An Audio Interview With Dave McCarty by Chris M. Barkley
Dave McCarty. Photo by Chris M. Barkley.
Yesterday, Saturday February 3rd, my partner Juli Marr and I drove from Cincinnati to attend Capricon 44 in downtown Chicago.
We went because we were cordially invited by Helen Montgomery for a semi-surprise party in support of Leane Verhulst, a beloved Chicago area fan. The Facebook Invitation read as follows:
In September 2023, Leane posted that she had a brain tumor. Since then she had surgery to remove it, and the tumor was biopsied. As some of you may have heard, Leane has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Glioblastoma. She has completed chemo and radiation, but this cancer is aggressive and unfortunately has a low survival rate.
As some of us discussed this, Dave had the idea that we would much rather celebrate her *with* her now instead of later. (I mean, we’ll celebrate her later too. Probably often. Because we embrace the power of “and” here.)
Please come join us at Capricon 44 on Saturday night at 8pm Central for our Celebration of Leane. Capricon 44 is held at the Sheraton Grand Chicago.
Juli and I have known Leane for many years and have socialized and worked with her at other sf conventions, including several Chicago Worldcons.
Leane had been in remission and was expected to be there but unfortunately, she had a rather sudden relapse on Friday that required her to be hospitalized for immediate treatment.
As of this post, she is conscious and in stable condition but tires easily.
As a consolation, Helen Montgomery set up a laptop and people attending the party spent a few minutes chatting with and to lift her spirits up. Juli and I were among the last to speak with her and I must remark that she was bearing up very well despite the difficult circumstances. In one way or another, we all told her that we loved her, wished her well with the hope of a speedy recovery…
Leane Verhulst
The other less important reason was that I was also there to receive my Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer from Dave McCarty, who was until recently the head of the Hugo Award Administrators for the Chengdu Worldcon. (He was also a co-host of Ms. Verhulst’s party.)
The party was a success and a literal Who’s Who in fandom was there including Don and Jill Eastlake, Ben Yalow, Alex von Thorn, Marah Seale-Kovacevic, Laurie and Jim Mann, Steven H and Elaine Silver, Stephen Boucher, Tammy Coxen, James Bacon, Jesi Lipp, Greg Ketter, Geri Sullivan, Janice Gelb, Ann Totusek and Kathy and Paul Lehman.
(Although many photographs were taken, I refrained from doing so for personal reasons.)
As all of you are probably aware of by now, these Administrators, and Mr. McCarty in particular, have been under fire for the shocking and unexplained disqualifications of the works of fan writer Paul Weimer, Chinese-born Canadian sff writer Xiran Jay Zhao, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman mini-series on Netflix and the novel Babel by novelist R.F. Kuang from the Long List of Nominations that was released on January 20.
Mr. McCarty, who has been involved in sf fandom for decades, was bombarded with inquiries from most of the ineligibles (save for Ms. Kuang, who issued a brief statement of her own on Instagram), from outraged sff fans on social media and from curious factions of the mainstream press as well.
(Full Disclosure: I have not stated this recently but I must make it known that I have known and worked with Mr. McCarty for several decades. I have worked with him on many conventions in a subordinate role and clashed with him on many occasions involving contentious issues that I have brought before the World Science Fiction Fiction Business Meeting. Despite this, I have maintained a cordial and respectful relationship with him over the years.)
As a journalist, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum; being the recipient of the Hugo in Best Fan Writer category this year, I am in the uncomfortable position of being a part of the story I am reporting on.
But, since I am in the eye of the hurricane so to speak, I am also in the unique position to observe and report on the situation. Keeping my bias in check, I extended an invitation to interview Mr. McCarty several days before I left for Chicago. A day before I left, I receives a text from him accepting the offer, something he did not do when asked by Adam Morgan, a reporter from Esquire Magazine, which ran the following story this past Thursday, the first day of Capricon 44, much to Mr. Carty’s chagrin: “Hugo Awards 2024: What Really Happened at the Sci-Fi Awards in China?”
On Sunday morning, Mr. McCarty and I sat down in the lobby of the Sheraton Grand Riverwalk Hotel for an extensive talk about his experiences as the Chengdu Hugo Administrator, the Chinese colleagues, he worked with, his future in fandom and the mysterious origins of and his reactions to being named, “the Hugo Pope”.
One question I neglected to ask at the time was whether or not he, or anyone on the Chengdu Hugo Awards Administration team, were required to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement by the Chinese government or any other entity involved with the convention. I sent Dave McCarty a text message asking the question after I arrived home Sunday evening. His response:
“Nobody on the administration team signed any kind of agreement like that, we’re just bound by our regular WSFS confidential customs.”
And finally, there was the matter of my Best Fan Writer Hugo Award:
I was informed via text by Mr. McCarty that the six or so Hugo Awards shipped from the People’s Republic of China to the United States for distribution arrived at his house this past Monday.
Unfortunately for all involved, all of the awards had been damaged in transit; while he did not detail the damage to the other awards, Mr. McCarty told me that mine had suffered the most damage in that the panda had chipped paint and had also become completely detached from the stargate. He theorized that this happened because the cases did not have any cushioning material inside to insulate it, so that any practically any motion during transport would cause the awards to rock and bounce against the case.
Mr. McCarty reported that all of the custom cases were for all practical purposes, unusable.
He did tell me that he thinks that the awards can be either fully repaired or possibly even replaced in the next month or so.
He did offer to give my award as is and have it repaired on my own but I declined and said that anything that he could do to have it restored would be fine with me.
This turn of events will mean that my daughter Laura and her family, my bookstore and library friends and all of ardent admirers at my local Kroger’s supermarket will have to wait just a little while longer to take their selfies with one of the most iconic symbols in literature…
(1) UNLOAD THE CANON. Rev. Tom Emanuel calls on scholars and students to “Decanonize Tolkien” at Queer and Back Again.
In the fifty years since Tolkien’s death, his work and legacy have irrevocably shaped our understanding of what fantasy even is. This Oxford don, whose seemingly anachronistic, unclassifiable, wildly popular stories of Elves, Hobbits, and magic rings were once dismissed by the self-appointed guardians of Western literature, has now become one of its canonical figures.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends very much on whom you ask. Speaking as a lifelong Tolkien fanatic, my answer is: a bit of both. Either way, we might as well throw in the towel on biblical scholarship as on Tolkien scholarship. Just as the Bible is an inescapable, bone-deep influence on Western culture even for those who do not accord it status as Scripture, Tolkien is an inescapable influence on modern fantasy and, by extension, the study of the fantastic. His canonical status is why we cannot yet write him off; he means too much to too many people, has exerted too great a gravitational pull upon our field of inquiry. Yet that same canonical status is also why Tolkien scholarship must explore new horizons of reception and applicability and grapple responsibly with Tolkien’s complicated legacies both literary as well as cultural, historical as well as contemporary – another feature his work shares with the Bible. In fairness to my colleagues, many exceptional scholars, both established and emerging, are actively breaking new ground in Tolkien studies. More is needed, however, and an active reconsideration of approaches which have held sway in our field for too long….
…Those of us who study the man will always find it edifying (possibly) and entertaining (most certainly) to “interpret every single note Tolkien once wrote on a napkin and subject this analysis to multiple peer review,” to quote from this forum’s prompt. If we seek to continue in a genuinely Tolkienian spirit, however, we would do well to consider more deeply and carefully the effects of Tolkien’s fiction upon his readers and the wider culture in which they are implicated.
Key to this endeavor will be loosening the grip of so-called “authorial intent” over large swaths of Tolkien fandom and scholarship….
(2) HUGO AWARDS MESS REACHES ESQUIRE. [Item by PhilRM.] A not-terrible article that just showed up in Esquire about Chengdu touches, briefly and not terribly accurately, on the Puppies, and is almost entirely about the exclusions rather than the complete lack of believability of the numbers (although Heather Rose Jones’ work gets a link), but at least it delivers a well-deserved drubbing to Dave McCarty. “Hugo Awards 2024: What Really Happened at the Sci-Fi Awards in China?”
…In 2021, the voting process to select the host city for the 2023 convention became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. Each year, anyone who purchases a membership in the World Science Fiction Society can vote on where WorldCon will be held two years later. In 2021, voters could choose between Chengdu and Winnipeg, Canada for the 2023 convention. “There were concerns that a couple thousand people from China purchased memberships [in the World Science Fiction Society] that year to vote for Chengdu,” says Jason Sanford, a three-time Hugo finalist. “It was unusual, but it was done under the rules.”
While Sanford welcomed the participation of new Chinese fans, other people were alarmed that many of the Chinese votes for Chengdu were written in the same handwriting and posted from the same mailing address. The chair of the convention that year, Mary Robinette Kowal, says some members of the awards committee wanted to mark those votes as invalid. “But if you’re filling out a ballot in English and you don’t speak English, you hand it to a friend who does,” she says. “And the translation we’d put in could be read as ‘where are you from,’ not ‘what is your address.’”
Eventually, a few votes were invalidated by the committee, but most were allowed to stand. “China has the largest science fiction reading audience on the planet by several magnitudes, and they are extremely passionate,” Kowal says….
…When McCarty finally shared last year’s nominating statistics on his Facebook page, authors, fans, and finalists were shocked. In the history of the awards, no works had ever been deemed ineligible like this. Many people who had expected Kuang to win for Babel were now stunned to see she very well could have, and McCarty’s refusal to explain what happened made everything worse. (McCarty did not respond to interview requests for this story.)
“Fandom doesn’t like people fucking with their awards, no matter who does it or why,” says John Scalzi, a three-time Hugo Award winner who was a finalist last year in the Best Novel category: the very same category in which R.F. Kuang should have been nominated for Babel, according to the nomination count on page 20 of McCarty’s document. “The reason people are outraged right now is because they care about the award, in one fashion or another, and this lack of transparency feels like a slap,” Scalzi says….
The article ends:
At the end of my Zoom call with Sanford, I see some emotion in his face around the eyes. “When I was young, science fiction and fantasy books literally saved my life,” he says. “I looked for books that were Hugo finalists or winners, and they showed me a way forward. They showed me there are other people out there who think like me.”
Whatever happens to the Hugos moving forward, one thing is clear: No one should have the power to erase books from the reading lists of future Jason Sanfords.
Jason Sanford disavowed the last paragraph on Bluesky.
Yes, I read the Esquire article I was interviewed for about the Hugo Awards controversy. A good article overall. I liked how the transparency of the Hugos is compared to lack of the same with most literary awards. Then I read the closing paragraph. Oh gods. SMDH. Be nice & know I didn’t write that.
Editor’s Note: The article also says of McCarty, “Within the WorldCon community, he’s nicknamed the ‘Hugo Pope’ for serving on so many awards committees over the years.” It’s a nickname I haven’t heard before. And Ersatz Culture reminds me that the October 26 Scroll carried a photo of a signature book showing McCarty refers to himself as ‘Hugo Boss’.
(3) WE DON’T TALK ABOUT HUGOS. Artist Lar deSouza has done a cartoon inspired by the controversy. See it on Bluesky: “We don’t talk about Hugos….”.
Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro division behind tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, is denying rumors sparked by a Chinese news report that a struggling Hasbro could be selling its Dungeons & Dragons franchise to Chinese video game company Tencent….
…But in a Thursday statement to multiple outlets, including Forbes, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro division that publishes Dungeons & Dragons and games including Magic: the Gathering, denied the rumors, claiming while the company has multiple partnerships with Tencent, “we are not looking to sell our D&D [intellectual property],” and the company would not comment any further on “speculation or rumors about potential M&A or licensing deals.”…
(5) FIGHT GOES INTO THE SECOND ROUND. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] “Disney To Appeal Ron DeSantis Legal Loss As The Empire Strikes Back” reports Deadline. Of course they are. It’s The Mouse. They have far more lawyers than there are pirates in The Pirates of The Caribbean Ride at Walt Disney World. And those lawyers know more about fighting dirty than those pirates ever did. Hmmm…. Mickey with an eye patch and cutlass…
The lines at Disney World may be long, but the Mouse House isn’t standing around to let Ron DeSantis savor his win yesterday in the company’s First Amendment lawsuit against the failed presidential candidate.
Less than 24 hours after a federal judge agreed with the Florida Governor and deep-sixed Disney’s nearly year long legal action, the Bob Iger-run entertainment giant and Sunshine State mega-employer gave official notice they plan to challenge Wednesday’s dismissal.
“Notice is given that Plaintiff Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, U.S., Inc. (“Disney”) hereby appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the Order Granting Motions to Dismiss and the final judgment entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on January 31, 2024,” said outside Disney counsel Daniel Petrocelli and a small legion of lawyers in a filing this morning.
No word yet when the actual appeal will be filed, but it could be within the next week or so, I hear.
In a Florida knife fight that started with Disney’s slow but eventual opposition to the state’s parental rights bill, known by detractors AKA the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and then turned to DeSantis’ throwing overboard the long standing governance the company had over the region around Orlando’s Disney World and appointing his own Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board. As the dust-up escalated, Disney filed its suit in April, as past and now present CEO Iger and the so-called “woke” battling DeSantis, who was eyeing what became a face plant of a primary campaign, hurled missives at each other in public…
(6) URSA MAJOR. Nominations for the Ursa Major Awards, Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award, are open and will continue until February 17.
You may choose up to five nominees for each category:
Nominations may be made for the following categories:
Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Series Best Anthropomorphic Novel Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip Best Anthropomorphic Magazine Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration Best Anthropomorphic Game Best Anthropomorphic Website Best Anthropomorphic Costume (Fursuit) Best Anthropomorphic Music
(7) CALL FOR ‘WEIRD HOLLYWOOD’ SUBMISSIONS. Christopher J. Garcia, Chuck Serface, and Alissa Wales are planning an issue of The Drink Tank about Weird Hollywood. “Weird,” however you define that term, can apply to Hollywood as the city itself or as the entertainment industry. The editors are interested in fiction, art, history, poetry, photography, or anything printable you want to contribute. Send submissions to Chris at [email protected] or to Chuck at [email protected]. The deadline is March 1, 2024.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 2, 1990 — Sarah Gailey, 33. Sarah Gailey comes to our attention with their Best Related Work Hugo at Worldcon 75 with their Women of Harry Potter posts. Fascinating look at some other commenters mostly. Here is the “Women of Harry Potter: Ginny Weasley Is Not Impressed” post at Reactor.
Their alternate history “River of Teeth” novella, the first work in that series, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novella at Worldcon 76 and a Nebula. It’s also the first work in their American Hippo duology, the other being the novella “Taste of Marrow”.
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey, art by Will Staehle
Upright Women Wanted is set in the a fantasy of a Wild West of a twenty minutes into the future dystopian hyper heterosexual America which is all I can say about giving away spoilers about it. Major trigger warnings for any conservative readers here.
Their Magic for Liars, is quite excellent I would say. It’s a murder mystery set in school for young wizards but it’s nothing like those books. They discuss their book here in a YouTube video.
The Echo Wife is a thriller with some very adult questions about the nature of what being human actually means. To say anymore would be spoiling it. It’s damn good. I’d say that it’s their best work to date.
Their latest novel, Just Like Home, is not one I’ve read. Let’s just say that I don’t do serial killers and leave it at that.
They also scripted The Vampire Slayer series on Boom! Comics from the universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
They have done a double, double handful of short fiction, almost so far collected though the American Hippo collects the “River of Teeth” novella and the “Taste of Marrow” novella, and two short stories, “Worth Her Weight in Gold” and “Nine and a Half”, all part of the River of Teeth storytelling.
Finally they have a magical, in the best way magic is, newsletter called Stone Soup. “It’s about the things we cook, the things we read, the things we write. It’s about the things we care about, together and separately; it’s about everything we add to the pot, in little bits and pieces, to make something great. It’s about community.” You can sign up for the free level, or the paid which I do and is well worth the cup of coffee a month it’ll cost you. (My Patreon fees collectively are larger than any of my streaming services by far.) Mike has from to time included material from it here.
Spotify has said that it has paid audiobook publishers “tens of millions” since allowing users 15 hours of audiobook listening in its Premium subscription package last autumn.
The company said that the figure, reported by trade magazine the Bookseller, is “100% royalties” and that it expects to “continue growing” royalty payouts in future. It would not give a more precise amount for payouts made so far, but said that the “tens of millions” figure applies in both pounds and dollars.
However, the Society of Authors (SoA) said they “remain concerned at the lack of clarity about the deals”. The industry body said it is “still waiting to see the effect on author incomes and whether these are real additional sales or simply take market share from Amazon”….
(11) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] A Tolkien category featured on tonight’s episode of Jeopardy! Some contestants stumbled.
Category: Talking About Tolkien
Answer: Humphrey Carpenter’s bio of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis & like-minded friends has this title, like their literary circle.
Wrong question: What is the Oxford group?
Right question: What is the Inklings?
Answer: To his family and close friends, Tolkien was known by this name, the first “R” in his initials.
Wrong questions: What is Rael? and What is Robert?
Right question: What is Ronald?
(12) CSI SKILL TREE. The latest episode of CSI Skill Tree is “Game Localization with Siyang Gao and Emily Xueni Jin”. The series examines how video games envision possible futures and build thought-provoking worlds. In this episode, the participants discuss the process of video game localization, which encompasses both translation and deeper work, even up to adapting a game’s mechanics, cultural references and allusions, and more to better resonate with players who encounter the game outside of its initial linguistic and cultural context.
Siyang Gao is a writer, translator, and video game localizer who specializes in narrative-heavy games, and Emily Xueni Jin is an essayist, researcher, and fantastic translator of science fiction who translates both from Chinese to English and the other way around. Also, here’s a YouTube playlist with all 14 of the Skill Tree episodes thus far.
The New York Police Department robot sat motionless like a sad Wall-E on Friday morning, gathering dust inside an empty storefront within New York City’s busiest subway station.
No longer were its cameras scanning straphangers traversing Times Square. No longer were subway riders pressing its help button, if ever they had.
New York City has retired the robot, known as the Knightscope K5, from service inside the Times Square station. The Police Department had been forced to assign officers to chaperone the robot, which is 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 400 pounds. It could not use the stairs. Some straphangers wanted to abuse it.
“The K5 Knightscope has completed its pilot in the NYC subway system,” a spokesman for the department said in an email.
On Friday, the white contraption in N.Y.P.D. livery sat amid a mountain of cardboard boxes, separated from the commuting masses by a plate-glass window. People streaming by said they had often been mystified by the robot.
“I thought it was a toy,” said Derek Dennis, 56, a signal engineer.
It was an ignominious end for an experiment that Mayor Eric Adams, a self-described tech geek, hoped would help bring safety and order to the subways, at a time when crime remained a pressing concern for many New Yorkers….
(14) TUNES INSPIRED BY LOVECRAFT STORY. Another musical discovery that might be of interest: “The Music of Erich Zann” from Half Deaf Clatch via Speak Up Recordings at Bandcamp.
‘The Music of Erich Zann’ is one of my favourite short stories by H.P Lovecraft, and I’ve been wanting to do a musical adaptation for a long while now. This EP started out as a few short atmospheric instrumentals, but very quickly turned into a full blown musical work with lots of lyrics!
The words are an abridged version of the story and detail the salient points, rather than providing a blow by blow account, if you haven’t read the actual story I highly recommend it.
I kept the instrumentation relatively simple, just an acoustic guitar, electric cello, pipe organ, percussion and atmospheric soundscapes. The majority of the sounds are made by acoustic or electro-acoustic instruments, the electric cello was played through an Orange ‘Crush’ acoustic amp and EHX Soul Food pedal, any ‘otherworldly’ effects were created with instruments put through octavers and auto filters.
In the original story Lovecraft says that Eric Zann plays a ‘viol’, it is widely accepted that he meant a viol da gamba, a Baroque era instrument which closely resembles the cello, but has five to seven strings, and frets. Since these are rare and very expensive, I obviously decided to use my electric cello for this EP, as buying a viol da gamba seemed an unnecessary extravagance.
In April 2023, a 54-year-old programmer named Gary Bowser was released from prison having served 14 months of a 40-month sentence. Good behaviour reduced his time behind bars, but now his options are limited. For a while he was crashing on a friend’s couch in Toronto. The weekly physical therapy sessions, which he needs to ease chronic pain, were costing hundreds of dollars every week, and he didn’t have a job. And soon, he would need to start sending cheques to Nintendo. Bowser owes the makers of Super Mario $14.5m (£11.5m), and he’s probably going to spend the rest of his life paying it back….
…In the late 00s he made contact with Team Xecuter, a group that produces dongles used to bypass anti-piracy measures on Nintendo Switch and other consoles, letting them illegally download, modify and play games. While he says he was only paid a few hundred dollars a month to update their websites, Bowser says the people he worked with weren’t very social and he helped “testers” troubleshoot devices.
“I started becoming a middleman in between the people doing the development work, and the people actually owning the mod chips, playing the games,” he says. “I would get feedback from the testers, and then I would send it to the developers … I can handle people, and that’s why I ended up getting more involved.”
In September 2020, he was arrested in a sting so unusual that the US Department of Justice released a press release boasting about the indictment, in which acting assistant attorney general Brian C Rabbitt called Bowser and his co-defendants “leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of US companies”.
“The day that it happened, I was sleeping in my bed, it was four in the morning, I’d been drinking all night,” Bowser says. “And suddenly I wake up and see three people surrounding my bed with rifles aimed at my head … they dragged me out of the place, put me in the back of a pickup truck and drove me to the Interpol office.”…
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s “Echo Pitch Meeting” invites everyone to step inside the Pitch Meeting that led to Echo! Beware what you step in, though, because there are spoiler warnings.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, JJ, Kathy Sullivan, Joey Eschrich, PhilRM, Jason Sanford, Robin Anne Reid, Ersatz Culture, Chuck Serface, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) 2024 HUGO VOTING STALLED. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon paused Hugo nomination voting on January 28, announcing in social media, “We are aware of an issue with nominations. We have taken that system offline as a precaution.” Their January 30 update said, “We committed to update you on the temporary pause of Hugo Award nominations. Our UK software provider is still working on a solution. We will provide you with our next status update no later than the 6th February.” At this time they do not expect to extend the nomination voting deadline.
(2) NEW STAR IN THE FIRMAMENT. Margaret Atwood appears as a guest star on the CBC series Murdoch Mysteries this coming Monday, February 5. She plays Loren Quinnell, Amateur Ornithologist. “Her and her feathered friends help crack the case…”
The Salam Award Scholarship: For the year 2024, The Salam Award has agreed to sponsor a student of Pakistani origin, whether a Pakistani resident of any ethnicity, or a Pakistani-origin student anywhere in the world up to USD $1,000.
The Malik Sharif-Fehmida Anwar Scholarship: Usman T. Malik and his parents Malik Tanveer Ali and Shabnam Tanveer Malik have offered an annual travel scholarship to help fund travel up to USD $2,500 for a student of Palestinian-origin. The applicant should be Palestinian Arab-Muslim or Arab-Christian from Gaza, West Bank, or Golan Heights, or may be Palestinian diaspora located anywhere in the world.
Through the generosity of our donors, Clarion West provides a number of scholarships for writers every year. Approximately 60-90% of our Six-Week Workshop participants receive full and partial-tuition scholarships. You must indicate your need for financial aid when you apply to the six-week workshop. Your application is reviewed without regard to your financial aid request.
You can learn more about scholarships for the Six-Week Workshop here.
(4) WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT. RedWombat took inspiration from the continuing Hugo controversy to pen these lyrics, shared in ha comment on File 770 today.
This only works if you pronounce it “Wisfuss,” but…
We don’t talk about WSFS, no no no We don’t talk about WSFS
But!
It was Hugo nom day (It was Hugo nom day) We were running numbers and there wasn’t much good to be found Standlee stops by with a glint in his eye (Trademark!) You filking this thing or am I? (Sorry, sorry, please go on)
Standlee says, “we can’t enforce…” (Why did he say it?) The lawyers are aghast, of course (That’s not how you play it) And MPC did not endorse (Had to resign but nevermind…)
We don’t talk about WSFS, no no no We don’t talk about WSFS
Hey, grew to live in fear of what the lawyers might find next Feeling like the whole organization’s been hexed I associate it with the sight of scathing posts (Tsk tsk tsk) It’s a heavy job sieving through this murk Implicit contract no longer seems to work Can’t rely on the Old SMOFs Network Who’s gonna do the work?
M-P-C, taken aback People still mad about the AO3 attack How can you enforce this implicit contract? Yeah, the lawyers scream and break into teams (Hey) We don’t talk about WSFS, no no no We don’t talk about WSFS
We never should have asked about WSFS, no no no Why did we talk about WSFS?
(I put that song in my head for the next year doing this, so if you’re going to complain, believe me, I have already been punished.)
(5) WRITERS AT GEN CON. The 2024 Gen Con Writers’ Symposium guests will include Linda D. Addison, Mikki Kendall, and quite a few featured speakers who are sff authors. Gen Con 2024 will be held August 1-4 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Gen Con Writers’ Symposium is a semi-independent event hosted by Gen Con and intended for both new and experienced writers of speculative fiction. All registration is handled through the Gen Con website.
(6) WHO ELSE HAD A STAKE IN DRACULA? Bobby Derie tells readers that H. P. Lovecraft claimed his friend Edith Miniter was offered the chance to revise Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What do we know about this claim? Find out! “Lovecraft, Miniter, Stoker: the Dracula Revision” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.
In The Essential Dracula(1979), Bram Stoker scholars Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu revealed a letter (H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 10 Dec 1932) that had been drawn to their attention by horror anthologist and scholar Les Daniels, where H. P. Lovecraft claimed that an old woman he knew had turned down the chance to revise Stoker’s Dracula. The letter had not been published before this. Although Lovecraft’s claim had been made in print as early as 1938, and a letter with the anecdote was published in the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters from Arkham House in 1965, this seems to be the first time the Stoker scholar community became generally aware of the claim. The authors were intrigued by the possibilities…
(7) LDV NEWS. J. Michael Straczynski shared that Blackstone Indie has unveiled a webpage for The Last Dangerous Visions. It does not take preorders yet.
In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed.
Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it.
Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, representing voices both well-known and entirely new, including: David Brin, Max Brooks, James S. A. Corey, Dan Simmons, Cory Doctorow, and Adrian Tchaikovsky, among others.
With an introduction and exegesis by J. Michael Straczynski, and a story introduction by Ellison himself, The Last Dangerous Visions is an extraordinary addition to an incredible literary legacy.
(8) ANOTHER ENTRY FOR THE CAPTAIN’S LOG. The Visual Effects Society will honor Actor-Producer-Director William Shatner as the recipient of the VES Award for Creative Excellence in recognition of his valuable contributions to visual arts and filmed entertainment at its annual ceremony on February 21. “William Shatner Named as Recipient of the VES Award for Creative Excellence”.
…The cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation will receive The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 51st Annual Saturn Awards, being held in Los Angeles this Sunday. For 2024 the Academy is doing something different for the TNG cast with this award. A statement from the Academy to TrekMovie explains:
“The Lifetime Achievement Award is usually presented to an individual for their contributions to genre entertainment. Top luminaries like Stan Lee and Leonard Nimoy, Mr. Spock himself, have received this top honor. It’s not new, but we extended this award to cover the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, due to its continued influence on the face of general television. It was originally doomed to failure since it was following in the footsteps of the original Star Trek, yet it carved its own identity, and its diverse cast was light years ahead of its time!”…
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 1, 1954 — Bill Mumy, 70. Bill Mumy is best remembered of course for being on Lost in Space for three seasons (“Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”) though he has a much more extensive performance resume.
At the rather tender age of seven, he makes his genre acting debut on TheTwilight Zone as Billy Bayles in “Long Distance Call”. He’d appear in two Twilight Zone episodes, “It’s A Good Life” as Anthony Fremont, a child with godlike powers and finally as the young Pip Phillips in “In Praise of Pip”.
He’d show up much later on in Twilight Zone: The Movie in one of the segments, not unsurprisingly a remake of “It’s A Good Life” which here is listed as being from a screenplay by Richard Matheson. Here he’s Tim. Whoever that is.
He’d be on the reboot of the Twilight Zone in “It’s Still A Good Life” as the Adult Anthony Fremont.
Billy Mumy in 2013. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
He next had three appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, none genre. His next genre outing would be playing two different characters on Bewitched. I Dream of Jeannie and the Munsters followed.
Then of course was the eighty-three episode, three season run on Lost in Space. He’d be eleven years old when it started. I know I’ve seen all of it at least once. No idea how the Suck Fairy would treat it nearly this long on, but I really liked it when I saw it at the time.
Remember the 1990 Captain America? If you don’t, you’re not alone. In this WW II version, he plays a young boy, Tom Kimball, who photographs Captain America over the Capital building kicking a missile off after batting Red Skull so crashes in Alaska, burying itself and Steve Rogers under the ice. 12%, repeat 12%, is the rating audience reviewers gave it on Rotten Tomatoes.
He showed up once in the first iteration of a Flash series, and then has three appearances as Tommy Puck in the Nineties Superboy series. The first I saw and quite like, the latter not a single episode have I encountered.
The next thing that is quite worthy of note is his stellar role on Babylon 5 as Mimbari warrior monk, I think that’s the proper term, Lennier. Of one hundred and ten episodes, he was in all but two. That’s right, just two. Or at least credited as being so. What an amazing role that was. I’ve watch this series including the six films at least twice straight through. No Suck Fairy dares comes near it.
The last thing of note, and I’m not seen the series, was him playing Dr. Zachary Smith on the reboot of the Lost in Space series that came out just a few years ago for two episodes. Please, please don’t ask who he’s playing as my continuous headache got even worse when I tried to figure out who he really was. Really I did. What they with that series was a crime.
(11) PUTTING THE BITE ON TOURISTS. [Item by Steven French.] If you’re ever in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Atlas Obscura recommends a visit to “Vampa: Vampire & Paranormal Museum”.
TUCKED AWAY IN THE SAME building as an antiques store in a small Pensylvania town lies a shockingly large collection of antique vampire-killing sets.
Covering the walls are the standard tools of the vampire hunter: the stake, the crucifix, the holy water bottle. But the stakes are far more than pointy, wooden sticks. Believed to date back centuries, all the weapons have been beautifully decorated with a variety of religious and allegorical carvings. They are spectacular objets d’art from every corner of the world, including several personal collections from actors who played Dracula in films. One wooden “traveling vampire hunter kit,” from around 1870 was owned by actor Carlos Villarias, who portrayed the famous count in a Spanish language Dracula….
The craters are unique to Russia’s northern Yamal and Gydan peninsulas and are not known to exist elsewhere in the Arctic, suggesting the key to this puzzle lies in the landscape, according to a preprint paper published Jan. 12 to the EarthArXiv database.
Researchers have proposed several explanations for the gaping holes over the years, ranging from meteor impacts to natural-gas explosions. One theory suggests the craters formed in the place of historic lakes that once bubbled with natural gas rising from the permafrost below. These lakes may have dried up, exposing the ground beneath to freezing temperatures that sealed the vents through which gas escaped. The resulting buildup of gas in the permafrost may eventually have been released through explosions that created the giant craters.
… But the historic-lake model fails to account for the fact that these “giant escape craters” (GECs) are found in a variety of geological settings across the peninsulas, not all of which were once covered by lakes, according to the new preprint, which has not been peer reviewed….
… Permafrost on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas varies widely in its thickness, ranging from a few hundred feet to 1,600 feet (500 m). The soil likely froze solid more than 40,000 years ago, imprisoning ancient marine sediments rich in methane that gradually transformed into vast natural gas reserves. These reserves produce heat that melts the permafrost from below, leaving pockets of gas at its base.
Permafrost in Russia and elsewhere is also thawing at the surface due to climate change. In places where it is already thin on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas, melting from both ends and the pressure from the gas may eventually cause the remaining permafrost to collapse, triggering an explosion.
This “champagne effect” would explain the presence of smaller craters around the eight giant craters, as huge chunks of ice propelled out by the explosions may have severely dented the ground, according to the preprint….
(13) HUNT TO EXTINCTION. The stories you hear from Brian Keene.
(14) NEW HEADSHOT. Scott Lynch introduced his new photo with a wry comment.
New publicity photos for 2024, too. Part of a multi-year study by numerous federal agencies to discover if male fantasy authors actually die if we wear something that isn't a black t-shirt (results are promising so far).
(16) OCTOTHORPE. John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty respond to a letter of comment from Tobes Valois in episode 102 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I fully comprehend the mysteries”.
Octothorpe 102 is here! We discuss the Hugo Awards debacle in some depth and SOLVE ALL THE ISSUES (no, really) but we book-end it with letters of comment and picks for those who need a bit of respite. Artwork by Alison Scott. Listen here!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
“The Wreck of the Hugo” created by artist Charles Oines in 2015.
INTRODUCTION: Zimozi Natsuco is an ordinary sf fan from China. He is studying at a Chinese University majoring in literature. Zimozi Natsuco attended 2023 Worldcon and the business meeting. Several of his non-fiction works are submitted in WeChat account SSSZJU2009, including News and Newspapers Summary on Science Fiction.
NOTE: A Chinese-language version of this post follows below.
By Zimozi Natsuco: We have now seen the great inflammation of overseas public opinion on the Hugo Awards. Considering that the English version of this article will be aimed at overseas readers, I have no intention of repeating well-known events and facts that have already been stated over and over again. Instead, you will hear unique observations from Chinese science fiction fans.
Throughout the two “nomination announcements,” the lack of information and access to Chinese readers was jaw-dropping. The voting data was not publicized through any of the official social media outlets for the Chengdu 2023 World Science Fiction Convention in mainland China – although those outlets have only a handful of followers and post lackluster promotions. Even the first announcement of the final results came just after a heated attack on the Hugo Awards by a Chinese internet influencer ”Ma Dugong”[2], which was completely off-color, and the organizing committee still avoided presenting its own tally to set the record straight. The second nomination result was even more ridiculous, with no official report from the Chinese Internet on the matter. The only official Chinese website with the results in small print has restricted access for possible reasons of economy – and hopefully for the sake of Glasgow2024.
If this is the case, we will have to point out to our Chinese and foreign friends the extreme absurdity of the facts. Even as Western sci-fi fans are furious at being fooled, their Chinese friends can’t help but envy them. Chinese sci-fi fans are completely excluded from the Hugo Awards’ “openness and transparency,” and some on the organizing committee apparently believe that pleasing and satisfying foreigners with any request, whether reasonable or absurd, takes absolute precedence over being honest and open with the people of their own country, who have spent the most money and effort supporting them. All Chinese sci-fi fans need only become cash cows for some on the Chengdu committee: a few hundred dollars for voting, a few thousand dollars for attending, and thousands and millions of dollars for developing Chengdu’s sci-fi industry under the command of the committee.
I have nothing to say except to feel ashamed when such a post-colonial magical scene occurs in a socialist country committed to independence and autonomy!
The post-colonial tragedy cannot go unrecognized. Further, the irresponsibility behind these two reports needs to be exposed more clearly. The release dates of the two reports were made public against deadlines. If we did not look at the title, we might have insisted that this is made by a lowest-ranking student. May I ask if this is a disgrace to the WSFS constitution? Is this an insult to the 80-year glorious history of World Science Fiction Conventions? Is this an insult to 120 years of Chinese science fiction history?
Some people in the organizing committee don’t care about these questions because they have no sense of shame. Naturally, we can’t expect such people to be able to fabricate data that conforms to the statistical laws seriously, explain the correct reasons for nominating and rejecting nominations, and correctly interpret the vote-counting mechanism. It’s not just that they don’t have the moral integrity to do so, but it’s also related to the lack of competence of these people: lacking a sense of responsibility and identification with science fiction, how can we expect them to have the competence and enthusiasm to learn how to run a good science fiction convention and judge the Hugo Awards?
This irresponsibility must be taken a step further by grasping the complexity of the facts in Sino-Foreign relations. It is not our intention to defend the arrogant, haughty, and insolent Dave McCarty, yet while he was the target for the most firepower, some bugbears masquerading as Chinese were stealthily making their way through the organizing committee. They were never science fiction fans in the first place; they were not a part of fandom. a couple of media company executives had somehow gotten involved in the convention, taken over everything, including the Hugo Awards, used their few contacts in the media world to make a big splash in the press and in government hospitality receptions. Then they passed the job of external surrender to McCarty, who would bend over backward with small favors, and the job of internal repression to the Chinese workers who had to be be forced into surrender through the use of intimidation. In the midst of everyone’s uproar, they will go into hiding, saying a few words to the government’s enthusiastic civil servants, “Who understands this, my family?”[3] say a few words to the big corporations, “Go begging, bro!”, and then they’ll become a glorious page in the history of Chinese science fiction literature, a shining convention[4]. Why do they get all the good stuff?
So, if such people oversee the Hugo Awards and then exclude those who are truly responsible and educated, how can the Hugo Awards not be evil? It’s a matter of water under the bridge, and I urge my naive foreign friends to accept this little Chinese shock!
Annotation:
[1] Evils fall: イビルフォール, 恶堕, which is always used to describe the process in which a character forced into evil.
[2] Here is ma’s video:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1eN411L7eU/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0, with the title of “I am not afraid of the slated Hugo; I am just afraid that it can be sorry to Three Body Problem”. Ma holds the opinion that the award is unfair due to speculation from Chinese sci-ci companies, but none of these companies, like 8 light minutes which he criticized the most, took part in it.
[3] It’s a meme sentence used in Chinese Internet to satirize someone self-centered and with no attention to public rules.
[4] “shining convention” is the word said by Chen Shi in about February 2023.
Glasgow 2024 today opened nominations for the 2024 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The nomination period will close on Saturday, March 9, at 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time.
Glasgow 2024 will administer the eighteen Hugo Award categories specified in the WSFS Constitution. This will include the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work, which is being presented for the first time this year. (A category of Best Video Game was previously presented in 2021 on a trial basis). Glasgow 2024 will also administer the ballots for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented by Dell Magazines. There will be no special category Hugo Award in 2024.
Nominations can be submitted by all individuals who hold WSFS Memberships in either the 2023 (Chengdu) or 2024 (Glasgow) Worldcons as of 11.59 p.m. Glasgow time on January 31, 2024. To facilitate the participation of 2023 Worldcon members, many of who are Chinese-language speakers, the committee will be making the nominating ballot available in Chinese as well as English.
More information about the Hugo Awards, including full instructions on how to complete and submit a nominating ballot can be found on the Glasgow 2024 website. They have also provided a PDF version of the paper nominating ballot which can be downloaded by members who prefer to submit their nominations by postal mail. All ballots, whether submitted electronically or by postal mail, must be received by the deadline of 4.00 p.m. Glasgow time on Saturday, March 9, 2024.
Instructions have also been sent to all eligible WSFS Members by email, using the email address associated with their membership. They encourage members to check their junk/spam/promotions folders for this email if they do not appear to have received it. Voter notification messages may be flagged as spam by some email systems. Worldcon members who are uncertain of their status or who experience problems with the online nominating form should contact the committee at [email protected].
The committee’s press release states:
The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We encourage all eligible members to nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favourites from 2023. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations. At that time we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.
While members of both the 2023 and 2024 Worldcons can nominate for the 2024 Awards, only members of the 2024 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot. If you are not yet a member of Glasgow 2024, see the convention’s Membership Page for information about joining.
Any questions about the administration of the 2024 Hugo Awards should be directed to [email protected].
Vincent Villafranca casting the 2013 Hugo Award base.
TL;DR SUMMARY: The differences between the redacted and the final 2023 Hugo ballots involved three items and were due to rules applications as explained in the 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report.
The “ineligibles” were not on the redacted ballot, either. If you don’t know what the redacted ballot was, keep reading.
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. Last July 2 the Chengdu Worldcon released a version of the Hugo final ballot, then within hours took it offline and asked news outlets to remove it. File 770 honored the request (see “2023 Hugo Finalists [Redacted]” – which reported what happened, but you won’t find the old list there).
Committee member Helen Montgomery explained at the time, “Official statement is that the list was posted in error by IT as part of their set up / testing process, but it is an earlier version of the ballot and is not correct.”
Rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to which ever got the most nominating votes.
WERE THE INELIGIBLES ON THE OLD BALLOT? No, the “ineligibles” – R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, Neil Gaiman’s series Sandman and one of the episodes, fan writer Paul Weimer, and author Xiran Jay Zhao (in their second year of Astounding Award eligibility) – were not on the redacted ballot, either.
DETAILED COMPARISON.
Best Novel – same finalists
Best Novella – same finalists
Best Novelette – same finalists; a comma typo corrected on final
Best Short Story – same finalists
Best Series – same finalists
Best Graphic Story or Comic – same finalists
Best Related Work
ON REDACTED (Item published in 2020.)
THE ART OF GHOST OF TSUSHIMA, Sucker Punch Productions|对马岛之魂艺术设定集 突袭游戏工作室|海南出版社
ON FINAL
Buffalito World Outreach Project, by Lawrence M. Schoen (Paper Golem LLC)
Best Dramatic – Long Form
ON REDACTED (Rule 3.8.3)
Andor (Season 1) Directed by Toby Haynes, Susanna White, Ben Caron|安多（第一季） 导演：托比•海恩斯、苏珊娜•怀特、本•卡隆|
ON FINAL
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, screenplay by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, directed by Ryan Coogler (Marvel Studios)
Best Dramatic – Short Form
ON REDACTED (Rule 3.8.3)
Severence, S1.E9, The We We Are, Writtten by Dan Erickson, Anna Ouyang Moench Directed by Ben Stiller|人生切割术（第一季第九集）： 编剧：丹•埃里克森、安娜•欧阳•莫恩奇 导演：本•斯蒂勒
ON FINAL
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: “Whose Show is This?”, written by Jessica Gao, Francesca Gailes, and Jacqueline Gailes, directed by Kat Coiro (Marvel Entertainment)
Best Editor – Long Form – same finalists, order of Chinese names was changed (e.g. from Yao Haijun to Haijun Yao)
Best Editor – Short Form – same finalists, order of Chinese names was changed
Best Professional Artist – same finalists
Best Fanzine – same finalists; (And Journey Planet had 15 team members listed on both versions.)
Best Fancast – same finalists
Best Fan Writer – same finalists (including same typo in “Bitter Karelia”)
Best Fan Artist – same finalists
Lodestar Award – same finalists
Astounding Award – same finalists, order of the Chinese names was changed
McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, previously gave File 770 this reason for ruling R. F. Kuang’s Babel, fan writer Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman tv series, and second-year Astounding Award nominee Xiran Jay Zhao as “not eligible”:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
People have been trying to pry more information out of McCarty in a prodigious exchange on his Facebook page. Initially he referred them to the original reply above. And slapped back at one fellow who persisted in questioning with “Asked and answered.” Then, when that didn’t silence the questioner:
And
Clearly, Joseph Finn isn’t Tom Cruise, and Dave McCarty isn’t Jack Nicholson.
Yet it’s an innate part of human psychology to want to be understood and accepted by other people. The need is so strong that even the formidable McCarty had to make some effort to answer this question.
Neil Gaiman has been quite upset about what is essentially a Catch-22 explanation – the Sandman series was a Rule 3.8.3 casualty, but the individual episode that triggered the rule was also tossed as “not eligible”. Earlier today he had this exchange:
Silvia Moreno-Garcia replied:
When Jon Nepsha tried to lay some guilt on McCarty his friend Tammy Coxen stepped in with a heavy hint that there’s a more noble explanation, it’s just not being said out loud.
But McCarty himself has taken the opposite tack by defending the adequacy of the report.
The 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final report posted today on the official Hugo Awards website revealed that the Chengdu Worldcon’s Hugo award subcommittee made many startling and sometimes unexplained rulings.
R. F. Kuang’s novel Babel, winner of the 2023 Nebula and Locus Awards, was ruled “not eligible” without explanation, even though it had the third most nominations. The EPH point calculation used to determine the Hugo finalists shows the count for Babel was stopped in the first round, and it accrued no more points when other works were eliminated in the automatic runoff.
(The Google Translate rendering of the Chinese is “Not eligible for nomination.”)
Paul Weimer was another “not eligible” kept off the ballot without explanation, despite having been a Best Fan Writer finalist for the past three years. Weimer had the third most nominating votes this year – and in that category the EPH calculation was completed, showing he ended up with the second highest point-count.
A third such “not eligible” was Xiran Jay Zhao, ruled out of the Astounding Award. As noted here in a comment on the announcement post, it should be impossible for a first-year-of-eligibility Astounding Award finalist to be ineligible the following year unless either they already won the award or the original Hugo committee (Chicon 8) erred in their eligibility determination.
And episode 6 of Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman (“The Sound of Her Wings”) was labeled “not eligible” without explanation, while the series itself was disqualified from Best Dramatic – Long Form under Rule 3.8.3. The WSFS Constitution’s rule 3.8.3 says a series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form finalist, or an episode of the series can be a Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form finalist, but only one or the other may be on the ballot, the nod going to whichever gets the most nominating votes. Once the episode was removed there was no longer a rule 3.8.3 conflict. Keeping Neil Gaiman’s work off the ballot entirely was the result, however explained.
File 770 asked Dave McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, the reason for these “not eligible” rulings. He replied:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
File 770 then asked Kevin Standlee, among the best-known interpreters of the WSFS Constitution, what rules there could be in addition to the Constitution. Standlee pointed me to his article posted today, “Elections Have Consequences”.
…An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions….
…When it comes to local law, this could end up applying anywhere. Here’s an example I can use because as far as I know, there are no Worldcon bids for Florida at this time. Imagine a Worldcon held in Florida. It would be subject to US and Florida law (and any smaller government subdivision). Given legislation passed by Florida, it would not surprise me if such a hypothetical Florida Worldcon’s Hugo Administration Subcommittee would disqualify any work with LGBTQ+ content, any work with an LGBTQ+ author, or any LGBTQ+ individual, because the state has declared them all illegal under things like their “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws and related legislation….
Fans are clearly expected to infer these Hugo eligibility decisions were made to comply with Chinese rules or authority, but no one is saying what Chinese rules the Hugo subcommittee was operating under, unlike Standlee’s hypothetical which is based on Florida laws and policies that can actually be pointed to. Another unaddressed question is whether the administrators made these decisions on their own, voluntarily, because they were afraid not to disqualify certain people, or because they were told by someone in authority that’s what they should do.
OTHER RULINGS. In a few cases, the report explains an item’s ineligibility in a footnote.
Best Related Work – The History of Chinese Science Fiction in the 20th Century was disqualified because one of the authors was on the Hugo subcommittee.
The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was first published in 2020.
Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form – Andor (Season 1) and Sandman – Rule 3.8.3 (knocked off the ballot because individual episodes got more votes in the Short Form category)
(And yet down below the individual episode of Sandman was knocked off the ballot as an unexplained “not eligible.” What kind of Catch-22 is that?)
Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form – The Severance episode was a Rule 3.8.3 disqualification going the other direction (the series made the ballot).
The Deep. — Deep Sea, which is the Chinese translation given in the report, is said in a Chinese footnote to have been “published years ago.” (Alternatively, this could refer to the animated movie Deep Sea, whose release date per IMDB was 2023, later than the eligibility period.)
In one case it is possible to deduce the likely reason for the “not eligible” ruling though not explicitly said in the report.
But it is not explained why Hai Ya’s “Fogong Temple Pagoda” was ineligible for Best Short Story, although the problem must not have been with the author because his “Space-Time Painter” won the Best Novella Hugo.
DECLINED NOMINATIONS. S. B. Divya’s public announcement about declining two Hugo nominations encouraged speculation at the time that many more people were following suit as a political protest. In fact there were not that many refusals, and it’s not demonstrable that any of the others were protests.
Who declined?
Becky Chambers — (Novella – “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy”)
S. B. Divya — (Novelette “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”; also removed her name from the list of Hugo-nominated semiprozine Escape Pod’s team members. See “Why S. B. Divya Declined Two Hugo Nominations”.)
Prey – (film – from Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form)
Guo Jian – (from Best Professional Artist)
CUI BONO. Who got on because people declined?
Novella – Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire – which went on to win the Best Novella Hugo.
Novelette – “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S. L. Huang
Best Professional Artist – Zhang Jian
Who got on where works or people were declared “not eligible” for one reason or another?
Best Novel – The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Best Novelette – “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu
Best Short Story – “Resurrection” by Ren Qing
Best Related Work – The Ghost of Workshops Past by S.L. Huang and Buffalito World Outreach Project by Lawrence M. Schoen
Best Dramatic Presentation – Avatar: Way of Water; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Severance (season 1)
Best Fan Writer — HeavenDule
ERROR WILL BE CORRECTED. In the Best Novelette category “Turing Food Court” appears on two different lines of the report. Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty explained, “It 100% is a copy/paste error that I missed in the dozens of back and forths between me and the Chinese folks handling translations.”
UPDATE 01/20/2024. The amended report is now up. Here is the corrected Novelette page. (Thanks to Mr. Octopus for the story.)
Update 01/28/2024: Added a paragraph to make the ineligibility of Neil Gaiman’s works part of the lede. That had only been discussed in the category analyses.
The official Hugo Awards website posted the 2023 Hugo nomination voting statistics today.
Detailed statistics for the nominating and final ballots are available in the 2023 Hugo Award Stats Final PDF file.
The document includes several unexplained rulings by the Hugo Administrator that works like R.F. Kuang’s Babel or people like fan writer Paul Weimer, who otherwise would have made the final ballot, were “not eligible”.
This thread is for posts about 2024-published works, which people have read and recommend to other Filers.
There will be no tallying of recommendations done in this thread; its purpose is to provide a source of recommendations for people who want to find something to read which will be eligible for the Hugos or other awards (Nebula, Locus, Asimov’s, etc.) next year.
If you’re recommending for an award other than / in addition to the Hugo Awards which has different categories than the Hugos (such as Locus Awards’ First Novel), then be sure to specify the award and category.
You don’t have to stop recommending works in Pixel Scrolls, please don’t! But it would be nice if you also post here, to capture the information for other readers.
The Suggested Format for posts is:
Title, Author, Published by / Published in (Anthology, Collection, Website, or Magazine + Issue)
Hugo or other Award Category: (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Graphic Novel, Lodestar, Astounding, etc)
link (if available to read/view online)
optional “Brief, spoiler-free description of story premise:”
