49: Not Sufficiently Sassy

John is demanding, Alison joined a Discord, and Liz knows a lot about the WSFS Constitution.

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 and war (chapter 1), racism and capitalism (chapter 2), sexism (chapter 5)

Letters of comment
Liquid of comment from This Never Happens (Cornish branch)
Jonathan Baddeley: “Tedious NPC” would make a great badge ribbon
Ali Baker
Dave Coxon
Chris Garcia
Kat Tanaka Okopnik says Nice is not bidding for 2026
Crying movies
Fran Dowd: Platoon
Farah Mendlesohn: Fried Green Tomatoes
Ang Rosin: Dead Poets Society

Alison very much appreciated this sponsor read on Podside Picnic

Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction edited by Otherwise Award-winning author Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Kindle Direct Publishing took down Ekpeki’s account shortly before having to pay him royalties
File 770 reports on the eventual end of the saga
This is a continuation of Jason Sanford’s discussion of financial barriers to global authors

The DisCon III Site Selection fiasco
Salon Futura’s write-up of DisCon III
File 770’s comment thread with a lot of inside baseball
Steve Cooper has set up a mailing list on groups.io to look at Electronic Site Selection

Chicon 8 says:
“Hugo nominations will open later in January, and will run through mid-March. All members of DisCon III and anyone who joins Chicon 8 before the 31st of January 2022 will be eligible to nominate in this year’s Hugo Awards.”
Section 3.7.1 of the WSFS constitution, fact fans

Awards!
Nicholas Whyte answers our questions
Nerds of a Feather has recused itself from the 2022 Hugo Awards
Commentary and interesting history courtesy of File 770

We listened to Hugo, Girl!, a fancast in which feminists read and discuss SF
The FAAn Achievement Awards 2022
The Incompleat Register 2021
“A ‘fanzine’, for our purposes, is defined as an immutable artefact, once published not subject to revision or modification. The fanzine might not exist in a physical form. A PDF, for example, is an artefact.”
“[A perzine is a] fanzine which typically has few, if any, contributors other than its editor(s).”

Alison has joined the Hugo Award Study Committee which is a Discord server
If you’d like to join then contact the chair, Cliff Dunn
Their last report was in 2018 at the San Jose Worldcon

New Year’s resolutions
John: Publish more fanzines and make an app
Alison: Have at least one SFF book a month ready to talk about on Octothorpe.
Alison’s super nerdy iPad board game challenge

Liz: Read 80 books on Goodreads (maybe)

Picks
Alison: Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction translated and edited by Xue Christine Ni (epub, Kindle)
Liz: She Who Became The Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan (epub, Kindle, hardback, paperback pre-order)
John: The Expanse (Amazon Prime)

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