Pixel Scroll 7/11/20 Hello Pixel, Hello Filer, Here I Am At Camp 770

(1) COOL RUNNING. Archipelacon 2, the Nordic science fiction and fantasy convention in Mariehamn, Finland in 2025, is also a bid for Eurocon for 2025. (Cheryl Morgan added, “but not Worldcon, the venue is too small and they are much too sensible.”)

(2) PLAN B. Ian Sales, in “Reading diary 2020, #8” briefly gave some thought to reviewing the books on the Clarke Award shortlist before realizing it would be more interesting to tee off on US fandom.

…The Clarke commentary no longer takes place. An attempt to reinvigorate it several years ago with a shadow jury was loudly condemned by US fans who plainly didn’t understand what a shadow jury is and equally plainly hadn’t bothered to find out. Despite all claims to the contrary, fandom is not a community. Once upon a time, it was an emergent phenomenon of the stories’ existence. Now it’s just a part of the marketing machine, and, happily for the publishers, it costs them nothing. Five stars means less than one star. Giving a book five stars just makes you a fucking mug. And everything is dominated by the US, a nation which seems congenitally incapable of recognising that other countries exist and they do things differently there (yes, I know, that’s a time-based reference, not geographic one; but never mind). True, science fiction is an American mode of fiction, and the single largest market for its creations, so its dominance is hardly surprising. But us non-USians, while we may appreciate the genre output of the US – the stories, the novels, the films, the TV series – we don’t actually give a shit about what US fans think. Science fiction fandom is not one giant global family. It never has been. And it never should be. Vive la différence.

(There actually are bunch of good reviews in the post, once you get past this.)

(3) WINDYCON CANCELLATION. Chicago-area’s Windycon will not take place this year now that they’ve reached agreement with their facility.

Out of concern for the safety for our members, guests, and staff, Windycon 47 in 2020, originally scheduled for November 13-15 is cancelled for this year by mutual agreement with our hotel.

All room reservations will be automatically canceled by the hotel beginning Monday, 7/13.

If you have purchased a membership, dealer tables, or space in the art show for Windycon 47, we will refund your money or roll over your payments for Windycon 47 in 2021, per your preference.  Please contact us at [email protected] to let us know.  Dealers, please contact [email protected] for your preferences, and artists, please contact [email protected]

If you haven’t contacted us by August 1, 2020, then memberships will be automatically refunded.

If you have a membership that was rolled over from Windycon 46, that membership will automatically be rolled over to the convention in 2021.

There may yet be some online activities which will be held during Windycon 47’s original timeframe.  Should this come to pass, information will be posted on the Windycon website and via social media channels.

Windycon 47 will now be held at the Westin in Lombard, Illinois on November 12-14, 2021, COVID-permitting, featuring all of the guests from 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact the ISFiC board at: [email protected]

(4) STORYGRAPH. Someone has invented a tool that could massively accelerate the growth of your Mount TBR, judging by Cole Rush’s “Interview with Nadia Odunayo, Founder of The StoryGraph” at The Quill To Live

Welcome to our special interview with Nadia Odunayo! Nadia is the founder of The StoryGraph, an online service that helps you find books to fit your mood. After you read the interview, head over to The StoryGraph to sign up and find your next read!

What is The StoryGraph and what does it do for readers?

The StoryGraph is a website that helps you to find perfect books for you based on your mood and the types of books you like to read.

Our magic feature is “Ordered for you.” Users fill out a short survey — it takes anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes to fill out — letting us know their favourite sorts of books to read, down to specific topics, types of authors, themes, genres etc. — and we order all of the books on our website for them based on how well they match their preferences.

Combine that with our filter menu, where you can filter down by moods, pace, genres, book size, and more, and you’re never more than a few clicks away from your next perfect book!

(5) DRIVE-IN FAVORITE. Did you see this coming? Deadline says it’s making the cash registers ring again: “‘Empire Strikes Back’ Leads At The Weekend Box Office Again, 23 Years After Sequel’s Special Edition”.

For the first time since the February 1997 reissue, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is leading at the box office this weekend after clocking an estimated $175K at 483 locations. Empire should end the weekend with a 3-day take in-between the high $400K and low $500K.

(6) DON’T PANIC. Huffpost urges, “Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam”. And proceeds to document inaccuracies in the open letter signed by over 150 writers, including J.K. Rowling.

On Monday, 153 prominent writers, academics and public figures signed their names to a statement entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” According to the signatories, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper’s, doesn’t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over “cancel culture.” The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.

This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper’s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over “cancel culture” is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.

(7) CLARON CONVERSATIONS CONTINUE.  The next two installments of the Clarion Conversations are scheduled for July 15 and 16.

The Future is Queer – July 15, 5:30pm PT / 8:30pm ET (Register here.)

This week, our guests are José Iriarte, Jordy Rosenberg, and Nicasio Andrés Reed, moderated by Ellen Kushner. The conversation, named in honor of the Delany-Kushner-Sherman “The Future is Queer” scholarship for Clarion students, will explore speculative fiction through the eyes of these four writers whose work centers queer stories and experiences, the writers who inspired and paved the way for them, and what the future of the field looks like.

We encourage attendees of tonight’s conversation to make a contribution to the Delany-Kushner-Sherman/The Future is Queer Scholarship, which recognizes the continued work of Samuel R. Delany, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman as active LGBTQ writers in the field of science fiction and fantasy, and their contributions as Clarion faculty members who have been particularly supportive of LGBTQ students over the years. The scholarship provides financial support for Clarion students who self-identify as part of the broader queer community. In addition, it recognizes the need for more queer representation in speculative literature, and the many hardships queer writers face due to employment, home, and financial discrimination. Our hope is that the Delany-Kushner-Sherman scholarship will help more queer writers attend the Clarion Workshop.

Remembering Octavia/Writers of Color at Clarion – July 16, 5pm PT / 8pm ET (register here)

This week, our guests are adrienne marie brown, Lisa Bolekaja, and Senaa Ahmad, moderated by Shelley Streeby (Clarion Workshop Faculty Director). The focus this week is to highlight the contributions of writers of color in the Clarion community, looking back to early student Octavia E. Butler and to the future through the eyes of these three writers, including two Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholars—a scholarship for Clarion students of color sponsored by the Carl Brandon Society.

The Carl Brandon Societyhas tirelessly dedicated itself to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction. We encourage attendees of tonight’s conversation to make a contribution to the Butler Scholarship Memorial Fund.

Videos of the first two panels are available on YouTube.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • July 11, 1997 Contact premiered. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis with production by him and Steve Starkey. It‘s  based off Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel of the same name with the screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg. Jodie Foster is the protagonist with an extensive supporting cast of Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey and David Morse. Contact won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at BucConeer, beating out Men In Black, Gattaca and Starship Troopers. The rough consensus of the critics was that it had great ideas, quite flat characters. Box office wise, it never earned back what it cost to make. The audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a 78% rating. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born July 11, 1899 – E.B. White.  Essayist at Harper’s and The New Yorker.  Three revisions of Strunk’s 1918 Elements of Style (1959, 1972, 1979) which thus since 1959 has also borne White’s name.  Letters, 1976 (Winship Award); Essays, 1977; Poems & Sketches, 1981.  For us, Stuart LittleCharlotte’s Web(Newbery Honor), The Trumpet of the Swan.  Amer. Acad. Arts & Letters Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Wilder Award, Nat’l Medal for Literature, Pulitzer Prize.  (Died 1985) [JH]
  • Born July 11, 1913 – Harold McCauley.  Five dozen covers, a hundred interiors for AmazingFantasticImaginationOther WorldsUniverse.  Here  is a cover for the August 1940 Fantastic.  Here is the May 1952 Imagination.  Here are some images from the Grapefruit Moon Gallery (the stern man with a staff is HM’s cover for Empire of the Atom).  See Di Fate’s note on him in Infinite Worlds.  The Quaker Oats man has his face. (Died 1977) [JH]
  • Born July 11, 1913 – Cordwainer Smith.  Forty short stories; even the titles are strange – “Scanners Live in Vain”, “Golden the Ship Was – Oh! Oh! Oh!”, “Think Blue, Count Two”.  Translated into Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish.  Under another name (and he used others too) he was Sun Yat-sen’s godson, earned a Ph.D., knew six languages, studied brainwashing and psychological warfare.  We may understand him some day.  (Died 1966) [JH]
  • Born July 11, 1920 Yul Brynner. The Gunslinger in Westworld and its sequel Futureword.  He would also play Carson, a human warrior in the post-apocalyptic The Ultimate Warrior. I don’t think we can consider The King and I genre or even genre adjacent…  If we do, he played Prince Mongkut in the short-lived Anna and the King as well. (Died 1985.) (CE)
  • Born July 11, 1925 David Graham, 95. The voice of Daleks in the early years of Doctor Who including two non-canon films, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.; his voice work made him a sought-after worker and he’d be used on ThunderbirdsAsterix & Obelix Take On CaesarTimeslipMoomin, Stingray and even the recent Thunderbirds Are Go. (CE)
  • Born July 11, 1954 – Sarah Prince.  Ceramicist, photographer, graphic designer.  Voice and handbell choirs.  Co-chaired Ditto 6 (fanziners’ convention, named for a brand of spirit duplicator – I’ve used it myself and “spirit duplicator” still sounds fantastic).  Here (Mark Olson photo) she is at Boskone 28.  (Died 2017) [JH]
  • Born July 11, 1956 Amitav Ghosh, 64. Author of the absolutely brilliant The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Really just go read it and we’ll discuss it over a cup of chai masala. (CE)
  • Born July 11, 1958 – Alan M. Gutierrez, 62.  A hundred sixty covers, forty interiors.  Here is the Spring 1983 Rigel.  Here is The Infinite Sea.  Here is the April 2005 Analog.  Here is Fuzzy Ergo Sum.  Here are some starship concept sketches.  [JH]
  • Born July 11, 1959 Richard James Bleiler, 61. Genres breed academics. One of them is this bibliographer of speculative fiction, crime, and adventure fiction. Among his papers are “The Fantastic Pulp Fiction of Frank Belknap Long” which appeared in Gary Hoppenstand’s Pulp Fiction of the ’20S and ’30S and “Forgotten Giant: A Brief History of Adventure Magazines” which was published in Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy. (CE)
  • Born July 11, 1976 T.L. Morganfield, 44. She is as she says “An Aztec geek; whether it’s history or mythology, I devour it all. It’s a love affair that began in college and has taken over my fiction writing life.” And that’s why I’m recommending her Bone Flower trilogy which is at genre adjacent if not genre. Her Aztec West series bring the Aztec gods into the Old West and is quite entertaining in a weird sort of manner. (CE)
  • Born July 11, 1984 – Marie Lu, 36.  Nine novels, five New York Times Best Sellers, some adapted to graphic novels and video games; they are young-adult futuristic dystopias.  Here is a January 2020 interview for The Writer.  [JH]

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Non Sequitur shows a suspicious case of news not going viral.

(11) MOVING IN A NEW DIRECTION. “Julia Sawalha ‘devastated and furious’ at Chicken Run sequel ‘ageism'” reports BBC.

Actress Julia Sawalha has said she is “devastated and furious” at not being in the Chicken Run sequel, claiming she was told her voice sounds “too old”.

Sawalha, who played Ginger the chicken in the 2000 animated original, said she felt she had been “unfairly dismissed”.

The actress said she had “officially been plucked, stuffed & roasted” after being told the role was being recast, but wished the film “the best of luck”.

The BBC has asked Aardman Animations and distributor Netflix for comment.

In an open letter, the Absolutely Fabulous and Cranford star said she had been “informed out of the blue” that the producers of Chicken Run 2 were recasting Ginger.

“The reason they gave is that my voice now sounds ‘too old’ and they wanted a younger actress,” she wrote.

Sawalha responded by filming herself speaking some of her old dialogue and sending the video to the sequel’s producers.

She said she had received a “very kind” response from an unnamed “creative” – who said the recasting would still go ahead.

(12) SHE ADORES THE DOCTOR. BUT NOT THAT DOCTOR. Galactic Journey’s Lorelei Marcus will tell you “This is how I fell hard for handsome, clever, talented teen idol of the century: Tony Randall.” [JULY 10, 1965] “SINCE I FELL FOR YOU” (A YOUNG TRAVELER’S CRUSH).

… He’s at his best though, when he is playing Dr. Lao; specifically when he drops the stereotypical façade of a foolish Chinese man and becomes the traveled scholar underneath. Suddenly he is standing straight and tall, almost regal in his confidence. His voice is deep and carrying, but his demeanor is kind, wise, and gentle. He speaks in a perfect and precise manner and his words discuss the magical secrets of the universe. I hadn’t known it at the time, but despite all the makeup and effects, this role was one of the closest to Randall’s true self.

At this point, I was awed by Randall’s performance in the movie, but felt little beyond that. Dr. Lao was a few thousand years too old for my tastes, and I had yet to see the man behind him more clearly. Then my father’s and my weekly Password viewing happened to feature a very special guest. I was quite excited, not necessarily because it was Tony Randall on Password, but simply because it was an actor that I recognized and admired. At least, that’s how it started.

I was folding laundry while watching the TV, and I found my attention frequently drifting away from my linens and to the man on screen (no, not host Alan Ludden.) Randall was fascinating to watch. He always sat with perfect poise and spoke with wonderful rich tones. And he was absolutely erudite, forcing me to pull out a dictionary a few times. His brilliance aided in his gameplaying as well, as I believe he is the only player in Password history so far to win four games in a row!

(13) LANSDALE INTRO ONLINE. Joe R. Lansdale, in “The Missing Link Between Golden Age Detectives, Hardboiled Noir, And Hallucinogenic Adventure” on CrimeReads, has an introduction to a new edition of Joel Townsley Rogers’s The Red Right Hand. a novel Lansdale says is “a genre slider, a brain teaser, a liar and a truth-teller at the same time.” 

… Clues and odd impressions pile up like plague victims, and from time to time the answer to the riddle seems close at hand, as if you could reach out and grasp it. Then the answer that seemed so clear wriggles from your grasp like an electric eel and slithers into darkness.

(14) STARRING ATTRACTION. At The Eloquent Page, Pablo Cheesecake entertainingly reviews “Random Sh*t Flying Through The Air by Jackson Ford”.

Please note, this is a direct sequel to The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind. It is entirely possible that if you have not read book one in The Frost Files series then this review will contain something akin to minor spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!

Teagan Frost’s life is finally back on track. Her role working for the government as a psychokinetic operative is going well and she might even be on course for convincing her crush to go out with her. But, little does she know, that sh*t is about to hit the fan . . .

A young boy with the ability to cause earthquakes has come to Los Angeles – home to the San Andreas, one of the most lethal fault lines in the world. If Teagan can’t stop him, the entire city – and the rest of California – could be wiped off the map.

For reference, before we begin, I’m going to refer to this book henceforth as Random Sh*t. I can’t be bothered typing Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air all the time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant title for a brilliant book, but it’s wearing me out. The prospect alone of having to repeatedly type it out is giving me the fear.

(15) UNDER THE HARROW. Andrew Mather reviews a sequel in Harrow The Ninth – Sure, Ok, Yeah” at The Quill To Live.

God, it’s like assembling a fusion reactor without a manual. I am honestly surprised at my perceived commercial success of Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series. Not that it is bad in any way – in fact, we gave book one a stellar review and listed the series as one of our top Science Fantasy books of all time. It’s just that these books are so confusing that you will literally never understand what is happening, which is usually a huge turn off for most readers. I am pleasantly surprised that the general public has collectively decided these books are worth the time and effort.

So, Harrow The Ninth, the second book in the series, is coming out soon. You might be sitting on your couch right now, browsing this review on your phone, and thinking “oh a Harrow review, maybe he will say the books get less confusing.” Well reader, no, unfortunately, I cannot say that because I don’t understand half the plot, and the other half I do understand is basically all spoilers.

(16) UNSEEN THINGS. Looks like Trump’s Space Force has a head start on the Border Patrol. The New York Times reveals “Beyond the Milky Way, a Galactic Wall”.

Astronomers have discovered that there is a vast wall across the southern border of the local cosmos.

The South Pole Wall, as it is known, consists of thousands of galaxies — beehives of trillions of stars and dark worlds, as well as dust and gas — aligned in a curtain arcing across at least 700 million light-years of space. It winds behind the dust, gas and stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, from the constellation Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere to the constellation Apus in the far south. It is so massive that it perturbs the local expansion of the universe.

But don’t bother trying to see it. The entire conglomeration is behind the Milky Way, in what astronomers quaintly call the zone of avoidance.

An international team of astronomers led by Daniel Pomarède of Paris-Saclay University and R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii announced this new addition to the local universe on Friday in a paper in Astrophysical Journal. The paper is festooned with maps and diagrams of blobby and stringy features of our local universe as well as a video tour of the South Pole Wall.

It is the latest installment of an ongoing mission to determine where we are in the universe — to fix our neighborhood among the galaxies and the endless voids — and where we are going….

(17) BEYOND ELEMENTARY. At Nerds of A Feather, Paul Weimer’s “Microreview [book]: The Sin In the Steel by Ryan Van Loan” points out a new book’s connection to a strong literary tradition.

…Going into the novel, I did not quite realize that this was going to be a twist on a Sherlock adventure, and it was a delight to meet Buc and Eld on Holmes and Watsonian  terms. The author takes this further than I expected–giving Buc a use of a drug in order to focus and think in a productive way, and making Eld a veteran Who Has Seen Things.. The youthful nature of the protagonists (Buc is 17 and Eld a couple of years later) puts them between a “Young Sherlock Holmes” and a Traditionally aged Holmes and Watson.

(18) WOKE IN TIME FOR BREAKFAST. Vogue tells why “OffLimits Is a New Cereal Brand for the Conscious Breakfast Lover”.

Emily Miller, author of the cookbook Breakfast and host of “Breakfast Club,” which hosts tours of famous breakfast spots around New York City, is launching a new cereal brand today called OffLimits. There are two flavors: DASH, which is made with Intelligentsia coffee and cacao, and ZOMBIE, a recipe that includes relaxing adaptogens like pandan, vanilla, and ashwagandha. The flavor’s names also represent fictionalized characters created by Miller. They represent moods and emotions like anxiety and depression. She crafted these personas in order to humanize cereal branding, which—despite how sugary or fattening it may be—has often shouted eat this and you will be better and stronger! DASH is also the very first female cereal character ever created in the industry.

(19) TUCKERIZED. Fanac.org has posted Part I of the Bob Tucker Interview that Dick Smith conducted for Chicon 2000.

Dick Smith’s interview of Wilson “Bob” Tucker was done for the 2000 World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 2000 (with videography by Tom Veal, chair of Chicon 2000!). In this low key conversation, Tucker tells wonderful stories about 60 years of fandom, from Chicon 1 in 1940, to his only stint as convention Artist Guest of Honor, to the origin of the Tucker Hotel, to Claude Degler and more. There’s history. There’s “smoothing”. There are intriguing hints of stories not told. Here’s your chance to sit down with a ghiant of fandom, and listen to Dick Smith draw out his stories of our fannish past.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]

Future Worldcon Bidders

Here is a summary of ongoing bids for the Worldcon pieced together from the presentations at Chicon 7 and online discussions I’ve seen since then, with some Machiavellian speculation thrown in for seasoning.

2015

There are bids for Helsinki, Orlando and Spokane.

Helsinki, Finland: The recently announced bid for Helsinki in 2015 is chaired by Eemeli Aro, with a committee of (so far) Andrew Adams, Jukka Halme, Lisa Hertel, Crystal Huff, Johan Jönsson, Kristoffer Lawson, Jeff Orth, Ann Marie Rudolph, Nicholas Shectman, Heikki Sørum and Megan Totusek.

The website explains, “We’re an international crew of conrunners, with a Finnish core, and we’re hoping to build the most international Worldcon yet.”

Site selection is less than a year away, but the bid has not proposed a date for the con or identified its facilities.

In fact, fans feel obligated to begin a discussion of the new Helsinki in 2015 bid with mutual assurances that it is real. Not long ago the chair Eemeli Aro and two other top leaders were pushing Mariehamn, Finland in 2016, aka Wårldcon 2016. So far as the internet is aware, they still are.

Nevertheless, Helsinki bidders made a presentation to the Chicon 7 business meeting and ran a bid table at the recent FenCon. Helsinki has styled itself as a real bid from the start, in contrast to the Bermuda Triangle committee which took awhile to become seduced by the possibility of actually winning the 1988 Worldcon. (They made a real race of it before losing to New Orleans.)

The Mariehamn bid’s overarching advantage was that site selection voting for 2016 is to be done at Loncon 3 in the UK. There is no better timing for a European bid that wants to win, as European membership in the current year’s Worldcon will be at its peak. (Remember that The Hague defeated the LA in ’90 bid by a hefty margin at a site selection vote also held in the UK.)

Yet the serious Helsinki bid is sprinting toward an immediate up-or-down vote at a North American Worldcon against two bids for U.S. cities. Do they like their chances anyway?

If not, might this be a subtle way to party on with less risk of winning?

Or could there be an even deeper game involved? Does the committee have a contingency plan to roll over the Helsinki bid to the better year with the benefit of increased public awareness? In recent years several other bids have kept running after an initial defeat, Chicago victoriously, but KC and Columbus both losing the second time around.

Orlando, Florida: Adam Beaton chairs the Orlando bid committee. They propose to hold the con over Labor Day weekend, September 2-6 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World.

Others on the Orlando committee in addition to Beaton are Mary Dumas, Robbie Bourget, John Harold, Eva Whitley, Lynda Manning-Schwartz, Charles Schwartz, Colette Fozard, Adam Ferraro, Pam Larson, Thomas Safer, Arthur Sanders, Katie Katz and Patricia McConnell.

The bid styles itself as a revolutionary approach to Worldcon running, committing to outreach, lowering Worldcon costs, and getting the next generation of fandom excited about Worldcon. These principles are discussed in detail in “The Orlando Manifesto”.

Spokane, Washington: The bid is being run by Alex von Thorn. Bobbie DuFault and Sally Woehrle are the prospective Worldcon co-chairs if they win. Spokane’s dates would be August 19-23.

They propose to use the Spokane Convention Center and nearby hotels, the largest being the Doubletree, Red Lion at the Park and the Red Lion River Inn.

The announced committee is: John Ammon, David Glenn-Anderson, Patricia Briggs, C.J. Cherryh, Bobbie DuFault (Convention Co-Chair), Jane Fancher, Bruce Farr, kT Fitzsimmons, Jerry Gieseke, Char Mac Kay, Randy Mac Kay, Tim Martin, Michael Nelson, Carole Parker, Pat Porter, Gerald Power, Rhiannon Power, Sharon Reynolds, Susan Robinson, Marah Searle-Kovacevic (Bid Vice-Chair), Chris Snell, Danielle Stephens, Bill Thomasson, Tom Veal, Alex Von Thorn (Bid Chair), Tracy Williams, Mike Willmoth (Hotel Negotiation), Sally Woehrle (Convention Co-Chair), Drew Wolfe, Kate Mulligan Wolfe, Chris Zach.

2016

There is a bid for Kansas City, and with caveats, Mariehamn.

Kansas City, Missouri: KC in 2016 proposes to hold the con August 17-21 at Bartle Hall and the Kansas City Convention Center. They have signed a contract with the rights of first refusal with their proposed facilities.

Co-Chairs of the bid are Diane Lacey, Jeff Orth, and Ruth Lichtwardt. The committee is: Chaz Boston-Baden, Margene Bahm, Warren Buff, Aurora Celeste, Barry Haldiman, Sheril Harper, Parris McBride Martin, Tim Miller, James Murray, Paula Murray, Mark Olson, Priscilla Olson, Jesi Lipp Pershing, John Pershing II, John J. Platt IV, Keith Stokes, Beth Welsh, Ben Yalow, Jim Young. No longer named as part of the bid committee is René Walling.

Mariehamn, Finland in 2016, aka Wårldcon 2016: Eemeli Aro and Johan Jönsson are co-chairs, and Jukka Halme is vice chair. The bidders made a presentation at Smofcon last December and when challenged about facilities, Eemeli Aro raised the possibility of anchoring a cruiseliner in the harbor for the duration of the con.

2017

There are three bids in various early stages of activity, Montreal, New York, and Nippon.

Montreal, Canada: Originally announced as a 2019 bid at the 2011 Smofcon, the Montreal committee reportedly now is setting its sights on 2017, in competition with a declared Nippon bid and a possible NY bid.

The Montréal group would bring the con back to the Palais de Congrés, the 2009 Worldcon facility.

René Walling, who chaired that Wordcon, made Montreal’s bid presentation at Smofcon.

New York: Mr. Shirt and his wife, Stacey Helton McConnell, reportedly are considering making a run at hosting a Worldcon in New York for the first time since 1967.

NYC didn’t make a presentation at Chicon 7. According to Petrea Mitchell, the New York bid did not intend to begin active campaigning until 2013.

Some have expressed resistance to a Worldcon run by a pseudonym, while others are undisturbed by people using handles as their fannish identity following the example of the internet.

Nippon: The official site for the bid is www.nippon2017.org which has no information at all, and a www.nippon2017.us site “independent of and not associated with the Bid Committee, but dedicated to encourage and assist them in returning the Worldcon to Japan” which has almost as little to say. Neither site lists committee members or a proposed date.

Andrew Adams told fans at the 2011 Smofcon that the Japanese bid planned on using the same venue in Yokohama as the Nippon 2007 Worldcon. But information shared at Chicon 7 indicated the bid committee is looking at two other sites, also in the greater Tokyo area, in Chiba, and Makuhari Messe in Saitama.

The Nippon in 2017 bid is immediately handicapped by questions about the huge loss incurred by the 2007 Worldcon in Japan whose full dimensions were only revealed this month. Bid spokespersons say funding for 2017 is separate. In a move to bolster their credibility they’ve added Vince Docherty to lead the finance division. A great deal more will need to be done to persuade voters that it is economically practical to hold another Worldcon in Japan.

2018

A New Orleans group is considering launching a bid.

The New Orleans in 2018 Pre-Bid Committee is Raymond Boudreau (Chair), Michael Guerber, Cordelia (Colin) Murphy, Rebecca Smith, Stu Segal, Jessica Styons and Kendall Varnell.

Committee member Jessica Styons told File 770, “Obviously we are in the early stages of building support, gauging interest and staking a claim but we are interested in all comments, offers of support and assistance.” Rebecca Smith, chair of CONtraflow, also is working on the bid.

2019

No bids.

2020

The one serious bid is for New Zealand.

New Zealand in 2020 is led by Norman Cates, a past DUFF delegate. The general committee members are Kevin Maclean (New Zealand),Maree Pavletich (New Zealand), Lynelle Howell (New Zealand), Malcolm Fletcher (New Zealand), Louise McCully (New Zealand), Struan Judd (New Zealand), Daphne Lawless, Andrew Ivamy (Queensland, AU Agent), James Shields (European Agent).

The committee says it’s an open question where they’d hold a Worldcon. There are said to be two facilities in Auckland and one in Wellington that could support a 1500-3000 member con.

Mitchell: Bid Type Signifiers

[Editor’s Note: At Smofcon Finnish fan Eemeli Aro presented a Mariehamn in 2016 Worldcon bid that left the internet wondering whether he was serious or not. The debate inspired Petréa Mitchell to devise a set of criteria for diagnosing hoax convention bids which she posted to the SMOFS list. Having some experience perpetrating hoax bids myself, I was thoroughly entertained by her thought experiment. Petréa has given her permission to repost it.]

While waiting to get a definitive statement from the Mariehamn bid on its intended level of seriousness, I got to thinking about how we tell hoax bids and non-hoax bids apart, because I am a bit of a social psychology geek. (I’m a programmer, and my particular interest is in usability issues, which means having to learn a lot about how the human brain works.)

When I tried making a list of sensible-sounding criteria, I realized most of them actually don’t work. To wit:

(1) Date: Works if it’s obviously outrageous, e.g. Christmas, or in the past, or a year centuries in the future.

(2) Location: Again, has to be really obvious, like fictional (Xerps, Z’ha’dum), or not a city (Aberdeen Proving Ground). “Too small/out-of-the-way” is a criticism that gets made of actual Worldcon bids from time to time (remember the discussion about perceived lack of air connections to Spokane recently?).

(3) Silliness of campaign: IIRC, most of the content on the Australia in 2010 Web site when it first appeared was the timeline of how the bid started with an ill-chosen remark. The first Orlando bid poster is riffing on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Serious bids have no trouble getting silly, so this actually doesn’t work as a signifier.

(4) Degree of online presence: The site for Mariehamn consists of a single page, but between that, its Facebook page, and it Twitter account, it has more of an online presence than all the apparently-serious-so-far bids for 2017-2019 combined.

(5) Degree of organization: I’m guessing that most people would expect all the hoax bids to be run by a bunch of slackers and everything else to be polished efforts by well-organized groups. OTOH, I expect everyone on this list has encountered the occasional counterexample.

(6) SMOF density: Thinking over some recent hoax bids I’m familiar with, I think the hoaxes may actually have a slightly higher average level of conrunning experience involved.

So the confusion over the Mariehamn bid is due to #3-#6 being useless, sounding plausible on #1, and mixed appraisals of #2.

Given how many of these don’t work, it’s a wonder that most of the time everyone’s able to tell immediately which ones are the serious bids and which are the hoaxes.

[Postscript: We’re now reliably informed that Mariehamn is not a serious bid.]

[Petréa Mitchell regularly contributes to several fannish blogs and writes a quarterly sf-oriented fanzine named Picofarad, “The zine of little capacity.”]