Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Hugo 2024 Best Fan Writer

I have some thoughts on this category. I don’t normally post what I’m going to nominate and obviously you should all make your own decisions but I do have some suggestions.

Firstly and most obviously:

Paul Weimer: I would be nominating Paul regardless of recent revelations about the 2023 Hugo Awards. I don’t know if or how either the 2023 or 2024 Worldcons will make any kind of official moves to apologise to Paul but regardless of that I think people should be nominating him both because of how he was mistreated in 2023 but also (and primarily) because he is an excellent fan writer https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2022/06/04/paul-weimer-hugo-2022-fanwriter-finalist/

Now, one thought I had was to end the list there and just bullet-vote for Paul but he’s not the only person who has been harmed by recent events. The one big positive thing I hoped for with the Chengdu Worldcon was to make contact with Chinese fans. Despite many things that were wrong with that con, I know I and many of you have met some new and really interesting people involved in Chinese science-fiction. Sometimes that has been more in depsite of the official convention than because of it!

It really saddens me that Chinese fans are now also hurting and feel let down by the 2023 Worldcon. We should not and must not let this shitty set of events around the 2023 Hugos further a rift between fans across the world. There are many Chinese fans with nominating rights for the 2024 Hugo Awards and I sincerely hope that many of them vote and nominate the works and people they value.

I will also be nominating:

Arthur Liu aka HeavenDuke 天爵 https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2023/09/27/2023-fan-writers-arthur-liu/ and Riverflow 河流 https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2023/09/28/2023-fan-writers-river-flow/

It has been really interesting meeting both of them online and seeing their perspective on Worldcon and the Hugo Awards. Both are really interesting fan writers and curators of fan projects and activity.

I also asked ErsatzCulture for other suggestions for people to check out and consider in the fan categories. As most of you know, ErsatzCulture has been doing sterling work bridging the gap between fandoms and his updates on File770 have been invaluable. Among the people he suggested:

  • SF Light Year (Mike Glyer equivalent)
  • Xerosoul (new release news and analysis, not really of interest to non-Chinese fans though)
  • Zimozi Natsuco (aka ghostfoxctc on Twitter and BlueSky)

Honourable Mention: of course, I’ve just said ErsatzCulture did fantastic work last year but I know he’s not keen on being in the spotlight and wouldn’t be keen to be a Fan Writer finalist. However, I would STRONGLY suggest people consider nominating his unofficial Hugo Award Packet (https://sf.ersatzculture.com/chengdu-worldcon/voter-packet-contents.html#best-fanzine ) for Best Related Work.

Obviously, Award packets aren’t new and many volunteers have done the hard work of collating them in previous years without much recognition. Even so, the work here with Arthur Liu to get fan works in particular in dual languages to fans in China and internationally is of particular significance and I think very worthy of recognition. Without their intervention, many of us wouldn’t have had a chance to read the works by Chinese fans before the voting closed. The whole thing is also an important piece of fan history showing a point of exchange between two very different and yet very similar communities.

camestrosfelapton

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25 responses to “Hugo 2024 Best Fan Writer”

  2. I suspect a bunch of people think James Nicoll is purely a pro reviewer and conflate his personal website with his ReacTordotcom work.He provides an essential service and is pleasantly snarky, too.

    Liked by 5 people

    • If only for “Young People Read Old SF” and the reviews on his blog.

      He’s definitely everyone’s favorite accident-prone reviewer in the English language. 😉

      Liked by 2 people

      • My favourite accident is still something from rec.arts.sf.fandom where James found one of those big void-packs — that’s just a single bubble — and a knife. All the “oh no James!” got a “I have very good reflexes, I’m fine” reply.

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    • Last year he did specifically ask people not to nominate him. I don’t know if he’s made any similar statement this year.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I did not! But I knew when I stepped away last year it might have a lasting effect because people might not realize it was for just the one con with two pro-genocide GOHs (and one who was OK with being next to those two).That said, it would be weird if voters, having passed me over in 2021, 2022, and 2023, remembered I existed. Usually the pattern is once the finalist streak is over, it’s over.

        Liked by 3 people

        • Also, while I’d love to be nominated for more awards, I’ve seen the corrosive effect of chasing awards. If it happens, I will be very pleased. If it does not, I will find something else about which to be pleased.

          Liked by 3 people

            • Context: Lurkertype’s remark about deputizing a team of Canadian scrutineers to monitor the Hugo voting.

              Maybe a crack team from Switzerland? If Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels are anything to go by, the meetings will start on time, schedules will be kept, and deadlines will be met. 🙂

              Liked by 1 person

              • I worked in Switzerland for a while, and it was very like that. The train staff apologised for a 30s late departure. But more amusingly my client was a cigarette factory with a smoking policy (you will smoke our cigarettes). We put a “no smoking” sign on the door of the office we’d been assigned for the project, and the client staff obeyed, it…

                What’s more, that was in one of the more relaxed French-speaking cantons.

                Liked by 2 people

              • As it happens, I have worked (during elections only) for both Elections Ontario and Elections Canada. Thrilling development: EC is having so much trouble finding people [1] their trainers no longer brag about not having to follow Canadian labour law [2].

                1: Your typical EC staffer is a retiree and I think Covid hollowed out their numbers.2: During the 2015 election I worked 14 hours with two five minute pee breaks and no meals breaks.

                Liked by 1 person

        • I could have sworn that I saw something on Bluesky to the effect of, “I did surprisingly well for a year in which I had asked people not to nominate me”. I may be mistaken. Your review site seems to be down right now, so I’m currently unable to see exactly what you did say.

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          • I did say that but I meant I did well in the 2023 Hugo Awards.(My site is up and down this week. Don’t know why)

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  4. I’m curious to know how you know that Chinese fans are hurting and feeling let down by the 2023 Worldcon. Are you in touch with Chinese fans? Do you mean specifically because of the Hugo situation?

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  5. Apologies for commenting in another old(ish) thread again, but can I just point out that nominating Arthur Liu or the Unofficial Voter Packet will probably waste nominations, as I think they will be ineligible.

    Arthur is on the Glasgow Hugo Awards Eligibility Research Team, which I *think* would make him ineligible for Best Fan Writer cf WSFS 3.13. https://glasgow2024.org/about/committee-and-staff/

    Regarding the Unofficial Voter Packet, from my point-of-view, that project was a co-production between me and Arthur Liu – the page you linked to was my work, but Arthur had similar ones aimed more at the Chinese audience. Whilst those pages could in theory be treated separately for the purpose of Hugo nominations, I’d feel very uncomfortable getting nominated for the stuff I did, but for Arthur to miss out because of the work he is doing for the Glasgow team.

    I had chatted with Arthur about this before, and he’d vaguely mentioned he might be working for the con in some capacity, but I wasn’t aware that it was (a) official, and (b) in a Hugo related capacity until the past few days.

    Obviously people are still welcome to nominate – and I’d certainly argue that appearing on a (legitimate) Hugo stats report is an honour in itself – but I think that nominators should be made aware that those nominations would likely be in vain.

    Liked by 2 people

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