he after whom the Hugos are named

[sergebroom]

In 2005, Paul McAuley and Kim Newman opened the Hugo Ceremonies with a speech on the life of science-fiction's pioneer after whom the Award is named - Victor Hugo.

...his was the guiding hand behind Jules Verne's famous Three Laws of Automata: a homunculus, automaton or other artificial being shall not serve a human red wine with fish, must always alert a human to shortfallings in the quality of his cuisine with a mechanical cry of 'sacré bleu', and shall not (through inaction) allow a human to be seen in public with mismatching gaiters and cravatte.

The complete speech can be found here on Kim Newman's site.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Someone is confused, and I don't think it's me. The Hugo Awards were named after Hugo Gernsback, a pioneering magazine publisher of the pulp-fiction age. Are you sure that speech wasn't intended as an Onion-style joke?

[sajia.livejournal.com]

Of Course It Was a Joke! Although admittedly I too was confused when I read about it at Making Light, me being an Innocent Bengali Girl and all.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Right. I had heard about this before, but I didn't remember that it was in ML.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It is a joke, mais oui.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

But serving red wine and fish apparently is not a joke, but an horreur!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Le vrai horreur would be to serve a decent vin blanc with saumon fumé.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Sacrebleu!

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

And a very silly joke it was, especially the part about Toulouse-Lautrec having done covers for him that show a demoiselle in distress as she is being attacked by a monster from Saturn. If you want, I can send you the actual movie of the whole affair, which has the extra flavor of MacAuley and Newman saying the bits in French with an absolutely atrocious accent.

[(Anonymous)]

It was a very, very good joke. I was in the audience laughing myself sick.

Susan
http://www.rixosous.com