Worldcon

So, Worldcon. The Japanese had an excellent time, of which I am glad. Our Thursday night party--the salmon jerky and dried octopus tentacles especially--was a hit. And the J panels I'd constructed mostly went well. I think audiences especially enjoyed the Beyond Godzilla vs King Kong, and the Disaster and Supernatural Literature panels, the latter of which coaxed both tears and laughs from the audience. One woman shared her own experience with Hurricane Katrina afterwards, and we were all quite moved. We also had an offsite reading at the local Barnes & Noble, with the university's Japanese language students in attendance.

The big fun news was Haikasoru's first Hugo, for Ken Liu's short story "Mono No Aware," from The Future Is Japanese, which you should buy if you've not yet. Here's a pic of my co-editor Masumi Washington and Ken Liu's friend Alex Shvartsman (who was recognized by several Japanese people on the Haikasoru twitter feed as the first foreigner to win a Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix in Japan!) with the trophy, which was quite heavy this year:



The Haikasoru twitter feed was quite busy, so check it out. I Storyfied the English-language tweets here.

My SMOF ZONE pic led to some minor dust-ups, which put me in the LOL ZONE. I didn't attend any of the business meetings, as none of the issues seemed all that important to me personally. Here's one version of events, and another. I don't have a strong opinion about a YA Hugo, though I think the fewer categories the better. My only thought is that if an "objective definition" of YA is necessary, to only qualify books with JUV BISAC prefixes.

This year's Hugo details (link to PDF) are interesting. "Mono No Aware" made the ballot with relatively few votes, but won fairly handily. This suggests to me that the Hugo packet of ebooks and stories was definitive, at least in this case. Voters read the story and were persuaded to vote for it, which is as it should be.

In other news, I got seventeen votes for Best Editor, Short Form, despite only editing one half of one anthology this year. So that was nice to see. And my novelette "Arbeitskraft" got thirty votes in that category, seven short of making the ballot. If only I had begged for votes made "obligatory" eligibility posts and tweets as is done so often these days.

Next stop, London? Or maybe Detroit!