Patrick Nielsen Hayden

As some of you are aware, recently I agreed to co-sponsor a motion to the Worldcon business meeting which would have had the effect of splitting the existing Best Professional Editor Hugo Award into two awards, one for magazine editors and one for book editors. Our proposal, our initial argument for it, and many comments pro and con can be read here. It has also been debated in various other venues in the days leading up to Worldcon. At the last minute, Chris Barkley, the original drafter of the measure, had to cancel his plans to attend, leaving me in the somewhat uncomfortable position of being the leading public advocate of a measure from which I might arguably benefit.

The short report is that a version of this measure has passed, and been sent on to next year's Worldcon for final ratification. If LACon's business meeting does indeed ratify it, the 2007 Hugos will have two editor categories rather than just one.

Here are the details of how it happened, to the best of my recollection. I'm sure I've compressed and telescoped certain details of parliamentary procedure in ways that will grate on experienced Business Meeting attendees; I apologize in advance and welcome their corrections.

At Friday's business meeting, our motion came up after much other business had been disposed of. An objection-to-consideration was immediately raised; this objection was then soundly voted down. (Objections to consideration always proceed directly to a vote without debate; subjecting all new business to OTCs is a good way to thin out proposals which have no serious support.) Despite this evidence that the Business Meeting sincerely wanted to discuss our issue, I was pretty convinced, based on the torrent of criticism we'd received before the con, that the prevailing winds were against us, and I was determined to speak for the proposal in such a way that appealed to the assembled SMOFs to recognize the reality of the problem we're trying to address, however they should choose to try to solve it.

I didn't have to. Mark Olson, with whom I'd had very courteous arguments beforehand, interceded before debate could be called on our proposal, and moved that the chair deputize him to convene an informal committee to report back the very next day. This committee would be charged with drafting language for a revised-and-reformed single Best Editor Hugo, and new language for a pair of Best Editor Hugos. The committee would take no position on the relative merits of the two approaches; its job would be to construct the best possible language for each.

Mark's motion passed. The Friday BM adjourned shortly afterward, and Mark and I went to a corner of the room where we accreted about a dozen other attendees--people like Seth Breidbardt, Sharon Sbarsky, Martin Easterbrook, etc. We very carefully went over both the existing single-award language and the PNH/Barkley split-the awards proposal, attempting to address all the problems people had raaised, one by one. Among other things, we all decided to agree that the award or awards no longer need a "circulation requirement" or, for that matter, any definition of "professional" whatsoever. And we agreed to completely ignore the issue of online "publication" because the BM has already chartered a separate committee to address those kinds of questions throughout the Hugo definitions.

The big change we made to the Barkley/PNH proposal was to relocate the anthologists and editors of story collections to the category inhabited by magazine editors, thus addressing the concerns of those who feel that the category is otherwise unsustainably weak. We retitled the two proposed Hugos "Best Editor (Short Fiction)" and "Best Editor (Long Fiction)". The dividing line between "short" and "long" would be that already defined in the WSFS charter: 40,000 words.

The big change we made to the existing single category, in drafting the alternative don't-create-a-new-Hugo plan, was to eliminate all the magazine-specific language and insert language making it explicitly clear that book editors are to be consiered eligible.

Mark wrote out a fair copy of the language for both proposals, and later typed it up and posted it in an agreed-in-advance public location, so we could all read it one more time before Mark handed it off to the Business Meeting officials that evening, for inclusion in the next day's agenda.

The next morning, by pre-arrangement, debate was opened on both proposals very shortly after the 10 AM start of business, as I had a panel to appear on at 11 AM. Debate was quick and to the point. After a brief motion by Rick Katze to amend the two-category motion in such a way as to prohibit any editor from accepting nomination in both categories (after a brief debate, this was voted down Everyone-to-Rick), I gave the opening speech in favor of the two-category version. My basic point was this: I am entirely in sympathy with the BM's historic reluctance to create new Hugos. Down that road, if unchecked, lies a Hugo category for Best Filksong, and we all know it. Rather, I continued, I am before you to engage in a massive act of special pleading. And the case I make to you is this: Book publishing has been the dominant mode of production in written SF for over fifty years. If the magazines were all to die tomorrow, it would be a tragedy. If SF book publishing were to cease tomorrow, it would be the end of our subculture. I concluded by reading the names of forty book editors in our industry who each edit four or more new titles each year.

Tim Illingworth alternated calling on speakers in favor of the reformed single category and speakers in favor of the two-category proposal. Among the notables who rose to speak in favor of the two-category proposal--in essence, our proposal--were Priscilla Olson, Craig Miller, Kevin Standlee, and Ben Yalow. Also in attendance were several other book editors, including Ginjer Buchanan of Ace, Anne Groell of Bantam, freelancer (and former Avon editor) John Douglas, and Moshe Feder of Tor. John, Ginjer, and Moshe were all among the speakers. Moshe in particular was able to rebut some false assertions about Hugo history that were raised by opposing speakers.

A counted-off vote was taken between the two proposals. The two-category proposal defeated the reform-the-existing-category proposal 39 to 20. A vote was then taken on passing the two-category proposal and sending it on to LACon for ratification. This passed 51 to 6. I got to my 11:00 panel at 11:06.

Of course, it seems entirely plausible that at tomorrow's Hugo ceremony, book editor David Hartwell will turn out to have finally, after being a finalist sixteen times, won. If so, this LJ entry will exist to show that I was alive in advance to the possibility of massive irony.