Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I think the concept which is difficult for people to understand is that a world-renowned award like the Hugo is a club activity.

That's because we don't promote the name of the sanctioning body (the World Science Fiction Society) that much. Instead, we promote the World Science Fiction Convention, WSFS's only event.

This is made even more difficult by the fact that no one joins WSFS as such, one buys a membership in an event sanctioned by the club....

But in fact we do -- we just don't use that terminology. A Worldcon Supporting Membership is your annual membership dues to the World Science Fiction Society. The difference in price between an Attending and Supporting membership is the "convention supplement."

...and that event is held in a different part of the world each year, and is inconvenient for most people to attend.

For some years, I was a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians and its regional body, the California State Association of Parliamentarians. I paid membership dues to NAP. NAP holds a convention. If I wanted to attend it, I would have to pay an additional fee (the convention supplement) on top of my membership dues. And the NAP convention was held in a different place every time, so it wasn't always convenient to attend. (In fact, I never did attend one; I did, however, once attend the CSAP annual convention, and even got to vote -- there was no guarantee of being able to vote at these things even though I was a member!)

Why should a fan pay to support a convention in order to vote for an award which is not being given by the convention, per se?

Why should I have paid membership dues to NAP when I didn't attend their annual convention?

Maybe if we actually styled the supporting membership as "WSFS Membership" and the remainder as "convention supplement," this distinction would be more clear. But I don't think it would change people's minds very much.