The Hugo Awards were presented this evening at Chicon 7 in Chicago, and have been well-reported elsewhere (Facebook, Twitter, Fictionmags, and of course Locus Online), so I don’t need to recount the winners. My perspective was a little different this year, not having a guest invitation from one of the Locus crew to the pre-ceremony reception for the nominees, where they usually serve decent hors d’oeuvre and provide drink tickets. (Actually, to be specific, in the past ten years I was a nominee myself twice, so got in; three of those 10 I didn’t attend; so there were five times I got in as a guest of Liza or Gary or one of the others. This year Liza and Gary took other guests.) So this year I got in line with everyone else and ended up six rows from the back in a hall that filled to capacity, with overflow sitting on the floor around the edges… Given the perspective, I saw virtually the entire event on the screens at the ends of the stage, rather than directly; there were too many heads in front of me, and the stage was too far away.
John Scalzi kept things moving along though many of the acceptance speeches were rather lengthy. My partner stayed back at his son’s condo and watched the event via Ustream, which, as quickly became known, cut off the show about half way through as the movie clips ran for supposed copyright infringement. So they, and many others at home, missed the last part of the show, with all the most important categories.
On the other hand, they did see Locus win, which was gratifying for everyone concerned since this was the first time Liza and crew won on their own, since Charles Brown died, and especially since rules changes to the Hugo category definitions, proposed last year and ratified this year, apparently rule out Locus (and a couple other perennial nominees) from this category forever more. It was nice that Liza mentioned, among two dozen other editors and contributors, me, as the ‘illustrious’ website designer.
I did not make it up to any of the parties (and the Hugo Losers party was strictly barred from anyone not specifically invited), mainly due to the long lines at the elevators, not to mention the hot and crowded conditions on the party floors that I’d already experienced the night before. I did mingle with the winners in the ceremony hall for a while, then mosey through the Big Bar several times, but then eventually came up to the room to write this.
It was mentioned to me today that my new site, sfadb.com, might qualify next year in the ‘related book’ category, which can include websites (such as this year’s winner). Hmm. I noticed among the statistics released post-ceremony that it took only 34 nominations to get an item onto the final ballot in that category this year. Hmm.
Tomorrow morning I check out and fly home. I didn’t get a post written last night, and have mostly panel reports from yesterday and today still to write up. I’ll get to those in the next couple days.
And I’ll also be updating sfadb.com with all the awards results from this weekend — Hugo, Chesley, Carl Brandon, Golden Duck, etc., soon.
