If you are interested in nominating for this year's Hugo Awards and were not a member of Torcon 3 and are not yet a member of Noreascon 4, you need to join Noreascon 4 as at least a supporting member by January 31. You can buy a Noreascon membership online at http://www.store.nesfa.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PLST&Store_Code=N or learn more about N4 at http://www.noreascon.org/
Hugo Awards nominating ballots do not appear to be directly available on the N4 site yet, although they're probably part of the large PDF of Progress Report 5 available from their Publications page. Online nominating will presumably be available eventually, because they printed a Hugo PIN on the mailing label. In any event, copies of the ballot are available from me in paper form. Besides the 2004 Hugo Awards, Noreascon 4 will present the Retro-Hugo Awards for 1954 (works first published in 1953), so there are two separate ballots. Because there are two separate ballots, each with a full list of categories, and based on BASFA's usual practice of taking two weeks to work our way through the ballot, it will take us four complete meetings to take care of both years. I recommend that we start this process at the January 26th meeting, taking the first half of the 2004 Hugo ballot, then the second half on February 2, the first half of the 1954 Retro-Hugo ballot on February 9, and the second half on February 16. I volunteer to lead these discussions of Hugo Award recommendations after the regular meeting is over each week, and to collect the results. Cheryl is, as usual, prepared to add our recommendations to those at the EMERALD CITY Hugo Recommendations list at http://www.emcit.com/hugo_rec.shtml . As always, you need not wait for the BASFA meeting, and you don't have to be eligible to nominate this year to make recommendations. If you have Hugo Awards recommendations you want to make now, send them Cheryl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for inclusion on the EmCit list. Kevin
