Tag Archive: fantasy


On the Nature of Non-Apology Apologies, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident, Continued

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September 3, 2025

It’s January 22, 2017, and Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway coins the phrase “alternative facts” during a TV interview while defending Sean Spicer’s blatantly false claims about the size of the inauguration crowd. The phrase goes viral. Within a week, the sales of Orwell’s 1984 go up by 9,400%. Conway gets mocked, becomes a meme, shrugs it off, and lives happily ever after.

It’s August 16, 2025. The two hosts of the annual Hugo Awards ceremony mangle many non-anglophone names, and giggle at least once while doing so.

It’s August 20. Host #1 makes a Bluesky comment, saying “For context I was high as a kite on pain meds.”

It’s August 21. My essay on the Hugo incident unexpectedly goes viral: 13,000 views and counting.

It’s September 2: 17 days after the awards ceremony, 12 days after the essay. The Seattle Worldcon Chair and the two hosts issue simultaneous non-apology apologies. They are… odd.

The easiest way to kill a lot of weeds or unwanted plants is to cover them with a tarp to cut off their sunlight. For best results, wait a week. Or two weeks. Or 17 days.

When you take 17 days to craft an apology, one would expect a masterpiece to rival Abraham Lincon’s Gettysburg Address, especially when those apologizing are professional writers. We did not get a masterpiece.

The Gettysburg Address was 271 words long. The hosts’ non-apology was 1,283 words long. The Chair’s non-apology was 401 words long. We are to believe that, on average, only 23.6 words of that statement were written every day.

Here is the shortest possible apology: “I’m sorry. I screwed up. How can I possibly make this better?” This took me 13 seconds to write. At this pace, working eight hours a day, for 17 days straight, my resulting apology would have been 451,938 words long, or only 6% shorter than Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

A few hours ago, Jess Nevins posted an excellent Bluesky thread about the lost art of apologizing. Just like me, he chose not to name the hosts.

I rather enjoyed his point #4:

“#4) I’m truly surprised I have to type this one, but….

DO NOT EVER SAY ANYTHING THAT CAN BE REMOTELY CONSTRUED AS ‘WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE, ME OR YOUR LYING EYES/EARS?’

It happens all the time that the offender and the offended remember events differently.”

This bit was also quite good:

“Because if you make your living crafting sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters and entire books, you don’t need time to gather your thoughts or to articulate your apology correctly. You write for a living: putting together an apology shouldn’t be difficult for you or take much time.”

The non-apology from the hosts begins with, “We’re truly sorry that our work hosting the 2025 Hugo Awards Ceremony has caused anyone distress.” That is an unusual way to start, and is synonymous with “we’re sorry you got upset.”

The letter goes on to claim there’d been confusion with the pronunciation guides, all caused by the Worldcon staff, and that there’d been no time to rehearse the names. (But I suspect they’d found the time to rehearse the Hugo song. Priorities…)

Perhaps most interestingly, the apology states that host #2 (the younger of the two hosts) did not giggle while reading any names. Well, of course she didn’t. That was host #1. (For what it’s worth, I too hate watching videos of myself and have a hard time recognizing my own voice.) For posterity’s sake, here is that giggle once again. There were thousands of us in the audience. We all heard it. We all reacted instantaneously, turning to our neighbours, asking, “Did that just happen?”

But no, dear reader. No. Do not believe your lying eyes and ears. What good have they ever done to you? Don’t worry your pretty little head. Do as you’re told instead.

The non-apology apology goes on to say that neither of the hosts had felt comfortable insisting on a full run-through rehearsal, because they’d never hosted an awards show before. That said, they’ve both offered their advice and guidance to the future Worldcon organizers. Generous.

Their statement does not mention host #1 being “high as a kite on pain meds.”

Their statement does mention omitting Kamilah Cole’s name, but that section ends rather oddly: it says that host #2 has apologized to Cole, and that host #1 “needs to do that as well!” (I have not altered their punctuation.) That reads like an odd first draft. That does not read like a professional statement that had taken two writers 17 days to prepare.

I often wonder about the ratio of “time spent rehearsing the Hugo song” to “time spent rehearsing the names,” but it’s bad luck to divide by zero.

In their non-apology, the hosts repeatedly say that the pronunciation guide was either missing or incomplete. That is objectively false.

On April 6, 2025, the Seattle Worldcon released this video where professional announcers read out almost every name. They read those names without giggling. If you’re curious what the giggle-inducing name is supposed to sound like, here you go. (Egbiameje Omole, I do not know you, but I am so sorry.)

The list of the finalists was not secret. It had been released more than four months before the Seattle Worldcon took place. The full video is 22.5 minutes long. You could play it almost three times in one hour at normal speed. You could practice the names multiple times per day.

If you cared, that is.

That pronunciation video is cleverly concealed. To access it, one must go on YouTube and type in such secret, esoteric words as “2025 Hugo Awards.”

Verily, I say upon thee: there was no way for anyone to find it.

In their non-apology, the hosts complain that the title of Darcie Little Badger’s YA novel, Sheine Lende, also wasn’t in their pronunciation guide. It might not surprise you to learn that the title was also in that pronunciation video, just 78 seconds in.

The hosts chose to release their non-apology in a rather unusual format: not as a blog post, or a press release, or even a PDF. No, it’s a shared Google Doc file. Fun thing about those files: they cannot be archived by the Wayback Machine, and the people who own the document can go in and alter it at any time.

The internet is a complicated and chaotic place. It’s possible that something unexpected might happen to that file within, let’s say, a year. It’d be a shame if it disappeared. A real shame.

As someone who cares about the preservation of historical documents, I’ve gone ahead and saved a PDF copy. It’s timestamped and tamperproof. If some tragedy ever befalls that Google Doc, I’ll attach my copy of the PDF to this essay. Please, no need to thank me.

How to issue a slightly longer apology:

  1. Don’t start with “Sorry you got upset” or some variation thereof. Is it attention-grabbing? Oh yes. Is it conducive to your purposes? Oh no.
  2. Consider starting with a brief and honest summary of what had happened. E.g., “During the most important awards ceremony many of the finalists may ever attend, we…”
  3. Accept responsibility. E.g., “At least 50% of us were high as a kite. We did not prepare.”
  4. Acknowledge the other party’s pain. E.g., “I can’t begin to imagine how that felt” – but not “Sorry if our work has caused anyone distress.”
  5. Provide an objective judgment of your offense. E.g., “We failed at our main task” – but not “The staff failed us, and we were too shy.”
  6. State your regret. E.g., “We’re truly and deeply sorry. That will not happen again” – but not “[Host #1] needs to apologize as well!” Alternatively, depending on your mood and desire to shake things up, you may say “Yeah, I’ll probably do it again.” Not recommended, but hey – that’s an option. Free speech and all.
  7. Describe your future actions. E.g., “We will triple-check every name we’re not 100% sure about in the future.” Saying “we have a list of suggested remedies to pass along to the events team based on our experience” might not have the most impact.

Perhaps the most subtle aspect of this incident is the silence of the A-listers. Of all the bestselling authors I follow, to the extent of my knowledge, only Elizabeth Bear spoke about this entire incident. There were bloggers, of course: Cora Buhlert has made an excellent (as always) post on the nature of the two non-apologies. File 770 wrote about it here and here, though at one point the anti-name-manglers got referred to as “woke folk.”

There were many bestselling authors who sat in the same audience, and in better seats than the rest of us, probably, and who heard the mangling and the giggling, and then chose to say nothing. My best guess is that they didn’t want to make waves, didn’t want to upset their friends. Smile and clap and move on.

I suspect that by writing the previous essay, as well as this one, I might be sabotaging the odds of publishing my YA sci-fi novel, as well as any follow-ups.

Perhaps. But even if so…

Worth it.

When properly pronouncing people’s names becomes woke, only the woke will properly pronounce people’s names.

The non-apology from the Seattle Worldcon’s Chair, Kathy Bond, is much shorter – a mere 401 words. It’s quite good, and it almost passes for a true apology if you don’t look closely enough. It sure seems to follow the traditional format.

And yet… It has no mention of host #1’s odd admission of being high during the ceremony. It does not mention that host’s giggling while reading a non-anglophone name. It suggests creating a centralized “organizational structure responsible solely for the accurate handling of names” (or, in simpler terms, “name team”) without explaining why their own pronunciation guide video got ignored by all.

Perhaps the strangest part is that neither of the two non-apology letters even mentions the r/fantasy nominee for the Best Related Work. When the two hosts got to that slide, they saw the list of 20 or so names (as well as Reddit nicknames), and they both laughed in unison as they skipped it. That was not an ambiguous giggle. That was laughter. Was it nerves? Was it the same kind of classism that the AO3 folks experienced not long ago when the very nature of their platform wasn’t deemed serious enough? We’ll never know.

What to do if you didn’t rehearse any of the names and are faced with an unexpectedly long list of them:

  1. Read out the title. (Good job!)
  2. Consider reading the names.
  3. Consider asking for help.
  4. Consider treating the nominees with respect and dignity.

What not to do:

  1. Don’t laugh.
  2. Don’t goddamn laugh.

In my first essay, I asked the Seattle Worldcon these seven questions:

  1. How many times did they rehearse the Hugo song?
  2. How many times did the announcers rehearse the names?
  3. Was there ever a pronunciation guide?
  4. If not, why?
  5. If yes, what happened to it?
  6. Was there ever, at any point of the planning process, a voiced objection, or even a concern, that the popular awards presenter would not be able to pronounce foreign names?
  7. If so, what was the reaction?

I suspect the Worldcon people saw them while drafting their short non-apology. Only one of those questions got addressed, and even then, very briefly: “We provided insufficient organizational plans at the podium, including an inadequately designed pronunciation guide and other poorly designed materials.”

Translation: “We didn’t prepare.”

That admission is as much as you and I deserve, my friends.

If anyone ever decides to make a Fyre Festival-style documentary about this mess, it’d be pretty entertaining. I bet there’s at least one insider who doesn’t agree with the party line. I bet there have been some interesting Discord chats or text messages or even emails during those 17 days.

I bet I’m not the only one who likes to save things for safekeeping.

My blog will not fall prey to digital decay. I’ll keep it accessible for as long as I live – and then some.

You may be reading this in the future, in a year far beyond 2025. No, not you with the cat – you with the cyber-glasses. I hope you’ll find this essay useful, whoever you are. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you’re insatiably curious. Maybe you’re working on a book (do you still have books in the future?) about the history of Hugo awards.

Perhaps, in whatever future you’re reading this, be it a week, or a month, or a decade from now, you’ll have more answers and more context and more clarity.

But meanwhile, here and now, in this slice of the time-space amber, this is the best bad truth that we mere mortals are allowed by our betters.

We deserve more.

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2025 Worldcon: the Good, the Bad, the Fugly

Filed under: wanderlust, writing — Leave a comment
August 22, 2025

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.

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When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident

Filed under: writing — 59 Comments
August 21, 2025

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:

  1. How many times did they rehearse the Hugo song?
  2. How many times did the announcers rehearse the names?
  3. Was there ever a pronunciation guide?
  4. If not, why?
  5. If yes, what happened to it?
  6. Was there ever, at any point of the planning process, a voiced objection, or even a concern, that the popular awards presenter would not be able to pronounce foreign names?
  7. If so, what was the reaction?

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:

  1. The well-rehearsed Hugo song: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=0AklpGZtEfv5Cu07&t=965 
  1. “They’ve given us a script, but I cannot find it”

“Right, there’s supposed to be a binder, right?” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=yh96eRIiOFmtsOhO&t=1220 

  1. The mispronunciation giggle: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=_zCF83ds59z_JVpQ&t=3387 
  1. Khōréō name list: “There’s a lot of them” [skipping the entire list of names after painstakingly reading the two prior lists of names] https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=0zVwe8T1eXf-JrNB&t=3403 
  1. Mangling Denis Villeneuve’s name: https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=ZSYncwfYiwyK4Rgh&t=4969 
  1. “I’m looking for my cheat-sheet before I say something that is difficult for me to say… Let us see… I don’t know if I have any pronunciation guides. Okay, I’ll just – I’ll be corrected when I’m wrong, okay?” https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=_7rZwfn-l5988LjF&t=6061 
  1. “And this – I do not know how to say this, but you know how to say this”

“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 

  1. Skipping “So Let Them Burn” by Kamilah Cole entirely after the confusion with “Sheine Lende” pronunciation:

“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 

  1. Elizabeth Bear’s Bluesky post on this topic: https://bsky.app/profile/matociquala.bsky.social/post/3lwm66nrzjt22 
  1. Related to the topic of names: a very beautiful short film about a rural woman and an eccentric foreigner with a hard-to-pronounce name, and their resulting friendship. “Meeting Mr. Oscar”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbPCcpzQ1I 

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On symbolism and lack thereof

Filed under: writing — Leave a comment
June 16, 2025

A while back, I wrote that I personalize my social media to absorb only interesting factoids or insights from folks who are experts in certain topics. That doesn’t always pay off (I’ve had to mute a lot of politicians’ names), but when it does, it’s beautiful. Today was one of those days.

Recently, there was a big debate about symbolism: someome made a webcomic where they mocked a Literature professor and implied that Poe’s raven was a happy accident, not a deliberate choice. I’m not going to repost the webcomic here because it turned out its creator was 16 when they made that cringeworthy (but surprisingly artistic!) masterpiece. What folks do before their 18th birthday ought to be a sealed record.

In the aftermath of that online debate, someone posted a link to a fascinating article on the topic. In 1963, a teen asked top writers about their use of symbolism. Here’s what they said…

The article, which is already great all on its own, also mentioned an amazing essay by Mary McCarthy, “Settling the Colonel’s Hash.” She’d published a non-fiction piece that sounded like short story: her train ride amd debate with an antisemitic colonel. Far too many people assumed her story was fiction, and proceeded to over-analyze it, hunting for clever symbols when there were none.

In her “Settling the Colonel’s Hash” essay, years later, McCarthy dived deep into the dangers of looking too hard for symbolism, even when the author’s intent is right there. Enjoy this PDF version of her essay.

Some of my favourite bits:

1. “from the Middle West” is such a posh way to say “Midwesterner”

2. “A surprising number wanted exact symbols; for example, they searched for the significance of the colonel’s eating hash and the autor eating a sandwich.” (I love this weapons-grade snark.)

3. “If the colonel had ordered a fruit salad with whipped cream, this too would have represented him in some way; given his other traits, it would have pointed to a complexity in his character that the hash did not suggest.” (The fact that it’s true makes it that much funnier.)

4. “He declined to be categorized as anti-Semite; he regarded himself as an independent thinker, who by a happy chance thought the same as everybody else.” (That describes folks – especially men – today every bit as much as 60 years ago…)

There are many more amazing bits, but I don’t want to spoil that beautiful essay for you. Enjoy that 10-page read, and take your time – it’s worth it.

…and as for me, sometimes I find so beautiful that I simply must include it in my short films. Other times, it’s only at the very end of the editing process that I find a tiny detail that ties in perfectly with my theme – but had sneaked in right under my nose. And then, of course, there are lots of tiny little jokes in my short stories. Some of them are more noticeable than others, but I don’t deliberately sprinkle symbolism all over the place. (Though, as McCarthy wrote, everything we do is symbolic, which means that’s ultimately inescapable.)

And now I’m off to put a couple of more layers of polish on my new short story. (Technically, this whole symbolism foray – both reading and blogging – has been procrastination on my short story, which is, in turn, a way of procrastinating on my not-yet-started new novel.) The story is my first attempt at fantasy, or at least urban-ish fantasy. “Some Notes on Becoming a God” will end up around 3,000 words, and it touches on some mighty topical modern issues. Let’s see who’ll want to publish it, eh?

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Book review: “Half a King” by Joe Abercrombie

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April 23, 2014

(This is a spoiler-free review of an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

Joe Abercrombie’s “Half a King” is a mutant love child of Hamlet and Oliver Twist. It’s what you’d get if Joss Whedon decided to write a fantasy novel. It’s delicious.

The protagonist, Yarvi, is the ugly duckling of his royal family: born with a deformed hand, his only path in life is to become a minister and advise his older brother, who is obviously going to become the king. At least that was the plan, until both Yarvi’s brother and his father were killed in battle. What happens when a painfully shy teenager with serious self-esteem issues and no leadership skills becomes a king? Nothing good, that’s what.

Yarvi’s misadventures make for a highly addictive rollercoaster narrative as he goes from one worst-case scenario to another, getting an occasional bit of good luck that never lasts long enough. Abercrombie skillfully shows the protagonist’s growth and development as he’s forced to make hard choices and determine who his true friends are, and what he would (or wouldn’t) do for them. The story goes to some mighty dark places, but always stops just short of hopeless despair, keeping the reader engaged, enthralled and entertained.

By far my favorite thing about the book was an overabundance of medieval-style aphorisms. (Think Benjamin Franklin in the 1100s.) Inconspicuously scattered throughout the book, they help make the barbaric “might is right” atmosphere that much more believable. There are several interesting plot twists that can easily be missed and that provide “a-ha!” moments toward the end. The most attentive readers might be able to notice a couple of clues and put together a very unusual science fiction Easter egg that has no bearing on the plot but makes me wish for a sequel that would shed some light on the mystery.

The only gripe I have with “Half a King” is its use of the Rambo trope: warriors that spent several years in chains turn into mean, lean killing machines the moment they break free. Then again, I suppose it was either that or several dozen pages of medieval swordplay montage and physical therapy (also featuring swordplay because, you know, fantasy and stuff). Aside from that minor blight, “Half a King” was probably one of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

Score: 5 stars

Release date: July 15, 2014

Amazon pre-order link

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