Awards

Hugo Logo Contest

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Hey, a sekrit projekt has just gone live into the blogosphere. The Hugo Awards Marketing Committee (of which Kevin and I happen to be members) is running a competition to find a logo for the Hugo Awards. Of course we already have the rocket, which is absolutely iconic, but with each year’s base being different, and thousands of different photos of Hugo trophies in existence, there isn’t a single image that sticks in people’s minds and says “Hugo Award”.

So what we are looking for is something that can be put on web sites, can be used in magazines and newspapers, and can even be turned into a sticker that can be put on the cover of books as happens with the Newbery Medal. Who knows, one day we may even see the logo on movie screens.

Full details about the award are available on the official Hugo Award web site. If you are planning to enter, please check out the official rules and submission guidelines. As this will produce something that we intend to register as a service mark the legalese got a bit excessive, but we’ve tried to keep it under control as best we can.

The other great thing about the contest is that we have some really awesome judges. Representing fandom is the fabulous fan editor and graphic designer, Geri Sullivan. From the art business we have Irene Gallo from Tor, and Chip Kidd from Random House who was once described as “the world’s greatest book-jacket designer”. And finally we have a certain Mr. Gaiman who has won several Hugos and is far better publicity for the awards than anything the HAMC can do.

Obviously we’d like this spread far and wide. In particular I’d like to get the word out to awesome graphic designers. Being a fannish non-profit, WSFS can’t afford a huge prize (though many thanks to the folks from SCIFI for helping with the cash prize). However, the visibility that the winning design is going to get will be significant, and being known as the person who created that design will hopefully be very good for someone’s career.

Marketing Success

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

I’ve just been browsing the Amazon US site for books I need that are hard to come by over here. I pretty much knew what I wanted, but I figured I’d go look in the SF&F section just in case I had forgotten anything. The first thing that comes up is a list of the current Hugo nominees.

Yay! Marketing success story.

I think I know who is responsible for this. Thank you very much indeed.

Saving the Semiprozine

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

This one, sadly, is not a joke. As most of you will know, last year’s Worldcon gave first passage to a motion that would eliminate the semiprozine category. It was fairly clear from the debate that most of the people in the Business Meeting had no idea how many great small press magazines exist out there. A little education was in order, so some of us involved in semiprozines have got together to produce a web site that highlights the huge range of quality material available. Hopefully this will persuade WSFS members that our category deserves to be kept.

Many thanks to Neil Clark for doing most of the heavy lifting on this one. I just provided some ideas, and dragooned Kevin into writing something about the technical side of WSFS politics, which will appear on the site in due course.

Fair disclosure: I moved Emerald City into the Semiprozine category in 2006 and was nominated there. I’m also currently on the staff of the 2009-nominated Clarkesworld Magazine.

In The Drink Tank (again)

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Chris Garcia has his annual “handicapping the Hugos” issue of The Drink Tank online. He very kindly predicts that I will finish second in Best Fan Writer, which is the best I can hope for. His predictions are well worth a look, but nestled at the back of the issue is a little article by me, in which I give far too much serious attention to one of the daft conspiracy theories about the Hugos. Are there really political parties in fandom? Will Scalzi’s Internet Party triumph? Is it all over for the Feminist Party and the Old Phart Party? Read the whole thing here.

Fan Artist News

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

One thing that surprised me about the list of Best Fan Artist nominees was the absence of Steve Stiles from the list. Now, thanks to Mike Glyer, I know why. Steve did get nominated, but chose to decline and encourage people to vote for Taral Wayne instead. Given that Steve has been nominated 8 times and never won, this is a particularly generous gesture.

Best of 2008?

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

John Scalzi is busy working on his free fiction package for this year’s Hugos. This year he has kindly offered to include material from categories other than Best Novel. So I need to find three examples of my finest writing from 2008 and send them off to John. I have a few ideas as to what I’d like to include, but it occurred to me that I may be totally off-base with my assessments. Some of you folks obviously nominated me, so I’d be interested to know which three pieces you think I should include.

Before You Complain

~ Cheryl ~ 19 Comments

Yes, it is Hugo Nominations season again, so we are getting the usual rash of posts about how the Hugos are completely out of touch with what SF fans are reading today. And in the first two I looked at today one was complaining that there was no really good hard SF in the Best Novel list, and the other was complaining that there was no blockbuster fantasy in the Best Novel list.

Now of course there could be both of those things. (I nominated Daniel Abraham and Paul McAuley.) But what the complainers really want is a ballot that solely reflects their taste, because that’s what they think is “good”. It ain’t gonna happen.

Firstly the Hugos are popular vote awards that cover the whole of fandom. These days fandom is very diverse. A list that has representatives of a wide range of different tastes would be a good result.

And secondly, I always wonder how many of these people who complain so bitterly actually sent in nominations. Yes, I know it is expensive. People like Kevin and I are working hard to both bring down the cost and get your more for your supporting membership. But when it comes down to it, if you don’t participate, the Hugos will represent other people’s tastes, not yours.

Shopping Report

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today I went to investigate the new Westfield Mall in Shepherd’s Bush. Bay Area folks will be used to such things, but it is a bit of a departure for London. It is, however, dead easy to get to by Tube, which is a very good thing. It is probably about the same size as Valley Fair, but with more open space inside it. Fortunately today it was pretty quiet.

I didn’t buy a Hugo dress. I did find a very nice dark blue one in Debenhams (just the color you suggested, Keri), but they had nothing between a 10 and a 20, and in any case it was £100 which seemed a bit painful after last year’s $22 bargain.

I almost bought a coat in Next. It looked great on the mannequin, but it was a bit padded and consequently made me look even more fat than I am, which is not good. But I did manage to find new stocks of Whittard’s mango tea at last. I’d been getting worried that they had stopped making it.

On the way back I stopped off at Oxford Circus to check out Hugo nominees in Borders. FAIL. Not one of the Best Novel nominees was available in the SF section. i did finally find one lost and lonely copy of The Graveyard Book in the YA section, but that was all. Tsk.

I did also check Liberty in case they had a Vivienne Westwood dress I wanted them to put aside in case I win the lottery, but no luck there either.

The other piece of news I got from the trip is that the Victoria Line will be closed all weekend. This has caused me to change my plans for tomorrow. Instead of going to find a pub for the Wales-Ireland I’m going to stay here and listen to the games on the radio instead. If we win I can watch the game on the iPlayer next week.

I Can Haz Hugo?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Well, thank you once again, everyone, both for your nominations, and for all the messages of good will that have been coming my way. It is always a great honor to be nominated (and a great relief to discover that I’m not yet a has been).

Thank you also to John Scalzi for standing aside this year, and for encouraging people to take an interest in the fan categories.

Congratulations, obviously to all of my fellow nominees. I’ll be having more thoughts on the ballot later, but one thing that is obvious is that Best Novel is going to be one heck of a fight this year.

But talking of fellow nominees, despite John’s exhortations to people to get some new names into the fan categories, the ballot has a very familiar look to it. I’m now part of that “same old, same old” thing. People are going to start asking, why don’t I step aside? Well, there’s a very simple reason for that.

I want to beat Dave.

Look, he’s a wonderful writer, and a good friend. I really admire his work. But, dammit, I keep finishing second to him. Even the Hugo I did win probably wouldn’t have happened if Dave hadn’t chosen to move Ansible into the semiprozine category. Often I haven’t lost by much – sometimes fewer than a dozen votes – but I’ve always lost. If this were boxing people would be shaking their heads and wondering about my sanity.

So, probably I will get beaten again. But it is always a huge honor to be nominated. And while Dave is still there as a target, I’ll keep trying.

More later. In the meantime I’m going shopping. I need a new dress…

Worth Staying Up For

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

I have been propping my eyes open with matchsticks for the past hour or so, but I was determined not to go to sleep because I was expecting a certain important announcement to go live. And it has.

Thank you, everyone. I shall be more coherent tomorrow when I’m awake. Thankfully Kevin is handling the official Hugo site and SFAW updates. I’m just watching Twitter. And reading the list to find out who else got one.

A Lammy for Marcus?

~ Cheryl

In processing the awards news for SFAW this morning I discovered that my friend Marcus Ewert is up for a Lammy this year for his excellent transgender children’s book, 10,000 Dresses. I am keeping my fingers crossed for him and the artist, Rex Ray.

Nebula-ous Thoughts

~ Cheryl

As I’m in catch-up mode that the moment I thought I should take time out to comment briefly on the Nebula nominees. Unlike Matt Cheney I can’t claim any close connection to any of the nominees (I had no idea you’d been so fertile, Matt), but I do know many of them and I’ve even read some of the works.

Andrew Wheeler notes sadly that the final ballot is:

more a catalog of the various interest groups and log-rolling communities within SFWA than it is a list of the best works of the year

I suspect he’s partly right, but somehow the Nebs, despite producing some awful short lists, often come up with very good winners. Let’s see if we can spot them. You can see the whole short list here.

The novel list is not too bad. I very much enjoyed Cory’s book. Le Guin and Pratchett are both very good. Brasyl, on the other hand, deserved a Hugo. I hope it gets a Nebula instead.

I’ve only read one of the novellas – Kelley Eskridge’s Dangerous Space, but I loved it, and it was on my Hugo ballot last year. I very much hope that it wins.

The novelette list is, I’m afraid, a complete blank, but there are some very good writers in there. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Johanna Sinisalo. Go Finland!

Short story is also full of good writers. “The Tomb Wife” was shortlisted for the Sturgeon last year, so that one’s definitely in with a chance. My money is on Jeff Ford because he’s so consistently good.

The script category, as Andrew says, is an embarrassment. SFWA is well rid of it.

And finally, the Norton. I cannot for the life of me understand how two YA books (Little Brother and Powers) have made it onto the Best Novel short list, but neither of them reached the Preliminary Ballot for the Norton, nor were they added by the Norton Jury. It is all very odd.

But What Can Twitter Do?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Apart from waste even more of your time, of course.

Well, Twitter seems to have taken over the online world pretty comprehensively over the last few months. Don’t just take my word for it, there are even CongressTwitters. British politicians have been twits for a long time, of course, but that’s another issue. Companies such as Google have their own Twitter accounts. And all sorts of media personalities have huge followings because there are few things that people seem to like more than glimpses into the lives of the rich and famous.

Following celebrities, however, is only one aspect of what Twitter can do. You don’t have to use it to be a voyeur. It can do stuff for you as well. In fact it appears to be remarkably good at doing all sorts of things.

To start with, you can get news. I was on Twitter when Neil Gaiman made his now infamous announcement of his Newbery win. I was on Twitter when Mary Robinette Kowal announced that the Nebula final ballot was online. I was in the middle of writing this post when the news of the corrections to the Nebula ballot came up, and I immediately switched to SFAW to blog about it. This is useful to me.

More importantly, however, Twitter can get news out. You can follow discussion of specific issues on TwitterFall (such as the tweeting from Potlatch that I mentioned over the weekend). You can also find out what is currently a hot topic on Twitter by looking at the cloud map on Twitscoop. There was a glorious moment last weekend when a chance remark by Neil got “Armageddon” to appear there. I have set myself a target of getting “Hugo” and “Worldcon” visible on Twitscoop this August. Given the number of followers that Neil has, I think this is very achievable.

Remember the liveblogging of the Hugos that I did last year? Well now the technology I used for that can take input from Twitter streams. That means your webcast can have roving reporters as well. In fact it would have been perfect for the World Fantasy Awards coverage because Gigi could have tweeted the winners in rather that having to txt them to me and have me re-type them.

TwitPic is enormously useful as well. With it, and the iPhone, I can be out and about anywhere and do live reportage complete with pictures. Just imagine what you can do in terms of convention coverage with that.

And last night I discovered that Twitter can also do IM. If you find yourself in a complex conversation on Twitter you can just switch over to TinyChat and talk there.

There are things that Twitter can’t do. For example, it won’t support essays like this. But I continue to be impressed at just how much it can do, and I’m really enthusiastic about the sort of online coverage we can do for conventions using it.

Good Deed for the Day

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today I got email from the BBC – or rather the Hugo Awards did, and as I’m one of the people who helps maintain the web site it got forwarded to me.

The message was from a researcher who works on Doctor Who Confidential. They wanted some information on Steven Moffat’s Hugo Award wins. Sadly this is all for a short piece they are doing for an industry event (they didn’t say which, and I’m not speculating). However, if the film ever does go public I shall let you know.