Chicon 8, the 2022 Hugos and the Business Meeting

Chicago was the first city in the USA that I ever set foot in, aged 5 in 1972, on a family visit to my father’s old friend Emmet Larkin. My only previous visit as an adult was in 2016 for SMOFCon, when I also saw Hamilton. In 2016 we were out by the airport for most of the time; this year we were in the Hyatt Regency, right beside the meeting of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

May be an image of skyscraper

This is actually an extraordinary feat of engineering. In the late nineteenth century, the river channel was re-shaped and a connecting canal built with the Des Plaines River, leading to the Illinois River and the Mississippi River basin, so that the Chicago River now flows out of the lake rather than into it. Most of the water in the picture will go all the way to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, 1500 km to the south. Though I suppose some of it will go the other way, through Lake Huron and Lake Erie, over Niagara Falls, through Lake Ontario and into the Atlantic via Canada, which is 1600 km as the crow flies but a little further as the river flows.

Back in March 2020, as the pandemic was closing in and I was one of the Deputy Hugo Administrators wrestling with that year’s Hugo nominations, I reached out to Kat Jones, who was also on the Hugo team that year, and said that, if Glasgow were to win the 2024 Worldcon bid, I would likely become the WSFS Division Head, and if so, would she consider being that year’s Hugo Administrator? Kat replied with a provisional yes, much to my relief.

A few months later, in October 2020, Kat reached out to me in turn. She had just been appointed the Hugo Administrator for 2022, and wondered if I would consider joining the team as her deputy? At this stage of course we had no guarantee that there would be an in-person Worldcon ever again – CoNZealand had had their disastrous virtual ceremony two months before. But I agreed anyway, in hope that we would be able to attend, and so it proved.

We had a great team this year, with the committee also including WSFS Division Heads Jesi Lipp and Brian Nisbet. I have known Brian for twenty years, but this was the first time I had really worked with Jesi. We discovered that we are actually seventh cousins twice removed, sharing ancestry with Grover Cleveland, Fritz Leiber and Shirley Temple. It’s a small world.

All in all, this was definitely the smoothest of the four and a half Hugo processes that I have been involved with. (2017, 2019, 2020, part of 2021, and this year; not having a global pandemic does help). We now have robust software solutions for tallying nomination votes and counting the final ballot; we have a good eligibility verification process; we generally (with inevitable glitches) had good communications with the rest of the convention and with finalists; and there was no big screw-up on the events side. Many small screw-ups on many smaller things, of course, but that is normal.

BK Ellison’s trophy was the first time I had been involved with a base design which includes a stand. (The others were all more plinth-ish, if that is a word.) We all fell in love with it as soon as he presented his initial design: it nicely captures the Chicago flag and the convention theme, “Take To The Stars”.

The Sekrit Hugo Cupboard was very close to the main hall where the ceremony was taking place, which made things a lot easier, though it was also right beside Registration, which made us a lot more cautious. Walking between the two on ceremony day with the envelopes containing the winners, I happened to bump into a bunch of finalists who turned a little pale when they realised what I was holding. I was very pleased to meet Arkady Martine at the reception beforehand, knowing (though she did not) that she had won Best Novel for A Desolation Called Peace (the only one of the three winners who I had voted for who was actually present). Concealing the awards from curious eyes backstage before the ceremony took a little McGyver-style ingenuity, but we managed it.

The ceremony, conducted by Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz, was efficient, funny and professional. (As James Nicoll put it, “almost as [if] the the ghost of a ceremony neither fast-paced nor entertaining was on people’s minds”.) It was slightly awkward that the presenters themselves won in two categories, but of course they had been selected long before the nominations opened, and other presenters were brought in for the relevant bits. (And they did not know in advance that they had won.)

I’ve written up my take on the results already, so just to repeat, this worked out very well; credit to the entire team, most of all Kat Jones, also Jesi Lipp and Brian Nisbet; Cassidy and their deputy Theresa Hahn for finalist liaison; David Matthewman and Chris Rose (and ultimately Eemeli Aro) for software and tech; Terry Neill on Help Desk and much else; Chris Ragan and Jed Hartman on the Voter Packet; Alissa Wales on eligibility; BK Ellison for the Hugo base and Sara Felix for the Lodestar trophy; John Brown and team for the ceremony, and Helen Montgomery for running the convention.

One other point. Best Editor, Long Form looks like the weakest of the current categories, with the highest vote for No Award and with no less than five nominees either turning out to be ineligible or withdrawing for other reasons. I will have more to say on this in due course.

The Business Meeting

Most of this post is going to be about the 2022 WSFS Business Meeting, because after the Hugos that was my biggest concern. I do not love the Business Meeting. It is tremendously demanding of participants’ time, especially when you have other commitments (like, for instance, running the Hugo Awards). There are some participants who appear to delight in finding procedural devices to simply use up time without achieving anything, which frustrates those of us less familiar with the rules who actually do want to achieve things. In a professional environment, the Business Meeting’s persistent failure to keep to its own time commitments would not be tolerated. I do not know if it is the fault of Roberts’ Rules of Order, or of the particular sub-culture of the WSFS Business Meeting, or both, that such behaviour is rewarded and not deterred, but surely there is a better way. For now, we are stuck with it.

Having said that, I personally had a good Business Meeting in 2022. Jared Dashoff and Jesi Lipp as presiding officers did their best to keep things on track, despite the difficulties imposed by structure and culture, and succeeded as often as not. And mostly the things I wanted to happen (or not) did happen (or didn’t).

Before the convention I had published some commentary on the Hugo Awards Study Committee and its proposals (here on File 770, mirrored from here) starting with the proposition that the Committee itself should be abolished. This took up half an hour of the preliminary business meeting on the Friday (from 1:17 on the video). The outgoing Chair of the Committee made his report; I made my speech opposing the renewal of the committee; and rather surprisingly, there were no more speeches in favour of either continuation or abolition – the remaining time was filled with procedural wrangles which I found difficult to follow, including a proposal that the cameras should be turned off. (Why? I had already said my piece. Were they planning to say Dark Things about me? Did they think that my non-existent allies and minions were primed to say Dark Things about them?) As the vote was called, I accepted that I would probably lose by a small margin. To my surprise, I won by about three to one, and the Committee was dissolved. (For more detail on the Friday see Alex Acks and Kevin Standlee.)

Much less to say about Saturday (more from Alex Acks and Kevin Standlee). In my absence (I had an actual program item to go to) the Business Meeting passed resolutions condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine and the GoH status of writer Sergei Lukanienko at next year’s Worldcon. The most important thing for me personally was getting elected to the Mark Protection Committee, which works to preserve the intellectual property of the terms WSFS, Hugo, Lodestar, etc. Several years ago I helped the MPC in a dispute with the Flemish broadcaster which planned to set up its own Hugo Awards in memory of the great writer Hugo Claus. In the end VRT backed down and decided to call the awards the “Hugo Claus Awards”. I am not sure if they ever got around to awarding them. I’ve also had my differences with the MPC over some recent issues, and felt it would be better to be on the inside. Also, the E Pluribus Hugo voting system, which faced a potential sunset clause, was reratified with permanent effect.

Sunday started very happily with the declaration of the Site Selection vote for 2024. Glasgow won by a huge margin (as the only candidate). Here’s the promotion video – I am briefly visible at 3:06, but the whole thing is a joy.

An attempt to suspend standing orders in order to yell at Chengdu 2023 was rapidly quashed. Then, at last, we were onto constitutional amendments. The first of these dealt with the conditions under which a Hugo category might be won by “No Award” if the number of votes for finalists is less than 25% of the Hugo total. The Study Committee had proposed a further refinement, but Olav Rokne and others very sensibly had proposed instead simply to abolish that provision of the constitution, and after a half hour of debate they won, as I had hoped. There are still two remaining ways in which a category can be No Awarded, but I hope that they will be rare.

At this point I had to leave to do Hugo wrangling, just as the bit I cared most about hit the agenda: the amendment to clarify the definitions of the Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist Hugos, which is the single most urgent issue facing Hugo administrators. The wording put to the meeting was largely mine, but I am happy to admit that it was not perfect, and it was referred to a new committee chaired by actual artists, exactly the sort of specialist consultation which helped the Best Game category over the line. As long as we end up with definitions which are more inclusive and less work for administrators, I will be happy, but it will take at least another year. The proposed new Best Game category was passed with nine minutes of debate and a large majority; of course those nine minutes were the culmination of years of intense discussion in the wider community. It now needs to be ratified in Chengdu. (Fuller reports, again, from Alex Acks and Kevin Standlee.)

The final session of the Business Meeting on the Monday considered the last three amendments proposed by the Hugo Awards Study Committee. All of these were bad ideas; one was kicked to a committee and the other two defeated. The first was the attempt to hardwire definitions of Fan and Pro into the Constitution, a proposal which the HASC leadership themselves admitted was not really ready for ratification and which had been proposed to the Business Meeting without the knowledge of most of the Committee members. To my frustration, this was referred to the same committee which had been set up the previous day to refine the Artist categories; they may or may not choose to do anything with it, but I felt shades of 2017, when my proposal to set up a committee to look at the Artist categories was transformed into the Hugo Awards Study Committee as it came to be. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

I stood up and proposed that the Business Meeting’s recommendations to the Artist committee on this point should include consideration of whether a global change is necessary at all, or whether a category-by-category approach might be better.

To my surprise there was a passionate but incomprehensible speech against my proposal, followed equally surprisingly by Dave McCarty (at 42:32): “Everybody note the time! I am about to say that, in general, I agree [on this issue] with Nicholas Whyte, and that’s really freaking rare.” The meeting included a fair amount of sensible stuff in its recommendations to the committee, and one or two silly things, so that’s that. (They are detailed by Kevin Standlee; Alex Acks had gone home by now.)

Finally came the Hugo Awards Study Committee proposals to further restrict eligibility for Best Series by over-riding the wishes of voters and making administrators’ lives more difficult. I spoke against the second of these (at 1:14:14), but it was clear from an early stage that the Business Meeting as a whole had lost patience with the HASC, and both proposals were defeated by substantial margins.

Apart from getting itself abolished, the HASC overall managed to get only two amendments passed (Best Game, which had originated elsewhere, and another very technical one on low-participation Hugo categories), with three rejected outright and another two referred to committee. The HASC had lost internal support from its own members, including me, and then failed to move the Business Meeting. As I said above, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it did not work out.

Other stuff

I spoke at one panel, and attended another and a couple of Table Talks (Kaffeeklatsches without the coffee). The panel which I spoke at became somewhat chaotic – we had received mixed messages as to whether it was meant to be in hybrid format, tried that out and failed, ultimately splitting into a virtual and a physical panel. I very much enjoyed talking to Olav Rokne and L.D. Lewis about award culture, but wished we could have had more from Farah Mendlesohn and especially Mame Bougouma Diene. I am not impressed with Airmeet, and would have preferred to stick to Zoom, which we are all familiar with. The Table Talks that I attended (virtually with Neon Yang, physically with Fiona Moore and Jason Aukerman) were great fun but a bit sparse; I was 50% of the audience for the first two, and 100% for the last. I very much enjoyed the panel discussion of Titus Groan where I said a few things from the audience.

The space for hanging out was generally fine, and I enjoyed the parties that I went to. I found the background noise in the Big Bar generally too much for my middle-aged ears, but there were alternatives, and Dell Magazines kindly took Kat and me outside for a drink one evening to discuss the Astounding Award and other matters. Kat and I also dined on the north side of the river and got thoroughly lost in the scary northshore car parks on our way back, eventually reaching safety by way of the Sheraton Hotel basement. To be honest, most of my time was spent dealing with the Hugos, and after all that’s what I had signed up for, but I had many chats and a few meals with old friends (and some new friends).

I had originally planned to participate in Chengdu next year as a senior adviser, but something else has come up which will absorb most of my fannish energy (announcement soon) and I’ve stepped back from Chengdu and do not expect to attend. So I’ll hope to see you in Glasgow in 2024, where I will be WSFS Division Head and Kat Jones will again be the Hugo Administrator. Join up, if you haven’t already.

2022 Hugo statistics

The full statistics document for this year, mainly by me, is available here.

Headlines

2235 final ballots and 1368 nominating ballots were received, consistent with 2020 and 2021, less than the 2014-2020 period, more than any year before 2014.

No particularly close results for the top spot. Best Editor Long Form was decided by a margin of 26 votes, and Best Semiprozine by a margin of 27. 

At lower placings, there was a tie for 5th place in the Best Fanzine category, and 5th place in the Best Fancast category was decided by a margin of one vote.

In 16 categories out of 19, the finalist with most first preferences won. Two rose from second place and one from third. 

  • Five nominees declined nomination or were not eligible in Best Editor Long Form.
  • Two nominees declined nomination or were not eligible in Best Professional Artist.
  • One nominee declined nomination in each of Best Novella and Best Fan Writer.
  • One nominee was disqualified in each of Best Graphic Story or Comic and Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. 

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a single vote: Best Graphic Story or Comic; Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form; Best Editor Long Form; Best Semiprozine; and Best Fan Artist.

The last place on the ballot in the following categories was decided by a margin of two votes: Best Novelette; Best Short Story; Best Series; Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form; Best Professional Artist; and Best Fan Writer.

Best Novel

A Desolation Called Peace was only 14 votes ahead of Light from Uncommon Stars in the first round but finished with a margin of 128. Light From Uncommon Stars came second, A Master of Djinn third, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within fourth and She Who Became the Sun fifth, by just seven votes; Project Hail Mary came sixth despite having the third highest number of first preferences.

At nominations stage, A Desolation Called Peace was also way ahead. Perhaps the Stars, by Ada Palmer, would have qualified with five more bullet votes. 

One of three categories where I voted for the winner myself.

Best Novella

A Psalm for the Wild-Built started with a lead of 70 over Elder Race and finished with a decisive lead of 236. Elder Race came second, The Past Is Red third, A Spindle Splintered fourth, Across the Green Grass Fields fifth and Fireheart Tiger sixth, also exactly the order by number of first preferences.

Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells, topped the nominations poll, but she declined, bringing Elder Race onto the ballot. Comfort Me with Apples, by Cat Valente, and Remote Control, by Nnedi Okorafor, both missed nomination by 9 votes.

Another category where I voted for the winner.

Best Novelette

“Bots of the Lost Ark” won by a substantial margin, a first round lead of 103 over L’Esprit de L’Escalier extending to a final count lead of 275. “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd” came second (I voted for it myself), “Colors of the Immortal Palette” third, “That Story isn’t the Story” fourth, L’Esprit de l’Escalier fifth despite having the second highest number of first preferences, and “O2 Arena” sixth. 

The nominations count was very different, with “That Story Isn’t the Story” topping the poll and the eventual winner in fourth place. “Mulberry and Owl”, by Aliette de Bodard, missed nomination by two votes, one of six categories where this was the case.

Best Short Story

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” started with a lead of 51 over “Mr Death” and finished with a lead of 69. “Mr Death” came second, “Unknown Number” (my own choice) third, “Proof by Induction” fourth, “The Sin of America” fifth by. Three-vote margin and “Tangles” sixth.

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” was also ahead at nominations. This was another category where the last spot was decided by a margin of two votes, the loser this time being “The Cold Calculations”, by Aimee Ogden.

Best Series

Wayward Children started 236 votes ahead of The World of the White Rat, and finished 276 votes ahead, the biggest winning margin of the night. The World of the White Rat came second, The Green Bone Saga third, Terra Ignotafourth, The Kingston Cycle fifth and Merchant Princes (my own choice) sixth.

Wayward Children was also far ahead at nominations stage. We had some head-scratching with the vote tally, as we are not allowed to tally votes for a sub-series together with votes for that series, But the numbers came together for World of the White Rat to take the final place, and Seanan McGuire missed a second place on the ballot for Incryptidby just two votes. 

Best Graphic Story or Comic

Far Sector started with a 105 vote lead over Monstress v6 and extended it to 120 on the final count. Monstress v6 came second, Lore Olympus third, Die v4 fourth, Once and Future v3 fifth and Strange Adventures sixth.

Seanan McGuire topped the nominations poll with Ghost Spider: Party People, but our research indicated clearly that it had been published in 2020 so was not eligible. That brought Strange Adventures onto the ballot. The Girl From the Sea, by Molly Ostertag, missed that place by one vote, one of five categories where this was the case.

Myself I love Once and Future, and voted for it, and also did not understand the lack of love for Strange Adventures, which I quite enjoyed without necessarily considering it a masterpiece.

Best Related Work

Being Seen started 30 votes ahead of Never Say You Can’t Survive, but performed poorly on transfers, ending 53 votes behind. Being Seen then took second place, “How Twitter Can Ruin a Life” came third, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds (my own choice) fourth, The Complete Debarkle fifth and True Believer sixth. 

It was a different story at nominations, with The Complete Debarkle topping the poll and the eventual winner Never Say You Can’t Survive third. F. Brett Cox’s Roger Zelazny missed the ballot by four votes.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Dune started 176 votes ahead of WandaVision and finished with a diminished margin of 141. WandaVison came second, Encanto third, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (my own choice) fourth, The Green Knight fifth and Space Sweepers sixth.

Dune was also way ahead at nominations stage. Spiderman: No Way Home missed the ballot by two votes.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

The Expanse: Nemesis Games started 81 votes ahead of Loki: The Nexus Event and finished 76 votes ahead. The Nexus Event came second; Star Trek Lower Decks: wej Duj (which I voted for) came third; For All Mankind: The Grey came fourth, The Wheel of Time: The Flame of Tar Valon fifth and Arcane: The Monster You Created sixth.

Nemesis Games also topped the poll at nominations stage. Second place went to the WandaVision episode Previously On, but the whole WandaVision series also had enough votes to qualify for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, so we disqualified the episode (which had only 32 nominations, compared to 104 for the series) allowing wej Duj to take its place on the ballot. The Loki episode Journey Into Mystery missed that spot by a single vote.

Best Editor Short Form

Neil Clarke started eight votes behind Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, but picked up transfers to finish 41 ahead. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki took second place by 7 votes ahead of Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, who then came third. Sheree Renée Thomas came fourth, Jonathan Strahan fifth and Sheila Williams sixth.

Neil Clarke topped the poll at nominations stage. Scott Andrews would have needed 6 more bullet votes to qualify.

Best Editor Long Form

Ruoxi Chen started on 155 votes to 168 for Navah Wolfe and 160 for Patrick Nielsen Hayden, but picked up transfers to finish 26 votes in front of Navah Wolfe, the closest result of the night (not all that close in fact). Navah Wolfe came second, Patrick Nielsen Hayden third, Sarah Guan fourth, Nivia Evans fifth and Brit Hvide sixth. 

Ruoxi Chen had also topped the poll at nominations stage; but we had an extraordinary situation where one of the top six nominees declined and two of the others told us that they were not eligible. Two more of the next five nominees also told us that they were not eligible, so the sixth place on the ballot went to voters’ eleventh preference. Three nominees, K.B. Spangler, Carl Engle-Laird and Oliver Johnson, could have got that last place with one more vote.

This category had the highest proportion of votes for No Award. I have Thoughts about this, which I will develop in due course.

Best Professional Artist

Rovina Cai started 16 votes ahead of Maurizio Manzieri but finished with a margin of 110. Alyssa Winans came second, Tommy Arnold third, Ashley Mackenzie fourth, Maurizio Manzieri fifth despite having the second highest number of first preferences (including mine) and Will Staehle sixth.

Things were very different at nominations stage. Alyssa Winans topped the poll, and the eventual winner, Rovina Cai, had the equal third highest number of first preferences and came fifth on the EPH ranking. We also had John Picacio declining nomination and Galen Dara informing us that she was not eligible; their places were taken by Will Staehle and Tommy Arnold. Iris Compiet would have qualified with two more votes.

Best Semiprozine

Uncanny was 58 votes ahead of FIYAH on the first count, reduced to 27 at the end, the second closest result of the night. FIYAH came second, Strange Horizons third, Escape Pod fourth, Beneath Ceaseless Skies fifth and PodCastle sixth, the same as the order by first preferences.

This was also almost exactly the same order as the nominations ranking, except that Escape Pod was fourth and Beneath Ceaseless Skies fifth. Mermaids Monthly missed the ballot by one vote.

Best Fanzine

Small Gods had a lead of 108 on the first count over the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog, and ended with a margin of 56. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog came second, Journey Planet third, Galactic Journey fourth, and The Full Lid and Quick Sip Reviews tied for fifth place, the only tie anywhere this year.

Nominations were very different, with the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog  way in the lead and the eventual winner, Small Gods, getting the fewest number of nominating votes among finalists, though ending up fourth under EPH ranking. Black Nerd Problems would  have qualified with three more votes.

Best Fancast

Our Opinions Are Correct, hosted by the MCs of the Hugo ceremony, was 88 votes ahead of Hugo, Girl! on the first count and won by 136 votes. Worldbuilding for Masochists got a lot of OOAC transfers and came second by three votes over Hugo, Girl!Hugo, Girl! came third, The Coode Street Podcast fourth, Octothorpe fifth by a single vote and Be The Serpent sixth.

Nominations were very different with The Coode Street Podcast top and Our Opinions Are Correct fifth. The Skiffy and Fanty Show would have qualified with 4 more votes.

Best Fan Writer 

Cora Buhlert had a lead of 32 votes (one of them mine – thi was the third category where I voted for the winner) over Bitter Karella on the first round, but ended 102 votes ahead of Jason Sanford on the last round. Jason Sanford came second, Paul Weimer third and Bitter Karella fourth despite having the second highest number of first preferences. Chris Barkley came fifth and Alex Brown sixth.

Cora Buhlert was also way ahead at nominations, and second-placed Camestros Felapton withdrew, bringing Jason Sanford onto the ballot. Amanda Cherry would have needed two more bullet votes for that slot.

Best Fan Artist

Lee Moyer had proportionally the best first preference result of any finalist, starting 106 ahead of Sara Felix and finishing 43 ahead of her. Sara Felix came second, Nilah Magruder third, Iain Clark fourth, Lorelei Esther fifth and Ariel Housman sixth.

At nominations, Iain Clark had the most votes and Sara Felix ranked top under EPH, with Lee Moyer, the winner, third. Richard Man would have qualified with one more vote.

Lodestar Award

The Last Graduate started 80 votes ahead of Iron Widow and finished 55 votes ahead. Iron Widow came second, Chaos on Catnet (my own choice) third, Victories Greater than Death fourth, A Snake Falls to Earth fifth and Redemptor sixth.

At nominations, Iron Widow had the most votes, but The Last Graduate was top under EPH. Along the Saltwise Sea, by A. Deborah Blake, was 14 votes adrift, the biggest gap in any category between finalists and non-finalists.

Astounding Award

Shelley Parker-Chan started 36 votes aehad of Micaiah Johnson and finished with a lead of 7. Micaiah Johnson came second, Xiran Jay Zhao third, Tracy Deonn fourth, A.K. Larkwood (my own chice) fifth and Everine Maxwell sixth.

Shelley Parker-Chan was also far ahead at nominations. Gautam Bhatia missed the last spot on the ballot by four votes.

We decided to include a bunch more statistics at the end, including showing how many categories voters engaged with, and how many nominations and final ballot preferences were given by voters in each category. I’d welcome feedback about what else could be included, without risking confidentiality.

Three books from the Hugo packet

Hugo voting is over for this year, and the winners will be revealed in three weeks. The Hugo voter packet included several books that were not themselves on the final ballot (though their authors or editors were). I’m therefore giving myself a bit more licence to write up those that I read in the last couple of weeks.

Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell (who is an Astounding finalist). Second paragraph of third chapter:

Kiem had the photo in his head, but it was still a shock to see that grave stare right in front of him. Jainan’s dark eyes gave a hidden spark of electricity to an expression that was otherwise entirely proper and neutral. His clothes were Thean, a half-sleeved tunic with a blunter, looser cut than Iskat styles, in a muted blue that split the difference between a formal outfit and mourning grays.

A space empire tale with full marriage equality and gender diversity. Yet at the same time there are arranged marriages, and the two chaps at the centre of the story are forced into one at the very beginning (and inevitably discover that they quite like each other by the end). Inventive and entertaining, but I struggled a bit with the empire’s political and diplomatic structures, which are completely inflexible up to the point where the plot needs them to be suddenly flexible. You can get it here.

Soulstar, by C.L. Polk (third in the Kingston Cycle, one of the Best Series finalists). Second paragraph of third chapter:

Marlon handled the Windweaver shifts and sent two of them to board the train’s engine car. It looked strange to see its stack smoking with the leavings of burning coal, but all trains could run on coal if there was an emergency. People gathered on the platform, some gathered in clumps organizing their roles on the trains, others getting in the way with their gawking.

I could not get into this, not having read the first two volumes, and gave up not very far into it. This illustrates one of the real problems of the Best Series category, as I have repeatedly argued; a diligent voter cannot possibly familiarise themselves with all of the relevant material, so most votes are cast from imperfect knowledge of the finalists. Though if I had been the author, I think I would have included the first rather than the third volume of the trilogy in the Hugo voter packet. You can get it here.

Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher (part of the World of the White Rat, also a Best Series finalist). Second paragraph of third chapter:

A man just came out of the sword. I drew the sword and he appeared.

This was much easier to grasp. A fantasy world with, again, gender diversity, but where old gender roles remain strong and our protagonist, a young widow, discovers that she has inherited a sword which summons a long-dead warrior when it is drawn. The warrior may be long-dead but he is perfectly vigorous when he needs to be, and they have a very satisfying confrontation with the forces of conformity and greed. I enjoyed this one a lot. You can get it here.

The report on the Hugo Awards Study Committee report

Way back in 2017, my then Deputy Hugo Administrator and I proposed that a study committee should be set up by the WSFS Business Meeting to revise the Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist categories, which are difficult to understand and hugely out of date. The Business Meeting amended our resolution, with our consent, to create a Hugo Award Study Committee (HASC) with a broad remit to “study revisions to Article 3 (Hugo Awards) of the WSFS Constitution, including any such proposals for amending Article 3 as may be referred to it by the Business Meeting or suggested by others; [and] make recommendations, which may include proposing constitutional amendments, to the 2018 Business Meeting.”

In the last five years, the HASC has changed precisely two words of the Constitution. (Since you asked: adding the words “or Comic” to the title of the “Best Graphic Story” category.) The HASC’s defenders will complain that we had two years of pandemic, and that the committee switched to Discord rather than email only this year, and that there are lots of proposals this year. But the fact remains that so far the practical impact has been slower than I imagined when I first proposed the Committee.

There is now a detailed report of its activities in the last year and proposals for the coming WSFS Business meeting in Chicago. (Pages 56-77 of the Business Meeting agenda., with individual proposals discussed on pages 33 to 44.) Individual areas are broken out into separate headings with a named set of subcommittee members and a Chair and Sub-Chair. I am one of the signatories to the report, but I have also several dissents, as I will explain below.

My first point of dissent is in the introduction. Unfortunately, I did not feel that discussion was always respectful or effective, and it felt at times like a closed group of people which should have found a better way of reaching out to wider fandom. I do not think that the Committee’s mandate should be extended for another year, and if it is, I would like to see new leadership. The first draft of the report called for the current Chair to continue, but after much wrangling, that recommendation was deleted by a formal majority vote of the Committee. I am grateful to the current leadership for their work, but I think a change of tone will be healthy. Volunteers interested in facilitating inclusive and constructive discussions will be very welcome. (Assuming that the Business Meeting ignores my advice and renews the Committee; more on that later.)

Going through the subcommittees:

Best Related Work

Here the HASC makes no recommendations, and I agree. I certainly prefer when this category goes to prose non-fiction commentary, but I can’t find it in my heart to say that the voters got it wrong in the last three years when they chose other things. (Archive Of Our Own, Jeannette Ng’s Campbell Award acceptance speech, and Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf translation.) And if we carved off non-fiction prose into its own category, as some would prefer, I don’t really think that there is enough other material to reliably populate an “everything else” category.

Best Dramatic Presentation

Here the HASC also makes no recommendations, and I also agree. Any further split will mean an increase in the number of Hugo categories, to honour winners who do not always show a lot of interest in our process. The discussion did not really seem to reflect the proposals I have seen from wider fandom.

Best Audiobook

Here the HASC again makes no recommendations, and again I agree. For any new Hugo category proposal, I would like to see evidence 1) that it’s responding to the demands of a significant market share of fandom, 2) that it’s redressing an injustice in the current set-up for works loved by fans which are not getting on the ballot in existing categories, and 3) that it would be an appropriate thing for Hugo voters to vote on. I don’t see a problem here with the third of these criteria, but there is no clear case for the first two.

This was business referred to the HASC by the 2021 Business Meeting. It would have been preferable to give the Audiobook proposal a clean death in 2021, rather than sentence it to suffocation by committee.

Best Game or Interactive Work

A new Hugo category is proposed. I think this is very good, and despite my general dislike of new categories, it clearly meets my three criteria above (that it’s responding to the demands of a significant market share of fandom, that it’s redressing an injustice in the current set-up for works loved by fans which are not getting on the ballot in existing categories, and that it would be an appropriate thing for Hugo voters to vote on). This is something that both fans and the wider public can get excited about. Procedurally, it should be noted that this was largely the work of one activist supported by an ad hoc committee, refined by discussion with HASC members.

Best Series

This is one of three discussions where the HASC seriously lost its way. Best Series very narrowly survived an attempt to sunset it in 2021 by 35 votes to 30. The report declares, contra all evidence other than wishful thinking, that the “fundamental problem” with the category is “the possibility of a work being nominated for both Best Novel/Novella/ Novelette/Short Story and for Best Series (as a component), leading to reduced chances for other works to be nominated or win”, and therefore proposes two amendments.

The first of these amendments disqualifies from Best Series any series any of whose component parts has ever won a Hugo in any written category. The second makes it against the rules for the same material to appear on the same year’s ballot both on its own and as part of a series.

The immediate impact of both of these amendments will be to increase headaches for Hugo administrators, who will have to disqualify popular works that people have actually voted for, just because the 2021-22 Best Series subcommittee thinks that voters have been Doing It Wrong. There will also be some interesting judgement calls about exactly what works fall into or out of a particular series.

Both amendments also decrease the pool of eligible nominees by eliminating the ones that are too popular or too long-running. If either of these is passed, when the statistics come out and it becomes clear which nominees have been disqualified, it’s not the 2021-22 Best Series subcommittee who will get the blame, it will be that year’s administrators.

Cards on the table: I opposed the creation of Best Series at the time, and I’d have voted to kill it if I’d been in DC last year, and I’ll vote to kill it again if I ever get a chance. But this is not the moment to re-hash those arguments; we are where we are, and I would prefer that if we are to have a Best Series award at all, voters get to decide what works they want to honour, with no more intrusion from the rules than is strictly necessary. Both amendments should be rejected.

Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist

This is the bit that I wrote, with much welcome input from others, on an issue that was core to the founding of the Committee and has been referred back more than once by WSFS Business Meetings. The old definitions of the Artist categories are very out of date. Professional Artist basically means “Illustrator”. “Fan Artist” has a long list of eligible venues for publication which however is not exhaustive. I have had some pushback that the proposed Fan Artist amendment does not explicitly mention fanzines or conventions; the fact is that categories that are defined by place of publication or display will always run the risk of becoming outdated. So we have looked instead at the economics.

The proposal is to define Fan Art as art that is not produced for professional profit, and Professional Art as art that is produced for professional profit. If you’ve done three or more pieces of art in the last year that weren’t paid for at the time (might have been sold subsequently), then you will be eligible for Best Fan Artist. If you’ve done three or more pieces of art in the last year that were paid for at the time, then you will be eligible for Best Professional Artist. And if you’ve done both, you will be eligible for both. Selling your fan art after it’s been first displayed at a convention doesn’t make you eligible for Pro Artist in itself, because it was created for the convention, not directly for sale.

We went back and forth on this quite a bit, but the artist community indicated that they were happy with where we ended up. I am sure that it is capable of further refinement, but it’s a huge step forward from the status quo. The proposal opens up both categories to artists who were previously excluded, and decreases the burden on Hugo administrators to make tricky eligibility calls. (Or, for instance, to try and explain the concept of Semiprozines to artists who speak no English and have no connection to Worldcon fandom.) It will continue to be possible that an artist could qualify in both categories. I for one can live with that, if it is what fans choose to vote for.

Fan vs Pro

I did not understand this discussion, and I still don’t. It was supposedly driven by an incorrect perception that for the Artist categories, “at the root of the issue is a lack in the Constitution of a single definition for ‘Professional’, ‘Non-Professional’, or ‘Fan’.” I did not pay too much attention to the internal discussion, as I didn’t see the point of it, and also we were told that no new constitutional amendment on this would be formally proposed by the HASC.

Then suddenly at the last moment it turned out that such an amendment had been proposed by the HASC leadership, without the HASC as a whole being informed that this was happening. This proposal in particular went down like a lead balloon in some quarters of fandom, and the way it was handled was not appreciated by a number of HASC members, including me.

A minority opinion has been posted in the HASC report, expressing the entirely correct view that this should never have been proposed without wider community consultation. (In fact, the minority is rather close to being a majority.) I agree with most of it, and have co-signed, with a caveat: I am not certain that the problem (if there is one) should be addressed in this way at all, ie with a global definition of Fan and Pro. My instinct is that, if changes are needed, it may be better to do that category by category, as is proposed with Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist.

Even if this or something similar is passed, the specific definitions in the Best Artist categories (both as they currently are, and if my proposed amendments are passed) will take precedence for those categories, as will any other specific definitions elsewhere; and that nullified the supposed basis for the whole discussion.

Thresholds

This is the third category where the HASC seriously lost the run of itself. Two amendments are proposed, and I have signed a minority report opposing both. The current rule is that the total first preference vote for finalists in a particular category is less than 25% of the whole Hugo poll, that category is No Awarded. The first proposed amendment changes that to the lesser of 25% or 200 votes.

To have a 25% threshold makes the lower-participation categories very vulnerable to a future year when loads of people join Worldcon to vote for the previous year’s howling commercial success in Best Novel or Best Dramatic Presentation, and nothing else. As for the 200 votes option, I am leery of hardwiring numerical thresholds into the constitution, given that it will take two years to change if we turn out to have got the wrong number.

Really, it would be better (as others outside the HASC have proposed, and as the minority report recommends) to simply abolish the threshold. It has never been used. No Award has on occasion won the preference ballot, most recently in 2018; and there is also a provision that if a majority of voters prefer No Award to the candidate which would otherwise have won, the category is No Awarded. The threshold is superfluous to those provisions, and brings unnecessary risk.

The second and final proposed amendment sets conditions under which the Business Meeting would consider the abolition of low-participation Hugo categories. I simply don’t think it is appropriate for the Constitution to direct and potentially constrain future Business Meetings in that way. If the point ever comes that we need to abolish a category, we’ll know it without the constitution telling us so. I’ll have more to say on that once this year’s award cycle is over.

Continuation

As I said at the start, I do not think that the Hugo Awards Study Committee should be continued. Despite five years of existence, no new proposals have emerged on Best Related Work, Best Dramatic Presentation, or Best Audiobook, and those discussions should now return to the wider community. Good proposals have been made this year on Best Game / Interactive Work and (cough) the Best Artist categories, but bad proposals have been made on Best Series (two of them!), thresholds (another two!), and the supposed need to hardwire definitions of Fan and Pro into the constitution (proposed without the approval of Committee members).

The risk of establishing a separate Study Committee for a body like WSFS is that a few vocal participants will use it to promote their own hobby-horses, and present them to the Business Meeting with the veneer of committee support. There’s no easy way to prevent this, in what is, after all, a volunteer body. Appointing new leadership will be helpful, but is probably not sufficient.

I believe that it would be better to disband the Study Committee, now that the job has been done on Best Game and the Artist categories (and, years ago, the title change to “Best Graphic Story or Comic”). In future the Business Meeting can and should set up ad hoc specialist groups to look at particular issues as required, just as it has done in the past, without the overthinking that has happened recently as a result of silo-ing the discussion, and with more openness to stakeholders outside the Business Meeting itself.

2022 Lodestar Award

As before, just noting without specifying my preferences that I have read all of this year’s finalists for the Lodestar Award for Best New Writer.

Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

You can get it here.

Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao. Second paragraph of third chapter:

I lurch up from my straw bed, where I’ve been festering with a twisted stomach all night, turning my wooden hairpin over and over and over in my hand like a thick chopstick.

You can get it here.

The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“I know you were,” I said grimly, taking it, but her expression didn’t change; probably my tone didn’t sound very encouraging. So I added, “If you were going to say no, it wouldn’t have jumped us,” a little pointedly, because she should have figured that much out by then. A mal smart enough to have been quietly lurking in her floor pillows—floor pillows she’d probably inherited from a previous New York enclaver—for years and years, conserving its energy and slurping up anyone other than her who was unlucky enough to be left alone in her room—which is the kind of thing enclavers do, invite friends over for a study group after dinner with the understanding that one of them is going to arrive first and make sure the room is all right—hadn’t just leapt at us because it suddenly lost all self-control. It had done it because Chloe was about to get on board with me, meaning that especially delicious me was about to become a much harder target.

You can get it here.

Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“I’m not hiding,” I lied, humming with manic cheer as I swept through the gilded Imperial Suite hallways, balancing a sloshing tureen on one hip and a bundle of scrolls on the other. “I’m busy. You haven’t had your coneflower tea yet, have you?”

You can get it here.

A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Surrounded by markers and pieces of construction paper, thirteen year-old Nina sat cross-legged on the living room floor, staring at a scanned copy of Rosita’s portrait. She had to make an ancestral chart for class; it was a social studies project worth 10 percent of the class grade. Due to her tribe’s enrollment requirements, Nina already knew the recent branches on her family tree, so the project should have involved minimal research. And initially, yeah, it had been easy. First, Nina Arroyo had written her name, date of birth, and birth town on the bottom of a bright green piece of poster paper. Two branches extended upward: Richie N. Arroyo (father, bookstore owner) and Alicia T. Arroyo (mother, translator). Next, her parents grew four grandparents (one living, three deceased), who grew eight great-grandparents (three living, five deceased), who grew sixteen great-great-grandparents (all deceased). And that’s when things got tricky, since Nina’s teacher would never accept that Great-Great-Grandma Rosita was born in the 1870s (give or take) and died over 150 years later. But everything Nina knew about her ancestor supported this impossible truth.

You can get it here.

Victories Greater Than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders. Second paragraph of third chapter:

My phone is jittering with all the gossip from Waymaker fandom and random updates about some Clinton High drama that I barely noticed in the midst of my Marrant obsession … and then there’s a message from Rachael on the Lasagna Hats server.

You can get it here.

Best Graphic Story or Comic Hugo, 2022

As before, just noting without specifying my preferences that I have read them all, including one ancillary volume in the Hugo Packet and a subsequent volume in another series. 

Die, vol.3: The Great Game, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles. Second frame of third part:

DIE, vol. 4: Bleed, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles. Second frame of third part:

Far Sector, by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell. Second frame of third part:

Lore Olympus, vol. 1, by Rachel Smythe. Second frame of third part (from original webcomic):

Monstress, vol. 6: The Vow, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. Second frame of third part:

Once & Future, vol. 3: The Parliament of Magpies, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain. Second frame of third part:

Once & Future, vol. 4: Monarchies in the UK, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain. Second frame of third part:

Strange Adventures, by Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Evan “Doc” Shaner. Second frame of third part:

Best Novel Hugo, 2022

As before, just noting that I have read them all, without specifying my preferences.

A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine

(Three months ago, even if she’d somehow reached this exalted position in the Ministry, complete with her own tiny office with a tiny window only one floor down from the Minister herself, Three Seagrass would have been asleep in her house, and missed the message entirely. There: she’d justified clinical-grade insomnia as a meritorious action, one which would enable her to deal with a problem before anyone else awoke; that was half her work done for the day, surely.)

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers

Roveg sat in the middle of the tableau, his abdominal legs folded properly beneath him while his thoracic legs engaged with the serious business of finishing a lengthy breakfast. A variety of foods were spread across the table in front of him, all carefully selected from the stasie that morning. He’d arranged a somewhat Aandrisk-influenced spread: grain crackers with snapfruit preserves, spicy fermented fungus paste rolled in fresh saab tesh, and a few choice slices of hot smoked river eel (this was an Aeluon addition, but it complimented the other offerings well). A bowl of tea tied the arrangement together – a delicate Laru blend, as it happened – along with a small glass of seagrass juice. The latter beverage was the only part of the meal that originated with Roveg’s own species, and though he’d had many sorts of breakfasts on many different worlds, he still swore by that hard-shelled Quelin tradition of starting the morning with a cleansing shot of the stuff. Some habits, he could never break.

Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki

Once common in LA’s Eisenhower years, just a few of these giant donuts remained in greater Los Angeles. There were Kindle’s Donuts, Dale’s Donuts, and Randy’s Donuts, of course. Donut King II was in Gardena. In La Puente, there was the drive-through Donut Hole.

A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark

As she rode, her mind cataloged the night’s events. It had taken days to follow up on Khalid’s tip. Identifying the bottle. Arranging the meetup and creating her undercover persona. She’d even gotten a new suit— to perfect the look of the eccentric socialite. Things hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Then again, did they ever? Who thought that kid had it in him to summon up a Marid djinn and then demand wishes?

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

“Lightning round!” yelled my students.

She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

The sunshine was warm, and Xu Da had taken off his shirt and both robes to work half- naked in his trousers. At sixteen, the hard labor had already given him a man’s body. Zhu said a little tartly, “You’re asking to die, running around like that.” Prefect Fang never hesitated to wield his bamboo on novices who violated the rules of dignified monkly attire. Twelve- year- old Zhu, who felt an existential chill whenever she was forced to acknowledge the fact of her boyish but undeniably not- male body, appreciated Prefect Fang’s strictness more than anyone realized. “You think you’re that good- looking everyone wants to see you?”

Best Related Work Hugo, 2022

As previously, I’m not going to record my own preferences here, just the fact that I’ve read this category.

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Your fingertips have been dulled over decades of use, used to blunt force instead of sensitive consideration of the subtle differences in a texture. You have no idea how to find the world beneath them until you’ve tried.

The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War, by Camestros Felapton. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Part 1 of our Debarkle saga is estories [sic] about the past. Most of them take place this century but some of the precursors to the events in our saga take place in the Twentieth Century. I can’t hope to do justice to the full breadth of science fiction’s history but I will be looking at selected events from that history that have repercussions to later events. What follows in this chapter is a whistle-stop tour over many decades up to the early 1990s to just briefly touch on some elements of the past that will re-appear later. We’ll touch briefly on the roots of early fandom but mainly highlight some parts of US history that will be important later.

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. Second paragraph of third essay (Radioactive Nightmares: Nuclear War in Science Fiction, by Andrew Nette):

One of the most chilling takes is American academic Mordecai Roshwald’s novel Level 7. An unnamed soldier is assigned to the lowest level of a massive selfsuffcient underground military complex, where he and hundreds of others are expected to reside forever. Known only as X-127, he is a “push-button offensive initiator” of his nation’s arsenal of intercontinental nuclear missiles. The story is told via X-127’s diary: his low spirits at never seeing the sun again, doubts about his job, the physical adjustment to living four thousand feet—over twelve hundred meters—underground. The monotony of level 7 life is interrupted only by the occasional directive from the speakers of an intercom system, their sole means of communicating with the other levels. The several hundred men and women of level 7 develop a strange ersatz version of society, complete with marriage and their own mythology to justify life underground to the children that will come from these unions. Then the order comes to launch the missiles.

“How Twitter can ruin a life”, by Emily St. James. Second paragraph of third section:

It’s incredibly hard to imagine “Attack Helicopter” receiving the degree of blowback it did in a world where Twitter didn’t exist. There were discussions of the story on forums and in comment threads all over the internet, but it is the nature of Twitter that all but ensured this particular argument would rage out of control. Isabel Fall’s story has been held up as an example of “cancel culture run amok,” but like almost all examples of cancel culture run amok, it’s mostly an example of Twitter run amok.

Never Say You Can’t Survive, by Charlie Jane Anders. Second paragraph of third chapter:

I had a severe learning disability in elementary school— I nearly flunked out of first grade, second grade, and third grade. I couldn’t hold a pencil right, no matter how many times people showed me, and when I tried to put words on paper, the outcome was an unreadable jumble. I sat and stared at my blank notebook page, inhaling the scent of stale PB&J crumbs and spilt chocolate milk, while the teacher got more frustrated and the other kids made fun of me.

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman. Second paragraph of third chapter:

His schemes for departure from the comic-book trade in the 1940s and ’50s were varied, but they all hit dead ends for one reason or another: tragic luck, infertile business climate, deficit of inspiration, what have you. As a result, he never quit his day job. Timely Comics, or whatever it was called on a given week, continued to churn out four- color narratives, and Stan was back to being in charge of the whole line, despite his still- young age. Fago was relieved of his duties as head editor and would later note that Goodman, whatever his flaws, seemed to trust Stan. “Goodman never interfered with what Stan was doing,” Fago said. “He had faith in Stan. He knew Stan was in control and that his work was good.” Stan had associate editors, but was firmly in charge and trusted his gut instincts while navigating the waters of the adolescent comics industry— waters that would soon become dangerously choppy.

Best Novella Hugo, 2022

As with Best Short Story and Best Novelette, I’m not going to record my own preferences, just the fact that I’ve read this category. I will say that I thought these were all really good, and whoever it was that said that sf is at its best at novella length had a point. (I’ll also add that during eligibility research we found that several were just the merest shade under the 40,000 word limit for novellas!)

Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her father, a little subdued and worn out after his day at the clinic where he worked, sat across from her. He was a big man, with square shoulders and square hands, and always carried the faintest scent of fur and sweat on his skin. He wasn’t the only large-animal veterinarian in the area, but he was known as the best, and his ability to coax even the furthest-gone foal into eating had saved a lot of horses since he’d opened his practice. Regan’s riding lessons came at a discount because the owners recognized that having the local vet’s only daughter utterly in love with their horses was the opposite of a bad thing.

Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Nyrgoth Elder was seven feet tall, gaunt, clad in slate robes that glittered with golden sigils, intricate beyond the dreams of tailors. Lyn imagined a legion of tiny imps sewing that rich quilted fabric with precious metal, every tiny convolution fierce with occult meaning. His hands were long-fingered, long-nailed; his face was long, too: high-cheekboned, narrow-eyed, the chin and cheeks rough with dark stubble. His skin was the sallow of old paper. He had horns. In the old pictures, she’d thought they were a crown he wore, but there they were, twin twisted spires that arched from his brows, curving backwards along his high forehead and into his long, swept-back hair. She would have said he was more than half monster if she hadn’t known he was something half god. He was the last scion of the ancient creators who had, the stories said, placed people on the world and taught them how to live.

Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard. Second paragraph of third chapter:

It burnt. The tea burnt. Soggy tea leaves caught fire right in the throne room, in full view of everyone else. Not just in her nightmares or in her bedroom.

The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente. Second and third paragraphs of third chapter:

When I remember hunting my name, I mostly remember the places I slept. It’s a real dog to find good spots. Someplace sheltered from the wind, without too much seawater seep, where no one’ll yell at you for wastreling on their patch or try to stick it in you in the middle of the night just because you’re all alone and it looks like you probably don’t have a knife.

I always have a knife.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Dex realized, slowly, still naked, still dripping, that the robot wanted them to shake its hand.

A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Primrose’s castle is about a thousand times better. The stone is smooth and cool beneath my tennis shoes and the torch brackets smell of oil and char. My dress isn’t polyester and plastic; it hangs heavy on my shoulders, literal pounds of burgundy velvet and gold thread. I try to walk like Primrose, a glide so delicate it suggests my feet touch the earth only by happenstance.

NB this last includes some gorgeous interior illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

Best Novelette Hugo, 2022

As with Best Short Story, I’m not going to record my own preferences, just the fact that I’ve read this category.

“Bots of the Lost Ark”, by Suzanne Palmer. Second paragraph of third section:

Before it left the bot repository, it visited the shellfab unit for reconfiguration. Speed and agility were important, so it added external rotors in a foldable X configuration to its chassis, upgraded its connection utilities, and onboarded a second communications receiver and a half-dozen other repair and maintenance modules it was likely to need. At last, after consideration, it added a small electrified probe and shielding. It did not like the thought that it might find itself in hostile opposition to its fellow bots, but from the history logs Ship had given it access to, there was a 93 percent probability that it was unavoidable.

“Colors of the Immortal Palette”, by Caroline M. Yoachim. Second paragraph of third section (“Chrome Yellow”):

The immortal artist—and yes, I am sufficiently petty not to name him even now, for his artistic legacy does not need more help from me than I have already given—is here at the Salon, of course, though I am pleased to note that despite him having taken part in perhaps a hundred Salons, the hanging committee has placed his work poorly. Not at the ceiling, quite, but high enough to strain the neck should anyone wish an extended viewing.

L’Esprit de L’Escalier, by Catherynne M. Valente. Second paragraph of third section:

Whatever comfortable has come to mean for either of them.

“O2 Arena”, by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. Second paragraph of third section:

We had a plethora of assignments and projects that kept us buried to our eyebrows, even on weekends. But assignments were rarely my concern on weekdays, much less weekends. And on this weekend, Ovoke was gone.

“That Story Isn’t the Story”, by John Wiswell. Second paragraph of third section:

Grigorii drops the yellow sketch pad in Anton’s lap along with a few colored pencils. “Literally had these leftover for ten years. Can you believe it? They waited for you.”

“Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.”, by Fran Wilde. Second paragraph of third section:

The Lighting Gown shocked a dancer’s escort. The Ocean and Moon Gown seemed to grow heavier on Odelle until she had to sit down. She was found drenched in the restrooms, but alive, much later. Dora’s sharp laughter echoed in the empty store.

Best Short Story Hugo, 2022

As I’m Deputy Administrator this year, I’m not going to record my own preferences, just the fact that I’ve read each category as I work through them.

Interesting variation of format in the Short Story category, with one a Twitter thread of functional screenshots from a text conversation, and another told through Wiki-style edits. Also I noted two different takes on the afterlife.

“Mr. Death”, by Alix E. Harrow. Second paragraph of third section:

I couldn’t see her, but I could sort of sense her: a soft, amber gaze hovering at the edges of the hospital room, watching the labored rise and fall of my chest. 

“Proof by Induction”, by José Pablo Iriarte. Second paragraph of third section:

The chaplain sighs. “The equipment will be cleaned and reused, except for the actual leads that connected to his scalp, which are disposed of.”

“The Sin of America”, by Catherynne M. Valente. Second paragraph of third section:

There’s a woman outside of Sheridan sitting on a threadbare bluebell-patterned cushion a dead lady once thought was so classy and beautiful it would turn her into a better person so she bought the whole bolt of fabric without even looking at the price.

“Tangles”, by Seanan McGuire. Second paragraph of third section:

They were just . . . stuck.

“Unknown Number”, by Blue Neustifter. Second paragraph of third screenshot:

I am literally five seconds from blocking this number.

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, by Sarah Pinsker. Second paragraph of commentary on third verse:

Ellen and her sisters represent the three Fates. –Dynamum

Hugo ballot: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

The Hugo ballot is out! Congratulations to all of this year’s finalists.

I had a couple of days’ advance knowledge and prepared these tables of the finalists’ standings on Goodreads and LibraryThing; some of these numbers will have changed on GR and LT in the meantime.

Best Novel

  Goodreads   LibraryThing  
  reviewers av rating owners av rating
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir 239,092 4.53 2,252 4.3
She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan 22,276 3.96 525 4.07
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers 15,679 4.44 628 4.42
A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine 13,345 4.37 512 4.18
A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark 9,601 4.15 462 3.95
Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki 6,184 4.14 279 4.16

All very highly rated, though with a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, but had the highest reader rating on both systems.
The 2020 winner was fourth on this metric, and had the second highest rating on Goodreads and joint third highest on LibraryThing.
The 2019 winner was third on this metric, had the second highest rating on Goodreads (again) and the second lowest on LibraryThing.
The 2018 winner was second on this metric and had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2017 winner was also second on this metric, had the third highest rating on Goodreads and the second highest on LibraryThing.
The 2016 winner was fifth on this metric, but had the top ratings on both systems.
The 2015 winner was fourth (out of five) on all counts.
The 2014 winner was third (out of five) on this metric (counting all the Wheel of Time as one) and in the middle-ish on ratings (depending on how you count the Wheel of Time)
The 2013 winner was top on both metrics (uniquely!) and third (out of five) in ratings on both systems.
The 2012 winner was last on both Goodreads owners and ratings, and had the lowest rating on Goodreads, but was ranked and rated third (out of five) on LibraryThing.
It’s clearly an imperfect indicator. The eventual winner was in the top half of the table in four of the last nine years, in the botto, half four times, and in the middle once.

Best Novella

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers22,0314.295814.23
Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire12,3673.823283.96
A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow12,9863.73024
Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard3,2293.511863.85
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky4,0614.21144.03
The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente1,8254.181244.41

Again, all very highly rated, though again with a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, but had the highest LT rating and second highest GR rating.
The 2020 winner ranked top on this metric.
The 2019 winner was second on this metric but had top ratings from readers.
And I don’t seem to have done it previously.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
Lore Olympus, vol. 136,2484.433544.16
Monstress, vol. 6: The Vow1,6454.451264.22
Far Sector1,3764.29603.73
Once & Future, vol. 3: The Parliament of Magpies7414.17333.94
DIE, vol. 4: Bleed6724.18343.82
Strange Adventures6794.21183.7

A clear leader in ownership, but a different leader on user ratings.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric, third on GR ratings, but only fifth on LT ratings.
The 2020 winner was actually last on this metric, and had the second lowest ratings.
The 2019 winner was third and had the second highest ratings.

Best Related Work

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman9013.8514.38
Never Say You Can’t Survive, by Charlie Jane Anders4424.27574.63
Being Seen, by Elsa Sjunneson2214.55213.75
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds, by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre343.9126
The Complete Debarkle, by Camestros Felapton142
“How Twitter can ruin a life”, by Emily St. James (Vox, Jun 2021)

The last of these is not a standalone publication, and The Complete Debarkle clearly hasn’t hit the bookstore shelves. The LT reader rating for Never Say You Can’t Survive is the highest for any of these books. I don’t think I’ve done this for BRW before.

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

GoodreadsLibraryThing
reviewersav ratingownersav rating
The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik37,9804.346124.25
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao267964.254614.13
Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko53454.311174
Victories Greater Than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders 19873.552123.66
A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger14504.121013.55
Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer5384.18634.07

Again, a clear leader.
Last year’s winner was third on this metric and fourth on both GR and LT ratings.
The 2020 winner had the second lowest place on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers; but LibraryThing readers ranked it top.
I skipped this category in 2019.
The 2018 YA Award winner was top on the metric, and among Goodreads reviewers, but only rated fifth out of six by LibraryThing users.