  Q: How many
Hugo nominees does it take to change a lightbulb?A: It's an honor just to be allowed
near lightbulbs.-- Susan Shwartz# # # #
What's it like being nominated for a
Hugo and the Campbell for your first published story?I have to admit that that's not a
question I ever thought I would be in a position to answer. It is a question that I
remember asking Nick DiChario a while back. Actually, I phrased it in the past
tense, because by the time I met him, ConFrancisco was long over and Nick had
already lost both awards. I honestly don't remember what he said.But I do remember what he said when I
asked him the question this past year. Because this time, I had a little more stake
in the answer, and he told me just to enjoy the feeling, the way he did.# # # #
Readers of Mimosa may recall
that in 1994, I attended the Clarion workshop, as I wrote an article about my
experiences which appeared in Mimosa 17. Since then, I had sold and seen
published two stories in Analog, "TeleAbsence" (July 1995) and "Sentimental
Value" (October 1995). I got very little outside feedback when the stories appeared
-- it seems that not a single person wrote to the magazine to comment on my stories
-- and I thought that was pretty much the end of it.Until the following year, when I
found out that "TeleAbsence" had won the Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Short
Story of 1995. And been nominated for the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.
And had somehow gotten me nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New
Writer.To answer, myself, the question I had
posed to Nick, being nominated for the Hugo elated me. It came out of nowhere and
totally blew me away. I was thrilled, ecstatic, and also scared.Why scared? For one simple reason,
which I think will make a lot of you nod your heads wisely, or explode with laughter.
You see, my wife Nomi and I decided that this would be an experience we would never
forget. So, even though we live in the Boston area, we made plans to attend L.A.Con
III, just in case I won. I wanted to be present at the Hugo Awards Ceremony to
accept.And that meant attending my very
first Worldcon.# # # #
Fortunately, it was not Nomi's first
Worldcon, as she had attended Noreascon 3, back in 1989. And it wasn't my very
first convention, either, as I had been attending conventions since Arisia in 1992.
But the prospect of going to Worldcon was slightly more intense than the prospect
of just going to one of the regional cons which we try to attend every year.So I ended up looking at it
differently. I teach Physics and Mathematics at the Cambridge School of Weston, and
one of the problems with attending Worldcon was that faculty meetings begin the week
before Labor Day and cut into Worldcon. Since we wouldn't be able to arrive in L.A.
until Thursday night anyway, I told myself that I wasn't attending Worldcon, but the
Hugo Awards Ceremony, and that anything else I made it to was gravy. That way,
instead of kicking myself for missing all the Thursday and Monday events of a
Worldcon, I would see all the Friday through Sunday panels which I attended as
extras, side benefits of attending the Hugo Ceremony.On Thursday night, August 29, 1996,
Nomi and I flew out to Los Angeles with our friends Joe and Cindy Lazzaro. Joe is
another writer, who has also had work appear in Analog, and he and his wife
are frequent travelers, so we decided to plan our trip together. Cindy is wonderful
when it comes to arranging flights and car rentals, which took a load off my mind.
In turn, I made our hotel reservations.We got to the hotel late Thursday
night -- OK, more like early Friday morning -- and collapsed.The Worldcon itself passed in a bit
of a blur. I remember various parties. I remember going to the SFFWA Suite to
receive the Science Fiction Weekly Reader Appreciation Award for Best New Writer. I
remember meeting a lot of people I had known only from the Internet or Genie. I
also remember a panel here and there. In fact, somehow I stayed sane enough to
moderate one panel, called "Writing: The Long and the Short of It," about the
differences between writing novels and short stories.I also remember a very large dealers
room, with far too much stuff that I wanted. And I remember one specific event in
the dealers room.Adam-Troy Castro was working at the
Science Fiction Age table, and I found him there Sunday morning. The dealers
room was filled with small exhibits as well as dealers, and Adam told me that they
even had a display devoted to the history of the Hugo statuette. He walked me over
to the display, and I got my first look at the 1996 model.
It was gorgeous.Imagine the standard rocket statue,
gleaming in all its glory, sitting on top of a film can base. The base, a real
recycled film can, is surrounded on the edge by a filmstrip with color stills from
famous science fiction movies and television shows. On the back of the base,
framing the rocket from behind, is a model of the mountains from Destination:
Moon. And in front of the rocket are two Hollywood style spotlights, aimed
towards the rocket and designed to shine upon it when the back switch is
depressed.The very first battery-powered Hugo
Award.I'll admit it. I drooled over this
rocket, I put my hands around it, I fondled it. The thought of being up for one of
these finally hit home in a way it never had before. Here was actual, physical
evidence of the award I was competing for.I said to Adam, "If I win, it'll be a
real problem getting it home."He replied, "We should all
have such problems."# # # #
On Sunday night, after taking in one
last panel to calm my nerves, Nomi and I headed over to the Arena building at 7 PM
for the Hugo Nominees reception, which took place in a large room next to the main
auditorium.I still had trouble believing that I
was present as a nominee, as I was surrounded by all these people whom I knew were
deserving of the award; I felt like an upstart. Nomi and I met a lot of people
during that all too short hour, and we spent a good part of the time talking with
Stan Schmidt, editor of Analog, and his wife Joyce.As it got to be close to 8 PM, the
Hugo administrators brought out a sample Hugo Award for us to examine, and to show
us how to hold it just in case you happened to be the one called onto the stage to
receive it. Once again I found myself drooling over the statuette, and wondering
if I'd have to worry about how to get it home.And then, they ushered us into the
auditorium. Quietly, the mass of us walked in the dark to the central seats, which
had been reserved for nominees and their guests. Nomi and I sat with Robert Sawyer
and his wife Carolyn Clink, whom we've befriended over the past few years. I tend
to consider Robert a well-established pro, and it came as a shock to me this year
when I realized that we were both up for our first Hugo Award.Nomi and I sat down, and I looked
around us, at the people filling the auditorium to capacity, and at the huge stage
with the two movie screens on either side. All of my nervousness came to a head.
This was the moment I'd been waiting for since finding out I was a nominee almost
half a year ago.As they say in Hollywood, it was
showtime.# # # #
Connie Willis was the Toastmaster,
which I think was an excellent choice. She is a very funny person, and I enjoyed
her performance when presenting an award at the Nebulas a few years ago, but I
wouldn't want to have been squirming in my seat while sitting through a monologue
placed between her reading a list of nominees and announcing the name of the winner.
Having her host the ceremony as a whole was perfect; her humor helped reduce the
tension I was feeling enormously.Unfortunately, the beginning of the
ceremony still seemed to drag, especially for me. Think about it. I had never been
to a Hugo Ceremony before, and naturally I was assuming that they'd get to the
Campbell Award fairly quickly, as it was one of the earlier awards to be presented.
But first, there was the First Fandom Award, and the Big Heart Award, and the Seiun
Awards, and they felt like they took forever. In fact, they took the better part of
an hour.Finally, it was time for the Campbell
Award to be announced. Stan Schmidt walked on stage, discussed the legacy of John
Campbell briefly, and stated the names of the five nominees: Michael A. Burstein,
David Feintuch, Felicity Savage, Sharon Shinn, and Tricia Sullivan. Then he named
the winner.David Feintuch.I turned to Nomi immediately, and
said, "That's it. I haven't won the Hugo either."She wasn't sure if that would be so,
but I was. I had figured that although my chances of winning the Hugo were not that
great, being both a Hugo nominee and Campbell nominee would help me on the Campbell
balloting. (A few other writers had told me the same thing.) But I doubted it
would go in the other direction.Feintuch gave a very nice acceptance
speech, and then the ceremony continued, with other Hugos being presented and
humorous stories being told on stage. I was feeling a little low, of course, but my
spirits rose when the Babylon 5 episode "The Coming of Shadows" won the Hugo
for Best Dramatic Presentation. I am a major fan of the show, and felt that the
Hugo was well deserved, and I cheered along with the rest of the audience when the
winner was announced.What I had forgotten was that the
Best Short Story Hugo came next.After J. Michael Straczynski gave his
acceptance speech and the applause had died down, Larry Niven ascended to the podium
to present the award. He listed the five nominees, mispronouncing my last name
'Bur-STINE' instead of 'Bur-STEEN'."TeleAbsence" by Michael A. Burstein.
"Life on the Moon" by Tony Daniel. "A Birthday" by Esther M. Friesner. "The
Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh. "Walking Out" by Michael Swanwick.And the Hugo went to "The Lincoln
Train" by Maureen McHugh.Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who published
the story in F&SF, went to accept the award on Maureen's behalf, while I
sat in the audience, applauding. I had been expecting this, so it wasn't too much
of a shock. Besides, Maureen's been deserving of the Hugo since her first novel,
and furthermore, she's a very nice person. While Kris accepted the award, I kept
thinking of how Maureen came to my reading at Boskone last year, and how pleased I
was that an established pro of such magnitude would be interested in my work. Her
attending my reading had meant quite a lot to me.The other fiction categories were
left, and the worst part of the Hugos is the fact that there can be only one winner
in each category. As I told Esther at one party during the convention, I wanted to
win, but I didn't want her to have to lose for me to win. So I was ecstatic when
James Patrick Kelly won Best Novelette for "Think Like a Dinosaur" and when Allen
Steele won Best Novella for "The Death of Captain Future," but at the same time
there were other people on the ballot for whom I felt disappointed, as I had been
rooting for them too.I do want to express my deep
appreciation for something Jim said, though. I had helped him with a small piece of
science in his story (to the point where he named the protagonist Michael Burr), and
during his acceptance speech he thanked me by name for a key piece of research, thus
correcting the mispronounciation which Larry Niven had made. It felt good to hear
my name as part of the awarding of some Hugo, even if it wasn't a Hugo for me.The last category was Best Novel,
which Neal Stephenson won for The Diamond Age. A fine book, indeed, which I
enjoyed highly, but I had been rooting for The Terminal Experiment by Robert
Sawyer.The Hugos were over, and Nomi and I
headed outside with everyone else. We were talking to each other and looking for
friends when Priscilla Olson handed me a copy of the Hugo edition of Stat!,
the convention newsletter, and directed my attention to the Hugo balloting.My short story had been the last one
to be eliminated; I lost the Hugo to Maureen by a final vote of 242 to 232.I had lost the Hugo by only ten
votes.I was thrilled; I screamed with
delight. If I had lost by only one vote, I'd have been devastated; if I had lost by
a large margin, my slight disappointment would have been intensified. But ten votes
was just right.I barely remember the Hugo Nominees
Party (or Hugo Losers Party, as some people call it). I had a chance to
congratulate David Feintuch, and I finally got to meet Richard & Nicki Lynch,
who had published my first piece of fanwriting since I was a teenager. But it was
all over and we had an early flight, so after only about an hour of socializing,
Nomi and I returned to our room to sleep.# # # #
The story doesn't quite end there,
though. When I got back to the Cambridge School of Weston, I announced at an
assembly that I had lost both awards. At the very next assembly, a group of my
students took to the stage to announce the inception of the first ever CSW Bug Eyed
Critter Award for Best Short Story. They read the list of nominees -- and of course,
my story was the only one on the list. They presented me with an adorable Folktails
"Alien in Spaceship Puppet" (the bug eyed critter, of course), which I could control
by sticking my hand inside. It even has a control stick for the spaceship, which
you move with your thumb, and it glows in the dark.You know something? It's better than
the Hugo.# # # #
Am I upset? Well, of course I'm
disappointed -- who wouldn't be? -- but I think of the story of one of the American
Olympians in Atlanta this past summer, who lost the gold medal and was asked by a
reporter if he felt crushed about it.The athlete stared at the reporter
incredulously, and with a big smile on his face, exclaimed, "Are you kidding? I've
just won a silver medal!"And that's how I feel. It's hard to
be disappointed when your first published story gets nominated for the Hugo, no
matter how you do in the balloting. Getting nominated was a fluke, I know, as it
usually takes years for someone to make it onto the Hugo ballot. If I ever want to
look at an award, well, I've got my bug eyed critter. And in the end, I have to
agree with the truth of what it's like to be a Hugo nominee, no matter how much it's
been turned into a joke:It really is an honor
just to be nominated! - - - - - - - - - -
Michael's article caused Harry Warner, Jr. to do some personal timebinding: "I've
escaped the emotional upheaval of attending a Hugo Award ceremony in which I was a
finalist. I attended only one worldcon in the same year that I was a nominee [but]
left before the Hugo Awards ceremony because I wasn't feeling well." Of the novel
design of the 1996 Hugo Awards, Harry commented that "Michael's description of the
Awards makes me wonder if the trophies will continue to become more complicated and
handsome each year. The one I won [in 1993] was a major advance in design over my
earlier ones and obviously, [the 1996 Hugos] were even more exciting to look at and
possess." But on the topic of desirable awards to possess, Teddy Harvia wrote that
"I loved Michael's description of his alternate Hugo. I want one!" (Michael went
on to win the Campbell Award in 1997, at LoneStarCon 2.)Other articles in M19 included
Dave Kyle's remembrance of "Those Wonderful Turbulent Thirties," Ahrvid Engholm's
article about Swedish fan-slang, Harry Warner, Jr.'s remembrance of the 1971
Worldcon, Sharon Farber's deconstruction of the Star Trek universe, and
Shelby Vick's description of a small Florida fan club of the late 1940s. Besides
these, Forry Ackerman and Walt Willis each had articles where (from different
viewpoints) they described their first meeting. And there was also a remembrance by
John Berry of Bob Shaw, who's absence from fandom is even now still profoundly felt.
We closed the issue with some wit and wisdom from Bob Shaw, a reprint of a speech
he'd given more than 20 years earlier, at "An Evening for James Blish," about one
of his favorite things:All illustrations by Joe Mayhew |
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