Locus, October 2014
Page 6
Winners were Best Novel: The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White (Collins); Best Novella: Who Goes There, Don A. Stuart [John W. Campbell] (Astounding ScienceFiction, August 1938); Best Novelette: ‘‘Rule 18’’, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding ScienceFiction, July 1938); Best Short Story: ‘‘How We Went To Mars’’, Arthur C. Clarke (Amateur Science Stories, March 1938); Best Dramatic Presentation (short form): The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, written by Howard Koch & Anne Froelick, directed by Orson Welles (The Mercury Theater on the Air, CBS); Best Editor, Short Form: John W. Campbell; Best Professional Artist: Virgil Finlay; Best Fanzine: Imagination!, Forrest J Ackerman, Morojo, & T. Bruce Yerke, eds.
In Fan Awards, the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award was presented by Steve Francis. There was a problem with the audio, handled coolly by the micced Kowal, who walked up to the podium, turned her head to the audience, and said to Francis, ‘‘Speak into my bosom.’’ Fortunately the podium mic came on, saving him from a brief fluster, and he presented the award to John Clute. The First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame Awards were presented to John ‘‘Ted’’ Cernell and Walter H. Gillings. The Sam Moskowitz Archive Award went to Mike Ashley, the ‘‘first Brit to get this.’’ Sue Francis presented the Forrest J Ackerman Big Heart Award to Vincent Docherty, who said he was genuinely surprised, and encourage everyone to contribute to the field themselves. ‘‘Thank you very much for this. I’m quite stunned.’’ Due to the presence of only one graphic novel nominee for the Retro Hugo Award (which knocks the category out) the convention committee granted a Special Committee Award to the sole nominee. Presented by Alice Lawson and Steve Cooper, the award went to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for the first published appearance of Superman, accepted by Paul Cornell, who read a speech from DC Comics. The ceremony was followed by a swing dance.
Vicki & Don Glover; Seanan McGuire, Michelle ‘‘Vixy’’ Dockrey; Marcus Gipps, Stephen Baxter
WORLDCON 2015 AND BEYOND
The convention closing ceremonies took place on Monday, handing over the official gavel of WSFS to Sasquan, the 73rd World SF Convention, to be held August 19–23, 2015 in Spokane, Washington. Sasquan will be housed in the Spokane Convention Center, with guests of honor Brad Foster, David Gerrold, Vonda N. McIntyre, Tom Smith, and Leslie Turek.
–Arley Sorg
A selection of photos from the convention follow.
Novel: Ann Leckie; Novella: Charles Stross; Novelette: Mary Robinette Kowal; Short Story: John Chu; Beefeaters guard the Hugo Awards trophies
Beefeaters flank Geoff Ryman and Justina Robson; Editor, Long Form: Ginjer Buchanan; Editor, Short Form: Ellen Datlow; Fanzine: Aidan Moher; Semiprozine: Stefan Rudnicki
Antonia Pugliese, James Bacon; Liza Groen Trombi, Liz Gorinsky, Miriam Weinberg; Karen Haber, George R.R. Martin, Robert Silverberg
Catherynne M. Valente, David Tennant, Heath Miller; Malcolm Edwards, Gillian Redfearn; Gary K. Wolfe, Joe Monti
Eammon Clarke, Neil Clarke; Feòrag NicBhride & Charles Stross; Sheila Williams, Andrea Duffy
Will Frank, David Gallaher, Ben Yalow, Dave McCarty, Vincent Docherty; Alice Lawson, Steve Cooper
Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris; Mike Underwood, Paul Cornell, Adam Christopher, Jimmy Broxton; Eemeli Aro, Beth Welsh, Galen Dara
Wesley Chu, Melissa Frain, Whitney Ross, Patty Garcia; Jonathan Oliver, Jay Caselburg, Glen Mehn, Rani Graff
Glyn Morgan, Andrew Ferguson; Will Frank, Sunil Patel; Betsy Mitchell, Anne Groell
Andrew Tremblay & Kevin Roche, Ben Yalow, Glenn Glazer; Jonathan Strahan, Sophie Strahan, Alisa Krasnostein
Kathleen Ann Goonan, Edward James; Mollie Wogg, Ramez Naam; Sally Harding, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Vincent Docherty
Geoff Ryman, Pat Cadigan, Steve Morris, Tricia Sullivan, Ian McDonald; Jukka Halme, Jeff & Ann VanderMeer, Amy Sundberg
Ginjer Buchanan & John R. Douglas; Big Heart: Vincent Docherty; Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: George R.R. Martin for Game of Thrones; Stephen & Mandy Slater, Amanda Foubister
Jed Hartman & Mary Anne Mohanraj; Shannon Pritchett & Vylar Kaftan; Matthieu Larqué &Aliette de Bodard and child; Ben Aaronvitch, John Berlyne
Meg Frank, Mark Oshiro, Johnny Chen, Jesi Pershing, Sunil Patel, Will Frank, Keri O’Brien; David Moore, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Retro Hugo Awards: Vincent Docherty, Ben Yalow, Helen Montgomery, John Clute, Mike Ashley, Anna Carmichael, Connie Willis, Sue Francis, Dave Gallaher, Steve Francis, Dave McCarty, Curt Phillips, Robert Shearman, Mary Robinette Kowal
Kaja Foglio& Phil Foglio; Tara Smith, John Picacio; Christophe Louvet, Bruce Pennington
Micaiah Huw Evans, Suzanne Tompkins; Farah Mendlesohn, Bella Pagan; Gail Carriger, Peter V. Brett; Eddie Schneider & Carolina Valdez Miller
Delia Sherman, Jane Johnson, Ellen Kushner; Gregory Manchess, Scott Edelman, Irene Gallo, Chris Gerwel;Jamie Cowen, Adrian Selby, Anne Clarke
Shana Worthen,Farah Mendlesohn; Tim Holman, Kim Stanley Robinson; Tobias Buckell, Adam Rakunas; Joe & Gay Haldeman
Gareth L. Powell, Simon Morden, Joshua Bilmes, Joseph Zieja; Jo Walton, Ada Palmer
Laura Lam, Elizabeth Bear & Scott Lynch; Micaiah Huw Evans, Helen Marshall, Daryl Gregory; Jonathan Strahan, Kate Elliott
Gaie Sebold, David Gullen, Marcus Gipps; Chris Beckett, Jetse de Vries; Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Cory Doctorow, Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Harper Voyager Table: Yasmin Jaunbocus, Eleanor Ashfield, Natasha Bardon; Gollancz Table: Emily Lunn, Den Patrick, Sophie Calder, Simon Spanton
Vivian Cheung, Adam Christopher, Nick Landau, Jack Campbell, Daryl Gregory, Kim Newman, Jim Burns, Steve Saffel; Kendra Leigh Speedling, James Patrick Kelly, E. Lily Yu, Siobhan Carroll
Pierre Pevel,Emmanuel Beiramar; Peter Crowther, Stephane Marsan, Jo Fletcher; Yael Achmon, Katherine Pendill, Didi Chanoch, Rani Graff
David Langford, David Pringle; Ken MacLeod, John Berlyne; Caren Gussoff, Nigel Goodwin, J.Y. Yang, Allison Solano, Georgina Kamsika
Jonathan Wright, John Courtenay Grimwood, Cheryl Morgan, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo, Sarah Pinborough; Bragelonne Editorial Staff: Yolande Rochat de la Vallée, Alice Arslanagic, Hania Jalkh, Anne-Laure Lajous, Julie Muzard
Filthy Pierre; Cat Sparks, Janeen Webb, Gillian Polack; Brian Aldiss, Paul J. McAuley
Andy Duncan, Robert Shearman, F. Brett Cox; Robin Hobb GoH signing
Best in Class (Group) Novice: Puff & Perry on the Other Side of Boring; Most Beautiful, Master: The Odyssey Dress; Best Workmanship, Master: We Dance
Best Recreation, Novice: ’70s Doctor Who Monsters; Best in Class, Journeyman: Coliseum
Best in Show: Aratalindalë
Past, Present and Future Worldcon Chairs (l to r): back standing: Dave McCarty (2012), Steve Cooper (2014), Michael Walsh (1983), Todd Dashoff (2001), Kevin Standlee (2002), Vincent Docherty (1995, 2005), Jeff Orth (2016); middle seated: Rene Walling (2009), Robin Johnson (1975), Sally Wohrie (2015), Martin Easterbrook (1995), Kent Bloom (2008), Dave W. Clark (1993), Kees van Toorn (1990), Ruth Lichtwardt (2016); front seated: Fred Prophet (1959), Leslie Turek (1980), Deb Geisler (2004), Karen Meschke (1997), Joe Siclari (1992), Alice Lawson (2014), Peggy Rae Sapienza (1998), Tony Lewis (1971), Diane Lacey (2016)
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LONCON 3 WSFS BUSINESS MEETING
Despite the near-record attendance at the Worldcon overall, the WSFS Business Meeting at Loncon 3 drew about the same number of people as usually attend, possibly due to a lack of significantly contentious issues on the agenda. Everything that passed last year in San Antonio was ratified. Four new constitutional amendments received first passage and will be forwarded to Spokane for ratification.
This year’s meeting ratified a proposal that extends Hugo Award eligibility for works initially published outside of the USA for an additional year whenever the works are first published in the USA. Extensions of this sort have been adopted annually since 2001 (except in 2005). This year’s meeting voted to make the extension permanent. The meeting also ratified p
roposals expanding the information that Worldcon committees are required to file with WSFS; clarifying aspects of the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award; eliminating residency requirements for members of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee; and eliminating the requirement that Worldcons must provide paper versions of their publications by default.
The meeting gave first passage to a proposal that clarifies the status of audiobooks in the Hugo Award ‘‘story’’ categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story), explicitly stating that publication in ‘‘physical print, audiobook and ebook’’ form qualifies a work for the Hugo Award. This proposal was a reaction to the disqualification of the initial audiobook publication of ‘‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars’’ in 2012; the story’s author, Mary Robinette Kowal, was one of the sponsors of the proposal and spoke before the Business Meeting to advocate for it.
Also receiving first passage was a proposal to change the official name of those works and people appearing on the final Hugo Award ballot from ‘‘nominee’’ to ‘‘finalist.’’ This was a reaction to people who receive at least one vote in the nominating ballot billing themselves as ‘‘Hugo Award nominees.’’
A rule to set a minimum price on Worldcon memberships that include voting rights (in the Hugo Awards and Worldcon Site Selection) received first passage, as did a rule to require that future WSFS constitutional amendments that pass the initial two-year ratification process be submitted to a referendum of all members of the following Worldcon for final approval.
The meeting rejected proposals to extend Hugo Award nominating rights to members of any NASFiCs held in the three-year period centered on the current Worldcon and to create a new ‘‘Best Fan Performance’’ Hugo Award category.
Last year’s most-contentious issue, a proposal for a Hugo Award category for YA fiction, had been referred to a committee for study. The committee produced no report this year, and was re-formed with new leadership and sent off to try again to produce a workable proposal. The Business Meeting voted to change its rules of conduct to make it harder to kill new proposals without debate, but slightly easier to kill proposals at their initial consideration stage after a short debate. This was a reaction to perceived misuse of the ‘‘Objection to Consideration’’ motion that was often used to kill new business at the Preliminary (Friday) meeting.
The WSFS Mark Protection Committee reported that they and Loncon 3 dealt with a serious threat to the Hugo Awards, wherein a US company called Fancaster asserted an exclusive right to the term ‘‘Fancast’’ and demanded that Loncon 3 cease giving out the Best Fancast Hugo Award. Legal fees of more than USD$15,000 associated with refuting this claim were covered primarily by Loncon 3 and donations of $5,000 each from CanSMOF (2009 Worldcon) and SCIFI (2006 Worldcon).
The meeting minutes and video, WSFS Constitution, and text of proposals being passed on to Spokane for ratification will be posted to
–Kevin Standlee & Cheryl Morgan
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COMPLETE 2014 HUGO VOTING
Loncon 3 received 3,587 valid ballots from Hugo voters, way up from 1,848 received by last year’s LoneStarCon 3. Loncon 3 got a record 1,923 valid nominating ballots, up from LoneStarCon 3’s 1,343, which was a record-breaker itself.
Once again, it’s time to explain the Australian ballot preference system used for the Hugo awards. First place votes (including those for No Award) are counted in column one. If no entry has the majority of the vote, then the entry with the fewest votes is eliminated (e). The dropped entry’s second place votes now become first place votes (column two) and the process is repeated until a nominee has a majority of the votes (usually five drops), deciding first place. Then it gets complicated: second place is determined by dropping the winner, counting second place votes as if they were first, etc. Therefore, the item that originally placed second doesn’t necessarily win second place. Likewise, the third place winner is decided by dropping both first and second place winners, promoting the next eligible entry, and counting all over again. The system ensures that the winner is liked by a majority of voters, even though it may not have received a majority of first place votes.
BEST NOVEL
Ancillary Justice by debut novelist Ann Leckie had the most nominations (with twice as many as the next most nominated, Warbound by Larry Correia), and kept a three-digit lead in every round, easily winning. Leckie’s novel also won the Clarke Award and the Nebula Award, making it the first novel to win all three major SF awards in one year. Charles Stross’s Neptune’s Brood was only fourth in nominations, but picked up enough votes from Leckie supporters to easily take second place. Grant’s Parasite led all the way in voting for third place, with the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (finished by Brandon Sanderson) handily taking fourth, and Larry Correia’s Warbound finishing fifth. Correia organized the ‘‘Sad Puppies’’ voting campaign during nomination season, posting a slate of 11 proposed nominees and urging his fans to ‘‘make literati heads explode’’ and change the ‘‘snooty and pretentious’’ award process by nominating books by authors who deviate from ‘‘groupthink.’’ Many of his suggested nominees made the ballot, though none won. The closest runner-up to the ballot was The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, which missed being a finalist by two votes. The Ocean at the End of the Lane was nominated, but author Neil Gaiman declined, allowing Grant’s Parasite to make the final ballot.
BEST NOVELLA
‘‘Equoid’’ by Charles Stross was second in nominations and had a hard fight with nomination leader Six Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente, narrowly leading for three rounds and then falling behind in the fourth, only to surge ahead in round five by picking up votes when Brad Torgersen’s ‘‘The Chaplain’s Legacy’’ was eliminated. Valente took second place easily, and there was no real contest in any of the other rounds, with the least-nominated ‘‘Walkulla Springs’’ by Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages taking third, Torgersen’s ‘‘The Chaplain’s Legacy’’, fourth, and The Butcher of Khardov by Dan Wells fifth. There were no close runner-ups, with ‘‘How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea’’ by Mira Grant missing the ballot by 23 votes.
BEST NOVELETTE
‘‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars’’ by Mary Robinette Kowal had the most nominations, a vindication of sorts since it missed the ballot last year for technical reasons. (In 2013 it came third in nominations; initially published as part of the audiobook Rip-Off!, it was declared to be a Dramatic Presentation rather than fiction, but did not have enough votes to make the ballot in that category. The subsequent print version was declared eligible this year.) She led through all five rounds for an easy win. Ted Chiang’s ‘‘The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling’’ had a tight race to finish second but never lost its slim lead. ‘‘The Waiting Stars’’ by Aliette de Bodard took third in a single round, and Torgersen’s ‘‘The Exchange Officers’’ had an easy win in fourth. Vox Day’s ‘‘Opera Vita Aeterna’’, another ‘‘Sad Puppies’’ nominee, actually finished below No Award. This was Kowal’s fourth Hugo nomination for fiction and her second win; she also has a trophy as part of the Writing Excuses podcast team, which won in Best Related Work last year. ‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King’’ by Ken Liu was runner-up, missing the ballot by 20 votes.
BEST SHORT STORY
There were only four finalists due to the ‘‘5% rule,’’ which requires finalists to get at least 5% of nominations. ‘‘The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere’’ by John Chu had the least nominations – only 43 – but had the most first-place votes and never wavered in the race for first place. ‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers’’ by Sofia Samatar had a close fight for second place, only overtaking third-place finisher ‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love’’ by Rachel Swirksy in the third round of voting after picking up votes when fourth-place story ‘‘The Ink Readers of Doi Saket’’ by Thomas Olde Heuvelt was eliminated. This was Chu’s first nomination. The nearest runner-up was ‘‘Dog�
�s Body’’ by Sarah A. Hoyt, missing by five votes.
BEST RELATED WORK
Essay ‘‘We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative’’ by Kameron Hurley was fourth in nominations but got the most first-place votes, and maintained a (sometimes narrow) lead in every round of voting to finish first over the top-nominated Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer. VanderMeer took second place fairly easily, and last year’s winner Writing Excuses took third without much of a fight, leading in every round. Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It, edited by Sigrid Ellis & Michael Damien Thomas, took fourth, beating out fifth-place finisher Speculative Fiction 2012, edited by Justin Landon & Jared Shurin. This was Hurley’s first year appearing on the Hugo ballot, and she did so in two categories; she also won Best Fan Writer. The runner-up was Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack, which missed the ballot by 10 votes.
BEST GRAPHIC STORY
‘‘Time’’, an installment of Randall Munroe’s online comic XKCD, was tied for second in nominations but had a triple-digit lead in first-place votes, and continued to lead in subsequent rounds to take the prize. Saga, Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples had far and away the most nominations – more than four times as many as ‘‘Time’’ – and easily took second place. (They won last year for the first volume of the series.) Girl Genius, Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne & The Sleeping City by Phil & Kaja Foglio started out in third place and finished there too, above ‘‘The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who’’ by Paul Cornell & Jimmy Broxton, which took fourth without a fight over fifth-place finisher The Meathouse Man by Raya Golden. Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary: Broken Wind would have been a nominee, but was ruled ineligible. This was Munroe’s first nomination. The first runner-up was Locke & Key Vol. 6: Alpha & Omega by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez, missing the ballot by four votes.