The Final Countdown

[kevin_standlee]

I was online as the Hugo Voting Deadline ticked over last night so I could un-stick the posts on TheHugoAwards.org (they actually turned "un-sticky" about 23:45) and compose the entry announcing that Voting was closed and giving more details about the Hugo Awards ceremony on August 22.

From a few comments I saw on social media, there were people who may have assumed that the results would be announced last night at 12:01 AM. These are people who have heard about the Hugo Awards but have no idea of their connection to Worldcon. Of course, there are also people who think that the Hugo Awards need to cut their long ties with Worldcon and be run completely independently, with no poll tax and making sure that every consumer of pop-culture SF/F entertainment anywhere in the world speaking any language is consulted before a decision is made to give it to the Right Works (defined as whatever the individual who is demanding Change Right Now wants to win, of course). These people, if they are thinking at all, seem to think that the Hugo Awards are something that was created somewhere else and is hosted by this Worldcon thingy, instead of understanding that the Hugos are a creature of the Worldcon itself. They don't like that when you point it out to them.

Anyway, today I've been dealing with a number of WSFS cleanup jobs, not the least of which personally is toting up all of the money I've been out-of-pocket in the past eight months to WSFS jobs and submitting my expense report. It's only a low-three-figure sum, but it's still something that needed doing. I also helped someone compose potential WSFS constitutional amendments, and addressed further why I hope people will stop trying to use Objection to Consideration against things that are merely unpopular and unlikely to pass muster at the Main Meeting, while being scolded for not letting members do anything they want to do whenever they want to do it. Sometimes I feel like I'm beset from all sides, and that WSFS's worst enemies are their putative friends.

Comments

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Non-sequitur. If you're going to call a convention WOrldcon, it should be World, and that should mean being open to being held in countries other than the US, which it has been and almost certainly will be again. On the other hand, the Hugos have never been anything other than WSFS's award. Unfortunately even insiders like GRRM have made the mistake of taling them up as "fandom's award" in recent years, as opposed to WSFS' award. (To GRRM's credit he admitted his mistake on his LJ.)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

What I've been seeing is people saying that "because it's WORLDcon, you should never hold it in the USA ever again, and instead hold it in China and the Middle East and places like that, and certainly not places like the EU or US or Canada or Australia. And definitely not a place where English is the primary language!" I reckon they'd be happy with the Japan bid, but it's tainted by having been held there before. Besides, aren't there huge governments willing to spend millions of dollars to bribe the Board of Directors of WSFS to hold the event in the country, like Real Conventions? We're a High Profile World Event, and they'll spend lots of money on us and tens of thousands of people will show up when your Big Entertainment Company holds your Pop Culture Entertainment Event there. Sigh. And when you tell them, "Tell you what: you bid for it and see what happens." they get huffy and storm off. A bunch of keyboard warriors, the lot of them.

I expect a proposal, maybe next year, to require Worldcon to not be held in the same country two years in a row. I've pointed out that the last time WSFS did that, the European members immediately voted to reverse it the following year.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

A saner variation might forbid three, four, or N years in the same country, but somehow I doubt such a low impact proposal would be popular.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm in favor of holding Worldcon in a serial variety of countries. But that's because they have vibrant SF traditions and active fandoms of their own. Not because it's called "Worldcon." That's not why it got the name in the first place, you see. That's the historical ignorance, and thus why the comparison is not a nonsequitur. Sam Moskowitz called it the World Science Fiction Convention because it was being held in conjunction with the 1939 World's Fair in NYC. If "world" in the other sense had been the intent, it would be beyond bizarre that it was never held outside North America until 1957 IIRC, and not in a non-English-speaking country until 1970, and that only as a one-shot for many years afterwards.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the history, @kalimac!

My first Worldcon was 1998 (I haven't been to every Worldcon since, however). 1998 through 2016, Worldcon's 35% non-U.S., which seems pretty good to me, given demographics (even when outside the U.S.), and given it's historically an English-speaking con. Heck, looking at only the past most-recently-seated Worldcons, it's even "better" (?!) - 40% non-U.S.

Sure, taking a very narrow view - let's say, 2012-2016 - it's only 20% non-U.S. But a similarly totally arbirtrary-but-recent timeframe, 2005-2010, is 67% non-U.S. It's all in how one spins the numbers - all in what one emphasizes. And I feel like some people are wearing blinders when complaining about it being in the U.S. "too much."

(I'd be happy if Helsinki won, despite living in the DC area. There are other non-U.S. bids coming up in the next 5 years that I hope do well, but they must compete like any other bid.)

[(Anonymous)]

While the name "World Science Fiction Convention" may have been inspired by the World's Fair, I would think that some of the fans who decided to keep up the idea of a World Science Fiction Convention after 1939 thought of the word "world" in another sense. I don't think any of the Worldcons after 1939 were held in cities that were also hosting World's Fairs.

-- J. Kreitzer

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

They can interpret it however they choose. But that carries no obligation on anyone else to agree with them.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Callng the first one Worldcon because it was at a World's Fair was reasonable. Continuing to call it that while holding it every year in the US was arrogant and like much colonial/imperial issues of the past should not determine what we do 75(!) years later, particularly when there has been a serious effort to make it more international while retaining its culture. But anyway, we're getting off the point which is that Worldcon IS an international event and is intended to be so by its constitution.
The original point in this thread was about people who don't understand that the Hugo Awards belong to WSFS/Worldcon. Saying that Worldcon isn't World simply because the name first came about because of the World's Fair and ignoring the decades of acceptance and promotion of it being a World event (albeit one with strong cultural links to US fandom and a high proportion of events in the US) is not a good argument in general and is distracting from the original point, which is that the Hugos belong to WSFS/Worldcon and those people who complain about aspects of the Hugo process that are connected to Worldcon are at best misinformed.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You have a point here, but you've reached the stage of beating a casual comparison to death. The relevance of the comparison remains that some people are ignorant of what the thing is and what it was created for.