I still haven’t watched the livestream. I know how the voters voted, and that was never a matter of suspense to me because with that list of finalists, any result was bound to be a good one. It’s a great ballot.

I will say, I’ve been having thoughts about how the Hugo Award ceremony is a very large and public statement of Who We Are—except who’s “we”? Well, you can tell who the event’s organizers think “we” are by how they arrange the ceremony.

And as time goes by, and the people involved (at whatever level) change, you can see the folks who assume that their centrality to that “we” is permanent, durable, and just a natural and right feature of the universe. The shift exposes that.

One would hope that in such circumstances organizers would find a way to honor those folks but also look to the way things may have changed. When that doesn’t happen, there are going to be problems.

It’s clear who the organizers and top level participants this year thought “we” consisted of, and how “we” should view the history of the field. Future organizers should really think hard about this and not just lean on “but History and Tradition!”

History and tradition aren’t just “the things that happened” but a narrative of who we are and how we got to be that “we” It’s not just a pure, Platonic solid that’s coalesced out of the aether that we must all bow to.

If future ceremony organizers don’t realize this, there will be nothing but tears, recrimination, and resentment next time.

OH AND as @scalzi points out, being Hugo Toastmaster isn’t just a great honor, it’s a job, with responsibilities. If you aren’t willing or able to do the work that comes with that, don’t take the gig.