Finally!

#worldcon #HugoAwards

ETA Important update in this File 770 post:

https://file770.com/chengdu-worldcon-committee-gives-mccarty-another-chance-to-deliver-2023-hugos/

https://locusmag.com/2025/10/chengdu-worldcon-revokes-administrator-authority/

Octothorpe 143 is slightly late! We welcome Alison back to the podcast and read a bumper mailbag before getting into discussion of @seattlein2025, #LAconV, and #MontrealWorldcon. Our artwork is by Atom! We recorded before the Seattle apology, and we might have more thoughts on that in a future episode. Listen here: https://octothorpe.podbean.com/e/143-a-major-movie-in-the-sand-genre/

#Worldcon #HugoAwards

I shared some reactions to the #HugoAwards longlist and nomination stats on TikTok! #bookstodon #sff

https://www.tiktok.com/@thefancyhatladyreads/video/7546740600687611150?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=6897480734862378501

(The above posts are about the #HugoAwards.)

Octothorpe 142 is here with stunt Alison, Lori Anderson of @hugogirlpodcast! We discuss some of the pronunciation snafus at the Hugo Awards Ceremony before getting into a happier discussion of panels, the winners themselves, and books. Listen here! https://octothorpe.podbean.com/e/142-a-lot-of-double-sided-bra-tape/

#ScienceFiction #Podcast #HugoAwards #Worldcon #SeattleWorldcon #Worldcon2025

Radio Free Skaro #1029 – Mission to Magnus

http://traffic.libsyn.com/freyburg/rfs1029.mp3

Download MP3

This week, we have a bonus Sarah Murphy of Is It Camp!? fame to cogitate on the week’s news, including the BBC content chief claiming “The TARDIS is going nowhere – with or without Disney”, The War Between the Land and the Sea is coming out in 2026(!), an exciting new web game involving everyone’s favourite vacuum Scoot, some fictitious awards, and Part the Third of our Miniscope on Doctor Who director Jamie Magnus Stone, covering “The Halloween Apocalypse”, “War of the Sontarans”, and “Village of the Angels”! 

Links:

• Support Radio Free Skaro on Patreon
• BBC Content Chief On ‘Doctor Who’ Future: “The Tardis Is Going Nowhere — With Or Without Disney”
• The War Between the Land and the Sea to air in 2026
• Polish Polish with Scoot
• Some Season 12 episodes of Doctor Who disappearing from iPlayer in 2 months?
• Big Finish The Death and Life of River Song: The Dissolution of Time released
• Big Finish The War Doctor Rises: Cybergene due Dec 2025
• Doctor Who: One Night Only (A Fela Kuti Story) is available now
• 2025 Hugo Award winners include Steven & Erika with Uncanny, Lower Decks beats Doctor Who
• Doctor Who won the TCA award for Outstanding Achievement in Family Programming, second year running
• Catherine Tate no longer appearing at Edmonton Expo

Guest:

• Sarah Murphy
• Is It Camp?! Podcast

Miniscope:

• Jamie Magnus Stone, Part 3
• The Halloween Apocalypse
• War of the Sontarans
• Village of the Angels
• The Confused Adipose
• Radio Free Skaro #892
• Directing Doctor Who
• Clara and the TARDIS

#892 #BBC #BigFinish #CatherineTate #doctorWho #EdmontonExpo #FictitiousAwards #HugoAwards #iPlayer #IsItCamp_ #JamieMagnusStone #Merchandise #RadioFreeSkaro #SarahMurphy #Season12 #TelevisionCriticsAssociation #TheConfusedAdipose #TheHalloweenApocalypse #TheWarBetweenTheLandAndTheSea #VillageOfTheAngels #WarOfTheSontarans

On YouTube today I have an "If you like this, try that" video for a bunch of the 2025 Hugo Awards nominees! I've given most of these recommendations on TikTok already, but this is the long-form video version. #booktube #booktodon #sff #hugoawards
https://youtu.be/MblpkeTJ5Ps

The longer we go without them, the more disappointed I am that we didn't get the #HugoAwards nomination stats and longlist released on Sunday along with the voting stats.

Also confused. This data shouldn't have changed since the finalists were announced in April.

Hugo Debrief

I’ll do a longer analysis of this year’s Hugo Awards when the nomination stats are published. Currently, they have published provisional stats for the final vote with more data promised.

A relatively small number of final ballots cast this year: 1,962 in total. I was going to say that in a typical year we would expect a bigger increase compared to the number of nominating ballots. The problem with that statement is finding a typical year. In the past 10 years we have 2015, 2016 and 2017 all influenced by the Puppy campaigns. Then we have 2020 and 2021 most directly impacted by Covid lockdowns. Finally we have the data from 2023 which is not trust worthy. So maybe 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2024 are “typical” years? Odd to call a minority of years “typical”.

I don’t know the attendance figures for this year’s Worldcon. I assume if they are lower than normal then the current instability in the US played a part. If the decline is mainly in non-attending memberships then the very avoidable issue with the use of LLMs to screen panellists likely led to decreased enthusiasm.

A nice innovation in the stats this year are the use of Sankey diagrams. These are a way of showing graphically the flow of values from one category to another in a process. They are very suitable for showing how votes change during a transferable vote count.

Here is best novel for example:

The Tainted Cup started strong and while A Sorceress Comes to Call picked up a lot of votes on the way, they weren’t enough to over take The Tainted Cup‘s lead.

In Cora’s round-up of the results she mentions that Robert Jackson Bennett had made some unwise remarks during this year’s Worldcon AI kerfuffle and I did see some people express surprise that he then went on to win. However, if voting in this year’s Hugos was reduced because of disenchantment around the AI usage then it is likely the people most likely to not vote for Bennett were the people who didn’t vote at all.

Best Series was an interesting race, with four of the finalists really battling it out and the eventual winner coming up from behind.

Speaking of close races, Best Fancast has a nail-bitingly close race. In the end it came down to ONE VOTE between Worldbuilding for Masochists (195) and Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (196). I can’t imagine how the Worldbuilding team must be feeling

Speaking of running second in a race, a more personal experience:

Honestly, I’m pretty chuffed with that result. I came a strong second to Abigail Nussbaum who is a critic whose writing I really admire and thoroughly deserved her win. That’s like coming second in a sprint with Usain Bolt. Also, there was one person who voted No Award 1st and then me 2nd which I feel must have been somebody really committed to engaging with the complexities of the voting system.

In Best Related Work, Heather and I did less well but I was firstly not that surprised (our entry literally has a discussion on how useful fractions are) and I was also very happy to see Speculative Whiteness win. I did see some people express surprise that neither Charting the Cliff nor Report on Censorship & Exclusion won. I was not surprised though. If they had been eligible in 2024 when anger and interest in the Chengdu scandal was still high, then they would have had stronger votes. However, people have sensibly moved on.

Anyway, I’m glad Charting the Cliff was a finalist. That, I feel, was the right amount of validation for the work we did.

I’m sad though that Heather didn’t get to make her speech. It was a short speech but it captured some very important ideas. With Heather’s permission, I’ve included it here:

Facts matter.
Logic matters.
Truth matters.

As we learned during the debacle of the 2023 Hugo Awards, access to the truth is not always granted to us. But with data and careful analysis we can discern the shape of the space that truth must inhabit—the things it must include and the things it cannot include.

When I first looked at the 2023 Hugo data and started poking at it, I viewed it as a puzzle to solve. (I recently retired from a career as an industrial failure analyst and solving that sort of puzzle was my bread and butter.) But as more information came out—from people like our co-finalists Jason Sanford and Chris Barkley—and when Camestros graciously asked me to be a co-author on his more extensive analysis, I saw this project as an opportunity to help ensure that the parts of the truth that could be known were documented and laid out for posterity.

Thank you for considering this work valuable enough to nominate for a Hugo award.

If I have one regret about this nomination, it’s that I had the idea—back over a year ago—to reach out to all the people researching and writing about different facets of this issue and see if we wanted to create a combined publication to document our understanding in a single source. In an ideal world, that would have been the publication you were considering for Best Related Work. I realized I didn’t have the time and energy to carry it through. But at this time I want to recognize, in addition to Jason and Chris, the work of ErsatzCulture, Arthur Liu, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Jameson Quinn, Liz Batty, and others.

Because facts matter.

Heather Rose Jones

#books #fantasy #HugoAwards #Politics #scienceFiction

#HugoAwards is now trending across Mastodon

What I wore to the #HugoAwards last night! #Worldcon

YouTube Tipp ▶️
#Worldcon2025 #Seattle - #HugoAwards #Ceremony - August 16th, 2025 8:30 pm
https://www.youtube.com/live/py7MeV31ln4?si=RwmWQ4xBXWSJrbmy

Preliminary #HugoAward statistics released:

https://seattlein2025.org/wsfs/hugo-awards/winners-and-stats/

#hugoawards #hugoawards2025

#Literatur-News in Kürze 📚
#HugoAwards & mehr
https://www.phantastiknews.de/index.php/literatur-news/30917-news-in-kuerze-hugo-awards-mehr

Caves of Qud Wins Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work

https://fullcleared.com/news/caves-of-qud-wins-hugo-award-for-best-game-or-interactive-work/

#gaming #gamingnews #videogames #hugoawards #coq #cavesofqud

So I am still processing that this happened last night. Thank you to everyone who made this happen. 2024 was the most difficult year of our lives, and I am humbled by the care and love we have received from each and every one of you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. #HugoAwards #WorldCon2025

2025 Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work - Caves of Qud

Joining previous winners Hades and Baldur's Gate 3, Qud continues its well-deserved collection of high tier relics.

Great speech by co-creator and lead writer @ptychomancer , joined by co-creator and lead programmer @unormal 's son -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py7MeV31ln4&t=4708s

#HugoAwards #Scifi #Fantasy #CavesofQud #roguelike #indiedev #indiegame #steamdeck #steam #gaming #nintendoswitch #rpg #gammaworld

Locusmag is at the #HugoAwards and will be posting as they proceed.

Aktuelle Meldung:
Die #HugoAwards 2025 wurden vergeben!

>> https://www.sf-lit.de/aktuelle-meldungen/letzte-meldung-2509/

Tonight's #Hugo Award ceremony marked the climax of Seattle #Worldcon 2025, this year's edition of the world's premier science-fiction convention. Check out this report about the new crop of Hugos, mostly because there are links to all of the award winners. https://cosmiclog.com/2025/08/16/star-trek-lower-decks-doubles-up-on-hugo-awards/ #HugoAwards #ScienceFiction #Books #Space #StarTrek #StarTrekLowerDecks