I meant to post about my Hugo picks, but never got past the first post, where I gave my choices for Graphic Story and Related Work (and a summary of my reasons for those picks).

Well, it's sort of beside the point now ...

I was at the Hugo ceremony. I was lucky enough to be near the front.

I don't know what anybody else felt, but to me the anticipation, that feeling of tenterhooks, was palpable ... through the First Fandom awards, the Big Heart (congratulations to a very deserving Ben Yalow), the Campbell, the fan Hugos ... up until the first "No Award" was announced.

And it was a No Award. Followed by four more.

Wow.

Up until it actually happened, I wasn't sure it was going to fall out that way. Maybe I hadn't talked to enough people. Or maybe nobody really knew, until we all knew.

I had voted No Award in all of the short fiction categories and in Related Work, on principle. Doubly so. The first principle was to strike my own small blow against the gaming of the nomination system by the two gangs of Puppies.

But when the packet came out, I had decided that I was going to be honest and judge the work on its merits. I then proceeded to read (almost)* all of the nominated works.

*(I think I can be forgiven for giving up on Wisdom from My Internet after a mere sampling of its myriad wonders. I didn't finish Letters from Gardner either, but the several unremarkable chapters I did read was enough. I did, however, read all of the John C. Wright nominees, including Transhuman and Subhuman. Gods help me. What kept me going was morbid fascination ... well, I suppose I can say I read his so-called "awful truth" so the rest of you don't have to, but Wright, you fucker, that's a small chunk of my life I'll never get back. Meh.)

Well, I read the nominated work and judged it on its merits. And it all merited No Award.

Including, in my opinion, the non-Puppy nominated work that did win for best Novelette, "The Day the World Turned Upside Down." Chacun à son goût, I suppose ...

Anyway, back to the ceremony. A total repudiation of the Puppies. I do feel for some of the editors who were nominated (mainly Mike Resnick, Sheila Gilbert, and Toni Weisskopf), who, in a less polarized year, where they hadn't been smeared by Puppy shit, might have had a real chance at a rocket.

And we have more of this to look forward to next year?

I really hope the Sad Puppies abandon this pointless exercise. I don't expect the Rabid Puppies to do so. They hate fandom ... they hate the Hugos ... they want to destroy us, and have explicitly said so.

In light of this year’s Hugo fracas, I decided that not only did I need to vote, I also needed to share my thoughts on how and why I voted. So, here I go, category by category. I’m going to list them in the rank I’ve put them on my ballot; where there’s no  number next to an entry, it means I didn’t vote for it at all.

I also haven't posted to my journal here in ages. This is the closest thing I have to a blog right now, ao here I go ...

In this first entry I’m going to cover Best Related Work and Best Graphic Story.

I don’t claim to be the best of critics; these are the opinions of this fan. They are mine, however.
( Picks and pans below ...Collapse )

I was at the memorial for Velma.

A lot of her family was there, as well as a lot of folks from all of the disparate circles she frequented when she was still here in NYC: fans, music folk, even a writer or two who had never met Velma face-to-face but was touched by her writing.

I was gratified by how her sister, brother, niece, nephews, and other relatives accepted me after all these years as still part of the family ("you don't get out that easy ...")

Anyway, I had decided that, unlike many other times where I didn't get up and say something, I needed to do so this time. And winging it would not do, so I wrote my comments.

[The following is what I said when I got up to speak ...]Velma, I didn’t have a red dress to wear here tonight. Even if I did, I don’t think I have the legs to carry it off. I hope my riotously colored necktie suffices …


Though we hadn’t had much contact in recent years, especially after she and Soren moved to Seattle, Velma and I had been part of each other’s everyday lives for nearly 20 years. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to share a few thoughts with you about the woman I love.

I met Velma when we both hung out with a ragtag, scruffy bunch of science fiction fans that would frequent Washington Square Park on most Thursday evenings when the weather allowed. We were both unattached at that moment in time. As I remember, she was in equal measures both shy and playfully outgoing. On one occasion, there was a bit of horseplay, where she was goofing about, deliberately falling into the arms of a couple of people, including me (a lot!), often falling face forward. I think some part of my brain got the message at that point …

It was either at that gathering, or another shortly after, that the group decamped, as was its wont, to dinner at one of our “usual suspect” destinations, Jiu Siang Dumpling House in Chinatown (which is no longer there under that name). She later told me that I rescued her on that dinner expedition, as her Chinese food experience was strictly of the Cantonese egg roll, chow mein, and egg drop soup variety … as it was for so many of us growing up in those years. Dumplings and Sichuan food came later for most of us. I don’t remember just what I did, sitting next to her … I think part of it was chopsticks … but whatever it was made her feel more comfortable and much less lost. I don’t recall exactly when it happened, but at some point we were holding hands … she offered hers, and to her amazement, I took it. My brain had gotten the rest of the message. I rode on the subway with her to her stop that night, even though it wasn’t my stop … or my line.

Things went on from there.

Velma was known to her friends by a couple of names. At some point, she decided to use what started out as wordplay on her initials as her name to her friends and for her writing. The fact that “Vijay” in Hindi is normally a boy’s name I think amused her. The fact that it means “victory” I think is significant.

That made me think about what one word I would use to best describe Vijay, if I was held to one word. One of the best that comes to me is “fierce.”

Fierce in her likes, and dislikes. Fiercely passionate, and fierce in the pursuit of her passions. Fiercely loyal to those she loved, her friends, her lovers. Fiercely protective of those she cared about.
While that fierceness could be a two-edged sword, I don’t think those who loved Vijay, and who she loved, would have had it any other way.


So I stand here, with you all of you who loved Velma and were loved by her, to trade memories and celebrate the life of a woman whose flame burned fiercely bright. Velma, I love you.

Lou Reed died yesterday.

The world is a little emptier. The heroes and icons of my youth are making their farewells, one by one.

For a long time I've held that many on the right are worse than wolves. Wolves, at least, look after fellow members of their pack.

The right is wrong about rights:
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/27/the_right_is_wrong_about_rights/

I post rarely (not necessarily a good thing), but I have a couple of things on my mind ...

First, the next time I have a discussion with somebody and they state that radical climate change is an exaggeration, or a political ploy, or the like, I will be bitchslapping (figuratively, of course ;-)) that person so hard ... this stuff is not deniable anymore. Anybody carrying water for these anti-scientific Luddites is worse than a flat earther; at least, flat earth beliefs don't hurt anybody.

Gov. Cuomo had it right. We're in a new reality, and we have to start hardening our infrastructure against the severe weather that's a major part of that new reality.

Perhaps we can emulate the place from which our city and region drew their original names, which is also the site of the largest flood protection project, containing the largest surge barrier, in the world. Can you say stimulus? Can you say jobs program on steroids?

(Yeah, I posted this same passage on FB ... so sue me, much good it'll do you ... )

It has been 50 years ... Happy Yuri's Night ...

... in a few hours, arriving tonight (Thursday).

I'm going to be in Seattle over the weekend, representing TES at the NCSF annual meeting.

Meetings are Saturday and Sunday; I'll have most of Friday free.

Twenty years ago I was living with roadnotes on the wrong side of the BQE, on Warren Street in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill.

(It was a beautiful apartment, about which the less said, the better ... the landlady was crazy. Certifiable. Dangerous frootbat ... We spent less than a year there.)

We did own a television. At that point, however, it lived on the kitchen floor, unplugged, serving as a foot rest under the kitchen table.

We got a phone call that afternoon from a friend. My recollection is that it was Gary Farber, but I'm not totally sure. A reconstruction (not necessarily accurate, but the gist is there) of that brief conversation runs somewhat like this:

"Are you watching TV?"
"No. It's unplugged."
"Plug it in and turn it on now."
"Why?"
"The Berlin Wall is coming down."