Worldcon is a Wrap

I have a hard time splitting my attention sufficiently to blog during a convention -- I often barely remember to post on social media. But now that it's Monday and I'm having breakfast in my hotel room with a couple hours before I need to be at the train station to go home, let's see if I can remember enough details.

I took Amtrak up from the Bay Area simply because I have the leisure to do so now and it meant I could avoid the annoyance of airports and security theater. It means one overnight in a coach seat. They recline and have a footrest, but it still isn't conducive to good sleep. Having experiemented with that, I'm not sure I'll pursue my fantasy of switching to trains for most of my travel. The cost of a roomette erases any savings on the ticket price, and more than one night in a coach seat would mess me up.

Arrived late Tuesday (with a delay just short of Seattle for a car stalled on the train tracks). I once again roomed with Catherine Lundoff (head of Queen of Swords Press, who also is the author of this month's LHMP story). I had signed up in advance to volunteer at Registration (which I very much enjoy doing) but after an initial contact had never received any further information, despite a promise of a training session and a scheduling signup sheet. Checked in about that last week and was told I'd get an email link for signup. That never happened so I checked in multiple times on Wednesday at Reg to get on the schedule and no one ever had time to get me sorted out, so I gave up on being a volunteer this year. I may look for some other area to volunteer in next time, because the organizational chaos in Registration is now an established pattern.

I had my first panel Wednesday: "Horrible Histories," in reference to the show by that name with a general topic of presenting history to a popular audience, especially through podcasts and the like. The panel was great -- lively and packed with knowledgable co-panelists. (Including one of my LHMP authors, B. Pladek. This will become a recurring motif throughout the convention: bumping into people I've published.)

Mostly what I do at conventions these days is participate in programming and try to bump into and hang out with people whom I mostly see only at conventions. In addition to the usual suspects, this included a number of the regulars at the Sunday SFWA writing dates, as well as people I've met through the Hugo nominee Discord. I also still bump into people I knew from back in my filking days, although we don't tend to have much in common these days.

Thursday was a panel on Medieval Women Writers, which again was packed with knowledgable people. I was moderator and got some nice comments on how the panel was run from several folks I bumped into later, so I'll conclude it went well. Thursday dinner was with Catherine and with fellow Queen of Swords author Michael Merriam and his wife, plus two other friends of Catherine's. (She tends to get overloaded with advance-planned dinner groups; I tend to leave meals to serendipity. Sometimes this intersects.)

Friday started off with a breakfast meet-and-greet in the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) suite. Several pleasant conversations but as usual in that type of space, the acoustics made it difficult to really enjoy them. (See my other comments about parties.) I had an autographing session at noon, which I tend to treat as "here is a specific time and place you can be sure of finding me" rather than expecting hordes of adoring fans. I had several people drop by early in the hour to have me sign things and chatted with other low-volume authors around me. I'd brought inventory to sell, featuring Skin-Singer. I brought a dozen copies and eventually across the weekend sold ten of them. Not bad! Later Thursday was a Conlang (invented languages) panel, focusing specifically on inventing/using conlangs in fiction. That topped off my run of very enjoyable panels (not that there were any unenjoyable ones after!). Didn't manage to snag any dinner plans with others that day, but I treated myself to my usual One Very Nice Dinner in the steakhouse at the hotel.

Saturday, of course, had the decks cleared for Hugo activities, which meant that I'd left myself lots of time for fidgeting and looking at clocks. Midday I went to one of the rehearsal sessions. As part of it we got to practice holding the award--though not the actual version, since this year's base involves glass and they wanted to reduce the chance of breakage during practice.

I wandered around and attended some panels until it was time to go back to the hotel to dress. The pre-ceremony reception is primarily a mechanism for getting all the attending nominees in one place so that official pictures can be taken and we can be herded into our reserved seats in a single mass. But it was also a great time to relax and meet people. (There was an appetizer buffet, though not enough to substitute for the dinner that we would all not have time for.) My "plus one" for the Hugo events was Ursula Whitcher (not only a good friend, but also one of my LHMP authors) whose book North Continent Ribbon has been getting  some very nice attention. Since we intersect different sets of people, we had fun introducing each other to other nominees that we knew. At one point I managed to have three of my LHMP authors (including Ursula) together in a selfie, when we ran into Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and Rebecca Fraimow (who I had not quite realized were married to each other when I accepted their stories).

The ceremony itself was much like every other Hugo ceremony I've attended except for two brief moments of anticipation. (In addition to Related Work, I was the designated acceptor and speech-deliverer for my co-author Camestros Felapton in the Best Fan Writer category.) I did not win a Hugo, but honestly I think the work that won (Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll) was the most substantial work of the nominee group. The post-Hugo party had all the deficits of a party that starts at 11:30pm and is held in an acoustically noisy space. Ursula and I got some appetizers (again, no substantial food) and then agreed we were done. See below for a slighly modified version of my Hugo acceptance speech.

Sunday started off with a Table Talk (small-group discussion focused on a specific person) at 9am, which meant I was quite gratified when four people showed up, including old friends and people who had enjoyed one of my panels. They asked questions that allowed me to tell fun stories about my career and interests, and I ended up selling five books and signing more. And then the rest of Sunday pretty much involved resting by listening to panels. And here it is, Monday morning, and I need to check out and take a taxi to the train station.

Here is the speech I would have given if I'd won the Hugo, modified in a couple of places to refer to being a nominee, rather than being a winner. (It works for both.)

Heather's (I didn't win a) Hugo Speech

Facts matter.

Logic matters.

Truth matters.

As we learned during the debacle of the 2023 Hugo Awards, access to the truth is not always granted to us. But with data and careful analysis we can discern the shape of the space that truth must inhabit—the things it must include and the things it cannot include.

When I first looked at the 2023 Hugo data and started poking at it, I viewed it as a puzzle to solve. (I recently retired from a career as an industrial failure analyst and solving that sort of puzzle was my bread and butter.) But as more information came out—from people like our co-finalists Jason Sanford and Chris Barkley—and when Camestros graciously asked me to be a co-author on his more extensive analysis, I saw this project as an opportunity to help ensure that the parts of the truth that could be known were documented and laid out for posterity.

Thank you for considering this work valuable enough to nominate for a Hugo award.

If I have one regret about this nomination, it’s that I had the idea—back over a year ago—to reach out to all the people researching and writing about different facets of this issue and see if we wanted to create a combined publication to document our understanding in a single source. In an ideal world, that would have been the publication you were considering for Best Related Work. I realized I didn’t have the time and energy to carry it through. But at this time I want to recognize, in addition to Jason and Chris, the work of ErsatzCulture, Arthur Liu, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Jameson Quinn, Liz Batty, and others.

Because facts matter.