After all the controversies and the issues of this year’s Hugo Award, it’s sort of a miracle that things went not so bad, after all. Voting has been massive, and this is a great thing, no matter where people stand – because Hugos are awards given by the fandom, so more voters equals wider consensus.
The full list of 2015 Hugo Awards is available here, while for some good analyses you might want to check GRR Martin blog’s entry or Chunk Wendig’s post. From their articles, I’d like to extract two quotes that make up for most of what I have yet to say on this topic (about which I have posted a lot during these last months).
“Fandom is mostly relieved. No, not a great Hugo night — how could it be, with so many No Awards — but not nearly as bad as some had feared either.” (GRRM)
“And, also, to the Sad and Rabid Puppies, those charm school rejects who thought they could wrest control of the awards away from some mysterious vile cabal of PC CHORF SMOF SJWS, one likes to hope that last night was a demonstration of your noses being rubbed in the mess you made.” (Chuck Wendig)
Personally, I’m glad a few of my picks got the award – like the Best Novel or Wes Chu for the Campbell Award.
But also the Best Novelette I have voted won, and that’s great, because it’s an amazing reading. And you may want to read it too, since it’s free online.
“The Day the World Turned Upside Down”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lia Belt translator (Lightspeed, 04-2014) . Incidentally, Lightspeed Magazine also won as the Best Semiprozine.
The last thing that came out from Sasquan was the site selection for 2017 Worldcon and guess what, Europe – with Helsinki – won the bid.
As said on Helsinki 2017 website “Europe is full of fannish activity, but we lack cohesion; we lack a collective that we might all call our own. In other words, while there are many national fandoms, there is no truly European fandom. Our little project is about fixing that, by bringing together these separate groups, and introducing them to fandom at large. We want Worldcon fandom to be truly international, and we believe the way to do that is to bring Worldcon to Europe more than once or twice a decade.”
Well done, all of you!
Glad to see Helsinki chosen. It’s a great city! As for the Hugos, for those who complain about “too PC” stuff, I wonder if they truly understand what politically correct actually means. It’s been so twisted and distorted over the years by politicians and others who don’t want to respect and accept anyone different from them and who want to exert more power and control over other people, that the true meaning has gotten lost. The whole Hugo controversy made me sad — especially the way it exploded and any chance for rational, calm discourse was lost.
Hello, yes – it was such a complicated issue. Glad it’s over now – let’s look forward, to Kansas City and Helsinki 🙂