Editorial

Greetings, reader!

Since our last issue, Mythaxis’ editor has travelled to visit his ancestral seat (imagine a ruined croft with a stunted tree growing out of it on the north coast of Scotland), also to attend his first WorldCon, Glasgow 2024. Quite the experience, though amidst the many (even too many!) events at hand the fondest memories I returned with were meeting faces familiar and new, including cohabitations and catching-ups with a handful of friendly authors, plus an editorial lunch with several far-flung peers from other platformers of speculative fiction.

And what more reason do I need to throw in a quick plug for Sci Phi Journal, Shoreline of Infinity, and the currently-on-sabbatical Little Blue Marble? None whatsoever. But maybe scratch your reading itch here before you go hunting for more good stuff there, hmm?

So, my first WorldCon, and therefore my first Hugo Awards ceremony too. About which…

Well look: after consistently voting for the losing side in elections and referendum at the national level (whenever I’ve felt sufficiently motivated to do so), I’m firmly convinced that democracy was a critical misstep in social evolution (benign dictatorship is clearly the way forward; why else become a magazine editor?). As a result I wasn’t totally surprised not to back every winning horse in the race for a Hugo, but (in addition to my genuine congratulations to all the winners!) I’d just like to put on record in particular that:

• The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was the actual best novel
• On the Fox Roads by Nghi Vo was the actual best novelette
• and the fact that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves beat ANYTHING to the best longform movie nod, let alone a film such as Poor Things, goes beyond “travesty” and enters some strange new vocabularic realm forever beyond the ken of humankind

What can I say? People can be smart, but when it comes to groups knock off an IQ point for every two you bring together. The highest IQ ever recorded was 276, and 3,436 legitimate ballots were filed for the Hugos this year. Do the maths.

Finally, on the subject of mistakes, a note for the Hugo organisers: there’s a reason why, during the Oscars, the Academy don’t make whichever star is announcing the nominations read out a solid paragraph of definitional fine print before they get to the names. It’s fine when you ask Jack Nicholson to say “The nominees for Best Picture are…”; if you give him a card reading “The nominees for Best Picture, which we define as a fictional narrative shot on a celluloid (not digital) medium, not shorter than 90 minutes and not longer than 360 minutes, with a minimum of eight speaking roles and—” he’s going to tell you where to stick it. And the audience would thank him for doing so.

Anyway, on balance, I enjoyed WorldCon more than I hated it! See you next year, maybe!

NOTE: Please be aware that the editor will of course retract this editorial the minute he or Mythaxis Magazine find themselves on a Hugo ballot, though he won’t hold his breath waiting for that to happen.