This committee was charged by the 1999 WSFS Business Meeting with studying the issues surrounding the eligibility and nomination for the Hugo Award of works first published outside the USA. There is an underlying assumption in all of these proposals that, inasmuch as most of the people nominating and voting for the Hugo Award live in the USA, works first published outside of the USA are at a severe disadvantage. This disadvantage is perceived to apply even when the Worldcon is held in a country other than the USA, because even then, most Hugo voters are from the USA. The committee does not address this assumption directly in this report, inasmuch as it primarily is an argument for or against any change at all.
After deliberation, the committee finds there are four major options, which we discuss in this report.
Among the issues the committee discussed, a few overarching goals were identified.
- Minimum Change.
In order to prevent unexpected side effects, any changes should be the minimum necessary to accomplish the stated goal.
- Ease of Administration.
A proposal should not be excessively complex to administer, or create unreasonable demands upon the Hugo Administrators.
- No Second Nomination.
If a work receives sufficient nominations to appear on the Final Award Ballot, it should never be eligible to appear on that ballot again, regardless of whether or not it wins the award or is withdrawn from nomination by the author. The Committee believes that this will eliminate "tactical withdrawals," where an author withdraws a work because s/he feels the work might have a better chance of winning during its second year of eligibility. Note that a "tactical withdrawal" is not quite the same thing as withdrawing a work as unrepresentative, which is authorized under current 3.2.5. The committee believes that if a work is withdrawn during its first year of eligibility as "unrepresentative," then receives sufficient votes in its subsequent eligibility year to qualify for the ballot in substantially the same form, the Hugo Administrator should disqualify it from the Final Ballot on the grounds that the same work had already been withdrawn as unrepresentative. The committee recognizes that this does potentially complicate the job of Hugo Administration, in contravention of the previous goal.
1.4.1 Yearly Eligibility Extension by Resolution
The WSFS Constitution, section 3.4, authorizes the Business Meeting to extend the eligibility of works that receive "extremely limited distribution" in their initial eligibility year. This extension requires a ¾ vote of the Business Meeting. The Business Meeting has never actually extended the eligibility of any work or group of works, although the 1998 Business Meeting did consider an advisory resolution worded in similar terms regarding a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author. (Worldcons administer this award, but WSFS does not have jurisdiction over the award’s eligibility rules.)
If the perceived inequitable distribution of works originally published outside of the USA is a relatively short-term problem that will disappear as part of "globalization," adopting an eligibility extension resolution from year to year would probably be the best option to address a short-term need. In addition, year-by-year extension by resolution has the advantage of being easy to stop if it proves unworkable. By contrast, constitutional amendments take at least two years, and usually more, to work their way through the adoption process. If a constitutional amendment proves to be unworkable, it could take years to fix it.
The committee believes that the Hugo Eligibility Extension motion below, suitably updated with appropriate years, could be passed at each year’s WSFS Business Meeting to continue extending eligibility one year at a time. This may be an alternative to amending the constitution; however, it would require the Business Meeting to adopt the motion each year, and to establish a mechanism for the motion to be introduced each year. (Possibilities include continuing the ROWHE Committee and charging the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee to include this motion in the list of Continuing Resolutions.)
The committee moves the adoption of the following motion:
Moved, To extend for one year, based on limited availability, as authorized by section 3.4, the eligibility of all works that:
1: Would otherwise qualify for a "specific work" 2000 Hugo Award (sections 3.3.1 through 3.3.6 inclusive);
2: Did not qualify to appear on the Final Ballot for the 2000 Hugo Awards;
3: Have not been published in the USA as of 31 January 2000; and
4: Have not previously had their eligibility extended by resolution of WSFS.
This motion extends eligibility for the Hugo Award; therefore, it requires a ¾ vote.
If the above motion passes, the committee moves the adoption of the following motion:
Moved, To continue the Rest of the World Hugo Eligibility Committee as previously constituted and charged, with a new Chair appointed by the Business Meeting.
Note that the current Chair of the ROWHE Committee will not accept reappointment as Chair of the committee, although he will continue to work with the committee if it is renewed.
1.4.2. Multiple Year Eligibility for Non-US Works
The committee’s opinion is divided on the issue of whether or not there will continue to be a significant difficulty in distribution of works initially published outside of the USA. If the Business Meeting desires to produce a long-term result of giving those works first published outside of the USA an extra year of eligibility for the Hugo Award, the best way to do it would be to amend the Constitution. The following wording would accomplish this extension:
Moved, To amend portions of Article III of the WSFS Constitution to have the effect of extending an extra year of eligibility for the Hugo Award to works first published outside of the USA, and to administer this change, as follows:
Strike the last sentence of subsection 3.2.2:
3.2.2: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation. A work, once it has appeared in English, may thus be eligible only once.
Insert the following after existing subsection 3.2.2:
3.2.x. A work originally appearing in a country other than the United States of America shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first published in the United States of America.
3.2.x. A work shall not be eligible if in a prior year it qualified to appear on the final Award ballot, regardless of whether or not it actually did appear on that ballot, unless it was withdrawn as unrepresentative as authorized elsewhere in this section.
Insert the following in existing subsection 3.2.5:
3.2.5: In the written fiction categories, an author may permanently withdraw a version of a work from consideration if the author feels that the version is not representative of what that author wrote.
If the Business Meeting does adopt this amendment, it should also consider adopting an eligibility extension resolution (see next section), which would address eligibility issues immediately, whereas a constitutional amendment could not take effect until the end of the 2001 Worldcon.
The committee does not make a recommendation for or against adoption of this amendment.
1.4.3 Blanket Two Year Eligibility
The committee considered proposals to simply extend the eligibility of the Hugo Award to works published in the previous two years, as opposed to the current one year. While this is may be technically the easiest change to implement, the committee believes that it would introduce more problems than it would solve. However, wording that would accomplish a blanket two-year eligibility would be:
Moved, To amend portions of Article III of the WSFS Constitution to have the effect of granting two years of eligibility for the Hugo Award to all specific works, and to administer this change, as follows:
3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous two calendar year years.
3.2.2: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation and the following year. A work, once it has appeared in English, may thus be eligible only once.
Insert the following after existing subsection 3.2.2:
3.2.x: A work shall not be eligible if in a prior year it qualified to appear on the final Award ballot, regardless of whether or not it actually did appear on that ballot, unless it was withdrawn as unrepresentative as authorized elsewhere in this section.
Insert the following in existing subsection 3.2.5:
3.2.5: In the written fiction categories, an author may permanently withdraw a version of a work from consideration if the author feels that the version is not representative of what that author wrote.
The committee recommends against adoption of blanket two-year eligibility.
1.4.4. Do Nothing
It may be that this entire issue will soon become moot, with the increasingly easy availability of works initially published outside the USA. If the Business Meeting believes this to be the case, then it may choose to do nothing and leave the current situation unchanged. Obviously, the Business Meeting need not explicitly vote to do nothing – a motion to do would be dilatory, anyway – but it can accomplish the same result by not considering any of the proposals in this committee report.
Committee Recommendations
The Committee is divided over the best approach to this situation. Those members of the committee who expressed a preference during the committee’s e-mail-based discussion were:
George Flynn, Kevin Standlee, Vincent Docherty: Favor choice 1 (Resolution) as a trial, followed by 2 (Amendment, Non-US works), followed by 4 (Do nothing), followed by choice 1 (Resolution) as a long-term solution.
Mark Olson: Favors choice 2 (Amendment, Non-US works), followed by 1 (Blanket Resolution) as either a short or long-term solution, followed by 4 (Do nothing).
Ben Yalow: Favors choice 4 (Do nothing), followed by 2 (Amendment, Non-US works), followed by 1 (Resolution); in general favors specific resolutions extending eligibility on a case-by-case basis.
No other participants in the on-line discussion expressed a preference. There was near-consensus that blanket two-year eligibility was a bad idea, and nobody favored it in their preference lists. The committee reports wording that would accomplish two-year eligibility in the interest of reducing on-the-floor technical arguments, but recommends against such a proposal.
The committee moves the adoption of the blanket eligibility resolution, as noted above, and the contingent motion on extension of the committee if the first motion passes. The committee does not move the adoption of either of the constitutional amendments, but reports them to the Business Meetings for use if they so desire.
Committee List
This report attempts to reflect as many views expressed in online discussion of the Hugo Eligibility issue as reasonably possible. The bulk of this committee report was written by Kevin Standlee and reviewed by Vince Docherty, and the rest of the committee did not have an opportunity to review it prior to the Business Meeting. Therefore, this report cannot be guaranteed as representative of all members of the committee.
The following people participated in the online discussion:
Vincent Docherty, Chairman
George Flynn, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tim llingworth, Saul Jaffe, Perrianne Lurie, Mark Olson, Robert Sacks, Sharon Sbarsky, Mike Scott, Kevin Standlee, Ben Yalow,
