I once was a writer who wrote out of spite,
Converting the few free minutes
of long workweeks
into words.
That didn’t last.
I once was a writer who relied on a muse.
The words poured freely but rarely.
Rarer yet…
Then never.
And now I sit down
for a thousand
daily
words.
Time and again.
Habit and perseverance.
August. Quebec City. Tourists.
Tim Hortons lobby, filled with folks studying the bright display promoting savoury snacks.
French only.
The two cashiers stand still; paragons of patience.
I smile, stride in, bypass the others.
“Bonjour…”
Aaaand I’m back. Just 10 days ago, I typed up the hopeful, giddy post, Onward to Worldcon. In it, I wondered just what kind of cool adventures and experiences I would have had over the following week.
Much has changed.
Short version: many adventures were had. My overall impression of my first-ever Worldcon was positive, and I’ll definitely attend the next one in California. Many fun new friends.
Long version: wild week, eh. I tried to fill every waking moment with new experiences and friends and panels and parties, and I had very very many waking moments, since I slept only about 4-5 hours per night.
Worldcon felt to me like an intricate clock with ten thousand moving pieces. Some of the pieces had redundancies, so if something failed (and I’m sure many things did), we the attendees never found out. It was a monumental event of staggering complexity, and the fact that it went as well as it did is a testament to the combined efforts of all the volunteers. Sincere and heartfelt kudos to you all, my friends.
There’s a lot to process here, and I’m sure random bits and pieces will fall into place weeks and months later. For now, though, here’s a list of the good, the bad, and the fugly.
To start with, the fugly. The essay I posted yesterday, When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident, has been improbably successful. Over 8,000 blog views within 24 hours, over 1,400 likes and 800 reskeets (yes, we call them “reskeets” – no, we will not change), and so many excellent conversations. That’s more than I could ever hope for. Anyhow, not much else for me to say on that front.
The second fugly aspect was the registration line… My initial plan had been to fly in the night before (Quebec City -> Chicago -> Seattle), crash at my brother’s place, get a 7am bus to the convention center, get my pass, and make it to one of the 9am-ish panels.
Reality interfered. The flight to Chicago got delayed to the point where I had to spend the night at the airport, and didn’t get to Seattle till 9:30am. I raced from there directly to the convention center, big backpack in tow. (Experienced traveler tip: always carry deodorant, toothpaste, and a toothbrush! That cost me five minutes, but it made me much more pleasant to be around, eh.)
I arrived at the convention center at 10:30am. And then… Then I spent almost two hours waiting in the registration line. One of my many, many privileges (of which I’m constantly cognizant) is that I’m physically fit and in good health. Even so, that line almost defeated me. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have felt like to those who had mobility issues or couldn’t spend two hours surrounded by the loud crowd on all sides.
The convention staff claimed there were some connectivity issues. (They apparently lasted the entire first day, judging by the Discord chatter from those who tried to watch panels remotely.) If there was a backup in place, it must have failed. I was sleep-deprived and borderline delirious, but I swear I heard them ask the folks in line if anyone could join them and help with processing the registration passes.
As we got closer to noon, they made another announcement, telling the panelists with the upcoming panels to step aside for the express line so they wouldn’t actually miss their panels. It was not good… The wait was made worse because my neighbour in line was a) an old-timey Worldcon visitor, with 20+ years of convention memories, and b) incredibly cynical: they kept saying how none of the opening/closing events mattered, etc, etc. Later, during the second hour, my neighbour moved on to describe their daily routine, their preferred type of digital tablet, and more. Unbidden. I nodded and tried to filter it all out and kept promising myself that the day could yet be salvaged.
Finally, at 12:15pm, I finally got my pass with the neat little “my first Worldcon” ribbon and raced upstairs, to find the third panel on my daily schedule.
From what I understand, it’s not always like that. What I don’t understand is what specific cascade of issues caused all that. Later in the day, folks who arrived at the convention center in the afternoon claimed it still took them 90 or so minutes to get processed.
This… kerfuffle, let’s call it that, made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, I ought to throw my hat into the panelist pool for the 2026 convention. I know a lot about several topics, and will gladly contribute my knowledge if they’ll have me. I would do just about anything to minimize any further chance of being stuck in the Line From Hell. (Yes, folks, it was that bad.)
So that was the fugly: the registration at the start and the name-mangling giggling mess toward the end. I’ll intersperse the good and the bad.
Good: the variety of panels was mind-blowing! Hundreds of them, with at least 10 to pick from for any one-hour slot. (Some went longer than an hour.) Some panels were so full that folks sat on the floor (the ones with GRRM and Martha Wells, for example), while others were oddly sparse, like the panel on the future of energy. (It had an excellent mix of experts in the field. One of them gave me their personal email address since they don’t have a blog, huzzah!)
Bad: folks, I get that it was all volunteer-run, but some of the moderators… There were two particularly bad examples. At one panel, the moderator never even showed up. The panelists were three women, who were all published authors, and a 95-year-old man who used to be a UW professor. (If I recall correctly, he may have published something at one point.) The panelists decided to self-moderate. The old man turned his introduction into a bona fide speech. Weird, but okay. When the panelists decided to discuss the panel’s topic (I’m being vague here: no topic, no names), the old man interrupted one of the women and launched into an honest-to-God lecture on the topic, as if we were a bunch of college freshmen. He went on and on and on. I finally stood up and walked out. Quite a few people followed me. I felt so incredibly sorry for those panelists…
The other weirdly moderated panel actually had a moderator. The moderator was a woman, as were all the panelists. (One of them is among my favourite podcasters!) Problem was, the moderator wasn’t sure what her job entailed, and an impatient panelist had to explain it to her. Over the hour that followed, the moderator launched into looooong monologues about her personal involvement with the panel’s subject. She talked on and on, longer than any two (out of four) panelists put together. The audience grew restless. The poor panelists couldn’t hide the impatience and frustration from their faces. Finally, the impatient panelist interrupted the moderator when the filibuster showed no sign of slowing down. Some discussion among the panelists took place. The offended moderator buried her hands under the table, texting or browsing or doing who knows what else on her phone.
Five minutes before the panel was scheduled to end, the moderator finally looked up, realized she missed something, and announced that it was time for some Q&A. The panel went wayyy past the one-hour mark so, once again, I felt like a jerk by getting up and walking away, to get a good seat at the next panel before it filled up. Ho hum.
Good: the panel on navigating AI for writers and editors was excellent, in large part due to Jason Sanford, who made it very very clear that, as a moderator, he would not suffer fools gladly – or at all. He kept the ideologically polarized crowd in check, especially after one of them jeered something in support of the pro-AI panelist. Sanford sounded downright intimidating from time to time, but he made sure the panel stayed on track, he didn’t monologue, and he gave each of the four panelists time to speak.
Neil Clarke, of the Clarkesworld fame, spent most of the hour literally facepalming as a blatantly pro-AI “author” opposite him used every pro-AI excuse in the book, (The other two panelists were a pro-consent, anti-AI professor, and another professor who kept saying how neat it would be to have an AI cowriter…) Neil has been an anti-AI champion with his magazine for years, and he made his point quite clear during that panel. Later, at the awards ceremony, he gave a brief but passionate anti-AI speech when he accepted his Hugo for the best short-form editor. You rock, Neil! Keep up the good fight, eh.
Bad: food and coffee options inside the convention center. It was very very strange to see that the sole coffee stand (and in Seattle, no less!) packed up and left for the day by 5:40pm. With thousands of caffeine addicts milling around, you’d think that the baristas’ overtime wage would’ve paid for itself within five minutes. (Or hey, maybe their boss could come by and take over…) But nope. The overpriced food vendors on the exhibit floor also folded up by 6pm. I more or less had to beg them for the privilege of buying a small bag of chips and a coke for the low, low price of $8. Oof. Oof, I say. (And no, there were no vending machines.)
Good: the 7am coffee meet-ups were excellent. Part of the Fringe program, they were partly a tour of Pike Place, partly a way to make new friends, which we all did. I’ve made it out to just two of those early meet-ups, I think, and the second one ballooned into an awesome one-on-one conversation of humanity and theology as it pertains to sci-fi and fantasy. (“Those aren’t gods – you just recreated superheroes!” Heh. You rock, C.W.) Granted, there wasn’t much to do at the actual convention center before 10am (aside from a few very early panels) because the exhibit floor stayed closed till 10pm, but nonetheless – those coffee meetups were wholesome and fun and edumacational. (If you ever travel to Seattle, touring Pike Place around 7am is a unique experience: it’s empty and devoid of crowds; quite different from the rush hour.)
Bad: you know, I’m actually out of bad stuff – it was overwhelmingly good! The only borderline weird thing was the nature of the big masquerade event. At first, I assumed it was going to be a masked ball. One of the old-timers assured me that was not the case: all were welcome, mask or no mask. After that reassurance, I assumed it was going to be a masked ball, but with mask-less folks welcome to attend and mingle. Welllll, it was actually more of a fashion show. Folks sat in the huge auditorium, while up on stage, cosplayers of all kinds took turns to display their amazing costumes. (Giant squid person – you were a genius!) That was a very different pace and vibe than I’d expected, so I hung around for just 10 minutes before bouncing out.
Good: authors! It was so, so great to finally meet my favourite authors in person. I’d met Matt Dinniman (he of the Dungeon Crawler Carl fame) a few times before, but I kept running into him at the convention, and the two panels with him that I attended were brilliant. A genuinely nice guy on top of being a great author! Mary Robinette Kowal is now at the very top of the list of authors I’ll read once I get through the books on my short-term list. (Geek problems, am I right?) Her live taping of the “Writing Excuses” podcast (with Erin Roberts and Howard Tayler) taught me more about writing than some of the 200-page writing manuals I’d encountered in my journey. In a building full of brainiacs, she stood out by a long shot.
Meeting John Scalzi and GRR Martin was also fun. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for about 20 years now, and it was great to finally put the voice to the persona. (His pink unicorn “Alpha Male” T-shirt was excellent trolling.) Martin showed up 12 minutes late to his own panel, did quite a bit of monologuing, and had to be gently (but firmly) stopped by Scalzi when his monologues got too long. Interesting guy. I was not at the event (autograph signing?) when one of Martin’s extra-toxic fans asked if he could please hurry up and give his series to Brandon Sanderson (who was also present) before dying of old age. Ye gods… That might have been the ugliest fan interaction Worldcon has experienced in years. It felt as if one of the extra-toxic subreddits breached containment.
Good: the Freebie Lounge! That was such an interesting part of the convention… It was located in the corner of the big exhibit hall on the second floor. There were books, books, and more books. Some titles had been brought by authors seeking to boost their recognition: dozens of books, shrink-wrapped and waiting to be picked up. Some authors set up a little autograph table for their freebie books. (Great strategy!) There were a lot of old-timey sci-fi magazines from the 60s and 70s: I snagged a couple, and will devour them at leisure. (Retro sci-fi is quite different from the stuff today, for better and for worse.) There were also the latest issues of today’s top magazines: Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Analog.
The local SFF fans helped out by donating books from their own collections, which was unexpectedly wholesome! That’s how I got my hands on four Terry Pratchett paperbacks. (I’m on a long-term quest to acquire every Terry Pratchett novel, but only from thrift stores and/or freebie locations.)
I had to be very selective (limited luggage space, limited shelf space) but even so, I ended up with 11 books, including lots of amazing fanzines! The most unexpected find was the hardcover copy of Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries by Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary comic. The book is in the format of Art of War (one rule, many commentaries), except that it’s annotated by military grunts and mercenaries from the distant future. It’s beyond funny. Tayler was kind enough to sign it for me when I bumped into him at a panel later that day. (What a guy!)
Good: parties! All in all, I partied for five nights straight – the sixth night was a fun barbecue after a day of hiking near Mt Rainier. (Probably the best yet least attended Fringe event. Only nine sign-ups out of 5,000+ attendees!) I’m an introvert who is very very good at storing social energy, much like a sloth has a hidden reservoir of energy reserves. The convention had a dedicated dry-erase board where different party organizers could promote their events.
A few were somewhere in the city, but most were at the nearby hotel, three or four at a time. The hotel’s elevators couldn’t quite handle all the traffic, and required a key card to use them after 10pm. At one point, our gregarious gaggle of geeks got tired of waiting and just started going up and down the stairs, following the noise on each floor till we found an unlisted (but not unwelcoming!) party. Much fun was had by all, especially at the famous annual Dead Dog Party (disregard the odd name) that was bigger and more attended than all the other parties combined. Huzzah!
Good: friendos! Sooo many new friendos. Many emails were exchanged. Lots of social media connections were forged. At least one epic conversation will continue.
Not bad, but funny: as someone only tangentially aware of Worldcon (this was my first), I’d always heard about the so-called Bar Con, aka the after-panel meetup at the nearest bar, where all the writers would trade lore and tips and gossip, being all cool and writer-y. For some reason, in my mind’s eye I’d always thought it would be a fancy, private-club sort of affair, with posh velvet chairs, relaxed lounge music, and fairly quiet, witty conversations…
Reader, I was wrong. I was so wrong that it’s actually pretty damn funny. (I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t pack a full-on suit in my Osprey backpack!) The bar at the nearby Sheraton hotel had writers, yes, and fans of said writers, and many many other people. Hundreds of them, actually. It was louder than some of the concerts I’ve attended in the past, and that just added to the hilarious mismatch of my expectations and the actual reality.
It was a bit odd when the hotel’s bar stopped serving drinks at the stroke of midnight. That was on Saturday night, no less, right after the awards ceremony, which mercifully ended around 10:40pm. Later on, I heard that that the city ordinance is to stop serving drinks at 2am. Soooo, much like with the coffeeshop, when you make a deliberate choice to stop serving drinks to a giant crowd on a Saturday night… Weird business choice, brah. (I know, I know, Worldcon had no part in it. Just listing my personal subjective experiences.) Nonetheless, I made a couple of new friends in that Bar Con crowd, so all was well.
Good: SFWA events! I wrote recently that I managed to join the SFWA after making juuuust enough money to exceed their associate member threshold. Their members-only breakfast on Friday, followed by a networking reception just before the awards on Saturday, was fun. I did end up accidentally talking to at least one AI apologist (eww. Eww, ewww, ewww.) but the vast majority of them were cool cats. There was an issue with SFWA forums during the convention, so I joined their Discord server (not my favourite platform: bad archival functionality), and made even more friendos that way!
Good: film festival! My short film Please Don’t Send Help screened on Thursday, to the audience of about 80 people. There were approving-sounding face noises. There were no rotten eggs or tomatoes or booing or riots. There was a very small but cozy Q&A at the end (thanks, Shawn!) and at least one person who recognized me and stopped by to chat a few days later. It’s always wild to see something I created on a big screen. What an excellent treat.
Neither good nor bad: my writing streak took quite a hit, and that’s entirely on me. I tried (mostly failed, but tried) to write at least a little bit on my phone’s Notes app every day, and managed to type up exactly 2,183 words. Better than nothing, but not a whole lot, considering I was away for eight whole days. Ah well, it was still progress. Today was the first day when I actually sat down and typed typed typed. The end result: 1,644 new words for my first draft. Not too shabby.
Super-good: sooo much inspiration! I jotted down ideas for at least three new short stories, as well as a sci-fi novel that would actually utilize my degree in political science. (Seriously, it’ll pretty much write itself.) Just gotta finish the current WIP, which has just reached the 55% or so mark… It’s good to have more ideas than you know what to do with! I also took lots of notes on book recommendations (as well as the occasional movie) from all the panelists. My reading list will never ever run dry, and that is beautiful.
And so… Fun event. Not perfect, not terrible. Will come again. Lots of fun free books (the best kind!) for my reading pile. I haven’t checked yet, but I believe the organizers are uploading the panels that got filmed (not all got filmed) and will keep the files available till the end of the year. So much to stream!
A year from now, I’ll be the grizzled second-year Worldcon attendee – to quote a joke, “This isn’t my first rodeo!” I say at my second rodeo.
I’ll see you all there, I hope.
It’s August 16, 2025, Worldcon, Seattle, and the main presenter of the annual Hugo awards butchers almost every foreign name on the list. When trying to pronounce an unusual African name, the presenter giggles.
It’s 1934, and Frank Lloyd Wright designs his masterpiece, Fallingwater. The beautiful house sits over a waterfall. To an outside observer, it’s a marvel of architecture, a fusion of engineering and nature. To the people who actually live there, it’s an endless nightmare of leaking roofs and cracked concrete. Fallingwater’s owner nicknames it “Rising Mildew.”
The 2025 Worldcon had hundreds of panels and thousands of attendees. It had fantastic freebies and fanfic fans and fun filking. It had authors and poets and filmmakers and podcasters. It had five full days of genre celebrations, of coming together as one.
It also failed at its most basic, fundamental purpose.
The cornerstone of this annual gathering is the Hugo awards ceremony. During the days leading up to the big event, the convention attendees engage in quiet discussions about the nominees. They wish their favourite authors the best of luck. They recommend the finalist books and art to all their friends.
And then… Then the esteemed Hugo awards host (as well as the secondary host) mispronounces non-English names, over and over. (Even Denis Villeneuve wasn’t spared.) They skip one of the nominees altogether, making the audience shout in unison, after which there is some awkward fumbling. (“Did we miss one? Oh no! Why aren’t they on the list? … Clearly they have to win because they were on the second page.”)
(That nominee did not win.)
The skipped nominee was Kamilah Cole, a Jamaican-born woman, whose only fault, it seems, was having her name on the second side of a page. (Typing on both sides of the page is a brand new technological development. Very few people have heard of it. We cannot expect mere Hugo awards hosts to keep up with such groundbreaking inventions.)
A house is supposed to keep you safe and dry, even when – or perhaps especially when – it doubles as a work of art. If it can’t do that bare minimum, it becomes worse than useless. It turns into a liability.
Likewise, an annual awards ceremony that fumbles that most basic of all tasks – pronouncing the finalists’ names – fails at its most basic purpose.
It’s May 2004, rural Nevada, high school graduation. The kind of school where many students get pregnant before they get their diploma. The kind of school where the biggest scandal of the year is the video of two boys kissing at a house party. The kind of school where the History teacher stops in the middle of a joke, chuckles, and says, “I’ll finish it later” when he realizes one of the school’s three Black students is sitting in the back of the class. The kind of school where all the students get lined up against the wall every few weeks, while a gigantic German Shepherd sniffs each crotch, presumably seeking drugs, and its handler, a gun-wielding cop, smirks.
It’s that kind of school. In a small desert town with one big street, one Walmart, and more casinos than libraries.
And as the graduation ceremony approaches, I worry that the announcer will butcher my name, just like most of my American classmates have during my sole year with them. The big day comes, and I’m beyond amazed when the announcer makes sure to ask each senior how to pronounce their name – and then gets all of them right, including mine.
Beneath the bright lights, on that stage, I get the ceremonial piece of paper and hear my true name. Few people clap: they’re so used to mangling my name that they literally can’t recognize me. No matter. I exit, stage right. Less than three months later, I leave for college. I never return.
The Hugo awards ceremony features a somewhat elaborate song number, with multiple people (including the awards presenters) singing in unison, at length, repeatedly. At one point, they even get the audience to join in.
There’s a very good chance they’d spent more time rehearsing that song than the names of the finalists, for whom this awards ceremony may well have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
During the ceremony, both of the main announcers say – repeatedly – that they don’t have a pronunciation guide for the names.
Five days later, there is still no official statement from the organizers. The announcer who giggled at the African name is silent on social media.
Aside from a Bluesky post by Elizabeth Bear, there has been no discussion, no articles, nothing beyond social media rumours. This is being relegated to the dustbin of history. An unfortunate faux pas. An oopsie.
I shall not let it fade away.
In the global forum that is the internet, I rank just slightly above a street preacher with a megaphone. I don’t expect this essay to be seen by more than a few dozen eyeballs. But my blog will live on for decades, and so will this contemporary record.
It’s 2015, Seattle, tech industry. Many of my coworkers are from India. Their culture fascinates me, as do their names. I take great care to memorize each arrangement of syllables, to commit to memory the names I’d never before encountered. Suyash, Vairavan, Srinivas, and many others. The sole Indian woman on my team is named Vijayalakshmi Deverakonda, and I’m in love with the melodious sound of her name, the way the syllables cascade off my tongue.
The rest of my white coworkers don’t share my respect for people’s names. They routinely call her “Vijay,” which is a male name, and more than a little insulting.
Within two years, Vijayalakshmi and I become workplace rivals. Afterward, we don’t stay in touch. But for a few months, I knew I’d made a fellow immigrant happy because I’d gone the extra mile to learn her true name, to treat her like a fellow human being.
Every failure can be explained by one of these two fundamental explanations: evil or stupidity. Malice or ignorance. It’s often hard to determine which of the two is the main factor. When people make assumptions, and when they build further assumptions on such shaky foundations, their ultimate conclusions diverge from reality.
I make no assumptions. I can believe that a celebrity of the literary world, the main announcer chosen by the 2025 Worldcon committee far in advance, was merely ignorant, and maybe nervous, but not evil.
I say this to myself, and then I remember that giggle in the middle of that unusual name.
Here is how to pronounce “Grigory Lukin.” The first name rhymes with “story.” It has nothing to do with the name “Gregory.” The last name rhymes with “win.” It does not at all sound like “looking.”
For the purposes of brevity, this essay will not cover the pronunciation of my consonant-rich patronym.
It’s 2017, Seattle, the same stressful tech company where white and Indian employees mingle but don’t mix. In a work chatroom, a fellow white guy makes a dirty joke about an Indian woman whose first name is Sukdeep.
I submit an HR report, as do several of my Indian workers. They’re surprised that I would care. To me, that’s a matter of fundamental human decency.
My white male coworker is a successful programmer. He gets a chat with HR, but suffers no further consequences.
The Hugo awards presenter is neither white nor male nor a programmer. But they are successful.
I live in Québec these days. Either here or in America, I can pass for a local, as long as I don’t open my mouth or show my ID. My Russian accent will never truly go away, and for as long as it stays with me, changing my name to something more Western-sounding would be futile. I shall always be The Other.
We rarely speak of this – we who have made a life for ourselves in the West, we who have fully integrated, we who have found a niche in this world. We rarely voice that deep-seated anxiety: do our new compatriots actually accept us? Or are we still viewed as The Other? Do they chuckle and mock our names when we’re not around? Do they bother to view us as fully human even as they enjoy our writing, our films, our art?
We’ll never know for sure. It shall forever be unknowable. Probably paranoia, nothing more.
And then the host of the most prestigious sci-fi and fantasy awards ceremony giggles while reading a foreign name, and the deep-seated anxiety flares up, and I think that maybe it’s not paranoia after all.
The importance of names is an ancient concept, perhaps even eternal. Even today, some cultures give their children a fake name to ward off evil spirits. Religious Jews don’t pronounce the four-letter name of God written in the Torah. Some cults insist on changing their followers’ names to separate them from their past. Many cultures automatically change women’s last names to those of their husbands. Residential schools were infamous for changing Native American children’s names as part of the forced assimilation process. In fairy tales around the world, through the ages, a villain could be defeated only if the hero learned and pronounced their true name.
And at the annual Hugo awards ceremony, the host giggles when they read an unusual name during the highlight of someone’s professional career.
Most issues can fit on a spectrum from one to ten.
Refusing to rehearse foreign names and then mangling them during an awards ceremony is more serious than a playground microaggression.
At the same time, it’s far less serious than a large-scale cultural genocide.
At the same time, it’s still on the spectrum.
Things you should do if you’re overwhelmed and nervous while presenting the most prestigious annual science fiction and fantasy award:
1. Take a few seconds to refer to your pronunciation guide.
1a. If a pronunciation guide is not available, demand one. Have the singers come back on stage to fill the gap until the guide is procured.
2. If the pronunciation guide doesn’t exist, take a few more seconds to summon somebody (perhaps even one of the singers!) to help you.
3. Apologize to the audience, invite every finalist to join you on the stage, and have them pronounce their own names into the microphone.
4. Apologize even more profusely. Admit your nervousness and lack of preparation. Give the microphone to somebody more qualified. Walk off the stage. Don’t return.
Things you should not do:
1. Don’t giggle.
2. Don’t goddamn giggle.
You may mock this essay, as is your right. In these turbulent times, as the planet gets ever hotter, as war crimes get more horrific, as genocides get swept under the rug, this is what people complain about?
And yes, sure, you’d be right. Saving even a single starving child from a sniper is infinitely more important than this issue, now and forevermore. And yet, if your first reaction was to scoff, consider this: is your name conventional? Do people ever giggle when they see it? Are you aware of the concept of microaggressions? Would you say you believe in equality, that racism is wrong, that diversity is important? When you claim to be an ally to those different from yourself, do you accept (both intellectually and emotionally) that they have certain issues which you cannot comprehend but should believe?
If there’s ever an apology letter from anyone involved, it’ll probably blame stress, and anxiety, and growing up in a social environment that didn’t have such linguistic diversity.
Over the past five days, there has been no such letter.
I’m prepared to accept that the main announcer (and their helper) was an anxiety-ridden human being, with human biases, with imperfections. I understand. There are eight billion people in this world. Quite a few of them have sins that are far worse than laughing at foreign names.
I don’t demand perfection. I demand basic competency.
This essay isn’t about the Hugo awards announcers. It’s about the stunning incompetence of the ceremony’s planners.
Here are some things I’d love to learn, but doubt I ever will:
I’ve been a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy. I can go to great lengths to suspend my disbelief. But if you expect me to believe that a racist, homophobic, rural high school in one of the poorest states can find a professional name announcer, while a giant annual convention held in one of the most prosperous cities cannot… I’m sorry. Even I cannot suspend my disbelief that much.
Was the awards presenter chosen on the basis of friendship and connections and good vibes? Were they chosen because they had decades of experience in speculative fiction? Was there no one else available who had a richer linguistic and sociopolitical background?
Would it be fair to say that even if any concerns had been voiced at all, the overall sentiment was to dismiss them and hope for the best? Let’s just do it and be legends, man. We’ll do it live. Fingers and toes crossed. YOLO, eh. What’s the worst that can happen?
A system that awards top jobs based on seniority and connections rather than competency related to the job at hand ceases to be a system. It becomes a joke.
This essay is not about the US politics.
Throughout history, one of the worst and most unusual punishments was to have your name struck from historical record, as if you never existed at all.
Call it petty. Call it poetic. Call it neither, or both. I deliberately choose not to mention the name of the giggling name-mangler in this essay. Likewise for their co-host. It’s a bit ironic, since neither of them had actually introduced themselves when they started the ceremony. (Nice song, though.)
The announcer’s name will probably live on through all their many written works, but this essay will do them no such honour.
Names have power. Deleting them, even more so.
Someday, I hope to be a Hugo finalist. I’ve got about 35 years left; 40 if I eat my veggies. If I ever do get that honour, when my turn comes, will the announcer mangle my name? Will I be afforded the most basic human respect of an identity?
In this genre of dragons and werewolves and rocketships, this is my wildest, most improbable hope: that someday, we shall have awards ceremonies where people with unusual names will be treated as individuals.
May we live long enough to witness such wonders.
Notes and video excerpts:
“Right, there’s supposed to be a binder, right?” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=yh96eRIiOFmtsOhO&t=1220
“What? I do? I do not know how to say it because nobody gave me the pronunciation guide.” [referring to “Sheine Lende” by Darcie Little Badger, who went on to win the YA prize.] https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=dL34349j1IKwgQKK&t=7655
“Did we miss one? Oh no! Why aren’t they on the list? … Clearly they have to win because they were on the second page.” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=nVOK4Ivqe0IB9D5d&t=7671
Typing this up at 1:40am before catching some Zzz’s, a bit of packing, more than a bit of Tim Hortons, and a bus to the first of the two flights to Seattle, to the 2025 Worldcon.
This will be my first Worldcon and almost certainly not the last. I got here in such a roundabout way, too… Months ago, I was dying of boredom (a bit of a recurring theme, that) and, after playing with filters on FilmFreeway, I stumbled on Worldcon’s first-ever film festival. It hadn’t been advertised, and so it was just pure chance that I found it at all. Submitted my short film. Got accepted. Started thinking that if I’m going to attend in person, I might as well get the full week-long membership, not just the complimentary one-day ticket… And that’s how it came to be, eh. Life is a yarn ball of coincidences.
I’ll be in Seattle for six full days, at least four of which will feature post-Worldcon parties, and the sixth will have a barbecue right after a hike up one of the local mountains. (With a handful of other Worldcon attendees.) That should be fun… For extra fun, I’ll try to get up at 6am in order to be at a coffeeshop meet-ups (and one SFWA breakfast!) at 7-ish in the morning, for a chance to geek out with fellow SFF fans before the hustle and bustle of the convention.
On the off chance you’re reading this and have not yet finalized your Worldcon program – hey, come check out my film! Thursday, noon, room 331. It’ll be my third real-life screening, and it’ll be every bit as terrifying and exciting as the first two, I’m sure.
My sole regret is that I won’t be able to attend every single Worldcon panel – there are so many of them, and some of the really amazing-sounding ones overlap. Where’s a time-turner when you need one, eh?
This will be, without a doubt, the geekiest week of my life. Exactly 168 hours from now, I’ll be napping in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport before my morning flight back to Quebec City: the first of many attempts to pay off the sleep debt I’m going to accrue in the coming days.
Can’t wait, eh.
Most advice comes in parables. The kind that doesn’t is straightforward: “don’t eat the yellow snow” or “use the bathroom before going outside.” Anything more complex than that, though… Parables. Lots and lots of parables.
You may have heard the same damn piece of advice dozens of times before, but someday it’ll sneak up on you, shaped and phrased and packaged as something entirely new, novel, and unexpected – and before you know it, you’re looking at the same problem from an entirely different perspective, and everything clicks in place.
Ever since finalizing the edits on my YA sci-fi novel “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes” in April, I’ve been more or less procrastinating on writing my next novel. (Also sci-fi, but – for once – without any time travel whatsoever! I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.) The last three months haven’t been unproductive, mind you. I’ve written tons of new stories, attempted (and then quit) a huge hiking adventure, and joined the SFWA. (Huzzah! The screening process took just two days.) But despite assembling an impressive collection of factoids, cool epigraphs, and citations for my next novel, I never actually sat down to write it…
A blank page is perfect by default: it is pure, unsullied by substandard words, and filled with glamorous potential. But you can’t make a novel out of blank pages. You must sit down and actually write.
Not long ago, I was procrastinating by reading the writing advice from some of the best writers of our time. Among them was Octavia E. Butler, whose work ethic was legendary: she treated writing as a job, and wrote four hours a day, every day. (By my guesstimate, that puts her in the top 1% of writers or thereabout.) This page of advice had a section called “Don’t Prettify Your First Draft.” It had this very interesting bit of advice: “To her, the first draft wasn’t art. It was a raw material dump. Only after that could real craft begin. She followed what they call ‘vomit drafting.'”
The phrase “vomit drafting” was so over-the-top vulgar, obscene, and hilarious, that it got past all of my mental shields, all the laziness and procrastination. We’ve all thrown up at some point. A highly unpleasant and purely physical sensation, that. When you link that simple, brutal word with “writing” (an activity that has more mystique and unmet expectations attached to it than just about anything else) – well, the juxtaposition is nothing short of hilarious.
And that’s what did it for me. I’d read lots of different variations on the theme before: the first draft’s job is to exist, every first draft sucks, etc, etc. But this simple, plain, funny brutality – “vomit drafting” – was what ultimately worked for me.
And so… I pretended to turn off the part of my brain responsible for shame or self-esteem, and I sat down, and I just started typing. The codename for my novel is “Inhuman Insurance Inception” (the actual title is much snappier, I promise), and it’ll feature two different points-of-view, as well as lots of interesting, world-building interludes. (A bit like in “The Watchmen” graphic novel.)
I started writing 11 days ago, on July 22. Haven’t missed a day thus far. The total wordcount (the first POV + the interludes thus far) is 15,146 words, which is pretty damn great. (I’ve also managed to knock out at least one new short story along the way. Yay side quests!)
I’ll leave for Worldcon in 10 days and I’m not exactly sure whether I’ll be able to maintain my writing streak of 1,000+ words per day, but I know I’ll add at least a few new words to ye olde manuscript. And the entire time I write, I’ll imagine the late, great Octavia E. Butler sitting in the same room, typing on her own computer, the two of us vomiting our first drafts onto the hitherto pristine – and pure, and empty, and therefore unsellable – pages.
Give it up for parables, eh?
Grigory Lukin.com 