North America 2022 : Sunday September 4 Day 6 Hugo Award Ceremony

About a month before I left Australia Melbourne author and editor Andrew Nette contacted me to see if I would be willing to act as an acceptor at the Hugo Awards for him. Neither he, nor his co-editor Iain McIntyre, would be travelling to Chicago and wanted to have someone on hand to pick up their award for them, should they win. I was certainly going to be there and agreed to take on the role. It all seemed easy enough.

Andrew and Iain were on the Hugo Award ballot under the Best Related Work category for their non-fiction essay anthology, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds : Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985. They were in with a chance but with Charlie Jane Anders also being on the ballot in that category the chance was small.

Andrew sent me his acceptance speech in the week before I left for Chicago. I downloaded it, and printed it out in large font. I hoped I was ready for job ahead.

I picked up the relevant documentation from the program committee and attended the rehearsal as requested at the appropriate time. Basically they wanted to be sure you entered on the right side of the stage, knew how to handle the award – and not to handle it in a way that might be seen as non-PG – and then to walk to the podium and exit properly. It wouldn’t do for any of the winners to trip on the way up or drop the award on stage.

The Award ceremony was scheduled to start at 8:00pm, with a reception beforehand beginning at 6:00pm, and entry to the main ballroom at 7:30pm. I wore a jacket and tie – my only cosplay for the convention – and only had one glass of wine at the reception. It wouldn’t be a good thing to get too under the weather. I could do that later if required.

I found a seat and started sending Andrew an update every few minutes by instant messaging as he was as work in Melbourne and couldn’t get to watch it live over the designated YouTube channel. He seemed to appreciate it.

The Hugo Awards ceremony was hosted by Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz. They presented all the awards, other than the ones they were nominated for, and so handed over to Alec Nevala-Lee for the Best Related Work category. In the funniest part of the evening, Nevala-Lee brought along his young daughter, indicating that she was his best related work. It got a laugh.

Unfortunately, Andrew and Iain didn’t win. The award this year was won by Carlie Jane Anders for her work Never Say You Can’t Survive, indicating, yet again, that the Hugos are mostly a popular contest. Anders’s work may well have been the best in the category; I can’t say as I haven’t read it. In any event, being popular and visible certainly didn’t hurt their cause. Being Australian, and lacking visibility, would certainly have hurt Andrew and Iain.

The Hugos wandered through to their inevitable conclusion with Arkady Martine winning Best Novel as expected. Big surprise of the evening was Australian author Shelley Parker-Chan winning the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. This isn’t a Hugo Award but is presented in the same ceremony and carries a lot of weight in the sf field. Unfortunately none of the other Australians nominated won any awards either.

The whole thing took just over two hours, so the hosts must be commended for keeping the whole thing running smoothly.

The ceremony over I wandered around the hotel and bumped into a few people having a beer in the main bar. Most of the Hugo audience seemed to be headed to the Glasgow Worldcon party which I later heard was very packed indeed. I didn’t make it there and by the time I put my head into the area of the post-Hugo Award reception that had pretty much finished.

It was a long night. Being an award acceptor was very draining. I have no idea of what it must have been like for Andrew to receive all of my stupid messages. I’ll have a beer with him when I get back and find out.