First, this tweet from CoNZealand 2020 (next year’s Worldcon), regarding how it intends to proceed with the newly-renamed Astounding Award:
#CoNZealand welcomes the decision to rename the Award for Best New Writer, and will administer the Astounding Award on the same basis that we would have administered the John W. Campbell Award. #WorldCon2020 https://t.co/Ug3cm6AI64
— CoNZealand (@CoNZealand) August 30, 2019
This is relevant because there were some folks who were saying that due to the name change and the WSFS constitution, the Astounding Award could not be administered/given out until the WSFS constitution itself noted the change of name, a process which could take two years or longer. Fortunately for everyone involved, the people who are actually running the convention recognized this was trivial nickpickery of the highest order; it’s the same award and there’s no reason not to keep doing things as they have been. So it’s good that’s settled.
Second, there’s not been any guidance to how people who won the award when it was known as the Campbell should refer to themselves in relation to the award today: Are we still Campbell Award winners, or are we now Astounding Award winners? Well, I’ve personally made the unilateral decision that I will be referring to myself as an “Astounding Award winner” and when necessary for context I’ll say “Astounding Award (formerly the Campbell Award)” or some such*.
Why? Mostly because I think it makes sense to standardize how we refer to the award and to use the current name for doing so. I think previous winners and nominees adopting the new name in reference to their nominations and wins is useful in terms of helping with the transition from one name to the next. There may be some previous award winners and nominees that prefer to continue using the former name and that’s their right, for whatever reason, but I’m fine with the new name. So: Astounding Award winner it is.
With regard to others referring to the Astounding Award, my suggestion is they also use the new name for the award, but given the history of the award and the length of time the Astounding was the Campbell, I’m not going to go out of my way to be offended if people refer to it as the Campbell. It’s possible a very small minority of people who are performatively outraged at the name change will insist on calling it the Campbell in the same way and for the same reasons that some people think saying “Merry Christmas” is striking a blow against political correctness, or whatever. Those people are silly, and also a little bit sad. But to each their own.
In any event, hi, I won the Astounding Award, back when it was called the Campbell. But you can say I won the Astounding Award for short.
(* Please note that while I am adopting the Astounding name moving forward, by and large I am not going to go back into this site’s archives and swap out “Campbell” with “Astounding” in previously written entries. That would be a lot of work, and I am lazy. I will probably update it on professional bios/CVs and such. That is much less work.)