Transcript - Starship Fonzie #36

To help facilitate the Starship Fonzie podcast for the hearing impaired, I'm going to begin posting transcripts of the cast onto this blog. I pre-script all my episodes anyway, so this shouldn't be too difficult.

Here you are, enjoy!

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Greetings, all my fellow Milwookies, homo-sapiens, and all other sentient lifeforms of the Planet Earth. This is Starship Fonzie, the official podcast of the Milwaukee Science Fiction and Fantasy League. I’m your host, Eric J. Hildeman, and we’re going to let you know what’s going on in the world of sci fi in Milwaukee, and in the SFF world generally.

This podcast is being pre-recorded live from the hidden lair of Master Chief 117 who is currently trying to track down Dr. Halsey.

Actually, it's coming to you from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or as Chicago is coming to call it, that city just to the north where that one guy has this crazy idea about starting a new convention. Yeah, that place.

Welcome to the 36th episode of Starship Fonzie. Episode #3 in our fourth year of existence.

I just got back from volunteering at Capricon, one of two major science fiction cons in the Chicago area, and home to some of the biggest names in fandom who make that convention their regular home. I mean, anyone who was anyone was there in terms of what’s been going on recently in the Hugo Awards. Tammy Coxen was there, I attended her cocktail party. I got to meet Ben Yalow who was co-chair for Chengdu, and that was awesome. I got to meet Donald Eastlake who stepped up to become the new chair of W.I.P., which is Worldcon Intellectual Property, the official organization whose members are the Mark Protection Committee for Worldcon.

And I got to meet and talk with Dave McCarty, the man who is currently the most central figure in the current Hugo Awards controversy, taking most of the blame for… most of it. And it was both exciting and yet frustrating. Because the ONE THING I wanted to talk with him about was the ONE THING I knew he couldn’t talk about at all. So, I talked with him about what I was trying to do in Milwaukee, and we talked about past conventions there, which he knew a surprising amount about, actually. Apparently, he was there for some of those! And I talked some sports with him a little bit too. And then his phone started blowing up and I thought it best to stop talking with him at that point and make my exit, which I did.

But it was so maddening. I was working with the guy for four solid days, and I couldn’t really talk with him.

Well, fortunately, Chris Barkley was also there. And Dave McCarty had refused to do interviews with all sorts of people, but when Chris asked him, he agreed. And after the con was done, Chris Barkley published his interview. And I am SO grateful he did that! It was like being able to scratch an itch that I couldn’t reach and has been bothering me for four days straight!

If you get a chance, go over to File770.com and listen to that interview. It’s a little maddening because Dave couldn’t answer certain things in a straightforward way, but at least Chris got to ask him all the questions that I wanted to ask him.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to meet Chris in person and say hi. I also missed Paul Wiemer. HE was there! And I didn’t even realize it until he posted a picture of downtown Chicago to Blue Sky. And I was like, “Hey, Paul! Where are you?”

And he said, “I’m up at the Art Show,”

And I told him, “I’m in ops. Come on by.”

Well, I guess he didn’t get a chance. He was at the closing ceremonies, and so was I, but then I had to go help out with closing out all the cash transactions.

You see, when you’re a Treasury Second for a convention, you’re basically stuck in the office for most of the con. And I didn’t mind, because some great people came to the ops office to visit us, but it also meant I couldn’t sit through all the panels I could have otherwise.

But what a great experience! I told Tammy Coxen later on that, to me, it felt like my first few days in college. It really did.

While I was there, this bit of news was breaking. My colleague and, I think it's fair to say, conrunning coach, Alexia Habel, is not only the Treasurer for Capricon, she was the Treasurer for the Western component of the Worldcon in Chengdu. As such, one of her duties was to administer the pass-along funds from Chengdu over to Glasgow. What are pass-along funds? Well, if there's any money left over after running a Worldcon, they have the option, and traditionally always do, of passing that surplus along to the next Worldcon as a donation towards its effort. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.

Well, in between duties at Capricon, and after speaking to Ben Yalow about it, she offered $40,000 in pass-along funds to the Glasgow Worldcon. And again, that's der rigur. Every Worldcon does this if they can.

Glasgow turned the money down.

They're so anxious to avoid any associations with the Chengdu Worldcon, that they're unwilling to even touch their money. To the tune of $40 grand!

And it's not like Glasgow couldn't use the money. Their registration system, I was told, was being hosted by a company that totally bungled it, and those technical problems put them in the hole. That $40 grand could potentially help them out a lot. But they're too scared of how pissed off the fans are. So, to them, it's worth more money down the road to not accept this money now.

Here's my thought about that: If you think someone is wrong, if you find someone objectionable, if you think that person or entity is evil and wrongheaded, wouldn't you take the money away from them if you can? If you think Chengdu is evil, fine! Take their money away from them! After all, they don't deserve that money anyway, right?

If you have a chance to take money away from evil people, DO IT! In general principle you should NEVER let evil people keep the money! 

And I'm not saying that the people behind Chengdu are evil. Please don't misunderstand me. I think they are very good people. But I think they're people who live in constant fear of government oppression.

Time for some news:

The Saturn Awards are out. The Saturn Awards are given out by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, an organization which was started in 1972 by Donald A. Reed to promote genre-based fiction in movies, television, and home video. Basically it's the award that's given out to all the science fiction films the Oscars inevitably snubs. But this year? They seem a little off.

The winner of the best Science Fiction film of 2023? Avatar: The Way of Water.

I mean...

Avatar wasn’t a terrible movie. It was visually stunning and we all loved the special effects. But the writing was weak. Sully takes his family all the way out to a new tribe in order to protect the forest people, except that doesn’t work either. Just like everyone knew it wouldn’t at the onset. And it just

That made me go back and look at who the nominees were. The nominees for best sci fi picture were

Avatar, of course,

The Creator

M3GAN

Prey

and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

Really? No They Cloned Tyrone? No Poor Things?

The real snub was not including Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse. I mean, come on!

Regarding the Saturn Awards, did you know that one can be a Level A Associate Member of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, for $40 per year? And if you do, you get to VOTE on who gets a Saturn Award? That's relatively inexpensive compared to other groups and clubs. So maybe more of us fans should join up and get involved in that. Because right now, it really looks as if there's a real lack of input at the Saturn Awards. Those people need to know what fans really want.

Because right now, they sure don’t.

Meanwhile, other news from Glasgow. The Hugo Awards nominations opened up on January 27th, but had to shut down right away due to technical glitches. I think it's universally expected that the Hugos will go better than they did in China, but that was an inglorious start. But, fortunately, those issues have now hopefully been resolved, and nominations are open once again.

So, I need to report something as a bit of a confession. One of the other podcasts I enjoy on YouTube is called Science Fiction with Damien Walter. And he's kind of out there, he likes to shake things up, but he always gives a good historical perspective and I like that about his show. Well, he covered this latest fiasco with the Hugo Awards, and delved into the history of past controversies. The title of this particular YouTube video was called "The Strange, Sad Death of the Hugo Awards."

Well, I picked a fight with him over him calling the Hugos dead. In the comments section, I laid out my working hypothesis regarding what happened, and barked at him over sensationalizing it. Well, he barked back at me a bit, I responded in less than kind, and then got no more replies to my comments. And I figured that was the end of it, but lo and behold, he changed the title of his video. The new title reads, "The War for the Hugo Awards." I think that's much more appropriate and way more accurate.

So in the way of a "thank you," I'm giving him a shout-out. If you haven't seen Damien Walter's YouTube videos, go check him out. 

Well, speaking of other podcasts I like, I was listening to Mur Lafferty's podcast, "I should be writing," and Mur did talk a little bit about what happened in China. And something she said really struck me. She said that we hadn't had a big Hugo Awards controversy in a few years, and that meant we were due. And that got me thinking: What other controversies took place before this? The one everybody can think of off the top of their heads is the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies incident where a bunch of right-wingers used block voting to game the system back in 2015. The fans struck back an issued no Hugos at all in several categories. But what happened before that? Well, I thought it might be fun to go over all the Hugo controversies from the very beginning up to now. Because you know what? Mur was right. A major scandal affects Worldcon every few years or so, and minor scandals happen seemingly every other year. I think that will be both entertaining and therapeutic. Because it will remind us that controversies have come and gone, and that, as far as the Hugo Awards are concerned, this too shall pass. Going forward, we're going to be just fine. And there will be other mishaps to come, without a doubt. But we'll weather those storms, too. Every time I conclude a scandal, you'll hear the sound of a Hugo Award breaking. So, ready? Here we go!

At the very first worldcon, Cyril Kornbluth assaulted Forrest J Ackerman, punching him in the stomach.

Also at the first worldcon, 1939, members of a group known as the Futurians were banned from attending, presumably for their left-wing views.

The very first Hugo Award was presented in 1953 at the 11th Worldcon in Philadelphia. Yet in 1954, they failed to issue a Hugo Award at all. The Hugos resumed in 1955.

The second Hugo Awards ceremony gave the Hugo to They'd Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, which is quite possibly the worst sci fi novel ever written. No list of nominees was retained so it's impossible to know exactly who was overlooked, but the sheer number of great novels published that year includes The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, Brain Wave by Poul Anderson, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, and The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien! Why did the judges fail so badly? Some say they were going by Mark Clifton's past short story performance, but hadn't actually read the novel. Another competing fan theory is that it was a conspiracy by L.Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology to give Clifton and Riley the award.

1962 Chicon 3, Isaac Asimov gives a speech titled, "The Positive Power of Posterior Pinching" in which he not only talked about, but demonstrated, the proper way to pinch the posteriors of women at conventions. Isaac Asimov was, himself, a notorious ass-grabber.

1964 Pacificon II in Oakland California, Walter Breen, the husband of Marion Zimmer Bradley, was banned from attending because they were afraid of his well-known pedophilia. Yet the convention committee avoided calling him a pedophile outright. In its official publication regarding the matter, the convention committee stated, "We haven't done this because Walter Breen is allegedly a child molester, but because legal council lead to the conclusion that if he molests minors at the convention, legal action will probably be taken against us."

1970 HeiCon in Heidelburg, Germany. The battle for the balcony! Student protests against various European governments had been taking place all over Europe after being driven out of Paris, France. They arrived in Heidelburg just as the Worldcon was taking place. The students invaded the balcony of the main room and proceeded to disrupt the entire event. When they tried to enter further, Elliot Shorter rallied members of the Society for Creative Anachronism to bar their way - using the SWORDS they were wearing! When the protesters realized they were facing off against armed opponents, they decided to withdraw.

1977 SunCon, Miami, Florida. Originally was to be held in Orlando, Florida, but the hotel they contracted with went bankrupt and cancelled the contract. The committee selected another hotel in Miami Beach called the Fountainbleu, which also went bankrupt. Fortunately, they honored the contract this time, and the convention went ahead anyway. The entire con was plagued with difficulties and convention chairs resigned one by one, until only chairman Don Lundry remained, running the con pretty much all by himself. On top of this, Marion Zimmer Bradley proposed that fandom boycott the event on the grounds that Florida had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, and had repealed a gay rights law. Her boycott request went ignored.

1983 the ConStellation Crab Fest, Baltimore, Maryland. Because blue crabs are a local dish in Baltimore, the convention decided to do a crab feast at the banquet! As such, everyone received a small, wooden mallet for the purpose of cracking open the crab shells. But then, the food was late in coming. People there began expressing their displeasure by banging their hammers on the tables, creating so much noise that the speaker, Jerry Pournelle, couldn't even hear himself speak above the racket, even with a microphone, and eventually stormed out in disgust.

1984 LACon II, the "Profits to the Clubhouse" snafu. LA Con was especially profitable that year, as Worldcons went, but fans soon noticed that $10,000 of Worldcon funds had gone to pay for the air conditioning at Los Angeles Science Fiction Association's clubhouse. Fans erupted in a furor claiming scandalous misuse of funds which ultimately belonged to the fans. In fact, it wasn't unusual for conventions to make use of a local clubhouse back then, and some compensation was therefore in order. But many fans didn't see it that way and a virtual civil war erupted.

Plushiegate! At ConFiction, the 1990 Worldcon in the Hague, Netherlands, the site selection voting of which city would get to host the Worldcon in 1993 (because voting was three years in advance back then) was split between four contenders: San Francisco, California, Phoenix, AZ, Hawaii, and Zagreb, Croatia. After three rounds of ranked-choice voting, San Francisco in '93 edged out a majority with 520 votes. 519 were needed to win. But one of those votes came, not from a person, but from a plushie! A Worldcon member paid for two memberships, one for herself, and the other for her Hoka - a stuffed animal. Because there was no rule yet in place barring non-persons from voting, the vote stood. But it's interesting to note that the bid came within a single vote of being won, by a plushie.

2006, LA Con IV, Harlan Ellison gropes the breast of Connie Willis. In public. On stage. An act that observers are still stunned he got away with.

2009, Race Fail! Although the lack of diversity in SFF had been broiling for quite some time, and some people pointed to a panel in Wiscon in 2008 which helped give the problem more attention, it came to a head in 2009 with Race Fail, an incident in which many prominent black sci fi writers declared that they'd had quite enough with being polite about the damned subject. One particular flashpoint was Elizabeth Bear's essay, "Writing the Other."

2013, the "Free Ed" scandal. Ed Kramer, the co-founder of DragonCon, and someone who had been arrested for prior offenses relating to pedophilia in 1997 and 2001, was arrested again in 2011 when he was found in a hotel room, unsupervised, with a 14-year-old. The resulting trial became the most delayed court proceeding in the history of Georgia, with no trial taking place until 2013. Ed was kept in a high security prison all that time and complained loudly to anyone who would listen to him about how he was doing prolonged jail time without even a trial. Many people fell for his begging pleas. Eventually there were calls to "Free Ed" from many famous science fiction people, including Harlan Ellison, Ann McCaffrey, and Robert J. Sawyer. Ed Kramer eventually took a plea deal, pleading guilty to three counts of child molestation, one for each of three unnamed victims. Ellison, McCaffrey, and Sawyer, all quietly wiped the egg off their faces and tried quietly to forget how badly they'd been duped.

2015, Sasquon, Spokane, WA, the "Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies" scandal. Using the technique of organized mass-block voting, right-wing leaning writers Larry Correia, Theodore Beale (a.k.a. "Vox Day"), and Brad Torgerson, collectively referred to as the "Sad Puppies" or their more virulent counterpart the "Rabid Puppies," succeeded in dominating the lists of finalists for the Hugo Award that year. There were almost no candidates whom they hadn't pre-approved of. In response, fans revolted with block voting of their own, and most Hugos that year went to "No Award," denying the Puppies their victory. The problem was eventually addressed, and solved, by the ranked-choice voting structure known as E Pluribus Hugo, which was enacted in 2017.

2019, Jeannette Ng wins the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She immediately uses her acceptance speech to declare that John W. Campbell was, "a fucking fascist." The fannish world was so shocked by this (and so embarrassed that it was true) that they changed the name of the John W. Campbell Award to the Astounding Award. For this, she was nominated for a Best Related Hugo Award - and won.

2020, Covid wipes out ConZealand, and the fall of George R.R. Martin. Because of Covid-19 lockdowns, the much-anticipated Worldcon in New Zealand was forced to go 100% virtual. The virtual con was MC'ed by George R.R. Martin, who lazily mispronounced many names and gave a huge amount of reverence and deference to the recently disgraced John W. Campbell. In response to this, an essay titled, "George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun," written by Natalie Luhrs, was nominated as a finalist for a best related work Hugo. It did not win. It also did not help George R.R. Martin that Game of Thrones ended in such a disappointing fashion.

2021, Discon III, a.k.a. "Discon Disastrous." The entire convention nearly falls apart! The hotel venue went bankrupt, and the contract was cancelled at the last minute. In the desperate scramble to save the convention, the date was pushed back, but it didn't help. Both con chairs, Collette Fozard and Bill Lawhorn, resigned over separate incidents, and Mary Robinette Kowal, a veteran of chairing SFWA conventions, was brought in to save the convention - which she did. But not before fans erupted in furor over a sponsorship from weapons manufacturer Raytheon Technologies.

Whew! And I highlight all this, not to make the Hugos look extra bad, but simply to say that fandom has weathered, many, many storms. It WILL weather this one.

I’d like to close out with something positive, and so I’m going to read a bit from Jo Walton’s book, “An Informal History of the Hugos,” because she really sums up the whole Hugo Awards history in an interesting and, I think, beautiful way.

"When I started doing this series, everybody thought I meant to read or reread all the Hugo winners. But that wasn't what I wanted to do at all. For one thing, it is a fairly normal thing to do. Several people I know have done it. For another thing, I think that there's too much significance on winners, when what I think is much more interesting is the whole slate of nominees. I wantedte this year because reading this to look at them as a set, and as a set in the context of their year. In addition, I am fairly well read in the genre, but there are lots of things I haven't read, and I wanted to look at what I had and hadn't read and my reasons for not having read things. Whether I've read something is a piece of data to go with whether it's in print and in the library.

"But in Worldcon in Reno in 2011, in addition to a ton of people saying how much they enjoyed them, three people told me that they usually go to Worldcon, but this was the first time they'd voted for the Hugos. They chose to exercise their vote this year because reading this series made them feel the Hugos were important and exciting.

"This in itself makes the whole experience worthwhile, inconclusive results or not. 2011 had the highest-ever turnout of Hugo voters - 2,100 people, and it would only have been 2,097 if not for this series. That makes me happy. Because I do think the Hugos are important. The Hugos are fan-nominated, fan-voted, fan-collated awards - okay, only fans who can afford to go to Worldcon or buy a suporting membership just to be able to vote. But it's still terrific that we can be involved in SF's most prestigious and highly regarded award. And they are important for more than one year; they are the lasting record of what we have liked. One thing this series has shown is that people still care about the old Hugos. The controversies have mostly not been "settled by history," as Mike Glyer put it. Some nominees have indeed been forgotten, while other books from those years remain important. But on the whole, they're doing a good job - 69 percent of the time for novels, but 99 percent of the time for novellas.

"Read. Nominate. Vote. Care.

No local news this time. I’m going to be scheduling a Milwaukee Falcon planning meeting, and there will be a lot of developments there, but until then, not a lot going on.

Except maybe Mighty Con which is going on at State Fair Park right now, but I wasn’t able to attend that one.

That’s our show, thanks for listening!