Monday at WorldCon - Lady Astronauts

I had been planning to go to Mary Robinette Kowal's reading on Monday morning even if she hadn't won the Hugo. So it was even more exciting that she actually brought the Hugo with her, and let people hold it!

She explained that they are told how to hold the Hugo in rehearsals - not in the middle in front of your body under any circumstances, because it just looks rude! The correct position is cradled in one arm to the side.
She also told us about the dress she had been wearing the night before, a gorgeous silver evening dress. I missed the name of the designer, but he had created a range of dresses named after lady astronauts, and the dress Mary Robinette wore was the Peggy Whitsun, named for the woman astronaut who had spent the longest period in space.
She also brought some computer punch cards from the sort of computers that feature in her books. I remember being shown round the computer room of Salford University when I first started work there in the 1970s - it looked like something out of the Man From UNCLE, and it worked by feeding punch cards into it!
And she brought Lady Astronaut Club badges, too.
She read two pieces from her as yet unpublished work, this time telling the story from the point of view of Helen, the senator's wife (and pilot) rather than Elma the Lady Astronaut's. She said there are two ways of reading, a neutral tone that enables the listener to hear the story clearly, and a more emotionally engaged reading where the reader is acting the parts and doing the voices. She prefers the latter, but added that both ways are valid.
It also turned into a bit of a writing class as she frowned at one point. "Hm, both those sentences end with "hand" - that's not good," and changed it on the fly. The second piece was still only a draft, so may well change before publication.
There was also discussion about Pancho Barnes - one of the audience asked if Helen was based on this real life pilot, who sounds fascinating. There was a book recommendation - Sky Girls, written by one of the Mercury 13, the women who did the astronaut training but were not allowed into space, about the Powder Puff Derby, a flying race for women pilots.

Sunday at WorldCon 4 - Art and Politics, Filk and Hugo Awards

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!

WorldCon Opening Ceremony and Retro Hugos

I met an interesting lady on the way to the Opening Ceremony and ended up sitting on the balcony with her.
It was a long way down, but the view was terrific.
Ellen Klages and Dave Rudden were the hosts for the evening, and Ellen Klages was very funny, especially in the bit where she tried to pronounce Irish names ("Are those sheep in the photos getting closer?").
James Bacon, the Chair of this year's WorldCon, gave a speech, and he was bursting with pride at what they had achieved.
The Guests of Honour for the Convention were introduced and sent to sit on sofas to one side of the stage. They came up later to present the Retro Hugo Awards.
There was also a short play by Firedoor Theatre, about a druid, a banshee and a Viking drinking in a bar run by the Morrigan - and the Viking has brought a mortal with him....
The other entertainment of the evening was from Songs in the Key of D, a community choir who only sing songs about Dublin or have a strong connection to Dublin. They were great!

Also awarded at this point in the proceedings were some special awards. First Fandom is a group, dwindling now, of fans who were around in the early days, and people who have been fans for more than 30 years. The award for the Hall of Fame went to Ray Faraday Nelson.
The First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame went to Bob Shaw, James White and Walt Willis, all fans who were important in Northern Irish fandom. Bob Shaw and James White also became well known authors (I met James White once, at a Star Trek Con in the 1980s. I was dressed as an Andorian and my makeup was way too dark - I hadn't tested it beforehand - which he commented on. We were in a group that was being interviewed for a Liverpool hospital radio station, and he was lovely).
The Sam Moskowitz Archive Award for SF collecting went to Dr Bradford Lyau, and the Big Heart Award went to Alice Lawson.

The Hugo Awards began being awarded in 1953, so the Retro Hugos were created to honour those who created their work before 1953, who would have been honoured if the award had existed at the time. This year, the works all came from 1943, when no WorldCon was held (for obvious reasons). The Retro Hugo base this year was made from blue ceramic, designed by Dr Eleanor Wheeler, whose doctorate is in architectural ceramics and public art.
I was pleased to see Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber, Jr. win the best novel.
Best novella was introduced as a slap down between The Little Prince and HP Lovecraft! And The Little Prince won!
Best novelette was Mimsy Were the Borogroves by Lewis Padgett (the name used by the writing team CL Moore and Henry Kuttner), and Ray Bradbury won best short story for King of the Gray Spaces.
The people who came up to collect the awards were not, of course, the actual winners, but the awards will be going to the estates or families or whoever is now connected to the original works.
Wonder Woman won the best Graphic Story (runners up were Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Garth - and Le Secret de la Licorne by Herge, with one I was unfamiliar with, Plastic Man by Jack Cole).
The films were Heaven Can Wait and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (there was laughter as the film poster for one of the runners up, Der Fuehrer's Face, was shown on the big screen - it shows Donald Duck throwing something at Hitler).
The Best Professional Editor, Short Form award was won by John W Campbell, and his grandson and great-granddaughter came up to receive the award.
Best Professional Artist was Virgil Finlay, and Best Fanzine was Le Zombie edited by Wilson 'Bob' Tucker. The Best Fan Writer was Forrest J Ackerman.
And in the programme for the evening, it is noted that 1943 was the year that Irish Coffee was invented, to warm up passengers at Foynes airfield, Limerick.

Dysprosium - Day Two

I dressed up for the day in a blue silk jumpsuit with a tool belt - as a Tardis engineer. Anyone seen an old Type 40? I hear the chameleon circuit needs fixing, and every time I get somewhere it seems I've just missed it!
The Young Man, in cream frock coat, was a Time Agent.
The longest queue of the convention was for breakfast, due to a misunderstanding between the committee and the hotel that breakfast was between 9am and 11am, when in fact it could be taken earlier.
The first panel of the day for us was The Return of the Great British Eccentric, Huzzah!
Two Great British Ecentrics, Professor Elemental and Herr Doktor, were on the panel - I didn't catch the names of the other panelists. There was some discussion about whether eccentrics had to be British (Huzzah!), and about half way through it was realised that all the examples of eccentrics given so far had been male - and posh (poor people tend to be labelled mad, like poor John Clare the poet). So a good few women eccentrics were mentioned, like Gertrude Bell. One member of the audience said that talking about class was a load of rubbish - he had members of the Establishment on one side of his family and penniless refugees on the other side, so we shouldn't take any notice of the traditional class divisions.
Then on to Unseen London in Bleriot, which started off by talking about the Tube, and then branched off in interesting ways. One of the panellists here was Russell Smith, who spoke on some interesting panels on urban fantasy and London at LonCon. There was quite a bit of discussion of obscure engineering works, which was quite fascinating. The chap who'd talked about class (or the lack of it) in the previous panel was there too, and turned out to be extremely knowledgeable about Tube lines and tunnels under the Thames and so on.

Pause for a bit of gentle shopping, combined with chatting to people like Dr Geof, the lovely couple from Gearhearts magazine, the lady selling Beeblebears (with two heads) for ZZ9 the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy fan club, Runesmith, Major Tinker, and others. And lunch. I think we had lunch.
We were also looking out for Clickety Click!, the Con newsletter, which was being put together over the weekend at a room off the Real Ale Bar, marked by the moose and crossbones flag. By this time the committee were appealing for more gophers (I'm afraid I wasn't about to volunteer, as I wanted to spend all the time I could with the Young Man, who I don't see very often. If I was on my own, I probably would have done.)

At three we were back in Discovery for Jim Butcher. He has started another series of books which are not at all like the Dresden Files, with cities inside huge spires, ruled by Spirearchs, connected by airships. Albion Spire is about to make war on Aurora Spire and the main characters are caught up in it. However, he was reconciled to the thought that the main thing that people would remember about the series was not the airships or the world building or any of that - it was the fact it had talking cats in it!
He also talked a bit about how he became a writer, and the writers' course he'd been on (and the terrible novels he'd written) until he decided he would prove his teacher wrong by doing exactly what she said he should do (thinking that it would fail and then he could say he told her so). And that was the first of the Dresden Files.

Later that afternoon, we were in Endeavour, across from the big hall, for Trowelblazers, which is an initiative to give recognition to all those women archaeologists whose contributions have been glossed over and forgotten. The speaker was Brenna Hassett, herself an archaeologist. I knew about a few of them, like Kathleen Kenyon - but there was plenty I didn't know, like seeing a picture of Gertrude Bell posing with Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill, on camels, which just goes to show how influential she was (she was at some Middle East peace talks).
There was also a delightful film made in the 1930s at an Egyptian dig run by John Pendlebury, archaeologist and (later) war hero. There were women in the background, holding the high jump for the "Olympic Games" he put on for the children of the local labourers (who seemed to be having a great time), or sitting at tables illustrating the finds, but they were never mentioned or named. There were women labourers, too, walking, or sometimes running, around with baskets of dirt on their heads. Their names were never recorded, either.
I discovered, too, that there was an all female dig at Great Zimbabwe in 1929. It was run by Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who was a student of Margaret Murray (who I knew better as a writer on witchcraft), and one of the diggers was Kathleen Kenyon. Gertrude seriously annoyed the South African government by saying publically that there was no evidence at all that Europeans had come in and built Great Zimbabwe (as was widely believed, because of course the natives couldn't build anything in stone like this) and of course Africans had built it. It was such a fascinating talk that I started taking notes, and there is a website, too (link in the side bar).

And then it was back to Bleriot for the announcement of the Hugo shortlist, with a live video link to the committee of Sasquan.
Which was - interesting. It seems the Sad Puppies have been at it again. After the total failure last year to get their preferred right wing, white male candidates chosen, they have been much more organised this year. Voting is going to be a minefield. There was a meeting the following night, which we didn't get to, for concerned people who wanted to work out what to do about the voting.

Hugo Awards

It was quite exciting to be in the audience of the Hugo Awards this year. We could even see the press table, where journalists were tapping away on their laptops as the awards were given. The ceremony was also making the most of the big screens behind the stage to put up live action and art and clips of film - all the Short Form Dramatic Presentations had clips shown before the award was given - which was quite Doctor Who heavy! Two Doctors were actually there - David Tennant attended the Hugo Losers party after the event, and Peter Davison was in the audience, in the reserved seats at the front, in case his short film The Five(ish) Doctors won the award.
Sadly, many winners were unable to be there in person, but they had all written speeches to be delivered by proxies.
The Hugo statuettes themselves were displayed in a mock-up of the White Tower at the Tower of London, which slid aside to show the shelves where they were standing, and at the beginning of the evening the whole thing was guarded by two men in the uniform of the Yeoman Warders, or Beefeaters. Later in the Con, the shelving was on offer to whoever could take it away - and it was pretty big!
The first award was not a Hugo - it was the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and that went to Sofia Samatar.
Then we had the best Fan Artist. Most of the fan art I saw in the Hugo package was pretty much on a par, but one artist stood out head and shoulders above the rest, and I wasn't surprised when she won. I learned later that this was the only category in the Hugos this year where the first vote was decisive - it's a form of proportional vote where the votes for the one who comes last are re-distributed until there is a clear winner. Sarah Webb won hands down - and apparently she's only nineteen! So she's got a great future ahead of her.
The best Fan Writer was Kameron Hurley, which I was pleased about, because I follow her blog, and her work at A Dribble of Ink blog, which won Best Fanzine and the Best Related Work category, in part because of Kameron Hurley's essay We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative (which is excellent - I recommend it). Kameron Hurley's acceptance speech is also well worth reading, and there was a good podcast on tor.com about the awards featuring Aidan Moher and Foz Meadows, too. Other Fanzines up for the award included two I follow regularly - The Book Smugglers and Pornokitsch, both of which are also excellent. There's a lot of talent out there.
The Best Related Work category had a lot of good stuff in it. I rather enjoyed Queers Dig Time Lords: a celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans who love it, and I was also very impressed by The Wonder Book by Jeff Van der Meer. In fact, I started taking notes from the extract that was included with the Hugo packet, and I bought the book at the Con. It's a writing manual, and I'm picking up a lot of good tips from it about constructing scenes and so on.
The Best Fancast was SF Signal Podcast by Patrick Hester.
The Best Semiprozine was Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams, Rich Horton and Stefan Rudnicki, and then it was time for the Professional Artists. Julie Dillon won this one (I like her work, too) but the quality was incredible, and I liked a lot of the work that I saw.
I didn't feel I knew enough about it to vote for the Best Editor. The Long Form editor award went to Ginjer Buchanan, who came up in person - and she's about to retire, so what a wonderful thing to get at the end of her career. The Best Short Form Editor was Ellen Datlow.
In the Short Form Dramatic Presentation category, none of the Doctor Who related work won - it was The Rains of Castamere episode of Game of Thrones that took the (Iron Throne) prize. The Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation was Gravity, which some people have quibbled isn't really science fiction at all.
There was more Doctor Who in the Best Graphic Story category, The Girl who Loved Doctor Who by Paul Cornell - I liked it best, although it was clearly aimed at a younger audience than I am, but the winner was Time, from XKCD. One of the other nominees was Volume 13 of Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio, which is now on my wish list the next time I get to a Forbidden Planet.
The winner of the Best Short Story award was John Chu, for The Water that Falls from Nowhere, and he was a very emotional winner - he'd obviously encountered a lot of resistance to his work in the publishing business, some of it racist, and the Hugo was a huge vindication of his work. I went back and re-read the story after the Con, and he really is a superb writer - and I just wanted to give his main character a big hug at the end! He's an author I'll be looking out for in future. One of the other nominees in that category was Sofia Samatar, who won the John W Campbell award, with Selkie Stories are for Losers.
We were getting near the end of the evening now, and to the longer fiction. Best Novelette went to Mary Robinette Kowal's The Lady Astronaut of Mars, which was the one I liked best of the selection, though I also rather liked The Exchange Officers by Brad Torgersen.
The Best Novella went to Equoid by Charles Stross, who looked very smart in a dark kilt, and the Best Novel went to Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, who has been sweeping all before her in the awards this year.

The Retro-Hugos for 1939

The first ever WorldCon was held in 1939 (only 200 people attended) - but the first ever Hugo Awards didn't happen until 1953. Therefore, this year, voting took place for the 1939 Hugo Awards - with the benefit of hindsight, of course.
It seems strange now to think that Carson of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Galactic Patrol by EE Doc Smith were published in the same year as The Sword in the Stone by TH White - which was voted the winner of best novel category. Out of the Silent Planet, by CS Lewis, was a contender, too, the fifth choice being The Legion of Time by Jack Williamson.
For Best Novella, it really had to be "Who Goes There?" by Don A Stuart/John W Campbell - the story which became the film The Thing, just as the best dramatic presentation (short form) had to be The War of the Worlds by HG Wells, put on radio by Orson Welles to famously cause widespread panic. Nothing else in the category came close to that sort of notoriety. There was no category for best long form dramatic presentation, so I suppose there were no SF films put out that year.
The choice for best novelette was Rule 18 by Clifford D Simak - though Pigeons from Hell by Robert E Howard sounds intriguing, and I don't think I've come across Werewoman by CL Moore, though I'm a fan of her work (especially Jirel of Joiry).
The wonderful thing about the Hugos now is that voters are able to receive a package of the nominated works - that couldn't happen in 1987, when I was last eligible to vote. Computer downloads are so much lighter than a pile of books coming through the post, even if anyone had been able to afford to give out so many books back then. So I was able to read quite a few of the works that had been nominated. I was already familiar with most of the novels, but the shorter stories mostly appeared in SF magazines, and are harder to track down. I did enjoy (though I thought it was terribly sad) Lester del Ray's short story The Faithful, about genetically enhanced dogs in a time when humans have been wiped out, who embark on a project to make themselves new humans from genetically enhanced apes so they will have someone to be faithful to. Arthur C Clarke won that category, though, with How We Went to Mars.
The best editor, and certainly the one whose fame has lasted best, was John W Campbell, and the best artist was Virgil Finlay.
I didn't feel qualified to vote for best fanzine, though there seem to have been a few to choose from - Imagination!, edited by Forrest J Ackerman, Morojo and T Bruce Yerke, won there. "Morojo" seems to have been Myrtle Douglas in Esperanto. Forrest J Ackerman was also nominated as best fan writer, and was beaten by a man who went on to greater things - Ray Bradbury!

Hugos - Queers Dig Time Lords

I'm in the middle of Queers Dig Time Lords at the moment, a collection of essays by gay, lesbian, bisexual - and anyone else who doesn't identify as 'straight', talking about Doctor Who fandom. It came in the download from the Hugo awards under the title "Related Works", so not actually science fiction or fantasy, but still part of the genre.
I'd say it was a light, easy read, except that some of these people are baring their souls and talking about what must be quite painful memories. It just shows how science fiction can be a refuge for anyone who feels different, and that it's something that enriches people's lives. It certainly worked that way for me (not gay, but I was always "the weird one", a title I now embrace!).

Voting for the Hugos

This is all quite exciting.
I don't remember what happened in 1987, the last time I went to a WorldCon, but I'm pretty sure we didn't get packages of Hugo nominees to look at before we voted on them. In fact, I didn't go to the Hugo award ceremony at all - I was in another hall with the filk singers (I remember enjoying a trio of a capella singers called Technical Difficulties). Of course, back then, the only computer I had access to was my friend's BBC Micro, which used cassette tapes!
This time, it's much easier to vote from a position of knowledge without having spent large amounts of time and money collecting new releases in all the different categories. So I've just been downloading nominated novels, novellas, short stories, fan and pro art, and graphic stories to have a look at before I make my choice. It's a brilliant perk of membership of the Convention. One of the graphic stories on the list is Paul Cornell's The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, which I was considering voting for - I had wanted to get it when it came out, but I missed the publication date, being so far from a comic shop of any sort. But now I see there's something called Girl Genius, which looks intriguing....
I'm better placed with the TV and film categories, which I have seen quite a few of - but do I choose An Adventure in Space and Time or The Five(ish) Doctors Revisited, which both have merits in their different ways? And having listened to a few of the Big Finish audio adventures now, I'm getting a new appreciation of Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
At least I've got until 31st July to make my decisions.