48: The Things You Nominate Are All Extremely Unpopular

John and Alison are watching cutting-edge TV, and Liz is hungry.

Please email your letters of comment to [email protected] and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: genocide (chapter 2); war and defence contracting (chapter 4)

Letters of comment
Farah Mendlesohn asks “but what did you think of DisCon III?”
Doug Faunt asks about the opening ceremony’s Christmas music
Flick asks why we didn’t mention the Xinjiang region
UK House of Commons motion
Tahir Hamut Izgil writing at The Atlantic

We’re sorry to Ira Alexandre for mispronouncing their name in episodes 20 and 21

Hugo Awards
Octothorpe was almost nominated for the Hugo Awards
Octothorpe was the last fancast to be eliminated from the ballot!
We were surprised and very thrilled and thank you so much for nominating us

E Pluribus Hugo
Helsinki’s explanation of how this works

Nicholas Whyte analyses the Hugo Awards in detail
Camestros Felaptron’s Hugo posts: 1, 2, 3
The Hugo Awards long list
It always has delights on it and this year is no exception
Best Series: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London
Best Related Work: The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom 2021 (presumably it was actually 2020 that was nominated now that we think of it)
2022 open for your suggestions now. Get those fanzines and fan writers and fan artists and fancasts that you think are absolutely great on there!
Direct link: https://bit.ly/hugoaward2022

Fanzines just below the line included Bill Bowers’ Outworlds, William Breiding’s Portable Storage and Chris Garcia’s The Drink Tank

Sponsorship
Shaun Duke points out that Raytheon was one of the contractors that was employed in launching the James Webb Space Telescope

NASFiC
File 770 reports that Winnipeg are pivoting to a 2023 NASFiC
Orlando in 2026 is also pivoting to a 2023 NASFiC
File 770
Official site
This leaves the 2026 field
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Nice, France
Brice de Nice

Glasgow has launched a lovely "move 500 miles poster
John can walk 804.672 kilometres
Earworm
A fantastic edit
Play along on Strava

Picks:
Alison: The Expanse (Amazon Prime)
OK she is a bit behind but it is a 2022 Plan

Liz: Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergei Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey (paperback, epub, Kindle)
John:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Coco (Disney+)

Music credits
Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license