Salon Futura on the Hugo Awards

[kevin_standlee]

As I fill out my 2024 Hugo Award ballot (deadline in a few days), I note that Salon Futura is eligible for Best Fanzine.

Cheryl Morgan has written an article in the latest issue ("Chengdu Revisited") that I think is well worth a look. She did give me an advance look at it, but I hasten to add that I've revealed no "insider information" to her, unless you think pointing people at the published minutes of WSFS MPC/WIP meetings is Revealing Sekrit Information. I did point out that a few places in the USA still use the Town Meeting form of government that we use for WSFS, although as she points out, few places (or none at all of which I'm aware) try to do the day-to-day governance of a town with thousands of residents using it, and that's what people who seem to think have a constantly-in-session, round-the-clock (except during Worldcon itself) online WSFS Business Meeting appear to want. Even a rules geek like me would get tired of that pretty quickly.

I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I have previously speculated that the Ad Hoc Congress of Free Luna was something that Heinlein was inspired to write after attending a WSFS Business Meeting. Note that even in the hyper-libertarian society posited there, they eventually ended up with an elected legislature.

Comments

[jonesnori]

FaceBook is full of silliness, it is true. (The money suggestion is ridiculous and offensive.) There are serious fans having serious discussions about this, though, and making much more reasonable suggestions. By the time something makes it to an actual Business Meeting, you may still disagree, but it should not be a silly suggestion.

[kevin_standlee]

I certainly hope that serious solutions actually make it to the Business Meeting. But you know, I've been proposing ways of giving the entire membership a share of the decision-making process for years, and I have been told I was a dangerous lunatic for doing so. I'm afraid that this latest is going to be the opening for those people who really do want to burn everything to the ground to do so.

[jonesnori]

It may be that the time has come for your public approval plan to be accepted.

[kevin_standlee]

Maybe. However, when ever I bring it up, people say that it's still Bad and that the only way to run things is for every single person to attend the Business Meeting, so it must be held at times and places that are convenient to [insert person complaining; who cares about anyone else], and that if you don't have a computer, you're not a real person, so who cares about you, etc.

Essentially, you have a lot of very loud people who are convinced that everyone except them individually are Wrong, and that the only proper form of government is a circular firing squad. And Rules are bad. The only rule should be "Do whatever I order you to do!"

I wish I could be more optimistic, but with the large number of people complaining that All Rules Are Evil unless the result it whatever they personally want, I'm really worried.