Well, the other shoe has dropped on the 2023 Hugo Awards voting and I won’t say “I told you so” – yet – but there are several nominees that were deemed “ineligible” by the awards committee without apparent explanation.
Chief among them is Paul Weimer, nominated for the Best Fan Writer award.
After reading quickly through the reporting, I’m going to speculate (guess without any real underpinnings for doing so) that the explanation we will receive, least in some cases, is a misunderstanding of the relationship between professional work and fan work, as in, if someone is a professional, they aren’t eligible for the fan awards.
Tell that to Fred Pohl or John Scalzi.
Regardless, this is not good and needs to be responded to with alacrity.
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Steve Davidson is the publisher of Amazing Stories.
Steve has been a passionate fan of science fiction since the mid-60s, before he even knew what it was called.
