This is one of a series of posts about the 2025 World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting. They are all tagged bm2025.

A proposal to abolish the Retro Hugos was passed by the 2024 Business Meeting and has landed on this year’s agenda as item E7 (page 29), requiring ratification. It was put to a consultative vote of WSFS members last month and was narrowly rejected, by 167 votes to 164.

Another proposal is on the agenda for this year’s Business Meeting as item F21 (pages 53-54), in case that E7 fails ratification, to allow Worldcons to present Retro Hugos in a multiple of ten years after a gap in the Hugo sequence. The “missing years” are 1940, 1942, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1952 and (it is argued, though not convincingly) 1957. So we could polish them all off between 2027 and 2032.

I think that has helped to clarify my own thinking. The absorption of volunteer time and bandwidth, and of money, by the Retro Hugos is not a good use of resources, at a moment when the demands on Worldcon volunteers in general and Hugo administrators in particular are increasing. So if I’m in the room when it happens, I’ll vote in favour of E7, and if that is rejected, against F21 which would leave the cycle at a 25-year pace.

2025 WSFS Business meeting posts:
Mark Protection Committee Report
Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards report
Software Committee
Hugo Administration Process Committee report
Business Meeting Study Group
C1, C2, C3, C4
C5
D1, D2, D3
D4
D5, D6
D7, D8
D9, D10, D11, D12
E1, E2
E3, E4, E5
E6
E7
E8
E9
F1, F2
F3, F4, F5, F6
F7, F8
F9, F10
F11
F12
F13
F14, F15
F16, F17, F18, F19
F20
F21
F22