Preliminary Business Meeting Links

The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) is the organization that sets the rules for worldcons and the Hugo awards. The yearly preliminary business meeting was held yesterday morning at LoneStarCon3.

Here are some links explaining what happened:

Rachel Ackes live blog

Kevin Standlee's Report

Cheryl Morgan's Report

Aiglet's summary of YA Hugo related happenings

Summary: The motion to remove most of the fan hugo and the motion to create a YA are not going to be considered. Two monitions that would keep Hugo voting expensive will be debated at the second meeting this morning. However while the YA Hugo motion is dead progress has been made on creating one. A committee was created to study the matter and hopefully create a more workable solution.

On a related note apparently LonCon3 will be giving out Retro Hugos for works 1st published in 1938. Anyone have any rec's for Speculative Fiction form that year?

Main Business Meeting Links

Well the main business meeting is over. After I got all worked up very few changes where made an those that where made will all have to be ratified next year. Here are some reports form people that were there.

Rachel Acks Live BlogThis has summary of most of the arguments that where made, so is very helpful.

Kevin Standlee's report

Worldcon's will no longer be required to make paper publications op-out. This is expected to help decrease the cost of membership and thus voting. (Assuming this ratified next year.)

The two measures that would keep the price of Hugo voting high have been refereed to a committee. Hopefully this committee will contain at least some people who are concerned about accessibility and voter diversity.

A measure requires more information be include in financial reports was passed (again subject to ratification). Sounds like increased transparency to me, which would be good, but don't really understand all the ins and outs.

There was motion to expand the best fan artist Hugo to include more forms of art, but it got amended to quite minor changes to the catgoriy (yet again subject to ratification)

And that's it until worldcon next year. Legislative processes that are only in session for two days a year, means than changes are very slow.