At Potlatch 20 we promised to involve the membership more in the Book of Honor selection. However this turns out to be more difficult than you might think! In the end the logistics of creating and managing a process that involved the entire membership proved insurmountable for this year. With time running out, we punted. The truth is we need to pick a BoH and we need to do it now.
Why? Well, for one Potlatch programming tends to be built around the BoH to some extent. How great an influence on programming choices the BoH exerts varies from year to year and there have been years without a BoH, but it is still something to keep in mind. Considering that we have no guests and all our panelists are drawn from the membership, we need to tie these kinds of things down before too much of the programming is set in mud brick.
In any case, one programming item I can promise for Potlatch 21 is a discussion of what makes for a good BoH. The purpose of this is manifold; including educating the membership as to the decision-making process a ConCom goes through, getting input from the membership as to what makes for a good BoH (from their viewpoint), and discussing alternative models for choosing a BoH in the future. What happens from there will depend on who takes up the reigns for Potlatch 22, 23, 24, and so on.
We’ve discussed potential BoH’s at length internally and have considered everything from the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to Feersum Endjinn by Ian Banks. Finally the Potlatch 21 ConCom narrowed down the choice to the following four novels:
Why these books? Well, obviously, these are all books our ConCom feels worth honoring and celebrating. Moreover, these are all books that have been mentioned by others in the Potlatch community as good choices.
Some, like Canticle and Stars, are traditional ‘safe’ choices for a Potlatch BoH. Dragonflight is, frankly, a bit lightweight when placed in such august company, but it has a history (first novella Hugo and Nebula by a woman) that lets us expand our programing into gender issues and female genre writers in general. (Yes, that was already done at Potlatch 4, so?) Neuromancer breaks the ‘the author must be dead’ rule, but it’s Neuromancer! (Who doesn’t want to deconstruct Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, especially as to how well it holds up to our actual future-now of computer-mediated lifestyles and out-of-control global corporations?)
So that’s the list. We (the Potlatch 21 ConCom) intend to make a final decision in the very near future, so watch this space! Feel free to comment here with your own input as well.
In the meantime, we’ll continue working on panel ideas and will be sending out programming questionnaires to the membership soon. So, if you haven’t purchased your membership, please do so without delay. We wouldn’t want to miss what you have to say at Potlatch 21!