The Hugo Awards for 2024 and Worldcon site selection for 2026

August 11, 2024 4:43 PM

2024's Hugo Award winners have been announced. Complete voting statistics and a report from the Hugo administrators are available as PDFs. The video of the award ceremony is currently online without a live feed, so the ceremony begins at around -01:52:00 and a short presentation by John Scalzi begins at -01:48:00. Also this weekend, Los Angeles was selected to be the site of Worldcon in 2026. Meanwhile, Glasgow 2024's programme guide is currently still online, showing some kinds of things that happen at Worldcon, while Seattle 2025 continues gathering panel suggestions.
posted by Wobbuffet (54 comments total)

> The following nominees received enough votes to qualify for the final ballot, but declined nomination:
….
Best Related Work: Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood’s promotional tweets for This Is How You Lose the Time War

I understand why, but also, B.D.W. deserves the accolades.
posted by persona at 4:52 PM on August 11 [15 favorites]

Rumor has it that Dave McCarty, unwelcome and unmissed, made some appearances at the event regardless. There are further reports that he was confronted and verbally accosted in a hotel lobby by a woman in a fabulous hat (bsky, but the pertinent bits should be visible without login). This account courtesy of T. Kingfisher, who also won Best Novella for Thornhedge and whose acceptance speech was (I understand) primarily about sea cucumber butt teeth. I have not seen the sea cucumber speech myself but I hope it will turn up somewhere.

edit: oh duh it's no doubt in the video linked above, sorry, somehow thought it was only a livestream. I'll watch when I'm somewhere I can hear it better.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 5:18 PM on August 11 [10 favorites]

The sea cucumber butt speech was magnificent.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:22 PM on August 11 [6 favorites]

Yes! T. Kingfisher / Ursula Vernon's sea cucumber speech is here beginning at around -18:56.
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:23 PM on August 11 [5 favorites]

Strange Horizons won a magazine Hugo after MANY years doing PHENOMENAL work and getting on the ballot but not winning. Just absolutely delighted.
posted by brainwane at 6:16 PM on August 11 [14 favorites]

Speeches worth checking out include:

Scalzi being forthright about what happened last year

Ruoxi Chen on the light that motivates us

Zach Weinersmith on being a buzzkill

BOTH of Naomi Kritzer's speeches, on what she wanted to achieve with those stories

Emily Tesh on wanting her book to disappear into history
posted by brainwane at 6:21 PM on August 11 [6 favorites]

Also, Adri Joy from Nerds of a Feather, inviting Neil Gaiman to fuck off into the sun at around -01:12:45
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:29 PM on August 11 [13 favorites]

Wobbuffet, I saw that and instantly noticed that, technically, it was not slanderous.
posted by brainwane at 6:36 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

Shout-out to MeFi's Own Chris Rose in the administrators' report for a lot of programming work on the nomination and final ballot voting system! Thanks, Chris!
posted by brainwane at 6:41 PM on August 11 [14 favorites]

A few of the winners or nominees, like the Three Body Problem adaptation, are listed as being in Chinese with no translator noted. The report notes: "Given the very large number of WSFS members of Chengdu Worldcon, all of whom had the right to nominate for the 2024 Hugos, we had all the necessary material efficiently and professionally translated by Sophia Xue." Is that common practice? I don't follow the Hugos very closely, so I wondered if Spanish- or French- or any other language material was regularly nominated and considered in a bespoke translation.
posted by the sobsister at 7:13 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

Untranslated work is eligible, but I think it's pretty rare for it to be nominated. I don't pay as much attention as folks like, say, the Hugo Book Club Blog--who would know--but I can't remember any before Chengdu. I may be overlooking something but I don't see untranslated work among finalists from when Worldcon was in Yokohama in 2007, Montréal in 2009, or Helsinki in 2017 (nothing untranslated pops out in the nomination tallies either, though I'm looking at them even less carefully).
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:52 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

I usually don't read super-new stuff, so in most years I've read zero of the nominees. This year I'd read two without even trying, and it's won by the author I don't even know. I'll give it a shot. (Starter Villain and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi are both good reads, FWIW).

I thought Poor Things was head and shoulders above the D&D movie in terms of artistic quality, and more interesting in terms of SF setting too.
posted by mark k at 8:21 PM on August 11 [4 favorites]

Glad to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves getting some props.
posted by jmauro at 8:21 PM on August 11 [8 favorites]

Lots of good stuff in best novel, but was pretty sad that Saint of Bright Doors didn't get it; it's an amazing book. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was also super good fun.
posted by kaibutsu at 8:30 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

I have attended a grand total of one Worldcon, Worldcon 56, held in Baltimore in 1998. The relevant information here is that the needlenose spaceship Hugo trophies are made by a foundry in England, but every year the base on which the trophy sits is designed and produced by a local craftsperson in the city where the convention is held. In 1998, the Hugo bases were made by my father, using wood reclaimed from the USS Constellation.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:03 PM on August 11 [35 favorites]

I see 2026 will be in the same Los Angeles where the Los Angeles Angels play and not actually Los Angeles.
posted by jimw at 9:06 PM on August 11 [7 favorites]

Ahh boo... I was hoping LA would be more LA-proper, but also, this would be my first chance to actually attend! I don't even know what the hell to do or expect or prepare of how not to nerd gush or feel woefully underprepared.

Man, World Con and then the Olympics... weeeeeeee.....
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:08 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]

The livestream has converted into an ordinary video, so notable moments are easier to link to, e.g. the beginning at 23:58, Scalzi at 27:10, Joy's final comment at 1:02:18, Chen at 1:14:10 (following significant technical difficulties including the absence of a pre-recorded? segment that would have included opening an envelope), Weinersmith at 1:37:35, Kritzer for Short Story at 1:48:00, Kritzer for Novelette at 1:52:00, T. Kingfisher at 1:56:00, Tesh at 2:06:30, etc. I think that's everything that's been mentioned so far, but plenty of other acceptances were neat to see.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:21 PM on August 11 [5 favorites]

What a fabulous night (technical glitches notwithstanding).
posted by jscalzi at 10:31 PM on August 11 [7 favorites]

Looking at the nominations data, there's definitely some odd voting patterns. There's a handful of nominees with very high ratios of EPH-Score to Total-Nominations, which implies almost all voters who nominated them didn't nominate anyone else.

Eg: the Three Body Problem graphic story had 151 EPH score, and 151 nominations. That means everybody who nominated it had only one selection for that category. Other nominees also had very high ratios, eg: Yao Haijun in Editor, Long; Answerless Journey in Short Story, and about ten other works with a ratio of at least 80%. Typical nominees had ratios around 45-65%.

Note that this is not dispositive. It's possible that voters did nominate other works, but those works were eliminated too early to show up on the ballot. Or even if not, "bullet voting", where you only nominate one option, is totally allowed. It's just odd to see such outliers.

FWIW, none of these potentially-suspicious nominees won their categories, so I see no reason to doubt the overall results.
posted by vasi at 11:35 PM on August 11 [3 favorites]

Nominations were open to members of the Chengdu Worldcon of 2023, so we got all the good Chinese stuff that was missing from a lot of the categories in 2023 due to, well, McCarty et al prejudices - I assume those members wouldn't be widely read in very new English language stories and their priority would be to recommend good Chinese stories. Glasgow did very good work in translating them for a wider English speaking audience and I really enjoyed Introduction to the 2181 Overture especially. Also A+++ on prerecorded finalist lists pronounced by people with the right phoneme background.

Also it always surprises me how few people nominate. I now have the satisfaction of being one of like 50 people who contributed to the thousands of Hugo voters and way more who treat the shortlist as a reading recommendation discovering Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape A Dragon's Breath.

Really fun Worldcon, much envy to people who go to Seattle and LA and hopefully Montreal and Brisbane, please support Dublin in 2029 so I get to do this again in person!
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:57 AM on August 12 [10 favorites]

Also it always surprises me how few people nominate.

This has been routinely surprising me since I started paying attention to the numbers. It is a really small nominating base. I have a couple of professional interests in the Hugos these days - my clients include Arkady Martine, nominated in Novella for Rose/House (originally published by a small press in a very limited run, which no doubt hurt its chances, but is coming from Tordotcom and Tor UK next spring in wide release!), Max Gladstone, on the longlist for Best Series, and the Sunday Morning Transport, on the longlist for Best Semiprozine, and the latter two missed the ballot by 17 and 16 nominations respectively. And I can't complain, because I didn't get a membership this year, so didn't nominate or vote.

I have to say, I adore the Administrator's Report. So fussy, so precise, so detailed, so many excellent uses of bold font. I would love to see something like it every year.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:44 AM on August 12 [12 favorites]

Nicholas is somewhat legendary as a very fussy, precise administrator. He's also hoping to be done with the position after Seattle, so hopefully someone steps up.

(Also, thanks, brainwane, for pointing out the mention; I was out at dinner with friends and actually missed it in person, sadly!)
posted by ChrisR at 5:08 AM on August 12 [7 favorites]

I didn't get a supporting membership this year but Some Desperate Glory would absolutely have gotten my top vote for novel so hooray!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:05 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

I think the nominating pool is small partly because relatively few people know how the Hugos work,. Yes, even in fandom, even in Worldcon fandom.

I think people who do know about nominating overestimate how much you need to know to nominate. The field in huge these days;. You can't keep up with more than a category or two, and maybe not even that. I recommend nominating anything you think is strikingly good even if you don't know the rest of the field.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:11 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

1) I teared up when I saw that Strange Horizons has won a Hugo. Year after year, they've been responsible for me expanding my reading horizons and my reading practices in all sorts of new directions. I'm so pleased to see them be recognized.

2) The administrative report! This is just me being nosy, but I'm curious about the story behind the one nomination for Northanger Abbey in Best Novel. A mistake? Mistyping a different release? For fun? Just rounding out one's ballot? A cross-cultural misunderstanding? Some political jab? Or maybe it's just not unusual to have one extreme outlier among the large numbers of nominations?
posted by mixedmetaphors at 7:10 AM on August 12 [5 favorites]

I'm very happy for Naomi. Still annoyed October Daye never wins best series.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:51 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

How did the more business-y Worldcon proposals go? Wasn't there a proposal to have a third-party audit of voting going forward, that would need 2 consecutive con approvals to pass? Something like that, anyway?
posted by mediareport at 8:15 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]

There's a general committee to report on the Hugo Awards process, and a similar general committee to make proposals about the structure of the business meeting. I'm not sure where either of those will go. There's a new third committee to investigate the events of 2023 and report back with recommendations. The fourth one, and gods help me, is one I'm chairing to report on possible constitutional requirements for software used in the administration of the Hugo Awards and possibly other aspects of WSFS.
posted by ChrisR at 9:28 AM on August 12 [5 favorites]

In case this is inspiring you to consider going to your first Worldcon, next year or 2026: some of us on Ask talked a few months ago about what to expect at a Worldcon, and what sorts of activities you might enjoy doing there.
posted by brainwane at 9:44 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

For some reason, I had pigeonholed Some Desperate Glory as a young adult thing, which is not my thing. I guess I have to recalibrate that.
posted by Ber at 9:59 AM on August 12 [2 favorites]

OK I'm going to go CAPSLOCK for a bit about Strange Horizons.


They've been doing this work SINCE 2000

as a NONPROFIT

(Clarkesworld: 2006. Uncanny: 2014. Lightspeed: 2010. Beneath Ceaseless Skies: 2008. Escape Pod: 2005. Abyss & Apex: 2003. The vast majority of the magazines I listed a few years ago: started AFTER Strange Horizons proved out how good an online venue for pro-level short SF/F can be.)

the site has NO ADS

since 2017 they've ALSO been publishing "a quarterly magazine of and about translated speculative fiction", Samovar, to bridge the worlds of English-language SF/F and other languages' literature

They were the first pro mag to publish Alaya Dawn Johnson and John Scalzi and Nnedi Okorafor and Justine Larbalestier and SO many others

They published Erin Horáková's 2017 essay "Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift" which has become a touchstone

And SO MANY special issues and conversations and essays and interviews - always thoughtful and thought-provoking

THEY PUBLISH EVERY WEEK

and, since 2017, they have content notes at the top of stories

they have been RAISING THE BAR for inclusivity in SF/F SINCE THEY STARTED -- in fiction and nonfiction

the QUALITY of the stories is -- a lot of them don't speak to me but they all SPEAK

Works they published got included in Year's Best anthologies and got nominated for or won awards going back all the way to 2000, and then the magazine got on the Hugo Award ballot for Best Semiprozine in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

And this year they WON

and look, other magazines do great work too! For sure! But Strange Horizons is such a lighthouse, and it's dear to me, and yesterday it got a particular kind of recognition, not just for the past year of work, but, in my view, TWENTY-PLUS YEARS of serving and advancing the field

and I hope everyone who's ever been associated with Strange Horizons feels a touch more pride today
posted by brainwane at 10:59 AM on August 12 [25 favorites]

("Kirk Drift" on MeFi previously - and Strange Horizons is the source for dozens of past front page posts, including several of mine.)
posted by brainwane at 11:06 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]

For some reason, I had pigeonholed Some Desperate Glory as a young adult thing, which is not my thing. I guess I have to recalibrate that.

The protagonist is a young adult but the subject matter is definitely tailored for actual adults. I read it for a book club and one of our members is a human rights lawyer who said he could only get through it in small doses because it got so much awful stuff right.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:40 PM on August 12 [5 favorites]

Flagged as Fantastic, brainwane (and pun only intended in retrospect)
posted by kristi at 7:31 PM on August 12 [2 favorites]

I was interested to see that Strange Horizons has swung from having several dozen people listed on the ballot in 2021 to going with simply "by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective". Did they change the rules to make things easier on the trophy engravers?
posted by 3j0hn at 9:16 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]

There's a general committee to report on the Hugo Awards process, and a similar general committee to make proposals about the structure of the business meeting. I'm not sure where either of those will go.

Well, now I'm confused. Please forgive my ignorance about the Hugo process, but when I asked in the previous thread, "Are proposals for an independent audit system going to be voted on next month?" I got this answer:

Yes. But amendments have to pass two consecutive Business Meetings before becoming part of the WSFS Constitution, so the earliest there could be solid external audit machinery in place would be for the 2026 Hugos.

And then a link to the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting agenda, which I thought included proposals that would be voted on this year, but apparently, ChrisR, you're saying that didn't happen yet? Again, please forgive my ignorance of Hugo processes.

On page 18 of the agenda, for instance, there's a resolution for a "Hugo Process Study Committee" that includes this text:

Resolved, that there be a Hugo Process Study Committee that shall report back to the 2025 Business Meeting with recommendations and proposed amendments. The remit of this committee shall include, but not be limited to: employing third-parties to administer, oversee, and/or audit the Hugo Awards and the financial implications thereof; other options for independent oversight of the Hugo Awards; creation of a whistleblower process and protections; and how such processes might affect the site selection process [emphasis added]

Did that pass? If so, does that now set up the committee or do we have to wait for a 2nd approval in Seattle next year?

Then on page 31 there's a proposal for "Independent Hugo Administration" with this text:

Moved, 1) to assign specific duties associated with Worldcons to a standing body that exists
separately from the convention of Worldcon and has responsibility for maintaining the
service marks of WSFS and associated items with due care and responsibility.

The subsequent discussion describes a process that doesn't seem very independent of Worldcon to me, at least not in the Price-WaterhouseCoopers/Oscars way, but whatever. It was apparently on the agenda. Did that pass?

tldr: Given that two consecutive Worldcons must approve any changes to the Worldcon constitution, what changes were approved in Glasgow for possible consideration next year in Seattle? Was there anything that advanced to that next step?
posted by mediareport at 10:05 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]

File770 published a series of business meeting summaries with, like, what passed and what didn't. You still need the ~100 page agenda to look up the text, but "D. 10 Hugo Process Study Committee" is marked "PASSED."

A lot of business meeting stuff is opaque to me, and I didn't watch or attend the meeting--very much speculating on this. But I suspect giving this committee a very specific remit with the goal of making amendment proposals isn't an empty procedural step that delays action but rather a way to give their recommendations more legitimacy and help their proposals avoid a quick motion to refer to committee. I think the latter is what actually happened to a bunch of the proposals this year: F. 5 through F. 10 all went to the committee formed under D. 10.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:47 AM on August 13 [2 favorites]

They were pretty explicit that a bunch of stuff was going to be passed to committee because the business meeting is recorded and they did not want to find themselves liable for libel given the likely tenor of the discussion re: various previous Hugo administrators and and their associates. (Scottish libel law being what it is and all.)
posted by restless_nomad at 12:15 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]

mediareport: i'm not an expert on Robert's Rules, but my understanding is that "assigning something to a committee for study" is a different class of motion; changing the constitution is what requires two business meetings in a row. So this represents an additional delay, but it's definitely not for the sake of delay; it's so that they can get shit moving on the idea between business meetings and get some reasonable proposals to actually make it work.
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:21 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

They were pretty explicit that a bunch of stuff was going to be passed to committee

Yeah, those were D. 11 and D. 12, and IIRC that move involved a judgment call about WSFS Constitution 5.1.4--like, if censure resolutions aren't previously a thing, then they're not customs/usages of WSFS, so the order of precedence in 5.1.4 isn't applicable and the executive session stuff can come into play. The Hugo-related amendments to the constitution were under section F, and rather than failing as-is or taking no action, the summary suggests they were moved to committee there in the meeting--a healthy sign suggesting real interest in consensus, IMO, because amendments failing to pass is pretty common.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:33 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

It seems that while I was in transit halfway to my destination, Wobbuffet and adrienneleigh answered your questions, mediareport :D

In the agenda, the D. items were resolutions that were already within the meeting's remit per the constitution. E. was the set of constitutional amendments passed on for possible ratification, and F. were new business that could result in a change to the constitution next year in Seattle.
posted by ChrisR at 2:18 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]

Some Desperate Glory on Fanfare.

Yay explicit antifa scifi!
posted by lalochezia at 5:06 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

File770 published a series of business meeting summaries with, like, what passed and what didn't.

lol that's a hilariously confusing presentation. Like Wobbuffet, I still find Worldcon's business structure to be somewhat opaque ("ridiculously byzantine" also comes to mind, and while I know I'm not the first to say it I'm probably less inclined than most to see that absurd complexity as somehow endearing), so please correct me if the following is not right:

1. Amendment F.6, "Independent Hugo Administration," was referred to the new Hugo Process Study Committee on Saturday instead of being voted on, and then not mentioned in 770's reports of subsequent days. This is the proposal that most clearly creates "a standing body that exists separately from the convention of Worldcon" (though goddesses help me I can barely understand its convolutions) but since it didn't pass at this year's con cannot be enacted after a 2nd vote in Seattle next year.

2. After a motion to postpone F.11, "Hugo Administration and Site Selection Monitoring," failed, and a motion to refer it to the new Hugo Process Committee also failed, both on Saturday, and then nothing happened with it on Sunday, F.11 actually passed (huzzah!) on Monday. This amendment says it "provides for independent monitoring of site election and Hugo Award administration," but the independence depends on monitors giving "a statement that they are not affiliated with either of the next two Worldcons committees and will not become so affiliated during their term of office." Is that really independent? Will it really help? Anyway, this can become Worldcon law if it also passes in Seattle next year.

Those are the two that seemed most central, and I don't think much is going to change from the passage of F.11, which strikes me as a deck chairs/iceberg kind of thing. I'm willing to wait and see. But what the hell happens next with F.6? Does the business committee meet during the year? Did they discuss it in full already and drop it?

Ugh, this stuff. So needlessly convoluted.
posted by mediareport at 8:52 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

Re: the schedule/workload the committee will operate under and what proposals they'll eventually come up with or recommend for passage, my guess is it's an ongoing activity like a lot of Worldcon volunteer stuff that happens informally all year.

Re: the convolutedness of Worldcon, I suspect you and I are in a similar place on what's clear and what isn't.

Unpacking it all for anyone here who might want to be in the same place or better, I feel like I have a good cognitive model of the 16-page WSFS Constitution informed by seeing it matter over the years, plus the same understanding anyone would have from following File770--which I think published some of the proposals in advance. This much isn't really that hard to grok--it's more a matter of following it steadily with casual interest.

I've also skimmed a dozen pages in the 100-page business meeting agenda, and my understanding of Robert's Rules of Order would easily fit in a 2-page summary (more doubtless apply though). The things I've never spent time on include the 6-page rules for running the business meeting, the 33-page resolutions and rulings of continuing effect, or attending/watching a complete business meeting. I see Kevin Standlee has posted recordings of this year's sessions, and there are a bunch of old recordings and minutes online.

It is A Lot, but it is also amazing that a bunch of people volunteer to spend that amount of time (and way, way more out of view) on what is essentially a big annual party to celebrate SF/F and talk about it and see people in the field and have fun.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:20 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Zoë O'Connell's visualizations of the detailed voting stats for the Hugos are terrific.

Apparently they were made with SankeyMATIC, a free and open source tool built around D3.js and also available online.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:52 PM on August 14

I'm thinking of adding some support for those into NomNom; they're really pretty and I suspect they'd make for nice visualization for the admins.
posted by ChrisR at 11:40 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

(I realized that it's probably non-obvious, but NomNom is the Hugo Award nominating, voting, and reporting software used by Glasgow in 2024, and to be used by Seattle and LA in the next two as well)
posted by ChrisR at 5:08 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

I'd love to see those output from NomNom, either in the final stats report or as an addendum! They tell a clear story about the audience's preferences--not to mention the legitimacy of outcomes that aren't obvious from looking at round 1.
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:57 AM on August 15

Man those are some great graphs. I would love to see those every year - they really lay out some of the voting patterns. You can see some things like social groups - in a couple of cases, people voted for their #1 and #2 that are pretty tightly linked in generation/social media circles/personal circles even when the works aren't necessarily that similar. (I think this is the obvious explanation for the Witch King/Translation State transfer - a lot of people who read Witch King read it because they came from Murderbot, and they either came to Murderbot from the Radch or went there after.) Also interesting that it was FIYAH voters that put Strange Horizons over the top, after a decade of Uncanny taking the award. (Uncanny's great but man has it been time for a change.)
posted by restless_nomad at 6:10 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

The only sad thing about Uncanny not quite making it is that I feel for the Thomases after losing their daughter earlier this year. They don't deserve to win because they lost her, but it would have been a nice thing to see.
posted by ChrisR at 6:20 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I was expecting it, actually, given Caitlin, and I hope they're taking it ok. (They're friendly acquaintances, and the con I help run held a memorial for her this summer. She was a good kid.)
posted by restless_nomad at 6:24 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

"Friendly acquaintances" is roughly where I'd slot them in as well.

It's been a rough year for Chicago-area fandom.
posted by ChrisR at 6:43 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

BTW Naomi Kritzer's acceptance speech for "The Year Without Sunshine" included a tribute to Uncanny and to Caitlin.
posted by brainwane at 7:03 AM on August 15 [3 favorites]