Awards

Translation Awards Eligibility Lists

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Over at the Translation Awards website I have posted the lists of works we have been able to find that are eligible for next year’s awards. (There are also a couple of 2011 works published towards the end of last year that we missed.)

I’m delighted to see so many interesting books and stories listed. As always, the indefatigable Brian Stableford has produced a torrent of translated books from Black Coat Press. Those are mainly quite old books, but I’m pleased to see that Black Coat are doing books by contemporary French writers such as Sylvie Miller and Philippe Ward. Haikasoru and Kurodahan are continuing to do excellent work with Japanese translations, and it looks like we can now rely on Beijing Guomi Digital Technology for a steady supply of translations from Chinese. Lavie Tidhar’s Apex Book of World SF series continues to produce interesting stories. And thanks should go to my friends at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath who supply me with lots of interesting translated works from non-genre publishers that nevertheless seem to fit our remit.

One thing I am sure about, however, is that I won’t have got everything. There are bound to be short stories in online magazines that I have missed, for example. If you know of something you think the jury should be looking at, and it isn’t listed, please let me know, either here or over on the Translation Awards website.

Little Rebels Arrive

~ Cheryl

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers (yes, there is such a thing) has founded a new literary price, Little Rebels Children’s Book Award. This is what they have to say about it:

The new Little Rebels Award is designed to recognise a rich tradition of radical publishing for children in the UK. For this first year, the award will be restricted to fiction targeted at children aged 0-12. ‘Radical’ is defined widely to include books informed by inclusive/anti-discriminatory concerns or those which promote social equality or social justice

For more information, including how to submit books, see their website.

IMPAC Award Longlist

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As literary prizes go, I am very fond of the IMPAC. It is international (though limited to the English language), and nominations are made by librarians rather than by literary critics, so it is much more likely to be in tune with what people are actually reading. This year’s long list has been announced. Here are a few books that have speculative elements (with links to my reviews where I have them):

People like Sam Jordison, Matt Cheney and Larry Nolen may have more to add to that list.

Plus ça change…

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

1987: Ellen Kushner publishes Swordspoint. As Tansy Rayner Roberts notes in the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast, it has become notorious because it is a “fantasy” novel with no actual magic in it. That was apparently revolutionary at the time.

2012: “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” by K.J. Parker wins Best Novella in the World Fantasy Awards. In the latest Coode Street Podcast Jonathan Strahan notes that the story has attracted criticism because it is a “fantasy” story with no actual magic in it.

I guess some people enjoy having something to get a bee in their bonnets about, but personally I am very bored of arguments about genre purity.

World Fantasy Awards

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

The World Fantasy Award winners for 2012 were announced in Toronto last night. The full list of winners is available from Locus. Many thanks to Fran & Liza for getting the results out so quickly. (I am, of course, now wondering whether the World Fantasy Board will devote time to discussing how they can prevent Locus from getting the award results out quickly, as they did for me. Somehow I doubt it.)

Much of the talk beforehand was about the possibility of Jo Walton’s Among Others becoming the first work to grab the hat trick of major award victories: the Nebula, the Hugo and the World Fantasy. As it turned out, Jo missed her chance to make history, and what’s more someone else beat her to it. Ken Liu’s story, “The Paper Menagerie” has won all three awards this year. That’s an amazing achievement, and very well deserved IMHO. Well done Ken, and many thanks to Charles Tan for being the first to spot history in the making.

(I’m assuming here that no other piece of short fiction has done this. I’m confident about the novels, but as no one had spotted Ken’s situation I’m not 100% sure that it is a record. Do let me know if I’m wrong.)

One person who will be very pleased with this year’s list of winner’s is Steve Jones. The only female winners share awards with men (apart possibly for KJ Parker whose gender is a fairly well guarded secret). At last the Evil Feminists have been banished from the World Fantasy Awards and it is safe for horror editors to show their faces in public again.

Or maybe not. There were plenty of women on the ballot. And sad as I am to see so few female winners, I can’t quibble much with the results. Indeed, I’m really very pleased with them, even though Clarkesworld didn’t win, and neither did the two stories that we published. The winners are all very fine people and works.

In particular the list of winners has something of an international flavor this year. Eric Lane of Dedalus Books took home a Howie as a reward for publishing fiction in translation. There are lots of translated stories in The Weird. Ken Liu won Short Story. And Best Novel was won by Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, which I loved. It is good to know that the sort of books that snobby elitists like myself put on their Hugo ballot can win awards elsewhere. I am, of course, looking forward to Lavie’s blog post in which he explains how this proves that the whole awards scene is deeply corrupt and biased against him, and I see that Tim Maughan has already accused him of being a sellout on Twitter. Well done Lavie, mate. Very well deserved.

Finally, and still on the subject of people who appear on my Hugo ballot but never make the nominee lists, I am absolutely delighted for John Coulthart. He’s a genius. Come on, Hugo voters, what are you waiting for?

Cthulhu Calendar 2013 - John Coulthart

World Fantasy

~ Cheryl

The 2012 World Fantasy Convention gets underway in Toronto today. I’m not there, for reasons I explained here. My profuse apologies to my friends Liz Hand, John Clute and Gary Wolfe whose Guest of Honor appearances I am missing. I would have liked to be there. However, it seems that things have worked out quite serendipitously after all. Had I bought a plane ticket to Toronto, it is quite likely that both Kevin and I would have got caught up in hurricane-related travel drama; and of course we would not have been able to enjoy the Giants’ World Series win together. Also, if we had been able to get a table at Bell’s Diner for the Friday of BristolCon, we would have been there while I was still suffering from a stomach bug. Really, things have turned out quite well.

Of course the other reason for wanting to be at World Fantasy this year is that, as part of the Clarkesworld team in 2011, I’m up for a Howie. Clarkesworld is absolutely deserving of that award, though whether it finally gets there this year or next is another matter. The full list of nominees can be found here. Best of luck to them all (especially the fabulous John Coulthart).

Coode Street: Best / Not Best

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

Thanks to Gary and Jonathan, and their special guest Paul Kincaid, for another fascinating podcast. This week they discussed Paul’s LA Review of Books essay, “The Widening Gyre”, and his concern that the SF field is in a state of exhaustion.

Like Paul, I prefer books that provide a great deal of mental stimulation. However, I don’t share his distress, possibly because I have lower expectations. I’m well aware of the fact that my literary tastes are elitist and not shared by the majority of readers. I don’t expect commercially-focused publishers to always cater to my tastes, though I’m pleasantly surprised when they do.

Paul’s particular beef is with Best of the Year anthologies, a type of book that I have very little interest in (sorry Jonathan). That’s because I recognize them for what they are: a commercial operation intended to encourage readers to pay for collections of short fiction. The idea that one editor’s picks, constrained by commercial necessity, will ever accurately represent the “best” of the year is frankly silly. The best we can hope for is that such a book will provide a reasonable snapshot of the state of the field.

Of course some people will then complain that such books should not be called “Best”, and in a world free of marketing imperatives they would not. However, complaining about this is a bit like complaining that the contestants in a TV talent show appear to have been picked because of their eccentric personalities or their desperate desire for fame, not their actual mastery of their craft. And it will get you about as far.

I’m therefore perfectly happy to acknowledge that no “best of the year” anthology actually contains the best stories of the year. I only raise my eyebrows when people complain that a “year’s best” book is bad because it contains the “wrong” stories, and if it had included a different set of stories it would indeed deserve to be called the best of the year. That’s totally missing the point.

The boys also got to talking about awards, and appear to have forgotten that the romance community is far worse at slapping itself on the back than we are (though quite possibly it does it for the same reasons). I’m not a big fan of proliferation of awards, and certainly not of the idea of adding new awards because you think that the existing ones are “wrong”. Where I like to see new awards is where they can draw attention to works that might otherwise be ignored. I’m fond of awards like the Tiptree, the Carl Brandons and the Translation Awards.

It should be noted, however, that not all awards are the same. Each one has its own method of deciding on a winner, and its own eligibility rules. I find the different results produced by these different methodologies to be fascinating.

I’m happy to agree with Jonathan and Paul that the primary benefit of awards is to provide an excuse to talk about books. I’m delighted when my friends win with good books, and try not to become despondent or angry when I don’t like the results. I also try to ignore the seemingly endless accusations that particular awards are “broken” or “fixed”. Such things seem to be an inevitable part of the process. The one thing that really confuses me is when people complain that the Hugos produce winners that are really poor quality, and then go on to say that the results would be much better if far more people voted. Oh dear me no.

Like Paul, Jonathan and Gary, I would love to see more really good books and stories. How we get them is another matter. We are in the middle of a pretty nasty recession right now, so I don’t expect the major publishers to have much appetite for risk taking. But I will continue to check out what the more adventurous small presses are producing, and if I spot anything I like I’ll bring it to your attention. I will not expect all of you to share my tastes.

The YA Hugo: Pros & Cons

~ Cheryl ~ 18 Comments

The failure in Chicago of the proposal to add a YA Hugo has caused a lot of yelling online. Some people are furious at what they see is a bunch of old folks denying YA readers and writers recognition, while others are furious about what they see as attempts to create an unnecessary and unworkable category. I’m going to try to illuminate some of the issues. I guess that means that both sides will end up hating me.

Part of the problem is that the two sides are looking at entirely different parts of the elephant. From a marketing point of view, having a YA Hugo is a great idea. The publishers would be all over it (at least in the short term while YA is still popular); there’s a vibrant online community surrounding YA fiction; and few things would do more to help sell Worldcon to young people than a Hugo Award specifically for the books that young people read. It would do a lot to help the convention seem relevant to new generations of fans.

Unfortunately, from the point of view of award design, the YA proposals have been a nightmare. To start with there’s no clear definition of what YA means. In addition it is clear that YA books are not greatly disadvantaged in the Hugos because they keep getting nominated, and even win. Generally new categories are introduced to help works that are being missed out, not ones that are apparently punching their weight.

By the way, I’m sure that a lot of people out there are convinced that they have a watertight definition of what YA means. Unfortunately there are many different such definitions and none of them agree. A definition is pointless unless you can get most people to sign up to it.

Whenever a new category is proposed, someone from SMOFdom always complains that people will be able to cheat their way to a Hugo because of it. This appears to be a Pavlovian reaction. I can’t really see writers trying to pretend that their books are YA in order to get into a supposedly weaker category. The opprobrium heaped upon them in social media would deter all but the most shameless. However, because we can’t pin down what YA means, there will be a lot of disagreement over whether the nominees should have been eligible. In particular I expect that the Hugo voters will nominate works that many people in the YA community think are not YA, and much yelling will result.

One possible solution to this, which was proposed by Colin Harris at the debate in Chicago, is simply to allow works to be eligible in more than one category. Then you would not need to make decisions about eligibility. However, while most authors won’t have the chutzpah to pass their books off as YA when they are clearly not, fans have no shame when it comes to voting for their favorite writers. Allowing works to compete in both YA and the adult categories would, I think, increase the likelihood that works did get nominated in two categories. China Miéville? Railsea is totally YA. Connie Willis? She’s a woman, she must be writing for kids. George Martin? The central characters are teenagers, how can it not be YA?

Furthermore, the idea that you can’t win two Hugos for the same work has been enshrined in WSFS lore for decades. When Colin first proposed his amendment my reaction was that he was trying to wreck the motion by adding a “poison pill” clause. As it turns out, it appears his concern was genuine, but even so there are bound to have been people who were wavering who will have come down against the motion because Colin’s amendment was accepted.

To my mind the most interesting argument against the proposal was made by Chris Garcia. He said that the last thing that young people want is to have bunch of old folks telling them what they should read. A YA Hugo would only make sense, therefore, if it were voted on by young people.

I have heard this argument advanced before, including by some actual youngsters, though I have no idea how prevalent the sentiment is. It does, however, offer a way out of the predicament.

Firstly the idea of the voters deciding what is YA and what isn’t makes much more sense if the voters in question are actually all young people. It would be hard for anyone to argue with that. Also it would be entirely reasonable for a work to be eligible in two categories if the electorates for those two categories were different. Then having a YA book win both the adult and YA categories would mean something.

So, would this be possible? I can hear the SMOFs stirring already. They will complain that unscrupulous fans will pretend to be kids in order to be allowed to vote in the YA category. We could get around that by saying that you had to vote in either the YA or adult categories, but I’d prefer not to keep the kids out of the other awards. We’d therefore need some means of verifying that WSFS members were entitled to vote on the YA award. If they are attending members that’s OK as Worldcons now have youth memberships, and it is pretty obvious when you arrive whether you are a kid or not. For supporting members it will be harder, but hopefully not impossible. As is their wont, some of the SMOFs will say that we mustn’t adopt such a system unless it can be proved to be flawless, but they say that about every rule change and we always ignore them.

I suspect we’d need a cheaper supporting membership, because even the $40 that London is charging is steep for teenagers. I’d love to see WSFS working with schools and colleges to encourage young people to vote.

So, how about it? A YA Hugo that is actually for young people, rather than being just us oldies telling kids what is good for them? How can we make this work?

Big In Manitoba

~ Cheryl

My Google Alerts (for Worldcon, I don’t have one for myself) have just delivered a link to this article from The Manitoban, “The Students’ Newspaper of the University of Manitoba”. It is about the Hugo Ceremony streaming fiasco, and it quotes one “organizer and Hugo-winning editor Cheryl Morgan” as its primary source. I’m guessing that author, Tom Ingram is a journalism student, as he has carefully taken things I presented as conjecture and turned them into statements of fact, just like a professional newspaper would. However, he’s got the message spot on. “Ultimately, this is the price of free services on the Internet.”. Well said Tom, and thank you.

The WSFA Small Press Award

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

This is a favorite award of mine, and one I’m growing even more fond of now I have my own publishing company and bookstore. The Washington Science Fiction Association (that’s Washington DC, not Washington State) gives out an award each year to a fine short story published by a small press. The nominees for 2012 were released just before Worldcon and the news got a bit buried by the Hugo excitement, so I’m giving them a signal boost. Besides, You can buy lots of the nominees in my store.

The full list of nominees is available here. I’d like to highlight the following.

From Clarkesworld we have “A Militant Peace” by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell (issue #62) and “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by Lily Yu (issue #55).

From Fantasy we have “Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg (issue #54).

From Twelfth Planet Press there’s “The Patrician” from Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Love and Romanpunk collection.

And from Book View Café we have “What Ho, Automaton!” by Chris Dolley, which is available in the anthology Shadow Conspiracy, Volume II (edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff) and as a stand-alone volume. Chris has produced a celebratory version of the stand-alone book with steampunk-themed drop caps. As I know some ereaders mess up dropcaps I’ve left both versions available when you buy the book.

Finally, though sadly not in the store, I’d like to mention “Yesterday’s Taste” by Lawrence M. Schoen which appeared in Transtories, the last book edited by my much missed friend, Colin Harvey. Colin would have been so proud.

Semiprozine – It’s Not That Hard

~ Cheryl ~ 18 Comments

Listening to the Coode Street Podcast today, I noticed that Jonathan had completely misunderstood the nature of the changes to the semiprozine category. I’ve left a comment on his blog, but I figured it might be helpful to post it here as well, because I suspect that many other people are also confused.

Here’s the easy version.

If no money changes hands then it is a fanzine.

If the contributors get paid but the staff of the magazine do not, then it is a semiprozine.

If the staff of the magazine get paid then it is professional.

For those who are still confused, here’s some elaboration.

The basic fan ethic is that you do what you do for the love of it, not to make money. The only “payment” fans should expect for what they do is that fans who benefit from their work should also do things on a volunteer basis to pay back for all of the free stuff they have received from others.

However, as with all artistic activity, not all creativity is commercial. Our writers need money to support them. Fans can help by creating publishing companies and magazines that take in money to pay the writers, and cover costs. Provided that the fans themselves don’t take payment, they are still operating within the fan ethic.

If, on the other hand, the staff of the magazine get paid, then clearly they are running the magazine as industry professionals and should be judged as such.

There are, of course, inevitable wrinkles and complications, because real life is not as simple as award rules, but the above outlines the basic principles on which the split is based.

Hugos Webcast: The Replay

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I have a press release from Chicon 7 announcing that the full webcast of the Hugo Award ceremony will soon be available from UStream. The key part of the text is as follows:

To makeup for the disruption to the original broadcast, Ustream will feature the full un-edited and bot-free ceremony on its Homepage this Sunday, September 9, starting at 7 p.m. CT. Ustream will also run the broadcast ad-free on the Worldcon Hugo Awards channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/hugo-awards, and provide additional marketing and promotional support to raise the profile of the event. The broadcast will subsequently be available from the same channel on an on-demand basis. Ustream has also offered additional support and publicity for the streaming of future Hugo Award Ceremonies for upcoming Worldcons in San Antonio, TX (2013) and London, UK (2014).

Well done Dave McCarty for negotiating this. I’m now thinking that it was a stroke of genius on Kevin’s part to ask the out-going Worldcon chair to replace René Walling as chair of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee, because it gave Dave exactly the right hats he needed to do this. Of course we had no idea it would be needed, but we’ll take the coincidence and run with it.

The Hugos: What’s Changed?

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

After every Worldcon one of the things I try to do is set out very clearly what has changed in the rules. With the caveat that Kevin is on a train and can’t check what I’m saying, here’s what I think this year’s changes are.

1. Graphic Story is now a full-fledged category and will continue indefinitely. I must admit that I’d expected to see it dropped this year when the sunset clause was debated. However, the Business Meeting appears to have taken the category to its heart and is happy to keep it. I somehow doubt that this will improve the knowledge of comics displayed by the voters, at least in the short term, but at least there’s evidence that people do care about the category.

2. Best Fancast is now a real category and will continue at least until 2016 when it will have to go through the same sunset clause thing that Graphic Story had to face. Also audio and video productions — the sort of things that qualify for Fancast — will no longer be eligible in Best Fanzine as they were this year.

3. The raft of changes to the Fanzine and Semiprozine category were also ratified. An attempt by hardliners to exclude electronic fanzines was defeated (I keep hoping they’ll give up, but I may have to wait for them to die). The main result of these changes will be that Locus is no longer eligible in Semiprozine as it has full-time staff. Liza Groen Trombi is, of course, still eligible in Best Editor: Short Form.

The other motion that was debated was the proposal for a YA category. That was defeated, so no changes result. As to why it was defeated, that’s going to require a separate post, which I will write when I don’t have a headache because the issues are really very complicated with good points and bad on both sides.

If you want to listen to the debate on the three changes listed above, you can do so here.

Facts Are Not Opinions

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today SF Signal has a new Mind Meld post up discussing the lack of non-Anglo writers in the Hugo Awards. This is a subject dear to my heart. Indeed, one of the many reasons I suggested setting up the Translation Awards was to encourage fans to read more translated fiction so that it might stand a better chance in the Hugos. If people don’t know about books, they are not going to vote for them. I was delighted to see the success this year of Ken Liu and E. Lily Yu, together with the Translation Award wins for Chinese writers Chen Qiufan and Huang Fan. I was also very sad to see that Hannu Rajaniemi’s wonderful The Quantum Thief missed getting on the Best Novel ballot by just one vote. Personally I also wanted to see Lavie Tidhar’s Osama on the ballot, but I seem to be in more of a minority there.

Of course one of the reasons why the Hugos are dominated by works in English, mainly works by Americans, is because English speakers, mainly Americans, make up the vast majority of the electorate. The Voter Packet and cheaper Supporting Memberships will hopefully help change that, as will outreach to European fans by the London Worldcon. But another good reason why certain works don’t do well is that people simply don’t know they can vote for them. I have gone on at length before about the people who choose not to vote because they have deemed themselves unworthy of having a vote. It is also true that people don’t vote for works because they think they are not eligible, when in fact they are. I was therefore deeply disappointed to find one of the Mind Meld contributors, Canadian writer Chris Galvin Nguyen, say the following:

Also, at present, for a work to be eligible, it must be from the US or must be a foreign work that was first translated or made available in the US within the previous year (even if it was published earlier in another country). Maybe it’s time to widen the field of eligibility as well. [Her emphasis]

That’s so far from the truth that even Paul Ryan might blush while saying it.

I have no idea how Nguyen came to think that was true. She has clearly been reading the Hugo Awards website, and what she says there is directly contradicted by something she quotes from that website. But equally I find it hard to blame her. To start with I wrote most of that website, and clearly didn’t explain well enough for her (see this great post by Justine Larbalestier on authors and being misunderstood). Also the idea that the Hugos are limited to Americans, or books published in America, is something I see crop up time and time again, despite all of my efforts to counter it. Sadly now I’m going to get people pointing to SF Signal as proof that I don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to the Hugo rules.

Where I do think this should have been stopped is at the editorial level. Kevin and I have spent enough time doing podcasts with John DeNardo about the Hugo rules. People at SF Signal should have that what Nguyen wrote was untrue. I know that the Mind Meld is supposed to be for people to give their opinions, but allowing people to say things that are completely false just to generate controversy is not, in my opinion, good journalism. I’m disappointed that, so soon after winning their first Hugo, SF Signal should publish something that is so badly wrong, and so damaging to the reputation of the Awards.

For the record, works are eligible for the Hugos as follows:

1. On first publication, no matter where in the world they are published, or what language they are published in. It also doesn’t matter whether the work is published professionally or self-published; whether publication is on paper or electronic; and you don’t have to submit your work, or pay a fee, in order for it to be considered.

2. On first publication in English. So if your work was first published in a language other than English, and then published in translation in a later year, you get two years of eligibility.

3. If the Eligibility Extension rule is in place, a work can also get a third year of eligibility on first US publication if all previous publications were outside of the US.

So works first written in languages other than English and published outside of the US are not only eligible, they can get up to three years of eligibility.

Nguyen also asked why the Eligibility Extension is renewed each year rather than being a fixed part of the WSFS Constitution. That’s a good question. The reason is that the Extension is presumed to be there to help non-US works in years when the majority of voters are American. The assumption is that when Worldcon takes place outside of the USA the majority of voters will not be American and the Extension may not be needed. From memory, the only time that the Business Meeting decided not to approve the Extension was for 2005 when Worldcon was in Glasgow. For Yokohama, Montreal and Melbourne the Extension was approved even though Worldcon was outside of the USA.

Update: Gender corrected for Chris Galvin Nguyen with profuse apologies from me and huge thanks to Aliette de Bodard for catching my mistake so quickly.

Hugo Ceremony Follow-Up

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

UStream have issued an apology and explanation, which pretty much confirms what happened with the Hugos webcast. You can read it here. My thanks to the people who pointed me to it.

The facts of the matter are pretty much as most people had anticipated. The Hugo Ceremony was pulled by automatic software that the UStream staff on duty that night could do little about. That software is now under review. I suspect that it is so trigger happy at the moment because of the Olympics. Usain Bolt gets the job done in under 10 seconds, and that’s shorter than most movie clips anyone is likely to show. Highlights of other sporting events also come in very short, and people do try to make money off showing them. It is good to have this issue raised, because a lot of people are liable to fall foul of it in future. The solution for Worldcon, however, is different.

UStream points out that Chicon could have signed up for a professional account that would have been a) ad free and b) pre-approved so immune from the software bots. That’s certainly something that San Antonio should consider. However, there is a snag. The sign-up details for the professional account are here. As you will see, the cheapest option available costs $99/month. Worldcon does precisely two webcasts per year: the nominee announcement and the award ceremony. So that’s a total cost of $594 per webcast. It is better than setting up your own webcasting service, but it is not cheap.

Of course it could be sponsored. You would think that a few hundred dollars a year would be easier to get than a few thousand. Also it may be that UStream will negotiate and allow us to pay only for the two months that we need. I note that CoverItLive did that for Kevin. Our web hosts, Laughing Squid, have also been very understanding of the intermittent nature of our traffic. I shall leave Kevin and the newly appointed chair of the Hugo Award Marketing Committee, Dave McCarty, to sort it out.

In the meantime, do keep yelling. I don’t like the idea of the Internet being run by software bots any more than anyone else. At least not until those bots are as smart and benevolent as Culture Minds. However, you should also never forget the cardinal rule of social networks: If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product, and must expect to be treated as such.

While I’m here, a couple of other points. There will be no Emerald City Best Dressed Award this year. Only the Galactic Suburbia crew bothered to send me a photo, so there’s not really much point in my judging it. I’ll have to wait until the next time I can actually get to a Hugo Ceremony and take the photos myself.

Also, a small complaint. In 2004 when I was at the pre-Hugo party I was impressed to see the toastmaster, Neil Gaiman, going round checking that he knew how to pronounce everyone’s name. I was impressed, and have tried to ensure that happens at any award ceremony I’m involved in. At Chicon both Stan Schmidt and John Scalzi neglected this simple piece of courtesy. Please, Hugo Ceremony Directors, make sure that your presenters are better briefed in future.

The Hugos and the UStream Fiasco

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

As reported earlier, I was up at 1:30am this morning to help Kevin and Mur Lafferty host the live webcast of the Hugo Awards. As usual, we were doing text-based reporting via CoverItLive. In addition Chicon was streaming the video live through UStream.

I should note in starting that this is the first time I have actually been impressed with the video quality on UStream. It was watchable. If only it had lasted. But, as most of you probably know, UStream pulled the plug on us during Neil Gaiman’s acceptance speech for BDP: Short Form.

And no, that wasn’t because Neil said That Word again. Nor was it because of an unscheduled wardrobe malfunction by Amanda. The feed was pulled for copyright violation. Specifically Chicon had shown clips from the various BDP: Short Form nominees, and UStream deemed that to be in breach of copyright.

One immediate effect of that was that the audience Kevin & Mur had jumped from around 600 to more than double that, so thank you UStream for sending people our way. More on that later. The other immediate effect was a storm of protest on Twitter.

Lots of people were muttering about “fair use”. Actually, folks, that should have been irrelevant. When Kevin and I ran Events in Glasgow in 2005 I spent a lot of time emailing Hollywood studios to get permission to use the clips. (Many thanks to Craig Miller for his invaluable professional assistance with that.) Chicon should have done the same thing, and should have included information about the webcast. So unless something went badly wrong behind the scenes (I have asked Kevin to check, but whoever updated Wikipedia says permission had been granted) UStream pulled the feed because we showed clips that has been provided to us by the studios for the express purpose of being included in that feed.

How could this happen? Well, like all other social networks, UStream views its content providers as disposable. There are millions of them, after all. I’m pretty sure that the account Chicon had with them did not rate contact with an actual human being. A software system will have detected that we were showing material that was under copyright and pulled the plug automatically. It was late on Sunday night, the day before one of the biggest public holidays in the USA. The chances of reaching an actual human being who could reverse that were practically nil. It is, I’m afraid, a hazard of using services like UStream.

Back in 2005, before UStream existed, Kevin and I were very keen to webcast the ceremony. We talked to providers, got costings, and put a proposal before our management (Vincent Docherty and Colin Harris). Based on the costs, they said no, which we expected. I did try to get sponsorship, but none of the publishers were interested so the idea was dropped. I’m sure that the same technology still exists. It is probably cheaper now, and cheaper in the US than in the UK. I suspect that Chicon could have got it done for under $5k.

What’s more, I know that they had some sort of video link set up between Chicago and Atlanta so that Dragon*Con attendees could watch the Hugos too. So I suspect that a lot of the technology that they needed was already in place.

Future Worldcons will need to consider this problem. It may be that there is some sort of paid account you can get with UStream that will allow you to clear a webcast with them beforehand. If not there will be other services that do let you do that, you just have to pay them.

In the meantime we’ll probably continue doing the CoverItLive feeds, if only for the benefit of people who don’t have the bandwidth to watch streaming video or who, like the visitor we had from China, are unable to access Twitter in their country.

Even that, however, has problems. CiL now charges for shows that exceed a certain level of viewership. Kevin cleared the budget for the expected audience, but when the UStream feed went down the floor of new people blew us past our pre-paid limit and Kevin tells me that about 250 people were unable to log on. Our apologies for that. We’ll hopefully be better prepared next time.

Also I think next time we’ll drop the automatic inclusion of the Twitter hashtags. It overwhelmed our coverage last night. I would have done it myself except I’m still in bad odor with a lot of people in WSFS so I needed Kevin’s permission, and CiL’s private message system that allows webcast staff to communicate between themselves went down half way through the show.

All of this would, I suspect, be a lot easier if individual Worldcons were more willing to cooperate with the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. However, most of them are deeply suspicious, even with no involvement from me, and that makes Kevin’s life very difficult.

Bad Hugo Blogger

~ Cheryl

Excuses. I was out most of yesterday at meetings. I went to bed soon after getting home because I had to be up at 1:30am to help Kevin with the live coverage of the Hugo Ceremony. I’ve not gone back to bed as I need to catch an 8:00am train into Bristol for a business meeting. I may fall over when I get home. Hugo-related bloggage will happen, but not just yet.

In the meantime, the results are here, and the stats breakdown is here (PDF).

What’s On Deck for WSFS?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

With Worldcon starting today I figured that it was time to have a look at the things that the WSFS Business Meeting will be discussing. Kevin’s not involved in running the meeting this year, so I don’t have much of an inside track on the gossip. However, the agenda for the meeting is online here and the Chicon staff have done a good job in getting all of the motions online too.

Passed on from Reno are two motions affecting the Hugos. The first is the Best Fancast category, which I’m still very dubious about. While, thankfully, no one is trying to kick podcasts out of the Hugos, the idea of protecting fanzines from other forms of fan publication does not sit well with me.

The other change up for ratification is the one that attempts to clarify the divisions between professional, semi-pro and fan publications. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever will be, and it is better than what we had before.

There are two new motions affecting the Hugos up for debate. The first is very simple. It seeks to remove the sunset clause on the Graphic Story category, therefore ensuring that the category continues in future years instead of being dropped next year. Given how poorly the category has worked, I’m afraid I don’t see any justification for keeping it.

The second motion proposes the establishment of a new category for YA fiction. I see that it sensibly stipulates that any work that is nominated for this would not be eligible for other fiction categories. That does mean that really good YA novels won’t win Best Novel, as they have many times in the past, but it also means that it won’t be possible to win both Best Novel and Best YA with the same work, which would upset a lot of people. I’m still ambivalent about this one, and I’ll be interested to hear how the debate goes.

Two other motions have been submitted. One is the usual continuation of the extra year of eligibility on first US publication. I expect this to go through on the nod. While the majority of voters are based on North America, this continues to be a valuable way of helping work published elsewhere.

Finally we have a piece of silliness from some Boston fans that I don’t understand because I’m not that much of an expert on fannish traditions. This one apparently dates back to 1940, and even I’m not that old. Hopefully it won’t upset too many people the way that the Pluto motion did a few years ago. Mind you, if it causes people to be late for tomorrow’s baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and my beloved San Francisco Giants there could be some very annoyed fans.

Hugos Best Dressed Contest

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

As you doubtless all know, I can’t be in Chicago for this year’s Hugo Award ceremony. This causes a bit of a problem for the annual Emerald City Best Dressed at the Hugos contest. However, Kevin and Mur Lafferty will be doing the usual live coverage of the festival on the Hugo Awards website. Here’s what I think we can do. If you are going to be at the Hugos, and you think you have a totally speccy outfit, send me a photo of you wearing it. I’ll keep the photos all under wraps until the ceremony, and I’ll pass them to Kevin so that he can add them to the coverage. The following day I’ll also post the photo gallery here. It’s not perfect, but it does have the advantage of allowing me to include nominees who can’t make it to Chicago (this means you, Galactic Suburbia people). Spread the word, please, people.