Surprised? I was. Kevin and I spend a lot of time talking about how open and democratic WSFS is. Anyone who goes to Worldcon can attend the Business Meeting and have their say in how the Hugos are run. But there are still little committees where acts of political skulduggery can take place.

The Hugo Awards website, where Sunday’s coverage took place, is run by a body called the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee (HAMC). It is something that Kevin helped set up several years ago. I’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes, including creating and maintaining the website.

The HAMC is managed by another WSFS committee, the Mark Protection Committee (MPC). They are the people responsible for looking after the various service marks that WSFS owns, so it makes sense that they should also oversee how the Hugos are marketed. However, some members of the MPC have always been opposed to the existence of the HAMC, and they have a long track record of trying to obstruct what it does.

In 2008 I was all ready to start work on upgrading the Worldcon and WSFS web sites as I had done for the Hugos. I wasn’t able to attend the MPC meeting, and when Kevin got back from it I was surprised to discover that I had been relieved of responsibility for the job. Someone else had been taken on to do the work. As it happens, that someone is rather better qualified to build web sites than I am, and the lack of action over the past two years is mainly due to his life going through some major changes. But even so, had I been given the job it would have been done by Montreal.

In 2009 Kevin and I managed a contest to design a logo for the Hugos. I was delighted to see the logo being used all over this year’s award ceremony, and even in newspaper articles about the awards. But at the end of the Montreal Worldcon a meeting of the MPC effectively forbade us from attempting to register the logo as a service mark. Apparently it was not necessary, and would be a waste of the MPC’s money. This year Kevin (by way of the HAMC’s report to the MPC and thus to WSFS) put a motion before the Business Meeting suggesting that we register the logo. It passed easily, and none of the MPC members who spoke so forcefully against registering it in Montreal was prepared to put that position forward in a public meeting.

This year once again I missed the MPC meeting. (I was recording an interview for Salon Futura). When I finally caught up with Kevin I discovered that the MPC had adopted a new rule forbidding any member of the HAMC from being on the Hugo ballot. Any member who wanted to remain eligible for a Hugo next year had to resign immediately.

I thought about this for all of about two seconds. I have no idea what Neil plans to do with Clarkesworld from now on, and I certainly have enough Hugos. But I would love to see Salon Futura on the ballot. What’s more, I would love to see Kevin get a nomination. He’s my business manager, fulling the same role that Kirsten Gong-Wong has for Locus. But there’s no way he was going to abandon the HAMC, so if we do get a nomination next year his name won’t be included. I, on the other hand, am staying in the Hugo race, because I have other fine staff who also deserve nominations and I want to see that happen. Accordingly I have resigned from the HAMC and won’t be allowed access to the Hugo Awards website in the future.

The official reason for the new rule is that anyone who is on the HAMC could potentially abuse their position to campaign for a Hugo for themselves. I can see how one might do that, and I have made a point of trying to avoid it. If you look at the Hugo website you won’t see much mention of me there. I certainly don’t sign any posts I write. Kevin’s name is much more prominent than mine.

The live reporting of the ceremony is a bit different. In previous years I have done that through my own websites because key staff on the current Worldcon have been actively hostile to the HAMC. This year was different, but even so we didn’t announce the coverage until we had been given express permission to do it by both Vincent Docherty, the Hugo Administrator, and Kathryn Daugherty, the ceremony director. Aussiecon 4 co-chair Perry Middlemiss came to see what we were up to during rehearsals, so he knew we were doing it too.

The thing about the live reporting is that it ought to be on the Hugo website, or that of the current Worldcon. The results should be presented to the world through official channels. It is actually of far more benefit to me to do it through my own websites, because then I get the traffic. If someone else wants to do it for the official Hugo website next year I’ll be delighted. After all, I won’t even be in Reno, so it will be hard for me. But that does mean someone else has to be prepared to do the work.

That, I suspect, is the main issue. Some of this is undoubtedly pure spite. One or two people on the MPC, having seen me win a third Hugo, will have been determined to do something to try to hurt me. But far more important than that, by removing me (and trying to remove Kevin as well), the MPC was trying to get rid of the people who actually do the work, and bring the process of marketing the Hugos to a grinding halt. They are doing this because they are strongly opposed to encouraging anyone other than Worldcon regulars from voting.

Personally I’m not too annoyed about this. I have Wizard’s Tower and Salon Futura to run. Having less WSFS work to do will be a good thing. As a WSFS member, however, I am furious. I want to see the process of marketing the Hugos go forward, not be hamstrung by a small group of selfish, elitist conservatives operating behind the scenes in little-known committees.

Kevin needs help. If you have experience in maintaining a WordPress web site and have no ambitions to win a Hugo he’d probably be delighted to hear from you. Ditto if you have experience of actual marketing. And if you can’t do any of these things, but think that what has been done here is wrong, please say so in the comments. If we want to convince people that WSFS is a fair and open organization, we have to put a stop to this sort of thing.

Kevin talks about another piece of skulduggery on his LJ.

Kevin and I were booked on the shuttle service that advertises hotel runs “from $15″ from the airport. In our case the cost was a bit more — $35 return each — but it was a lot cheaper than a cab. On Sunday we phoned up and booked our return trip for an 11:05am flight. We were told we’d be picked up at 9:00am.

By 9:10am we were getting a bit worried, so we phoned the shuttle company and were directed to the small print on the ticket which said they might be up to 20 minutes late. This was not disastrous, but we did have things to do at the airport before checking in, and had we known about this we would have booked an earlier pickup.

By 9:25am there was still no sign of the shuttle, and the hotel staff were clearly concerned. We took a cab, which cost us $52. We passed what we think was the shuttle van shortly after leaving the hotel, so we might have been OK had we waited, but we could not take the chance.

As it was we got to the airport on time, and the queues were short, but we were not pleased. If you are still in Melbourne and are booked with that company I suggest you tell them that your flight is at least half an hour earlier than it actually is.

Secondly, applying for the visa, with the attendant need to clear my name, would cost at least $7,000, possibly a lot more. Immigration lawyers do not work for free.

Finally, I have pretty much only one shot at this. If I apply again and get turned down again them I can probably kiss goodbye to any chance of getting back to the US. Therefore, even if you can find a lawyer who will work for free, or somehow raise the money, I would be unwilling to roll the dice at this point.

And you know, if people have that much money to throw around, I can think of much better causes than my travel budget.

The right thing to do — for me, for Reno and for other conventions — is to make better use of the Internet in doing online programming.

Amazingly no one has a photo of my 2010 dress online yet. At least not that I can find.

Huge thanks to Kevin and Mur Lafferty for helping with the live coverage while I was busy being swank.

There is a party going on. I am going to it. More tomorrow when I sober up.

I hope as many as possible of you will watch the coverage, especially if you are a nominee. It is always a very special moment when someone learns that they have won via our coverage.

The title of the panel was “Is Criticism Dead”, the assumption being that because critics are losing their positions as gatekeepers of literary taste they no longer have a role in the world. Of course us critics are actually undead (and want your braaains!), but hopefully we still have a role in providing entertainment for the public.

The substance of the panel turned on making a distinction between criticism and reviews (and thanks to Peter Nichols for making this clear from the audience). We had, on a couple of occasions, tried to define criticism, and failed. However, we came up with a number of things that it is not.

To start with, as Peter so eloquently put it, criticism is not like writing for Which? magazine. We are not trying to tell you which book you should read next. Reviewers may try to do that, though I think it is a pretty foolish enterprise.

James noted that, especially in today’s online world, critics should approach works with an attitude of humility. We are not there to hand down judgment from on high. We are there to give our impression of the work. Clute added that we may well get it wrong on first reading, and should not be afraid to re-visit works at a later date. I added that even if we get it right for ourselves, other people may approach the work in a very different way. As I said in the first issue of Salon Futura, there is no one correct way to read a book.

Clute also noted that criticism is not spoiler free. You can’t talk intelligently about a book if you have to tiptoe around everything that happens in it. Reviews can try to be spoiler free. Blurbs perhaps should be but rarely are. Criticism, however, has to engage with the work.

Bill made some very interesting points about the nature of reading on computer screens and why the supposed short attention span of the online reader is more a function of font choice, line length and screen clarity than a dumbing down of people’s reading ability. I’d like to know a lot more about that and will try to find Bill to get references. This is relevant, because many online venues are uncomfortable with articles that try to develop an argument, as opposed to simply making points. Criticism should not be simply stating an opinion.

The rough conclusion that we came to is that the role of the critic as a gatekeeper who hands down judgment on books from on high may well be dead, but the need for critics is as great as ever and the new freedoms provided by the Internet, in which magazines like Salon Futura can find a niche without being beholden to the publishing industry, create plenty of opportunities for criticism to flourish.

The motion to decouple the site selection voting fee and the initial supporting membership cost will probably be controversial because it will raise membership costs for regular attendees and lower them for people who only attend Worldcon infrequently.

The motion to allow electronic voting on site selection also looks like being controversial. Some prospective bidders are a little worried about safeguards, which is entirely reasonable, but I think their concerns can be taken care of. I suspect that some of the other people who are opposed to the idea would really like to make participation in site selection as difficult as possible.

The elections to the Mark Protection Committee are contested this year, which is unusual. This is undoubtedly because Kevin has made his re-election effectively a referendum on the work we have done for the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. If we lose the vote, that committee may cease to exist as of today (and we’ll be barred from updating the official Hugo Awards web site).

For those of you following along from last year, the committee investigating the rules for the semiprozine Hugo has not come up with any firm recommendations. Somehow or other I got left off the mailing list, but Neil Clarke tells me that he and David Hartwell have participated in the discussions so I’m much less worried than I was yesterday. I suspect that the main problem is that the committee is made of of people with very different objectives, and neither side is willing to budge.

It has been a good day thus far. My panel on trans characters in YA fiction went very well. Lots of people have said nice things about the iPad edition of Salon Futura, and I have been out to dinner with Cat Valente and Seanan McGuire. But I was up half the night finishing the aforementioned magazine, and now I am struggling to keep my eyes open.

What I should say is that the convention center building is the nicest such venue Worldcon has ever had. It is about the right size for this con, the rooms are all very well equipped, and the wi-fi is superb.

A lot of people are complaining that the wi-fi in the convention center is not free. Clearly they have never had to get wi-fi at other convention centers. AU$20 buys you 8 hours or 250 Mb, whichever is used first, and which you can use in any was over a 48 hour period. This is om much better than the $300/day I have been asked to pay at other convention centers. Also the quality of the signal is excellent.

The con, as usual, has a whole lot of furious paddling going on just below the surface, but thus far there have been no obvious snafus. Long may it continue.