Read MidAmeriCon II Publications Free

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Midamericon II guests of honorMidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, is posting its Progress Reports and other publications as free reads online.

Currently available:

  • The Possum Trot Le Zombie-Picayune, also known as Progress Report Zed, announcing the GoH’s and cost of membership (4 pages)
  • The 1941 Retro Hugos briefly introduces the award concept (2 pages)
  • MidAmeriCon II Fan Fair Parties is a FAQ explaining the plan to run parties in a designated space of the Exhibit Hall rather than in the con hotels, comparable to how parties were handled at Loncon 3 (4 pages).
  • MidAmeriCon II Progress Report 1 (Retro Side), a lookback at the Kansas City Worldcon of 1976, with photo pages, and humor articles by Bill “The Galactic” Fesselmeyer (“How the Grinch Stole Worldcon”) and Wilson “Bob” Tucker (“A Proposed Constitution for World Science Fiction Conventions”).  (18 pages)

Here’s an excerpt of the Tucker parody:

Article Two: The general purpose of a world convention shall be to gather together in one place, or two hotels and a municipal auditorium if that is not possible, all those rugged individualists who do not read science fiction but who pay lip service to it: by publishing illegible fan journals, composing pseudo-science stories, collecting garish cover art and lesser illustrations, trading comic books, selling back- issues and scarce books at astronomical prices, stealing artifacts they cannot afford, praising shoddy anti-science films, encouraging infantile television programs, criticizing unread novels, toadying to ego-swollen authors, and by exhibiting themselves in public places as slave girls, belly dancers, bugeyed monsters, mutants, off-worlders, belligerent apes, pointy-eared aliens, rocket jockeys, mythical magicians, errant knights, slans, mad scientists, faery queens, and Ming the Merciless.

  • MidAmeriCon II Progress Report 1 (Current Side) contains actual reports of progress – a committee list, Message From the Chairs, a Code of Conduct, miscellaneous reports, a GoH feature about Michael Swanwick, and Jeff Orth’s article about Kansas City barbecue. (22 pages)

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8 thoughts on “Read MidAmeriCon II Publications Free”

  1. I predict that the “you can’t serve meal-like foods or alcohol” will lead to a lot of in-room parties, anyway. I commend MAC II for attempting a general party area, but I think they will find the Exhibit Hall deserted by a lot of people for room parties.

  2. I find the issuu utility too hard to use…better if they (the con docs) were fully downloadable as pdf or similar easy docs…very frustrating…don’t want to read online on issuu but download for later viewing/reading…not happening…

  4. If you can’t serve meal-equivalents and booze, it’s not a Worldcon party, is it? Nice try, but it’s not going to work except for very small things that would otherwise be overlooked.

    Also, issuu is completely non-intuitive and hard to read.

  5. lurkertype: it’s so non-intuitive that I’ve been completely unable to read anything there. There’s just the page saying MidamericonII and a link to Midamericon’s page. I don’t see any links to progress reports or anything from the issuu page.

  7. Morris Keesan:

    And seriously, is “Free” really news here? Has any Worldcon ever made its publications available online in a non-free version?

    Until we can give everyone a little green pill that equips them with Morris Keesan’s data set, there will be people for whom all kinds of Worldcon information is news. For example, you might page back through the Hugo discussions earlier this year to remind yourself how many people had never even heard of the award before the controversy. Or how many more found paying for a Worldcon membership an impediment. Maybe it didn’t occur to some of them the pubs are freely available online.

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