Tag Archives: Jo Van Ekeren

Pixel Scroll 12/14/21 I Scrolled Pixel Rae’s Lawn

Posted on by

(1) A DRIVING FORCE IN LITERATURE. Liza Burns’ artwork for the new Oregon license plate is composed of 127 symbols of cultural importance to the state. The book icon represents Ursula K. Le Guin. An interactive key is here.

From a distance, the “Celebrate Oregon!” Cultural Trust license plate is a vibrant tapestry of Oregon geography. Look closer, and symbols – 127 in all – tell the story of the history, heritage and cultural practices that make our state unique. The marriage of the two in this piece of art speaks to the inextricable link between the physical and cultural diversity of Oregon.

(2) IS IT A RECORD? Early reports of perhaps 3,000 Worldcon site selection ballots being cast pre-con made some fans curious if the Chengdu/Winnipeg race will set a record. In the table of historic Worldcon statistics “Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record Yet Again” there is one column tracking the number of site selection votes, which Jo Van Ekeren says is fully updated.

(3) RUNNING HARD. The Chengdu in 2023 Worldcon bid’s Facebook page reported on a marathon livestream campaign in progress to drum up support as the voting deadline approaches.

After five days of a marathon campaign of online live streaming to promote DisCon III and call for support of Chengdu’23 Bid, we have seen a new wave of support, and some real LAST MINUTE vote from many of our fans, overcoming all sorts of obstacles, including technical, procedural, language, and payment difficulties. Now we can say that in some way we have already won, not necessarily in the Worldcon bid, but in promoting something we all love and enjoy. We have made many new friends. And we have a better understanding of the world.

Here are the posters for the past five days, and screen captures of tonight’s live streaming event hosted by SFW magazine.

(4) SEATTLE IN 2025. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon bid team has published their first newsletter that we’ve sent out. The full newsletter is here. The bid website is here.

Bid Launches Into New Orbit

After almost two years of coasting through online convention bid tables and Zoom parties, the Seattle in 2025 Worldcon bid is accelerating to cruising velocity with the updating of our website, an appearance at DisCon III, creation of support tiers, release of new information, and plenty of metaphors to herald our progress towards hosting the first Worldcon in Seattle in 64 years. The original 1961 Seacon took place before the Seattle World’s Fair and the opening of the Monorail and Space Needle. We believe 64 years is too long an absence from the Emerald City. Does Worldcon still need us? Will you feed us your site selection votes? Science fiction fans—if we build it, will you come?

The bid is co-chaired by Kathy Bond and SunnyJim Morgan.

(5) UNDERTHING PRESS WILL PUBLISH DIGGER OMNIBUS. Grim Oak Press is partnering with bestselling author of The Kingkiller Chronicle Patrick Rothfuss to create the new imprint, Underthing Press.

…The first project Grim Oak Press and Underthing Press will produce is Digger: The Complete Collection by Ursula Vernon. The deal includes new softcover and hardcover editions of the Hugo Award-winning graphic novel as well as signed and limited copies. Rothfuss has written a new foreword for the book and will sign the limited and lettered editions along with Vernon.

“It all started when I gave away my copy of the Digger Omnibus to a friend, then discovered I couldn’t buy another one. It breaks my heart when I learn that a book I love has gone out of print. I’ve always daydreamed about starting my own imprint, and I couldn’t think of a better place to start than by making a brilliant, Hugo Award-winning comic available to the public again.

“We’re in talks with several folks to bring their books back into print, or in other cases, to make a beautiful specialty edition of a book I particularly love. And I’ll have my own projects too, of course. I’m finally ready to publish a project I’ve been working on for years with friend and Illustrator Nate Taylor. It’s an illustrated version of The Boy that Loved the Moon.”

The crowdfunding campaign for Digger: The Complete Collection will launch February 2, 2022.

(6) R.E.S.P.E.C.T. This SFWA Blog post titled with the author’s name, “Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki”, urges people to spell and say African names correctly.

…One is forced to reconsider the clichéd question: What is in a name? Does the value of a name lie in its familiarity or the simplicity of its pronunciation? So that, alas, Nnamdi and other African names fail to elicit value from the Westerners who mock them for this reason? Does a name, for its being unfamiliar or difficult to pronounce, remove from the skills and abilities of the bearer? And if the mockers believe that names represent the value of a person, do they then think that denying a person their name, or misspelling, mispronouncing, or mangling their names devalues them even further? Is the purpose of this deliberate distortion of identity to devalue the bearer of the name?

Names possess value and power to their bearers. Like misgendering a person, failing to honor what someone chooses to be called disrespects that person’s definition of their own self….

(7) PODCAST PEOPLE. Podside Picnic episode 147 features Karlo Yeager Rodriguez, Chris and Kurt as they discuss the holiday horror-comedy, Krampus (2015). Make your lists (and check them twice) to see who deserves to be beaten with birch branches and who should get carried off by Saint Nick’s shadow… “Krampus, Krampus Time Is Here”.

(8) THAT’S HER, TOO. Everything Everywhere All At Once embroils Michelle Yeoh’s character in a multiverse crisis that only she can solve!

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1984 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Thirty-seven years ago, Starman premiered. It was directed by John Carpenter. The original screenplay was written by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, with Dean Riesner making uncredited re-writes. This Starman is not related to the Forties created DC character who is definitely human.  

It starred Jeff Bridges in the lead role which got him an Academy Award nomination. Other principal cast were Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith and Richard Jaeckel. 

It inspired a short-lived television series of the same name several years later that takes place fifteen years after the film’s story and features the return of the alien as a clone of deceased photojournalist Paul Forrester to meet and guide his now-teenage son Scott Hayden Jr.  It lasted lasted for twenty-two episodes.

Critical reception for the film was, with the exception of a few of pre-reform Grinches, overwhelmingly positive. Roger Ebert said it was “one of 1984’s more touching love stories”. One of those Grinches said that Carpenter turned it into an “irritatingly soft-headed love story. What a waste of a promising idea.” However, the box office did not respond as enthusiastically as it made just twenty-nine million against costs of twenty-four million in production costs. Now audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a decent but not great sixty-nine percent rating. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 14, 1916 — Shirley Jackson. She first gained public attention for her short story “The Lottery, or, The Adventures of James Harris” but it was her The Haunting of Hill House novel which has been made her legendary as a horror novelist as it’s truly a chilling ghost story which recently was made into a series.  I see that’s she wrote quite a bit of genre short fiction — who anyone here read it?  And there’s an interesting tale of Hill House, the press that took its name from her novel that came to a bad ending. (Died 1965.)
  • Born December 14, 1920 — Rosemary Sutcliff. English novelist whose best known for children’s books, particularly her historical fiction which involved retellings of myths and legends, Arthurian and otherwise. Digging into my memory, I remember reading The Chronicles of Robin Hood which was her first published novel and rather good; The Eagle of the Ninth is set in Roman Britain and was an equally fine read. (Died 1992.)
  • Born December 14, 1949 — David Cherry, 72. Illustrator working mostly in the genre. Amazingly, he has been nominated eleven times for Hugo Awards though no wins to date, and eighteen times for Chesley Awards with an astonishing eight wins! He is a past president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Oh, and he’s is the brother of the science fiction writer C. J. Cherryh (“Cherry” is the original spelling of the last name of the family) so you won’t be surprised that he’s painted cover art for some of her books as well as for Robert Asprin, Andre Norton, Diane Duane, Lynn Abbey and Piers Anthony to name but a few of his works.
  • Born December 14, 1954 — James Horan, 67. One of those actors that had roles across the Trek verse, having appeared on Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. He also voiced a character on Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, andshowed up on Highlander, Charmed and Lost.
  • Born December 14, 1959 — Debbie Lee Carrington. Actress who was an ardent advocate for performers with disabilities. She was the performer inside the Howard the Duck costume, a Martian rebel named Thumbelina in Total Recall, an Ewok in Return of the Jedi (and in the TV movies that followed), a Drone in Invaders from Mars, Little Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons, an Emperor Penguin in Batman Returns and a Chucky double in Curse of Chucky.
  • Born December 14, 1960 — Don Franklin, 61. He’s  best known for his roles in seaQuest DSV as Commander Jonathan Ford, Seven Days as Captain Craig Donovan, and as one of The Young Riders  as Noah Dixon). No, the last isn’t remotely genre but it was a great role. 
  • Born December 14, 1964 — Rebecca Gibney, 57. She was in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot,, and also in King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes mini-series. She also had one-offs in Time Trax, Farscape and The Lost World, all of which were produced either in Australia or New Zealand, convenient as she’s  New Zealand born and resident.
  • Born December 14, 1966 — Sarah Zettel, 55. Her first novel, Reclamation, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996, and tied for the Locus Award for the Best First Novel. Writing under the alias C. L. Anderson, her novel Bitter Angels won the 2010 Philip K. Dick award for best paperback original novel. If you’ve not read her, I’d recommend her Playing God novel which was nominated for an Otherwise Award as a great place to start reading her. 

(11) THE PLAY’S THE THING. Today also is the anniversary of the 1966 broadcast of a well-known Star Trek episode, which Galactic Journey commemorates in this post — “[December 14, 1966] (Star Trek: The Conscience of the King)”.

… …Do you remember Kevin Riley? He caught the alien virus in The Naked Time, locked everyone out of Engineering, and sang Irish songs over the intercom. He’s recently been promoted, but Kirk busts him back down to Engineering alone—presumably, to keep him safe, but nobody tells him that. Kirk doesn’t tell Spock why he’s demoting the Ensign, either.

Spock does put the pieces together and demands to know why Kirk is risking his life. (That’s rich, coming from the man who hijacked the Enterprise to haul it to the one planet with a death penalty for visiting.) Kirk tells Spock to leave his personal life alone. Spock very politely does not point out that 400+ crew members unknowingly traveling with a potential murderer is a bit outside the scope of Kirk’s “personal life.”…

(12) HOWDY, STRANGER! How fascinating to see for sale (at $6,500!) a copy of The Outsider And Others, the first collection of Lovecraft’s writings, published in 1939. Only 1,268 copies were printed, and among 1940s fans, The Outsider was a byword as the most valuable item in the sf collection of anyone who happened to own it. The title is mentioned several times in Rob Hansen’s compilation of Forties LASFS history, Bixelstrasse.

(13) TALKING HEADS. John Scalzi weighed in one of this year’s non-genre additions to the National Film Registry.

(14) MIGHT BE NEWS TO YOU. In this TelevisionAcademy.com interview, the late Leonard Nimoy discusses the Star Trek pilot.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, Ryan George says that the first Harry Potter movie reveals that the wand store where Hogwarts students get wands operates onthe model of “let kids smash things until they buy” and that at the climax, “a mother’s love is super plot armor.”  But why do wizards celebrate Christmas?

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, N., Kathy Bond, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

ConFusion 2021 Eastercon Report

Posted on by
ConFusion 2021 Eastercon Logo Banner

By Jo Van Ekeren:

This past weekend, ConFusion 2021 (Eastercon) was held as a virtual convention. Guests of Honour were author Dan Abnett, author and editor Nik Vincent-Abnett, and fan Dave Lally. The online environment was primarily in an application called Gather Town, with some aspects of the con also available through the ConFusion 2021 website.

I had volunteered to staff a Virtual Fan Table for the Memphis in 2023 Worldcon bid at ConFusion 2021. Prior to the con, the Dealers Room head Melissa Taylor gave me a demo of the Gather Town environment so I’d have an idea what to expect. Melissa was really responsive to my requests for customisation to the fan table setup, which I greatly appreciated. The Memphis Fan Table area had a link to the website at a little kiosk on either side, a pop-up of the Memphis Q&A PDF (in the vending machine), and a whiteboard where people could write questions or messages (“back in 1/2 hour”, etc.). [N.B.: I wasn’t planning on writing this report until someone (ahem!) twisted my arm, and I didn’t think to take screenshots of the various rooms, so some of the images below are mockups.]

ConFusion 2021 Gather Town Profile Bar

Confusion 2021 Eastercon Member Badge, with the ConFusion logo, member name, and member number

Right before the con, I received an e-mail with a virtual con badge, which was cool, even though I didn’t do anything with it. Members had the option of printing their badge off and wearing it, putting it in their virtual background, and/or posting it on social media.

Before dropping you into the environment, Gather Town required you to select an avatar from a variety of avatar choices and attire choices (some of the “attire” choices were wheelchairs, which was great). You also had the ability to add a line of text to your Profile with pronouns and/or bio info. After selecting their avatar, each person appeared in their current location in Gather Town with a small version of their avatar labeled with their badge name and membership number.

ConFusion 2021 Gather Town Avatar Selection

I was able to be present for around 6 hours each day Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon (since I live Down Under, the UK was 12 hours off from me, which made a pretty skewed schedule for me, but the fact that we have a 4-day Easter holiday weekend down here really helped). I spoke with people who stopped by the table in the Dealers Room, but I also took the opportunity on several occasions to go out and explore the VR environment and chat with other members I encountered. I had nice conversations with Leife Shallcross who was “next door” with the Australia in 2025 bid, and with David Stokes from Guardbridge Books on my other side.

I don’t know what the con’s membership total was (my membership, bought right before the convention, was number 438), but there was a small “people online” counter down in the corner on the Gather Town screen, and the highest number I noticed was 169 – which may or may not be close to the actual max usage of that environment during the convention.

There was a user profile bar at the bottom of the screen, which you could click on to toggle your green/red Status, change your text line, access a map to the entire Gather Town layout, change your video and audio hardware settings, and add an emoji to your profile. Unfortunately, though I tried it periodically, I could never get the map to load; the “loading” indicator just sat there, grinding. However, the designer, Alex Storer, posted a copy of the “spaceship” map on Facebook, and it’s really a clever design.

ConFusion 2021 Eastercon Gather Town Map, design by Alex Storer

I liked the Gather Town virtual-reality environment much better than that of some other virtual conventions I’ve attended in the past year. It was simpler, very much like walking around at a real con inside a video game. There were potted trees and plants and chairs and couches. There was a large “Hangar” room where the Registration and Information Desk was located, with a bunch of shuttle-sized space vehicles parked in it. There were Easter Eggs like a fountain in the Arboretum having an unmarked entrance at one specific point which led to an observation deck.

There was an “invisible maze” accessed via an unmarked doorway (which I messed with for a bit, but I could not figure out how to get through it without being continually kicked back to the start). They did a Scavenger Hunt in the Dealers Hall which involved having to visit each dealer’s area and get a single pop-up word which you had to collect to form sentences and win a prize. There was a Gaming room which had a bunch of little stations where you could play video games, but I tried one and it appeared that the functionality was poor because it made an already resource-intensive application even more resource-intensive.

There was a virtual Art Show, which was viewable either through Gather Town, or through the browser from their website in an app called “Kunstmatrix”. I thought this was really well done. It’s available to the public for a couple more days, and you should go see it!

There was a nice variety on the Programme Schedule, with panels, readings, kaffeeklatsches, virtual author “signing” sessions, and presentations by various Dealers. Programming ranged across the gamut of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, for both printed and visual media – with even some cuisine-related events!

SMOFcon 2021 (SMOFcon Europe in Lisboa) presented a panel on “Managing the Crisis”, with Elizabeth McCarty, Marguerite Smith, and Matt Calvert, moderated by Vincent Docherty. The speakers talked about how to manage con-related crises in an age of instantaneous, fast-moving social media, and discussed some real-life examples. This was a really useful panel, and I hope that it can be put up on YouTube, or otherwise made available to conrunners outside of this convention. (Elizabeth McCarty and Colin Harris have authored a great resource document entitled “Social Media Response Guide“, which is publicly available to conrunners and other interested parties.)

When you got close to someone in Gather Town, a little video window for them would pop open at the top of your screen, and you could see and talk to each other (your own video screen was on the lower right side). If that person’s video was turned off, you could click a “Ring” button on their little video window, and it would ring like a telephone on their side so they knew you wanted to talk. You could set the video screen of the person with whom you were speaking to full-screen mode and see a larger image of them during your conversation.

People walking by too closely, or walking up to you, would cause their little video window to pop up and they could jump in on your conversation, but there were also private spaces you could go into and talk, where random passersby wouldn’t trigger interruptions. You also had the ability to turn your green Status light to red to indicate that you were not around or were doing something privately; this also tightened your proximity bubble and prevented interruptions from random passersby.

ConFusion 2021 Gather Town Chat Bar, where the message log can be read, and messages can be sent

ConFusion 2021 Gather Town Member List of all members currently online, ability to search for a member, follow a member, or message a member

There was a left-side menu which included a pop-up list of all attendees, showing their green/red Status and their text (pronouns, bio, etc.). You could do a search by Badge Name to find a specific attendee, or browse the whole list. You could click on an attendee’s name and Message them, or Follow them (which would “physically” take you to wherever their avatar was located). The system also included a “Block” function which you could use if there was someone you didn’t want to be able to see you or talk to you; it made you invisible to the blocked person.

There was also a popup menu item for a Discord-type Chat message feed, which included all messages to Everyone, People Nearby (if they were in the same room as you), and your exchanges with individual members. But you had to scroll back through it to read messages; there was no Search or Filter function by keyword or member.

Now for an in-depth discussion of the drawbacks:

1) Gather Town required a desktop device; you could use it in a browser or in the desktop app, but there was no functionality for mobile devices.

2) Gather Town was a resource hog and I had to pretty much shut everything down on my computer to keep it from periodically losing connection and having to reconnect (and even that didn’t always prevent glitching). I actually have a pretty powerful desktop device; I suspect people with basic laptops and desktop devices would have had a really poor experience. I’m guessing that the Gather Town developers and testers all have hardcore gaming tech hardware setups; I don’t think Gather Town will ever make it as a successful virtual venue unless they can resolve these high CPU usage problems.

3) The environment was laid out like a real convention space, which meant you had to use your left/right and up/down arrow buttons to travel through long empty hallways to get somewhere. (When I refer to “travel” in this summary, I mean holding down the arrow keys and navigating around obstacles.) This seemed like the result of an inability to re-imagine a virtual con as anything other than being the same layout as a physical con. Getting from one place to another could often take at least minute or two of using your keyboard to navigate to get there (and that was assuming you had a good idea of the route to take to get where you wanted to go). I think it would have been an especially difficult adjustment for people who have never played video games.

4) The interface needed the ability to click a specific room on a list of rooms and immediately be taken there. There were teleportals in the larger areas which would take you to a central teleporter hall with all of the main area teleportals labeled, so there was a bit of a shortcut by that method. But a way to instantly get from one Programming Panel to the next was sorely needed. And a setup where new entrants were deposited into the central registration area hub, with many labeled doors each leading immediately to different sections and not requiring travel time and extensive keyboard manipulation, would have been much better (and would have still permitted the ability to have “fun” exploration rooms like the Arboretum and the Gaming Room).

5) I went to a reading early on in one of the programming rooms. There were a dozen or so attendees, and it was set up so that video windows showed only for the person/people up front. You could also “attend” sessions outside of Gather Town by going to a section of their website and clicking on the video feed you wanted to see. But a lot of people reported having so many issues trying to attend panels in Gather Town that they just chose instead to access the video streams via the website. However, there were lots of problems with that, too, with things getting started very late, or the streaming not working during the actual panel, and the panels were only viewable later on as a recording, which prevented in-session Q&A interaction with the audience.

6) Programming sessions were recorded, and were available for later viewing via the convention’s website. The quality of these recordings was pretty good, but I had to set the video playback quality to the lowest level to avoid “hiccupping”. And strangely, though I tried several things, I was never able to route the audio from these recordings through headphones, either through an audio jack connection or through a USB headphone connection (although both of these worked just fine for me in Gather Town). There was no automated captioning on anything, and no transcripts for the panels. (Members still have access to these recordings until midnight [GMT+1] on 12 April.)

7) I think that the environment design for the convention was done with a goal of cleverness, cuteness, and “real-world emulation in a video game” – and there’s something to be said for that, parts of it were rather fun. But I’m very vision, hearing, and hand-dexterity abled, so it was easy for me. I thought the environment showed a real lack of awareness of the accessibility issues which accompany such an interface for those with impaired vision, hearing, or hand/finger dexterity. Labels on person icons were quite small, and navigation was by keyboard keys. (The accessibility problems with Gather Town are well known; ACM’s Ubicomp had to apologise after using it for their convention in September 2020.)

8) I saw someone somewhere say that Gather Town costs $1 per person for 2 hours (which would be $24,000/£12,300 for 500 people for 4 days). This meant that it was so expensive that everything was set up only right before the convention started, and there was no ability to do a “shakedown cruise” and revise things based on user feedback in the days leading up to the convention. Aside from the expensive cost and the poor performance quality, the inability to do that shakedown cruise without any additional cost would seem to me to be a real deal-breaker for using Gather Town.

Based on all of these considerations, my recommendation for a virtual convention would be for the environment to be something that is mainly text and menu-based with a little bit of artistic embellishment, but with the primary emphasis on functionality and accessibility, rather than on impressive visuals or virtual-reality effects.

I “attended” the Eastercon Bid session which was done over Zoom and moderated by Vincent Docherty. There was one bid for 2022 by Phil Dyson, to be called “Reclamation“, which they expect to be in-person but with some virtual aspects for members who can’t attend. It was selected in a vote by 98% of the members at the session. They then announced their Guests of Honour: Authors Zen Cho and Mary Robinette Kowal, Artist Philip Reeve, and Fan Nicholas Whyte.

There were two bids for the 2023 Eastercon. One, for “Persistence”, was by the current chair, who is understandably wanting to put on a real convention in 2 years because their convention last year had been cancelled at the last minute due to the burgeoning pandemic, and they’d been forced to do this one (its replacement) virtually. The first bid presentation lasted about 3 minutes and amounted to “I want to put on an in-person convention, and I promise to do a good job, but I don’t have any specifics yet”.

The second presentation was a spur-of-the-moment “bid” by Alison Scott, who wanted to speak at length regarding the other bid, but was told that she was required to be an official bid to do so. Scott’s presentation was civil but quite impassioned regarding the lack of consideration shown in the planning of the current convention, saying that it called into question whether the other bid was really a good choice without first being forced to address the problems with the current convention as part of their bid planning presentation, and without being willing to commit to at least planning for a partially virtual convention, because she thinks that will be necessary. She said the convention was incredibly expensive for what it actually delivered, due to lack of planning, poor choices (some of which were strongly opposed by committee members who resigned after being overruled), and no testing or feedback.

Scott made the case that the Eastercon convention should not be a fancy show, but rather a community-building and sharing enterprise with much better communication than had been done this year, and that members should either vote for her bid (with the promise that she really would put together a well-run convention should she be selected) – or more preferably, vote to defer the awarding of the 2023 convention to next year, so that the bid(s) presented could make use of the feedback and lessons learned from this convention to really do an excellent job of planning (and that bid might very well be the bid of the current chair, if they showed a marked improvement in their planning a year from now). There was a vote of the members attending the session, and the result was 16% for the current chair’s bid, 10% for Alison Scott’s “bid”, and 69% to defer to next year the selection of the 2023 bidcom.

Farah Mendlesohn and Pat McMurray announced they would be presenting a bid for the 2024 Eastercon at next year’s convention, with team members David Cooper, Fiona Scarlett, Jude Roberts, and John Coxon. Their slideshow and the audio of their presentation are available on Dropbox.

Further information on ConFusion 2021

In spite of the issues, I really enjoyed getting the chance to interact with European fans at ConFusion 2021, and even though I won’t be able to attend in person, I’m hoping that Reclamation 2022 will have a virtual component in which I can participate.

Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record Yet Again

Posted on by

by Shieldforyoureyes Dave Fischer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

By Jo Van Ekeren:

I’ve spent the last couple of years exhuming statistics and ephemera about the Hugo Awards from various sources, including old Usenet posts on Google Groups, old fanzines, archived con websites, and various historical documents which have been scanned and made available online (and I give my thanks to those of you who have been making those archiving efforts, especially Joe Siclari, Edie Stern, Mark Olson, and Bill Burns).

I’ve managed to resurrect full or partial statistics for around 23 additional years beyond what was posted at TheHugoAwards.org. A few years have already been posted there, and I will be gradually rolling out the rest of them over the next few months as I get them formatted into readable documents.

This post is an expanded and updated version of earlier statistical analyses by George Flynn:
Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record by George Flynn [1988]
Hugo Voting: Let’s Look at the Record (Again) by George Flynn [1999]
and of an update by Jed Hartman which pulled in some additional years and electronic vs. paper voting numbers:
Hugo stats: numbers of nominating ballots by Jed Hartman [2018]

I’ve updated it with Site Selection ballot numbers, Advance Membership numbers, and Hugo participation percentages for 2000-2019, plus Retro Hugo data, as well as showing the difference between the number of categories which were on the nominating ballot versus the number of categories which had sufficient participation to be on the final voting ballot.

I’ve got source citations for all of the numbers included here. A lot of the information came from documents on The Hugo Awards, Fancyclopedia 3, FANAC, eFanzines, the SMOFS Long List, old Usenet posts on Google Groups, and the Wayback Machine. If you have questions about where one of the numbers came from, you can message me here.

You are welcome to link to the full Google document — and certainly can make a backup of it if you wish — but please be aware that I expect it to continue to change as more bits of information become available.

Please do report to me any errors or omissions you might notice, either in the comments on this post, or by submitting a message here.

What does the most recent data about Hugo nominators and voters tell us?

  1. Tracking of the electronic vs. paper nominations and votes, at the turn of the century, was helpful in evaluating the amount of electronic uptake by Hugo voters. That hit 99% in 2011, and has remained there ever since. Now this comparison tracking is chiefly of interest in noting how many remaining members are either unable or unwilling to nominate and vote electronically.
  2. From 1989 through 2007, participation in the final ballot was consistently under 20% of the Advance membership (those eligible to participate in voting). In 2008, both overall membership numbers and Hugo participation began to rise steadily. It is likely that common acceptance and the ease of the ability to nominate and vote electronically contributed significantly to this. In addition, 2008 was the first year of the annual Hugo Voter Packet – containing finalist works which were not otherwise available for free – and this has also likely contributed to the rise of member numbers and of Hugo participation among members.
  3. The ratio of Supporting to Attending members has also steadily risen in the last 10 years, and while some of this can be attributed to the Puppy campaigns of 2015-2016 as well as to fans from the U.S. being unable to attend overseas Worldcons in London and Helsinki, it seems clear that access to a large number of free works in the Hugo Voter Packet is also a contributing factor. Percentage of eligible advance member participation in the Hugo Awards is now at an all-time high, at 40% to 50% of the eligible membership.
  4. Site Selection, which has remained a mail-in or on-site endeavour, has seen somewhat of a decline in participation in the last 10 years. This is likely due to having only one bid site in many of those years, but possibly also somewhat due to people who previously voted for both Hugos and Site Selection by mail in the past now only voting for the Hugos online. This is not likely to change unless and until it becomes common for bidcoms to be willing to have electronic voting for Site Selection.

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Again (1971-1999), by George Flynn



Over
seas


Year


Worldcon             


Location		[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid
Nominating
Ballots
Valid
Final
Ballots		[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Site-
Selection
Ballots
Advance
Member
Count		Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
197129 - Noreascon IBoston93437329—1,60045.8%
197230 - L.A.Con ILos Angeles927055092561,50036.7%
197331 - Torcon IIToronto, Canada11350708113752,20032.2%
197432 - Discon IIWashington DC12?930126452,60035.8%
O197533 - Aussiecon OneMelbourne, Australia12267600125281,88031.9%
197634 - MidAmeriConKansas City124861,595129933,60044.3%
197735 - SunConMiami Beach12500800128842,80028.6%
197836 - IguanaCon IIPhoenix135401,246131,1544,20029.7%
O197937 - Seacon '79Brighton, UK134671,160139204,12628.1%
198038 - Noreascon TwoBoston135631,788131,5495,44732.8%
198139 - Denvention TwoDenver124541,247121,6804,52927.5%
198240 - Chicon IVChicago126481,071121,1195,00021.4%
198341 - ConStellationBaltimore126601,322127295,50024.0%
198442 - L.A.con IILos Angeles135131,467131,3686,74021.8%
O198543 - Aussiecon TwoMelbourne, Australia13222443135272,19920.1%
198644 - ConFederationAtlanta135681,267131,863 (’88)
1,276 (’89)		5,400
[6]		23.5%
O198745 - Conspiracy '87Brighton, UK13567990131,3734,95320.0%
198846 - Nolacon IINew Orleans144181,178141,4554,72125.0%
198947 - Noreascon 3Boston13539980131,6366,10016.1%
O199048 - ConFictionThe Hague, Netherlands14291486141,0883,41814.2%
199149 - Chicon VChicago133521,048132,0865,12620.4%
199250 - MagiConOrlando14498902142,5095,29717.0%
199351 - ConFranciscoSan Francisco15397841141,2825,83414.4%
199452 - ConAdianWinnipeg, Canada14649491141,4394,38811.2%
O199553 - IntersectionGlasgow, Scotland14477744141,5544,90015.2%
199654 - L.A.con IIILos Angeles14442939141,0646,00015.7%
199755 - LoneStarCon 2San Antonio13429687131,4674,40015.6%
199856 - BucConeerBaltimore13471769132,1685,13115.0%
O199957 - Aussiecon ThreeMelbourne, Australia13425438138202,42518.1%

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Yet Again (2000-2020),
by Jed Hartman and Jo Van Ekeren
Over
seas		YearWorldcon             Location[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories		Site-
Selection
Ballots		Advance
Member
Count		Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
TotalElec%ElecTotalElec%Elec
2000
[2]		58 - Chicon 2000Chicago1340713031.9%1,07147544.4%131,6985,26220.4%
200159 - Millennium PhilconPhiladelphia1349517836.0%1,05028226.9%132,0945,01320.9%
2002
[3]		60 - ConJoséSan José1462637159.3%92469775.4%141,0344,42220.9%
2003
[4]		61 - Torcon 3Toronto, Canada1473877647861.6%141,4814,20418.5%
200462 - Noreascon 4Boston1456736664.6%1,093141,6865,61319.5%
O200563 - InteractionGlasgow, Scotland1554643679.9%68455280.7%15[7]4,16916.4%
200664 - L.A.con IVLos Angeles1553343481.4%71160084.4%141,5614,12817.2%
O2007
[5]		65 - Nippon2007Yokohama, Japan1540934083.1%589159024,69112.6%
200866 - Denvention 3Denver15483895158264,06222.0%
200967 - AnticipationMontréal, Canada167991,0741,04096.8%167633,81228.2%
O201068 - Aussiecon 4Melbourne, Australia168641,094165262,89837.8%
201169 - RenovationReno161,00699298.6%2,1002,08699.3%167604,68844.8%
201270 - Chicon 7Chicago171,1011,922179325,21836.8%
201371 - LoneStarCon 3San Antonio171,343132999.0%1,848171,3484,46841.4%
O201472 - Loncon 3London, UK171,923188998.2%3,5873,57199.6%177788,58041.8%
201573 - SasquanSpokane172,122211999.9%5,9505,91499.4%172,62510,32157.6%
201674 - MidAmeriCon IIKansas City174,032401599.6%3,130171,3216,17450.7%
O201775 - Worldcon 75Helsinki, Finland182,464245899.8%3,3193,31599.9%181,2277,67243.3%
201876 - Worldcon 76San José191,813179599.0%2,8282,81099.4%197266,39344.2%
O201977 - Dublin 2019Dublin, Ireland201,800179799.8%3,0973,08999.7%208806,000?51.6%
O202078 - CoNZealandWellington, New Zealand191,584158299.9%2,221221699.85195874,48649.5%

Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record for the Retro Hugos

Year
Held		Retro
Year		Worldcon             Location[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
TotalElec%ElecTotalElec%Elec
1996194654 - L.A.con IIILos Angeles13111---605---10
2001195159 - Millennium PhilconPhiladelphia121304836.9%86215718.2%10
2004195462 - Noreascon 4Boston131319673.3%84110
2014193972 - Loncon 3London, UK1623322697.0%1,3071,29599.1%10
2016194174 - MidAmeriCon IIKansas City1648147598.8%86911
2018194376 - Worldcon 76San José1720419294.1%70368897.9%9
2019194477 - Dublin 2019Dublin, Ireland1821721498.6%83482699.0%11
2020194578 - CoNZealandWellington, New Zealand1812011797.5%52151699.0%12

No.Footnote Explanation
[1]Number of categories includes the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award, the Lodestar/YA Award, and any other special categories or awards announced that year. Discrepancies between total nominating categories and total voting categories are the result of categories with insufficient nominations being dropped from the final ballot.
[2]Chicon 2000 received 1,101 Hugo ballots, of which 475 were electronic ballots and 626 were paper ballots. 30 ballots were invalid, which left 1,071 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 30 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[3]ConJosé received 940 Hugo ballots. There were 697 were electronic ballots, 226 paper ballots, and 17 fax ballots. 16 ballots were invalid, which left 924 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 16 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic vs. fax.
[4]Torcon 3 received 805 Hugo ballots, of which 478 were electronic ballots and 327 were paper ballots. 29 ballots were invalid, which left 776 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 29 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[5]The number of final Hugo ballots for Nippon 2007 is unknown. The quoted figure is the number of Novel ballots / 80%, which is the average percentage of final ballots cast for Novel during that stretch of years.
[6]Site Selection went from 2 years to 3 years in advance
[7]Site Selection went from 3 years to 2 years in advance

Extending the
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin

Posted on by

Few people have had the chance to see Arwen Curry’s documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, which began making the rounds of film festivals in June 2018 but won’t be available to a mass audience until it airs on PBS in late 2019. It isn’t a finalist for this year’s Hugo Awards, and some who feel that might be the result of underexposure have announced plans to ask the Dublin 2019 business meeting to extend the film’s eligibility.

Here is the draft text of their motion:

Short Title: Hugo Eligibility Extension for Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin

Moved, to extend for one year the Hugo Award eligibility of the film documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, based on limited availability, as authorized by Section 3.4.3 of the WSFS Constitution.

Proposed by: Jo Van Ekeren, Hampus Eckerman, Adri Joy, Theodora Goss, Terry L Neill, Juliette Wade, Paul Weimer, Ziv Wities

This motion extends eligibility for the Hugo Awards under Section 3.4.3; therefore, it requires a two-thirds vote of approval.

Commentary: Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a documentary film by Arwen Curry exploring the life and legacy of the late feminist author Ursula K. Le Guin. Work on the documentary began as early as 2009, and the filmmaker was able to complete the many hours of filming prior to the author’s death in January 2018. The film premiered at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival on June 10, 2018. Since then there have been a number of screenings at film festivals in various locations around the world; however, the film has not yet been made available for viewing by the general public. Arrangements are in progress for the film to be shown at Worldcon in Dublin in August, and the film will be broadcast in the U.S. on PBS American Masters in October 2019.

Due to its limited release in 2018, very few members of Dublin 2019 had the opportunity to view the film before the deadline for nominating for the 2019 Hugo Awards. Passage of this proposal would make the documentary eligible for nomination in the Best Related Work category for the 2020 Hugo Awards next year.

As noted in the motion, the authority for extending the eligibility period comes from WSFS Constitution Section 3.4.3:

In the event that a potential Hugo Award nominee receives extremely limited distribution in the year of its first publication or presentation, its eligibility may be extended for an additional year by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the intervening Business Meeting of WSFS.

This provision of the WSFS Constitution was used in 2015 to extend eligibility for the film Predestination and for the short film I Remember the Future, and to extend the eligibility of the anime Summer Wars in 2011.

Hugos There?

Posted on by

This year Dublin 2019 released the Hugo finalists on a Tuesday, leading to renewed fannish discussion of John Scalzi’s 2014 claim that announcing the finalists during the week would get the Hugo Awards more media attention than announcements made at Easter weekend conventions (as has been done 11 of the last 17 years).

The 2018 nomination announcement was made on Easter weekend, but the 2017 and 2019 announcements were not, and Jo Van Ekeren has amassed a collection of links to media articles from 2017, 2018, and 2019 for comparison.

The lists can be seen here; there are separate spreadsheets tracking coverage of the finalist announcements and the Hugo Award winners. Anyone who wishes to submit a URL which does not appear on the list can use this form to do so. (Links to personal blogs, small SFF fan group blogs, posts by publishers and agents for their authors, sites that appear to be mirrors of other sites, and automated content-scrapers have been omitted.)

Van Ekeren invites people to look at the data and draw their own conclusions. Right now the 2019 Hugo nominations more than twice as many mentions as the 2018 nominations. She did detailed searches for every site on the 2019 list to see whether they had posted a nomination mention in 2018. Well over half of them had not. 

However, the nomination for Archive of Our Own has likely been a wild card factor in attracting attention from at least a few of the sites that decided to cover this year’s nominations.

Last year’s Worldcon committee received some criticism for scheduling its livestreamed announcement on Passover/Easter weekend/a Saturday (see Pixel Scroll 3/27/18 item #15). Chair Kevin Roche apologized for the conflict with Passover but explained the strategy of making simultaneous live presentations at conventions in England, the U.S. and Australia “is a way to further increase fan awareness of and participation in the awards, ultimately raising its profile in the general population as well.”

Inasmuch that Easter 2020 will be on April 12, WAY too late for Hugo Awards activity to start given CoNZealand’s earlier dates (July 29-August 2), there won’t be an Easter announcement next year, either.

Zen And The Art Of Hugo Finalist Maintenance

Posted on by

Vincent Villafranca casting the 2013 Hugo Award base.

[[Editor’s Note: I wanted more people to see Jo’s story, left in comments, about her Homeric efforts on Hugo day, and got her permission to run it as a front-page post.]]

By Jo Van Ekeren: It all started when I made the mistake of whingeing to Mike Glyer about never getting to go to GRRM’s awesome Hugo Losers Parties.

“Well, you did a big favour for my blog,” he said. “If you want, you can be my +1 and go to the parties, as my way of saying ‘thanks’”.

“What a great idea!” I said. “What could possibly go wrong?” I said.

And we made arrangements to meet on Sunday evening outside the location for the Hugo Finalist pre-party.

So on Sunday morning at the WSFS Business Meeting, I got a phone call saying that Mike had been taken from his hotel to the medical centre and could I go see him. “Sure!” I said. “I’m sure that he’ll be up on his feet shortly, and everything will be just fine!” I said.

So I got to the hospital, where a little creative editorialising led the staff to believe that I might possibly be one of Mike’s errant blood relations who just happened to live on the other side of the world, and was delighted when I got to his room and discovered that he seemed to be back to his usual jovial self.

“I’m so relieved to see that you’re doing well!” I said. “It’s a good thing that you’ll still be able to go to the Hugos tonight!” I said.

“Yeah, uh… about that…” he said.

I gave him The Look.

“They want to keep me in the hospital overnight, just to be sure that I’m okay,” he said. “So I’m going to need you to stand in for me at the Hugos tonight,” he said.

< deep breath >

“Okay,” I said. “I can do that, but I’m going to need you to e-mail me a copy of your speech in case you win,” I said.

“Yeah, uh… about that…” he said.

I gave him The Look again.

“I haven’t exactly written my speech yet,” he admitted.

< another deep breath >

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what you need me to say if you win.” And he proceeded to toss out his thoughts for an acceptance speech, which I avidly typed into my cell phone’s memo app.

I wanted to stick around until they got him taken from the evaluation area to an actual room. So we got a “here’s what’s going on” post put up on File 770, and I spent a few hours reading Filers’ responses to that to Mike, and relating the content of various tweets, Facebook posts, and the Business Meeting summaries to him. I’d missed the ceremony rehearsal which was early in the afternoon, but I talked to the Hugo staff on the phone, and they promised to give me a quick run-through whenever I got there.

FINALLY they got Mike moved to a room. At that point, it was getting very late in the afternoon, and I really needed to get home and take a shower and get ready for the ceremony. So I called an Uber, and walked out of the ER exit toward the pickup point. The Uber driver arrived, and seemed to have some sort of selective visual impairment, because they were looking at every one of the 16 compass points except at me. I put my arm up and waved it, while walking toward them. They still didn’t see me. So I kept waving and walking.

I never saw the curb that jumped up and hit me. (In my defence, there was construction going on, and the wide sidewalk area there had two sloping areas ramping down flush with the pavement. In between them was a curbed area which was not flush with the pavement.)

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground wondering where the truck that hit me had gone, and two people were urging me to go back into the ER and get my injuries checked. I looked at my watch. It was 5:10pm. The pre-party was supposed to start at 6:00pm. “I can’t,” I said. “I have a ceremony I have to be at in an hour.” So they helped me up, and I hobbled over to my Uber which was 3 fricking metres away — and my Uber driver had missed the entire thing, which had happened right in front of their car. “When did this happen?” they asked. “Just now?” they asked.

I didn’t bother giving them The Look.

Setting aside my perhaps well-founded concerns about their ability to observe possible obstructions and impending collisions in traffic, I had the driver take me back to my hotel. On the way, I called Helen Montgomery, told her what had happened, and said that I was probably going to need some wrangling from the staff at the ceremony. I hobbled up to my room, in a massive amount of pain, wondering how in hell I was going to make it to the ceremony. So I cracked open a cold Mike’s Hard Lemonade, took a few big swigs, and got in the shower. As I was washing my hair, I heard my roommate come in. “Heather?” I said. “What are you doing for the next hour?” I asked her.

“Nothing, as far as I know,” she said.

“Yeah, uh… about that…” I said. “How would you like to be a Hugo Finalist Wrangler?” I asked her. “Because I’ve sprained my ankle and I think I may have broken my arm, and I’m supposed to be down at the pre-Hugo party in half an hour. Would you be willing to help me get ready?” And she graciously agreed.

Heather Rose Jones, folks, is probably the only reason I wasn’t curled up on the bed crying from pain and exhaustion instead of going to the Hugo ceremony Sunday night. She kept talking to me and kept me going while I was getting ready, and helped with all of the things I couldn’t do by myself with a useless hand and arm. The hair and the makeup ended up being, shall we say, close enough only for Government Work. (But at least I had a tiara.)

I got to the pre-party late at about 6:45pm, which at least provided the benefit of allowing me to duck out of being brigaded into the posed finalist photos. I scavenged some food from the buffet, joked with Ursula Vernon about getting into a scuffle with her over something which involved her lying on the floor weeping and covered in quacamole, and sat down to write a speech — alternating between typing on my phone with one finger and shoving cheese and red wine into my mouth.

When the time came, the Hugo Ceremony staff ushered me out to the Grand Ballroom, where they had reserved for me a seat up front right by the stairs to the stage. They made sure that I had an arm and a good hand when I needed one, to carry a heavy rocket and avoid falling. Which was a good thing, because being given less than 12 hours of warning to make a speech under blinding lights in front of 3,500 people, which is being livecast to hundreds of fans all around the world, is pretty terrifying.

All I can say is that GRRM’s Hugo Loser’s Party is every bit as awesome as the rumours say — and that copious amounts of Blood Orange Cider apparently make a passable substitution for legal pharmaceutical analgesics, since I managed to stay to the end. And I have to thank Mike for giving me the opportunity to have what will be one of the most special experiences of my life. I am just sorry that he missed the opportunity to pick up his very last Hugo himself.

I figure that I must have some sort of Hugo record for “Trophy Accepter With Untreated Broken Bones”. Perhaps Kevin Standlee will give me a footnote in the official records.

Pixel Scroll 8/25/18 The Quidditch Policeman’s Union

Posted on by

(1) BRING ME MY SPEAR OF BURNISHED BRONZE, BRING ME MY CHARIOT OF FILE. Prior to the pacemaker being put in the staff worked hard to convince me to stay in San Jose a week before attempting to drive home. One it was in, the cardiologist cleared me to drive home immediately. That was a surprising, though positive, development.

Not that I really felt ready to drive right away. I stayed in a motel overnight, then got on the road this morning.

Many thanks to David Bratman for his daily hospital visits, and Spike, Michael Ward, and Karen Schaffer for helping get me and my stuff to the Motel 6. Plus Michael and Karen for picking up a nice dinner of Chinese take-out.

Getting ready to leave the hospital — photo by Karen Schaffer.

With all the Bay Area conventions I’ve been to over the years, I’ve done the trip down I-5 many times. The closer I got to LA, the more familiar the roads looked, and the smoother the drive seemed to go. I reached home in about 6 hours.

John King Tarpinian asked me if I’ll have to make a lot of changes to accommodate my newly-implanted device. While there are warnings about various electronics, I’m okay to microwave as long as I’m not staring into the window while it’s nuking the food. Also can’t hover over a running car engine. (Not that I ever do.) Hovering over a blogging laptop — okay. Phone held on the right side is okay — which I already do (pacemaker is on left). Nothing I really have to change in respect to the tech I already use.

And I’m not only grateful for all the comments and good wishes, but for Filers working overtime to turn all this into publishable material. Waste not, want not is on my list of mottos….

Tom Becker wrote:

GlyerBot could have gone rogue after he hacked his pacemaker module, but then he realized he could post pixel scrolls on the entertainment feed of the company satellite.

Iphinome responded:

Part human part machine. If we could get a picture of a cat sleeping on you, you can be Iphinome’s murderbot of the month.

And in other themes…. Cathy said:

I join the others in welcoming our File 770 Cyborg Overlord.

And Ryan wrote:

Congrats Locutus of Mike

(2) DEEP DIVE. Juliette Wade’s new Dive into Worldbuilding features “Alex White and A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe”. Watch the video conversation and read the summary at the link –

…I asked Alex about his research sources, and much of the material comes from his life experiences and those of his friends. This includes attitudes toward autistic people that he’s seen growing up with his child. He says, “the cultural baggage we drag around we assume is the right way to be.” This gets translated into things like Loxley’s boss telling her how to live, saying “I know a spinster who will police you,” and robbing the vulnerable of their agency. Even looking people in the eye is cultural and not universal.

I asked him also about his research sources for A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. He said the magic/tech blends were influenced by recent games, and that Cowboy Bebop had influenced some of the action sequence writing. He asked, “what is the worst goofy thing that can go wrong?” That’s the first question he asks, he says, when writing an action sequence. He told us about his podcast, The Gearheart, and said that this novel was a spiritual successor to the podcast, occurring 800 years later. Alex spent a lot of time running D&D there and getting to know the world….

 

(3) A GIFT TO THE WHOLE CULTURE. An editorial at The Guardian does more than simply praise N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo win: “The Guardian view on science fiction: The Broken Earth deserves its Hugo”

Ms Jemisin is the first black winner of a Hugo award for novels (the redoubtable Samuel Delany won twice for his short stories). Most of her characters are black, though this becomes only gradually apparent, and the system of slavery on her planet is not based on skin colour. Yet science fiction allows her to display some of the fundamental characteristics of any system of slavery, however much her account derives from the particular experience of African Americans. It may be the ultimate ambition of novelists to make characters who are entirely three-dimensional but in practice most of them produce bas-reliefs, where only aspects of their characters spring from the page and much of the background is undifferentiated.

(4) INSIDE THE NUMBERS. Nicholas Whyte’s analysis of the 2018 Hugo voting statistics is full of all kinds of interesting observations: “The 2018 Hugo Awards in detail”. For example:

Declined nomination:

  • Best Series – The Broken Earth (N.K. Jemisin);
  • Best Editor Long Form – Liz Gorinsky;
  • Best Professional Artist – Julie Dillon;
  • Best Fancast – Tea and Jeopardy
  • For Best Series, N.K. Jemisin declined for The Broken Earth;

the following were ruled ineligible, due to not having added enough to the series since last year:

  • The Expanse,
  • The Craft Sequence,
  • the October Daye books

And what Whyte said about the Best Fanzine stats I probably wouldn’t have noticed myself!

(5) THANKS TO ALL FILERS. Here’s a link to the Hugo ceremony video. Jo Van Ekeren’s File 770 acceptance speech begins at 48:34.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4UI_te7bs&feature=youtu.be&t=48m34s

(6) THE FANNISH TITHE. Kevin Standlee says one in ten Worldcon 76 attenders volunteered – “Worldcon 76 Day 5+1: That’s a Wrap”.

(7) HECK OBIT. German TV personality and actor Dieter Thomas Heck died yesterday, reports Cora Buhlert.

He was mainly known for hosting music and game shows, but he was also an actor and had a memorable SF role as the game show host in “Das Millionenspiel”, a 1970 adaptation of a Robert Sheckley story. And since I couldn’t find an English language obituary for him anywhere, I wrote one myself.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) AFTER ACTION REPORT. Joe Sherry tells how he appreciates the value of a fanzine’s community, like the one they have at Nerds of a Feather: “Thoughts on the 2018 Hugo Awards”.

Being a finalist for the Hugo Award means that Nerds of a Feather is a part of the history of science fiction and fantasy fandom. I treasure that. I’m fairly sure I also speak for both Vance and The G when I say that. It is an amazing feeling to receive that notification and we’re grateful for it.

I said this privately to our writers, but I would like to say it publicly as well. The reason we even had an opportunity for a Hugo is not because of the work Vance, G, and I are doing behind the scenes. It’s because of the high quality of the work our writers are putting out every day. It’s the cumulative power of the book reviews and essays and special projects and interviews and none of that happens without these fantastic writers. We may not have won the Hugo Award, but we are absolutely confident that we deserved to be at that table, that the work our writers are doing is as good as anything on that ballot for Fanzine. The name on the ballot might say “The G, Vance Kotrla, Joe Sherry”, but it is that full list of contributors, past and present that have built the reputation we have and the every day excellence they deliver that allowed us to even have a chance. They’re the best.

(11) SPACE CATS. Steve Davidson announced in comments there is a call out to help many, many SJW credentials living at the Arecibo radio telescope site in Puerto Rico – “Arecibo Observatory’s Space Cats Need Your Help!”

When Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico last September, destroying tens of thousands of homes and damaging the observatory, staff and other members of the local community sought shelter and supplies at the observatory’s visitor center. And the local cats did the same. [The Arecibo Observatory: Puerto Rico’s Giant Radio Telescope in Photos]

The Arecibo Observatory has long been known for its felines, and it has become an increasingly popular cat hangout ever since the hurricane hit last year, Flaviane Venditti, a researcher at the observatory, told Space.com. “After the hurricane, many people left the island and, in the process, left their animals behind,” Venditti said. “We can see that based on how people-friendly some of the cats are. They might have come to the observatory to shelter during the storm.”

(12) THEY’RE QUACKERS. [Item by Mike Kennedy]. What do you get when both The Joker and Daffy Duck show up in the same continuum? SYFY Wire says “Comics and cartoons collide in sneak peek at DC’s The Joker/Daffy Duck crossover”. The fertile (or fevered) minds at DC are cooking up not just The Joker/Daffy Duck one-shot, but also Catwoman/Sylvester and Tweety, Harley Quinn/Gossamer, and Lex Luthor/Porky Pig. These follow-up previous Warner Bros. or Hanna-Barbera crossovers with DC superheroes titles like Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey, Batman/Elmer Fudd, The Flash/Speed Buggy, Martian Manhunter/Marvin the Martian, Aquaman/Jabber Jaw, and Jonah Hex/Yosemite Sam.

The  SYFY Wire article has a 6-page preview of The Joker/Daffy Duck Special #1, “which finds Daffy visiting Gotham City to tour the ACME headquarters, only to discover that the building has been abandoned and taken over by the infamous Clown Prince of Crime.”

(13) IRON FIST. Trailer for Marvel’s Iron Fist: Season 2

It’s not a weapon to be held. It’s a weapon to be used. Season 2 of Marvel’s Iron Fist debuts exclusively on Netflix September 7, 2018.

 

[Thanks to Rich Lynch, Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Rick Moen, Steve Davidson, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/21/18 When The Deep Pixel Scrolls Over Sleepy Filer Walls

Posted on by

(1) OPENING MONOLOGUE. Thanks for everyone’s congratulations about the Hugo and kind wishes for my health. Back with a short scroll while I’m still in the hospital (for medical issues (which I’m not going to plaster all over the internet, but check with me via email if you want to be in touch about that.) Full gratitude to Jo Van Ekeren for doing the honors of accepting File 770’s Hugo for me in the emergency (and facing the lion’s den of the Hugo Losers Party after having had her hands on the trophy.)

(2) CONZEALAND. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) has posted a great set of ”Links for CoNZealand” for the now-officially-selected Worldcon of 2020, CoNZealand. (And let me say how enthusiastic I am that they picked a nickname, rather than just numbering the con! Since I don’t buy the idea that numbering enhances the Worldcon brand, there’s never been any attraction in it for me.)

(3) HUGO STATS. PDF files of the Retro-Hugos and 2018 Hugos have been posted by Worldcon 76.

(4) THE WINNER IS. Worldcon 76 has video of the Hugo ceremony online —

Miss the Hugo livestream? Want to watch it again? Head over to Worldcon 76’s YouTube Channel. The video of the entire ceremony is available to view.

(5) OH, JOHN (DIFFERENT JOHN).  This is far better than any set of second-place remarks I ever thought of, even after consecutive finishes behind Locus or David Langford!

Last night I did a thing that no one else in the entire history of the Hugo Awards has ever done, an achievement so singular, so unique, that no one could have possibly have imagined it for me or for anyone else:

I came in second in the Best Novel category to someone who has won back-to-back-to-back Best Novel Hugos!

No one else has ever done this! Ever! My achievement is monumental! No one can take this spectacular moment in time from me!

And naturally, I owe it all to N.K. Jemisin, who, by being the first person ever to win back-to-back-to-back Best Novel Hugo awards, created the necessary conditions for my exceptional position in the history books. I couldn’t have done this without all of her hard work over the years, and I thank her for it.

….So, while the first part of this post was obviously a bit silly, do not doubt that I am in all seriousness proud and happy to have come in second in the Best Novel category this year. The right book, and person, won, and I am delighted.

(5) SECOND FIFTH. Another thing I missed was N.K. Jemisin’s Best Novel Hugo acceptance speech. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has posted the text (and the video is available online – presumably as part of the ceremony video above, for one.)

This is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers: every single mediocre, insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honor, and that when they win it’s meritocracy, but when we win it’s identity politics,” she said. “I get to smile at those people and lift a massive shining rocket-shaped finger in their direction.”

(6) THIRD FIFTH NOT LAST AND NOT LEAST. As always, Camestros Felapton thinks of the appropriate reference at these moments, in “Post Hugo Post”.

So first off, thank you to everybody who voted for me. It really was special having Robert Silverberg present the awards. Sarah Gailey was a very deserving winner. I had a respectable showing but I guess the most elegant outcome would have been to have lost to No Award :).

(7) MORE ABOUT INCLUSIVENESS, RESISTING ALT-RIGHT IMPACT ON SCA. A Society for Creative Anachronism member who participates as Fulk Beauxarmes has written two more insightful follow-up posts about trending problems symptomized by the Kingdom of Trimaris.

….It isn’t enough to be a passive ally anymore, because we’re losing ground; it’s not enough to hold the belief that everyone should have the right to join the SCA, you need to stand up and be seen. How many newbies have seen something objectionable early on in their SCA career, have seen nobody speak against it, and just decide that the SCA isn’t the place for them? Judging from my comment section, too many. (As an aside, I’d like to see a real push to making sure that every SCA group, from canton on up, follow the example of the Barony of Ayreton and publish a statement of inclusivity so that newcomers can have no doubt.)…

Over the weekend, a member of the Board of Directors wrote a blog post in the form of an open letter to me, rebutting my most recent blog post Power, Justice and Safety in the SCA on an almost point-by-point basis. To her credit, Baroness Franca Donato contacted me ahead of time for permission to extensively quote from my blog as per my posted rules, which is a gesture of respect and courtesy which I greatly appreciated. Her post was exhaustively researched, politely written and as I said when I updated my blog post to include it yesterday, an invaluable addition to the ongoing discussion that is raging in the SCA; having a member of the BoD go on record with what the BoD can and can’t do was extremely educational.

A number of people have been vocally offended by Baroness Franca’s post on my behalf. My response to that is to simply state that I am not offended because people are allowed to tell me I’m wrong….

[Thanks to the heroic efforts of Jo Van Ekeren and Rick Moen and DB, I bring you today’s Pixel Scroll from high atop the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, with the lilting cardio rhythms of That Guy. Thanks to all of you who sent in items and I hope to get to a bunch soon. Some thanks in advance to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, and Jason. Title credit goes to contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions — #31

Posted on by

Why I am Advocating for a Best Translated Novel Category

By Chris M. Barkley:

Author’s Note: Like Jo Van Ekeren, I am a member of a Hugo Awards Study Committee, which was formed last year at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, Finland. The views expressed in this editorial are solely mine and may not reflect the views and interests of anyone else serving on the Study Committee or anyone connected with any Worldcon, past or present.

My first encounter with the Hugo Awards began back in high school in the early 1970’s when I stumbled upon a copy of The Hugo Awards Volumes One and Two, edited by Isaac Asimov. Up until I cracked open this particular anthology, I had only been a casual reader of fantasy and science fiction. Reading it plunged me into a literary whirlpool that I have reveled in and loved ever since.

When I started thinking about proposing changes to the Hugo Award categories in 1998, I had no idea how to proceed. I had attended fifteen Worldcons but I had attended only a single Business Meeting, and that was only because I was passing where it was being held one afternoon and a friend grabbed me and asked me to vote on something of vital importance. I went in, raised my hand when asked and did so and went on my merry way without knowing what I had just supported.

At Chicon 2000, I became a regular attendee and over the years learned how to cajole, advocate, persuade and validate my points of view. I did learn quickly to develop some thick skin as my early efforts were mercilessly stonewalled and ridiculed on a regular basis.

Through the tireless efforts of myself and other dedicated fans, we made significant changes to the Hugo Award categories and all of them were for the better, in my opinion.

But, as time has gone by it has become evident to some (including myself) that we should take a serious look at all of the categories to see if ambiguities could be removed from the language in the WSFS Constitution, redefining, improving, eliminating or suggesting new categories altogether. The Helsinki Business Meeting commissioned such a Study Group last summer and I happily volunteered.

At the moment, the group is gearing up to reach a consensus to issue a report in time for Worldcon 76 in San Jose.

On June 9, I presented the idea of a Best Translated Novel to the group. I did so because I believe that it is time the World Science Fiction Convention become a truly global award of cultural distinction.

Of course, the group on the whole had its concerns about establishing a new category. On the whole, I would say that we are not in favor of turning the Hugo awards into the Grammys with a nearly endless parade of sub-categories and narrowly defined special interest awards.

Well, imagine my surprise when I opened the June 14 edition of the Pixel Scroll and saw tweets from Rachel S. Cordasco and Claire Rousseau espousing the very same idea! Needless to say, I was very excited to see this and contacted them to enthusiastically pledge my support.

But there is a problem; as Ms. Van Ekeren rightly pointed out, even though we are less than two months way from Worldcon, the time frame for discussing it in advance and scheduling it for a formal debate at the Business Meeting is less than desirable at this point. We are, in essence, the gatekeepers of the Hugo Awards. And while I relish this vital role, I have often been frustrated by the somewhat glacial pace of the process and the sometimes overwhelming sense of caution the members of the Business Meeting immerse themselves in.

Be that as it may, I am quite confident and certain that this proposal will be assigned to a study group, will be roundly debated in the coming year and an amendment will be presented at the Business Meeting in Dublin.

The very first World Fiction Convention in 1939 was held in New York City and it has been documented that the original intention was to have the convention named as homage to the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows. And as time has passed, and innovations and technology have made our community more global, it just makes good sense to extend the good will and honor of being nominated for or winning a Hugo Award to the rest of the world. Because we, as a community, must show that the Worldcon isn’t just a traveling genre party for English speakers, but the whole, wide world. As an analogy I offer the example of the Academy Awards; a Best Translated Novel is just like offering the equivalent of the Best Foreign Film category.

For decades, the Hugo Award was mainly dominated by writers from the United Kingdom and North America. And while we called ourselves members of the World Science Fiction Society, the first convention wasn’t held outside North America until 1957 (London, UK) or in Europe until 1970 (Heidelberg, West Germany). Even then, English-speaking writers have prevailed. That is, until recently.

My inspiration for supporting the Best Translated Novel was inspired by the recent Hugo wins by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Cixin Liu and Hao Jingfang. This shows that the inherent bias against writers from other countries and cultures is slowly melting away. And while no translated novels or short fiction is on the final ballot this year, I am reasonably sure more nominations from writers of different countries and cultures will be forthcoming.

In the meantime, I am writing this column to directly address some of the issues Ms. Van Ekeren pointed out in her editorial.

First, the intent of the proposed amendment is to honor translated novels seeing their first publication in English. In the WSFS Constitution, the definition of a novel (as of this writing) is: ”A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more. ” This would or should exclude works of non-fiction, manga or anything else that would not fit into what we traditionally know as the novel category.  I take it for granted that some sort of provision will be written to prevent a nominee in the Translated category from also being considered in the Best Novel category.

If and when the definition of the novel category is changed, the wording of the Translated Novel category will be adjusted to suit the Constitution. The one thing that I would insist on inserting into the proposal is that translators of the work being honored also receive a Hugo for their efforts.

As to whether or not adding this new category will “dilute” the prestige of the Best Novel Award or make it a second class or lesser award, I completely reject that sort of reasoning. I have held many of them in my hands on many occasions during my four decades in fandom. Ask any of the recipients in any category whether or not they feel that their Hugo is any less special than anyone else’s. And the answer would probably be a unanimous NO. They are grateful and happy to have their work honored by knowledgeable fans.

One of the main objections seems to be finding eligible works to be nominated. This in turn brings us back to Dr. Cordasco, who has a Ph.D in literary studies, is a huge fan of translated fantasy and sf. She has been running a website completely devoted to tracking translated works for several years. (Speculative Fiction in Translation)

She has also meticulously compiled a list of works (431 as of this writing) published in English: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RyMOXmi1Zd4yvuTVHQcw5gka8YLZ1In42GJn6Rhh12E/edit#gid=0

Here is a list of translated novels published just in the past two years:

2018 ( Published or scheduled so far)

  • Anna by Niccolò Ammaniti, translated by Jonathan Hunt (Italian)
  • The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum, translated by Ira Moskowitz (Hebrew)
  • The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Spanish)
  • Elven Winter by Bernhard Hennen, translated by Edwin Miles (German)
  • Alphaland by Cristina Jurado, translated by James Womack (Spanish)
  • Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt, translated by Owen Witesman (Finnish)
  • Ball Lighting by Cixin Lui, translated by Jowl Martinsen (Chinese)
  • Faces From the Past by Rodolfo & Felicidad Martinez, translated by Rodolfo Martinez (Spanish)
  • Nekomonogatari White by Nisioisin, translated by Ko Ransom (Japanese)
  • Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha, translated by Stephen J. Epstein (Indonesian)
  • Frankenstein in Baghdad by Achmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright (Arabic)
  • Collected Stories by Bruno Schulz, translated by Madeline G. Levine (Polish)
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Vol 6: Flight by Yoshiki Tanaka, translated by Tyran Grillo (Japanese)
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Vol 7: Tempest by Yoshiki Tanaka, translated by Daniel Huddleston (Japanese)
  • The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani (Japanese)
  • Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima, translated by Daniel Huddleston (Japanese)
  • Science: Hopes and Fears by Juza Unno, translated by  J. D. Wisgo (Japanese)
  • Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath by Juza Unno, translated by J. D. Wisgo (Japanese)
  • The Invisible Valley by Su Wei, translated by Austin Woerner (Chinese)
  • A Hero Born (The Condor Heroes, Book 1) by Jin Yong, translated by Anna Holmwood
  • I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargey (Swedish)

2017

  • The Sacred Era by Yoshio Aramaki, translated by Baryon Tensor Posadas (Japanese)
  • SRDN: From Bronze and Darkness by Andrea Atzori, translated by Nigel Ross (Italian)
  • The Dying Game by  Asa Avdic, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Swedish)
  • On the Trail of the Grail by Svetislav Basara, translated by Randall A. Major (Serbian)
  • Heavens on Earth by Carmen Boullosa, translated by Shelby Vincent (Spanish)
  • Bodies of Summer by Martin Felipe Castagnet, translated by Frances Riddle (Spanish)
  • Our Dead World by Liliana Colanzi, translated by Jessica Sequeira (Spanish)
  • The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria, translated by Ramon Glazov (Italian)
  • Hadriana in All My Dreams by Rene Depestre, translated by Kaiama L. Glover (French, by way of Haiti)
  • The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel, translated by   Margaret Sayers Peden (Spanish)
    The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresan, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Spanish)
  • Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii translated by Timothy Silver (Japanese)
  • Spells by Michel de Ghelderode, translated by George MacLennon (French, by way of Belgium)
  • Me by Hoshino Tomoyuki, translated by Charles De Wolf (Japanese)
  • You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin (German)
  • Listening for Jupiter by Pierre-Luc Landry, translated by Arielle Aronson & Madeleine Stratford (French, by way of Canada)
  • Kzradock the Onion Man by Louis Levy, translated by W. C. Bamberger (Danish)
  • Blumenberg by Sibylle Lewitscharoff, translated by Wieland Hoban (German)
  • Only She Sees by Manel Loureiro, translated by Andres Alfaro (Spanish)
  • The Irish Sea by Carlos Maleno, translated by Eric Kurtzke (Spanish)
  • Fever by Deon Meyer, translated by K. L. Seegers (Afrikaans)
  • The Mountains of Parnassus by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Stanley Bill (Danish)
  • The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan, translated by Yuri Machkasov (Russian, by way of Armenia)
  • Malacqua by Nicola Pugliese, translated by Shaun Whiteside (Italian)
  • Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel, translated by Rupert Copeland Cunningham (French)
  • 2084 by Boualem Sansal, translated by Alison Anderson (French, by way of Algeria)
  • Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski, translated by David French (Polish)
  • Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Spanish, by way of Argentina)
  • The King in the Golden Mask by Marcel Schwob, translated by Kit Schluter (French)
  • Hexagrammaton by Hanuš Seiner, translated by Julie Novakova (Czech)
  • The Book of the Dead by Orikuchi Shinobu, translated by Jeffrey Angles (Japanese)
  • Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell (Korean)
  • Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, translated by Andrew Bromfield (Russian)
  • Moon Scars by Ángel Luis Sucasas, translated by James Womack (Spanish)
  • S(Es) by Koji Suzuki, translated by Greg Gencarello (Japanese)
  • Archeon by Alessandro Tagliapietra, translated by Patricia Keiller (Italian)
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Vol 4: Stratagem by Yoshiki Tanaka, translated by Tyran Grillo
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Vol 5: Mobilization by Yoshiki Tanaka, translated by Tyran Grillo
  • Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, translated by Karin Tidbeck (Swedish)
  • Bullseye! by Yasutaka Tsutsui, translated by Andrew Driver (Japanese)
  • Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman (French)
  • Frontier by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant (Chinese)

If you thoroughly peruse the Google doc, you will see that several dozen translated novels have been published in the past decade or so.

Are these works “Hugo worthy”? That determination should be made by the readers and fans, not a committee. I also submit that the point is moot since none of the works above will be nominated since there is no category, so to speak. But the fact that they have been translated and published in such great numbers seems to indicate, at least by the publishers, that there is a market out there for translated novels.

And yes, this would mean that fans who are interested in voting in this category would have to be devoted enough to buy and read more books. And frankly, I there isn’t much of a downside to that.

So, what I am asking is the members of the Study Committee and the World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting is to take yet another leap of faith with me.

In doing so, I point back to my advocacy of splitting the Best Dramatic Presentation and Editing categories, the establishment of the Best Graphic Story and my co-sponsorship of the Best Fancast categories. I helped work for their passage because I had a gut feeling they would work. And each of them has not only become popular among fans who vote on the awards, they have also drawn in new fans who had never heard of the Hugo Awards or the World Science Fiction Convention before.

After all the travails, waiting, frustration, arguing and controversy, what, you might ask, are you getting out of this? Although I achieved a certain low level of infamy over the years, I have never sought to be in a spotlight or capitalize on my advocacy.

This week, I celebrated my forty-second year in fandom. On June 25, 1976, I showed up at a convention which happened to be located just a few miles from where I lived (Midwestcon 27), bought a five dollar membership and changed my life forever.

What I have attempted to do over the past eighteen years is try to pay back all of the friendships and wonderful experiences by helping to ensure the legacy of the Hugo Awards and the works they honor and to make sure they endure far beyond after I take my leave from fandom and life. Each year, I admit feeling a bit of pride as the winners in the categories I helped shepherd into existence receive their just due.

And for me, that is more than enough.

Make It So: Adding A New Hugo Award Category

Posted on by


By Jo Van Ekeren: I have written this post in response to the recent voicing of support on Twitter and elsewhere for the establishment of a Best Translated Work category for the Hugo Awards, but much of what follows is applicable to any potential new Hugo Award category.

I am a member of the current Hugo Awards Study Committee, which was created at last year’s WSFS Business Meeting to review how the existing Hugo Award categories are performing and recommend improvements. I did share the contents of this post with the committee chair Vince Docherty; however, it is coming from me personally, and has not been endorsed by him, that committee, WSFS, Worldcon 76, or any other person or entity which may have some sort of authority.

Anyone wishing to help get a new Hugo Award category established will need to understand that a large group of people coming to the WSFS Business Meeting and saying “We want a Translated Work Hugo!” is not enough to get a new category created. Getting a new Hugo category established is usually a 2-to-5 year undertaking of research, analysis, and discussion. It is not something which is quickly accomplished.

One reason for this is that the rules for the Hugo Awards and its categories are specified in the Constitution of The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), and modification of that constitution requires approval by a majority of the members in attendance at two sequential WSFS Business Meetings (one multi-day meeting is held each year, at Worldcon). This may sound like a cumbersome and slow process, and it is – but it prevents hasty, poorly planned changes from being implemented. The second-year ratification requirement is an important sanity check (for dubious values of “sanity” which may apply to Worldcon members), especially given that Worldcon is a travelling convention which takes place in a different location each year. A two-year process prevents wildly radical changes from being implemented by a Business Meeting swamped with members from only one geographical area.

Another reason that establishing a new Hugo Award category is such a lengthy process is that WSFS members are generally very mindful of the damage that hasty, poorly planned changes can do, and they are very protective of the Hugo Awards. At various times in the past, after extensive research and discussion, new categories have been established – or trialled, since each Worldcon has the option to give out a special one-time Hugo in a category they specify – only to have nominations be almost nonexistent, resulting in the category being cancelled. Such an outcome is always a disappointment, in addition to using up time and effort which could have constructively been allocated to other areas of importance for the convention.

In 1993, a trial of a Best Translator Hugo received nominations on 40 out of 397 total nominating ballots (10%). Those 40 people made 53 total nominations – in other words, a majority of them nominated only one translator – resulting in nominations for a total of 25 different translators. The first-place nominee had 14 nominations, and the fifth-place nominee(s) had 2 nominations, which was probably a multi-way tie among several people. The remaining nominees had 1 nomination each. As a result, with the category not having 5 strong finalists, the Hugo Administrators used their discretion as permitted by the WSFS Constitution to omit that category from the rest of the year’s award process.

Because of past experiences like this with various attempted new categories, WSFS members are fairly rigourous about evaluating the viability of proposed new categories. In order to be willing to approve such an initiative, the majority of the WSFS members will want to see that a considerable amount of thought has been put into:

(1) The Category Definition

One of the important characteristics of the Hugo category definitions is that they be defined in such a way that works would not be able to appear on the ballot in more than one category. This is why the WSFS Award for Best Young Adult Book is not a Hugo: because there was no way to draw a distinct line between YA and Not YA. The likelihood for a Translated Work Award would be much better if it were to be a separate award which would not overlap with the Hugos, and which would not disqualify a work from being on the ballot for a fiction Hugo as well as for Translated Work.

If the award is to be a Hugo, the proposal would also have to address the changes which would be needed for the other category definitions to prevent overlap. At the very least, the fiction category definitions would have to be changed to include wording such as “and was not first published in a language other than English”. And this brings up the issue of whether that would be “ghetto-ising” translated works, whether it’s saying that such works are not good enough to compete in the regular fiction categories. While I was putting this piece together, Cheryl Morgan has made an excellent post on this subject on her blog: Translating the Hugos.

(2) Possible Ramifications of the Category and its Definition

Details which must be considered when defining a category include:

  • will there be a word count limit, and only novels be eligible, or would the category be open to works of any length?
  • would graphic novels and anime be eligible? (several people have pointed out that if the definition does not somehow exclude anime, it is likely the only type of work which would ever make the ballot)
  • would only fiction works be eligible, or would translated Related Work non-fiction be eligible as well?
  • how would exclusions in the other fiction category definitions be worded to account for the possibility of the translated English version being published before the native language version?

(3) Substantial Evidence that there would be a Non-Trivial Amount of Participation by Hugo Nominators

This is the hardest part of building a case to justify a new Hugo category. The report by the WSFS Young Adult Award Committee provides an example of the sort of work which went into getting it established, a process which took several years.

The general rule-of-thumb for a Hugo category to be considered potentially viable is:

  • to be able to name 15 qualifying works published in the previous year which are not only qualifying but also Hugo-worthy, and
  • to be able to show that a sufficient number of Hugo nominators have read those works and would likely have nominated them.

While “Hugo-worthy” has a different meaning for every individual, the intent of that phrase here is to indicate that just listing a sufficient number of works is not really enough; that list must also be made with an eye to the quality of the works on it. Showing that a significant number of people would have been willing to nominate a work is a good measure of that quality.

With that in mind, I have done some basic groundwork for anyone who wishes to take on the project of getting a new Hugo Award for Best Translated Work established. This is what I have found in going through the Hugo Award longlists for the last 10 years (I tried to be meticulous, but can not guarantee that I did not miss something); the number of nominations is in round brackets:

2018
no works on shortlist, longlist unknown

2017
Novel:
5th – Death’s End by Cixin Liu tr. Ken Liu (156)
11th – The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo tr. Lola Rogers (95)

Novella:
16th – Chimera by Gu Shi tr. S. Qiouyi Lu, and Ken Liu (39)

2016
Novelette:
1st – Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang tr. Ken Liu (576) (slated work, estimate w/o slate, 136)

2015
Novel:
7th – The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin tr. Ken Liu (210)

Novella:
14th – Where the Trains Turn by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen tr. Liisa Rantalaiho (69)

Novelette:
6th – The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt tr. Lia Belt (72)
13th – Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy by Xia Jia tr. Ken Liu (42)

2014
Short Story:
2nd – The Ink Readers of Doi Saket by Thomas Olde Heuvelt tr. Lia Belt (73)

2013
Novelette:
2nd – The Boy Who Cast No Shadow by Thomas Olde Heuvelt tr. Laura Vroomen (62)

Related Work:
15th – World SF in Translation by Jari Koponen (17)

2012
no works

2011
no works

2010
no works

2009
no works

2008

Novelette:
12th (6-way tie) – Where Do the Birds Fly Now by Yamano Koichi tr. Dana Lewis (10)

I have listed three 2016 works which made the Hugo longlist in 2017. For a campaign which is working to add a Best Translated Work category, my suggestion would be that they come up with a list of 12 more translated works from that year, with some sort of evidence which indicates that a non-trivial number of Hugo nominators would possibly have nominated them. Such evidence could include reviews, Facebook or blog posts, and Tweets about the 12 additional translated works – not by just anyone, but by people who are known to be Worldcon members and Hugo voters. There are a couple of ways to identify Worldcon members. While people have the ability to opt out of having their names published, and a certain number of them do, Worldcons usually have on their website a Membership Directory. And bloggers who are reading and recommending works will often mention if they are nominating for the Hugo Awards.

This would certainly be a significant amount of work, and might be best split up by allocating one work to research, to each of a dozen volunteers.

Other possible means of gaining support and supporting evidence are:

  • identify 3 good panelists with expertise on translated speculative fiction who will be at Worldcon, and suggest a panel on “SF in Translation” to the Worldcon program committee.
  • have an information table at Worldcon, staffed by volunteers who can provide information on sources for recommendations of translated works, and discuss the campaign.
  • provide an informational sheet to Worldcon to put in the Registration packets and/or in the free handout distribution area at Worldcon.
  • figure out how to take a survey of Worldcon attendees which gets some sense of how many people have read how many translated works from the previous year, and what those works are.

This last one could be difficult, because depending on how it is set up, a survey can be susceptible to manipulation (for example, 10 people completing an online survey 20 times each, by using VPNs, anonymisers, and computers in different locations, or by obtaining multiple copies of the paper survey form at Worldcon and filling out many submissions). People want to maintain their privacy, but having individual names attached to a survey (but not attached to specific results) would give it more credibility.

The WSFS YA Award committee did an online survey for the name of the award. Fans of one author promoted it heavily on social media, which resulted in a large number of votes for naming the award after her – most of them from multiple-voters and people who are not, and will never be, Worldcon members. Obviously, this was not helpful to the committee’s efforts to select a name. To be credible, surveys used in building a case for establishment of a Hugo Award category should avoid being susceptible to this sort of manipulation.

Any two or more Attending or Supporting Members can submit proposals to the WSFS Business Meeting; while it is not required that proposed business have a representative there to present it, having someone who can present the case persuasively, and is well-informed enough to answer questions, definitely increases the likelihood of a proposal’s success.

Timewise, a proposed change for this year’s Business Meeting would be rushed. Worldcon is only 2 months away, which does not leave much time for preparation of a convincing case. My suggestion is that it would be better to spend the next 2 months figuring out how to do an effective survey which is resistant to manipulation, use this Worldcon as an educational and information-gathering opportunity, and take the proposal to the Business Meeting next year. But if a fairly solid case for creating the category can be assembled, then a request needs to be made at least 2 weeks ahead of time to be put on the WSFS Business Meeting agenda (this year’s deadline is  August 3, 2018). The Business Meeting team will need an electronic copy of the report in advance, so that it can made available online to members ahead of the meeting, or at least 200 paper copies must be provided at the meeting.

If the WSFS membership, in the year in which a proposal is presented, is not willing to immediately approve a new category based on that information, but feels that the category has good potential, they may move to establish a study committee and ask for volunteers to serve on it and present a report at the Business Meeting in the following year. This is a very common result for significant changes when they are first proposed.

If a substantial case is built showing that significant participation by Hugo nominators would be likely, a Worldcon, if asked, might be willing to consider using their option to present a one-time Hugo Award as a way to trial the category. However, this would add work for them, so the case would need to be very persuasive. And if a Worldcon is presenting Retro Hugos as well as contemporary Hugos – which amounts to nearly double the work for the Hugo process – they may not be willing to make their job even more complicated by adding a trial category.

Assistance on presenting proposals to the WSFS Business Meeting is available for those who wish to take advantage of it. Kevin Standlee, WSFS Division Head for this Worldcon, has spent decades of time, effort and money on improving both Worldcon and the Hugo Awards. I have found him to be scrupulously fair, and extremely willing to help anyone who is willing to do the work toward getting changes made, even when he does not personally endorse the proposed changes. Dr. Katie Rask and Anna Blumstein were instrumental in the establishment of the YA Award, and they would probably be good people for advice on how to approach such a campaign.

Right now it looks as though the awareness of translated works among Hugo nominators is growing. I am just not sure that it has reached critical mass to justify a separate category at this point. But I am open to being convinced (as are many committee members and other WSFS members, who have voiced support in principle) by someone who has the willingness to put the work into building a case for it.

++ Jo Van Ekeren

WSFS Member and Hugo Category Committee Member
(I am just someone with opinions, and am not in charge of anything)