Lady Business

Yeah, it's an interesting problem. They define the Hugo as "science fiction’s most prestigious award", not "science fiction fandom's most prestigious award", so this idea of the awards representing "fandom" doesn't seem like it's coming from the members WSFS, but rather from our changing ideas of what "fandom" means as communities start to overlap. As far as I can tell, the people who steer and direct the Hugos consider it the award of the WSFS rather than "fandom's" award and they want the Hugo to continue to be an award given by members of the WSFS and represent the views of the WSFS while making the WSFS itself as inclusive as possible while retaining the demarcations of that specific community.

The Hugo is going through a little bit of a tussle, too — there are certain communities attempting to "claim" it, which isn't really possible. So I think it's a matter of where you're looking from, because my read on the Hugo is the exact opposite: I see a lot of different communities who want to Hugo to represent either all of fandom or specific parts, but the WSFS constitution and those who manage and work with it don't care about those fandom communities at all. The award belongs to fans who consider themselves part of the WSFS because the Hugo is an award of the literary society's perspective, and that's who it represents regardless of what community they belong to. Ah, popular awards! NEVER CHANGE.

I wonder if the cost of the Hugos is in reporting somewhere? It might be. But I would imagine that the bigger cost is fan time, which is why I have the view I do about it (resisting a "time is our most precious resource" Jupiter Ascending joke here because I'm not funny enough to pull it off). This is a neat article about the production of the rockets. It looks pretty intense! Then they generally ship them to winners because of the weight, so more dollars...

I would love a way to get lower income fans involved in the process some way without risking people taking advantage of it (like, really young folks like teenagers!). I could've really used this a few times when the Supporting membership was $60 — I still find that price utterly out of touch with the current economic realities of younger fans. I've purchased a few memberships for folks before (there were no shenanigans and they voted for whatever they wanted, truly!). I do wonder if there's an uncomplicated way to handle it. This is a pipe dream, I suspect, once you get into handing out scholarships, you have to think about the guidelines you use to give them, and that can get messy fast. Mostly I wish they would drop and the Supporting membership price to $25 for a start, see how that goes, and continue looking at other potential inclusive measures based on how Supporting memberships do over the next few years.

It's an interesting topic! One day I will be able to talk less about it and attend business meetings and learn how to suggest changes, I hope. :D