WSFS Business – The Preliminary Meeting

Today at Worldcon the Preliminary Business Meeting took place. This is the one that sorts out the agenda for the main meeting tomorrow. It is important because of a procedure called Objection to Consideration (OTC) through which motions deemed frivolous or a waste of time can be removed from the agenda entirely. Some resolutions, including the Hugo Award Eligibility Extension, can also be discussed as they do not involve actual amendments to the WSFS Constitution.

Kevin kept up a tweet stream throughout, but that’s hard to follow so I recommend this live blog of the meeting by Rachel Acks. She’s clearly partial, but she has most of the salient issues covered very clearly. Here are the highlights.

The motion to remove some of the fan categories had a 16 ton OTC dropped upon it, as I rather suspected it would. It was silly and a bit spiteful.

The same fate befell the “Very Short Form Dramatic Presentation” proposal. I suspect this is mainly because people expected it to become dominated by trailers for the same films that end up in Long Form.

A new motion, that I hadn’t seem come in, to expand Fan Artist to cover more types of art, will get debate time. My initial impression is that anything that can improve interest in this category is good, though I’m sure people will complain about having to compare apples to oranges.

The Hugo Award Eligibility Extension was passed almost unanimously. I’m very pleased about this because it means that WSFS has finally accepted that the Extension is about works from all over the world, not a special sop to UK-published works. It also acknowledges that, thanks to population sizes, the majority of voters will probably be US-based every year for a while yet.

There was a daft proposal to add an Eligibility Extension to the Retro Hugos. London is running 1939 Retros, so an extension would have included works published outside of the US prior to 1939 1938, and published in the US in 1939 1938. Given that the purpose of the extension to is allow US voters time to read the works, and that they will have had 75 years to do so, I fail to understand what different more time would make.

Then again, the intention became obvious with the next motion. You see, The Hobbit was published in the UK in 1938 1937. An extension would have allowed it to be included in the 1939 Retro Hugos. A special plea to have it included anyway was also rejected. If we are going to have Retro Hugos (which I am increasingly thinking was a Very Bad Idea) then can we at least keep to the works published in the year in question and not add works from other years just because they are very popular?

There were also a whole bunch of suggestions for making eligibility extensions easier, including one that would make the main one a permanent feature rather than having to be voted on every year. Given that is passes almost unanimously every year, I can see people not wanting to waste time on it, but equally I’m happy to argue for it every year if necessary.

And now for the one contentious part of the meeting: the YA Hugo.

At the start of the meeting the proposer of that motion asked to withdraw it. I think that was a sensible move, because the motion as it stood would have failed, and would have further soured people on the whole idea of a YA Hugo. Unfortunately you can’t withdraw a motion once it has been submitted without unanimous consent, and someone insisted on having a debate. I don’t know whether that was an overly enthusiastic supporter, or someone trying to stir up trouble, but the effect was trouble all the same.

Because the motion had to be debated, and because the mover wanted it removed, the only thing to do was to raise an OTC. Given that the maker of the motion didn’t want it debated, and it was unpopular anyway, it didn’t surprise me that the OTC passed. But of course Twitter was then full of people complaining about how the Evil SMOFs had stomped on the YA Hugo yet again, and ignoring the context of what had gone on in the meeting.

Towards the end of the meeting, as Rachel explains, Kevin moved to create a committee to study the issue of the YA Hugo and report back next year. This is a very promising development, because it provides a venue for the supporters of the motion and sympathetic BM regulars to get together and thrash out something that has a chance of getting passed. Kevin and I have both volunteered to be on the committee. It will need some work, and compromise on both sides, but I’m hopeful that we can come up with something that is going to get young people involved in the Hugos.

If you are interested in being involved in the YA Hugo Committee, let me know and I will pass your name on to the appropriate people. Ideally you need to do so tomorrow, though I suspect that there will be means of adding people later.

Those were the main highlights from today. The video of the meeting should be online in a day or so. I was also pleased to hear Kevin note that there was a very big turnout. The more people get involved, the better the BM will be able to reflect the wishes of fandom at large, rather than just the few people willing to go to meetings.

More New Business

The WSFS Business Meeting Agenda for Lone Star Con 3 is getting busier and busier. You can see the whole thing here. I’m going to focus on a few things briefly.

The motion that used to be called No Cheap Voting is now called No Representation Without Taxation. That might be intended to be a cheap dig at British fans, but aside from that it is a vast improvement.

A rather better formulation of the same idea is Keep Us Together which basically states that a WSFS Membership is a WSFS Membership and you should not create classes of membership that carry with them only some of those rights. It also explicitly acknowledges that Worldcons offer Admission as well and Membership, and that people who buy admission tickets are not WSFS Members (at least in part because they buy them too late to be able to exercise many of the rights of membership), which is a good thing.

There are motions to do with the rules about publications that essentially make electronic publications the norm. There’s some argument over whether protection needs to be provided for those who cannot, or do not wish, to receive electronic publications. This will save money, though it is not guaranteed to reduce the cost of a Supporting Membership because of the link to the Site Selection voting fee. Still, it is a step in the right direction.

There are a couple of motions to introduce new categories of Dramatic Presentation — one for fan works, one for very short works. I have no firm views on this, other than that we need to trial them, and not make them permanent categories from day one.

And finally there is a YA Hugo category motion, which makes me want to weep because it is so badly written. I have some sympathy with the basic idea, but I can’t see many people supporting a motion that says that an author who has written an adult book and a YA book in the same year can only be eligible in one of the categories. There are people (including Kevin) who are very willing to help people draft motions. I do wish more people would take advantage of that.

Sense of Community

There has been a lot of debate around this year’s Business Meeting motions since I wrote about them last week. Kevin tells me that elsewhere it is being said that anyone who is against the “No Cheap Voting” motion must be in favor of free voting. They’ll probably carry on doing that no matter what I say. If you are interested, Seanan McGuire has a lot to say about why some sort of cost to participate is necessary, and she’s right.

There has also been a lot of discussion about the economics of membership, and possible changes to the WSFS Constitution that might allow us to lower the cost of a Supporting Membership. These are good discussions to have, and I hope we can get the cost down further. However, such discussions are irrelevant to the “No Cheap Voting” proposal. It doesn’t talk about what the price should be; it simply seeks to establish, as a matter of principle, that lack of wealth should be a barrier to participation. If it passes, I fully expect people to argue that, regardless of the economics, the price of a Supporting Membership can never be reduced below the roughly $40 that London is charging, because that would make it “cheap”. Then they’d start arguing that $40 is “cheap”, and begin asking bids if they will increase the cost of a Supporting Membership in line with the will of the Business Meeting.

A much more relevant issue is that is the concept of a “sense of community”. People are saying that they want Hugo voters to feel that they belong to the World Science Fiction Society, and that somehow paying a lot of money for the privilege will give them this sense of belonging. I’d like to look at that idea in more detail.

I accept the fact that there are people who think that the only “true” members of WSFS are the people who go to Worldcon every year, and actually help create the event. They have clearly invested far more than just money in the event. Some would like to restrict voting in the Hugos to that group (and indeed participation in the Business Meeting is still restricted to that group). For them, a Supporting Membership is simply a means of allowing people who would otherwise be regulars to keep up their participation in those few years when actually attending is impossible for some reason. It is a valid position to hold, but one I disagree with. Once the convention grew beyond the size that all of the people who attended could reasonably be involved in staging it, I believe that position became untenable.

The problem with the “sense of community” argument is that someone who pays $200 to attend when Worldcon is local to them, but never attends when it isn’t, is somehow deemed “part of the community” for that year and deserving of a vote, whereas someone who pays far less every year but never attends is somehow “not part of the community”. I think that this is thoroughly muddle-headed.

Someone who only ever interacts with Worldcon as a paying member when it is local to them, and who never takes part as other than an audience member, does not generally feel part of WSFS. Many of them don’t even bother to vote in the Hugos. They see Worldcon as a foreign event that costs a stupid amount to attend, but which they go to because of the big names they’ll get to see. Once the con is over, they have no interest in it until next time it is local.

The people who really feel part of Worldcon, and of WSFS, are the people who will go to Worldcon when it is local, and will buy a Supporting Membership in years when it isn’t so that they can carry on being part of the excitement. That’s the sort of community I want to foster. It may well be that someone who lives in, say, Japan or Australia can only afford to attend Worldcon one year in ten when the convention comes to their part of the world. That’s inevitable with an international event.

Colin Harris said yesterday in a comment that there is a feeling amongst Worldcon regulars that the Hugos are becoming dominated by people who are only interested in the Hugos, and have no interest in Worldcon. Presumably that’s because the proportion of voters who have supporting memberships rather than attending memberships is going up. Maybe some of those people genuinely don’t care about Worldcon, but it is my contention that most of them do. Most of them would love to attend regularly, they just can’t afford to. They are amongst that group of people who will attend on that one year in ten when Worldcon is local to them, but will buy Supporting Memberships the rest of the time.

Furthermore, I maintain that if those people are buying Supporting Memberships whenever Worldcon isn’t local, then they are far more likely to volunteer to help stage it when it does come back. And indeed they are more likely to become part of a bid to bring it back. That’s what community building is all about.

So how can we foster this sense of belonging? How can we encourage people to become part of WSFS every year? Well, a cheap Voting Membership is a possible tactic. It has been suggested, but hasn’t been tried. Personally I would prefer to have Worldcon find other things that it can offer to Supporting Members that would encourage more people to think that $40 was a reasonable price, but I appreciate that can be difficult to achieve.

What certainly won’t foster a sense of community, except amongst some of those who are already members, is passing motions that appear to be specifically designed to make that community seem elitist. The question is, what sort of community do you want: one where you dig in, protect what is yours, and don’t let anyone else join; or one that is open and welcoming to as many like-minded people as possible?

If Worldcon is to be a truly international event, and especially in a time when international travel is becoming more difficult rather than less so, I think it is inevitable that people who want to support Worldcon will outnumber those who can actually attend. Let’s welcome those people, find more ways to get them involved, and build a bigger sense of community.

New ESFS Website

One of the results of the new management team for the European Science Fiction Society has been a brand new look for their website. It is now much more slick and easily navigable. Well done, folks.

Now if only something similar could happen with WSFS…

WSFS: The Old Pharts Fight Back

The agenda for this year’s WSFS Business Meeting has been published, and with it the usual collection of new business for consideration.

There has been quite a lot of discussion elsewhere already about the proposal to scrap three (but oddly not all) of the fan categories in the Hugos. I don’t think I need to add to that. You only have to read the commentary on the motion to see that it is the work of someone with a bee in his bonnet. The logic of it has been thoroughly dissected elsewhere. I guess it would be amusing to see it actually get debated, because some people would end up saying some very weird things on the record, but I’m expecting this to suffer Objection To Consideration at the Friday meeting. It you can spare the time to drop by on Friday to make sure it doesn’t get any further, please do so.

A rather more serious piece of business is the one called “No Cheap Voting”. Here is the text, to save you clicking through to read it.

4.1.1 Short Title: No Cheap Voting

Moved, to add a new subsection following existing section 1.5.7:

Section 1.5.X: No membership that includes any WSFS voting right may be sold by a Worldcon for less than that Worldcon’s supporting membership rate when it was initially selected.

Commentary: These voting rights are a perquisite of Worldcon membership. Anything including the same for less is distorted by definition.

The title of the motion, and the use of the word “distorted” should be enough to tell you that this too is the work of people who are angry about the way the world is going, and want to roll things back. But what is it all about?

Well, for a long time people have been complaining that voting in the Hugo Awards is too expensive. I agreed with them, and so did many other people. As a result, some steps have been taking to reduce the cost.

The main issue here is that voting in the Hugos is a right that one obtains by becoming a member of Worldcon. For a long time conservatives have tried to claim that being a “member” means actually attending the convention, but voting at the convention hasn’t been required for ages. Worldcons have long sold “supporting memberships” that allow people who can’t afford to attend to still participate in the event.

However, supporting memberships are still fairly expensive. For the current Worldcon in San Antonio they cost $60. London, to my horror, is not currently advertising a rate for supporting memberships. I very much hope that this is an error in their website, and not policy.

There are various reasons for the high price. Partly you get things other than the voting rights for a supporting membership, such as the program book and progress reports, which cost money to produce. And partly supporting memberships are tied into the site selection process. You have to buy at least a supporting membership to vote in site selection, and Worldcons have become dependent on the revenue from site selection to provide the initial cash flow that they need on becoming seated. Some progress was made last year, but supporting memberships can’t get too much cheaper without causing financial hardship to Worldcons, unless some other means of obtaining an initial cash injection is found.

Without cheaper supporting memberships, it might seem that Hugo voting cannot get any cheaper, but that’s not the case. There is nothing in the WSFS Constitution that would prevent a Worldcon from adopting a new class of membership: a Voting Membership. It would carry with it no rights other than voting in the Hugos, and would therefore be pure profit for the Worldcon. If it was priced suitably, it could result in a significant additional source of income, as well as increasing participation in Hugo voting.

The purpose of this new motion is to prevent Worldcons from ever creating this sort of membership.

That is, its purpose is to prevent the “Wrong Sort of Fan” from participating in the Hugos: young people, poor people, people from countries where $60 is a huge amount of money, and so on.

The commentary on the motion is a piece of ridiculous sophistry. A membership is a membership. There is no reason why creating a new type of membership would be a “distortion”, unless you have the sort of mindset that holds that allowing people who are poorer than you to vote is a “distortion”.

This motion is an attempt by people who already have voting privileges to prevent those privileges from being extended to others. It also cuts Worldcons off from a potentially very lucrative source of income. I want to see it voted down.

Geek Girls in New Statesman

Yesterday’s New Statesman had an article about the Fake Geek Girl phenomenon. This was something of a surprise for a fairly mainstream political newspaper. But even more surprising was that they linked to the Hugo Awards website and my article about the Hugos on For Books Sake. This makes me happy about having written for a more mainstream site. It also reminds me that I have another piece to deliver shortly.

Coode Street, Adventure Rocketship, Translations and Gatekeepers

The latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast includes some discussion of political science fiction. Along the way Jonathan makes mention of Adventure Rocketship #1, which he says has some “really strong stories” in it. He singles out Tim Maughan’s story, “Flight Path Estate”, for particular praise. I am a very proud publisher.

Of course, being praised by the Mullahs of Coode Street will ruin Tim’s street cred for all eternity. But I am cruel and heartless, and also I have this new trick of embedding an audio player, so if you want to listen to what Jonathan has to say you can do so here:



Also in the podcast, the boys discuss the short lists for the SF&F Translation Awards. This makes me very happy, and also gives me another opportunity to plug Karin Tidbeck’s wonderful Jagannath. I hope to be recording an episode of Small Blue Planet featuring Karin sometime soon.

Finally the boys discuss how one gets to be an “insider” in the SF&F community. Karen Burnham and I were mentioned specifically by name, and I always try to respond to the Summon Cheryl spell, so I guess I should say something about how it was for me.

I must start by noting that there are all sorts of levels of privilege that facilitated my becoming known by people who might be regarded as gatekeepers (including Gary and Jonathan). I’m white; I come from an English-speaking country; I had a good education, including parents who indulged my reading habit; and I have had sufficient disposable income and work-related travel to allow me to attend many conventions.

On the other hand, I’m also female and trans, which ought to count against me (unless you are one of those people who believe that trans women are “really” men and benefit from male privilege at all times). So how did I get in? Well, I thought to myself, I knew people. Dave Langford and Martin Hoare were friends before I ever went to a Worldcon. I met Kevin at the first Worldcon I attended, and that must have helped.

Then I stopped, because I realized I was telling myself that I only got an in because of who I was sleeping with. And maybe that is true of me, some people certainly think it is, but I refuse to believe that it is true for every woman who makes a name for herself in the community.

(Update: for the benefit of people with over-active imaginations, I should point out that Dave and Martin are just friends. I’m very happy with Kevin and see no need to build up a harem.)

I think it is complicated. And to illustrate that I invite you to consider some of this year’s WSFS business. As many of you will know, someone has decided to propose that we scrap all of the fan Hugos. I’m not going to have a rant about that. Other people have been doing the job for me. What I want to do is note that there are many reasons why people advocate killing the fan categories. They include:

  • That they keep getting won by professionals
  • That they bring the Hugos into disrepute because they result in non-professionals winning awards
  • That they are won by people who are too old
  • That they are won by people who are too young
  • That they are won by the “wrong sort of fan” (i.e., fans of the wrong thing)
  • That they are won by people who are “not part of our community” (i.e., people who might be fans of the right thing, but whom we’ve not heard of before)

What all of these things have in common is that there are people who think that the fan Hugos are being won by people who are, to use the favorite SMOF term, “not worthy”. It is a very common meme, and it doesn’t just get applied to people who win awards. In fandom it tends to get applied by members of one subgroup against any member of another subgroup who achieves success beyond that subgroup.

So yeah, there is plenty of privilege involved. I accept that, and do what I can to make it easier for people who don’t have the advantages I had. But privilege is generally not enough. You do have to be prepared to work at it too.

That’s The Way To Do It!

Mr. Punch dealt with people who annoyed him by whacking them over the head with his stick. These days, violence of that sort is frowned upon, but you can still whack annoying people over the head metaphorically by doing good work. The response to an appalling racist diatribe by one maverick SFWA member last week was a spontaneous fund raising drive for the Carl Brandon Society and related causes that raised just short of $17,000.

WHACK!

That’s the way to do it! 🙂

Well done, science fiction and fantasy community.

Thank You, Finland

I’m back home in the frozen wastes of the UK. I’m missing Finland already, and only in part because the weather is so much better there.

The main point of this post is to say Thank You! once again to Finnish fandom for being so friendly and hospitable, and for running such fun conventions. That goes double for Otto and Paula, who once again proved to be fabulous hosts, and this year also to Jukka and Eemeli for taking the time to show me around their proposed Worldcon facilities.

This year, however, I get to give special thanks to everyone. At the end of Ã…con I was presented with a Certificate of Adoption into Finnish Fandom. It is beautifully illustrated by Jukka Halme Petri Hiltunen. I don’t have a picture as yet because it has to go off to Jyväskylä to be signed by Irma Hirsjärvi, my official adoptive mother. (Otto is the adoptive father). I should be able to take it home from Finncon in July, and will post a picture then.

See what I mean. They are lovely people.

So I guess I am now fannishly a Finn. Which probably means that I’ll be expected to be on convention committees. 😉

Small Blue Planet: France

C’est animé? C’est vivant? Je ne sais pas. La traduction, elle est difficile.

Especially when you are as bad at languages as I am.

Thankfully my guests on Small Blue Planet are very good at English. Many thanks to Mélanie Fazi and Lionel Davoust for their wonderful tour of French science fiction and fantasy. Also thanks as ever to our wonderful producer, Karen Burnham, and to Kevin for being the emergency holographic sound recordist.

Along the way we talk about French conventions, the best award trophy in the world, how the UK came to be a fundamentalist Mormon state, Brian Stableford’s amazing translation work, and some of the best SF&F writers working in French today.

As ever, the podcast is available via the Locus Roundtable.

Amazing En Español

I’m delighted to see that Amazing Stories will start covering SF news in Spanish as well as English, thanks to my Peruvian friend, Tanya Tynjälä. Tanya’s husband is Finnish (hence the last name) and I should be seeing her in Helsinki later this year. I’ll see if I can arrange a chat with her while I’m there.

News From Eurocon

This year’s Eurocon is taking place in Kiev this weekend. I didn’t make it, the whole thing got to be far too difficult and expensive. But a lot of people I know are there, and there appears to have been something of a revolution. For as long as I can remember, the European Science Fiction Society has been run by the same small group of people. Now we have a new committee. They are as follows:

  • Chair: Carolina Gomez-Lagerlöf (Sweden)
  • Vice-chair: Saija Kyllönen (Finland)
  • Secretary: Gareth Kavanagh (Ireland)
  • Treasurer: Vanja Kranjcevic (Croatia)
  • Awards administrator: Bridget Wilkinson (UK)

That’s a much more diverse group than before, and one I expect to be a lot more open and proactive. Carolina should be known to most Worldcon and Eastercon regulars, and she chaired a very successful Eurocon in Stockholm a few years ago which revitalized Swedish fandom.

The other piece of news I have is that the 2015 Eurocon will be in St. Petersburg over the weekend April 23-25. (2014 is in Dublin the weekend after the London Worldcon).

Given the reaction I got when I reported that the Russians were bidding, I’m expecting people to start demanding that we boycott the convention because of Russia’s attitudes towards QUILTBAG folk. Before you say anything, I want you to take a look at this website.

OK, I know most of you won’t have clicked through. That’s the English-language version of the website for Coming Out, the St. Petersburg LGBT organization. They do exist. They haven’t been banned. Earlier this month they celebrated the city’s first ever Week of Transgender Visibility. Their report on the event says:

On March 31 – the International Day of Transgender Visibility – a mass rally was planned to draw attention of the public and law enforcement authorities to the problem of discrimination against transgender and transsexual people and other gender minorities. 9 administrative districts of St. Petersburg refused Coming Out permission to carry out the rally. One of the refusals referred to the “propaganda” law, despite the Russian Supreme Court’s decision of October 2012, which stated that rallies in support of LGBT rights are not to be considered propaganda.

This is the first case of the “propaganda” law being used against transgender people.”Coming Out” intends to challenge the administration’s ban in the city and national courts and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights.

I note that St. Petersburg has 18 administrative districts, so a full half of them gave permission for the rally, and they have the support of the Russian Supreme Court. I don’t know the details of this “propaganda” law, but it sounds very much like the UK’s notorious Section 28. I can just imagine what British fans would have said if there had been calls to boycott the 1995 Wordcon because of that. Obviously it is tough for QUILTBAG people in Russia right now, but that means people like the folks who run Coming Out need our support and encouragement.

And, you know, that could be quite a year for the Baltic. Eurocon in St. Petersburg followed by Worldcon in Helsinki.

The Five Percent Rule

Hugo Award LogoEvery year when the Hugo Award nominees or winners are announced, someone finds something to complain about. This year one of the obvious targets is the fact that only three works made it onto the ballot for Short Story because of something called the “5% Rule”. I have seen this described as “shameful”, as if some dreadful moral failing can be ascribed to, well, someone. Perhaps the mysterious “They”, who are often cited as the secret cabal that decides who gets what in the Hugos. As is usually the case, this is more an issue of statistics and rules than any deliberate malfeasance.

We should start with a few facts. This rule is not new. It has been in force longer than I have been involved with the Hugos, and has been invoked before. Kevin says it dates back to 1980. It does not apply only to the Short Story category. It is simply that the typical distribution of nominations in that category makes it more likely to fall foul of the rule than other categories. There is no conspiracy to defraud short story writers of their rightful nominations. Indeed, given that the Hugos have categories for three different lengths of short fiction, you could argue that they have more chances at a rocket than anyone else.

So what is this rule? What does it say, and why is it there? Here is the actual text from the WSFS Constitution:

3.8.5: No nominee shall appear on the final Award ballot if it received fewer nominations than five percent (5%) of the number of ballots listing one or more nominations in that category, except that the first three eligible nominees, including any ties, shall always be listed.

The first thing to note here is that whoever wrote the rule was well aware that it could result in a fairly thin category; hence the stipulation that there must always be at least three nominees. It is possible, though not likely, that none of the three stories on the ballot this year achieved 5% of the vote.

The purpose of the rule, fairly obviously, is that works must have a reasonable groundswell of support in order to get on the ballot. However, the reason why that might be a concern is not so obvious. So I’d like to take you all the way back in time to 2007.

That’s not long ago, but we’ve seen a huge increase in interest in the Hugos in recent years. In 2007, with Worldcon being held in Japan, only 409 people participated in the nominating stage of the awards (compared to 1343 this year). In Short Story only 214 people submitted nominations, which was actually quite high. For Fan Artist the number was 141 (statistics here). So the cut-off for getting on the ballot in Short Story was just 11 votes. For Fan Artist it was only 8.

There are two points to consider here. The first is, would you really want someone to be able to get on the ballot with less than 8 votes? Thankfully, for Fan Artist that year it wasn’t a problem. All of the people who did get on the ballot had well over the limit, because it was a case of the usual suspects getting nominations. For Short Story, however, there are different stories each year, and the spread of votes can be very broad and flat. All five nominees got over the 11 vote limit, but in the runners up there was one story on 14, one on 13, two on 12, two on 11, one on 10 and four on 9 (data here). It is all very tight. Ties for 5th place in Short Story are by no means unknown. And if the cut-off point is very low the chances of a 3- or 4-way tie for 5th place are quite high. We don’t want to be in a position where one vote could make a massive difference to how many people get on the ballot.

These days, of course, we have a lot more participation. The number of votes required to meet the magic 5% in Short Story this year was 34. We have no idea what the 4th and 5th place stories got, but I venture to suggest that the chances of a multi-way tie for 5th are a lot less than they would be if the cut-off was 11.

If we do want to make a change to the rule, what I would suggest is that we replace the limit of 5% with something like “5% or 30 votes, whichever is lower”. Obviously 30 is a number I have plucked out of the air, and I’m sure that there will be people who think it is shameful that any work should get on the ballot with less than a much larger number of votes. It is, however, a simple and workable solution, and in my opinion far better than abandoning the 5% rule altogether, which some people were calling for last night.

It would, of course, help us to make a decision if we knew the actual nominating numbers for Short Story this year. LoneStarCon 3 can’t release the numbers of votes for the three nominees, as that could influence the final ballot. However, they might feel that they can release the numbers (but not titles) of the stories that finished in 4th down to 10th. If it turns out that none of them got more than, say, 10 votes I’d venture to suggest that we are better off without them. If, on the other hand, 4th and 5th got 33 and 31 votes respectively then I think they deserved to be included.

Now it is up to fandom to decide what it wants. While not everyone can attend the Business Meeting, I’m sure that online debate will influence the opinions of people who can go. Have at it.

Juliet Looks To The Future

Juliet McKenna is, of course, best known for her epic fantasy writing, but the experience of chairing an Eastercon has clearly tweaked the SF writer side of her personality because she’s started to wonder what Eastercons will be like in 10 years time. You can find her speculations here.

These sort of things concern me too. I’m still a director of SFSFC, Inc, and in fact we have a board meeting on Saturday. I’m also a trustee of the BristolCon Foundation, which is currently busy expanding its activities outside of the actual convention. How to best manage fannish activities in a time of economic crisis, and with those responsible for doing the work seemingly getting older and older, is an ongoing worry.

I don’t want to get into yet another predictable discussion about the “greying of fandom” because those never seem to go anywhere, but if I have the time I might write something about fannish organizational structures, and the sorts of events that they can support.

Kevin Speculates

A mysterious post appeared on Kevin’s LiveJournal overnight under the title of “Pull Up the Gangplank”. It is very short so I’ll reproduce it here. He says:

I am convinced that there are a bunch of regular participants in Worldcon politics who would not have allowed themselves through the door when they found fandom if they applied the same standards to themselves then as they want to apply to new entrants today. This, to me, is like the depressingly large number of adults who, as far as I can tell, have completely forgotten what it was like to be a child.

Given that the post is tagged “fandom, worldcon, wsfs” I suspect that this has something to do with things being said on The List That Must Not Be Named, i.e. the SMOFs mailing list. Of course if Kevin told me what was being said there would be outrage at him having leaked private conversations to an enemy of fandom, so I can only wonder myself what might have brought this on. I do hope, however, that it results in actual proposals being brought before the WSFS Business Meeting in San Antonio, because I’d love to see those responsible standing up and arguing in public that Worldcon is their lawn and that kids need to be kept off it. We could do with some entertainment.

The World SF Travel Fund

Remember how we raised money to send Charles A. Tan to the World Fantasy Convention in 2011? And two Swedish ladies, Karin Tidbeck and Nene Ormes, to the 2012 event? Well that money has run out, so the folks at World SF are looking to fill their coffers again. They are hoping to raise $3000 to cover a two-year period. The 2013 beneficiaries, who will attend the Brighton World Fantasy, are Csilla Kleinheincz from Hungary and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz from the Philippines via the Netherlands. There are plenty of fine rewards on offer for backers. You can help out here.

GUFF Deadline Approaches

James Shields reminds me that the deadline for voting in the current GUFF race is midnight on Monday. Details of the race are here, along with instructions on how to vote. Personally I’d love to see Mihaela win, but I know that Julie would make a great GUFF delegate too.

And remember, fan funds rely on the income from voting fees to help fund the travel. They need more people to vote.

Cockle Warming

No one seems to be sure what the derivation of the old English saying, “It warms the cockles of my heart”, might be, but it is a useful little phrase. Here is something that both Kevin and I found truly cockle-warming. It is a, “Hey, I found out that I can actually vote in the Hugos” post. Thanks Renay!

By the way, now that I’m allowed to help out with the Hugos again, I have taken the opportunity to update the website to a more recent version of WordPress and install a more modern theme. It’s not perfect, but it will do for now. I guess if the world really does end on Friday this will be taken as proof of how I have Destroyed Fandom. 😉

A Slovenian Fanzine

Like Croatia, Slovenia is one of the countries to emerge from the former Yugoslavia. It lies a little further to the north, bordering on Italy and the Alps. Indeed, it more or less surrounds the Italian port city of Trieste, which is relevant because the first ever Eurocon was held in Trieste in 1972. There was also a Eurocon in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, in 1983. Now, however, Slovenia is a proudly independent country, and keen to take it’s place on the world stage in all aspects of life, including science fiction.

Because Zagreb is very close to the Slovenian border, a number of Slovenian fans were able to attend this year’s Eurocon. They produce a fanzine, Jashubeg en Jered, and a special edition has just been made available in English. I found it thanks to Austrian fan, Nina Horvath, who mentioned it on Facebook. The reason that is in English is that it contains a lengthy report on the Eurocon, and an interview with one of the GoHs, Tim Powers. English is, of course, the easiest way to share the material with the rest of Europe, as well as with the UK, USA and other English-speaking countries. There are only around 2.5 million people who speak Slovene (though since that Eurocon I am the proud owner of a book written in the language).

Also in the special edition are an article on the place of SF in Slovenian society, reviews of the movies, Troll Hunter and Battleship, a book preview, and some short fiction (some of which I’ll be adding to the eligibility list for the Translation Awards). You can find the fanzine’s website here, but it is in Slovene. The link to download the PDF is the one that says “Klikni name”, but just for you I’ll provide a direct link. Click here for the PDF. (Warning: contains me, and Aloysius Squid.)