Hugo Announcements Ahead

[kevin_standlee]

In case you missed the post on the Hugo Awards web site, here's a note that the finalists for this year's Hugo Awards will be announced this Saturday. The main announcement event will be at Eastercon in Glasgow starting at 8:30 PM BST (12:30 PM PDT where I am in Nevada), along with satellite events at Minicon in Minneapolis (2:30 CDT) and Norwescon in Seattle (12:30 PM PDT), and the whole thing is to be broadcast on UStream, technology permitting.

Due to the arrangements coming together rather late in the process, we're not planning a CoverItLive event on the announcements this year; besides, except for Dave McCarty — who as Hugo Administrator will be too busy on Announcement day — none of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee members are going to be at any of the Announcement events. I'll be watching them, however, and posting the nominations shortly after they're announced at TheHugoAwards.org.

Note that Loncon elected to go with the terminology "Hugo Award finalists" rather than the traditional "Hugo Award Nominees." I think this is the right decision now that people have got it into their heads that one person writing their name on a Hugo Nominating Ballot makes that person a "Hugo Award Nominee" despite more than fifty years of contrary practice and tradition.

Comments

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

In the database, I call it the short list. This was originally driven by having a table called "nominee" which got the entries during the nomination phase - largely a shirt sighted choice, not a belief that they were actually nominees unless they got on the short list.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

I might suggest that the easiest way of dealing with the whole "nominee" thing would be to add a section to Article 3 of the WSFS Constitution that reads something like this:

"Nominees: Only those persons and/or works who appear on the final Hugo Awards ballot shall be entitled to call themselves 'Hugo Award Nominee.'"

It codifies 50+ years of fannish practice and tradition, and if some of these people continue to follow this misguided practice, let it be a matter for the Mark Protection Committee.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Never pass a rule you know will be ignored. And as Chairman of the MPC, I refuse to play King Canute. I have in the past pointed it out as politely as possible, and we have it on our web site, but anything beyond that would require legal action, and that would not only rapidly get expensive, it would make WSFS look particularly petty and foolish.