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| Team NoaF on stage! Photo by Aidan Joy |
We are overjoyed to accept the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine! Thank you so much to everyone who read and voted in the category—and to all of the other finalists. This is our second Hugo award as a zine, and we cannot adequately convey how much that recognition means to us. Thank you.
As in 2021, following a practice started by File 770 and Lady Business, we will be recusing ourselves from consideration in the fanzine category in 2025. Best Fanzine has been won by a different publication every year since 2014, and we think that variety is a strength of the category and a testament to all of the brilliant zines, online and paper, that are being published today. By stepping aside, we hope to allow other voices to have their chance in this category, and we're looking forward to cheering everyone on from the sidelines!
Our speeches at the ceremony were given by Roseanna Pendlebury and Adri Joy. Below, you can find the text of those speeches, as well as thanks from our other editors (except Joe Sherry, who is currently touring Scotland with limited internet but conveys his excitement, appreciation and joy in a similar way to 2021)
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| The NoaF team at the Hugo awards. Photo by Olav Rokne |
Roseanna Pendlebury
Before Adri gets to the bulk of our speech, I want to add my own personal thank you to my partner Ed, who found out Nerds of a Feather were asking for volunteers and told me to apply, as he consistently has for so many opportunities I've gone for. He did the hard bit, I just did the reviewing and editing. Also to every member of the reviewing community that our work exists in conversation with, because reviews could never exist in a vacuum.
I want to give a personal thank you to my parents for being here today, taking the long trip up from Cambridgeshire in the motorhome with two dogs to see their daughter in a jellyfish hat winning a science fiction award. Thank you, I love you, this wouldn't have happened without you. Thank you to my online communities, especially Sparkle Rocket, the Cannibal Cult and the Subjective Chaos gang, for being amazing, supportive and always having the right opinions even when they're also very wrong.
I want to thank the Nerds of a Feather team: fellow editors Joe, Arturo, Paul and Roseanna, founders G and Vance and our 2023 contributors: Alex Wallace, Ann Michelle Harris, Chris Garcia, Clara Cohen, Dean E.S. Richard, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Haley Zapal, Joe Del Franco and Phoebe Wagner. You're all amazing, and this award is for all of you.
I want to use this platform to note that we are gathered here in Glasgow at a time of particular national shame for the UK. Decades of xenophobic, racist, anti-Muslim rhetoric in this county have now spilled over into far-right violence and pogroms against refugees and migrants in many cities, especially in England and Northern Ireland, fuelled by misinformation and hate speech from political elites.
I think everything we do as creators and fans of SFF is political, and I'm proud to be part of SFF fan communities that stand opposed to that kind of hatred, and which seek to promote diversity and redress historic imbalances—however small and imperfect our efforts may be. I take this award as a challenge to recommit to action, to push back against racism, xenophobia, transphobia and marginalisation in all its forms, in whatever small ways I can make a difference.
I invite you all to do the same.
Vance K
When I think of the evolution of SFF and its attendant fandom over the 12(!) years that we have been publishing this fanzine, I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude to the creators and critical voices that have shaped that evolution. A million folks that are a lot savvier than I am have already pointed out that one of the jobs of SFF fiction is to imagine better possible worlds, but it's up to us here in real life to try to make them happen. I know that as an individual and as a fan, my life is better in concrete ways because of the efforts of so many across this community to promote inclusiveness and visibility for individuals and groups that have traditionally not had that visibility or advocacy in the past.
So I am profoundly thankful that Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together continues to be a place that gets to be a part of that ongoing conversation and evolution. This site began as two guys in Los Angeles who enjoyed talking about their respective nerdy passions. That it has grown over the years to include the work of over two dozen regular contributors, provide an outlet for many, many more guest contributors, champion the work of hundreds of new and established writers and creators, and develop an astonishingly capable and dedicated editorial team (the best anywhere, if you ask me) is a source of pride and deep gratitude. So much of that gratitude goes to Adri, Joe, Arturo, Paul, and Roseanna. They picked up the baton and grew the site into what it has become—WHICH IS A TWO-TIME HUGO AWARD WINNER!!!!
Thank you so much to the readers, the Hugo voters, and the community that engages with these posts and the works that they are in conversation with. And, of course, thank you to The G, who pitched me this whole idea those many years ago.
The G
Nerds of a Feather was born at an intensely stressful moment in my life, when I was frankly struggling to stay above water. I needed something joyful to pour my heart into, but also knew I couldn't do it alone. I called Vance and pitched an idea to him—a blog about books and films. He then suggested we bring a couple more folks on, so the blog would stay fresh, fun and exciting for us (and not turn into a slog). Many years later, and thanks to the contributions of the more than 25 writers who have spent time as part of our flock, Nerds of a Feather is now a two-time Hugo Award winner. Most of all, though, this award is a testament to the superb team of editors and writers we have right now—who continue to make this twelve-year-old blog fresh, fun and exciting five-days-a-week, fifty-two-weeks-per year.
To echo Adri's words, I also want to note that we've reached an important moment in time, when many of the most pessimistic predictions of science fiction seem to be coming true. From climate disaster and under-regulated artificial intelligence to corporate capture of government and the re-emergence of small-minded, chauvinistic nationalisms, we live in a world that desperately needs speculative thinking—new ways of imagining the reality we live in. Part of our mission at Nerds of a Feather is to engage with that thinking, while also celebrating works that bring us joy and escape at moments of great anxiety. I could not be more proud to be a part of this community, and to see the work of my wonderful colleagues recognized by Hugo voters.
Arturo Serrano
It was fortunate that my presence on Twitter during its last good times coincided with a call for volunteers at Nerds of a Feather in early 2021. I have my amazing husband, Tucker Lieberman, to thank for the revelation that Twitter was where the literary scene gathered and put their brains together. That precious place is now lost in the inconstant whirlwind of the internet.
There are many other happy coincidences to feel grateful for. The fact that I used the coronavirus quarantine to binge all the Star Trek that existed. The fact that I stumbled upon Jules Verne at my high school library. The fact that an exile from the Ottoman Empire chose Colombia to settle in and went on to found the academy where I learned English. I imagine countless potential timelines where I didn't end up joining a team that won a Hugo.
I have to thank Coral Alejandra Moore for giving me my first contact with the English-speaking science fiction community at the short-lived Constelación magazine. That was the start of an unpredictable journey that some days I can't believe has happened to me. Also thanks to Clay Harmon, Michael David Lukas and Rodrigo Bastidas for believing in my writing. Thanks to Alex Wallace for his enthusiastic support, and for putting me in contact with more awesome people. Thanks to Tamara Gutiérrez, María Teresa Osorio, Pilar Sáenz and Daniel Monje for keeping alive Cienciaficcionarios, the most important science fiction association in Bogotá. Thanks to Felipe López and Angélica Caballero for their inspiring perseverance in promoting science fiction in a country that barely reads. Thanks to Jaime Espinal and Juan Gabriel Vásquez for their good wishes.
And thanks to all the Hugo voters around the world who gave this award to our little website with basically zero budget but lots of passion.
Paul Weimer
I am delighted that, back in 2017, NOAF came to me and asked me to be their representative in Helsinki that year, since none of the team could go. That led me to eventually joining the team myself, and subsequently becoming one of the editors. And so here we are. Thanks to you, NOAF for making me part of your flock.
I would like to thank all of our readers for being enthusiastic and recognizing the value of our work, and the mission of our work. We are in the liminal space between writers and readers (some of us also being the former, and all of us being in the latter). If I was Kamala Harris, I'd have a Venn diagram to explain this all. I will be mysterious and also like to thank someone very special whom circumstances and the realities of the online world will not let me name. They have been an absolute rock for me, and their support of me invaluable. Thanks to them, and thanks to all.
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| What it looks like when you win a Hugo! Photo: Paul Weimer |
