#paul weimer

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

Over at SF Signal, Paul Weimer interviews Kate Elliott about THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT

Paul Weimer: Readers at SF Signal are familiar with you and your novels. So why a collection of shorter works, for which you aren’t so well known?

KE: Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications approached me to ask if I had ever considered publishing a collection of my short fiction. I was brought in as part of the Tachyon “THE VERY BEST” series, which also includes volumes from Charles de Lint, Tad Williams, and Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine.

As it happens the stories in the collection are indeed “the very best” of my short fiction because they constitute ALL of the short fiction I have ever written with the exception of two stories too tied to the Spiritwalker Trilogy to work without prior familiarity with that series (one available for free on my web page and one — with fabulous Julie Dillon illustrations — available for purchase) and two (never published) short stories I wrote as a teenager. Over the course of my life I have written twice as many novels as short pieces.

PW: I didn’t expect the non fiction essays to be included along with the stories. How did you come to choose these to be included? How do you see the dialogue play out between the essays and the themes of your own stories?

KE: I don’t write in a vacuum. While my chief goal when writing is to create a narrative that entertains the reader and keeps them reading (if I can’t keep my readers reading then it really doesn’t matter what other theoretically fabulous things I do, does it?), I do churn a lot of themes and questions through my stories as a way to examine, take apart, and consider from multiple sides issues and thoughts I have about the world, life, people, history, culture, and so on. Writing science fiction and fantasy is my way of trying to understand how humanity works and how I feel about that.

Writing a more substantive essay takes a lot of time so I don’t do it often, and generally I write such essays about subjects that I’ve wrestled with for a long time, often through my fiction. I asked for these essays to be included in the collection, and wrote an introductory essay as well, because the concerns reflected in the non-fiction resonate throughout my fiction.

Read the rest of Weimer's conversation with Kate Elliott at SF Signal.

For more on THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Julie Dillon.

At SF Signal, Paul Weimer declares THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT "An essential part of any fan of the author’s work and a short-form entree into the author’s style."

As such, the stories in The Very Best of Kate Elliott overlap with all of the major series in terms of publication. While some of the stories are original, some of these stories her work are side tales to those series rather than original works. Often, the characters here are original or at best marginal to the series. Thus, for the most part, these stories stand independently of the worlds in which they are set, giving a hint of the vaster worlds beyond the limited words of their pages.

<snip>

These stories and the others in the collection explore the concerns and themes that one can find in her larger works and series. The challenges and role of women in society, especially when said women cannot or will not conform to the limited roles that society has deemed within them. Women doing heroic things, both in the manner of more male protagonists, and also getting the job done in ways a typical male hero would never think of. Anna, for example, in “Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine” gets past the many obstacles on her own quest with some fancy thing and not a little bit of social engineering. Like her novels, stories like this show that Elliott likes to show different kinds and forms of heroism.

<snip>

In addition to the stories, the collection includes a number of the online essays that Elliott has written over the years. Readers at SF Signal here will, for example, recall “The Omniscient Breasts”, her study of “the male gaze” in fiction, first published in this space. These essays explicate the concerns and issues that Elliott has explored in her fiction in a much more direct and unflinching format. Readers who somehow miss the themes and concerns that the author explores in her fiction can see them here in unmistakable terms. If there was any doubt as to why it was Kate who was selected to read the Hugo best fan writer acceptance speech of another powerful voice in fantasy, Kameron Hurley, these essays make it absolutely clear why it was that she was selected.

<snip>

Fans of her novels should not hesitate to pick up The Very Best of Kate Elliott; readers new to her work can find the themes and style of the author in evidence in this collection, although not that deep immersive feel that her novels bring.

Read the rest of Weimer's insightful review at SF Signal.

For more on THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Julie Dillon.