So, I don't have the energy to formally blog about the Hugos and Worldcon, but I still have some thoughts to share about the SFF community in relation to both, so I guess I'm doing a thread.
See, growing up and SFF fan in Australia, I had no idea that the Hugos and Worldcon even existed. My SFF community was the handful of nerds I'd met and befriended IRL through various means, and even once the internet became a thing, I wouldn't have known to look the Hugos up.
I also didn't know that SFF was technically a male-dominated field. @TrudiCanavan has written about this, but in Australia through the 90s and onwards - my formative genre years - local fantasy was female-dominated, which impacted which overseas books made it to us.
My early tastes in SFF were built through libraries, second-hand bookshops (and firsthand, too, though that cost more) and, very rarely, online recommendations, usually from reading bios of fellow Elfwood members (remember Elfwood?).
And because of all this, my conception of the genre - the baseline concept of Who Writes SFF to which I was introduced - was overwhelmingly feminine. Very white and straight, too, as I'd later come to realise, but to me, SFF was written foremost by women.
I found @TamoraPierce in my local library, Sara Douglass in my school library. A relative gifted me Anne McCaffrey. @Kit_Kerr came from an Elfwood recommendation. @robinhobb and @KateElliottSFF were both secondhand bookshop finds. I read men, too, but women were my gospel.
So when, as a fledgling writer in 2010, I was able to attend my very first Worldcon - an event held literally walking distance from my Melbourne house - I was mostly excited because @KateElliottSFF would be there, and I'd get to meet her in person.
Because, see, the thing about @KateElliottSFF and @Kit_Kerr in particular? They used to be members of a website called DeepGenre, where established authors like them offered encouragement and criticism to would-be, often teenage writers like I was then. And they talked to me.
They also both had LiveJournal blogs, where I ended up a regular reader and commenter. And even though I was, at the time, just a random teenager in another country, they talked to me. @Kit_Kerr even answered an email for my Year 12 history extension essay about Merlin in SFF.
So getting to meet @KateElliottSFF for the first time in 2010 - being able to tee that up on the simple basis of having read her books and commented on her blog? That meant the world to me.
My first book, Solace & Grief, came out in 2010 - a locally-published YA urban fantasy about magic teens. I was 24, and suddenly all these famous writers from other countries were coming to Australia - my bit of Australia! - and I'd be mingling with them as a (very new) peer.
That I already knew some people in the Australian scene felt like a tiny miracle. But when it came to that first Worldcon, which was also my first convention, it was women who introduced me to people and made me feel welcome, especially @kehealey and @TrudiCanavan.
Also present at that convention was George R.R. Martin. I'd read his books too, of course, and all SFF was buzzing with the news that ASOIAF was going to be made into a TV series! And somehow, absurdly, baby writer me ended up on a panel with GRRM.
This meant that, for a brief moment, I was in the green room with GRRM before the panel. We spoke, and I introduced myself. My publisher had given me a stack of bookmarks for Solace & Grief, for publicity, and I handed one to GRRM as part of said introduction.
He looked at it rather as if I'd handed him a stained hamburger wrapper, made a sort of "hmm" noise and put it away. That was about the end of our conversation until the panel itself, which as far as I recall went well. But I need you to understand that I wasn't upset by him.
When I saw how he looked at my newbie writer bookmark, I just thought, "oh, of course. There's no reason for him to care or be impressed or enthusiastic. He must get this all the time, no big!" Because even though I liked his books? He wasn't The Genre to me. He didn't matter.
He wasn't the gatekeeper, because I'd already been welcomed by the women I grew up reading. Sure, he'd left me feeling that maybe I belonged to a different tier or area to him, but that was fine. I already counted to the people who mattered.
Later during the con, there was a - panel? presentation? something - where GRRM talked about the then-upcoming Game of Thrones series. He walked out of it surrounded by a flock of mostly young women, and I so happened to be standing in earshot at the time.
I cannot now recall whether he was talking about Sansa or Daenerys, but I remember vividly what he said next, grinning, to this group of mostly young women: "Well, I don't know how they're going to shoot the wedding night, because she's so young."
That comment froze me slightly in place, enough so that I didn't hear the rest of what was said. It felt... gross. Of all the details to wonder about! Of all the things to want to see depicted, a twelve-year-old's wedding night!
Because his concern wasn't serious, nor was it meant for the as-yet uncast actress and her potential need for a body-double. It was playful worry about the scene itself; the implication that it *needed* to be shown, and yet! What an exciting problem for which to seek sympathy!
In the decade since 2010, I've grown a lot as a person and a writer. I've been to many more cons, including Worldcons, and have even won a Hugo. And in that time, the constant has been how welcoming and friendly the women of SFF have been to me.
Queer & afab though I am, I know that I'm still privileged in con spaces as elsewhere: I'm white, English-speaking from a western country, middle class. I'm not trying to paint the white women of SFF as its universal saviours: I've seen *plenty* of appalling white lady behaviour.
I'm achingly aware of how many POC especially, how many marginalised writers, never had anyone welcome them into SFF the way I was welcomed by the writers I grew up admiring; who've had to fight to clear space for themselves. I hate that this is the case!
Nor am I saying that the fuckery of GRRM and Silverberg at the 2020 Hugos somehow magically ceases to matter just because I've never considered either to be integral figures in my mental genre-gospel. What they did was lazy, gross and self-serving in every way.
What I *am* trying to get at is why their decision to ramble on about Campbell, Lovecraft and their own glory days under the guise of Representing The History Of The Awards And Genre is so goddamn obnoxious: because it assumes a universal entry into SFF that does. not. exist.
The fact is, there's as many ways to get into SFF as there are SFF fans, and while there's always going to be overlap, telling the same old war stories over and over again doesn't remotely acknowledge the plurality of where the genre has been - or, crucially, where it's going.
An uncomfortable truth about SFF - which is, I suspect, also true of most other creative niches/fields - is that it's always going to be cliquey. When your peers are your peers because you share an interest that is also your joint profession, friend & professional circles merge.
It's a feature as well as a bug, which means that, while you can't eradicate it, you absolutely have to be *aware* of it, because while you might not notice Your Circle forming? Everyone on the outside of it sees its circumference lit up in neon.
So, what do you do with all those circles? Ideally, you try to make them into chainmail, not polka dots: you want connections that links groups together in a way that acknowledges both overlap and difference, not variously-sized, solid-colour blocs broken up by gaping spaces.
The past is important, but it shouldn't be elevated at the expense of the present, nor lauded to the exclusion of the future. And when GRRM and Silverberg get up and tell the same six stories every year, that's what they're doing: speaking just to Their Circle, the glorious past.
I don't know what Worldcon will look like in the future, because I don't know enough about conrunning to comment. Can the Hugos be detached from it? Is there an enduring core of people who keep making the same mistakes each year, or is it the lack of same that's the issue?
All I know is, given that SFF pro/friend cliques are inevitable, we need to aim for chainmail, not polka dots. And right now, I don't think the same old guard of dudes can be trusted to achieve that.
But even though it frequently exasperates me, I don't want to give up on SFF fandom entirely, either. It matters a lot to me that the writers I grew up respecting welcomed me into the genre - that they were all, unfailingly, polite and kind, even if I only met them for a moment.
GRRM was disinterested that first time we met; we've met subsequently, too - even had an actual conversation one time, though probably not one he enjoyed or recalls - and I would be startled if he knew me from Adam.
I briefly met Silverberg in 2018 at San Jose; he looked through me, not recognising my name even though I was on the list of Best Fan Writer nominees he was set to read out that evening. Neither man was rude, per se; they just weren't interested.
But it doesn't have to be that way, is the point. That aloof indifference to any newcomers whose names you don't recognise - that shouldn't be the default, and I hate that so many writers and fans have just had to accept it as such.
Because when I was a tiny new writer at my first EVER Industry Event, a small dinner at my publisher's place, @FIRECATz greeted me happily and said nice things about my forthcoming book, which I hadn't even known she'd read. Because @KateElliottSFF and @Kit_Kerr talked to me.
Because even when I embarrassed myself in full fangirl mode meeting @TamoraPierce, she was kind and funny and, after I gave her a copy of my book, sought me out later to have me sign it. Because @robinhobb was gracious and friendly and warm.
THAT was my introduction to fandom: established women making time for a newcomer, holding out a hand and acting as if I was in the right place. And that is what I think fandom should always strive to be, across all axes of marginalisation: a place where we welcome the future.
Because the thing about the future? It rarely looks quite like the past, and you have to lay ground for it in the present. And that's impossible to do if your base approach to greeting *new* people is to be, on some level, tuning out anyone who Doesn't Already Matter.
Is it really so hard to be welcoming? To look at newcomers and be excited just by their presence, without running a mental calculation about whether you want to endorse them; if they'll be worth the investment? Apparently, for some, it is. And they shouldn't be in charge.
FIN
