The Hugo for Best Related Work, including my own votes for this year

[nwhyte]

The Best Related Work category has been on the Hugo ballot every year since 1980. In 28 of those 41 years, it went to a published monograph or essay collection about science fiction and/or fantasy or related themes. The exceptions were as follows:

• Popular science books won twice, in 1981 (Carl Sagan: Cosmos) and 1986 (Tom Weller: Science Made Stupid

Comments

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[smofbabe]

* Yes, I do think the administrators should have disqualified the Luhrs essay and I think there were plenty of grounds to do so given the convention's Code of Conduct. "Everyone involved with DisCon III is expected to show respect towards the convention attendees, venue staff, the general public, and the various communities associated with the convention." "Comments directly intended to belittle, offend, or cause discomfort."

* You characterize this essay by saying it was controversial "because it includes a disparaging reference to a very privileged writer in its title." However, (a) the essay's content contains an extended attack on that writer, not just in the title, and (b) you're implying that being "privileged" means that someone is legitimately an open target for people to dump on.

* I'm also bemused at the phrase in your reply "just because you may think it is a nasty personal attack" - I'm not sure how else you can take an essay whose title begins "George RR Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun"! I seriously doubt that this essay made the ballot because it was a thoughtful, well-written, and meaningful contribution to the SF/F genre, and I even more seriously doubt it would have made it onto the ballot (and will conceivably win) without that title and that attacking content.

* Regarding whether George was "fully in control" of the Hugo ceremony, no, he was not, despite the convention deciding to hang him out to dry afterward. He submitted individual videos in advance of the convention to the Hugo ceremony staff. They could and should have reviewed those videos, and if they found the content to be objectionable, asked him to re-record, and they *certainly* could and should have cut them for length once they put them all together. They also neglected to provide him with a pronunciation guide. George was the talent, not the coordinator.

And as for being "borne out by everything I heard at the time and since," I was George's GoH liaison and was copied on nearly all of the back-and-forth email with the Hugo staff. And, BTW, that staff changed as the ceremony planning progressed, so there was a lack of continuity and coordination that was also decidedly not George's fault.

* Ultimately, you appear to be arguing as a Hugo administrator that the Hugo ballot is an appropriate and legitimate place for fans to hold a convention accountable for their screwups in addition to a place to reward the best works in the genre, which I find astounding.

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[nwhyte]

No point in prolonging this, but in brief:

Hugo administrators do not make judgements of what is in the minds of voters. If voters want to use their votes to hold a convention accountable for their screwups, that is their business. We just count the votes.

Hugo administrators also do not make Code of Conduct calls. Apart from that, I firmly believe that in general no public comment should be made on any Code of Conduct issue, unless absolutely necessary.

Look, I agree that it completely sucks that CoNZealand failed to protect George from making some pretty bad mistakes. They owed him a duty of care which they did not discharge, and I think your description that they hung him out to dry afterwards is fair.

But that does not absolve George from responsibility for making those mistakes in the first place, or grant him immunity from criticism. I find the failure of either side to accept any share of the blame very disappointing.

(And just to clarify - when you say “the Hugo staff” in your second last paragraph, I am pretty sure that you mean “the Hugo ceremony staff”. I don’t find any record of correspondence between you and the Hugo admin team between March and December of last year. Perhaps, and I am not blaming you in any way, that is one of the symptoms of the underlying problem.)

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[smofbabe]

* You state "Hugo administrators do not make judgements of what is in the minds of voters. If voters want to use their votes to hold a convention accountable for their screwups, that is their business. We just count the votes." You in this essay said "Given that there are very few mechanisms for accountability for what went wrong, it's entirely legitimate for fandom broadly to express its displeasure with last year's Worldcon by putting Luhrs' essay on this year's Hugo ballot."

That contention means that you feel the work was legitimately on the ballot not solely because of its intrinsic worth but as a means of holding the convention to account.

* George's viewpoints might be open to criticism but the length of the ceremony and the mispronunciation of names, which are key factors in the loud outrage expressed, are directly the result of the Hugo ceremony staff not doing their jobs, and the convention allowed all of the blame for those points to fall solely on George.

* I fail to see why the convention committee is not entitled to apply Code of Conduct guidelines to Hugo nominations, which are part of the larger convention.

* Yes, I thought it would be clear from the context that I was talking about the Hugo *ceremony* staff, not the administrators, when I was talking about correspondence about the ceremony.

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[nwhyte]

To be absolutely clear: the work is on the ballot because people voted for it, no other reason. We can speculate about why people voted for it, we can opine about whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but it’s on the ballot, not because the administrators thought it fair comment, but because people voted for it.

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[ext_5782146]

Your contention that the Hugo ballot is an appropriate venue for people to comment on the screwups of a Worldcon because you perceive they have no other outlet is entirely separate from whether people voted to put it there.

Re: Not both ways, but two different things

[nwhyte]

Sure. One is my opinion, the other is the rules.

Code of Conduct Can't Override the Hugo Award Rules

[kevin_standlee]

I think there were plenty of grounds to do so given the convention's Code of Conduct.
How so? Worldcon committees have the right to create a Code of Conduct under Section 1.6 of the WSFS Constitution:
Section 1.6: Authority. Authority and responsibility for all matters concerning the Worldcon, except those reserved herein to WSFS, shall rest with the Worldcon Committee, which shall act in its own name and not in that of WSFS.
Article III of the WSFS Constitution (the Hugo Awards) is one of those things that is "reserved to WSFS." In other words, you can't disqualify a Hugo Award finalist by making up rules that go beyond those in the WSFS Constitution like a convention Code of Conduct. If you could do so, then you could also establish a Code of Conduct that says (to give what I hope are absurd examples) that it is a violation of the Code of Conduct to permit Worldcon bids from any site in the USA, or to introduce any proposals to the Business Meeting that are not personally authorized by the Convention Chair. Or possibly just say that "Only works authorized by the Convention Committee shall be permitted on the ballot for the Hugo Awards."

This doesn't mean I'm happy with the cited work. I just don't think the Administrators have any right to disqualify it. If you want the Worldcon Committee (and by extension the Hugo Award Administration Subcommittee) to be able to disqualify works on purely subjective grounds, you have to change the rules to explicitly allow this, not try to do so through a back door of a Code of Conduct, I think.

[nwhyte]

Agree.