The Millennium Philcon® August 30, 2001 - September 3, 2001 Philadelphia, PA 59th World Science Fiction Convention
Memberships Hugos Program Activities Volunteering Home	Hotel & Travel Philadelphia Area Publications About Us Site Map What's New

1.4. Report of the Hugo Eligibility Rest of World Committee

This committee's immediate ancestor was charged by the 1999 WSFS Business Meeting with studying the issues surrounding the eligibility and nomination for the Hugo Award of works first published outside the USA. There is an underlying assumption in all of these proposals that, inasmuch as most of the people nominating and voting for the Hugo Award live in the USA, works first published outside the USA are at a severe disadvantage. This disadvantage is perceived to apply even when the Worldcon is held in a country other than the USA, because even then, most Hugo voters are from the USA. The committee does not address this assumption directly in this report, inasmuch as it primarily is an argument for or against any change at all.

The committee was continued and reconstituted by the 2000 WSFS Business Meeting.

After deliberation, the committee finds there are three major options, which we discuss in this report.

Among the issues the committee discussed, a few overarching goals were identified:

• Minimum Change. In order to prevent unexpected side effects, any changes should be the minimum necessary to accomplish the stated goal of "leveling the playing field" to allow works first published outside the USA to compete more equally with those first published in the USA.
• Ease of Administration. A proposal should not be excessively complex to administer, or create unreasonable demands upon the Hugo Administrators.

• No Second Nomination. If a work receives sufficient nominations to appear on the Final Award Ballot, it should never be eligible to appear on that ballot again, regardless of whether or not it wins the award or the nomination is declined under section 3.9 or the work is withdrawn as unrepresentative under section 3.2.5. (Note that a new version of the work could be subsequently eligible, but the specific work withdrawn as unrepresentative is withdrawn forever.) See the 1999-2000 committee report available at http://www.wsfs.org/bm/min2000_appD.html for further discussion of the reasoning behind this principle.

Yearly Eligibility Extension by Resolution

The WSFS Constitution, section 3.4, authorizes the Business Meeting to extend the eligibility of works that receive "extremely limited distribution" in their initial eligibility year. This extension requires a 3/4 vote of the Business Meeting. The 2000 WSFS Business Meeting passed two such resolutions, one affecting a single publication, and the other giving a blanket eligibility extension of one year to works first published outside the USA.

The committee believes that the motion below, suitably updated with appropriate years, could be passed at each year's WSFS Business Meeting to continue extending eligibility one year at a time. This may be an alternative to amending the constitution; however, it would require the Business Meeting to adopt the motion each year, and to establish a mechanism for the motion to be introduced each year. (Possibilities include continuing the HEROW Committee and charging the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee to include this motion in the list of Continuing Resolutions.) Furthermore, this method does not address the case of works first published in the USA more than one year after first non-US publication. The extension by resolution method can not extend eligibility for more than one year.

The committee moves the adoption of the following motion:

1.4.1. Short Title: Throw a Blanket Over It

Moved, To extend for one year, based on limited availability, as authorized by section 3.4, the eligibility of all works that:

1: Would otherwise qualify for a "specific work" 2001 Hugo Award (sections 3.3.1 through 3.3.6 inclusive);

2: Did not receive sufficient nominations to appear on the Final Ballot for the 2001 Hugo Awards;

3: Have not been published in the USA as of 31 January 2001; and

4: Have not previously had their eligibility extended by resolution of WSFS;

This motion extends eligibility for the Hugo Award; therefore, it requires a 3/4 vote.

If the above motion passes, the committee moves the adoption of the following motion:

1.4.2. Short Title: We Need Another HEROW

Moved, To continue the Hugo Eligibility for the Rest of the World (HEROW) Committee as previously charged, with a new Chair and members appointed by the Chair of the Business Meeting, and with the Chair of the HEROW Committee authorized to add additional members to the committee.

Note that the current Chair of the HEROW Committee will not accept reappointment as Chair of the committee, although he will continue to work with the committee if it is renewed, because he is Chair of the 2002 WSFS Business Meeting and believes the two jobs conflict with each other.

Expanded Eligibility Extension

As discussed in the next section, the current practice of passing a blanket extension under Section 3.4 does not really meet the requirements for extension of the Hugo eligibility period, because there is no guarantee that any of the works in question will be published in the USA in the following year. Moreover, Section 3.4 was originally intended to be used for single, named works, and the current practice of using it for a blanket extension, while it has been ruled to be legal, is offensive to constitutional purists, several of whom are members of this committee.

The amendment below is intended to provide a firmer Constitutional base for our current practice, and to make what we can do match more closely what we want to do. The language differs from that discussed above under "Multiple Year Eligibility for Non-US Works" because this amendment provides for a series of extensions, voted each year, rather than making it permanent.

This proposal does not suffer from the main disadvantage of constitutional amendments — long lead times to dismantle — because, should such extensions prove no longer desirable, the Business Meeting would merely need not pass the motion one year, leaving the framework to be dismantled at leisure. This amendment does not require that eligibility be extended; it merely authorizes the Business Meeting to allow it.

The committee moves the adoption of the following motion:

1.4.3. Short Title: Perpetual Motions

Moved, To amend portions of Article III of the WSFS Constitution to regularize the current practice of extending an extra year of eligibility for the Hugo Award to works first published outside the USA, and to administer this change, as follows:

Delete the final sentence of section 3.2.2:

3.2.2: A work originally appearing in a language other than English shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first issued in English translation. A work, once it has appeared in English, may thus be eligible only once.

Insert the following after existing subsection 3.2.2:

3.2.x: The Business Meeting may by a 3/4 vote provide that works originally published outside the United States of America and first published in the United States of America in the current year shall also be eligible for Hugo Awards given in the following year.

3.2.y: A work shall not be eligible if in a prior year it received sufficient nominations to appear on the final Award ballot.

Even if the Business Meeting does adopt this amendment or any similar amendment, it should also consider adopting an eligibility extension resolution (see above), which would address eligibility issues immediately, whereas a constitutional amendment could not take effect until the end of the 2002 Worldcon, first affecting the 2003 Hugo Awards.

Permanent Multiple-Year Eligibility for Non-US Works

The committee's opinion is divided on the issue of whether or not there will continue to be a significant difficulty in distribution of works initially published outside the USA. If the Business Meeting desires to produce a long-term result of giving those works first published outside the USA an extra year of eligibility for the Hugo Award, the best way to do it would be to amend the Constitution. The following wording would accomplish this extension:

1.4.4. Short Title: Well, If You Insist

Moved, To amend portions of Article III of the WSFS Constitution to have the effect of extending an extra year of eligibility for the Hugo Award to works first published outside the USA, and to administer this change, as follows:

Insert the following after existing subsection 3.2.2:

3.2.x: A work originally published in a country other than the United States of America shall also be eligible for the year in which it is first published in the United States of America.

3.2.y: A work shall not be eligible if in a prior year it received sufficient nominations to appear on the final Award ballot.

The committee recommends against adopting a constitutional amendment of this form.

If the Business Meeting does adopt this amendment or any similar amendment, it should also consider adopting an eligibility extension resolution (see above), which would address eligibility issues immediately, whereas a constitutional amendment could not take effect until the end of the 2002 Worldcon, first affecting the 2003 Hugo Awards.

"Relative" vs. "Absolute" Wording

The committee is aware of proposals for wording this amendment, or other amendments with similar effects, in "relative" rather than "absolute" forms, where instead of the references above to the USA, the rule would refer to the country hosting the Worldcon administering that year's Hugo Awards, or to the number of ballots received per country. The committee recommends against any "relative wording" proposals or oblique language that would effectively apply only to the USA without mentioning the country by name. Even when the Worldcon is held in countries other than the USA, most active voters have been from the USA. This committee's charge is to deal with the uneven playing field created by this situation, and believes that straightforward wording is the best way to accomplish that task.

Do Nothing

It may be that this entire issue will soon become moot, with the increasingly easy availability of works initially published outside the USA. If the Business Meeting believes this to be the case, then it may choose to do nothing and leave the current situation unchanged. Obviously, the Business Meeting need not explicitly vote to do nothing – a motion "to take no action" would be dilatory, anyway – but it can accomplish the same result by not considering any of the proposals in this committee report.

Committee Recommendations

The Committee is divided over the best approach to this situation. While there was a consensus for extending eligibility immediately, there is not a consensus that a constitutional amendment making such extension permanent is the right approach.

The Committee moves the adoption of the blanket eligibility resolution ("Throw a Blanket Over It"), as noted above, and moves the motion on extension of the committee ("We Need Another HEROW") if the blanket eligibility resolution passes.

The Committee moves the adoption of the "Perpetual Motions" constitutional amendment, and recommends its adoption.

The Committee reports the text of the eligibility extension amendment ("Well, If You Insist") to the Business Meeting, but recommends against its adoption.

Committee List

Chris Barkley, Vince Docherty, George Flynn, Tim Illingworth, Saul Jaffe, Rick Katze, Perrianne Lurie, Cheryl Morgan, Mark Olson, Sharon Sbarsky, Kevin Standlee, Ben Yalow.

(signed)

Kevin Standlee
Chairman, Hugo Eligibility/Rest of the World Committee