Somewhat to my surprise, I find my name on the Hugo Award ballot again this year. I am one of the team that is a finalist in Best Related Work for the ConZealand Fringe programme of events.

I’d like to thank and congratulate the rest of the team: Claire, Adri, C, Alasdair, Marguerite and Cassie. I note that Claire, Adri, Alasdair and Marguerite are all on the ballot in other categories as well, so they are very much worth checking out. Also Iori Kusano, who was on the panel that I curated and chaired for CZ Fringe, is on the Related Work ballot for her work running a similar Fringe programme for FIYAHCON. Having all of this virtual convention work on the ballot makes me very happy.

I should also thank Kelly Buehler, co-chair of CoNZealand, for her support of our work. It would have been great to integrate more closely with the main convention, but as with so many things to do with CoNZealand, time was against us.

Finally I should thank Mike Glyer, because there’s nothing quite like being denounced on File 770 to bring you to the attention of fandom at large.

Update: Duh! I should also thank everyone who nominated us. You can tell that it is 10 years since I’ve had to do this, can’t you. One the plus side, no one has yet come into my social media to complain about how I am the Wrong Sort of Fan, possibly because this is not a fan category.

The rest of the ballot for Related Work is very strong. I don’t expect us to win. There are lots of other interesting things on the ballot that I’d like to talk about, but that will have to wait for the next Salon Futura. Here’s the full list of finalists for Related Work.

And yes, I did notice that DisCon 3 has decided not to use the official Hugo Award logo. Thumbing their noses at WSFS seems to have become a habit for them. And they did manage to mis-spell Beowulf, though it is correct on the press release.