Hugo Subcoms Should Be Tougher
Moshe Feder
do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
Back in the 70s, one subcommittee refused to declare LOCUS ineligible for
what was then the best amateur magazine category even when its publisher
publicly admitted he made his living from the magazine. Two decades
later, another subcommittee is allowing APOLLO 13 onto the ballot for the
Science Fiction Achievement Award (a.k.a, the Hugo), despite the fact that
it is plainly neither SF nor fantasy.
APOLLO 13 was a wonderful film, yes, and so was SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, and
that at least showed us a sort of "alien" world. Odd that no one (That I
know of!) feels that it would make a sensible Hugo nominee. Of course, it
lacks the knee-jerk trigger that got APOLLO 13 onto the ballot. If only
Jane Austen had written a large rocket ship into her book, everyone would
be sure it deserved a Hugo. [Well, come to think of it, if there were a
blastoff in S & S, it would - given the period setting - have to be
considered SF after all and perhaps the Hugo would be deserved! :-)]
I have news for you, APOLLO 13 nominators: trips to the moon are not SF
any more. We are not living in the 40s or the 50s. We've been to the moon.
More than once. Stories about moon trips are especially not SF when they
are closely based on an actual mission, filmed with the help of the actual
commander of the mission, and don't deviate in any important way from what
actually happened. Yes, a certain amount of fictionalizing for dramatic
purposes is inevitable, but that just makes it a slightly fictional
version of a _real_ event -- docudrama if you like that term -- not SF.
By definition, SF is not about real events. In SF stories, something
fantastic (i.e. - something that doesn't happen in reality) occurs. For
instance, if Ron Howard had changed the story so that the mission were
aborted due to hitting an alien spacecraft, _then_ it would have been SF.
Ghu save us, do I really have to explain this elementary stuff?
And another thing, the Hugo is not supposed to be an award for special
effects. Yes, they were wonderful, but there's an Oscar for that. The
fact that this film had dazzling special effects is no reason to nominate
it for a Hugo. There should be more to a dramatic presentation than
effects. Nor do special effects, even ones depicting spacecraft,
automatically make a film SF.
In principle, you'd think the Hugo is an award given out by the most
fanatical and expert science fiction and fantasy readers in the world. In
actual fact, as this nomination demonstrates, it appears to be given by an
ignorant and confused group of shallow-thinking sentimentalists. So, yes,
we can start out by blaming the misguided voters first. They don't seem to
understand that the point of a science fiction and fantasy award is to
recognize a work in one of those related fields, not just any fine work of
any kind that we happen to like a lot.
But given that there are always going to be misguided voters, why can't
the subcommittee have some principles? If they can say, "No, no matter how
many people foolishly nominate this short story as a novel, it's not going
to compete in that category." they ought to be able to say, "This western/
mystery/romance/documentary drama (or whatever) is quite fine, but it has
no fantastic qualities and we can't allow it to usurp the place of a real
genre work in the competition for this SF&F award."
Unfortunately, going by past experience, I don't expect to ever see that
happen. Instead, they'll wimp out as usual, saying "We're just giving the
voters what they've democraticaly indicated they want." In that case, why
do we bother have an administering body at all, why have eligibility
rules? Let people nominate a detective story from three years ago as best
SF&F novel for last year. Sense? If enough voters choose to vote that way,
why shouldn't they have what they want?
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Moshe Feder *FIAWOL* mo...@dorsai.org
"Save the Lox! Nova difference."
Mark Bernstein
Your tone was a tad over-the-top for my taste, but I agree with
everything you said. I wish I could say the nomination for Apollo 13
surprised me, but it didn't, given the precedent of The Right Stuff.
--
Mark Bernstein
m...@arbortext.com
Janice Gelb
fiction. However, I'm not sure I agree with the opening of his
message, which blasts the Hugo subcommittee for not doing its job.
The movie's eligibility for the Hugo was discussed on this list a few
months ago and I think many posters felt that movie's subject matter
was close enough to the common subject matter of science fiction that
it qualified. Evidently enough voters also felt this way, and I think
it would be arrogant of the subcommittee to override those votes given
the movie's close connection with the genre. It would be a different
situation if there was something nominated that was obviously out
of line.
********************************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with this
jan...@marvin.eng.sun.com | message is the return address.
http://www.tripod.com/~janiceg/index.html
"[Literary-minded] men choose _Hamlet_ because every man sees himself as a
disinherited monarch. Women choose _Alice_ [in Wonderland] because every
woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who
think they are disinherited monarchs."
-- Adam Gopnik, _The New Yorker_
********************************************************************************
Mark Bernstein
: The movie's eligibility for the Hugo was discussed on this list a few
: months ago and I think many posters felt that movie's subject matter
: was close enough to the common subject matter of science fiction that
: it qualified. Evidently enough voters also felt this way, and I think
: it would be arrogant of the subcommittee to override those votes given
: the movie's close connection with the genre.
Obviously, this year's subcommittee agrees with you. My problem is
that the WSFS Constitution specifically states that Best Dramatic
Presentation is to be awarded to a work of science fiction or fantasy.
There's no provision for "[C]lose enough to the common subject matter".
As such, Apollo 13 just doesn't qualify. Personally, I don't think
it would be arrogant of the subcommittee to abide by and enforce the
rules--that's their job.
Sometimes, The People are wrong.
--
Mark Bernstein
m...@arbortext.com
P Nielsen Hayden
: Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
: do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
: a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
Yes, it must be
(1) dereliction of duty, or
(2) cowardice, or
(3) cockeyed misunderstanding.
It couldn't possibly be reasonable people disagreeing. No, they must be
morally or mentally defective. Thank you for that contribution to civil
discourse, Moshe.
-----
Patrick "sheesh" Nielsen Hayden : p...@tor.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Moshe Feder
: Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
: a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
*snip!*
I'm not going to quote my self at full length here - just that one
paragraph to set the scene. Rather, I'm going to post a response to my
complete message on behalf of a friend who doesn't have Usenet access.
He happens to be the co-chair of the Hugo Subcommittee I'm flaming, David
Bratman. Obviously, we disagree, but I think he deserves his say before
the same audience:
[start quote]
Moshe, you have my e-mail address, I know, so next time before you flame
the Hugo subcommittee on Usenet would you mind talking to us first?
It's one thing for a Hugo administrator to declare ineligible a
Campbell candidate who had a story published in F&SF 3 years ago; or a
fanzine edited by a member of the subcommittee. Both of these we did
this year. Those are 1) matters of unarguable fact; 2) matters which
nominators may be unaware of. It is quite another thing for the
administrators to overrule the voters on a subjective matter such as
whether Apollo 13 is eligible for Dramatic Presentation. Despite your
opinion that this is just as clear-cut, it isn't. Definitions of "1995"
and "Hugo subcommittee" are easy to come by. Definitions of "science
fiction" have puzzled wiser heads than ours. Don't ask me why the voters
thought a historical science film was SF, but they did. They cannot be
accused of nominating it out of ignorance.
(One argument I've seen is that as the film is not a documentary, it's
therefore fiction, and since it's about science, it's therefore science
fiction. This strikes me as sophistry, but it would be truly sophomoric
of me to dismiss the work from the ballot on that ground.)
Furthermore, there is 1) precedent (news coverage of Apollo 11, surely not
even fiction let alone SF, won the DP Hugo); 2) a fuzzy factor - namely
a general feeling among many that the DP and Nonfiction Book Hugos are
open to related works.
I appreciate Berni's attempt to explain that we had a lot of work to do,
but it should not be thought this decision was a mistake made in fatigue.
It was in fact a deliberate decision to count A13 nominations, announced
before the ballots were sent out.
Mark Bernstein may be right that The People can be wrong - but in a
subjective situation it is not the job of the Hugo administrators to get
on their high horse and arrogantly tell The People that they're wrong
- that is the job of the rest of The People. To adapt a line from the
pro-choice movement, if you don't like Apollo 13, don't vote for it!
Thus, we do not officially disagree with you on whether A13 should have
been nominated: officially we have no opinion whatever; we let the
nominators decide. They've decided. Now it's up to the final ballot voters.
(I do not have access to Usenet, so you may post it there on my behalf.
Berni forwarded some of these messages to me.)
David Bratman
L.A.con III Hugo co-administrator
d.br...@genie.com
[end quote]
That's David's complete message, complete and unedited.
Bye.
Berni Phillips
: Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
: a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
: happen. Instead, they'll wimp out as usual, saying "We're just giving the
: voters what they've democraticaly indicated they want." In that case, why
: do we bother have an administering body at all, why have eligibility
: rules? Let people nominate a detective story from three years ago as best
: SF&F novel for last year. Sense? If enough voters choose to vote that way,
: why shouldn't they have what they want?
Moshe, I am really shocked that you posted this in such a manner. It is
unfair of you to impugn the characters of the Hugo subcommittee for
making a decision that you do not like. David and Seth bend over back-
wards to verify eligibility and to come up with a ballot that most closely
resembles the wishes of the Hugo nominators. Bear in mind also that this
year they had *two* Hugo ballots to come up with.
I would also like to remind you that these men you are accusing of
cowardice received an awful lot of heat in 1993 when their administration
chose to rearrange some of the nominees into different categories based
on the word count of the individual story. They were subjected to some
very bitter attacks for doing something which was legal under the WSFS
constitution and their sole purpose for doing so was to give the voters
a ballot which more closely represented what was actually being nominated.
I should also state, for those who are unaware, that I am not a disin-
terested party in this discussion as I am the wife of one of the Hugo
administrators. (Does anyone want to know how late they stayed up
every night counting ballots?)
Berni ("the female of the species is more deadly than the male") Phillips
be...@netcom.com
Richard Newsome
>
>I would also like to remind you that these men you are accusing of
>cowardice received an awful lot of heat in 1993 when their administration
>chose to rearrange some of the nominees into different categories based
>on the word count of the individual story. They were subjected to some
>very bitter attacks for doing something which was legal under the WSFS
>constitution and their sole purpose for doing so was to give the voters
>a ballot which more closely represented what was actually being nominated.
Didn't some Beloved Author just miss the final ballot on the first
run through, by a heart-breakingly narrow margin...but then one of
the administrators noticed that there was extra space in the short
story category, where only 3 stories had made the cut, and if they
just sorted a couple stories around into different categories they
could legally open up the extra slot to squeeze Beloved Author in?
Evelyn C. Leeper
Richard Newsome <new...@panix.com> wrote:
> [re 1995's reclassification of stories]
> Didn't some Beloved Author just miss the final ballot on the first
> run through, by a heart-breakingly narrow margin...but then one of
> the administrators noticed that there was extra space in the short
> story category, where only 3 stories had made the cut, and if they
> just sorted a couple stories around into different categories they
> could legally open up the extra slot to squeeze Beloved Author in?
Actually, it was that while in some categories fewer than five stories
made the cut, in others there were stories which failed the cut but had
garnered more nominations than stories which had made it. (For
example, if the short story with the lowest number of nominations had
10 nominations, but there were seven novelettes which had 11 or more
nominations. This is an example, not the actual data.) So the
administrators performed some reclassifications completely allowed by
the constitution and got flamed for it.
The actual nomination counts for the top ten candidates for the
categories in question were:
BEST NOVELLA
66 `Seven Views Of Olduvai Gorge' by Mike Resnick
64 `Forgiveness Day' by Ursula K. Le Guin
38 `Melodies Of The Heart' by Michael F. Flynn
38 `Les Fleurs Du Mal' by Brian Stableford
37 `Cri De Coeur' by Michael Bishop
24 Fan; Ryman
23 Haunted Humans; Hoffman
22 Soon Comes The Night; Benford
22 Viva Roma; Silverberg
20 Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone; Macdonald
BEST NOVELETTE
44 `The Martian Child' by David Gerrold
37 `The Singular Habits Of Wasps' by Geoffrey A. Landis
27 `Cocoon' by Greg Egan
25 `Solitude' by Ursula K. Le Guin
24 `The Matter Of Seggri' by Ursula K. Le Guin
24 `A Little Knowledge' by Mike Resnick
21 Nekropolis; Mchugh
21 The Lovers; Arnason
21 The Hole In The Hole; Bisson
21 Adaptation; Willis
BEST SHORT STORY
29 `None So Blind' by Joe Haldeman
29 `Barnaby In Exile' by Mike Resnick
26 `I Know What You're Thinking' by Kate Wilhelm
20 `Understanding Entropy' by Barry Malzberg
18 `Dead Man's Curve' by Terry Bisson
18 `Mrs Lincoln's China' by M. Shayne Bell
15 Unchosen Love; Le Guin
13 Inspiration; Bova
12 Virtual Love; Mchugh
11 Margin 0f Error; Kress
11 The Changeling's Tale; Swanwick
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ele...@lucent.com
"Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves,
and behold only the mist that enshrouds others."
--George Eliot, "Leaves from a Note-Book"
Janice Gelb
I agree with your last sentence -- and notice that you snipped out the
last sentence of my post, which indicated that I do. ("It would be a
different situation if there was something nominated that was obviously
out of line.")
Kevin Standlee
> Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
> do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
> a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
>
Whenever Hugo Subcommittees do anything you might consider "tough," they
get flamed even worse than you are doing. The WSFS Business Meeting has
made it clear through legislative history that they really don't want the
administrators being terribly activist about their roles. Look at what
happened when the administrators moved some stories between categories
(legally) a couple years ago.
> Back in the 70s, one subcommittee refused to declare LOCUS ineligible for
> what was then the best amateur magazine category even when its publisher
> publicly admitted he made his living from the magazine. Two decades
> later, another subcommittee is allowing APOLLO 13 onto the ballot for the
> Science Fiction Achievement Award (a.k.a, the Hugo), despite the fact that
> it is plainly neither SF nor fantasy.
>
The WSFS Business Meeting at Intersection gave first passage to an
amendment to the WSFS Constitution that will add the words "or related
subjects" to the definition of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award.
Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
The administrators announced several months ago that, in light of the
action by the WSFS Business Meeting that clearly stated that the meeting
felt related subjects were eligible (the short title of the amendment was
"WSFS, We've Got A Problem"), they would allow APOLLO 13 onto the ballot
if it got enough nominations.
> Ghu save us, do I really have to explain this elementary stuff?
>
Ghu save us, do I really have to explain all of the WSFS stuff above to
you? You've been in Fandom a lot longer than I have; you should know
better.
> But given that there are always going to be misguided voters, why can't
> the subcommittee have some principles? If they can say, "No, no matter how
> many people foolishly nominate this short story as a novel, it's not going
> to compete in that category." they ought to be able to say, "This western/
Actually, it's pretty common for the administrators to collect together
all of the votes for a fiction nominee in any of the four categories and
total them together, placing the story (if it gets enough votes) in the
category they consider appropriate within the rules.
>
> Unfortunately, going by past experience, I don't expect to ever see that
> happen. Instead, they'll wimp out as usual, saying "We're just giving the
> voters what they've democraticaly indicated they want." In that case, why
> do we bother have an administering body at all, why have eligibility
> rules? Let people nominate a detective story from three years ago as best
> SF&F novel for last year. Sense? If enough voters choose to vote that way,
> why shouldn't they have what they want?
>
The current administrators (who are now on their third and fourth
administrations, counting the Hugos and Retro-Hugos separately), David
Bratman and Seth Goldberg, have discovered that no matter how they do
their jobs, someone will be Shocked and Outraged, and that there will be
a Hugo Awards FlameFest on several electronic discussion areas, and that
Dark Threats will be uttered. I admire their abilities and their
willingness to take the job again even knowing that they need asbestos
suits to go with the job.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a thought from Kevin Standlee -> (stan...@LunaCity.com)
LunaCity BBS - Mountain View, CA - 415 968 8140
Jim_...@transarc.com
> I'm not going to quote my self at full length here - just that one
> paragraph to set the scene. Rather, I'm going to post a response to my
> complete message on behalf of a friend who doesn't have Usenet access.
> He happens to be the co-chair of the Hugo Subcommittee I'm flaming, David
> Bratman. Obviously, we disagree, but I think he deserves his say before
> the same audience:
>
> Campbell candidate who had a story published in F&SF 3 years ago; or a
> fanzine edited by a member of the subcommittee. Both of these we did
> this year. Those are 1) matters of unarguable fact; 2) matters which
> nominators may be unaware of. It is quite another thing for the
> administrators to overrule the voters on a subjective matter such as
> whether Apollo 13 is eligible for Dramatic Presentation. Despite your
> opinion that this is just as clear-cut, it isn't. Definitions of "1995"
> and "Hugo subcommittee" are easy to come by. Definitions of "science
> fiction" have puzzled wiser heads than ours. Don't ask me why the voters
> thought a historical science film was SF, but they did. They cannot be
> accused of nominating it out of ignorance.
I disagree. While your basic point -- defining what makes something SF
is sometimes hard because the definition is fuzzy -- is true, it's
true only in so far as distinguishing SF from fiction in
general. There's no such fuzziness over whether a science-fact based
film is SF; it clearly isn't. Apollo 13 doesn't belong on the ballot
as Best Dramatic Presentation anymore than the books by astronauts
like Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins, or Lovell would belong on the ballot
as "best novel."
As to why the nominators put it there, well, my guess is that they
really didn't read the rules or definitions very closely.
> (One argument I've seen is that as the film is not a documentary, it's
> therefore fiction, and since it's about science, it's therefore science
> fiction. This strikes me as sophistry, but it would be truly sophomoric
> of me to dismiss the work from the ballot on that ground.)
Why would it be "sophmoric"? I don't see this as anymore sophmoric
than evaluating eligibility based on any other criteria.
> Furthermore, there is 1) precedent (news coverage of Apollo 11, surely not
> even fiction let alone SF, won the DP Hugo); 2) a fuzzy factor - namely
> a general feeling among many that the DP and Nonfiction Book Hugos are
> open to related works.
Precedent is often an awful thing to go by though. One bad precedent
winds up dictating a lot of subsequent bad decisions.
The Nonfiction Book Category is, I'll admit, even a worse category to
deal with because it is so poorly named as compared to it's
definition. The name leads one to believe that, for example, a book of
Isaac Asimov's science essays would be elligible, but this is clearly
not the case from the definition. However, the category does supply
you with plenty of precedents for whatever way you want to go. On one
hand, you have Noreascon 3's decision (the correct decision, in my
opinion, but then again I was part of that decision :)) to reject A
Brief History of Time as not fitting the definition of the
category. On the other hand, you have things like Science Made Stupid,
which also doesn't fit. The solution here, I think, is to broaden the
defintion of the award to fit with the users perceptions of the award.
> I appreciate Berni's attempt to explain that we had a lot of work to do,
> but it should not be thought this decision was a mistake made in fatigue.
> It was in fact a deliberate decision to count A13 nominations, announced
> before the ballots were sent out.
>
> Mark Bernstein may be right that The People can be wrong - but in a
> subjective situation it is not the job of the Hugo administrators to get
> on their high horse and arrogantly tell The People that they're wrong
> - that is the job of the rest of The People. To adapt a line from the
> pro-choice movement, if you don't like Apollo 13, don't vote for it!
Why not make the same decision for all categories then--nominate
whatever want and let the voters sort it out. So what if the story was
actually a 1994 story? If the voters don't like it, they can vote
against it.
Part of the problem, I think, is that we disagree on the subjective
element here. I think it may have been subjective as to whether Animal
Farm was truly SF or not. But, given this was in a gray area, I
agree--err (if it is an error) on the side of giving the voters what
they want. In this case though I think the issue as to whether Apollo
13 is SF is about as subjective is what year a particular story was
published.
> Thus, we do not officially disagree with you on whether A13 should have
> been nominated: officially we have no opinion whatever; we let the
> nominators decide. They've decided. Now it's up to the final ballot voters.
>
> (I do not have access to Usenet, so you may post it there on my behalf.
> Berni forwarded some of these messages to me.)
>
> David Bratman
> L.A.con III Hugo co-administrator
> d.br...@genie.com
>
> [end quote]
>
>
> That's David's complete message, complete and unedited.
>
> Bye.
> --
> ______________________________________________________________________________
> Moshe Feder *FIAWOL* mo...@dorsai.org
> "Save the Lox! Nova difference."
******************************************************************
Jim Mann jm...@transarc.com
Transarc Corporation
The Gulf Tower, 707 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (412) 338-4442
http://www.transarc.com/~jmann/Home.html
Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not
some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves,
and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them?
-- Virginia Woolf
Mark Bernstein
: The WSFS Business Meeting at Intersection gave first passage to an
: amendment to the WSFS Constitution that will add the words "or related
: subjects" to the definition of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award.
: Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
: mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
: The administrators announced several months ago that, in light of the
: action by the WSFS Business Meeting that clearly stated that the meeting
: felt related subjects were eligible (the short title of the amendment was
: "WSFS, We've Got A Problem"), they would allow APOLLO 13 onto the ballot
: if it got enough nominations.
Thank you for that information. It makes all the difference. I still
won't vote for Apollo 13, as I *prefer* that the award go to a work of
science fiction or fantasy, but I now see that the nomination is
completely within the rules.
--
Mark Bernstein
m...@arbortext.com
Anne B. Nonie Rider
SAW "Apollo 13," but I'm strongly in favor of it
being on the Hugo ballot.
Why? Buncha reasons:
SF has always been closely tied with the space program,
and I've seen panels entirely on real-world satellite
packets, shuttle launches, and so on.
Good special effects, zero-gee filming, and so on.
But most of all, because it's this decade's best
advertising for the space program, bringing the
stars back into the view of Joe Lunchpail and his
kids. The tragedies, the triumphs, the dreams--
this movie lets us touch our common ground again,
fan and mundane.
--Nonie
Mean Green Dancing Machine
In article <4ll0hg$1...@amanda.dorsai.org>,
Moshe Feder <mo...@dorsai.org> wrote:
>
>By definition, SF is not about real events. In SF stories, something
>fantastic (i.e. - something that doesn't happen in reality) occurs. For
>instance, if Ron Howard had changed the story so that the mission were
>aborted due to hitting an alien spacecraft, _then_ it would have been SF.
>Ghu save us, do I really have to explain this elementary stuff?
Actually, yes, because it's not quite as elementary as you make it out
to be, IMHO. I'll agree that this is a gray area, but let me point out
some elements in _Apollo 13_ that *do* make it SF:
* The bringing in of the audience into a *story*
* The emphasis on the technical details
* The focus on characters dealing with technical problems, rather than
simply recounting events
No, _Apollo 13_ isn't SF in the way we normally think about it, but it
is about science, and it is a work of fiction, and from that standpoint,
I find it difficult to be harsh toward the committee who admitted it.
--
--- Aahz (@netcom.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
Androgynous kinky vanilla queer het
"I had lots of reasonable theories about children myself, until I had
some." -- Michael Rios
P Nielsen Hayden
Jim_...@transarc.com wrote:
: I disagree. While your basic point -- defining what makes something SF
: is sometimes hard because the definition is fuzzy -- is true, it's
: true only in so far as distinguishing SF from fiction in
: general. There's no such fuzziness over whether a science-fact based
: film is SF; it clearly isn't. Apollo 13 doesn't belong on the ballot
: as Best Dramatic Presentation anymore than the books by astronauts
: like Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins, or Lovell would belong on the ballot
: as "best novel."
Wrong. Apollo 13 is not a "science-fact based film"; it is not a
documentary. It is a work of fiction, analagous to a historical novel.
Whether or not it overlaps into the set "science fiction" is highly
debatable. Whether or not I agree that it does--and I'm not sure I do--I
absolutely believe that it is not the Hugo administrators' job to make
genre distinctions.
Down that slope lies the day a Hugo subcommittee decides that some
fairly literary and yet popular quasi-SF novel may not appear on the ballot,
despite having got the nominations. That would be a crushing blow to the
credibility of the Hugos.
Some people in this conversation talk as if the exact boundaries of SF are
self-evident and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously just being
troublesome. I find that a lot more offensive than simple disagreement.
The presumption is that disagreement is simply not possible, not respectable,
not worthy of basic courtesy.
-----
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@tor.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Kevin Standlee
new...@panix.com (Richard Newsome) writes:
>
> Didn't some Beloved Author just miss the final ballot on the first
> run through, by a heart-breakingly narrow margin...but then one of
> the administrators noticed that there was extra space in the short
> story category, where only 3 stories had made the cut, and if they
> just sorted a couple stories around into different categories they
> could legally open up the extra slot to squeeze Beloved Author in?
>
There is a strong implication in your words that the administrators acted
as they did in order to favor a particular author for personal reasons.
This is untrue, and it is regretable that you would make such
implications.
Steven desJardins
e...@mtcts2.lc.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) wrote:
>So the
>administrators performed some reclassifications completely allowed by
>the constitution and got flamed for it.
I don't agree that the reclassifications were legal. The relevant
sentence in the WSFS constitution reads, "The Worldcon Committee may
relocate a story into a more appropriate category if it feels that it
is necessary, provided that the story is within five thousand (5,000)
words of the new category limits." It isn't clear to me how the new
categories were more appropriate, or why it was necessary (not just a
good idea, but _necessary_) to move the stories.
In effect, the Hugo committee made a subjective determination that
they should perform that action in order to improve the ballot. This
year they refuse to take an action that I feel would improve the
ballot on the grounds that it would require them to make a subjective
determination.
It's interesting to consider the paradoxical effect this ruling could
have on the Campbell Award. Suppose a new author publishes a work
that is, arguably, science fiction or fantasy, and arguably not. If
she receives enough nominations to make the ballot, then under the
Apollo 13 precedent the Hugo committee would put her on.
Suppose she doesn't make the ballot, and two years later she publishes
a work that is unquestionably science fiction. If she then receives
enough nominations to make the ballot it seems that the Hugo committee
would again defer to the nominators' collective judgement and put her
on. So if she receives 7 nominations in 1996, she's eligible in 1998,
but if she receives 8 nominations she's not.
Or maybe she should be eligible both years. After all, we're told
that if we don't think Apollo 13 is s.f., we should vote against it on
the final ballot. Suppose everyone who thinks her first novel isn't
s.f. votes against her in 1996, and she loses. Isn't it unfair to
keep her off the ballot in 1998? Aren't you disenfranchising the
voters who feel that she now really is the best new science fiction of
the year?
My goodness, we could extend Campbell eligibility by decades this way.
Moshe Feder
P Nielsen Hayden (p...@panix.com) wrote:
: Moshe Feder (mo...@dorsai.org) wrote:
: : Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
: : do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
: : a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
: Yes, it must be
: (1) dereliction of duty, or
: (2) cowardice, or
: (3) cockeyed misunderstanding.
: It couldn't possibly be reasonable people disagreeing. No, they must be
: morally or mentally defective. Thank you for that contribution to civil
: discourse, Moshe.
Your welcome, Patrick.
I might put aside what you consider to be my contentious and insulting
analysis and adopt your friendlier one if in fact the subcommittee were
just reasonable people disagreeing with me and other reasonable people
about the genre status of APOLLO 13. If they maintained that A13 is in
fact SF. I'd question their taste and literary judgment, but I'd have no
grounds for the other speculations.
In fact, however, David Bratman admits he privately agrees with me that it
isn't SF and seems to personally find the actions of the nominators as
nonsensical as I do. What I'm annoyed about, and the reason I chose the
language I did to complain about it, is that despite that agreement he and
the rest of the subcommittee chose to let the nominators go their merry
nonsensical way. Isn't this situation horribly reminiscent of "The
Marching Morons," with the Hugo subcommittee in the role of the behind-the-
scenes bright few who just want to keep the misguided masses happy?
As I said before, if the Hugo Subcommittee doesn't exist to administer and
guard the integrity of the awards, then why bother appointing one? These
are supposed to be awards for works of SF and Fantasy. If just any book or
film is eligible, why bother having the awards?
Yes, Patrick, there are works about which reasonable people can disagree.
I can see arguments either way in the case of something like BATMAN, for
example. When there's genuine ambiguity, the committee should certainly
ere on the side of inclusiveness. There is no such ambiguity here.
APOLLO 13 is a dramatic reconstruction of a real event. Most of the people
involved are still alive. Many of us can remember watching the real
coverage on TV. No suspension of disbelief was required for its story to
work. No contortion of the English language can endow this fine film
(which I loved, by the way) with any element of "the fantastic" in the
genre sense. To appeal to the notorious slipperiness of SF's definition
is a cop out. The only thing A13 had in common with SF was that it
involved space travel; but crucially, actual space travel that really
ocurred. The subcomittee should have had no hesitation in ruling it
ineligible, just as I hope they would discard anomalous nominations for a
traditional western or pirate movie.
The fact that they probably agreed with my genre analysis, but declined to
act accordingly anyway, thus abdicating their responsibility (like the
committee before them that left LOCUS on the ballot despite Charlie's
admission) is why my complaint is couched in the hostile terms you decry.
My difference with them is not a literary, but a philosophical one. Their
apparent philosphy, like that of most of their predecessors, seems to be
that they will almost always bow to the voters (except on minor matters
like length), no matter how much what the votersmay want demeans and
devalues the award itself. This creates a situation that, to put it
kindly, is rife with internal contradiction and the potential for
hypocrisy.
In my opinion, the proper response to a flood of ballots for a nongenre
movie of this kind would be to consider it for a special committee award,
not to allow it to deny a real genre candidate a place on the ballot.
P Nielsen Hayden
Moshe Feder (mo...@dorsai.org) wrote:
: I might put aside what you consider to be my contentious and insulting
: analysis and adopt your friendlier one if in fact the subcommittee were
: just reasonable people disagreeing with me and other reasonable people
: about the genre status of APOLLO 13. If they maintained that A13 is in
: fact SF. I'd question their taste and literary judgment, but I'd have no
: grounds for the other speculations.
: In fact, however, David Bratman admits he privately agrees with me that it
: isn't SF and seems to personally find the actions of the nominators as
: nonsensical as I do. What I'm annoyed about, and the reason I chose the
: language I did to complain about it, is that despite that agreement he and
: the rest of the subcommittee chose to let the nominators go their merry
: nonsensical way. Isn't this situation horribly reminiscent of "The
: Marching Morons," with the Hugo subcommittee in the role of the behind-the-
: scenes bright few who just want to keep the misguided masses happy?
: As I said before, if the Hugo Subcommittee doesn't exist to administer and
: guard the integrity of the awards, then why bother appointing one? These
: are supposed to be awards for works of SF and Fantasy. If just any book or
: film is eligible, why bother having the awards?
: Yes, Patrick, there are works about which reasonable people can disagree.
: I can see arguments either way in the case of something like BATMAN, for
: example. When there's genuine ambiguity, the committee should certainly
: ere on the side of inclusiveness. There is no such ambiguity here.
See my previous post on this subject. There certainly is ambiguity here.
As I've already said, whatever my personal feelings about APOLLO 13, what I
find most boggling here is the rhetorical violence with which you (and a
couple of other people) feel entitled to deploy in asserting the absolute
primacy of your notion of where the genre boundaries are.
I may actually agree with your idea of where the genre boundaries are. But
I absolutely reject your claim that these boundaries are self-evident or
objectively proveable. And I absolutely don't want the Hugo subcommittee in
the business of enforcing their, or anyone else's, partisan idea of where
those boundaries are.
"If just any book or film is eligible, why bother having the awards?" you
demand. To which I ask, if you have such contempt for the voters ("marching
morons"), why do you care about a democratically-chartered vote?
Jim_...@transarc.com
p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
> Jim_...@transarc.com wrote:
>
> : I disagree. While your basic point -- defining what makes something SF
> : is sometimes hard because the definition is fuzzy -- is true, it's
> : true only in so far as distinguishing SF from fiction in
> : general. There's no such fuzziness over whether a science-fact based
> : film is SF; it clearly isn't. Apollo 13 doesn't belong on the ballot
> : as Best Dramatic Presentation anymore than the books by astronauts
> : like Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins, or Lovell would belong on the ballot
> : as "best novel."
>
> documentary. It is a work of fiction, analagous to a historical
novel.
I see the distinction you're trying to make here, but I disagree. A
strict re-creation of the time, based entirely on historical evidence
and containing only historical characters (with no fictional
additions) seems to me to be "history" not "historical fiction."
How would you classify Eckert's "biography" of Tecumseh (or many of
his other books, including his recent history of the Ohio River
valley)? They are drawn from historical sources. There are no
fictional characters. Eckert himself considers them to be histories,
not novels. Yet, he writes very much in a novelistic style. He takes
what the people are reported to have said and turns it into
dialogue. (He discusses how and why he does this in the intro to the
Tecumseh biography.) I'd classify this as fact, not fiction; I make
the same distinction with Apollo 13.
By the way, at least one of the major bookstore chains disagrees with
me. Borders puts most of Eckert's books (with the exception, I think,
of his biographies of Tecumseh and Blue Jacket) under fiction; this
is ironic given that it was at a Borders that I saw Eckert deny that
he wrote fiction.
(Another example might be Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, though it's
been 25 years since I read that and don't remember it well enough.)
> Whether or not it overlaps into the set "science fiction" is highly
> debatable. Whether or not I agree that it does--and I'm not sure I do--I
> absolutely believe that it is not the Hugo administrators' job to make
> genre distinctions.
>
I agree with you here. If the work is a work of fiction, then there
should be no question as to what the administrators should do. Our
real disagreement here is over whether it is "fiction."
By the way, I don't want to come off as being harsh to the Hugo
subcomittee. I realize that they were in a damned if you do/damnened
if you'd don't situation. I disagree with the choice they made but
certainly think they tried to do what they thought was best in a
difficult situation. The reason I like seeing this discussed in detail
now is not to flame the current administrators, but to try to clarify
this for future committees.
>
> Some people in this conversation talk as if the exact boundaries of SF are
> self-evident and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously just being
> troublesome. I find that a lot more offensive than simple disagreement.
> The presumption is that disagreement is simply not possible, not respectable,
> not worthy of basic courtesy.
I don't find the boundries of SF to be self-evident at all. I think
the boundries between SF and science fact, are, however, a tad better
defined (although as you point out, even that is a bit fuzzy in spots).
Sharon L Sbarsky
In article <u60XmD...@LunaCity.com>,
Kevin Standlee <stan...@LunaCity.com> wrote:
>
>The WSFS Business Meeting at Intersection gave first passage to an
>amendment to the WSFS Constitution that will add the words "or related
>subjects" to the definition of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award.
>Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
>mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
>
>The administrators announced several months ago that, in light of the
>action by the WSFS Business Meeting that clearly stated that the meeting
>felt related subjects were eligible (the short title of the amendment was
>
I would like to point out (as the original maker of the motion, that the
short title that Kevin quoted, was *not* the title that it was submitted
to the Business Meeting with, nor was there anything in the motion that
referred to APOLLO 13 or suggested that the amendment be used before
being ratified by another WSFS Business Meeting.
The only reason that the amendment was submitted was that in this smae
discussion last summer (when people first considered whether it was
eligible or not) it was pointed out by many the precedence of the News
coverage of the Moon Landing winning in 1970 (for 1969 Best Dramatic
presentation.) Further investigation determined that the News Coverage
was eligible *because* the wording was different then.
The actual words "or related subjects" brings the DP Hugo in line with
the wording of other categories, including, I believe, Fanzine.
Sharon
Kevin Standlee
p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>
> Some people in this conversation talk as if the exact boundaries of SF are
> self-evident and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously just being
> troublesome. I find that a lot more offensive than simple disagreement.
> The presumption is that disagreement is simply not possible, not respectable,
> not worthy of basic courtesy.
>
Which is why there are very few people with the appropriate temperment to
be Hugo Award Administrators. Nicely put, Patrick.
Kevin Standlee
stev...@cqi.com (Steven desJardins) writes:
>
> My goodness, we could extend Campbell eligibility by decades this way.
>
It is impossible to write the rules for the Hugo Award in a completely
objective manner. Try to do so, post your attempt here, and watch us
punch holes in it. Someone (the Administrator) has to make the call.
Disagreeing with the administrators' judgement is roughly analogous with
arguing a strike call with an umpire -- it just raises your blood
pressure without getting any results. OTOH, I _have_ seen umpires change
calls (I've done it myself) when informed of a mis-applied rule that
isn't a judgement call. (Example: I once called a balk in a local
Little League Baseball game. I waved the runners on to advance a base,
but the coach of the team on which I'd called the balk came out and
showed me the special local rule -- which I'd never noticed -- that
essentially gave pitchers one free balk per game in that particular
division. I said, "that's a dumb rule, and I'm going to take it up with
the Board of directors at the next meeting, but you're right," and sent
the runners back to their bases.)
Kevin Standlee
mo...@dorsai.org (Moshe Feder) writes:
>
> As I said before, if the Hugo Subcommittee doesn't exist to administer and
> guard the integrity of the awards, then why bother appointing one? These
> are supposed to be awards for works of SF and Fantasy. If just any book or
> film is eligible, why bother having the awards?
>
Because the evidence of the WSFS Business Meeting, which ultimately
controls the Hugo Awards, is that we, on the whole, do NOT want the
administrators to exercise subjective literary judgement, only objective
technical judgement.
I suggest that the only way you are going to get things changed is to get
the WSFS Business Meeting to pass a continuing resolution encouraging
future administrators to exercise more literary judgement than they
currently do. But don't hold your breath waiting for it to pass.
Sharon L Sbarsky
In article <4lq1ni$f...@dorsai.dorsai.org>,
Moshe Feder <mo...@dorsai.org> wrote:
>
>In my opinion, the proper response to a flood of ballots for a nongenre
>movie of this kind would be to consider it for a special committee award,
>not to allow it to deny a real genre candidate a place on the ballot.
I definitely agree that this would have been the ideal solution.
Despite my also agreement that is an excellent film, I will place it last
on my ballot behind No Award, since I do not consider the film to be SF
or Fantasy.
Sharon
Mark Bernstein
: >
: >Sometimes, The People are wrong.
: I agree with your last sentence -- and notice that you snipped out the
: last sentence of my post, which indicated that I do. ("It would be a
: different situation if there was something nominated that was obviously
: out of line.")
If you feel I distorted your meaning, I apologize. That was never my
intent.
--
Mark Bernstein
m...@arbortext.com
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <4lo4tn$f...@nntpb.cb.att.com>,
Evelyn C. Leeper <ele...@lucent.com> wrote:
> In article <4lnvpo$2...@panix2.panix.com>,
> Richard Newsome <new...@panix.com> wrote:
> > [re 1995's reclassification of stories]
> > run through, by a heart-breakingly narrow margin...but then one of
> > the administrators noticed that there was extra space in the short
> > story category, where only 3 stories had made the cut, and if they
> > just sorted a couple stories around into different categories they
> > could legally open up the extra slot to squeeze Beloved Author in?
>
> made the cut, in others there were stories which failed the cut but had
> garnered more nominations than stories which had made it. (For
> example, if the short story with the lowest number of nominations had
> 10 nominations, but there were seven novelettes which had 11 or more
> administrators performed some reclassifications completely allowed by
> the constitution and got flamed for it.
All this is true; however, I then included nomination counts for the
wrong year. This happened in 1994, not 1995. (Thanks to Dick Lynch
for pointing this out to me.)
Sharon L Sbarsky
>I disagree. While your basic point -- defining what makes something SF
>is sometimes hard because the definition is fuzzy -- is true, it's
>true only in so far as distinguishing SF from fiction in
>general. There's no such fuzziness over whether a science-fact based
>film is SF; it clearly isn't. Apollo 13 doesn't belong on the ballot
>as Best Dramatic Presentation anymore than the books by astronauts
>like Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins, or Lovell would belong on the ballot
>as "best novel."
>
>As to why the nominators put it there, well, my guess is that they
>really didn't read the rules or definitions very closely.
>
Another reason may be that David stated (as a member of the subcommittee)
that if enough people nominate APOLLO 13, then it will be on the ballot.
IMHO, this might have caused a few *more* people to decide to nominate it.
Sharon
Jim_...@transarc.com
stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) writes:
> mo...@dorsai.org (Moshe Feder) writes:
>
> > Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
> > do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
> > a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
> >
>
> amendment to the WSFS Constitution that will add the words "or related
> subjects" to the definition of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award.
> Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
> mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
Wow, what a can of worms that can open. Is related "anything I think
is related"? So, for example, can I nominate a historical documentary
on, say, The War of the Roses or Napoleon, since I think alternate
history is as much an integral part of science fiction as SF about
space ships? History is as related to the field as space travel
is.
David E Romm
> As I said before, if the Hugo Subcommittee doesn't exist to administer and
> guard the integrity of the awards, then why bother appointing one? These
> are supposed to be awards for works of SF and Fantasy. If just any book or
> film is eligible, why bother having the awards?
I keep trying to agree with your position on this, and never quite
manage. I tend to agree that Apollo 13 isn't science fiction... but it's
unquestionably a Dramatic Presentation. Regardless of the letter of the
law, it's clearly within the spirit of the law; to borrow from another sf
source, the movie is not just Amazing, it's Amazingly Amazing.
Secondly, I have a hard time taking Hugo Awards as seriously as you seem
to. There's a major "So What?" factor to all this.
Third, I tend to see the Hugo Subcommittee as administrative and NOT
Guardian of Integrity. A fan-based award is going to be subject to the
whims of fans, and their job (as I see it) is less to make judgments as to
herd all the mice.
Fourth, I have no problem with declaring 'reality' a subset of 'science
fiction' and thereby making "just any book or film" eligible. But is it
close enough to whatever definition of science fiction (or Dramatic
Presentation) to garner enough votes to be on the ballot? Shogun was a
great first contact story. If science fiction is exploring how technology
affects people's lives, than one of the best sf movies ever made was
Singing In The Rain. Again, the spirit of the law is more important than
the letter of the law. (If I cared about the letter of the law, which I
do on occasion, I'd go to the business meetings...)
Fifth, this comes awfully close to being one of my favorite things to do
in fandom: A raging argument about things that don't matter very much.
See second point. No matter what happens, this is unlikely to affect my
reading or viewing habits. But starting off a 'discussion' by accusing
reasonable people of cowardice is likely to affect how I read your posts.
Capish? You're at least partially right, and you are entitled to express
your views strongly, but please recognize that other viewpoints have some
validity and were arrived at with as much thought as yours.
--
Shockwave radio: Science Fiction/Science Fact
http://www.winternet.com/~romm
"What do you think of the human race? I need an outsider's opinon."
-- Latka to Louie, Taxi
Kevin Standlee
sba...@world.std.com (Sharon L Sbarsky) writes:
>
> I would like to point out (as the original maker of the motion, that the
> short title that Kevin quoted, was *not* the title that it was submitted
> to the Business Meeting with, nor was there anything in the motion that
I'm sorry, Sharon, I was remembering the title I saw on one of the
proposed drafts somewhere else. My apologies.
Mean Green Dancing Machine
In article <8P3ZmD...@LunaCity.com>,
Kevin Standlee <stan...@LunaCity.com> wrote:
>mo...@dorsai.org (Moshe Feder) writes:
>>
>> As I said before, if the Hugo Subcommittee doesn't exist to administer and
>> guard the integrity of the awards, then why bother appointing one? These
>> are supposed to be awards for works of SF and Fantasy. If just any book or
>> film is eligible, why bother having the awards?
>
>controls the Hugo Awards, is that we, on the whole, do NOT want the
>administrators to exercise subjective literary judgement, only objective
>technical judgement.
Let me quibble a tiny bit and point out that the 'objective' should be,
at best, 'semi-objective'. I think it is pretty clear that the Hugo
admins should exercise as little literary judgment as possible of any
kind, subject, objective, or something else.
Steven desJardins
stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) wrote:
>stev...@cqi.com (Steven desJardins) writes:
>>
>> My goodness, we could extend Campbell eligibility by decades this way.
>>
>It is impossible to write the rules for the Hugo Award in a completely
>objective manner. Try to do so, post your attempt here, and watch us
>punch holes in it. Someone (the Administrator) has to make the call.
I'm satisfied with the current rules. I reserve the right to be
amused when what I think is a silly interpretation leads to what I
think are silly consequences.
For that matter, I reserve the right to disagree with the Hugo
administrators without being challenged to rewrite the WSFS
constitution, just as I can say that I think Republican welfare reform
proposals stink without being required to produce a bulletproof
welfare reform plan of my own.
>Disagreeing with the administrators' judgement is roughly analogous with
>arguing a strike call with an umpire -- it just raises your blood
>pressure without getting any results.
My blood pressure's fine, and if you think that everyone who disagrees
with an umpire's call is trying to change the result then You Have
Greatly Missed The Point Of Sports Fandom.
I agree with Patrick that disagreement should be civil, and did my
best to maintain a mild tone in my comments. I'm puzzled why you
think they merited such a vigorous counterthrust.
Terry L. Smith
Evelyn C. Leeper (e...@mtcts2.lc.att.com) wrote:
: In article <4lnvpo$2...@panix2.panix.com>,
: Richard Newsome <new...@panix.com> wrote:
: > [re 1995's reclassification of stories]
: > Didn't some Beloved Author just miss the final ballot on the first
: > run through, by a heart-breakingly narrow margin...but then one of
: > the administrators noticed that there was extra space in the short
: > story category, where only 3 stories had made the cut, and if they
: > just sorted a couple stories around into different categories they
: > could legally open up the extra slot to squeeze Beloved Author in?
: Actually, it was that while in some categories fewer than five stories
: made the cut, in others there were stories which failed the cut but had
: garnered more nominations than stories which had made it. (For
: example, if the short story with the lowest number of nominations had
: 10 nominations, but there were seven novelettes which had 11 or more
: nominations. This is an example, not the actual data.) So the
: administrators performed some reclassifications completely allowed by
: the constitution and got flamed for it.
: The actual nomination counts for the top ten candidates for the
: categories in question were:
: BEST NOVELLA
: 66 `Seven Views Of Olduvai Gorge' by Mike Resnick
: 64 `Forgiveness Day' by Ursula K. Le Guin
: 38 `Melodies Of The Heart' by Michael F. Flynn
: 38 `Les Fleurs Du Mal' by Brian Stableford
: 37 `Cri De Coeur' by Michael Bishop
: 24 Fan; Ryman
: 23 Haunted Humans; Hoffman
: 22 Soon Comes The Night; Benford
: 22 Viva Roma; Silverberg
: 20 Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone; Macdonald
~~~~~~~ remainder of list of nominees snipped for brevity ~~~~~~
Uh, I don't mean to be offensive, or nit-picky, but are you sure
you have the right year here? I thought the rearrangement was
done to the nominees just *previous* to this bunch.
Perhaps it was done two years in a row, and I didn't
realize it...
"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting."
- Tom Stoppard (_Jumpers_)
- 'By For Now -
- M.Q.S., "Official Bimbo" for Baltimore; (SCOoF)
--
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
| M.Q.S. c/o T.L.S | "Don't play with that! You have no idea where |
| tls...@netcom.com | it's been..." -- Speaker to Elevators |
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
Alison Scott
Well, everyone's been getting really aerated about this, and I don't
plan to join in; I'm happy to see the Hugo subcommittee & nominators
do whatever they consider to be right.
The really interesting question, in my view, is
"What on earth was it that made a bunch of people nominate a
historical movie with no elements of SF or fantasy for a Hugo?"
It's not even "a related subject" really, unless you consider that
everything which was once science fictional is a related subject
(which I accept you might, but which seems a bit strange; anything
including a television or a fax machine or Windows 95 or, heaven
forfend, the Internet would then qualify?). And I would like to think
that fans are not so unsophisticated as to think anything with a space
ship in it is SF. Though I could be wrong. (Incidentally, the coverage
of the moon landing in 1969 seems to me to be far more a related
subject, simply because it was "only just" not SF, in the same manner
as a comet thwacking into Jupiter.)
So, what's going on here? Is it that the people nominating A13 tend to
be older, so that when they were children, the moon landings were
clearly within the realms of SF? Certainly, I know that for me it was
my first real brush with the sense of wonder. But even then, isn't it
like nominating the actual historical event rather than the movie? I
know the movie has loads of dramatic tension and so on; but I seem to
recall the actual event was pretty damned exciting. (Of course, I was
five at the time).
--
Alison Scott ali...@fuggles.demon.co.uk
This .sig supports Attitude for Best Fanzine Hugo.
Joel Rosenberg
>"What on earth was it that made a bunch of people nominate a
>historical movie with no elements of SF or fantasy for a Hugo?"
Because the heart and soul of that movie is as passionately in love with the
space program of the Apollo era as a lot of fans, and pros, are.
Myself certainly included.
(I wouldn't have nominated it for the Hugo, but . . . )
Joel Rosenberg | jo...@winternet.com | http://www.winternet.com/~joelr
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the
hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the
appalling silence of the good people.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chris Croughton
In article <4ltik9$d...@robin.cqi.com>
stev...@cqi.com "Steven desJardins" writes:
>stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) wrote:
>
>>It is impossible to write the rules for the Hugo Award in a completely
>>objective manner. Try to do so, post your attempt here, and watch us
>>punch holes in it. Someone (the Administrator) has to make the call.
>
>I'm satisfied with the current rules. I reserve the right to be
>amused when what I think is a silly interpretation leads to what I
>think are silly consequences.
You certainly have the right to be amused. On usenet you have the right
to tell us you're amused and why (and some of us will share your
amusement). I don't think Kevin was questioning that.
>For that matter, I reserve the right to disagree with the Hugo
>administrators without being challenged to rewrite the WSFS
>constitution, just as I can say that I think Republican welfare reform
>proposals stink without being required to produce a bulletproof
>welfare reform plan of my own.
Well, Kevin also has the right to ask you to back up your disagreements
with something positive. Yes, you _can_ just say "I disagree with them"
and not propose anything better, but it's not exactly constructive and
it's unlikely to have any effect on them than to make them think
"another know-it-all who can't be bothered to do the work himself". It
is possible to train a frog to fly by killing all those who can't manage
it, but it's not really efficient.
>My blood pressure's fine, and if you think that everyone who disagrees
>with an umpire's call is trying to change the result then You Have
>Greatly Missed The Point Of Sports Fandom.
I have no idea what the 'point' is of sports fandom, I didn't know it
had one. I thought it was just an excuse for the fans to get drunk and
smash up the stadium (and each other). But then I'm British, we take
our sports seriously (politician baiting, royalty bashing, you get the
idea)...
I thought the only reason to disagree with an umpire or referee was
because you thought he was wrong and wanted the mistake corrected. I
can't see any other point in it...
>I agree with Patrick that disagreement should be civil, and did my
>best to maintain a mild tone in my comments. I'm puzzled why you
>think they merited such a vigorous counterthrust.
They were following on from the original post on the subject, and I
suspect Kevin had just gotten tired of the whole thing by then and
treated it as "more of the same". I know that's how I felt. But I
didn't think Kevin's reply to you was less than civil, even though it
was 'vigorous'. Am I reading too much into what you wrote, or do you
think his reply to you was not polite?
(For that matter, do you think this one is not civil? If so, I
apologise, it's not my intention...)
.-------------------------------.-------------------------------------.
| ch...@keris.demon.co.uk | FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life) |
`-------------------------------^-------------------------------------'
Steven desJardins
Chris Croughton <ch...@keris.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I thought the only reason to disagree with an umpire or referee was
>because you thought he was wrong and wanted the mistake corrected. I
>can't see any other point in it...
I'm not a sports fan myself, but I notice that sports commentators
spend a lot of time after the game arguing about whether such-and-such
a call was correct and did it change the course of the game and so
forth, so they must find it terribly amusing, even when there's no
hope of changing the official result.
If the Hugo administrators want to take note of my disagreement, or
even the general level of disagreement, and take it into account when
future controversies arise, that's great. I don't think we'll see
administrators moving stories around between categories very often,
now that they've seen how unpopular it was. So to a degree, simply
expressing disapproval with a brief explanation of your reasons is a
productive thing to do, and I don't think I was repeating anything
that had been said before.
I posted the paradox because I thought it was amusing. Practically
speaking, the situation isn't likely to arise, and if Kevin asked what
I thought should have been done about it I would have said nothing.
Trying to eliminate the defect in the rules would cause more problems
than relying on the common sense and ability of the administrators to
handle a difficult situation when it comes up.
What irked me is that he seemed to take my post as an attack on the
constitution, and responded with an attack of his own. You said:
>You certainly have the right to be amused. On usenet you have the right
>to tell us you're amused and why (and some of us will share your
>amusement). I don't think Kevin was questioning that.
To which I respond that it's difficult to merely share my amusement if
every attempt to do so is met with an attack. (Granted, one
occurrence does not constitute a pattern.)
I don't have any quarrel with Kevin's civility, nor with yours.
>Well, Kevin also has the right to ask you to back up your disagreements
>with something positive. Yes, you _can_ just say "I disagree with them"
>and not propose anything better, but it's not exactly constructive and
>it's unlikely to have any effect on them than to make them think
>"another know-it-all who can't be bothered to do the work himself".
I've implicitly proposed something better: do the opposite of what
they did, and disqualify Apollo 13. Obviously we disagree on whether
or not that's "better", and it would certainly be more controversial
than their ruling allowing it was. But I didn't discuss how it could
have been handled better because that's a moot point. It's too late
to change the decision, and the rule is in the process of being
changed, so the question will not arise again.
For the record, if I'd been running the committee I would have avoided
the controversy altogether by created a new ballot category in which
Apollo 13 would have been clearly eligible. However, I gather the
current Hugo committee had reasons for not wanting to add a category.
Janice Gelb
In article 0...@fuggles.demon.co.uk, ali...@fuggles.demon.co.uk (Alison Scott) writes:
>
>"What on earth was it that made a bunch of people nominate a
>historical movie with no elements of SF or fantasy for a Hugo?"
>
>everything which was once science fictional is a related subject
>(which I accept you might, but which seems a bit strange; anything
>including a television or a fax machine or Windows 95 or, heaven
>forfend, the Internet would then qualify?). And I would like to think
>that fans are not so unsophisticated as to think anything with a space
>ship in it is SF. Though I could be wrong. (Incidentally, the coverage
>of the moon landing in 1969 seems to me to be far more a related
>subject, simply because it was "only just" not SF, in the same manner
>as a comet thwacking into Jupiter.)
>
While I don't personally agree with them I can see the point: it's not
just that "it had a spaceship in it" but it had a lot of the elements
of a standard SF plot: brave attempt to go out into space, something
mechanical goes wrong, operations back on Earth try desperately to
come up with something that will save it while brave astronauts cope
with danger and discomfort and knowing they might die. Jury-rigged
repairs made out of anything-at-hand work. By-the-seat-of-their-pants
navigation brings them safely back to earth. Sound familiar?
********************************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with this
jan...@marvin.eng.sun.com | message is the return address.
http://www.tripod.com/~janiceg/index.html
"People are worried about online porn on the Internet. It's the endless
`Who's better--Kirk or Picard?' threads that *should* scare them."
-- Jim Mullen, _Entertainment Weekly_
********************************************************************************
Avedon Carol
ROB HANSEN HERE:
> Some people in this conversation talk as if the exact boundaries of
> SF are
> self-evident and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously just
> being
> troublesome. I find that a lot more offensive than simple
> disagreement. The presumption is that disagreement is simply not
> possible, not respectable, not worthy of basic courtesy.
>
> -----
> Patrick Nielsen Hayden
But, Patrick, the exact boundaries of the genre were precisely defined
back in the 1970s by that great man, Leroy Kettle:
"Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on
established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with
the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply
aliens furiously raping or eating or both, beautiful naked huge-breasted
chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from
every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the
sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies
cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped
androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode."
Says it all, really.
-Rob
Mean Green Dancing Machine
In article <4m2ppj$d...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>,
Janice Gelb <jan...@Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>
>While I don't personally agree with them I can see the point: it's not
>just that "it had a spaceship in it" but it had a lot of the elements
>of a standard SF plot: brave attempt to go out into space, something
>mechanical goes wrong, operations back on Earth try desperately to
>come up with something that will save it while brave astronauts cope
>with danger and discomfort and knowing they might die. Jury-rigged
>repairs made out of anything-at-hand work. By-the-seat-of-their-pants
>navigation brings them safely back to earth. Sound familiar?
Precisely. "Truth is stranger than fiction." The fact that _Apollo 13_
is true doesn't change the fact that the plot summary sounds like an
awful lot of space opera.
Arthur Hlavaty
In article <Dqn3E...@cix.compulink.co.uk>,
Avedon Carol <ave...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>ROB HANSEN HERE:
>
>But, Patrick, the exact boundaries of the genre were precisely defined
>back in the 1970s by that great man, Leroy Kettle:
>
>"Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on
>established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with
>the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply
>aliens furiously raping or eating or both, beautiful naked huge-breasted
>chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from
>every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the
>sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies
>cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped
>androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode."
>
>Says it all, really.
>
>-Rob
You see? I *told* you *Apollo 13* qualifies.
--
Arthur D. Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius In Wile E. We Trust
\\\ E-zine available on request. ///
David E Romm
In article <Dqn3E...@cix.compulink.co.uk>, ave...@cix.compulink.co.uk
("Avedon Carol") wrote:
> But, Patrick, the exact boundaries of the genre were precisely defined
> back in the 1970s by that great man, Leroy Kettle:
>
> "Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on
> established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with
> the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply
> aliens furiously raping or eating or both, beautiful naked huge-breasted
> chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from
> every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the
> sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies
> cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped
> androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode."
>
> Says it all, really.
Nope, not sufficient: No mention of tail fins.
--
Shockwave radio: Science Fiction/Science Fact
http://www.winternet.com/~romm
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
-- Tom Clancy
Brad Templeton
I also felt strongly that Apollo XIII was not suitable for the DP Hugo as
defined. However, the WSFS business meeting rewrote the rules and they
will go into effect next year. Under the new rules the movie definitely
does qualify.
So while the committee could have been sticklers and said, "The rule change
doesn't apply this year" I think that since the WSFS has said that they
want this sort of film to qualify, *not through the nominating ballots* but
through an amendment to the WSFS constitution, then they might as well
qualify it this year.
Note that I disagree that the ballots count, as I would have disagreed
with the potential nomination of Comet Shoemaker-Levy last year.
(the rule change does not affect the comet's chances, the comet is not
a presentation, it has no presenters. A movie of the comet might qualify
as it is a presentation. The Hugos are definitely there to recognize
creative effort, not nice natural phenomena)
What is important is what is voted on at the business meeting. Based
on that, A13 can go on the ballot.
I know why it got on. Rocketship movies are all, by and large, SF,
and A13 is probably the best rocketship movie ever made. It happens to
be a dramatization of real events, but that didn't happen to affect people's
views.
However, it might not even win. Even though it is, as a dramatic presentation
and an SF-like presentation so vastly above the Babylon 5 episode on the
ballot as to not even be in the same league, the B5 episode will do well
due to the factor that gave the ST:TNG episode "The Inner Light" its Hugo.
In '93, "The Inner Light" squeaked on the ballot with the fewest nominations,
other ST episodes came close but did not make it. It was the first ST:TNG
episode to make the ballot.
When the voting came, it won by a very large margin, an atypical one.
Now the other nominees that year were particularly poor, which helped,
with Aladdin the only other entry better than Noah Ward, but the main
theory on the vast margin was that fans voted for it as a representative of
all of Star Trek TNG, and all the collective support of ST fans sent it over
the top. Which is not to say it wasn't a good episode, but not enough
to justify that margin.
This may happen this year with B5, but of course the field is much stronger.
However, many will vote against A13 because it is not SF and thus not
technically qualified for the ballot.
Oddly enough, an Australian fantasy movie which got a nomination for the
Academy Award for Best Picture didn't make the ballot at all, in fact didn't
even come in 6th since we know another B5 episode did that.
(Why they pulled it I am not sure, in theory one should not have to pull
an item but I can see how the phenomenon I describe above *could* suffer
from vote splitting, while ordinary voting would not.)
Sadly, this year there was an active campaign by some people to "get a B5
episode on the ballot," so we will never know if a B5 episode would have
made it on without the lobbying, and if it wins, the Hugo will be cheapened
slightly by this.
--
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp. in...@clari.net
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,300,000 paid sbscrbrs.) http://www.clari.net/brad/
Brad Templeton
In article <DqHAB...@world.std.com>,
Then you perhaps misunderstand most of how the preferential ballot works.
For over a decade, the candidate "No Award" has been eliminated in the
first or 2nd round of voting on almost all categories. (In fact,
Dramatic Presentation tends to get the most ballots for No Award, but it
still gets eliminated quite early.)
Once eliminated, your ballot then becomes a ballot for Apollo 13 over,
for example, a would you did not rank because you did not see it, or
over another work you also rank below it under No Award. Now you
indicate you will place it last, so that won't happen, and possibly you
have seen all the nominees so you will rank them all, so all of this
won't happen.
But for the common ballot which perhaps does not rank all nominees, you
should not rank works below No Award, because you are still ranking them
above the works you did not vote for.
There is a special rule that does a 2nd round for No Award against the
winner to see if most people voted No Award above the winner, but this
has never affected the results.
Solutions include:
a) Amend the rules to include an "abstain" choice for works the voter
does not wish to vote on, eg. didn't read or see. If the choice is
between a work the voter ranked and a work the voter abstained on,
the ballot is not counted. Currently the system takes the ballot as
meaning, "I preferred the work I read and hated to the the work I did not
vote on" which is not what most people mean.
b) Be dilligent, and rank works you did not read in random order, prior
to no award, and works you disliked under it. (But that still means if
it comes down to a vote between two you disliked your ballot will be
counted with the one you disliked least)
c) Inherently define ballots that don't list all works to do something
like the above.
So in spite of the temptation, if you rank No Award you should not rank
other works below it. If you rank it first you should not rank the
others below it. This is like saying, "Well, if it can't be no award,
then I would like the Hugo to go to A instead of B" which is probably not
what you want your ballot to do. Remember in the Aussie ballot, a ballot
that ranks A first and B second has exactly the same meaning as one that
ranks A 5th and B 6th, when it comes to the final round.
Brad Templeton
In article <4lp83b$c...@panix2.panix.com>,
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>Wrong. Apollo 13 is not a "science-fact based film"; it is not a
>documentary. It is a work of fiction, analagous to a historical novel.
Not sure about that. Other than where they combined events and people for
dramatic and time purposes, I expect as far as Ron Howard was concerned,
the closer to the exact events the better. I would presume all recorded
dialogue is as it was. He was trying to renact and add drama -- not events,
plot, character or the other elements of fiction to the story.
Doug Tricarico
In article <joelr.314...@winternet.com>, jo...@winternet.com (Joel Rosenberg) writes:
|> In article <83068474...@fuggles.demon.co.uk> ali...@fuggles.demon.co.uk (Alison Scott) writes:
|>
|> >"What on earth was it that made a bunch of people nominate a
|> >historical movie with no elements of SF or fantasy for a Hugo?"
|>
|> space program of the Apollo era as a lot of fans, and pros, are.
|>
|> Myself certainly included.
That still doesn't make it SF. Why not a nomination for The Net, then?
P Nielsen Hayden
Avedon Carol (ave...@cix.compulink.co.uk) wrote:
: ROB HANSEN HERE:
: > Some people in this conversation talk as if the exact boundaries of
: > SF are
: > self-evident and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously just
: > being
: > troublesome. I find that a lot more offensive than simple
: > disagreement. The presumption is that disagreement is simply not
: > possible, not respectable, not worthy of basic courtesy.
: >
: > -----
: > Patrick Nielsen Hayden
: But, Patrick, the exact boundaries of the genre were precisely defined
: back in the 1970s by that great man, Leroy Kettle:
: "Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on
: established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with
: the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply
: aliens furiously raping or eating or both, beautiful naked huge-breasted
: chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from
: every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the
: sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies
: cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped
: androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode."
Oh, you're quite right, I forgot. What could I have been thinking?
-----
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@tor.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Chris Croughton
In article <aahzDqn...@netcom.com>
aa...@netcom.com "Mean Green Dancing Machine" writes:
>Precisely. "Truth is stranger than fiction." The fact that _Apollo 13_
>is true doesn't change the fact that the plot summary sounds like an
>awful lot of space opera.
It does, indeed. And as someone else said elsewhere (the same
discussion is raging in the B5 area on CIS at the moment) with the
current state of the space programme an moon landing is back to being
SF. There are many adults who have never known the moon landings to be
anything apart from SF (born too late to see the last Apollo landings),
and while space flight (the Shuttle) is commonplace enough that the
media hardly notice another liftoff, landing on any other body than the
earth still seems as far off as it did in the early 60s...
Sharon L Sbarsky
In article <Dqo1D...@clarinet.com>, Brad Templeton <br...@clarinet.com> wrote:
>In article <DqHAB...@world.std.com>,
>Sharon L Sbarsky <sba...@world.std.com> wrote:
>>In article <4lq1ni$f...@dorsai.dorsai.org>,
>>Moshe Feder <mo...@dorsai.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>In my opinion, the proper response to a flood of ballots for a nongenre
>>>movie of this kind would be to consider it for a special committee award,
>>>not to allow it to deny a real genre candidate a place on the ballot.
>>
>>I definitely agree that this would have been the ideal solution.
>>
>>Despite my also agreement that is an excellent film, I will place it last
>>on my ballot behind No Award, since I do not consider the film to be SF
>>or Fantasy.
>
>Then you perhaps misunderstand most of how the preferential ballot works.
I know perfectly well, how the preferential ballot works.
>
>For over a decade, the candidate "No Award" has been eliminated in the
>first or 2nd round of voting on almost all categories. (In fact,
>Dramatic Presentation tends to get the most ballots for No Award, but it
>still gets eliminated quite early.)
>
>Once eliminated, your ballot then becomes a ballot for Apollo 13 over,
>for example, a would you did not rank because you did not see it, or
>over another work you also rank below it under No Award. Now you
>indicate you will place it last, so that won't happen, and possibly you
>have seen all the nominees so you will rank them all, so all of this
>won't happen.
>
I will be ranking all of the nominees one way or another.
>But for the common ballot which perhaps does not rank all nominees, you
>should not rank works below No Award, because you are still ranking them
>above the works you did not vote for.
>
>There is a special rule that does a 2nd round for No Award against the
>winner to see if most people voted No Award above the winner, but this
>has never affected the results.
>
So far. :-) It is possible that this particular nomination is
controversial enough that this rule might make a difference. Therefore,
even on the ballots that do not rank all of the nominees, a ballot with a
nominee *after* No Award will have an effect on that final No Award vs.
winner decision.
>Solutions include:
>
>a) Amend the rules to include an "abstain" choice for works the voter
>does not wish to vote on, eg. didn't read or see. If the choice is
>between a work the voter ranked and a work the voter abstained on,
>the ballot is not counted. Currently the system takes the ballot as
>meaning, "I preferred the work I read and hated to the the work I did not
>vote on" which is not what most people mean.
This is a possibility. Write up the amendment and submit it to the
Business meeting.
>b) Be dilligent, and rank works you did not read in random order, prior
>to no award, and works you disliked under it. (But that still means if
>it comes down to a vote between two you disliked your ballot will be
>counted with the one you disliked least)
Sometimes the entire Category consists of voting on what I dislike least. :-)
>c) Inherently define ballots that don't list all works to do something
>like the above.
>
That would still need a change to the Constitution.
>
>So in spite of the temptation, if you rank No Award you should not rank
>other works below it. If you rank it first you should not rank the
>others below it. This is like saying, "Well, if it can't be no award,
>then I would like the Hugo to go to A instead of B" which is probably not
>what you want your ballot to do. Remember in the Aussie ballot, a ballot
>that ranks A first and B second has exactly the same meaning as one that
>ranks A 5th and B 6th, when it comes to the final round.
Sometimes that is exactly what I want to say. No Award is an option just
like any other nominee. If I think that No Award should be ranked higher
than A, I'll place No Award 5th and A 6th. If I think that it should also
be ranked above B, I'll place No Award 4th and A & B 5th & 6th in some
order depending on which I liked more or disliked less.
If I were to leave off No Award and A & B, then if the choice came down to
A & B, my ballot would *not* be involved with the decision nor would my
desire to show my dislike of the nomination by having another ballot
counting No Award above A or B.
Sharon
Sharon L Sbarsky
In article <Dqny8...@clarinet.com>, Brad Templeton <br...@clarinet.com> wrote:
>I also felt strongly that Apollo XIII was not suitable for the DP Hugo as
>defined. However, the WSFS business meeting rewrote the rules and they
>will go into effect next year. Under the new rules the movie definitely
>does qualify.
>
>So while the committee could have been sticklers and said, "The rule change
>doesn't apply this year" I think that since the WSFS has said that they
>want this sort of film to qualify, *not through the nominating ballots* but
>through an amendment to the WSFS constitution, then they might as well
>qualify it this year.
Except that the new rules had only passed for the first time and had not
been ratified. What if the Business Meeting at L.A.con III decided to not
pass the amendment? Should Apollo 13 not be allowed to win at the last
minute? What kind of controversy would that cause?
WSFS has not said that they want this sort of film to qualify, only one
(out of the needed two) Business Meetings have said so.
There have been times when I have voted in favor of an amendment one
year, but against it the next (due to additional information, etc.) The
subcommittee should not have assumed that it will pass.
>What is important is what is voted on at the business meeting. Based
>on that, A13 can go on the ballot.
It should have waited for the rule to be put into the constitution, not
just one Business meeting. If a Business meeting passed an amendment to
automatically extend the eligibility of a non-NA film for another year,
would you permit the administrators to allow such a film on the ballot,
even if the rule was not yet in the Constitution?
Sharon
David G. Bell
> In article <4m2ppj$d...@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>,
> Janice Gelb <jan...@Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
> >
> >While I don't personally agree with them I can see the point: it's not
> >just that "it had a spaceship in it" but it had a lot of the elements
> >of a standard SF plot: brave attempt to go out into space, something
> >mechanical goes wrong, operations back on Earth try desperately to
> >come up with something that will save it while brave astronauts cope
> >with danger and discomfort and knowing they might die. Jury-rigged
> >repairs made out of anything-at-hand work. By-the-seat-of-their-pants
> >navigation brings them safely back to earth. Sound familiar?
>
> Precisely. "Truth is stranger than fiction." The fact that _Apollo 13_
> is true doesn't change the fact that the plot summary sounds like an
> awful lot of space opera.
And when the movie first came out, there were regular postings in
sci.space.shuttle describing people saying, in effect, "It must be
fiction. If that had happened for real, they'd be dead."
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, Furry, and Punslinger..
Avedon Carol
David Bratman (posted by Moshe) said:
> It's one thing for a Hugo administrator to declare ineligible a
> Campbell candidate who had a story published in F&SF 3 years ago;
> or a fanzine edited by a member of the subcommittee. Both of these
> we did this year. Those are 1) matters of unarguable fact; 2)
> matters which nominators may be unaware of. It is quite another
> thing for the administrators to overrule the voters on a subjective
> matter such as whether Apollo 13 is eligible for Dramatic
> Presentation. Despite your opinion that this is just as clear-cut,
> it isn't. Definitions of "1995" and "Hugo subcommittee" are easy to
> come by. Definitions of "science fiction" have puzzled wiser heads
> than ours. Don't ask me why the voters thought a historical science
> film was SF, but they did. They cannot be accused of nominating it
> out of ignorance.
Where were you guys when the Hugo Sumcom decided that WARHOON 28, a
fanzine that was nominated in the fanzine category, was really a
"non-fiction book"?
Avedon
http://www.fullfeed.com/hypatia/censor.html
-------------------------------------------------------------
It's all standard enough. To suppress someone else's speech,
one declares it's not really speech. To suppress ideas, one
declares that they're not ideas. To suppress people ... you
get the idea. - Gary McGath
Kevin Standlee
Chris Croughton <ch...@keris.demon.co.uk> writes:
[Lots of stuff snipped; but thank you very much for the defense, Chris.]
>
> They were following on from the original post on the subject, and I
> suspect Kevin had just gotten tired of the whole thing by then and
> treated it as "more of the same". I know that's how I felt. But I
> didn't think Kevin's reply to you was less than civil, even though it
> was 'vigorous'. Am I reading too much into what you wrote, or do you
> think his reply to you was not polite?
>
It's worse than just being a follow-on of the current thread. This
discussion, and ones like it, have been going on for several years now,
and probably were going on long before I joined Fandom.
For the most part, I've come to stop complaining about something unless
I'm willing to suggest a better solution. (This reduces the amount of
complaining I do and increases the number of things I'm willing to
tolerate, btw.)
Not meaning to brag excessively, but I think I'm one of the top dozen
experts on the WSFS rules these days, and while I'm trying not to "argue
from authority," whenever I hear complaints about the existing rules, my
first reaction is, "propose an improvement and let's see if it really
does work better."
(And just so you know I practice what I preach, after complaining about
the mangled state of the WSFS Standing Rules, I was authorized to convene
a Working Group to rewrite them. If we can pound out a few last-minute
glitches, we should have a complete rewrite done in time for this year's
WSFS Business Meeting.)
Kevin Standlee
stev...@cqi.com (Steven desJardins) writes:
>
> For the record, if I'd been running the committee I would have avoided
> the controversy altogether by created a new ballot category in which
> Apollo 13 would have been clearly eligible. However, I gather the
> current Hugo committee had reasons for not wanting to add a category.
>
Yeah, at least two good reasons I can think of (I wasn't part of the
decision directly, although I am WSFS Advisor to the Chair of L.A.con
III):
1. L.A.con III had in effect already added THIRTEEN new categories
by running the Retrospective Hugo Awards, and didn't see much need
to clutter the ballot with even more categories.
2. A Special Hugo category needs to be drawn in such a way that there
is a reasonable expectation of at least five nominees. Drawing up
a category that is aimed at a single work (like A13) will result
in so little interest that the category becomes meaningless.
And, for good measure:
3. There is a strong (although not unanimously held) feeling among
active smofs that there are too many Hugo Award categories already
without having to add another one.
David M. Hungerford III
br...@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) wrote:
[much snippage in various spots]
>However, it might not even win. Even though it is, as a dramatic presentation
>and an SF-like presentation so vastly above the Babylon 5 episode on the
>ballot as to not even be in the same league, the B5 episode will do well
>due to the factor that gave the ST:TNG episode "The Inner Light" its Hugo.
>In '93, "The Inner Light" squeaked on the ballot with the fewest nominations,
>other ST episodes came close but did not make it. It was the first ST:TNG
>episode to make the ballot.
>When the voting came, it won by a very large margin, an atypical one.
>Now the other nominees that year were particularly poor, which helped,
>with Aladdin the only other entry better than Noah Ward, but the main
>theory on the vast margin was that fans voted for it as a representative of
>all of Star Trek TNG, and all the collective support of ST fans sent it over
>the top. Which is not to say it wasn't a good episode, but not enough
>to justify that margin.
>Sadly, this year there was an active campaign by some people to "get a B5
>episode on the ballot," so we will never know if a B5 episode would have
>made it on without the lobbying, and if it wins, the Hugo will be cheapened
>slightly by this.
I fail to see how an effort to get the folks who like B5 to vote in
roughly the same direction cheapens the Hugo at all. Last year, eight
episodes of B5 received at least three nominating votes. Between
them, they received over 120 votes. Not one of them received enough
nominations to actually make it on to the ballot. This year, some
folks decided it would be different.
Over on the az-sf listserv (since replaced by the az.sf newsgroup)
there was some discussion of this last year. I'm sure that this has,
at various times, been discussed to death here. The basic question
(as we saw it) is, do you count an episode or a season as a single
Dramatic Presentation? I'm not honestly sure which way I lean on that
question, but I think that a simple word-of-mouth campaign to reduce
vote-splitting among what could, by reasonable people, be considered
different pieces of the same thing, hardly constitutes cheapening the
award.
What worries me is that instead of voting for B5 based on how good
"The Coming of Shadows" was, or even how good Season Two was, people
may vote for it based on how good Season Three is. That would bother
me.
Dav2.718
David M. Hungerford III
inv...@primenet.com
When I post as invertd, I speak for me, not my employer/ISP.
P Nielsen Hayden
Avedon Carol (ave...@cix.compulink.co.uk) wrote:
: David Bratman (posted by Moshe) said:
: > It's one thing for a Hugo administrator to declare ineligible a
: > Campbell candidate who had a story published in F&SF 3 years ago;
: > or a fanzine edited by a member of the subcommittee. Both of these
: > we did this year. Those are 1) matters of unarguable fact; 2)
: > matters which nominators may be unaware of. It is quite another
: > thing for the administrators to overrule the voters on a subjective
: > matter such as whether Apollo 13 is eligible for Dramatic
: > Presentation. Despite your opinion that this is just as clear-cut,
: > it isn't. Definitions of "1995" and "Hugo subcommittee" are easy to
: > come by. Definitions of "science fiction" have puzzled wiser heads
: > than ours. Don't ask me why the voters thought a historical science
: > film was SF, but they did. They cannot be accused of nominating it
: > out of ignorance.
: Where were you guys when the Hugo Sumcom decided that WARHOON 28, a
: fanzine that was nominated in the fanzine category, was really a
: "non-fiction book"?
Where was David Bratman? Um, that would have been 1981; I believe David was
in Seattle, and had nothing to do with the Hugos that year.
I've had my own disagreements with David and Seth's judgement calls over the
last few years, but it seems a bit unfair to tar them with the egregious
misdeeds of a Worldcon fifteen years ago.
Kevin Standlee
sba...@world.std.com (Sharon L Sbarsky) writes:
>
> WSFS has not said that they want this sort of film to qualify, only one
> (out of the needed two) Business Meetings have said so.
>
Yes, but in my opinion, even without the amendment passing, the
administrators had the option to allow the item onto the ballot, using
the "voters determine eligibility on non-technical grounds" theory. The
current administrators simply accepted the (apparent) encouragement of
WSFS on this matter.
This is similar to how in 1995 I used the site selection rules that were
up for ratification in 1995 because the _existing_ rules didn't forbid me
from doing so.
Robert Sneddon
> In article <4lp83b$c...@panix2.panix.com>,
> P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
> >Wrong. Apollo 13 is not a "science-fact based film"; it is not a
> >documentary. It is a work of fiction, analagous to a historical novel.
>
> Not sure about that. Other than where they combined events and people for
> dramatic and time purposes, I expect as far as Ron Howard was concerned,
> the closer to the exact events the better. I would presume all recorded
> dialogue is as it was. He was trying to renact and add drama -- not events,
> plot, character or the other elements of fiction to the story.
I recollect reading the film did make up dialogue to enhance(?)
the drama for the intended audience. Some of the head-to-head
stuff in the capsule/LM scenes which were not fully verifiable
(as there were no cabin voice recorders) were created from the
script-writer's imagination. It was not a documentary. It was
not even a docudrama. It was a work of fiction modelled very
closely on real events of the recent past. As such, I accept
it as a *real* Dramatic Presentation and a valid Hugo nomination.
Tom Hanks has never been the commander of any Apollo mission...
BTW if it is not a new work of fiction, does that mean the
film-maker's copyright is invalid? Patrick?
PS - the argument has no practical resolution for me, as I am
not a member of LaConII.
--
"This self-destruct button doesn't work! I want my money back!"
Robert (nojay) Sneddon
Moshe Feder
Berni Phillips (be...@netcom.com) wrote:
: Moshe Feder (mo...@dorsai.org) wrote:
: : Why do we have Hugo Subcommittees to administer the awards if they won't
: : do their jobs? Whether its dereliction of duty, simple cowardice, or just
: : a cockeyed misunderstanding of their function, I'm sick and tired of it.
: : happen. Instead, they'll wimp out as usual, saying "We're just giving the
: : voters what they've democraticaly indicated they want." In that case, why
: : do we bother have an administering body at all, why have eligibility
: : rules? Let people nominate a detective story from three years ago as best
: : SF&F novel for last year. Sense? If enough voters choose to vote that way,
: : why shouldn't they have what they want?
: Moshe, I am really shocked that you posted this in such a manner. It is
: unfair of you to impugn the characters of the Hugo subcommittee for
: making a decision that you do not like. David and Seth bend over back-
: wards to verify eligibility and to come up with a ballot that most closely
: resembles the wishes of the Hugo nominators. Bear in mind also that this
: year they had *two* Hugo ballots to come up with.
Berni, I'm sorry you're shocked. I think David knows (if only from my
direct e-mail to him), and I hope he'll tell Seth, that I have nothing
personal against either of them and I think they're both fine fans and
fine human beings. I just think that in one particular respect they're
badly mistaken, as others in similar positions have been before them, and
I'm "shocked" and upset enough about it (because respecting them, I didn't
expect them to make this mistake) to have chosen a commensurate way to
express my feelings. (It was either that or put a fist through my monitor
when I saw the nominations for the first time!)
Please note also precisely what I wrote, which you quote above. I
attribute dereliction, cowardice or misunderstanding not to Seth and David
in particular, but to _all_ the "Hugo Subcommittees" (plural, please note)
who have made the sort of error I'm complaining about. It's the very fact
that this keeps happening that has got me quite so upset. I mean, you
think we'd learn from our mistakes.
Based on my private exchange with David, I'd say that of my three
indictments, "misunderstanding of their function" is the one that applies
here. As an individual, David agrees with me that APOLLO 13 isn't SF, but
he feels the Hugo Subcommittee hasn't the right to overturn the voters'
absurd decision. Differing with him, I feel they have an _obligation_ to
do so. To ignore these matters of definition can only lead to an award
that becomes meaningless. Yes, I believe in democracy, but like the
founding fathers I know that majorities can make mistakes. That's why we
have three counterbalancing branches of government, and it's why the Hugo
Subcommittee must be willing to exercise a rare but essential check and
balance function.
: I would also like to remind you that these men you are accusing of
: cowardice received an awful lot of heat in 1993 when their administration
: chose to rearrange some of the nominees into different categories based
: on the word count of the individual story. They were subjected to some
: very bitter attacks for doing something which was legal under the WSFS
: constitution and their sole purpose for doing so was to give the voters
: a ballot which more closely represented what was actually being nominated.
Again, if you read carefully, perhaps once your blood pressure comes down
:), you'll see that I didn't accuse them of cowardice (Although I think
that term does apply to some of their predecessors, at least one of whom
told me years later that they didn't want to face the reaction to a tough
decision they could have made.) but listed that only as one the possible
reasons this problem arises. In fact, I remember their action in '93 and
admire them for it. That did take courage, though it was perfectly proper
as you note, and it was precisely in the spirit I'm invoking now. It was
all the more reason I expected them to act in agreement with me on this
issue. Clearly, ruling A13 ineligible would upset some people (If only
those misguided folks who voted for it!) and it would take courage to face
the resulting 0controversy. Based on '93, I had no doubt they were up to
it, but sadly, they chose for other reasons not to prove it.
: I should also state, for those who are unaware, that I am not a disin-
: terested party in this discussion as I am the wife of one of the Hugo
: administrators. (Does anyone want to know how late they stayed up
: every night counting ballots?)
Believe me, as someone who's counted ballots himself, albeit on a smaller
scale, I have an inkling of how hard they've worked. I admire you for
coming to their defence. I hope I've shown you at least that my reaction
is not coming out of nowhere. When the same annoying thing keeps happening
over and over, one moves from annoyance, to irritation, to exasperation.
Perhaps that underlies the denunciatory tone I chose, quite consciously,
to take.
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Moshe Feder *FIAWOL* mo...@dorsai.org
"Save the Lox! Nova difference."
Moshe Feder
Anne B. "Nonie" Rider (nri...@us.oracle.com) wrote:
: Must be a matter of opinion. Myself, I never even
: SAW "Apollo 13," but I'm strongly in favor of it
: being on the Hugo ballot.
A lot of people would disqualify you from having an opinion in this
matter right here because you haven't seen the film. However, given the
specifics of this argument, that's less relevant than usual.
: Why? Buncha reasons:
: SF has always been closely tied with the space program,
: and I've seen panels entirely on real-world satellite
: packets, shuttle launches, and so on.
SF's always been interested in space but that's not synonymous with the
U.S. space program. Heck, SF dates well back into the previous century (at
least). How was it tied to the space program then? It couldn't be "closely
tied" to the space program, even if we accept that dubious idea (there's
been plenty of anti-NASA SF), before oh, the late 50s or so. Anyway, our
support for space exploration (which I share) hardly requires us to give
short story Hugos to articles in astronautical journals. Letting this
movie win an award would amount to the same thing.
: Good special effects, zero-gee filming, and so on.
Sure, I was impressed to. But those are properly recognized by a Special
Effects Oscar, wouldn't you say? By themselves, they have nothing to do
with story telling, or with the quality of a work's sciencefictional
content (if any).
: But most of all, because it's this decade's best
: advertising for the space program, bringing the
: stars back into the view of Joe Lunchpail and his
: kids. The tragedies, the triumphs, the dreams--
: this movie lets us touch our common ground again,
: fan and mundane.
Yup, I agree completely. It was inspiring. I stood up and cheered. And
part of what made it so inspiring both to us and Mr. Lunchpail is that it
wasn't "that crazy sci-fi stuff" but something that *actually happened*
and that could happen again. Of course, that's also why it's *not* SF and
should not be up for the Hugo. (SF is not about what has "actually
happened.") However, I think your last paragraph there is precisely why it
should have been given a Special Committee Award (which any worldcon
committeee has the power to grant, in case you didn't know) instead.
Stuart C. Hellinger
Sharon L Sbarsky (sba...@world.std.com) wrote:
: In article <Dqny8...@clarinet.com>, Brad Templeton <br...@clarinet.com> wrote:
: >I also felt strongly that Apollo XIII was not suitable for the DP Hugo as
: >defined. However, the WSFS business meeting rewrote the rules and they
: >will go into effect next year. Under the new rules the movie definitely
: >does qualify.
: >
: >So while the committee could have been sticklers and said, "The rule change
: >want this sort of film to qualify, *not through the nominating ballots* but
: >through an amendment to the WSFS constitution, then they might as well
: >qualify it this year.
: Except that the new rules had only passed for the first time and had not
: been ratified. What if the Business Meeting at L.A.con III decided to not
: pass the amendment? Should Apollo 13 not be allowed to win at the last
: minute? What kind of controversy would that cause?
: WSFS has not said that they want this sort of film to qualify, only one
: (out of the needed two) Business Meetings have said so.
: There have been times when I have voted in favor of an amendment one
: year, but against it the next (due to additional information, etc.) The
: subcommittee should not have assumed that it will pass.
: >What is important is what is voted on at the business meeting. Based
: >on that, A13 can go on the ballot.
: It should have waited for the rule to be put into the constitution, not
: just one Business meeting. If a Business meeting passed an amendment to
: automatically extend the eligibility of a non-NA film for another year,
: would you permit the administrators to allow such a film on the ballot,
: even if the rule was not yet in the Constitution?
I would have to agree with Sharon. The proposed language is a restoration
of a portion of the Constitution that has been _claimed_ to have been
inadvertantly removed.
There is no way to prove the veracity of that claim.
In and of itself, the fact that it passed last year, there is no
guarantee that any amendment will pass on the second go round, and thus
no guarantee that it is the will of the membership.
On that basis, APOLLO 13 should not be placed on this ballot. I will not
go into the argument that I did over on Genie as to whether the movie is
fiction. It isn't. It definitively is not science fiction under and
_reasonable_ definition of science fiction.
The fact that the administration declared that using the vote at
Intersection, it would be allowed on the ballot, show that the
administrators will bend the rules to some obscure rational and not
actually follow the rules as presented. It also shows that the
administrators are not impartial.
Basically, they should have kept quiet until the nominating ballots were
in and counted. By publically ruling prior to the count, their
impartiality is questionable, and I for one, feel that they should have
been removed. In fact, I asked the Chair of L.A.con III to do just that.
To be any administrator, you can not show any signs or a bias, and you
have to carefully think about any announcements you make that _could_
have a possibility of influencing the vote.
On another point, as the DP Hugo usually has nominees that have no
connection to the genre beyond the film, are the people who are contacted
(Producers and their ilk) told exactly what the award is supposed to be for?
If they are not given the full description of the award, it is possible
that nominations are accepted on the basis of an uneducated decision.
-SCH! (Stuart C. Hellinger s...@panix.com)
Joel Rosenberg
In article <4m4tq8$1...@mailgate.lexis-nexis.com> utr...@dsdprod.meaddata.com (Doug Tricarico) writes:
>In article <joelr.314...@winternet.com>, jo...@winternet.com (Joel Rosenberg) writes:
>|> In article <83068474...@fuggles.demon.co.uk> ali...@fuggles.demon.co.uk (Alison Scott) writes:
>|>
>|> >"What on earth was it that made a bunch of people nominate a
>|> >historical movie with no elements of SF or fantasy for a Hugo?"
>|>
>|> Because the heart and soul of that movie is as passionately in love with the
>|> space program of the Apollo era as a lot of fans, and pros, are.
>|>
>|> Myself certainly included.
>That still doesn't make it SF.
Well,of course it doesn't, not in any literal sense.
But, IMHO, that's why that happened.
Kevin Standlee
s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger) writes:
>
> The fact that the administration declared that using the vote at
> Intersection, it would be allowed on the ballot, show that the
> administrators will bend the rules to some obscure rational and not
> actually follow the rules as presented. It also shows that the
> administrators are not impartial.
>
The only reason that David Bratman made the announcement was that he
wanted to end the "controvery" by clearly stating how the current
administrators would rule should the question be presented to them. To
that extent, it is similar to me telling people how I might rule on a
particular parliamentary matter when I was presiding over the WSFS
Business Meeting.
In addition, I think the EXISTING wording of the WSFS Constitution does
not PROHIBIT them from allowing the work onto the ballot. Therefore,
their decision to follow the apparent will of one WSFS Business Meeting
is similar to my decision to administer last year's site selection in
accordance with a pending constitutional amendment affecting the counting
of ineligible candidates. (That is, the wording in effect during my
administration did not preclude me from doing things the way the
amendment would require me to do it, so I did it that way anyway.)
> Basically, they should have kept quiet until the nominating ballots were
> in and counted. By publically ruling prior to the count, their
> impartiality is questionable, and I for one, feel that they should have
> been removed. In fact, I asked the Chair of L.A.con III to do just that.
>
The L.A.con III committee irrevocably delegated the Hugo Administration
authority to the Subcommittee, as provided for in the WSFS Constitution.
I don't see them having authority to withdraw that delegation, not
without making a joke of the provision in the Constitution that allows
for the irrevocable delegation in order to preserve the eligibility of
the rest of the committee.
It's incredible for you to question their impartiality when they have
publically stated that they don't care much for it being on there. If
they truely were biased, wouldn't the bias be toward their disqualifying
it?
Hugo Administrators have all of the incentive in the world to NOT be
activists.
Janice Gelb
In article 5...@dorsai.dorsai.org, mo...@dorsai.org (Moshe Feder) writes:
>Anne B. "Nonie" Rider (nri...@us.oracle.com) wrote:
>
>: SF has always been closely tied with the space program,
>: and I've seen panels entirely on real-world satellite
>: packets, shuttle launches, and so on.
>
>SF's always been interested in space but that's not synonymous with the
>U.S. space program. Heck, SF dates well back into the previous century (at
>least). How was it tied to the space program then? It couldn't be "closely
>tied" to the space program, even if we accept that dubious idea (there's
>been plenty of anti-NASA SF), before oh, the late 50s or so. Anyway, our
>support for space exploration (which I share) hardly requires us to give
>short story Hugos to articles in astronautical journals. Letting this
>movie win an award would amount to the same thing.
>
>: Good special effects, zero-gee filming, and so on.
>
>Sure, I was impressed to. But those are properly recognized by a Special
>Effects Oscar, wouldn't you say? By themselves, they have nothing to do
>with story telling, or with the quality of a work's sciencefictional
>content (if any).
>
Well, there's another thread on this now and I'll just repeat what I
said there:
While I don't personally agree with those who voted for A13, I can see
the point: it's not just that "it had a spaceship in it" but it had a
lot of the elements of a standard SF plot: brave attempt to go out into
space, something mechanical goes wrong, operations back on Earth try
desperately to come up with something that will save it while brave
astronauts cope with danger and discomfort and knowing they might die.
Jury-rigged repairs made out of anything-at-hand work.
By-the-seat-of-their-pants navigation brings them safely back to earth.
Sound familiar?
All this is to say that although I don't personally think the film
is SF, it's close enough that I think the Hugo subcommittee had enough
leeway to bow to the will of the voters.
********************************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with this
jan...@marvin.eng.sun.com | message is the return address.
http://www.tripod.com/~janiceg/index.html
"[Literary-minded] men choose _Hamlet_ because every man sees himself as a
disinherited monarch. Women choose _Alice_ [in Wonderland] because every
woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who
think they are disinherited monarchs."
-- Adam Gopnik, _The New Yorker_
********************************************************************************
Rich McAllister
>I would have to agree with Sharon. The proposed language is a restoration
>of a portion of the Constitution that has been _claimed_ to have been
>inadvertantly removed.
>
>There is no way to prove the veracity of that claim.
Doesn't somebody save the minutes of the WSFS Business Meetings? If the
clause was in the constitution at one point, and not in the constitution
later, and no motion passed with the clear intent of narrowing the
definition of the DP hugo, I think the claim would be proved.
Indeed, since it was Kevin Standlee who said, flatly:
Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
and Kevin is known for his attention to detail in such matters, I'd
bet somebody competent *has* so verified the claim.
>In and of itself, the fact that it passed last year, there is no
>guarantee that any amendment will pass on the second go round, and thus
>no guarantee that it is the will of the membership.
And no clear reason to believe an amendment is necessary simply
to make the text of the constitution match the recorded will of
the business meeting, but I agree it's best to go through
the whole amendment procedure to forestall future arguments, and
let the people on the spot make their best call.
>Basically, they should have kept quiet until the nominating ballots were
>in and counted. By publically ruling prior to the count, their
>impartiality is questionable, and I for one, feel that they should have
>been removed.
C'mon, out with it. How much do you think Ron Howard paid Seth and
David?
> In fact, I asked the Chair of L.A.con III to do just that.
I gather Mike didn't take your advice. Reading the Constitution, I believe
your only recourse is to invoke section 3.10 (since the LACon III committee
is "unable to perform its duties" for reasons of moral turpitude), and
following section 3.10, appeal to the nearest other existing committee (that
would be LoneStarCon 2, I believe) to take appropriate action.
Rich
--
Rich McAllister (r...@eng.sun.com)
Rich McAllister
In article <4m6emn$h...@panix2.panix.com> p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
[>: denotes Avedon, or somebody posting with her account]
>: Where were you guys when the Hugo Sumcom decided that WARHOON 28, a
>: fanzine that was nominated in the fanzine category, was really a
>: "non-fiction book"?
>
>Where was David Bratman? Um, that would have been 1981; I believe David was
>in Seattle, and had nothing to do with the Hugos that year.
Well, he may have voted.
>
>I've had my own disagreements with David and Seth's judgement calls over the
>last few years, but it seems a bit unfair to tar them with the egregious
>misdeeds of a Worldcon fifteen years ago.
Wasn't the four-issues-in-a-year rule in force then? So Warhoon 28
would have been clearly ineligible for the fanzine Hugo nomination.
Given the inability of most people to count words, relocating
nominations into an appropriate category seems to be a necessary
function of the Hugo administrators. Counting issues in a year
seems to be as objective as counting words in a story. I guess
one could argue that Warhoon 28 wasn't intended to be a "non-fiction
book" and therefore should have been left off the ballot entirely,
but that doesn't seem right.
Rich McAllister
In article <4m4tq8$1...@mailgate.lexis-nexis.com> utr...@dsdprod.meaddata.com (Doug Tricarico) writes:
>That still doesn't make it SF. Why not a nomination for The Net, then?
No, the Net is clearly a series, you can only nominate individual
postings.
--
Rich McAllister (r...@eng.sun.com)
Chris Croughton
In article <3yJ8mD...@LunaCity.com>
stan...@LunaCity.com "Kevin Standlee" writes:
>Not meaning to brag excessively, but I think I'm one of the top dozen
>experts on the WSFS rules these days,
You're certainly one of the few, and probably the first person I'd think
of asking if I had a question on the,
>and while I'm trying not to "argue
>from authority," whenever I hear complaints about the existing rules, my
>first reaction is, "propose an improvement and let's see if it really
>does work better."
I agree with you on that, certainly; I dislike complaining about
something without at least some idea of a solution. Of course, I do it
sometimes (if there's compiler bug, for example, I probably have no idea
what's wrong with the software except it doesn't work)...
>(And just so you know I practice what I preach, after complaining about
>the mangled state of the WSFS Standing Rules, I was authorized to convene
>a Working Group to rewrite them. If we can pound out a few last-minute
>glitches, we should have a complete rewrite done in time for this year's
>WSFS Business Meeting.)
Well, good. Not that I understand what "Standing Rules" are, but it's
good to know someone is improving them (I'm always in favour of
improving documentation to a less 'mangled' state, as long as it isn't
me who has to do it) <g>...
Rich McAllister
>b) Be dilligent, and rank works you did not read in random order, prior
>to no award, and works you disliked under it. (But that still means if
>it comes down to a vote between two you disliked your ballot will be
>counted with the one you disliked least)
Well, if the reason I didn't read a particular work is that I've
disliked everything I've read by the author's, and this work looked
similar under cursory inspection, I've no compunction about ranking
it under No Award. (For example, if "Lawyers of Gor" were to show
up on the Hugo ballot, I'd d\e\m\a\n\d\ \t\h\e\ \H\u\g\o\
\a\d\m\i\n\s\ \r\e\s\i\g\n\ rank it below No Award.)
--
Rich McAllister (r...@eng.sun.com)
David E Romm
In article <830855...@keris.demon.co.uk>, Chris Croughton
<ch...@keris.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <aahzDqn...@netcom.com>
> aa...@netcom.com "Mean Green Dancing Machine" writes:
>
> >Precisely. "Truth is stranger than fiction." The fact that _Apollo 13_
> >is true doesn't change the fact that the plot summary sounds like an
> >awful lot of space opera.
>
> It does, indeed. And as someone else said elsewhere (the same
> discussion is raging in the B5 area on CIS at the moment) with the
> current state of the space programme an moon landing is back to being
> SF.
Around here, the line is, "Apollo 13 is a pretty good movie if you can get
around the ridiculous plot".
--
Shockwave radio: Science Fiction/Science Fact
http://www.winternet.com/~romm
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx
Stuart C. Hellinger
Kevin Standlee (stan...@LunaCity.com) wrote:
: The only reason that David Bratman made the announcement was that he
: wanted to end the "controvery" by clearly stating how the current
: administrators would rule should the question be presented to them. To
: that extent, it is similar to me telling people how I might rule on a
: particular parliamentary matter when I was presiding over the WSFS
: Business Meeting.
It did not end any controversy. It actually made it continue.
How do we know that it did not have an effect of the nominations? The
correct answer in this case is that the administrator will rule only when
presented with the problem. That shows no presupposed bias.
In other words, you SAY NOTHING until you have to and when your decision
will NOT have any influence on the nomination process.
What is so difficult to grasp in that concept?
: In addition, I think the EXISTING wording of the WSFS Constitution does
: not PROHIBIT them from allowing the work onto the ballot. Therefore,
: their decision to follow the apparent will of one WSFS Business Meeting
: is similar to my decision to administer last year's site selection in
: accordance with a pending constitutional amendment affecting the counting
: of ineligible candidates. (That is, the wording in effect during my
: administration did not preclude me from doing things the way the
: amendment would require me to do it, so I did it that way anyway.)
I didn't say that you were correct, either. It also depends upon when you
made the announcement. I no longer remember.
The wording in the Constitution does not specifically prohibit the movie,
but it does not meet the definition as ascribed. You're trying to play
the half-full, half-empty game. If there is a definition of something and
the item does not fit, it does not belong. If you think that only things
strictly prohibited do not fit, they our language and wording is worth
than I ever though and then it _is_ left to the administrators decision.
: The L.A.con III committee irrevocably delegated the Hugo Administration
: authority to the Subcommittee, as provided for in the WSFS Constitution.
: I don't see them having authority to withdraw that delegation, not
: without making a joke of the provision in the Constitution that allows
: for the irrevocable delegation in order to preserve the eligibility of
: the rest of the committee.
In other words, in this case, beacuse it doesn't specifically say that
a Worldcon can make a change to protect the integrity of the awards, they
can't. You want it both ways as you see convenient. Interesting.
: It's incredible for you to question their impartiality when they have
: publically stated that they don't care much for it being on there. If
: they truely were biased, wouldn't the bias be toward their disqualifying
: it?
Not when they make a pronouncement at the wrong time. If the decision
was made during the ballot count and was released as part of the
nomination information, I still might disagree with their decision. In
this scenario, there is no hint of a bias in either direction. A bias was
created that possibly lead to additional nominations, which is highly
improper.
: Hugo Administrators have all of the incentive in the world to NOT be
: activists.
Yet, they have a specific job to do, with specific responsibilities. They
are supposed to remain neutral until a problem poses itself.
Pronouncements before the problem appears are inappropriate and in very
poor judgement.
Arthur Hlavaty
Rich McAllister (r...@urth.eng.sun.com) wrote:
: Wasn't the four-issues-in-a-year rule in force then? So Warhoon 28
: would have been clearly ineligible for the fanzine Hugo nomination.
: Given the inability of most people to count words, relocating
: nominations into an appropriate category seems to be a necessary
: function of the Hugo administrators. Counting issues in a year
: seems to be as objective as counting words in a story. I guess
: one could argue that Warhoon 28 wasn't intended to be a "non-fiction
: book" and therefore should have been left off the ballot entirely,
: but that doesn't seem right.
I thought it was "4 issues total, 1 in the previous year"
And by the way, it's a shame y didn't let Fred Pohl into that Worldcon.
--
Arthur D. Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius In Wile E. We Trust
\\\ E-zine available on request. ///
Kevin Standlee
Chris Croughton <ch...@keris.demon.co.uk> writes:
> Well, good. Not that I understand what "Standing Rules" are, but it's
> good to know someone is improving them (I'm always in favour of
> improving documentation to a less 'mangled' state, as long as it isn't
> me who has to do it) <g>...
>
If you've ever looked at all of the "official papers" of WSFS in the back
of a Worldcon Souvenir Book, you may have noticed that there are three
documents: The WSFS Constitution, The Standing Rules for Governance of
the Business Meeting, and the Business Passed On from the Previous
Worldcon.
Meetings of "deliberative assemblies" (not just legislatures like
Parliament or Congress, but any group of people meeting to debate and
decide issues) are governened by "parliamentary law." The term
"parliamentary" here doesn't mean The British Parliament (or any specific
country's Parliament), but instead refers to rules for governing
meetings. Generally, parliamentary procedure derives from the traditions
and practices of a country's governing body. In the USA, parliamentary
procedure is drawn from the practices of the US House of Representatives,
as modified by the demands of less formal bodies.
There are a number of manuals on parliamentary procedure, the best known
of which is ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER, NEWLY REVISED, which is probably the
most comprehensive work on the subject. (Other manuals include DEMETER
and STURGIS; the former is a little dated, the latter is a lot simpler
than Robert's.) WSFS has adopted ROBERT'S as their standard
parliamentary procedure manual, so except where the WSFS Constitution or
the Standing Rules take precedence, ROBERT'S governs the procedures of
the WSFS Business Meeting.
Whenever a group has special circumstances that are not covered by
their standard manual and want to make rules, they adopt "special rules
of order" or "standing rules." For instance, the rule that says that you
cannot move to postpone a motion indefinitely is a WSFS Standing Rule.
Because of the way in which the Standing Rules have been adopted and
amended over the years, they were getting creaky; they're written in
several different "voices" and were getting progressively more difficult
to understand. They also were vague on a number of points. The Standing
Rules Working Group undertook a project two years ago to rewrite the
rules into a single "voice" and codify existing practices, eliminating
the vague areas if possible, and proposing other improvements.
Sorry that took so long to explain, but I needed to set the groundwork
for anyone not familiar with the way the WSFS works.
Kevin Standlee
r...@urth.eng.sun.com (Rich McAllister) writes:
> In article <4m7n08$4...@panix2.panix.com> s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger)
>
> >There is no way to prove the veracity of that claim.
>
> Doesn't somebody save the minutes of the WSFS Business Meetings? If the
Yes and no. Until recently, there has not been any real effort to
preserve much of the legislative history, and in certain years the
minutes haven't even been distributed. The Nitpicking and Flyspecking
Committee was formed a few years back to try and accumulate everything,
but even then it's been a chore. (For instance, one year the raw minutes
were destroyed in a fire before being distributed and the only records of
the meeting are what the chairman and secretary could recall, according
to one NP&FSC report.)
> clause was in the constitution at one point, and not in the constitution
> later, and no motion passed with the clear intent of narrowing the
> definition of the DP hugo, I think the claim would be proved.
> Indeed, since it was Kevin Standlee who said, flatly:
>
> Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
> mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
>
> and Kevin is known for his attention to detail in such matters, I'd
> bet somebody competent *has* so verified the claim.
>
Much as I'm flattered by the compliment, I cannot _independantly_ verify
the claim. It merely was stated by several people who were around in
WSFS affairs in those days. (Remember, my first _convention_ was L.A.Con
II!)
Kevin Standlee
s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger) writes:
> Kevin Standlee (stan...@LunaCity.com) wrote:
>
>
> What is so difficult to grasp in that concept?
>
>
> : In addition, I think the EXISTING wording of the WSFS Constitution does
> : not PROHIBIT them from allowing the work onto the ballot. Therefore,
> : their decision to follow the apparent will of one WSFS Business Meeting
> : is similar to my decision to administer last year's site selection in
> : accordance with a pending constitutional amendment affecting the counting
> : of ineligible candidates. (That is, the wording in effect during my
> : administration did not preclude me from doing things the way the
> : amendment would require me to do it, so I did it that way anyway.)
>
> I didn't say that you were correct, either. It also depends upon when you
> made the announcement. I no longer remember.
>
My decision was on the site selection ballot, and I therefore made my
ruling at the time the ballot was written and released.
Stu, I do not necessarily disagree with a lot of what you say, but I
suspect that if you ever administered a Hugo election, you'd be
figuratively tarred and feathered and a bunch of changes would be made to
the WSFS constitution to make the administrators more or less powerless
to make ANY judgement calls.
As a rule, I don't think WSFS wants administrators to judge the literary
content of a work.
Kevin Standlee
r...@urth.eng.sun.com (Rich McAllister) writes:
>
> Wasn't the four-issues-in-a-year rule in force then? So Warhoon 28
I don't know about then, but the _current_ rule is "four issues TOTAL, at
least one of which was published in the eligibility year."
That's why Art Widner's YHOS was eligible for BOTH the '96 and '46 Hugo
Awards. (I tried, I tried....needed about five more votes, I think.)
Steven desJardins
stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) wrote:
>2. A Special Hugo category needs to be drawn in such a way that there
> is a reasonable expectation of at least five nominees. Drawing up
> a category that is aimed at a single work (like A13) will result
> in so little interest that the category becomes meaningless.
I think a Science Presentation Hugo, in which everything from PBS
documentaries to nonfiction books was eligible, would have a
reasonable expectation of producing five worthwhile nominees.
Brad Templeton
In article <4m65o5$1...@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>,
David M. Hungerford III <inv...@primenet.com> wrote:
>br...@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) wrote:
>
>I fail to see how an effort to get the folks who like B5 to vote in
>roughly the same direction cheapens the Hugo at all. Last year, eight
>episodes of B5 received at least three nominating votes. Between
>them, they received over 120 votes. Not one of them received enough
>nominations to actually make it on to the ballot. This year, some
>folks decided it would be different.
>
>Over on the az-sf listserv (since replaced by the az.sf newsgroup)
>there was some discussion of this last year. I'm sure that this has,
>at various times, been discussed to death here. The basic question
>(as we saw it) is, do you count an episode or a season as a single
>Dramatic Presentation? I'm not honestly sure which way I lean on that
>question, but I think that a simple word-of-mouth campaign to reduce
>vote-splitting among what could, by reasonable people, be considered
>different pieces of the same thing, hardly constitutes cheapening the
>award.
The WSFS consitutition is very clear on this point. Series are not to
be counted. I think that's a good decision, but I don't mean to debate
that here. It is, however clear. I think one reason for it is to stop
exactly this -- people voting for a series (which always gets many fans)
and ignoring what the professional Hugos are meant most to recognize, which
is individual achievement in a single artistic unit. Few DPs are individual
achievement but this is as close as you can get.
However, the fact that you fear vote-splitting indicates that you think
people will indeed vote for Shadows because they like B5, not that particular
episode. In voting for a particular episode, vote splitting is not possible.
Vote splitting would only happen if voters looked at 2 B5 episodes, said,
"Well, liked episode A more than B, so that's my B5 vote, and I'll use my
other votes on other stuff, not worry about B." That's people saying they
like the series, not the episodes. Casting a vote for B5 rather than the
episode. Bad voter!
--
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp. in...@clari.net
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,300,000 paid sbscrbrs.) http://www.clari.net/brad/
Ben Yalow
>In article <4m7n08$4...@panix2.panix.com> s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger) writes:
>>I would have to agree with Sharon. The proposed language is a restoration
>>of a portion of the Constitution that has been _claimed_ to have been
>>inadvertantly removed.
>>
>>There is no way to prove the veracity of that claim.
>Doesn't somebody save the minutes of the WSFS Business Meetings? If the
>clause was in the constitution at one point, and not in the constitution
>later, and no motion passed with the clear intent of narrowing the
>definition of the DP hugo, I think the claim would be proved.
>Indeed, since it was Kevin Standlee who said, flatly:
> Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
> mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
>and Kevin is known for his attention to detail in such matters, I'd
>bet somebody competent *has* so verified the claim.
Kevin's not here yet -- will I do?
The wording got changed at the Business Meeting at Noreascon (1971). In
the Constitution prior to the change, the first sentence read:
Any Production, directly related to science fiction or fantasy, in the
fields of radio, television, stage or screen, which has been publicly
presented for the first time in its present form during the previous
calendar year.
A motion was introduced to change the sentence to read:
Any production in any medium of dramatized science fiction or fantasy,
which has been publicly presented in its present form during the previous
calendar year.
(Note that there was no ratification needed, so the change became
effective starting at LAcon (1972).)
The commentary on the motion states:
A. Joseph Ross and Paul Galvin moved to expand the Drama Hugo to include
all media.
This would tend to imply that the change from " directly related to
science fiction or fantasy" to "of dramatized science fiction or fantasy"
was not considered the important part -- the change from a limited number
of explicitly listed media to "in any medium" was what the change was
intended to do.
<stuff snipped>
>> In fact, I asked the Chair of L.A.con III to do just that.
>I gather Mike didn't take your advice. Reading the Constitution, I believe
>your only recourse is to invoke section 3.10 (since the LACon III committee
>is "unable to perform its duties" for reasons of moral turpitude), and
>following section 3.10, appeal to the nearest other existing committee (that
>would be LoneStarCon 2, I believe) to take appropriate action.
The chair of L.A.Con III (or the Execom, or any other such body of
L.A.Con III) has absolutely no authority whatsoever over the decisions
of David/Seth. L.A.Con III decided to have a Hugo Subcommittee, as the
rules permit. Therefore, all authority over the Hugos was delegated to
the subcommittee, in accordance with:
Section 2.10: Exclusions. No member of the current Worldcon Committee nor
any publications closely connected with a member of the Committee shall be
eligible for an Award. However, should the Committee delegate all authority
under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the
Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the
Subcommittee only.
Note the words "all" and "irrevocable". L.A.Con has nothing to do with
those decisions, and Mike, or the Execom, or any other such body, has no
authority whatsoever on the Hugos.
>Rich
>--
>Rich McAllister (r...@eng.sun.com)
Ben
--
Ben Yalow yb...@panix.com
Not speaking for anybody
Ben Yalow
In <LDcaND...@LunaCity.com> stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) writes:
>r...@urth.eng.sun.com (Rich McAllister) writes:
>> In article <4m7n08$4...@panix2.panix.com> s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger)
>>
>> >There is no way to prove the veracity of that claim.
>>
>> Doesn't somebody save the minutes of the WSFS Business Meetings? If the
>Yes and no. Until recently, there has not been any real effort to
>preserve much of the legislative history, and in certain years the
>minutes haven't even been distributed. The Nitpicking and Flyspecking
>Committee was formed a few years back to try and accumulate everything,
>but even then it's been a chore. (For instance, one year the raw minutes
>were destroyed in a fire before being distributed and the only records of
>the meeting are what the chairman and secretary could recall, according
>to one NP&FSC report.)
Actually, there hasn't been much done officially, at least until the
NP&FSC was formed. But there has been some stuff done unofficially --
I've got copies of most of the minutes published over the last quarter
century or so, along with any notes I took at the meetings. And I've got
a number of the accounts published in fanzines during the times before my
first Business Meeting (Noreascon, 1971). And, fortunately,
Constitutional history doesn't need to go back before 1962/3, since
that's when the current Constitution was adopted, and there is an
appendix to George Scithers' fanzine about chairing Discon that has the
full report of the committee that came up with the Constitution. So all
I'm missing is stuff from 1964-71.
And I believe George Flynn also keeps archives of some of the stuff, and,
I assume so do others.
>> clause was in the constitution at one point, and not in the constitution
>> later, and no motion passed with the clear intent of narrowing the
>> definition of the DP hugo, I think the claim would be proved.
>> Indeed, since it was Kevin Standlee who said, flatly:
>>
>> Those words used to be in there, but were incidentally deleted during a
>> mid-70s constitutional rewrite.
>>
>> and Kevin is known for his attention to detail in such matters, I'd
>> bet somebody competent *has* so verified the claim.
>>
>Much as I'm flattered by the compliment, I cannot _independantly_ verify
>the claim. It merely was stated by several people who were around in
>WSFS affairs in those days. (Remember, my first _convention_ was L.A.Con
>II!)
I gave the history of this in another post. The change referred to took
place in 1971, at Noreascon.
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Just a thought from Kevin Standlee -> (stan...@LunaCity.com)
>LunaCity BBS - Mountain View, CA - 415 968 8140
Ben
Brad Templeton
In article <Dqor8...@world.std.com>,
Sharon L Sbarsky <sba...@world.std.com> wrote:
>Except that the new rules had only passed for the first time and had not
>been ratified. What if the Business Meeting at L.A.con III decided to not
>pass the amendment? Should Apollo 13 not be allowed to win at the last
>minute? What kind of controversy would that cause?
>
>WSFS has not said that they want this sort of film to qualify, only one
>(out of the needed two) Business Meetings have said so.
WSFS has said it, it just hasn't said it fully. The point is that this
is a question of interpretation of the wishes of the WSFS, and the Hugo
admins have that as their job.
They have excellent evidence of the wishes of WSFS members when this very
question is put to them. It is evidence in helping them perform an
interpretation, not a rules change. It doesn't need two votes to be this.
Note that this is different from getting lots 'o nominations. Nominators
nominate for any old reason, including just liking a film and not
knowing the exact wording of the rules. They often nominate works
published in the wrong year, for example.
However, in this case a large group of WSFS members were asked explicitly
if movies on subjects "related" to SF should count (as rocketship movies
certainly are related to SF) and they said yes.
Now I've had this argument with Seth and David before, but the thing that
annoys me the most about the story relocation from Winnipeg was not so
much that they did it, but that they didn't apologize after the WSFS
business meeting there implicitly, but strongly, censured their decision
by changing the rules to limit their discretion in this area.
They should have just said, "Hey, we felt at the time it was the best
plan, but clearly we misjudged what people want. Sorry." People make
mistakes and get forgiven.
Mean Green Dancing Machine
In article <830896...@ibfs.demon.co.uk>,
Robert Sneddon <no...@ibfs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> BTW if it is not a new work of fiction, does that mean the
>film-maker's copyright is invalid? Patrick?
This is where it gets tough: suppose you are a freelance journalist
interviewing an actor, who owns the rights to the taping of the
interview? IANAL, but my understanding is that both of you have some
rights.
--
--- Aahz (@netcom.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
Androgynous kinky vanilla queer het
"Perhaps God rewards martyrs, but life seldom does..." --Ulrika O'Brien
Chris Croughton
In article <cPcaND...@LunaCity.com>
stan...@LunaCity.com "Kevin Standlee" writes:
>If you've ever looked at all of the "official papers" of WSFS in the back
>of a Worldcon Souvenir Book, you may have noticed that there are three
>documents: The WSFS Constitution, The Standing Rules for Governance of
>the Business Meeting, and the Business Passed On from the Previous
>Worldcon.
"Looked at all of"? I doubt it very much. I might have noticed the
three sections, but not in any great depth...
>Meetings of "deliberative assemblies" (not just legislatures like
>Parliament or Congress, but any group of people meeting to debate and
>decide issues) are governened by "parliamentary law." The term
>"parliamentary" here doesn't mean The British Parliament (or any specific
>country's Parliament), but instead refers to rules for governing
>meetings.
From the derivation of the word, "rules for talking". That does seem to
describe it <g>...
>There are a number of manuals on parliamentary procedure, the best known
>of which is ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER, NEWLY REVISED,
As a matter of interest, how 'new' is that? Having seen bookshelves
with 50 or so Star Trek novels, each of which says "The NEW novel"...
>Whenever a group has special circumstances that are not covered by
>their standard manual and want to make rules, they adopt "special rules
>of order" or "standing rules." For instance, the rule that says that you
>cannot move to postpone a motion indefinitely is a WSFS Standing Rule.
Aha! That's the bit I'd missed, that these are local modifications to
the 'standard' rules. Got it. And I can see how they could easily get
in a mess, with amendments on top of amendments over many years.
>Sorry that took so long to explain, but I needed to set the groundwork
>for anyone not familiar with the way the WSFS works.
That's fine, thanks. And good luck with getting the new version
finished...
P Nielsen Hayden
Robert Sneddon (no...@ibfs.demon.co.uk) wrote, about APOLLO 13:
: I recollect reading the film did make up dialogue to enhance(?)
: the drama for the intended audience. Some of the head-to-head
: stuff in the capsule/LM scenes which were not fully verifiable
: (as there were no cabin voice recorders) were created from the
: script-writer's imagination. It was not a documentary. It was
: not even a docudrama. It was a work of fiction modelled very
: closely on real events of the recent past. As such, I accept
: it as a *real* Dramatic Presentation and a valid Hugo nomination.
: Tom Hanks has never been the commander of any Apollo mission...
: BTW if it is not a new work of fiction, does that mean the
: film-maker's copyright is invalid? Patrick?
What? I don't understand how APOLLO 13 can be considered "not a new work of
fiction." And I certainly don't understand how this has any bearing on its
copyright status.
Briefly: read the copyright FAQ. It's incredibly difficult to alienate a
copyright.
I do think a lot of people in this discussion have very, um, schematic
notions of the categories "fiction" and "nonfiction." I offer two free
hints. First, they don't map onto the categories "not true" and "true."
Second, they overlap.
-----
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@tor.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
P Nielsen Hayden
Stuart C. Hellinger (s...@panix.com) wrote:
: On that basis, APOLLO 13 should not be placed on this ballot. I will not
: go into the argument that I did over on Genie as to whether the movie is
: fiction. It isn't. It definitively is not science fiction under and
: _reasonable_ definition of science fiction.
Once again, we see people on one side of this argument -- and only one side
-- flatly asserting that they have a monopoly on reasonableness.
It's one thing to say you're right. It's another thing to claim that no
reasonable person could possibly disagree.
This, more than anything, alienates me from the sympathy with their views
that I might otherwise feel.
Janice Gelb
In article c...@panix3.panix.com, yb...@panix.com (Ben Yalow) writes:
>In <LDcaND...@LunaCity.com> stan...@LunaCity.com (Kevin Standlee) writes:
>
>>r...@urth.eng.sun.com (Rich McAllister) writes:
>>>
>>> Doesn't somebody save the minutes of the WSFS Business Meetings? If the
>
>NP&FSC was formed. But there has been some stuff done unofficially --
>I've got copies of most of the minutes published over the last quarter
>century or so, along with any notes I took at the meetings. And I've got
>a number of the accounts published in fanzines during the times before my
>first Business Meeting (Noreascon, 1971). And, fortunately,
>Constitutional history doesn't need to go back before 1962/3, since
>that's when the current Constitution was adopted, and there is an
>appendix to George Scithers' fanzine about chairing Discon that has the
>full report of the committee that came up with the Constitution. So all
>I'm missing is stuff from 1964-71.
>
>And I believe George Flynn also keeps archives of some of the stuff, and,
>I assume so do others.
>
Hey, you didn't mention my Smof Talmud *sniff*
:->
Kevin Standlee
yb...@panix.com (Ben Yalow) writes:
>
> Note the words "all" and "irrevocable". L.A.Con has nothing to do with
> those decisions, and Mike, or the Execom, or any other such body, has no
> authority whatsoever on the Hugos.
>
Exactly as I said. Of course, as you know, Mike is one of the three
members of the Hugo Subcommittee, so he shares one-third of the
responsibility for the 'call' as it were.
Seth Breidbart
In article <aahzDqr...@netcom.com>,
Mean Green Dancing Machine <aa...@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <830896...@ibfs.demon.co.uk>,
>Robert Sneddon <no...@ibfs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>film-maker's copyright is invalid? Patrick?
>
>interviewing an actor, who owns the rights to the taping of the
>interview? IANAL, but my understanding is that both of you have some
>rights.
The conversation is the created entity, and it apparently has two
co-authors. In some cases, parts of it (e.g. if the actor replies to
a question with a 20-minute discourse) might have a single author. I
suspect it would be a judge's judgment call.
But to answer the original question, if I write a news article about a
real event, I own the copyright on that article. It's not a work of
fiction (you can tell I'm not a professional journalist), but the
expression is mine, so it's copyrightable.
Seth
Stuart C. Hellinger
Kevin Standlee (stan...@LunaCity.com) wrote:
: s...@panix.com (Stuart C. Hellinger) writes:
: > Kevin Standlee (stan...@LunaCity.com) wrote:
: My decision was on the site selection ballot, and I therefore made my
: ruling at the time the ballot was written and released.
Well, in that case, I do not agree with you on this.
: Stu, I do not necessarily disagree with a lot of what you say, but I
: suspect that if you ever administered a Hugo election, you'd be
: figuratively tarred and feathered and a bunch of changes would be made to
: the WSFS constitution to make the administrators more or less powerless
: to make ANY judgement calls.
I'll take the risk of being tarred and feathered. An administrators job
is to make sure the rules that are in effect at the time are followed.
Sort of like a baseball umpire, the referees in other sports and so on.
If the rules as written allow some judgement calls, depending upon how
they are written, then they can do it, but have to be unbiased.
You do not announce a ruling before the situation develops. I can post a
thousand examples of how silly that is in other cases. You wait until the
decision has to be made. Anything else can give an impression of
impropriaty and can call in to question the impartialness of the
administartor, whether or not it is true. We do not want to taint oreven
possibly allow anyone to think that there is a possible bias. In legal
situations, you can lose just on the hint of a bias, even if it is not true.
If WSFS wants to have an administartor with no judgementlay powers, fine.
If the administrator is to not be allowed to make sure the rules are
followed, then all you need are ballot counters and not an administrator.
I'd probably be a much more fairer admoinistartor than you realize.
: As a rule, I don't think WSFS wants administrators to judge the literary
: content of a work.
I hope not. But if a work is out of genre, as defined in the
Constitution, then the administrator has a job to do.
Again, my unanswered question:
When the nominees are notified, are the nominees who are not familiar
with the field told what the Hugo Awards actually are? If they are not
given the full information, then how do we know that they have accepted
the nomination based on what the award is about? Most people have no idea
what the Hugo Award is.
Oh, and according to an Intersection Newszine, they did not have APOLLO
13 to show as scheduled because the distributor could not understand why
a science fiction convention would want to show a historical film.
Kevin Standlee
Chris Croughton <ch...@keris.demon.co.uk> writes:
> In article <cPcaND...@LunaCity.com>
> stan...@LunaCity.com "Kevin Standlee" writes:
>
> >Meetings of "deliberative assemblies" (not just legislatures like
> >Parliament or Congress, but any group of people meeting to debate and
> >decide issues) are governened by "parliamentary law." The term
> >"parliamentary" here doesn't mean The British Parliament (or any specific
> >country's Parliament), but instead refers to rules for governing
> >meetings.
>
> From the derivation of the word, "rules for talking". That does seem to
> describe it <g>...
>
Exactly! Parliamentary Law = Rules for Talking. I've never used that
before, but I think I will now. Thank you!
> >There are a number of manuals on parliamentary procedure, the best known
> >of which is ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER, NEWLY REVISED,
>
> As a matter of interest, how 'new' is that? Having seen bookshelves
> with 50 or so Star Trek novels, each of which says "The NEW novel"...
>
The most recent edition of ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER, NEWLY REVISED is
dated 1990, and is the 9th edition of a "family of books" known as
"Robert's Rules of Order."
The original POCKET MANUAL OF RULES OF ORDER FOR DELIBERATIVE ASSEMBLIES
(Cover title ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER) by Henry M. Robert was published in
1876; the second edition was published later that year, and a third
edition was published in 1893.
The fourth edition and first complete revision, called ROBERT's RULES OF
ORDER REVISED, which completely reworked the original and enlarged it by
75 percent, was published in 1915. The fifth edition was published in
1943, and the sixth ("seventy-fifth anniversary") edition was published
in 1951. This version is apparently now public domain, so you will see a
number of books out there with the words "Robert's Rules of Order" on
them (notably one illustrated by Will Eisner), but it's mostly out of
date except for a small number of organizations that specifically wrote
that edition in as their authority.
The seventh edition and second complete revision, called ROBERT'S RULES
OF ORDER NEWLY REVISED, which nearly doubled the size of the previous
edition and totally recast it as well, was published in 1970. This work
was a major change in parliamentary law, and it took most of that decade
for it to be totally accepted. There was an eighth edition in 1981 which
made minor changes, and then ninth and current edition was published in
1990. The ninth edition is bigger than previous editions, but that is
primarily because they computer-typeset it and printed it in slightly
larger type. However, new material WAS added; in particular interest to
WSFS, they added material to preferential balloting that wasn't there
before, so the preferential ballot now has a tie-breaking system.
The work is comprehensive and fairly modern, although the authors decided
to retain the somewhat archaic forms of certain motions, most notably the
motion "Previous Question," which really is the motion "Close Debate and
Vote Now." Among those groups with an adopted manual, ROBERT'S is used
by about 80+%. The second-most-adopted (about 8%, I think), is STURGIS.
STURGIS' RULES are shorter and simpler than Robert's, and a number of
archaic forms of motions have been eliminated. In fact, Sturgis is
closer to actual WSFS practice. If WSFS were to adopt Sturgis, we could
probably throw out around a third of the current standing rules.
>
> Aha! That's the bit I'd missed, that these are local modifications to
> the 'standard' rules. Got it. And I can see how they could easily get
> in a mess, with amendments on top of amendments over many years.
>
Exactly. The WSFS Constitution is in a similar state, but is a harder
task for various reasons.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain this.
Kevin Standlee
Member, National Association of Parliamentarians
and American Institute of Parliamentarians
Seth Breidbart
In article <4marjb$u...@panix2.panix.com>,
Stuart C. Hellinger <s...@panix.com> wrote:
>You do not announce a ruling before the situation develops. I can post a
>thousand examples of how silly that is in other cases. You wait until the
>decision has to be made.
If somebody wanted to nominate Apollo 13 if it was eligible, and
something else instead if it wasn't, then the decision as to its
eligibility is relevant to that person before he fills out his ballot.
There's no mechanism for "These are my 5 nominees. If any are
ineligible, here are their replacements."
Likewise, I see no problem with the administrators ruling on the
eligibility of anything else before the nominating ballots are due,
for the same reason.
Seth
Stuart C. Hellinger
P Nielsen Hayden (p...@panix.com) wrote:
: Once again, we see people on one side of this argument -- and only one side
: -- flatly asserting that they have a monopoly on reasonableness.
: It's one thing to say you're right. It's another thing to claim that no
: reasonable person could possibly disagree.
: This, more than anything, alienates me from the sympathy with their views
: that I might otherwise feel.
No, I make no claim that I have a monopoly on anything. But anyone who
will use as a defining characteristic that "X can be anything I say it
is" is not using a reasonable definition, nor any accepted for of
defining anything.
That is what has been used mostly in this case.
The "reasonable man" theory and doctrine has been used for thousands of
years and is still used today. If that doesn't work, they why is it still
applied every day?
There have been some reasonable claims that A13- The Movie is fiction. I
do not agree at all and none of the definitions supplied have ever
convinced me because there are as many definitions to disprove it.
There have been no reasonable claims that it fits any form of science
fiction as we know it or consider an accepted definition other than the
silliness I mentioned above.
Patrick, we'll never be in agreement here, but you are entitled to your
opinion as much as I am.
Stuart C. Hellinger
Ben Yalow (yb...@panix.com) wrote:
: Kevin's not here yet -- will I do?
Maybe. I thought you would have something! ;)
: The wording got changed at the Business Meeting at Noreascon (1971). In
: the Constitution prior to the change, the first sentence read:
: Any Production, directly related to science fiction or fantasy, in the
: fields of radio, television, stage or screen, which has been publicly
: presented for the first time in its present form during the previous
: calendar year.
: A motion was introduced to change the sentence to read:
: Any production in any medium of dramatized science fiction or fantasy,
: which has been publicly presented in its present form during the previous
: calendar year.
: (Note that there was no ratification needed, so the change became
: effective starting at LAcon (1972).)
: The commentary on the motion states:
: A. Joseph Ross and Paul Galvin moved to expand the Drama Hugo to include
: all media.
: This would tend to imply that the change from " directly related to
: science fiction or fantasy" to "of dramatized science fiction or fantasy"
: was not considered the important part -- the change from a limited number
: of explicitly listed media to "in any medium" was what the change was
: intended to do.
True, but though it was not the important part and it does broaden the
forms of media, do we know that the other change was an accident? Just
because it was not discussed, it could have been very deliberate.
: The chair of L.A.Con III (or the Execom, or any other such body of
: L.A.Con III) has absolutely no authority whatsoever over the decisions
: of David/Seth. L.A.Con III decided to have a Hugo Subcommittee, as the
: rules permit. Therefore, all authority over the Hugos was delegated to
: the subcommittee, in accordance with:
: Section 2.10: Exclusions. No member of the current Worldcon Committee nor
: any publications closely connected with a member of the Committee shall be
: eligible for an Award. However, should the Committee delegate all authority
: under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the
: Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the
: Subcommittee only.
: Note the words "all" and "irrevocable". L.A.Con has nothing to do with
: those decisions, and Mike, or the Execom, or any other such body, has no
: authority whatsoever on the Hugos.
But Ben, are you saying that in a case of _blatant_ impropriaty, nothing
can be done?
Oooops! Maybe we should think about that!
Rich McAllister
>How do we know that it did not have an effect of the nominations? The
>correct answer in this case is that the administrator will rule only when
>presented with the problem. That shows no presupposed bias.
>
>In other words, you SAY NOTHING until you have to and when your decision
>will NOT have any influence on the nomination process.
>
>What is so difficult to grasp in that concept?
Um, you've just made all these "rules" up. Why do you have trouble
understanding why we don't treat your opinions as Eternal Truths?
Myself, I think telling everbody what you're going to do as early
as possible sounds like the Right Approach.
--
Rich McAllister (r...@eng.sun.com)
Rich McAllister
In article <4m9l1h$b...@panix3.panix.com> yb...@panix.com (Ben Yalow) writes:
>>> In fact, I asked the Chair of L.A.con III [to fire Seth and David.]
>
>>I gather Mike didn't take your advice.
>
>The chair of L.A.Con III [...]
>has absolutely no authority whatsoever over the decisions
>of David/Seth.
>
>Section 2.10: [...] should the Committee delegate all authority
>under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the
>Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the
>Subcommittee only.
>
>Note the words "all" and "irrevocable". L.A.Con has nothing to do with
>those decisions, and Mike, or the Execom, or any other such body, has no
>authority whatsoever on the Hugos.
Yes, but as I understood it, Stuart didn't ask Mike to reverse the
subcommittee's decision, but rather to appoint a new subcommittee. (I find
it particularly amusing to note that since Mike's on the subcommittee,
Stuart was asking Mike to fire himself.) The constitution does say that the
Subcommittee's decisions are irrevocable, not that the delegation is
irrevocable. I can imagine situations (e.g. inability of the subcommittee
to fulfill its obligations due to death or illness) which *require* that the
committee have the power to appoint a new Hugo subcommittee. But
this is just logic-chopping.
In case I failed to convey the sarcasm I intended in the original post (note
that invoking section 3.10, as I suggested to Stuart, would amount to
cancelling LACon III, which I hoped most people would recognize as a
disproportionate response to the appearance of "Apollo 13" on the Hugo
ballot), I should say that I think the clear intent of the Constitution is
that the committee appoint the subcommittee and leave it alone. Mike did
the right thing, whether or not he, I, or anyone else believes he (or any
subset of the Committee) had the power to do the wrong thing.
Kevin Standlee
jan...@Eng.Sun.COM (Janice Gelb) writes:
>
> Hey, you didn't mention my Smof Talmud *sniff*
>
And perhaps I should have done so. Joke or no, a set of commentaries on
the WSFS Rules would be a good thing, and I intend to use the discussion
documents on the Standing Rules as the start of such a document.
We have, in the past, attempted to try and put EVERYTHING in the
constitution, recognizing that it's the only institutional memory we
have. If there was a different way of keeping track of the more arcane
points, we could possibly shorten the constitution proper.
One of the main reasons the rules keep getting longer is because Fandom
has so many excessively clever people in it; they keep coming up with
crackpot interpretations of rules that everyone else considers perfectly
clear. I may be as much at fault on this as anyone else.
I bet you didn't think your one-off joke at SMOFcon would have such
long-lasting effect...
P Nielsen Hayden
Rich McAllister (r...@urth.eng.sun.com) wrote:
: Wasn't the four-issues-in-a-year rule in force then? So Warhoon 28
: would have been clearly ineligible for the fanzine Hugo nomination.
Was there ever a "four issues in a year rule"? The rule I know is that a
fanzine must have had four issues, period. I think you may be confused.
P Nielsen Hayden
Mean Green Dancing Machine (aa...@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article <830896...@ibfs.demon.co.uk>,
: Robert Sneddon <no...@ibfs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
: >
: > BTW if it is not a new work of fiction, does that mean the
: >film-maker's copyright is invalid? Patrick?
: This is where it gets tough: suppose you are a freelance journalist
: interviewing an actor, who owns the rights to the taping of the
: interview? IANAL, but my understanding is that both of you have some
: rights.
The example you are postulating has nothing particularly to do with
copyright.
"Copyright" =/= the "rights" involved in most contractual relationships in
the entertainment and intellectual-property industry.
It would all be much clearer if the letters r-i-g-h-t were not in the word
"copyright."