We spent a month across the pond last summer, from July 15 to August 15.   We started in Belfast and environs, where A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS was being filmed.  From there we went on to Amsterdam, where I paid a call on my Dutch publisher, and then London to call on Jane Johnson and the good folks at Voyager, my UK publisher.  Oxford was next.  The Oxford Writers House had invited me to deliver a talk on fantasy with Philip Pullman, the author of HIS DARK MATERIALS.  I was really looking forward to that.  Unfortunately Pullman was ill and had to bow out, so the event turned into a booksigning and Q&A session, and I ended up flying solo.

It was an enjoyable afternoon in any case, and Oxford was amazing.  This was my first visit there.  I really must get back there one of these days.   Perhaps by then the Eagle and Child will have opened again, and I can raise a pint to the Inklings.

The last scheduled stop on our European travels was Glasgow, and the World Science Fiction Convention.   This was the third Glasgow  worldcon.  Parris and I attended the other two, the first in 1995 and the second in 2005, and we have fond memories of both, so I was determined to make this one too.

I am glad we did.   No, I was not on any programming… but we were there, and that’s what matters.  I attended my first worldcon in 1971 (that was Boston) and sat on my first panel in 1976 (Big Mac, in Kansas City) — those were the days of single track programming, and you really had to pay your dues before they let you onto the podium.  I have lost track of how many program items I’ve been on since.   Sometimes the panels were fun, and sometimes they were tedious; I suppose they were good promotion for my books.   That was never the point, though.  For me, worldcon was a family reunion, a gathering of friends new and old.  That was what drew me back, year after year after year.

Glasgow reminded of that.   I spent most of the con in the hotel bar, drinking and talking with fellow writers and fans, telling the old stories, remembering the old times, and raising a pint to all those we have lost.  Howard and Gardner, Phyllis Eisenstein and Gene Wolfe and Charlie Brown, Harlan Ellison and Fred Pohl, Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl and Jack Vance, Michael Bishop and Ursula K. LeGuin , Jay Haldeman and Greg Bear and Poul Anderson and so many more.   We wandered the art show and the huckster’s room as well, and enjoyed some great meals in Glasgow’s restaurants… the most memorable being our visit to Mr. Singh’s with the Brotherhood Without Banners.  I love Indian cuisine, even at home, but it’s so much better in England and Scotland than over here… and nowhere better than at Mr. Singh’s in Glasgow, which has got to be the best I have ever had.   (I have eaten there every time I’ve been to Glasgow, and it just keeps getting better and better and better).

Regular readers of this blog will know that for the past couple of years I have been producing a series of short films based on the works of Howard Waldrop, my oldest and dearest friend in fandom, and one of the greatest (and most original) short story writers in the history of the field.   We had five films in various stages of production (and a sixth, not based on a Waldrop story, just underway), and were able to wrap up three of them before worldcon: NIGHT OF THE COOTERS (d. Vincent d’Onofrio), MARY MARGARET ROAD-GRADER (d. Steven Paul Judd), and THE UGLY CHICKENS (d. Mark Raso.)   We’ve had them out on the festival circuit, but I brought them to Glasgow as well, thinking I might be able to screen them at the con.   That’s more complicated than it sounds, for various reasons, and I was never able to get anyone to return my phone calls to see what could be worked out, alas.  Fortunately, the hotel where we were staying had a small screening room in the basement, so at least I was able to invite a couple dozen friends over for a semi-private show.

I am pleased to say the shorts seemed to be well received.   We got a very nice review from the website WINTER IF COMING, for those of you who would like to know more about them:

https://winteriscoming.net/posts/i-saw-george-r-r-martin-s-howard-waldrop-short-films-and-they-re-delightful-exclusive-01j5xkrv0fx3

(Howard liked them too.   We were able to screen the final cut of MARY MARGARET for him just six days before he died last January.  I am so happy he was able to see it).

THE UGLY CHICKENS and MARY MARGARET ROAD-GRADER are still out playing festivals, by the way, so you still may be able to see them, depending on where you live.   The Chickens won the award for Best Short last week in San Jose at Cinequest, and will be showing again this weekend in Cleveland.   Catch it if you can; it is one of Howard’s classics.

The other highlight of my worldcon was the Alfie Awards banquet we held at our hotel

The Alfies are named in honor of Alfred Bester, one of the giants of the field, the author of THE DEMOLISHED MAN, “Fondly Fahrenheit,” THE STARS MY DESTINATION, and a long list of other great stories.  Bester was the winner of the first Hugo Award for Best Novel (for THE DEMOLISHED MAN, at the 1953 worldcon in Philadelphia).   He turned up at the very first Hugo Losers Party as well, in 1976 at Big Mac in Kansas City, and insisted he still counted as a loser since that first Hugo trophy was a made from an Oldsmobile hood ornament,  and had rusted and corroded over the years.   We all laughed, and let him in.

We created the Alfie Awards in 2015, at the worldcon in Spokane.  That was the year of Puppygate, when a number of writers and fans who would surely have been nominated for a Hugo Award were squeezed out when the Puppies (Sad and Rabid) stuffed the ballot with their own favorites.   There was no way to rectify that (though various people tried, with everything from wooden asterisks to rules reform to voting No Award).   My own approach was the Alfies; consolation  trophies made of old hood ornaments, like many of the early Hugo Awards, given to writers and fans who missed out on nominations they likely would have gotten in a normal year.    (I don’t say they would have won, there was no way of knowing that, but it IS an honor to be a Hugo loser.   I should know, I’ve lost a fair number of them myself).  You can learn way more than you ever wanted to know about the Hugo brouhaha of 2015 in from the myriad accounts on the web.

I gave another set of Alfies out in 2016, when the worldcon was in Kansas City.   The Hugo rules were different that year, so I tweaked the Alfies as well… but the winners still seemed to appreciate them.  (And that’s what awards are all about, really).   By 2017, when the con was in Helsinki, the need for the Alfies seemed to have passed.  We threw a great Hugo Losers Party that year, but handed out no hood ornaments.   Come 2018, worldcon went to San Jose, and we awarded a single Alfie, to John Picacio for his Mexicanx Initiative, a commendable effort to put more world in worldcon.   We went international as well in 2019,  in Dublin.  Alfies were presented there to two titans of British publishing, Malcolm Edwards of Gollancx and Jane Johnson of Voyager, two of the leading editors in the history of our genre, neither of whom had gotten so much as a Hugo nomination in years past.   They were long overdue.

There were no Alfies given at the worldcons in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.   The New Zealand con had to go virtual, due to the pandemic, and I was not able to attend the 2021 con in Washington, DC or the Chicago con in 2022.   But the next one up was in Chengdu, China… and that’s where the problems came in.   The Chinese fans designed a handsome Hugo trophy, for certain… but when the nomination totals were finally revealed, it became clear that the vote counting had gone seriously awry.   The numbers did not seem right, and four possible contenders (a television show, a fan writer, a new writer, and a major novel) were unaccountably missing from the final ballot, despite having received more than enough nominations.  They had been disqualified and removed from the ballot.   Why?  No one would say.

I won’t attempt to describe what followed.   You can read all about it on line.

It was time for the Alfies to return.  Fortunately, I still had a garage full of old hood ornaments.  And our hotel had a room that just the right size for a small, invitation-only celebration to honor those who were wrongfully denied their chance to contend for a Hugo rocket.

We shared some food and drink instead.

The Chengdu Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, was won by EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.   Short Form went to “Babylon’s Ashes”, an episode of THE EXPANSE.   Worthy winners both, but some of the competition was missing.  SANDMAN received 139 nominations in Short Form for “The Sound of Her Wings,” almost a hundred more than the EXPANSE episode, but was removed from the ballot for reasons never satisfactorily explained.  In Long Form, the first season of SANDMAN got 50 nominations, which would not have been enough to make the ballot… but the series was removed from that category as well (just to be sure?)

In the fan writer category, CHRIS BARKLEY was the winner.  He had received 90 votes during the nomination round, only one more than another perennial contender, PAUL WEIMER, who got 89… the third highest total, and more than enough to make the final ballot.  But Weimer’s name did not appear.  It was said that he was disqualified for the crime of visiting Tibet at one point.  Except he hadn’t.  Whoever removed him did not seem to know the difference between Tibet and Nepal, which he had visited.

Paul was at Glasgow, but the concom had him working during our banquet, so he was not able to attend.   No one from SANDMAN was in Glasgow, sad to say.   (We got them their Alfies regardless.   And none of our trophies broke, I am assured).

Our final two winners were on hand, however.

Believe it or not, I was a new writer once, and in 1973 I was a finalist for a brand new award for Best New Writer, the first year it was given.   It was called the John W. Campbell Award then, and for many years thereafter.   Today it is called the Astounding Award, but it’s the same award.  “Not a Hugo,” by either name, it is awarded to the best new writer to break in during the previous two years.

XIRAN JAY ZHAO was a finalist for the Astounding Award in 2022.   They lost, just as I did in 1973 — but hey, it is an honor just to be nominated, and I certainly felt that way in ’73.   The first time is always special.    Jay got enough votes to make the ballot again in 2023, their second year of eligibility… 178, to be precise, the fourth highest nomination total.   But their name did not appear on the final ballot.

Why?  No idea.

Instead, we gave them an Alfie.

The final Alfie of the night went to R.F.  KUANG for her novel BABEL, OR THE NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE,, which received 810 nominations, the third highest total.   Nonethelss, there was no place on the ballot her.  That was especially egregious, I thought, since BABEL would have had an excellent chance of coming out on top if the book had been nominated.  The novel had already won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award, among other honors; a Hugo would have given it a rare sweep of SF’s most prestigious awards.  Alas, BABEL never got the chance to contend.

But it did get an Alfie.  And Rebecca herself was there to collect it.

Will there be more Alfies in the years to come?  Only time will tell.

But Glasgow was fun.   And I hope to see you all again this year, in Seattle.

GRRM

Current Mood: pleased