Intergalactic House of Paisley

Worldcon was way fun, as always. Saw lots of folks we hadn't seen in too long, drank lots of beer and generally had a great time. Cats are happy to see us. More later.

Water falling from the sky! What a concept! Let's play music loud and splash about in it!


1) Up Against The Wall Red Neck Mothers, Jerry Jeff Walker

2) Spider, TMBG (Live 11-29-08 Le Poisson Rouge)

3) You're Only Lonely, Micah P Hinson

4) Rescue Me, World Party

5) Is It Any Wonder, The Shortwave Set

6) Insane In The Membrane, Cypress Hill

7) Arc (Mookie Blalock), Eddie Vedder (4.7.2008)

8) 2000 Miles, The Pretenders

9) C'mon Levi, Occult Detective Club

10) Daydream Believer, The Monkees


say wha'?


11) Children of the Polka, Children of the Wave

12) Hotel California, Gipsy Kings

13) January, Ravens & Chimes


Dinner with Steve and Sue Francis tonight, who are driving to Reno for Worldcon and passing through KC. Since the KaCSFFS meeting is next Saturday, we have somewhat more opportunity to check out the Monet exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art before it goes bye-bye (the exhibit, not the museum).

As some of you may be aware, I was one of the many people who worked on Anticipation, the just-ended WorldCon. My main job was that of doing the layouts for the Souvenir Book, which had the added entertainment value of being in English and French. The coommittee didn't want an Ace Double-style book with French on one side and English on the other; noooo, that would have been easy! Instead, they wanted the English and French to run side by side. This presented certain difficulties, since French is 25% wordier per average chunk o' text than English. So I played with various fonts and weights, and eventually settled in ITC Weidemann, medium weight for the English and book weight for the French. Overall, it balanced out pretty well. It was a lot of work, but an engaging and (in the end) fun challenge, and I am looking forward to seeing the final product at some point.

My other job (since no one ever does one thing for a WorldCon) was working with NPulsifer on the Hugo Administration Committee. My main activity was, once again, design: I created the nominating and final ballots (bilingual? Mai oui!), and the items related to the awards ceremony: the certificates of nomination, the envelopes with the nominees printed on them, and the "Winner is" cards. So I was one of the five people on the planet who knew the winners for the last month, which made things interesting, particularly when I read that Charles N. Brown had died on the way home from Readercon in July. Especially with the vote on eliminating the Best Locus Semiprozine coming up at the Business Meeting (it failed, by the way, before the Hugo Awards ceremony).

But that's not what I want to talk about. The person running the ceremony, Ian Stockdale, had asked for dummy winner cards for the presenters to practice with. I asked Ian how much fun I could have with them, and he mentioned the GoHs would be reading them, so I sadly abandoned my plans to give the short fiction awards to Ernst Hogan's classic trilogy (only two of which are real, as far as I know): "The Frankenstein Penis," "The Dracula Vagina" and "The Werewolf Rectum (Rectum? Killed the Sumbitch)" and came up with a mostly harmless set of cards, with fake titles and dead authors (though I did give Proud Flesh the Best Fanzine nod).

But there was one Easter egg. I had no idea how it would work or be received, but NPulsifer let me know earlier this evening:

So we all were at the rehearsal of course. They were blocking some
stuff and what not, then Neil showed up so they rushed forward so he
could practice his bit.

He pops open the the first envelope and reads Award for best
professional artist is: Amanda F. Palmer. About half those in the room
(100 people or so) laugh. He just stare dumbfounded at the card.

He then read out the best editor card (Some guy who I didn't
recognize, but who had been dead for a long time and somebody shouted
that fact up to him. Very nice.) Dumb luck that he got the best
artist one, but...

During the ceremony Diane, Ruth and I were back stage. Ruth handing
cards and Diane and I staging trophies. (Tanya was back there as well
and because of the glut of trophies for BDP long and short, she got to
carry one of the trophies on stage.) So best Graphic Story comes up
and Neil is kind of pacing around. I sidled up to him and said,
"Promise this one won't say Amanda F. Palmer." and he replies "That
was so funny!"

For those who don't know, Neil is currently dating Amanda, who is the co-founder of the band Dresden Dolls, and an incredibly talented singer/songwriter/performer. She refers to herself on her blog and elsewhere as "afp," which stands for "Amanda Fucking Palmer." I do hope he was able to get that particular card and take it home as a souvenir. Just wish I could have been there to see it.

Got the latest Anticipation Progrerss Report (Rapport préparatoire) in the mail today. Included was the Hugo & John W. Campbell Nominating Ballot (Bulletin de monination pour les prix Hugo et Joun W. Campbell de 2009), which I had the privilege of designing. I believe it's the first fully bilingual ballot (Nippon had separate ones, and I won't make the obvious jokes about about the UK and Australia).

The French text was provided to me by the fine folks at Anticipation, and it was an interesting excercise in layout. It was the first time I'd seen it in printed form (thank Ghu for pdfs!), and I have to say it looks pretty damn good.

The pdf is available for download here, and there should be an online ballot in the near future. Nominate well; I want to have a great list of works to format for the final ballot.

I have to admit I did try to sneak a little bit of fun in. In the form where the voter fills out their information, I had changed "Name/Nom" to "Name/Om nom," but it was spotted during the proofing stage, damn it.

Cheryl Morgan liveblogged the Hugo ceremony, and here are the winners (my first place vote in parentheses, if different from the winner)

Special awards to NASA on its 40th Anniversary, and NESFA Press

Keith Stokes Presents the First Fandom Awards

Hall of Fame Awards to Mike Ashley and Isaac Asimov

The Sam Moskowitz Award for Excellence in Collecting: Frank Robinson and Bob Peterson (tie)

Big Heart Award: Suford Lewis


And now the voted awards

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Mary Robinette Kowal

Best Fanzine: File 770 by Mike Glyer (PLOKTA)

Best Fan Writer: John Scalzi (Steven Silver)

Best Fan Artist: Brad Foster (Taral Wayne)

Best SemiProzine: Locus (NY Review of SF)

Best Professional Artist: Stephen Martiniere

Best Professional Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder, F&SF

Best Professional Editor, Long Form: David Hartwell (Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: "Blink," Dr. Who (saw none of the nominees, didn't vote)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Stardust

Best Related Book: Brave New Words, the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Jeff Prucher (Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry Malzberg)

Best Short Story: "Tideline," Elizabeth Bear ("A Small Room in Koboldtown," Michael Swanwick)

Best Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," Ted Chiang ("Finisterra," David Moles)

Best Novella: "All Seated on the Ground," Connie Willis ("Memorare," Gene Wolfe)

Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (Brasyl, Ian McDonald)

Commentary: the Chiang and Willis wins were a given (his first story in several years, and, well, it's Connie in her hometown), as was Locus for Best Locus (h/t, Teresa Nielsen Hayden). Several old hands won after a drought, but the big surprises to me are Stardust and Chabon. I'm betting the former benefitted from a split vote between Heroes Season One and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I must say I am impressed that Chabon won for novel. He is marketed as a "mainstream" author, even though almost all his work has been sf/fantasy by any reasonable definition of the term. He was present to accept the award, and said "I have wanted to win a Hugo all my life." We'll see if this affects his marketing in the future.