This is amazing (and a bit silly).

The Hugo Award finalists for this year's awards in various categories, to be presented in London in August, have been announced.

This year, there will also be Retro Hugo Awards for the year 1939 (which is exactly 75 years ago). The 1939 Retro Hugo Awards are for works first published in 1938 (in other words, voters must imagine themselves 75 years in the past, when they would have been voting for the previous year's awards).

This is where it gets weird. Ray's first published story, a trifle called "Hollerbochen's Dilemma", has made the final ballot in the short story category!

Now, we all love Ray around here, but...

That's funny; it was almost universally disliked at the time--an even worse sequel was written addressing this.

Not only was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma" nominated for a Retro Hugo Award for best short story of 1939, but Ray was also nominated (along with Forrest J. Ackerman, Donald Wollheim and Wilson "Bob" Tucker, among others) for best fan writer of 1939. Given what Ray thought of the quality of his writing at that period in his life, I am sure he would get a chuckle about all of this. For a complete listing of all of the nominees for the 1939 Retro Hugo Awards (which will be awarded at this year's World Science Fiction Convention to be held in London this August), click on the following link:

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2...hugo-award-nominees/

Drat - I write a long follow-up post, but had a case of buttermouse and lost it. The short version: If they start giving Retro Hugo Awards on a consistent basis from now on, Ray will feature strongly from about 2019 - the 75th anniversary of 1944, when voters will consider the works of 1943, when Ray's really good work began to pour in.

But if you look at the number of nominating ballots, interest seems to be rather low.