Guest Post : On the Hugos by Russell A Smith

ConZealand. the 2020 Hugos and the Past-Present Future. – By Russell A Smith

I got a very last minute membership to ConZealand via an application to the Inclusion Initiative someone kindly mentioned to me existed. That is to say, that as a BIPOC con-goer and fan and writer who would certainly have had a financial barrier to getting to the event otherwise. I was both grateful, and applied to this, because inclusion is often a great barrier prevention conventions etc from being all they might be genuinely being all it could be. Especially this year of Black Lives Matter etc.

Because I ended up joining very late in the day, I missed out on applying to be a part of  programming for the most part, but booked a spot on the ConZealand Fringe, Your Fave Is Problematic panel. With the excellent Jeannette Ng , Noria Reads, Shaun Duke and Foz Meadows. While we had enough to get through that the panellists were still chatting a good hour after the item officially finished, we had no idea what was coming next.

A little context first. Last year, Jeannette herself spelled it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ58zf0vzB0

And I should add that this was far from the first time the issue was mentioned.  However, the award previously named for Campbell’s legacy was renamed the Astounding Award, in an effort to close the tainted chapter of SF history.

Now, it would have been reasonable to have assumed the change would perhaps herald a new era and one whereby the world of fandom might consider moving forwards. Instead, the conversation loudly came back, backwards, on to this business, starting with the 1945 Retro Hugos. It’s fair to say a few eyebrows were raised when H.P. Lovecraft, himself well-known for a damaged legend despite a practically ubiquitous mythos and then John W. Campbell Jr himself, won awards for Best Series and Best Editor, Short Form respectively. The conversation and spotlight were firmly back on an area it seemed fandom wanted to leave in the past.

That this first part grew quiet by the end of the convention was only because an even greater controversy drowned it out. You might wish to see full ceremony for yourselves, though I can’t recommend doing so. But for those of us who were ‘there’, we all saw what we saw. A certain irony has been regularly pointed out that in the home of the epic-length Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, the awards were like an extended edition in themselves. Of the three and a half hours or so, half of this was the toastmaster, telling many tales about fandom of old. This may not sound too bad on the surface, but a name I’ve already mentioned two times too often in this piece was then lauded by the toastmaster, along with Lovecraft, and Robert Silverberg, himself a target of controversy in recent Worldcon years, got in on the act.

To invoke his name once would be reasonable, if only to remind us that the Award is now Astounding. To do so a couple of times is perhaps forgivable, if only to see the changes through. When it becomes the kind of drinking game whereby were players to take a drink at each mention, they would be paralytic within the first 45 minutes, that has to be considered deliberate. Intentional.  If you know full well as the Toastmaster that an award got renamed last year for reasons that have been mentioned for years and then utter the previous name more times in three hours more often than Sean Bean’s Sharpe utters the word, ‘bastard!’ over the entire series run, again, you have to question intent.

 And that’s the point which tips this over from a misstep, or a generational communication issue, to a targeted barrage. Intention matters.

Much like the way there are attempts to explain the numerous mispronunciations of names not only of people, but of publications took place. Again, it comes down to intent. It was less a matter of how badly but more the lack of effort. As I watched, and it’s not one of those things I know how to describe easily, I had that same feeling I saw while I was back in school classrooms when a teacher would do that to some of my classmates and somehow happen to be the only person laughing.

Even putting that aside, a host is not there to be the show any more than a DJ at a wedding reception is generally there to give an hour-long speech telling us about that time he did a politician’s birthday party. The disconnect between what was happening between the hosting and the winners was really not a good look.

Now, with all that said, the Hugo Award winners, each and every one of them, gave a range of outstanding speeches, and every single one of them deserves the attention I didn’t get around to giving them here because I’ve been too busy mentioning why we had such a hard time watching the centrepiece of what was otherwise a mostly excellent convention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=7yGPBIQvs0Y&feature=emb_title

Let us leave on the high note of knowing not only were those speeches a triumph of the creators to come in a year of adversity, but also that the technological achievement in bringing this together when at one point it seemed possible we wouldn’t have a Worldcon at all was nothing short of wizardry. Mostly secure programme items had no problems with rooms being too full to enter, no lengthy walks between one item to the next, the ability to rewatch at a more friendly time to your side of the world, bar areas masterfully recreated in Zoom and Discord for a chance to hang out with friends old and new. . .this was quite simply put about as close to actually being there as was possible, right down to the fact that I genuinely need a couple of days to recover afterwards, which is where I shall leave you all.

Enjoy on us!

There is loads of FREE content for you to enjoy on our website.

At the moment the front page has a sampler of the opening pages of each of our summer releases. 

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Lots of short stories are published on our free fiction page for you to download and enjoy and there are more in the skulk members area if you ‘join the skulk‘ below.  The members area also gives you discounts in the eshop and other goodies.

There is even a bit of video up all for your enjoyment and all it costs is a few moments of your time.

After all that, there is of course the blog, full of great content from guest posts and Hugo nominee Alasdair Stuart’s ‘Not the Fox News’. 

Indulge. Download the stories to take away and read at leisure. Tell your friends and send them over if they are looking for something new to read. The House of Fox has you covered.

Floof Will Out

Not The Fox News: One Weird Trick To Help EVERY AUTHOR EVER

Hi everyone, welcome back to Not The Fox News. The Sun is shining, the weather is good, awards season is in full swing and we have a special correspondent to fill you in on what you missed. Former President and full time fictional person Jed Bartlet!

 

 

Yeah that about covers it.

I know, I know some of you will go ‘Oooh what’s occurring?. So,  google ‘Hugo awards 2015’ start reading and be prepared for realizing it’s somehow  a week later and you’re crying and angry and muttering ‘How? How can so many words that mean SO LITTLE be generated for so, SO long?’.

Because the internet, bunky. Because the internet.

Which is depressing. This sort of dusty ethical brushfire war has been going on for longer than a lot of people have been alive and it’s not slowing down any time soon. Worse still, it can feel very tempting to jump in and declare that you, are in fact, there to save the day. I did.

See. Not just you. Oh and nothing happened aside from one thing; I got distracted. I took my eye off the work I should be doing and tried to fix a problem that wasn’t mine to fix. That’s why so much of this stuff is so tiresome; it’s an ideological conflict in a village, a West Side Story dancefight with no dancing but way too many crappy response posts. Not to mention a mystifying belief that Fisking is the nuclear weapon of debate when it’s not even the nuclear weapon of Fisking. (DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH. Or haven’t seen Daredevil yet.)

There are some interesting, good pieces hidden in the conversation, certainly. But the operative word is most definitely ‘hidden’.

So, world’s most rubbish kaiju battle going on in the genre, vast amount of signal being swapped out for noise, you caught in the middle, no sign of Cherno Alpha. What is an internet savvy, articulate, positive reader like yourself to do?

Well, there is that one weird trick…

1-Read a book. There are LOADS of them. A lot of them are great. Go pick one. I just finished this and it’s top. This too.

2-Have opinions about that book.

3-Write a review. It doesn’t have to be a magnum opus. It can be two lines or forty. It can be a full scale blog post or just ‘I really liked this, especially the characters.’ Write how you write. Talk about what you loved. Talk about what you didn’t. Look at the experience of your interaction with the book and the things that make your heart beat faster or that you really want to tell other people about. Make a note of them. Write up your notes. Congratulations, it’s a review.

4-Follow the two rules. Firstly, run a spellcheck. I have friends who have dyslexia and similar conditions who sometimes worry that the problems that causes them prevent them from doing this sort of thing. That’s where your spellchecker comes in. I have other friends who sometimes don’t believe in the second draft as a stage of their process or a philosophical construct. On occasion those friends are me. That’s where your spellchecker comes in.

-4b-Don’t be an asshole. If you read your review back and chortle at the creative ways you’ve insulted the author, you’ve done it wrong. There’s a whole conversation about if negative reviews have value that I don’t want to go into here. Firstly because I like you people, secondly because I don’t really want Jed to keep headbutting the desk and thirdly because they do, with one qualifier; don’t be an asshole. If you didn’t like a book, explain why. If you’re personally offended by the book’s existence and feel the need to vomit your electronic bile over the internet, don’t bother. That vacancy was filled a very, very long time ago.

5-Post your review to your blog, your local Amazon and Nook sites and any others you want to and GoodReads. Some of you, like me, will view GoodReads as a cruel User Interface joke inflicted on us all by angry time travelling developers from 1991. That’s fine. It is. But post it there anyway.

Also, about Amazon, I know a lot of people have problems with them as a book seller. I know they’re all valid concerns.

I also know every single author in history enjoys being paid, eating and being able to pay bills.

 

So, to sum up: Every single review for a book helps. If you hated it, say why but make sure you follow 4 and 4b up there. If you loved it, say why. But please, please say it and say it in as many places as possible. Here’s some good places to start:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon Germany

Amazon Japan

GoodReads

Nook US

Nook UK

Because every single time you post a review, you do four things;

-Express your emotional response to a piece of culture using the largest megaphone in human history.

-In doing so, release much needed brain space to go fill with the next piece of culture you encounter.

-Help an author not only get more visible but feel like everything they went through getting the book to print, or indeed, electron, was worthwhile.

-Make this a more positive space for us to all be in.

One weird trick, four positive outcomes. Looks like good value to me, what do you think Jed?

 

Awesome. See you next month, folks.