Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Post Hugo Post

So first off, thank you to everybody who voted for me. It really was special having Robert Silverberg present the awards. Sarah Gailey was a very deserving winner. I had a respectable showing but I guess the most elegant outcome would have been to have lost to No Award :).

Results here http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2018-hugo-awards/ and here http://file770.com/2018-hugo-winners/ and breakdown of results are here https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/2018DetailedResults.pdf

There were plenty of surprises but my only disappointment was that The Divine Cities didn’t win Best Series. Bujold is hard to beat though!

I wasn’t surprised, on reflection, that Sana Takeda won best professional artist — Monstress is exquisite and was my top pick for the graphic story — but I was surprised that Victo Ngai didn’t do better.

The did-Uncanny-win-twice thing happened, once for Best Editors and once as Best Semi-prozine. It’s a bit like Best Film and Best Director at the Oscars — it’s not an award for the same thing but winning either has a strong implication that they should win both. The two awards have too much in common currently and it is Best Editor that needs to change. Of course, both Uncanny and the Thomas×2 were deserving winners and I don’t want to take the shine off their rockets.

Sad that Mike Glyer couldn’t make the awards. He also withdrew File770 from further nominations, which was very magnanimous. Winning a Hugo this time in the first puppy free year since 2012 was important.

I haven’t had time to delve into the nomination stats much yet. Interesting to see how EPH works. As a rough rule of thumb, categories where the red highlighted nominees run consistently stepwise along the bottom, are categories were I think EPH probably had little impact. Where there is a bit of a ‘shelf’ with red text over black, it’s more interesting.

In other non-news it looks like the Castalia House blog has started functioning again – which is dissapointing:)

 

camestrosfelapton

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75 responses to “Post Hugo Post”

  1. I wonder what a certain never-to-be-mentioned Rabid thinks of Nora’s “big shiny middle finger” aimed by implication at him?

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      • In the comments on the Youtube version of the speech, someone posted a ‘quote’ by Robert Silverberg (misspelling of Ms Jemisin’s name) criticising her and the speech in the strongest and nastiest terms. The only source I could find for this drivel was on Beale’s blog, naturally without linking to any place where Mr Silverberg can be proven to have actually said it. I feel confident if he had said it anywhere, SFF would be alight with cries of dismay and disbelief, and I wonder if anyone has drawn his attention to this attempt to malign both Ms Jemisin and himself. It’s a pretty foul and dishonest tactic.

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      • Mark, if Silverberg really did say what has been reported – all issues of privacy violation aside – then I am disgusted as all hell. Not only is he wrong about what she said and the intent of it, he’s being extraordinarily narrow-minded and mean. I was disappointed in Silverberg’s response to ‘Petitiongate’ (http://www.pretty-terrible.com/oh-dear-sfwa-bulletin-petition/ ), but this thoughtless, privileged response to Ms Jemisin’s record making achievement destroys any benefit of the doubt I gave him over the matter. What a silly man.

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      • I am not particularly surprised about Silverberg. He’s always been a sexist in that New Wave SF 1960’s, 1970s tradition, (see his infamous quote about James Tiptree Jr.) And in his later years, he has grown more and more conservative. He didn’t “respond” to the Bulletin petition — he CREATED the petition about a complete and utter non-problem that was basically a weird conservative conspiracy theory about SFWA. He got the nasty guy to do it who wasn’t even a current member of SFWA, accepted it as an anti-feminist screed that made no sense, and got several of his famous friends to sign on to the thing while they clearly never had read it.

        So of course he’s going to object to a speech that treats the SFF industry and communities as less than perfect and brings up its prejudices. Because unfortunately a lot of the old guard of SFF who let a lot of that discrimination stand in their time are now very determinedly trying to deny that it exists at all or ever has. He’s going to denounce the black woman who pulled off a record with a brilliant trilogy for not knowing her place, which for them is that she should be grateful and humble that she was let in the door at all and not talk about the struggles and harassment she’s endured in society and in SFF to have a career and audience recognition.

        I was actually surprised that Silverberg was hosting the awards ceremony. He was beloved of the Puppies, though he wasn’t one, so it wasn’t the best choice for this particular finally free of Puppy vote rigging year. Maybe because he was getting the Fan Hall of Fame award. Which he deserves, not objecting to any of his awards. But he and the rest of the old white men crew keep throwing temper tantrums that the younger authors bring up civil rights issues that impact the industry and their careers, demanding that they stop. And no matter how often it’s explained to them that the younger authors aren’t going to stop and that’s a good thing, they stubbornly want to cling to a fantasy instead of reality. Which I guess is very SFF of them.

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      • Robert Silverberg presented the best fanwriter award and coincidentally told a somewhat stunned Sarah Gailey to smile. To be fair, I suspect he had no idea how problematic that was (old white dude and all that), but he should have known how offensive his remarks about N.K. Jemisin were.

        Coincidentally, Robert Silverberg has supposedly been at every WorldCon and every Hugo ceremony since 1953. He very definitely was in Helsinki last year. And yet he somehow managed not to read the trilogy that won three years in a row? of course, it’s possible that reading is difficult for him due to failing eyesight or cognitive issues. But you’d figure he#d manage to read at least a Hugo winner.

        i also really hope that he doesn’t vote for the Hugos, if he doesn’t read the books.

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      • Kat, it’s particularly annoying to read so many (female) people saying ‘oh yeah, he’s always been like that’ while other (male) people automatically dismissed the possibility of the quote being real and saying stuff like “he’s one of the classiest people I know”.

        Actually, no, it’s not annoying, it’s infuriating. After Asimov and Ellison, and #metoo, and all the fucking apologists for appalling male behaviour women have had to stomach for so long while being told that these are the giants of this or that genre/industry/artform/political world, we still have to read drivel about how men like Silverberg are old and set in their ways and, other than being sexist and ‘conservative’ (strangely only towards anyone who’s not a cis straight white man of rank) and downright ugly in the things they do and say, they’re just decent, kind folk, always ready to lend a hand to another cis straight white man, so let’s just set this atypical hatefulness aside and pretend we didn’t see them show their arses.

        Again.

        I’m absolutely tired of it. I’m tired of their influential friends propping up their reputations. I’m tired of them stealing attention away from the real heroes. I’m tired of listening to having to accept any explanation for their behaviour other than they are screwed up in the moral muscles. And I’m tired of the way other cis straight white man deflect the awfulness of what their objects of veneration have done by pretending the issue is somehow *other* than the racist, sexist, homophobic etc garbage that has just been spewed into the world and all over us. (You know, it’s about privacy. It’s about how he’s old. It’s about he comes from a different time. I saw a quote recently which said that all that tells you is that some people haven’t learned a damned thing in the last sixty years.)

        Silverberg didn’t even have the decency to spell N.K. Jemisin’s name right in his howl of outrage, let alone deign to read even one of her books. I don’t know why we have to give the knee to him even when he’s a bigot, just because he’s written a few books here and there of moderate entertainment value.

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      • Well you don’t have to bend the knee to him; that’s why he’s upset. Not as much knee bending as he’s used to. (Feudalism makes the hierarchy.) In terms of his work in the field, he is an icon, but being an icon doesn’t mean you get to denigrate people and call it fandom. But a lot of them are having trouble with the fact that their writing reps or decent behavior they’ve done in the past even, doesn’t mean that their more discriminatory behavior in fandom is going to be accepted uncriticized in current days by people who refuse to be further cowed. They decide that the criticism or protest cannot be legitimate, or might be but shouldn’t be allowed to create any change for the better and safety of the general community, at least if it inconveniences them or the image they have of themselves. And they are quite flummoxed that many, usually younger authors won’t go along with that script.

        It’s the same with Weber and Ringo’s rage re ConCarolinas, convention organizers sputtering over codes of conduct and having to consistently enforce them, the Puppies wanting everyone to be quiet about discrimination issues and labeling them false, the pointless nastiness about not calling people by the pronouns they’d like to be called, the dismissal of women writers, the whining that POC writers shouldn’t have dedicated anthologies while the thousands of pure white anthologies published for decades don’t count, and all the rest of it. They want people to shut up, treat all the folks used to ruling as the nice gods of SFF, and never talk about discrimination problems in the industry. They never want to have to think about what they are saying and what it means in the actual structure of society and SFF communities.

        But that leaves a lot of authors with damaged careers and a lot of fans with the choice to speak up or leave fandom events and interactions altogether. So they are trying to change things and bring in the wider groups of fans. There are quite a few older SFF authors and fan figures who get it and welcome it. It doesn’t have to be perfect about it. But Silverberg was okay launching a trolling petition at SFWA that among other things suggested giving women the vote in the U.S. might have been a mistake. All because he was miffed some of his friends were criticized for sexist cluelessness in the Bulletin.

        So you know, I’ve read some of his work, I accept his position in SFF history re his writing and editing, but I have little interest in a man who does stuff like that. He may be nice to individual women, but he’s not nice to women, and in the case of Jemisin, he played the I don’t understand racism while I tone police card. So yeah, I’m tired of them too. But that’s how they keep the walls up — making people objecting tired. So we keep talking about the discriminatory walls and how the walls are bad and we want them down. Maybe Martin or one of the others can take him aside and talk some sense into him, but it’s doubtful, given his history.

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      • I have it on good authority – i.e. Silverberg himself – that in fact he doesn’t vote for the Hugos and hasn’t for some time, b/c he’s not keeping up with the reading, Hugo or other. So tone-policing old fart, yes; dishonestly voting, no.

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      • What the feck did I just read? I feel my brain shivering somewhere down around the top of my spinal column and I don’t know how I’m going to coax it back out of hiding.

        That man needs professional help.

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      • Nominations show how many fans a thing has. Voting shows how wide its appeal is. Often these go together, but not always. While InCryptid might seem quite fun, and Stormlight an intriguing world, even to people who weren’t previously committed to them, I think someone who wasn’t already following Divine Cities could easily find it hard to relate to.

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        • I can see that. Also, it’s probably not a good series to try to get into in a rush – and certainly bfor me reading for Series was a rather…compressed…experience.

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      • Camestros got an impressive number of noms, but – alas – the wider voting public clearly haven’t yet drunk the Kool-Aid…

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  3. Regarding Uncanny: I think both awards need to change; once Best Editor is changed to Best Magazine, there isn’t a real justification for keeping Semiprozine.

    And I don’t think Best Film/Best Director is a perfect analogy. I admit it’s hard to see how those things could come apart, but presumably people who know a lot about films are able to separate out elements which are not due to the director. Whereas with magazines, we clearly aren’t meant to separate out aspects which aren’t due to the editor; we all know that ‘Best Editor’ means ‘editor of the best magazine (or anthology)’. If we think Asimov’s is the best, we vote for Sheila Williams, etc.: that’s the only way to honour it. Except that if it’s a semiprozine, it gets two bites.

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  4. Congrats on your nomination and Mike on his win, even if he couldn’t be there in the end to enjoy it. You are all in good company and it sounds like people had fun.

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  5. I personally am waiting for whatever Pups are still ranting to explain how a BLACK WOMAN could win 3 Hugos in a row without falling into conspiracy-mongering. Not that I’m going to actually read their pathetic blogs, mind you. That’s why I come here every day; in order to have Camestros give me an amusing and lucid (to the extent that’s possible) precis of the Pups’ bullshittery. I’m sorry you didn’t win, Cam, but my sorrow over that is outweighed by my glee that Nora and Martha Wells both won.

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    • The Pups gave up on were never actually interested in winning Hugos because it’s obvious now that the Hugos are immune to gaming are no longer relevant because of so much bias going on. So much bias. Really and truly. It’s what they tell you all the time! They swear it’s true!

      It’s the Dragon Awards that are what the serious Pups are spending their quality time losing these days.

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      • And now they’re trying so, so very hard to pretend that the new award which is even more vulnerable to being gamed is So Much More Prestigious Than the Hugo(tm) . The fun part is that they’re not really doing so well at winning the Dragons.

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        • Yes, GRRM made some comments about what really makes an award prestigious when he was presenting the Pro Artist Hugo. Obviously, a dig at the pups.

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  6. To be honest, I’m doing a lot of musing on what a fan is, and what fanwriting is. I think what Cam does is fanwriting. He’s doing it for the, for the lack of a better term, kudos. It’s the fun of writing and the response of comments that keeps him going. I’m getting a little more hesitant about other folks in the category — I think there’s starting to be some edge cases on the low/no-paying part of the rule for fanwriting, and, at least to me, it’s starting to feel like it’s being used as a stepping stone by some pros — because by winning fanwriter, they can put “Hugo Winner” on their books.

    Or another point — I suspect if I was to say, hey Cam, would you mind writing an entry for my blog/fanzine on a topic, I suspect that, unless he really hated the topic, he’d probably be willing to do so. (In fact, I’m musing a project that may lead to such a request, just to give you a heads up, Cam.) I’m less sure that if I asked some of the other nominees/winners in the category the same request that I would get a similar response.

    There is (or perhaps maybe was at this point) the concept of a fannish gift economy — I’d give you my fanzine, you’d give me yours, I’d ask you if you wanted to write or draw something for my fanzine, you might ask me if I’d write (or draw) something for yours, or hell, you might send me writing or art out of the blue for my fanzine. That’s kinda what I see Mike and Cam doing, as part of this fannish economy. It’s passed on to blogs and electronic media, and it’s the better for it. I’m not a fanzine ogre who insists that all the best writing is done in fanzines that nobody sees. Cam is a great example of what I’m talking about!

    But I’m a bit worried about where it looks, to me, where fanwriter is going and I don’t think I’m expressing myself that well, because it’s just a gut feeling.

    (Sorry, Cam, didn’t mean to kinda splatter all over your blog.)

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    • But pros winning best fanwriter has been a thing for at least ten years now. John Scalzi’s first Hugo was for fanwriting. I also don’t have a problem with pros being nominated for and winning best fanwriter, as long as the works in question are actual fanwriting, i.e. for the love and contributor copies, and not paid posts/articles on the big genre sites.

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      • Right, and I think Scalzi’s blog is fanwriting. He’s also been occasionally known to contribute to a fanzine if you ask really nicely. Alexandra Erin’s Puppy spoofs during the whole Puppy kerfuffle of 2015 were fanwriting.

        Here’s my thing. The rule for Best Fan Writer states: “Any person whose writing has appeared in semiprozines or fanzines or in generally available electronic media during the previous calendar year.”

        Both semiprozines and fanzines are defined as “Any generally available non-professional periodical publication devoted to science fiction or fantasy…”

        Which boils down to the question. Does Tor.com, for example, fall under the semipro/fanzine category, or the generally available electronic media, even though it’s an extension of a major publishing company? And if it counts under generally available electronic media, does that mean if, say, Asimov’s started publishing online, despite being a professional magazine, does that mean that stuff published there is eligible for Best Fan Writer?

        That’s the muddled tangle I’m working through in my head right now, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

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      • I think that an important criterion for fan writing is that you don’t get paid for your writing. It’s an act of Fandom. If you’re being paid, that’s pro writing of course.

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      • I’m pretty sure Tor.com pays their contributors, which is a problem e.g. with Liz Bourke, who writes great reviews and columns, but mainly for Tor.com. Not sure about the B&N science fiction and fantasy blog, though I think they pay, too. Ditto for places like io9, SyFy Wire, etc… So if someone’s writing only appeared in those venues, I would be hesitant to nominate them for best fanwriter.

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      • Pros won for fan effort even earlier than that (Wilson Tucker was best fan writer in 1970, and he had also been writing professionally for some time at that point (and in 1970, Piers Anthony was a finalist for both fanwriter and best novel)).

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    • One could argue that one of the biggest things about Worldcon is and always has been showing that the ‘pros’ are generally also ‘fans’. (One of the things that many of the puppies seemed to have issues with, being more familiar with industry-run conventions which have a harder dividing line, rather than fan-run ones.)

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    • Oh gosh, this is a complicated one.

      a. There is no doubt that people who are pros can also be fan writers – in recent years we have had Scalzi, Pohl, Hines, Hurley, Mixon etc. The question is what makes the writing fannish.

      b. There is no doubt that according to the strict definition of fan writer in the WSFS constitution, writing at Tor.com counts, under the heading of ‘generally available electronic media’. One may well feel, however, that this is not in the spirit of the award, given that in other parts of the constitution ‘fan’ and ‘pro’ are clearly contrasted, and the bit of the fan writer definition which relates to printed material says ‘fanzines or semiprozines’, both of which are defined as non-professional. It may be that the framers of that amendment were simply not considering that there might be professional generally available electronic media – Tor.com had not then been invented. The published informal guidelines for the Hugos do say that fan writing should not be in a professional publication.

      c. How we should, separate fan from pro work is a puzzle anyway. ‘Fan’ has never been defined as ‘unpaid’, as in ‘no money changes hands’ – work in semprozines has always counted as fannish, and they pay their contributors. Classically it was defined simply in terms of circulation, the relevant difference being between material published in the great wide world and material published in the world of fandom. The internet has made that way of drawing the distinction impossible, so now we have the weird ‘provides more than a quarter of anyone’s income’ rule, which (i.) requires us to ask embarrassing personal questions, and (ii) in any case produces anomalous results, as e.g. if a magazine should change from pro to semipro just because its editor’s income from other sources has increased.

      So I’ve no idea where we go from here. Perhaps the fan/pro distinction rests on a division between worlds which no longer exists, so can’t be maintained. Perhaps we should change the award to ‘best critic’ or ‘best commentator’ and stop trying to decide if it’s fannish or not. Or perhaps not.

      ((Was anything decided about the art awards, by the way?)

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      • But Tor.com pays pro-rates, don’t they? At least they do for fiction, so they’re not a semi-prozine. Though Liz Bourke was nominated for best fanwriter a few years back, when she mostly wrote for Tor.com and Locus, neither of which are semiprozines. And I don’t recall anybody having any issues with that.

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      • I was thinking about this prior to the awards but it would have been impolitic to discuss it before hand but I’ll write some thoughts tomorrow about it.

        My basic take is that I see ‘fan writing’ as equivalent to ‘fannish writing’ i.e. writing for fans about fandom and as part of fannish discourse, regardless of who is doing it.

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      • No, Tor.com is certainly not a semiprozine: but as the rule says ‘fanzines, semiprozines or generally available electronic media’, it allows a third way through, for which the question of professionalness, if you stick to the letter of the rule, doesn’t arise. This has the weird consequence that it has to be non-pro if it’s in print, but not if it’s on the web. (Given what ‘fanzine’ and ‘semiprozine’ are now generally taken to mean, you could just say ‘fanzines and semiprozines’, and it would include the kind of electronic media which people mostly want to include; but at the time the amendment was passed the terms were widely seen as referring only to print.)

        I think there was some worry about Bourke’s nomination, actually – there are old articles at File 770 reporting a debate on teh issue.

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      • If I recall correctly, although I’d have to go look it up (or ask Kevin Standlee), the clause about “generally available electronic media” was added in Reno, and it was added specifically to make blogs and efanzines (that is, fanzines published in pdf) eligible. I do recall that Reno is where we messed with the semipro definition and added fancast, and I can’t recall if we added to best fan writer at that time. I do remember arguments about making blogs specifically eligible because fannish writing was migrating that direction.

        I don’t care if pros win it because pros are fans, and that’s always been the case. Granted, back in the day, it was easier to distinguish fan writing from pro writing because there wasn’t a plethora of options for fan writing like there are now. I just want to keep it so that non-pros like Cam have a realistic shot of not only being nominated but of possibly winning, if that makes sense.

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      • ‘Generally available electronic media’ goes back a lot further than Reno: I haven’t managed to trace it to its source, but it was already being cited as early as 1998.

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      • Okay. I know Reno is where we messed with the semipro rules and added best fancast. I seem to recall us playing with something else, but I can’t recall now what that is. It must have been something in fanzine, then.

        I just think that “generally available electronic media” is a truck loophole — that nearly anything can be driven through it. But I’m not yet sure how to fix it.

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      • I think the immediate problem might be solved by changing it to ‘published in non-professional publications’ (possibly adding ‘in the field of science fiction and fantasy’, or the like, to stop perverse readings). This would really just kick the problem down the line to ‘what is a non-professional publication?’, but it would catch the probable intent of the current rule.

        (1992 is striking early to be contemplating electronic publication – any idea what sort of thing they had in mind?)

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      • Martin: thanks regarding the art awards. On the one hand I’m glad they haven’t rushed to judgement. On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have different committees for different sets of awards, because they all affect one another, and a change to one can have unintended ripple effects – e.g. the definition of fan artist mentions semiprozines.

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      • The 1991 minutes provide the movers’ (Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Saul Jaffe) statement: “This would […] include fanwriting that had appeared in the electronic media, including the Internet; Usenet; and pay services such as Compuserve, GEnie, and Prodigy.” (I was four years old, so I can’t really speak to anything personally.)

        And yeah, that’s why I voted against the motion to create a separate committee. Although the existing committee indicated that it wasn’t likely to return anything much different if the art awards were re-referred there instead.

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      • So, not sites as we now know them, but newsgroups, message boards, I suppose mailing lists if they had public archives. Which it would indeed be hard to represent as fanzines or semiprozines.

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  9. I’d like to know more about the experience of John Picacio’s Mexicanx Initiative — if the presence of the 50 supremely-talented invitees had an impact, brought awareness of broader international fandoms and their perspectives, and resulted in new friendships/ collaborations/ projects etc.

    It seems to me, from the glancing familiarity I have, that John Picacio is a remarkably good person — creative, energetic, kind, welcoming, diplomatic, politic. He surely was the ideal version of a GOH?!! Big congrats to him for raising 50 sponsored memberships and travel subsidies, and for helping Mexican guests navigate visa issues.

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  10. So nice to see the Fans get their award ceremony back. The rule changes did what it is supposed to do. And the alt right pups may still howl at the moon but they do it their business somewhere else.

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  11. I may still be unconscious from the Hugo Losers’ Party. That GRRM guy can really host!

    Looks like Teddy’s got some stooge forwarding him private emails. Need to find out who that is. Ain’t no way Silverberg is directly informing Teddy of any of his thoughts.

    I was sorry Mike missed it too, and ever so annoyed about YA, but happy for Wells and Monstress.

    And OMG you guys, Nora’s cape. It was EVERYTHING. It was LIFE. It should win a Hugo all by itself. She looked like a goddess or possibly a member of the Wakandan royal family, or both.

    John Picacio was awesome the whole way through, and Spider had us laughing and crying, and it was all swell.

    I must not be unconscious b/c things hurt.

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      • I’m sticking it in some category next year. Wherever I have a space. Best Novella, Best Fan Artist, Best Semipro Zine, I don’t care. I’m nominating that cape. She said herself the dress underneath was no big deal and average but she splurged on the cape and we all agreed this was ideal.

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      • Alyshondra was grabbing everyone to take their pictures. She’s Mary Robinette Kowal’s assistant and was the go-to person for those of us who had no idea how to dress fancy. Fashion is totally her thing; Mary (who of course is always gorgeous) was helping her round up people to photograph. I did not measure up and may have hidden on purpose. (She was going for people who were actually nominated and looked awesome.)

        That light-up crown was actually QUARTZ crystals. o_O I thought it was plastic but no!

        Oh gosh of course she got Nora’s cape. Did I mention it is EVERYTHING?

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  13. Just so you know, Cam, you lead the small six-member parade on my Best Fan Writer ballot. (I had Sarah Gailey as #2.)

    Just be glad that my terrible luck in picking political candidates to support via direct volunteer work hasn’t transferred to my Hugo picks. I worked as a canvassing volunteer exactly three times:

    1. Robert F. Kennedy, 1968
    2. George Moscone, San Francisco mayor, 1976
    3. Leo J. Ryan (my congressman and friend), 1978

    After that, I quit. (Note what they had in common.)

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    • I’m bad luck for politicians, too, but usually because they lose when I vote for them.

      But with your track record, maybe you should consider supporting Trump.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Cora, it’s definitely been suggested before that I deploy my apparent mystic powers on the side of lawful(?) good.

        (I don’t, of course, wish him that, but rather peaceful and democratic irrelevancy. And a fair trial.)

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  14. Related to the question of “what is fan writing?”, I’m curious to see if you think this is fan writing [pdf link]:

    Click to access RP-015.pdf

    (It’s mine, published in my own fanzine, and I consider myself party of fan zine fandom. But it’s about my mental health struggles.)

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    • That’s powerful writing but it is also a great example. Let’s count the ways:
      1. It’s in a fanzine
      2. It is by a fan
      3. It is about a fan
      4. The context is fandom and being a fan
      I guess the other aspect here is the sense of fan writing as social glue that helps bind a far spread community or to mix metaphors, a lubricant that helps keep the gears of fandom turning (which again points to Mike G’s writing as being the most fanwritish fan writing of all this years nominees)

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      • Thank you for your compliments on the writing. 🙂

        What Mike’s doing (and what he’s been doing for years, for a very long time on paper before he turned to blogging) is very definitely fannish, and is probably the center of a bunch of squiggly lines extending out in all directions. What you do strikes me as very fannish, even the stuff that doesn’t seem to be so much — it’s part of a conversation, I wasn’t around for all the arguments, but there was one about whether all this writing about jazz and sports cars in fanzines at the time was fannish writing. And the consensus was yes.

        I’m seriously thinking of doing an issue of my fanzine where I basically ask everybody what fandom is/means to them. It should be an interesting project…

        Liked by 1 person

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