Awards

The Best Dressed Award

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

As regular readers will know, for many years now I have been handing out a “best dressed” award at the Hugo ceremony. It is time once again for a winner to be announced. There was a fair amount of stiff competition this year. Naomi Fisher is always very elegant. Ellen Datlow, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kaja Foglio all looked splendid, as did the ladies accompanying John Scalzi, Wil McCarthy and Ed Bryant. Lisa Konrad gets a special mention for having bought her lovely dress in Fairy Gothmother in Camden (and teaming it with boots). However, for sheer princessly gloriousness, not to mention coming with a matching tiara, there can be no doubt about the winner. Ladies and Gentlemen, the 2008 Emerald City Best Dressed Award goes to…

– drum roll –

Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal's dress

I spoke to Mary briefly about the dress on the night. If I recall correctly it is from the 1960s and was purchased in a vintage clothing store in Portland, Oregon. Those of you into dressmaking can learn much more about it in this post.

World Fantasy Weirdness

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I didn’t have many brain cells to devote to this at Worldcon, but my initial reaction on seeing the novel shortlist for the World Fantasy Awards was a profound WTF??? I was expecting Ysabel to win, but the rest of the short list looks very odd. I’ve heard good things about Territory, but it is apparently only half a novel, having suffered the dreaded Publisher Chop. The others I have hardly heard of at all. Maybe the judges know something that I don’t, but I was very much expecting to see A Secret History of Moscow and The New Moon’s Arms on that list. And The Name of the Wind, even though it wasn’t one of my favorites. Jeff VanderMeer is also bemused.

Neat Gift

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It is traditional for the forthcoming Worldcon to not only host a party for the Hugo nominees after the ceremony, but also to give each of them a gift. The party is generally a bust, being massively overcrowded. This year was no exception. But this year’s gift was very good indeed. It is a combination pen and USB stick. The drive capacity is a useful 970 Mb. And of course the pen has “2008 Hugo Award Nominee” written on it (or if you prefer “Candidat – Prix Hugo 2008”). This is one nominee gist that I am going to carry everywhere with me and get a lot of use from. Thank you, Anticipation!

The Numbers

~ Cheryl

Denvention3 has posted the full breakdowns of nominations and the final ballot here. I’m going to sleep now. The Golden Ducks ceremony starts at 10:00am. Whose daft idea was that?

A Quick Post on Positions

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The con newsletter lists the nominees in the order in which they finished. A few highlights:

  • John Scalzi was second in Best Novel
  • The Arrival finished last – I’m very disappointed by that
  • Paul Cornell’s Doctor Who episode was second
  • John Picacio was second
  • And I finished third behind Scalzi and Dave Langford

Much Award Business

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

This morning at Worldcon was filled with much business to do with Awards. The results of the Business Meeting deliberations, and the new about the new Campbell pin, have been posted to SF Awards Watch. Here’s a small amount of personal opinion.

Mostly I’m very pleased with what the Business Meeting has done. However, the debate over the removal of the Semiprozine category appeared to involve a lot of odd discussion. Those in favor of the motion continue to assert that they are not trying to remove the category just to stop Locus from winning any more awards. However, when challenged to provide examples of their rationales they were peculiarly unable to do so. Ben Yalow said it was because there are not enough magazines eligible for the category, so was not an honor to be nominated, but in fact there are very many small press fiction magazines that pay contributors and carry advertising that appear eligible. That argument simply doesn’t hold water.

Seth Briedbart went on to complain that some of the magazines that do get nominated for Semiprozine are not worth reading. This is a very old and tired argument, and basically it boils down to “I don’t like the things that get nominated so I will define them as not Hugo-worthy.” Seth specifically mentioned 5th-place finishers, so let us take a quick look at the sort of publications that the proposers of this motion think are so bad they are not worth reading (let alone worthy of a nomination). Last year that was Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. In 2006 it was Interzone. In 2005 and 2004 it was Interzone’s (now deceased) Fantasy/Horror sister publication, The Third Alternative. These are not inconsequential magazines. And of course in 2006 Emerald City came fourth in the category. Was it also not worth reading? And if so how come it won a Hugo as a fanzine two years before?

There were no other arguments presented for the proposal. So what does this tell us about people’s motivations? If we are generous it says that people who attend the Business Meeting do not read small press fiction magazines and don’t think that there should be a Hugo for such things. Alternatively the truth of the matter, despite all of the protestations to the contrary, is that the category is being killed to stop Locus from winning it.

Hugo Press Coverage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Chris Barkley in the Denvention 3 press office tells me that National Public Radio is looking to do interviews with Hugo winners after the ceremony on Saturday. This is excellent news.

Meanwhile I am slightly disappointed at the lack of reaction I am seeing to Sam Jordison’s article on the Guardian book blog. Fandom has been complaining for ever that the mainstream media doesn’t care about us, and now we get a preview of the Hugos in a national newspaper and no one says anything. Get on over there and say “thank you”, people, and let The Guardian know that covering science fiction gets them readers.

Worldcon: Day 2

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

I finally got away from my computer at around 1:00pm and headed off to the convention. I was able to bag a couple of good interviews about future Worldcons – one with Farah Mendlesohn about programming in Montreal, and one with Stephen Boucher about facilities in Melbourne. I need to clean the audio up before I can podcast them, but hopefully they will go live next week. I’m also hoping to talk to Dave McCarty about the innovative ideas the Chicago in 2012 bid has about supporting memberships.

I did a quick tour through the Art Show and found a couple of things worth mentioning. I think that the Raku Ray Guns have been mentioned online before, but now I have seem them in real life and I can confirm that they are every bit as awesome as they look in photos. Elsewhere in the show I was impressed by Myles Pinkney, particularly this picture, which I may just buy a print of.

I was pleased to see that the exhibits area has filled up a bit. Obviously some folks were late arriving. However, the con still looks lost in such a big building.

The “SF Outside of the English-Speaking World” panel went very well, and we could have easily filled another hour with all the stuff there was to talk about. Many more people are now in awe of Finnish fandom.

I was going to be at the Chesley Awards ceremony this evening, except that ASFA has had a few problems and there will not be any awards given out until later in the year. This leaves me at a loose end for the evening. I’m not quite sure what I shall do, but I suspect that the words “Chris Roberson” and “bar” will feature somewhere along the way.

I’m also thinking that I might be able to do live blogging from the Hugos. Stay tuned for more news.

Guardian on Hugos

~ Cheryl

We have press coverage. At the Guardian Book Blog Sam Jordison speculates on whether Charles Stross or Ian McDonald might bring home a rocket for Britain. And gives a passing mention to a few other British contenders.

More on Worldcon later. Need breakfast first.

Worldcon Schedule

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

It appears to be the fashion for people to post details of what panels they will be on at Worldcon. Goodness only knows why any of you would want to see me in person, except perhaps to confirm for yourselves that I should not be let out in public without a paper bag over my head, but I am involved in some interesting panels and I hope to be doing some interesting journalism during the convention. Here is a brief run down of the plans.
Continue reading →

Finncon – In Progress

~ Cheryl

Hello, I am back at the hotel, footsore but happy. I have survived 5 hours consecutive programming, and am looking forward to my reward – dinner at Harald, the local Viking restaurant. I don’t have much time to blog, and anyway I have been in cosplay and panels all day so I haven’t seen much of what is going on outside of those events. Fortunately for you, Tero has been posting lots of good material. Go ye here for lots of things I need to put on SFAW when I get the time, and other reports as well.

The Hugo Voting Cost Motion

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

From Kevin’s LiveJournal I see that SMOFdom has moved on the subject of Hugo voting costs. Reading the motion I find myself in two minds. On the one hand it is an admirable attempt to rein in the apparent tendency of Worldcons to inflate supporting membership costs because they deem the demand for them to be inelastic. Certainly the sort of prices we are seeing these days for supporting memberships are well beyond what is necessary to service those memberships. On the other hand, the motion also seeks to tie voting rights firmly into the current concept of supporting memberships (so that a separate voting membership cannot be offered) and to make it difficult for any Worldcon to reduce the current high cost of voting. I think, on balance, I’m voting against the motion as it currently stands.

We’ve put a poll up on SFAW.

Farewell, Caribbean Monk Seal

~ Cheryl

After being presumed missing for many years, the Caribbean monk seal has officially been declared extinct. It is, of course, sad when any species becomes extinct, and being large mammals ourselves we tend to feel it more when another large mammal goes. This time, however, we have even more reason to be sorry, because the Caribbean monk seal has a starring role in one of the best fantasy novels of 2007. It has won the Aurora for best novel, and is currently shortlisted for both the Sunburst and Mythopoeic Awards. If you want to know more, you’ll need to read The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson.

Rushdie Throws Down the Gauntlet

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

At Hay today Salman Rushdie reportedly nailed his flag firmly to the mast of speculative fiction. As reported in The Guardian, his new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, “is filled with bad faeries, imaginary dragons, ogres, sorcerers, witches, an imaginary queen, hexes, and love potions.” Today at Hay he had to defend his decision to write what many of his audience will have dismissed as fluffy fantasy nonsense.

“We all began as readers with a very fond relationship with the imagination,” Rushdie told interviewer Mariella Frostrup. “But what happens as we grow up is we begin to think of that as childish. I’ve never thought that.”

And what’s more, he has support. John Sutherland apparently loves the book and is pimping it for the Booker, and you can’t get much higher up the British critics tree than him. This is all very promising.

And you know what, the book is eligible for the World Fantasy Award next year. Would I love to see Rushdie at our little convention in San José. You betcha!

Given that this is Rushdie we are talking about, I suspect that his book will be available even here in Darkest Somerset. I shall be looking out for a copy. There may even be a review.