I didn’t recognize the name or domain, and I have been active in fandom since 1978.
Then congratulations, you have stumbled across a large archive of informed and informative posts with extensive conversations including big players in fandom and big name writers. Along with File770 and Whatever, it is one of THE big blogs in sf fandom, from one of the top voices in modern science fiction.
For the love of God. It’s Charlie Stross, and here’s a key quote:
The world science fiction convention coevolved with fan-run volunteer conventions in societies where there’s a general expectation of the rule of law and most people abide by social norms irrespective of enforcement. The WSFS constitution isn’t enforceable except insofar as normally fans see no reason not to abide by the rules. So it works okay in the USA, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and all the other western-style democracies it’s been held in … but broke badly when a group of enthusiasts living in an authoritarian state won the bid then realized too late that by doing so they’d come to the attention of Very Important People who didn’t care about their society’s rulebook.
This is how you give a link. Link, tell where it’s to, and give a key breakout quote.
The Worldcon has been held so far in the countries of (in alphabetical order) Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S., and West Germany. Suppose you ignore the Worldcons held up to 1969, which were all in the U.S. except for one in Canada. Since 1970, they have been pretty much spread out among those countries, with more held in the countries with larger populations. The next two will be in Glasgow and Seattle. The one after that will probably be held in Los Angeles. If there are countries that you don’t want it to be held in, join all of them from now on, either as an attending member or a non-attending member, and vote against the ones bidding to be the Worldcon from those countries.
Look at the Wikipedia entry on Worldcon years and locations which I posted above.
Please avoid barelinks without some comment or context.
Moderating
If you go to read the Charlie Stross blog post, read the comments as well, they are interesting. Some additional information, some clarifying comments, some disagreement with how Charlie framed things.
Thank you!
I try to do this.
Yeah, I don’t do audio either, so it’s annoying when some authors made deals to have stories appear first in audioform before becoming available in other ways (like this one The Dispatcher - Wikipedia)
He’s not wrong - I wish he blogged more; lots of interesting material about how the book industry works, and how his process works.
(P.S. I miss “Making Light” which used to a major blog for SF news (fortunately, the archives still exist (classic post here Making Light: Another ABM on Amazon)
Heads are rolling on the US side.
I am involved with the Seattle Worldcon 2025 group, and I am betting that the guest lists for both the Glasgow 2024 Con and the Seattle 2025 Con are being revised as news about this fiasco comes out.
Impressive writeup in Esquire.
File 770 just posted the most thorough report to date on what happened with the Hugos. It is pretty long, but not boring, and it covers most of what happened:
Oops, never mind.
So China found useful idiots to do their dirty work for them in the US and Canada. But not especially competent idiots, as people have pointed out multiple mistakes in the political dossiers they compiled. (Not mentioned is how they made Robert J. Sawyer a guest of honor when he has–as I pointed out earlier in this thread–written fiction extremely critical of the Chinese government.)
They should just end the Hugos. They have been so politicized that every year there are more stories about the scancals around the Hugos than about the winners.
Does anyone even care anymore who wins a Hugo? Does it move books?
It does not. From Charles Stross:
A Hugo means increased book sales/revenue for both the publisher and the author
Ha ha nope!
Some time circa 2005-2010 I asked my then-editor at Ace, Ginjer Buchanan (who has now retired), what the most useful SF/F literary awards were.
She chuckled, then replied to the effect that none of them were worth a bucket of warm spit except for (a) the Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke awards (because they came with a cheque for the winner) and the Prometheus Award (which comes with a plaque bearing a 1 Troy ounce 23 carat gold coin), and (b) the Hugo for best novel (and only best novel), which doesn’t sell more copies, but Hugo-winning novels tend to stay in print longer.
“Stay in print longer” is, however, no longer a Thing, because if you’re trad-published through a Big Five imprint since roughly 2005 your books do not ever go out of print availability via the ebook distribution channels. You can only go out of print if your publisher fucked up and you or your agent can find a loophole in the contract to force reversion of rights.
With the exception of indie/small press titles, all my books remain in print, right back to 2003. Including the non-Hugo nominated ones.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html#comment-2183717
When I had her as my Editor Guest Of Honor at Orycon 30, she spoke on this subject and said pretty much the same thing. By the way, she was a delightful guest in my opinion.