The Hugos No One Attends*

[mishalak]

*For values of the people actually receiving the award.

Since I've never attended before and did not closely look at which authors were or were not attending the convention I thought I would see a number of authors picking up Hugo awards at the ceremony on Saturday night here in Denver. Not so and I've been given to understand this is not unusual.

In the case of both the fan awards and the dramatic presentation ones it is quite understandable. After all if you were in the movie or television biz it would mostly be a bit of a distraction from work. Meanwhile the fans are often too poor to jet off to wherever Worldcon is in a particular year so unless they're regular attendees of Worldcon or near by they're probably not going to show either. But the lack of authors at it is rather disheartening. This, much more than people talking about the graying of fandom or griping "What I liked didn't win, so the Hugos suck", shows there really is something wrong with the Hugo Awards. Authors can't even be bothered to show up when they're nominated and the odds on favorite to win the award. (I'm referring here to Michael Chabon not being there to pick up the Hugo given to for his novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.)

By something wrong with the Hugos I mean that they're not really that important outside of the community of people who already go to Worldcon. They probably have as much value on the cover of a book as any other award (or even a made up one) rather than being something important to sales like the Oscars are to movie rentals and sales. And I don't know how this could be changed.

The usual suspect is the lack of new fresh faces at Worldcon, and I'm sure it could not hurt. Another problem is the size and profile of the World Science Fiction Society and the Hugo Awards themselves. Search for the Booker Prize or Hugo Award and you'll generally find about half as much mention of the Hugos on the net as the Booker. Assuming that the average SF reader is probably more internet savvy and likely to have a blog or webpage than the average reader of the type of literature that get the Booker that is not a good sign. So how could the Hugo be increased in profile?

I do not know.

I think that there would be more attention paid if there was more perceived value in voting or if the voters were higher profile about doing so. For example I think a few well respected and widely read bloggers writing about how and why they voted would do much to 'shine up' the award. Or if was more transparent about how and when to vote so that people who do not have the initial interest or ability to go to a World Science Fiction Convention would be blogging about it the same way they write about politics.

But this is obviously all speculation on my part. I have no hard numbers to point to that say that having more members of an online WSFS would make the Hugos more respected or not. But I would love to hear competing ideas or support.

I'll be cleaning and writing periodically for the rest of the day.
 

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Note that they're not important enough for most people to vote on who are eligible - according to one person I talked to, there were an estimated five thousand eligble voters on the hugo... and they had less than 1000 ballots turned in.

Also note the discussion on tor.com (http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=3316) about how the people receiving the hugos are becoming older and older as time goes on.

Personally, I think the worldcon as a whole needs an injection of younger blood in general more than the Hugos itself needs specific attention - if we can pull in larger crowds for a Worldcon, I think the Hugo would be lifted along with it.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I think the question is the other way around. Get people interested in the Hugos and some percentage of them will want to attend the actual award ceremony. I think this because trying to get young people to attend without the social connection to Worldcon seems a difficult problem if Worldcon stays international rather than primarily American with the occasional jaunt to Europe once a decade. And I think Worldcon cannot get any larger without a professional staff rather than all volunteer. Somewhere beyond 5,000 attendees but well before 10,000 there needs to be a full time staff as there will not be enough fans who can subsidize the convention by doing a full time job while either holding down another job or independently wealthy.

In my view either Worldcon has to change to make the convention the tip of the iceberg held up by a larger fanbase that mostly does not attend every year or it has to change into a professionally run fan convention like Comic Con, Dragon Con, or the like. Though not a for-profit like Gen Con Indy.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

GenCon is not a good example. It wasn't when it was owned by TSR, and it sure isn't now that it's run by Peter Adkison. GenCon LLC is in big trouble with Lucasfilm and the Make-a-Wish Foundation for a charity auction gone wrong at Star Wars Celebration IV, and is undergoing Chapter 11 reorganization to try to protect itself.

Dragon*Con is not a good example. Its size is partially built upon its stationary nature, and partially built upon predatory actions against "competing" conventions. There are also some really scandalous things that have been ignored by their board of directors. The founder ended up in prison for child molestation (although this is old news). One of the program track leads has subjected many of his female volunteers to sexual harassment, and the board ignored complaints until last year. Finally, there were allegations (and plenty of supporting evidence) that people were selling prime seats for events that were included in the price of registration.

Comic Con International is not a good example. They've grown past the size that they have lots of clout with their venues, they're now hostage to their venues.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

What should I use as an example of a large somewhat fannish convention then? I picked them out because off the top of my head I don't know any other large conventions that would at least be qa

And I did not use Gen Con as an example, it was mentioned because it is a for profit unlike the others and I wanted to make it clear that I was not advocating a for profit model. Indeed I'm not advocating anything at all except to point out that if Worldcon does not change it will continue to be irrelevant to everyone except the small self-selected group that goes to Worldcon. It won't die. I suspect plenty of middle aged people are coming into the convention to keep it going for decades to come. But to regain relevance to the wider SF community it either needs to get bigger (and I don't see how that can happen on the backs of the current fannish potlatch system), gain a wider community without getting larger, or become more of a professional convention like World Fantasy.

The options as I see them:

Centaur Plan: Worldcon brings in some professional elements while (hopefully) remaining subordinate to a non-professional board like the relationship between a professional military and elected civilian leadership. Professional positions are created and filled by the seated convention committees with the advice and consent of the membership. The new organization would be part of a push to increase the size of Worldcon and thus bring down the cost of Worldcon though economies of scale. Worldcon is limited in the number of times it can leave N. America and/or some other system to make sure that the increased membership doesn't fall out of coming due to expensive and hard to reach foreign venues.

Iceberg Plan: Gain a wider community of people through making the World Science Fiction Society the more important part of the organization so that people will make long distance friendships with other fans, talk about the Hugos, and when finances and circumstances allow attend Worldcon. The Worldcon becomes the visible real world expression of a larger community that occurs online, through 'zines of various sorts, and possibly local meetups.

Potlatch Worldcon: Things stay as they are and Worldcon remains a self referential group of friends who like to take a collective vacation to a city each year with marginal attention paid to it by some professionals. Fans dedicated enough exhaust themselves financially by putting on the convention to show how great and wonderful fans they are not unlike the descriptions of the Pacific Northwest potlatch system. The convention cannot grow much because if it gets much larger it will be beyond the ability of the convention meeting to put it on.

Professionals Plan: Worldcon regains relevance by limiting membership to writing professionals, reviewers (paid and unpaid), and a limited number of fans not unlike World Horror Con or World Fantasy Con. Being difficult to get into makes the few who are allowed in (by lottery or whatever) much more excited about being there and the convention more important to the industry.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

All conventions fall into traps. It's a question of figuring out what trap you're in, though, and whether it's possible to get out of it.

Worldcon is trapped by its history. There's a large enough group who will, if there is ever any rumblings about incorporating WSFS (which would have to be a step preceding a professional staff) show up at the business meeting and kill it. No centaur plan.

Worldcon is trapped by economics, but it might be able to get out of that trap. Right now it's in a definite sour spot with regards to scale. It needs to find a way to cut supporting membership costs back down to around $35 (really only a $10 drop) and cut at-the-door costs to somewhere well under $200. I'm not the financial wizard it would take to figure out the details, though. I think that could help the iceberg plan.

3000-6000 isn't potlatch scale, and we've achieved over 6,000 twice this decade. It's not an insignificant number.

The professionals still show for Worldcon. While quite a few winners didn't show, there were a large number of writers and editors (nominated and not) and publishers up in front at the Hugos. We matter to them, even if we don't matter to the publicists and distributors. It's also still a convenient opportunity for many writers to meet with their editors and publishers in person (just like World Fantasy and World Horror). A lot of business still goes on behind the scenes. Going exclusive would only further ghettoize us in the views of the publicists, and many of them already have an irreparable view of the convention circuit that's out-of-sync with reality.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The founder ended up in prison for child molestation

Not exactly. He was accused but never went to trial. He's been under house arrest since 2000. On the one hand, the state sure doesn't seem eager to present its case in open court (and I think for a while the local courts in Hee Haw County were not actually allowed to run trials) but on the other, the person claiming to be the source of Kramer's legal advice did drive-bys on rec.arts.fandom [1] and the phrase "competent" was not the one that came to mind.

Oh, and there are allegations of civil rights violations as well, allegedly because the cops didn't approve of Kramer being a Jew.


1: Along with anonymous drive-bys by former associates of Kramers trying to make money off the situation.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Tom Whitmore has what he calls a powers-of-five algorithm for convention management. He postulates that you need a different management structure at each power of five of attendance, and that the log-5 is roughly the number of layers of management you need. To be more precise, it may be more like the greater of (1, log5-2), thus:

1 person = 1 layer (self)
5 people = 1 layer (leader)
25 people = 1 layer (leader might need staff)
125 people = 2 layers (chair, staff)
625 people = 3 layers (chair, area heads, staff)
3125 people = 4 layers (chair, division managers, area heads, staff)
15625 people = DragonCon
78125 people = ComicCon

The boundaries are fuzzy. The Worldcon management model will certainly work with conventions in excess of 8000 people, because it did work in 1984, and pretty successfully, too. I think we could easily have 10,000-person Worldcons run under the current model, but somewhere after that, the system starts breaking down.

This is why I've said that, roughly speaking, Worldcons need to either double in size or shrink to half their size. And that was when Worldcons were reliably running at 5K attendees, not 3.5K. Personally, I'm sorry to see them heading downward rather than upward, but I certainly understand the pressures driving it that direction.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think you're picking on the wrong target here; Chabon said that he would have liked to attend but had a prior engagement, and sent a speech through.

And as for the suggestion that fan and dramatic presentation winners can't be expected to be there but fiction authors should be, perhaps you haven't noticed how badly SF writing is paid as a profession. As a fan with a decently-paying 'proper job', I'm much more able to get the the Worldcon than many authors. But many of them go anyway, and yes, it's a struggle for them.

The Booker is a judged award with a large cash prize; not really a relevant comparison.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

He was far from the only one. Of the Hugos given out to authors only one, a local, was picked up by the actual author. And I'm pretty sure that Connie Willis goes to most Worldcons because she's a bit of a fan herself.

The Hugos are irrelevant. They're barely a bug strike on the windshield of the genre. If getting one was important to people other than Worldcon members people would show up to get them.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

The best fan writer hugo was given out to an author, John Scalzi, who was there in person and wasn't local.

Yes, I'm pedantic. It's a occupational hazard for programmers.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Worldcon is in a double bind because it's the wrong size. Growing would let it amortize the cost of the convention center across more members, which would be good (could allow a lower membership rate). However, at the current size and up (once it needs a convention center) it loses most of its leverage with hotels, so the hotel rates get fairly high too. The only route to a much cheaper overall Worldcon experience is for it to shrink back to where it can be hosted in one hotel, or at worst a couple of connected hotels.

I've been somewhat disappointed with a lot of the Hugos in recent years, and completely ignorant about even more. I don't know what constituency they *are* serving; it's apparently not the old guy with somewhat old-fashioned taste in SF.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Shrinking it would make it easier to run, but then Worldcon would be even less important than it is now. And there would have to be a membership cap of some sort because if it was much less expensive over all more people would want to attend thus forcing it back into convention spaces in most cities.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

...and imposing a membership cap wouldn't actually lower the membership cost, because if the cap was lower than the demand, all that would happen is that the artificially-inexpensive memberships would go into the secondary market and be resold at a higher price -- and the hosting Worldcon wouldn't get any of that money to boot.

You're right, too, that if the price went down, the attendance might go up. The question is whether it would go up sufficiently to balance. I think it might, actually, but no Worldcon is willing to risk going broke by trying it.

[sraun]

Hmm - interesting question. For other awards - both SF and non-SF - what percentage of the finalists actually show up for the ceremony?

My recollection is that it is not 100% for the big movie awards - IIRC, the Academy Awards are presented by an even smaller pool than the Hugos. There are frequently stand-ins there.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

It certainly is not 100%, but I only recall one from recently history and that was because the cinematographer had died in the interim. The 2008 Academy Awards had 100% of the people to whom the award was given showing up and giving the acceptance speech.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I suggest that using the Oscars is actually not a good example, because it's always in the same venue, a lot of the nominees already live or work relatively nearby, and a whole lot of them aren't troubled by the travel expenses if they don't live nearby.

You think the no-shows were a problem in Denver? It was worse in Yokohama.