GRRM and the Hugo Losers' Party.

[mme_hardy]

George R.R. Martin has issued a statement on File 770.

For those of you out of the convention fandom loop (and I listen but do not congo), for a decade or so GRRM has thrown the "Hugo Losers Party", at which winners are welcome to attend but have to wear funny hats and be mocked. For a couple of years those parties became the responsibility of the Worldcon where they were held; GRRM took them back. This year's party was a logistics disaster. People who couldn't get into the Hugo Awards (another logistics problem) went directly to the Hugo Losers Party. That meant that when the actual losers had finished with the awards, the party was full up. People were dropped off by minibus in front of the venue and left to wait until space was freed up by people leaving. There were tweets. There was anger.

I linked to GRRM's statement of what happened. The mood of the piece is that the Hugo Losers Party is a gift he gives congoers, not an entitlement. That's completely reasonable and appropriate. Renting out a floor of a brewery for a party is an extravagant thing to do.

However, wow, were there bad logistics choices made. GRRM rented a venue with a capacity of 450; there were worries that the venue might be too small. The contingency plan was the expectation that the venue would violate the fire code (if there were still a marquee tag, I'd be using it) or allow the party to overflow into space they hadn't rented. Even if he'd offered cash to expand it on the night, it would have been much too late to staff that space.

GRRM was at least annoyed by the discovery that there would be 280 spots reserved for the Hugo losers and their plus-ones. "280 spots of out 450 were already gone, before I had even invited a single guest of my own. " Here's the core problem. GRRM doesn't see the losers as guests of his own. This isn't actually the Hugo Losers' party, and that's just fine; GRRM can throw any party he likes. But being annoyed that the Hugo losers expect to go is dooming yourself to disappointment. This realization would also have been a great moment to reevaluate the amount of space being rented. However, as he amply documents, even GRRM couldn't have afforded to rent another floor, with liquor and the food required by Irish law.

GRRM arranged for a single minibus seating twenty to bring people from the convention center to the party. He appears to have thought of this as a way to slowly integrate new partygoers. Instead, it meant long lines at the buses. He is annoyed that ConZealand decided that there wouldn't be enough taxi space to accommodate all the partygoers, and rented two bus-sized buses to transport partygoers to the party. There went GRRM's only attempt at crowd control.

> They were obeying what we were told was the law.

"What we were told"? I mean, come on, this is basic basic big-party planning that GRRM's team should have figured out months in advance. Fire codes are a thing in every venue everywhere, and when they aren't, people die.

> But much of the outrage about what happened seems to have its root in a mistaken belief that this was their party, intended to “honor” or “celebrate” them, that it was being staged “for” them, that they should have been given preference over everyone else, an assertion that just reeks of entitlement.

GRRM doesn't want to throw the Hugo Losers party. That's fine. But everybody should stop calling GRMM's party by its original name.

Comments

[recessional]

....this is all so foreseeable and avoidable it makes my head hurt.

[armiphlage]

Like anyone would expect a party planned by GRMM to turn out as expected.



(clip of The Red Wedding)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btzq18TkaUc

[ellen_fremedon]

...yes, those terribly entitled Hugo losers, assuming that the Hugo Losers Party was being staged to honor the Hugo losers.

I can't even.

[mme_hardy]

Somebody has pointed out on Twitter that in their information packets, Hugo nominees found tickets to the Hugo Losers Party labeled "Admits Two". Such entitlement.

[muccamukk]

I kind of think Worldcons need to start doing some kind of hugo after party. Because when we went last year, the Hugo guests (I guess?) went to the GRRM party, and anyone without an invite was left with nothing to do all evening. Nenya and I were tired and just went back to the hotel and drank bourbon, but that wasn't what everyone wanted to do.

[ironed_orchid]

Yeah, there definitely needs to be an after party for other attendees, and it needn't be a big expense, most would be happy to buy their own drinks if it means somewhere to go and hang out and keep celebrating.

[liadnan]

Not that I disagree with the general thrust of any of the above, but on that specific point the bar in the convention centre was open and plenty of people were celebrating there.

[ironed_orchid]

Good to know.

[green_knight]

I missed this particular event, but yes. this can be summed up as 'if you call it the Hugo Losers party and don't make sure the Hugo Losers can attend, you're just rubbing it in that they're lost and are unwelcome EVERYWHERE'. Which is a total dick move.

And not caring about Fire safety is very much a dick move indeed. I mean, they're Guinness. Quite apart from the bad publicity of having people die at your venue, they have zero interest in getting shut down for fire code violations. Accepting a venue's rules as final is event planning 101, and you don't get to whinge about it.

[pameladean]

What really got to me was the nasty gratuitous dig at the current runners of semi-prozines. How dare a team run a magazine? How dare they all "expect rockets" for their work if they win in their category? Don't they know it inconveniences George R.R. Martin?

I mean, really, yikes.

P.

[mme_hardy]

That bothered me, too.

[nestra]

Naturally, all of the examples of the good old days when there was one editor involved...male editors. Maybe that's inevitable given the timeframe, but come on.

[pameladean]

I know, right? There are far more misogynistic people around than GRRM, I think. But it's such a bad look. Also, given the way men and women get landed with what kind of work, if women are going to run a zine at all they might need to do it as a team because as a rule they/we are much more heavily burdened, and there's not really much excuse for not considering that.

P.

[mme_hardy]

I note that the winning prozine, Uncanny Magazine, with six editors total, does actual outreach. Notably in the issue "Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction", in which they went looking for writers who aren't well represented in the SF community. That takes a lot of work that isn't necessary if you're just running a standard slushpile or hiring your friends.

[vom_marlowe]

The losers who got invited to the party and left in the rain outside were....ENTITLED?!?! Wow. Holy guacamole that's some....yikes.

I'm having a culture shock moment here, I confess. Most of the time, I forget just how strongly I come from a host culture.

If I behaved this way, if I threw a party ostensibly to cheer people up for losing a big award, and then did not make sure there was room for them at the ball? My mother would murder me. If I not only didn't make sure they was room for them, but actually called the TICKET BEARING, formally invited (!!) guests entitled for being sad about missing out? My mom would drag me from the dead just so she could murder me again. Possibly repeatedly. DEFINITELY repeatedly.

I'd be handwriting earnest 'I'm so very sorry' notes to every last one of them, at the very least. Even if it took years.

I mean. GRRM can throw whatever sort of party he likes for his little friends. He doesn't have to send a valentine to everyone in the class if he doesn't want to!

But he did use the name of the award and he did invite award-nominees and he did use the resources of the convention for organizing some of this. If he doesn't want to be thought of a clique-loving kindergartner, maybe next time he shouldn't use class time and class resources to distribute his 'only MY friends are important' cupcakes? Jeez.

[ankaret]

Hello, we come from the same people! I was just saying on Twitter that if you have agreed that someone else gets to invite guests to a party you are throwing, it is perfectly OK to say beforehand 'hey, these numbers don't fit with what I've budgeted, let's talk it over'* but once the invitations go out those are YOUR GUESTS and treating them rudely because you'd prefer to have invited someone else, or because you feel they are pipsqueaks who haven't paid their dues yet, or for any other inside-of-your-head reason whatever is Not On.

Also, taking account of safety regulations when planning *is* hospitality, and assuming the venue will just make space comes in under rudeness to people who can't just tell you to take a running jump without threatening their own livelihood. :(

* or 'Nope, X is not welcome in my space, for Reasons' or whatever

[kore]

Yeah, my parents were big party throwers (since he is making such a big deal out of that), in a lot of senses -- they would hold birthday parties, holiday parties, private shindigs, and they also did end-of-the-year parties for my mother's piano students, and helped out with the Santa Fe Symphony donor/musician parties, on and on -- and they would have DIED OF SHAME before doing that to a guest. Any guest.

And yeah, one of the things I learned from a young age when watching them do that was, ALWAYS CHECK THE VENUE. Because there will always, always be something that might screw everything up, and it usually doesn't become apparent until the last minute, and you need to be able to fix it on the fly or head it off. And it sounds like he thought that was some very unspoken arrangement where other people would do that for him -- oh, they won't be that strict about the fire code, or, the last time this happened people spilled out into the hallway and by the pool (and yes the hotel could have shut that shit down, omg), or, well it's just understood all losers are always welcome, &c &c.

[recessional]

I'm wondering if some of the general clash is coming from that kind of cultural place.

I mean, I'm with you? And I....cannot THINK of a context I've encountered where what's described in that link would not be incredibly rude. BUT there's enough of a thread of people going " . . . guys? What are you even freaking out about? If you can't get into a party you just do something else, why does a 'ticket' make a difference?" that I AM entertaining the possibility that there's a strong cultural thread that does not perceive this kind of thing the way we are.

(And by "culture" here I absolutely mean and include the kind of actually quite BIG cultural differences that can actually exist even within what is generally spoken of as "the same culture".)

[kore]

If I behaved this way, if I threw a party ostensibly to cheer people up for losing a big award, and then did not make sure there was room for them at the ball? My mother would murder me. If I not only didn't make sure they was room for them, but actually called the TICKET BEARING, formally invited (!!) guests entitled for being sad about missing out? My mom would drag me from the dead just so she could murder me again. Possibly repeatedly. DEFINITELY repeatedly.

Yeah, my parents would have done the BUT HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO YOUR GUESTS "not angry just very, very disappointed" thing for YEARS. Particularly at leaving people -- including disabled people -- literally standing OUT IN THE RAIN, with no shelter and no guarantee of when they could at least get in and dry off. Like, if you send someone an invitation, even if it's Entry Not Guaranteed, you do something for the people WHO GOT INVITES. It's like, you take on a responsibility when you do that, you've made a promise. (LOL now I sound like the Iliad, "Your father was a guest-friend of mine!")

[springheel_jack]

That's very strange, considering that the nominees - the losers - got invitations in their packets. Is it entitlement to assume you can get into a party to which you have received a printed invite?

[ironed_orchid]

Exactly. It's not weird to think invitees would be the first priority and everyone else could wait until it emptied out, or go elsewhere.

[sara]

IDK, I don't think being asked to wait outside until a venue is under capacity, whether I have a ticket or not, is really that big a deal. It's just a party. If you can't get into the party because the building's full, you either wait or you do something else. You don't complain about it in public. Particularly if you haven't paid for the ticket to the party.

[mme_hardy]

In this case, though, part of the problem was that people were deposited by shuttle bus into the rain, and told to wait in the rain until the party had room. I suspect without the Dublin rain people wouldn't have been angry enough to tweet. However, I do agree with the people elsewhere in this thread about host culture. When you invite people to a party, are extremely sloppy about sizing the venue, and then blame it on the venue's not accommodating the overflow, that's on you.

[sara]

Well, our read on his statement is quite different: I didn't see him blaming the venue, I saw him saying he made incorrect assumptions about the venue and apologizing.

I can't honestly see how, even if it were raining, it was remotely appropriate for anyone to stand outside and tweet complaints about a party (or not to dress for the weather, because Dublin, for chrissake, it'd be like complaining about getting rained on here). Like, that is so far beyond anything I can ever imagine doing in a social situation. There are valid ways to deal with minor physical discomfort and the inconvenience of not being able to go to a party. Public callouts aren't among them.

[ankaret]

I think this must be a cultural difference, because if I had attended an awards ceremony and then trustingly got on the minibus that had been laid on to take award ceremony attendees to a party they'd been specifically invited to, only to discover that the venue was filled to maximum, the minibus had gone, and I had to find a taxi home at night in an unfamiliar city, I'd tweet about it so that other people didn't find themselves in the same position.

If I then found that the host had been joking about 'they should have got here earlier' (ie, while the ceremony was still going on) I would definitely find myself thinking 'this person's sense of humour and mine aren't a match, I should probably not try to attend any of their parties'.

[mme_hardy]

That's fair. I may well be distributing out the overall huffiness incorrectly. I do think "They were obeying what we were told was the law." is a bit of a tell. It implies that there's some doubt about whether it's actually the law to limit occupancy.

[nineveh_uk]

I read that line not as there being doubt about the law, but as implying the law was being used as an inadequate excuse. Ireland definitely has laws on occupancy for fire safety, and really I'm amazed that there seems to have ben an expectation the limits could be breached. The Code of Practice for Management of Fire Safety in Places of Assembly linked here seems to cover it, with info on how it is calculated. http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-dublin-fire-rescue-and-emergency-ambulance-service/fire-safety-legislation

[mme_hardy]

I was flabbergasted. Somebody over at File700 suggests Martin may not have realized that it's specifically the fire code involved, but I'll bet you the venue said it.

[vom_marlowe]

I bet you're right. I've been in similar situations, and we always point to such authorities whenever possible, especially in situations where safety is a factor. Why make a customer unhappy at you when you can politely explain that the Fire Department is to blame.

[nineveh_uk]

Absolutely! We even do it with our internal spaces at work, let alone when talking to the public. No, we can't put 80 people in that room, the official capacity is 60 for a reason.

[mme_hardy]

I think this adds context on why the invitees were upset in this particular case.

[ankaret]

Yeah. Finding a taxi while disabled adds a whole extra level of difficulty. :(

[perennialanna]

Parties don't have tickets though. Parties have invitations, and invitations are what people got here. They were invited guests. If it had been a ticketed event, they would probably not have been tweeting angrily, but rather checking the terms and conditions and considering their course of action. The terms and conditions of an invitation are moral rather than contractual, but I do not think that "my host will welcome me to the party to which I am invited because it is for Hugo Losers and I am as of tonight a Hugo loser..." is a particularly extraordinary expectation.

[chocolatepot]

Your last paragraph is spot-on. Or at the very least, make it clear that "the Hugo Losers' Party" is a name that's being kept on for old times' sake and stop giving invitations to the nominees!

[movingfinger]

The word "sorry" appears twice in that very, very overlong screed, and the word "apology/apologize" does not appear at all.

I don't know how the logistics of a twenty-seat minibus for 450 people ever made sense to anyone, but whoever planned this party for Martin failed to do a job that there are loads of professionals out there doing well every day.

[mme_hardy]

Perhaps it's because Martin had "minions" instead of "event planners".

[emceeaich]

1. I saw that space a few days after the Hugo Ceremony when cynthia1960 and I went to the WonkaGuiness factory. It's not that big. Even with the adjoining hall.

2. I've always been irked by the Hugo Loser Party's exclusivity. The convention members vote on the award. I understand it's considered a gig where the shrimp floats past on boats in a stream of booze, but the "you ain't cool enough" thing is off-putting. Conventions need safe spaces for marginalized people. Hugo winners and losers aren't automatically marginalized people.

[mme_hardy]

Note especially the winners for DISABLED PEOPLE DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION in that regard.

[emceeaich]

Yeah. I heard too many people going "why did they all get a Rocket, ewwwww!"

[emceeaich]

I've been thinking a lot lately about artificial scarcity and this whole business is a prime example.

[mme_hardy]

Wow, that's awful. Maybe because the single-hero model has substantial costs both to the individual editor (burnout, financial woes) and to the society (no new blood brought in and educated, no access for people with limited time/resources).