The Sword and Laser discussion

I did a cursory search and didn't see anything - Hugo noms close this Friday. If there's a category that S&L is eligible in, I'd like to nominate you guys. Do you guys qualify under fancast?

Yep, Fancast.

Sword and Laser were nominated in that category in 2018:
http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-his...

excellent! Thanks!

Sword & Laser nominated in fancasts, along with a few novels, one novella, one series (Sandman Slim), a couple of graphic novels and as a related work, because I didn't know where else to nominate it, Star Trek: Kirk Fu Manual: A Guide to Starfleet's Most Feared Martial Art by Dayton Ward.

Does anyone know what's going on with the Hugos 2021? It seems that the 2021 Hugo Awards administration team has resigned en masse with the following statement:

The 2021 Hugo Administration team came on board, at short notice, at the start of this year. we were committed to the words in the 12 January statement by the DisCon III chair, Bill Lawhorn: “The Hugo Awards exist to celebrate and honor all of the creators chosen by the Worldcon membership. We should have considered those creators’ needs and feelings through our policies and the messaging we used.”

It is clear that we have taken the process as far as we can, and that our input is no longer needed by the convention leadership. We are therefore resigning from DisCon III with immediate effect.
https://twitter.com/nwbrux/status/140...

Seems like a lot of drama going on...

Jan wrote: "Does anyone know what's going on with the Hugos 2021? It seems that the 2021 Hugo Awards administration team has resigned en masse with the following statement:

The 2021 Hugo Administration team c..."

Digging into the Tweet thread it looks like there was a dispute over how many members of a team that was nominated (like for a movie or tv show) could be listed or attend the ceremony.

I'm glad Jan asked this because I wondered, too.

I thought those rules like that had been put in a few years ago, at least for the podcast category. I have not been following the Hugo’s this year, but that sort of smells like a situation where there was many private things that lead up to a blowup over the one public thing. Even though the one public thing was fairly minor. But I could be mistaken.

You can follow the ongoing events at File 770

http://file770.com/tag/discon-iii/

The organizers say they have space limitations and are having difficulty planning con events where nominees and winners are fairly represented. There are probably other issues that aren't clear from the File 770 reporting too.

So it seems this team was brought in after backlash against those restrictions by people arguing this rule would hit minorities most and now that team that was supposed to fix that has resigned.

That sounds a bit like they tried to solve the issue but their advice wasn't taken by the committe?

That article didn’t shed any light on why there is drama. Who brings more than 3 people to an awards ceremony?

Here locally we had that issue with the 2020 high school graduation, but that was because of the pandemic, and everyone lived locally, of course. I can’t think of any awards event I’ve been to where it wasn’t a straight +1. Hard limit. Bring your spouse, or a date, or your mom, but it’s one and that’s it.

Surely that can’t be the issue?

Anyone know?

^ Know? Nope, there's a whole lot of not-much going around. From what I've seen on social media, some groups are large. I'm unlikely to be able to locate it now, but IIRC on Twitter it was said that Strange Horizons has 80 people on their Hugo nominated project. They're not alone in large size. There's no restriction on who can give a speech if they win, so that could be a lot of speeches.

There's some question about facility size as well. That doesn't make sense to me because aren't all attendees of Worldcon allowed to go to the Hugo ceremony? And then the "losers" party which would be overwhelmed by large groups. Anyhoo, having made their statement the Hugo admin group stopped talking and no one else has made any clarifying announcements. That may be for the best, since the Hugo admin group has clearly had enough, but also clearly supports the Hugos in general.

80 people?!

You don’t take the entire company to the awards. You get nominated, you have a pizza party. If you win, you rent a room at a restaurant. What the hell, people?

Also, the pandemic is still raging. I mean, c’mon. This is dumb.

I prefer not to speculate and accuse whoever and just wish the event will go well. *goes to read the voter package*

Trike wrote: "80 people?!

You don’t take the entire company to the awards.

Well, from what I gather they never planned to take that many people to the awards or get a physical trophy for everyone, they just wanted everyone of those 80 people be able to say they were Hugo award nominated and therefore put them on the ballot...

I looked it up and apparently the brouhaha is about putting all the names on the screen during the presentation, and all of the names on the award itself.

Um… what.

How do you put 80 names on a trophy? The alternative is to give out 80 statues. Looks like they have the budget for 4 statues, then extras need to be purchased at cost. That seems reasonable to me.

I don’t see anything about how this hurts “marginalized peoples”, whatever that means in this context. If BIPOC folks aren’t in senior management positions, that’s kinda on the magazine, not the Hugos.

This whole thing is baffling to me.

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/hugo-awa...

And now the Con Chair, Bill Lawhorn, resigns as well.

https://discon3.org/news/con-chair-re...

Huh. Putting on a convention is a thankless task - no pay, lots of work, a hobby turned into a chore - so I'm actually more surprised that conventions get put on at all. Dunno why he left but wish him and the convention well. I've volunteered at conventions on a modest scale and interacted with some of the con committee people. Don't know how they do it.

The Incomparable podcast is discussing the hugo/nebula books. 571 You Paint Mushrooms Beautifully

People are quitting because it is now a pain in the butt to volunteer and than catch crap from anyone with twitter account.

Stephen wrote: "People are quitting because it is now a pain in the butt to volunteer and than catch crap from anyone with twitter account."

I've also got a foot in the free and open source software world and this happens there, too. You put your heart and soul into something and give it away for free and then people give you crap about it.

Although, luckily, in my case, I've only had positive interactions - perhaps because I make software relating to raising money for children's hospitals. (shrug emoji)

Bringing things back to my original topic, looks like S&L didn't make it, but I've got some really tough choices to make as a voter. Best semi-pro has multiple magazines I read and enjoy. Best series is full of awesome authors that I like.

For the other categories - fortunately they provide review copies for voters because I'm incredibly behind in reading the latest stuff, so I've made a new shelf to keep track of which books I need to read to become an informed voter.

As usual, it's a GREAT time to be a SFF reader/fan!!

Jan wrote: "So it seems this team was brought in after backlash against those restrictions by people arguing this rule would hit minorities most

..."

Huh? Why would numerical restrictions hurt minorities most?