directed a smattering of television episodes including the “Miss Stardust” of Amazing Stories, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” of Freddy’s Nightmares, “Dead Wait” of Tales from the Crypt and the entire Salem’s Lot miniseries. He also wrote a horror novel with Alan Goldsher, Midnight Movie: A Novel, that has himself in it at a speaking engagement. (Died 2017.)
Born January 25, 1958 – Peter Watts, 61.Author of the most excellent Firefall series which I read and enjoyed immensely. I’ve not read the Rifters trilogy so would welcome opinions on it. And his Sunflower linked short stories sound intriguing.
Born January 25, 1963 – Catherine Butler, 56. Butler published a number of works of which the most important is Four British fantasists : place and culture in the children’s fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. Another important work is Reading History in Children’s Books, with Hallie O’Donovan. Her website is here.
Born January 25, 1970 – Stephen Chbosky, 49. Screenwriter and director best-known I’d say for the Emma Watson-fronted Beauty and the Beast. But he also was responsible for the Jericho series which was a rather decent bit of SF even if, like Serenity, it got killed far too quickly. (Yes, I’m editorializing.)
Born January 25, 1973 – Geoff Johns, 46. Where to begin? Though he’s done some work outside of DC, he is intrinsically linked to that company having working for them for twenty years. My favorite work by him in on Batman: Gotham Knights, Justice League of America #1–7 (2013) and 52 which I grant which was over ambitious but really fun.
Born January 25, 1985 – Michael Trevino, 34. Performer, Tyler Lockwood on The Vampire Diaries and now Kyle Valenti on the new Roswell, New Mexico series whose premises I’ll leave you to guess. His first genre appearance was in the Charm episode of “Malice in Wonderland” as Alastair. He also shows up on The Originals, The Vampire Diaries spin-off.
Born January 25, 1985 – Claudia Kim, 34. Only four film films but all genre: she played Dr. Helen Cho Avengers: Age of Ultron followed by voicing The Collective In Equals which Wiki manages to call a ‘dystopian utopia’ film to which I say ‘Eh?!?’, and then Arra Champignon in the 2017 version of The Dark Tower and finally as Nagini, Voldemort’s snake which I presume is a voice role (though I’ve not seen the film so I could be wrong) in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
(10) ASIMOV REFERENCE.
Yesterday on Late Night With Stephen
Colbert (at about the 1:50 mark)
the host said during a sketch —
“My self-driving car has stopped taking me to Taco Bell…citing the first law of Robotics.”
(11) RE-DEEP. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A press release from Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain addresses the latest “deep image” from the
Hubble Space Telescope. The original Hubble
Deep Field was assembled in 1995,
only to be exceeded by the Hubble
Ultra-Deep Field in 2004 and
the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field in
2012. Each imaged galaxies further away and thus further back in time. Now
there’s a new version of the Ultra-Deep Field that recovers “additional
light” not included in earlier versions and showing thus additional
information about the included galaxies.
To produce the deepest image of the Universe from space a group of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) led by Alejandro S. Borlaff used original images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST taken over a region in the sky called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF). After improving the process of combining several images the group was able to recover a large quantity of light from the outer zones of the largest galaxies in the HUDF. Recovering this light, emitted by the stars in these outer zones, was equivalent to recovering the light from a complete galaxy (“smeared out” over the whole field) and for some galaxies this missing light shows that they have diameters almost twice as big as previously measured.
As a setting, boarding schools allow for the construction of thrilling narratives: concerned parents are replaced by teachers who may well prioritize student achievement over student welfare, e.g. maximizing points for Gryffindor over the survival of the students earning those points…
Are there any SFF novels featuring boarding schools? Why yes! I am glad you asked—there are more than I can list in a single article. Here are just a few….
Neanderthals may once have been considered to be our inferior, brutish cousins, but a new study is the latest to suggest they were smarter than we thought – especially when it came to hunting.
The research found that the now extinct species were creating weaponry advanced enough to kill at a distance.
Scientists believe they crafted spears that could strike from up to 20m away.
The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Lead researcher Dr Annemieke Milks, from UCL Institute of Archaeology, said: “The original idea was that Neanderthals would have been very limited using hand-delivered spears, where they could only come up at close contact and thrust them into prey.
“But if they could throw them from 15m to 20m, this really opens up a wider range of hunting strategies that Neanderthals would have been able to use.”
Prof Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, explains why some old assumptions about the intellectual capabilities of our evolutionary relatives, the Neanderthals persist today. But a body of evidence is increasingly forcing us to re-visit these old ideas.
A paper out this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution reports the early arrival of modern humans to south-western Iberia around 44,000 years ago.
Why should this be significant? It all has to do with the spread of our ancestors and the extinction of the Neanderthals. South-western Iberia has been claimed to have been a refuge of the Neanderthals, a place where they survived longer than elsewhere, but the evidence is disputed by some researchers.
The latest paper, which is not about Neanderthals, has been taken by some as evidence of an arrival into this area which is much earlier than previously known.
By implication, if modern humans were in south-western Iberia so early then they must have caused the early disappearance of the Neanderthals. It is a restatement of the idea that modern human superiority was the cause of the Neanderthal demise. Are these ideas tenable in the light of mounting genetic evidence that our ancestors interbred with the Neanderthals?
…“Orbital Reflector,” a sculpture by Trevor Paglen that was recently launched into orbit.
The sculpture is not lost in space as much as stuck in a holding pattern before activation, pending clearance by the Federal Communications Commission. According to the artist, it might not survive the wait while F.C.C. workers are on furlough.
A 100-foot-long mylar balloon coated with titanium oxide, “Orbital Reflector” was designed to be visible to the naked eye at twilight or dawn while in orbit for a couple of months. It would then incinerate upon entering the Earth’s thicker atmosphere.
But although it was sent to space, the balloon was never inflated as planned.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Mlex, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]
The final Hugo Awards Study Committee Report is now online at the Worldcon 76 WSFS Business Meeting page along with the draft agenda for this year’s Business Meeting.
Committee chair Vincent Docherty says:
The committee got going much later than planned (entirely due to my own lack of time due to other commitments) but once we got started there was very energetic participation by the 20+ committee members. The report summarises the discussion and makes a number of recommendations, including four specific proposals which are on this year’s Business Meeting agenda (three updates to categories and continuation of the committee), as well as a number of topics for further discussion next year, assuming the committee is continued.
The committee welcomes feedback from interested fans. We’re aware of some online reaction to the specific proposals already, which might result in adjustments to the proposals when we get to the Business Meeting.
My thanks to the committee members for their work this year.
An excerpt from the overview of their recommendations —
…Understanding that the overall operation of the categories works well, the Committee found several places for improvement:
The Committee found that the present definitions in the Fan Artist/Professional Artist category were potentially problematic. The Fan Artist category was initially designed in 1967, seeking to honor those offering their artistic talents to the broader community of fandom for little or no compensation. Such contributions were often in the form of illustrations for fanzines and convention programs. In the last fifty years, however, the form that fandom has taken has changed, and the result is that the definition of Fan Artist was found to be outdated. This was given an extensive examination. The Committee also acknowledges that some further examination of the other fan/professional categories may be in order, and has proposed to carry forward at least one further change in this area.
The Committee found the term “Graphic Story” problematic. Just as “comic book” has come to be taken as including work not literally comic, “graphic story” has come to be taken as excluding work appearing in comic books or comic strips. The Committee proposes re-titling to “Best Graphic Story or Comic.”
The Committee feels that altering “Best Fancast” into a “Best Podcast” category and removing the restriction on eligible productions receiving money is desirable. Many podcasts generate income from either limited advertisements, tip jars, or other small streams of income. While these are often not sufficient to support someone making a living, the income can still be substantial. As also discussed in the context of the Fan/Professional Artist categories, the use of fixed income thresholds was also found to be problematic.
In addition to the Artist categories, the Committee gave some consideration to cases of category overlap and/or gaps in categories in general, and would propose to continue examining this both in the context of current and proposed awards. This arose, in particular, in discussions surrounding the future of Best Novel and the proposed Best Translated category.
The Committee also briefly considered several other questions, including how well the Hugo Awards have handled the digital/print divide and differences between how terms are used in an “industry” context in non-industry discourse (e.g. by Worldcon attendees/WSFS members who are giving the awards) and in the Hugo Award definitions themselves. Consideration of various such questions fed into the discussions on specific proposals.
The second question, ‘How well do the categories honor what we wish to honor?’, generated more questions for examination. Given the interaction of this question and the question of how many Hugo Awards should be awarded, most of these questions have been recommended for passage forward for further consideration in the next year. In particular:
A Best Translated category was proposed relatively late in the Committee’s deliberations. As a result, the Committee did not have the time to study this potential award in sufficient depth alongside the rest of its workload, and there were multiple ideas as to what form this category should take (e.g. whether it should be limited to novels, cover all written works) and, if recommended, whether the award in question should be a Hugo or a non-Hugo award given by Worldcons. In particular, the Committee proposes to examine whether such an award is presently feasible.
A potential reorganization of the Best Dramatic Presentation categories was considered, and has been proposed to be passed forward should the committee be continued. Multiple alternatives, including a possible addition of one (or more) categories and redefining the Long/Short division into a TV/Movie division, would be given consideration if the committee is reauthorized.
A readjustment of the Best Semiprozine and Best Editor categories has been proposed and will be considered if the Committee is reauthorized. In particular, the Committee feels that the nature of the internet may have reduced the advantage that professional magazines have over non-professional productions, and that allowing professional publications to compete in a “Best Magazine” category would allow them to once again be honored. The Committee also noted various complications with the Best Editor categories; several proposals, including a possible realignment into “Best Anthology” and “Best Imprint,” will be evaluated if we are authorized to do so….
The report advances three proposed changes, and recommends further study of four more:
Part II: Specific Proposals
(1) Proposed continuation of the Hugo Study Committee
(2) Proposed Changes to the Fancast Hugo Category (with slight changes to the Semiprozine and Fanzine categories to maintain consistency)
(3) Proposed Changes to the Professional Artist and Fan Artist Hugo Categories
(4) Proposed Changes to the Best Graphic Story Hugo Category
(5) Proposal Recommended for Further Study: Addition of a Best Translated Work Hugo Category
(6) Proposal Recommended for Further Study: Replacement of Semiprozine and Best Editor Hugo Categories with Professional Magazine, Anthology/Collection, and Publisher/Imprint
(7) Proposal Recommended for Further Study: Potential Alterations to Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Categories
(8) Proposal Recommended for Further Study: Best Art Book and Alterations to Best Related Work
(9) Proposal Not Recommended for Further Consideration: Best Novel Split
The USC School of Cinematic Arts has partnered with 20th Century Fox Film to host an exclusive exhibit and retrospective celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Planet of the Apes franchise titled 50 Years of Planet of the Apes.
A vast collection of props, costumes, photos, posters and artwork from across all iterations of the longstanding franchise will be on display in the Hugh Hefner Exhibition Hall at USC this spring. The exhibit will be available to visit as a work-in-progress from January 26th – February 8th and all final displays will be open from February 9th through May 13th, 2018. A series of panels and screenings will complement the exhibit, including all feature films from the Planet of the Apes universe.
The exhibit is in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the 1968 release of the first Planet of the Apes film, the original installment of the still expanding franchise that now includes four sequels, a TV series, an animated series, comic books, merchandise, and 20th Century Fox Film’s highly successful prequel film series Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes.
There is a schedule of associated film screenings at the link.
What’s more, it landed the two flanking boosters in perfect synchronized formation. But the fate of the core booster was unclear; now it appears that the center booster, which was supposed to land on a drone ship, was lost.
Elon Musk said on a conference call with reporters that the launch “seems to have gone as well as one could have hoped with the exception of center core. The center core obviously didn’t land on the drone ship” and he said that “we’re looking at the issue.” Musk says that the core ran out of propellant, which kept the core from being able to slow down as much as it needed for landing. Because of that, the core apparently hit the water at 300MPH, and it was about 100 meters from the ship. “It was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck with shrapnel,” Musk said. That should be worth seeing on video: “We have the video,” Musk confirmed, “it sounds like some pretty fun footage… if the cameras didn’t get blown up as well.”
(5) SFWA AUCTION. Steven H Silver tells about a SFWA fundraiser:
Did you miss our charity auctions in December? Good news! SFWA will be auctioning off five new items every month on Ebay. Available items in February include an autographed uncorrected proof copy of Fevre Dream by George RR Martin, uncorrected proof 13th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (signed by Ellen Datlow), and a rare signed copy of This Island Earth by Raymond F. Jones.
The bidding began on February 5th and will run through February 12: Ebay.com/usr/sfwa65
All auction proceeds will be earmarked for the SFWA Givers Fund which is used to disperse grants to deserving applicants, along with bolstering the existing Emergency Medical (EMF) and Legal Funds.
For more information about our funds and what they support, please visit sfwa.org/donate. If you have items you would like to donate for future SFWA Charity Auction fundraisers, please contact Steven H Silver at steven.silver@sfwa.org for more information.
(6) BOSKONE PROGRAM. Look forward to the panels and participants discussing “Black Science Fiction at Boskone”, February 16-18 in Boston.
This year Boskone features a program with a strong selection of panels and discussions dedicated to black science fiction authors, publishers, and fans. Our program includes everything from black publishers and Afrofuturism to works by authors such as Octavia Butler, science panels that include the future of medicine, writing discussions that tackle young adult fiction, and much, much more!
Here’s a quick list of some of our program items with an emphasis on black science fiction and the authors who will be joining us from across the country. For the full set of program items, view the Boskone 55 program….
(7) VOLCANO IN TOWSON. Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast visits with Norman Prentiss to sample the volcano shrimp at a Chinese restaurant in Towson, MD.
And who is this episode’s guest? Why, it’s Norman Prentiss, who won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for Invisible Fences, and the 2009 Stoker for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for “In the Porches of My Ears.” His powerful, personal fiction has been reprinted in both Best Horror of the Year and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and his poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock.
Norman Prentiss
We discussed the day he wowed the other kids on his school playground by reading them Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the movies a Catholic Church newsletter’s warnings made him want to see even more, the supernatural superhero comic that led to a lawsuit against Harlan Ellison, the upside and (surprising) downside of having won a $35,000 college writing prize, how the freebies he got at a Horrorfind convention goosed him to start writing fiction again, why he wrote the last part of his novel Odd Adventures with Your Other Father first, how he’s been able to collaborate with other authors without killing them, what can be taught about writing and what can only be learned, why he ended up writing horror instead of science fiction, and much, much more.
Last year, I collated and linked to the webzine stories picked by Clarke, Dozois, Horton, and Strahan for their annuals. This year, I’ve collated all the selections. (I’ve also noted whether I’ve read them and, if so, whether they got an honorable mention, a recommendation, or were recommendations which made my Web’s Best Science Fiction or Web’s Best Fantasy.)
… When a follow-up attack of reremice occur, the fairies must question what they are fighting for and what makes a race worthwhile. While Frankos could have told the story with tremendous amounts of gravitas, the venue for its publication was looking for more lighthearted fare and she managed to deliver, sprinkling her tale with wonderful puns….
Over the past decade Marvel has brought us 18 films, starting with Iron Man in 2008 and including Thor, The Avengers and Captain America.
The class photo of 76 actors appeared on Twitter on Thursday.
It includes major players in the films like Robert Downey Jr, Vin Diesel, Scarlett Johansson and Letitia Wright.
The picture was shortly followed by a behind the scenes video.
It begins with Thor’s Chris Hemsworth saying: “It was sort of like being at the Academy Awards or something, every person had been in one or all of my favourite films.”
Marvel Studios kicks off its yearlong 10th anniversary celebration with a behind the scenes look at the class photo featuring 79 actors and filmmakers from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. pic.twitter.com/YyYTxMnUrc
Yes, I knew about Forry Ackerman twenty years ago.
I was part of the committee that gave him the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. I need you to know that I was outvoted. We were giving two awards that year and the Ackerman partisans were given what they wanted in order for those who were against the citation to be given what they wanted. Even so, the hell that went on behind the scenes was intense and lasted for months after the official announcement was made. But yes, one of the things that came up during the hellish brouhaha that followed was that he had, quote, “a house full of child pornography.”
The months of invective that went on, back and forth, behind the scenes, amounted to the worst period of my writing career….
“The underwater forest is like the Garden of Eden underwater,” says Christine DeLong, a paleo-climatologist at Louisiana State University. She says tests date the forest to be between 50,000 and 70,000 years old.
“It’s a huge deal,” DeLong says. “Because here we have this like perfectly preserved time capsule of an ice age forest.”
Flares can occur on their own, or be accompanied by powerful eruptions of plasma (charged gas) from the Sun.
If charged particles from these eruptions reach Earth, they can create havoc with infrastructure, such as satellite systems and power grids.
Now, researchers in France say the interaction of distinct magnetic structures controls these outbursts from our star.
Generally speaking, solar eruptions are caused by a sudden, violent rearrangement of the Sun’s magnetic field.
At a deeper level, the process is controlled by two types of structures that form in the magnetic field of the Sun: ropes and cages.
The rope is confined within the magnetic cage. If the cage is strong, it can contain the rope’s contortions, but when the cage is weak, an eruption can take place.
They had tried flashing signs, neon signs and staggered signs.
But when lorry drivers continued to keep on driving their over-sized trucks though low tunnels, Australian authorities took the extreme measure of warning drivers with water signs.
Drivers are greeted with a curtain of water falling from the entrance of tunnels with a huge ‘stop’ sign projected on to them….
Laservision said that the Sydney Harbour Tunnel has experienced more than 10,000 incidents of vehicles hitting the structure since it opened.
The damage caused by too large vehicles crashing into the overhead of the tunnel affected up to 12,000 motorists at peak time, the company said.
One might assume that any animal with two forward-facing eyes would automatically have stereopsis, but that’s not true. It’s a sophisticated skill that requires a lot of processing power and a complex network of neurons—one that not every animal can afford to build. Indeed, after stereopsis was first confirmed in humans in 1838, it took 132 years for scientists to show that other species had the same ability. Macaque monkeys were the first confirmed member of the stereopsis club, but they were soon joined by cats, horses, sheep, owls, falcons, toads—and praying mantises. In the 1980s, Samuel Rossel placed prisms in front of these insects to show that they do triangulate the images from both eyes to catch their prey.
When Jenny Read, from Newcastle University, first read about this, she was amazed. How could an insect pull off such a complicated trick with a brain that contains just 1 million neurons? (For comparison, our brains have 100,000 times that number.) To find out, she and Nityananda set up their mantis 3-D cinemas….
They presented the insects with screens full of black and white dots, with a slightly different pattern projected to each eye. Against these backgrounds, a small circle of dots—a target—would slowly spiral inward from the outside. “It’s meant to be like a little beetle moving against a background,” says Read.
By tweaking the dots, the team could change how far away this target would appear to the watching mantises. And they found that the insects would start to attack the target when it seemed to get within striking distance. Clearly, the insects have stereopsis.
But their stereopsis is not our stereopsis. We use brightness as a cue to align and compare the images that are perceived by our two eyes. Scientists can confirm this by presenting one eye with an image that’s a negative of the other—that has black dots where the other has white ones, and vice versa. “For us, that’s incredibly disruptive. We really can’t match up the images anymore, so our stereopsis falls apart,” says Read. “But the mantises are completely unfazed.” Brightness clearly doesn’t matter to them.
Demand for body parts from America — torsos, knees and heads — is high in countries where religious traditions or laws prohibit the dissection of the dead. Unlike many developed nations, the United States largely does not regulate the sale of donated body parts, allowing entrepreneurs such as MedCure to expand exports rapidly during the last decade.
No other nation has an industry that can provide as convenient and reliable a supply of body parts.
(Larry Niven once said he preferred Alexei Panshin’s “thumbrunners,” but having been beaten to the term, he’d come up with his alternative, “organleggers.”)
How fast do you think you’re traveling when you’re in the rockets on Space Mountain?
Think of the speed of a car on the freeway. Is Space Mountain faster than that? Slower? Is it 100 miles per hour, like Bill Watkins has heard people telling each other?
Watkins contemplated the speed question for years in the early- to mid-1970s. He built his first Space Mountain at Walt Disney World in Florida. But it was bigger – a 300-ft. circle on two tracks. When the Disneyland Space Mountain opened in 1977, Watkins had completed what he always saw as a giant math problem.
Space Mountain is a gravity coaster. Unlike the Matterhorn, which relies on thrusters to help move its vehicles forward, Space Mountain simply starts up and goes down. Technically, it’s 75 seconds of free fall.
At its maximum speed (which can vary slightly depending on the combined weight of the riders) the car you’re riding in Space Mountain is traveling about 40 feet per second.
That’s 27.27 miles per hour.
That seems really slow.
But Watkins somehow made it just right. More than 250 million people have ridden Space Mountain since it opened. And while it’s unclear if it’s the best – Disneyland’s public relations department would only say that Space Mountain is, according to guests, “a top 10 attraction” – how many are better?
It is certainly arguable that Bill Watkins created the most popular roller coaster of all time.
“I seldom meet anyone who hasn’t ridden it,” he said.
To help people make nominations for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, we have set up a “lightbox” system to let fans quickly flip through the works of over 113 artists listed below and to set aside the ones they particularly liked.
Greg Hullender says —
This is aimed at helping people pick artists to nominate, based on covers for magazines and for books containing original novels or anthologies. We don’t have pictures for reprints.
Where possible, we have links to the artists’ portfolios, so readers can get a broader idea of any particular artist’s work. To simplify that a bit, for eligible artists who had just a few works published in 2017 we’ve padded their list of pictures with their art from earlier years. (They’re marked by date for the benefit of those who only want to see works published in 2017.)
(22) ROBOTECH RETURNS. Titan Comics will publish a new graphic novel based on the classic Robotech saga.
A mysterious ship crashes on a remote island… 10 years later, the ship’s ‘Robotechnology’ has helped humanity advance its own tech. But danger looms from the skies and an epic adventure is set to begin…
The world-famous, fan-favorite animated epic returns to comics with a classic transforming-jetfighters-versus-giant-aliens adventure! Written by Brian Wood (Star Wars, Briggs Land, X-Men), with art from Marco Turini (Assassin’s Creed) and colorist Marco Lesko! Return to the fan-favorite Macross Saga that began the classic Robotech franchise, as hotshot Veritech pilot Roy Fokker and skilled rookie Rick Hunter are pulled into an intergalactic war when the Earth is invaded by the insidious Zentraedi! Whether you’ve seen the classic cartoon to the point you can quote every episode, or whether you’ve never experienced Robotech before, this graphic novel collection is for you!
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Scott Edelman, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Cath, Andrew Porter, Will R., David K.M. Klaus, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day evilrooster.]
