I thought that the only chance I'd have to see Jim Fitzpatrick was the panel on Art and Politics at the Point however, for whatever reason, he wasn't there, leaving Dr Mary Talbot and Dominic Riemenschneider to chat to moderator Siobhan Murphy, with occasional interjections from Bryan Talbot (graphic novelist and Mary Talbot's husband) in the audience. It was a huge subject, and they only scratched the surface of it, talking about abstract art being encouraged at the expense of figurative art by the CIA, for instance. It was also noted that there was a bid for the 2024 WorldCon to be held in the Chinese city of Cheng Du, which undoubtedly had the backing of the Chinese government.
To fill the time before the Hugo Award Ceremony, I went back to the filk room at the Convention Centre for a quiet sit down. Bill and Brenda Sutton were performing again, and I managed to get a CD of their songs, And They Said it Wouldn't Last. They were not officially selling CDs, so they asked instead that anyone who was interested should give tokens of their friendship in the form of paper notes, and they would give tokens of their friendship in the form of CDs in return. After all, there was no-one in the dealers' room selling any filk CDs or music books. The member of the Con Staff in the room then took the mic to say it was absolutely fine.
Once again, I found somebody interesting to sit and talk to during the ceremony while queuing up. Her boyfriend had the job of live tweeting the ceremony, and had been looking up interesting facts about each winner - which he wasn't allowed to tell her ahead of time.
Artist Afua Richardson and Michael Scott were the masters of ceremony for the evening - and it took me a while to realise that it was that Michael Scott - the author whose books retelling Irish myths I had adored when I first read them, an embarrassingly long time ago.
The evening began with an award that was not a Hugo - the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer. This was won by Jeannette Ng, who caused a sensation when she came up to give her acceptance speech. The first words out of her mouth were "John W Campbell was a fucking fascist!" She went on to say that people who were now winning the award named after him were far from the white male authors he had nurtured at Astounding magazine, and far more diverse than he could ever have imagined. She went on "you've given me the microphone now," and talked about the protests going on in Hong Kong, the city of her birth.
The speech certainly caused a stir. John W Campbell's grandson had been on the same stage only two evenings before to collect a Retro Hugo for his grandfather's work as editor, and he was of the opinion that Jeannette Ng should have the award taken from her. However, the sponsors of the award announced publicly only a few days later that the award would be renamed the Astounding Award. Jeannette Ng was not the only person to have criticised the name of the award, but her speech was the final action that made the change happen. And she did it while wearing an awesome peacock hat.
Nothing could quite live up to that beginning.
I was very pleased to see Charles Vess go up twice to receive a Hugo - once for the Best Art Book, for his work on the Complete Illustrated Edition of the Books of Earthsea, which was a special award for Dublin WorldCon only, as each committee has the right to create a special award for that year only, and once for Best Artist.
It was also lovely to see Likhain (Mia Sereno) win the Hugo for Best Fan Artist - she gave part of her speech in Filipino, which the caption service couldn't cope with (there were problems with the captioning throughout the weekend).
With Best Fan Writer being Foz Meadows and Best Fancast being Our Opinions Are Correct, hosted by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, this was turning into a very female and very LGBTQ+ Awards Ceremony.
Even better, the Best Semiprozine Award went to Uncanny Magazine - one of the ladies who went up on stage to receive the award had her guide dog with her, and announced that she was the first blind person in the history of the Hugos to win an award!
Part way through the ceremony, Afua Richardson made a speech to honour Nichelle Nichols, original Star Trek's Lt. Uhura, who was a great inspiration to her, and who has recently announced that she is suffering from Alzheimer's. She also sang, incorporating the Star Trek theme in the song.
Later, it was Michael Scott's turn to say a few words, and while he spoke Afua played the flute (a woman of many talents!)
When it came to the Dramatic Presentations, a clip of each show was shown. I voted for Demons of the Punjab, one of the two Doctor Who episodes in the shortlist (with Rosa next on the ballot paper), but the Award went to The Good Place episode Janet(s) - a series I haven't seen (yet).
Best film went to Into the Spider-Verse, which looks like a lot of fun.
Best Series of books went to Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series. I've read the first one of those, and enjoyed it a lot (I want to live on that space ship!), and it's strange to think that, when I was having fun at LonCon in 2014, Becky Chambers was also there with the manuscript of her self-published novel, trying to find a publisher - and here she is now, a Hugo winner!
Monstress won Best Graphic Story - I'd seen some of Sana Takeda's wonderful artwork in the art show earlier.
And then there was another moment of unusual excitement, as the Best Related Work was announced to be AO3 - the Archive Of Our Own, a website for fan fiction. At this point the house lights came on, so that everyone in the audience who had written fan fiction and posted it on AO3 could stand up - because this was their Hugo!
I was pleased for Zen Cho, who won Best Novelette for If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again - I enjoyed that one.
I was absolutely delighted that The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal won Best Novel! She also gave a great speech about noticing the people who get airbrushed out of history. That was a great end to my evening!
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