I'll be returning to SFF social media more once my MS is off, but whew...
Today I went from writing a piece on Hindu nationalism to catching up on the latest SFF industry SNAFU: a massively corrupt administration behind this year's Hugo noms.
And yes, it's certainly a mess for writers getting arbitrarily blocked from consideration, but...
This is also why I'd become *so* disheartened by industry in the first place.
Nonsense like this keeps folks in crisis bubbles, far from the greater world.
@MLClark it wouldn't be SFWA without a Hugo scandal. 🙄
SFWA's Nebulas have their own messes, on account of the noms and awards being selected only by SFWA members.
Hugos (the awards by fans) always have their own Worldcon fuckery behind them. And this year it's definitely at a whole new level. Here's Neil Gaiman's attempt at a polite, probing chat with one of the WSFS admin (Dave McCarty) who's behind some of the extremely arbitrary eliminations this year. Just... such petty nonsense. This should not be what's taking up air here.
@MLClark Thank you for reminding me. it's been a long time since I had anything to do with SFWA.
"Petty nonsense" is about right.
Growing up with CanLit, I quickly noticed how much the industry framed its book chats around awards lists - and I really didn't like only talking about lit in competitive settings.
That gut aversion to awards carried with me into genre, where I got to see how much shady hustle & clique-dom underpin award noms.
I'm an admin editor for SFWA's Pubs Crew, where I help bring out the best in articles to help fellow writers, and promote a *super* collaborative team. That's more my jam.