A Worldcon in Saudi Arabia?

CoNZealand has received and accepted two bids for the 2022 Worldcon — JeddiCon, a bid to hold the Worldcon in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a bid for Chicago, Illinois, USA. 

Their bid materials will be posted on the CoNZealand website in the next week or so. Site Selection ballots and payment systems are expected to be available in April.

JEDDICON IN 2022. With a web domain — https://jeddicon.com/ — that was just created on January 6, and a bid Council that first came into effect on January 26, the bid for Jeddah has only had a public face for a few weeks.

However, they did file with CoNZealand by the January 31 deadline to be on the Site Selection ballot. (For the record, when File 770 inquired on January 25 neither 2022 bid had yet filed.)

The JeddiCon bid proposes to hold the 2022 Worldcon in Jeddah, the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia, at the King Faisal Conference Center.

The bid committee styles itself the Jeddi High Council, led by Master of the Order Yasser Bahjatt (Yoda), who was born in Michigan but has lived in Jeddah since he was 5. He is a computer engineer by profession, but also is the author of Yaqteenya: The Old World, “the first Arabian alternative history novel.”

The bid website adds:

Yasser has been actively building the SciFi culture in Arabia since 2012 when he announced the Initiative Yatakhayaloon that he co-founded with his parter Ibraheem Abbas to jump start the contrary SciFi culture in Arabia (TED Talk). Since then he has been attending the WorldCon to talk about Arabian SciFi and to promote it globally.

Other committee members are Grandmaster Khalid Alsameti (Kenobi), Lore Keeper Rami Hamzah (R2-D2), Ahmad Sabbagh (Ackbar), Dr. Ashraf Fagih (Anakin) a Saudi writer and novelist, Mohammed Albakri (Mace), Raneen Bukhari (Rey), Tamim Kashgari (Tarkin), and Thamer Alturaif (Vader).

File 770 sent an inquiry through the contact page on their website asking about their conrunning experience but has yet to receive a reply.

As is well known, visitors to Saudi Arabia are subject to various cultural and religious restrictions, which can be read about in the entry on the country’s “Local laws and customs” posted by the government of the United Kingdom. Some of these include —

…Local laws require men and women to dress modestly covering shoulders and knees in public, avoiding tight-fitting clothing or clothes with profane language or images. It is not mandatory for female travellers to wear the traditional robe or abaaya. Information on important laws and etiquette around dress codes is available to visitors on the Visit Saudi website.

…Homosexual or extra-marital sexual relations, including adultery, are illegal and can be subject to severe penalties. It’s also illegal to be transgender. Transgender people travelling to Saudi Arabia are likely to face significant difficulties and risks if this is discovered by the authorities. See our information and advice page for the LGBT community before you travel.

CHICAGO IN 2022. The Chicago bid has been wooing voters for a few years now. Their most recent Smofcon questionnaire, Chicago for Worldcon 80 in 2022, said, “We will likely be at the Hyatt Regency Chicago in downtown Chicago, the site of four prior Chicago Worldcons.”

Proposed Site: Chicago, IL
Proposed Dates: September 1-5, 2022
Bid Chairs: Helen Montgomery and Dave McCarty.
Website: Chicago in 2022 Worldcon Bid
Facebook: Chicago Worldcon

The bid chairs have extensive Worldcon running experience, as do the many committee members listed in the Smofcon questionnaire.

56 thoughts on “A Worldcon in Saudi Arabia?

  1. I don’t think the bid from Saudi Arabia has the experience it needs. (I’m ignoring the rest of the potential problems. For now.)

  2. Hunh, had not heard about the SA Worldcon bid at all until now. I was planning and thinking “2022 is Chicago” and that’s the way I am going to vote, regardless (assuming all goes well and I go to NZ).

    SA is not a welcoming place, to put it in the mildest of terms, for far too much of our community.

  3. I give them a lot of credit for their enthusiasm, but the fact that the JeddiCon bid team obviously haven’t done any research in how to plan and conduct a bid for a Worldcon is deeply concerning (as is the location, which is a complete no-goer).

  4. For a WorldCon in a muslim majority country to work, the host country needs to be much more liberal than Saudi Arabia. A pre-coup Turkey might have worked or Malaysia or maybe the UAE somewhere down the line, but Saudi Arabia? Nope. I do know that there is fandom in Saudi Arabia and there was at least one Saudi fan at WorldCon in Dublin, but they’re far from ready to host a WorldCon, let alone with only two years headstart. After all, Saudi Arabia only held its first comic con last year or so and there were all sorts of restrictions such as separate venues for male and female cosplayers that won’t fly with international attendants.

    I was never happy with the unopposed Chicago bid, especially since Chicago hosted so many WorldCons already, but it is a vastly better choice then Jeddah. Though I likely won’t bother with site selection, if I get to go to CoNZealand, because I’m not going to Jeddah and it’s highly unlikely I’m going to Chicago.

    PS: Actually, I think the guy in the video is the Saudi fan who was at WorldCon. I briefly chatted with him.

  5. That’s a very charming bid!

    It’s nice to see a bid in opposition to Chicago but I doubt the legal and human rights situation in Saudi Arabia will have changed enough by 2022 to make it viable, which is a shame (for more than just the bid), and not the fault of the fans there. I wish them luck developing their local conventions, though, and I hope more of them manage to attend some fan-run conventions elsewhere, too.

  6. I admit to some bias here because I live in Chicago (although I have no association with the 2022 bid). But any bid that doesn’t publicize itself until just before the filing deadline would have a tough row to hoe. And that goes double or triple for a bid from Saudi Arabia.

  7. Dear Folks,

    Given previous discussions about the friendliness of the US to certain foreign visitors, I am sure someone will troll this with,”But, where do we draw the line?”

    To which I pre-reply, “I couldn’t say with precision, but I know it is well to this side of Saudi Arabia.”

    pax / Ctein

  8. Ctein on February 1, 2020 at 7:23 pm said:

    Dear Folks,

    Given previous discussions about the friendliness of the US to certain foreign visitors, I am sure someone will troll this with,”But, where do we draw the line?”

    To which I pre-reply, “I couldn’t say with precision, but I know it is well to this side of Saudi Arabia.

    Yeah, Saudi is like the hypothetical case to demonstrate that there clearly is a line and that Saudi is well on the wrong side of it — except this time it isn’t hypothetical.

  9. Camestros Felapton: Saudi is like the hypothetical case to demonstrate that there clearly is a line and that Saudi is well on the wrong side of it — except this time it isn’t hypothetical.

    It appears that a bunch of Worldcon SMOFs accepting free vacations from the Chinese government gave the JeddiCon bidders the impression that the human-rights line for Worldcon is a lot more negotiable than that. Which is not surprising – it certainly gave me that impression, too.

    JeddiCon @JeddiCon Jan 15, 2020
    @chengduworldcon We need to ask you some questions regarding how you are planing to organize the programing if you win the bid.
    Please DM us.

  10. This is a complete no-go as far as I’m concerned. The chances are high that trans or enby creators will be finalists and would be subject to arrest just for attending.

    Also subject to arrest would be unmarried male and female fans sharing a hotel room, as the courts accept that as de facto proof of extra-marital sex unless at least one of the male roomies is a relative of the female roomie.

    Not to mention that Saudi Arabia has a groping problem – even of women in abayas. I imagine local authorities would not give a shit if a western-dressed female fan got groped either.

  11. That’s fascinating stuff and I’m interested in the sudden enthusiasm of the JeddiCon bid. It’s a novel approach and I look forward to seeing them put forward their ideas and plans and how they hope to overcome local issues that many fans will see as an impediment to voting for them. I would like to hear decent discussion and respectful engagement on the issues they have to contend with, and hope that more international fans come and help Worldcons and they learn positively from the experience.

  12. I am delighted by the SA bid team’s enthusiasm.

    I am somewhat less delighted with the various laws of Saudi Arabia and how they interact with fans and fandom.

    I do understand that it is outside the remit of a bid team’s responsibilities to change the laws of the land, but it must also fall within their remit to accept that the law of the land may be considered a sufficiently high bar for voters in general to prefer another (or any other) choice.

  13. A Chinese bid is bad enough due to that country’s record of the Great Firewall etc. but Saudi Arabia? Well, it is at about the same time period as my SCA persona, the 10th Century so we could play time travelers from the 21st Century. As a woman, hell no. As a friend of LGBTQ rights and individuals this is problematic. As a First Amendment fanatic, hmmm.

  14. I suppose it’s trivial next to the deficiencies (to put it mildly) of the site they’re bidding, but the titles of the bid-committee members also get my back up….

  15. I’ve got no enthusiasm for three consecutive worldcons in the same half of the same country, but no ducking way.

  16. Much like the Chengdu/China bid, I hope this leads to an annual national convention in Saudi Arabia, and that they regularly send people from that convention to Worldcon. I think that would be an important step.

  17. Dear Steve,

    Eh, and how do you imagine that would go at all well?

    Fandom already finds enough reasons to be plunged into war. We don’t need yet another one.

    pax / Ctein

  18. I have a great deal of sympathy for Arab fans, but even if they had any clue about what a WorldCon is (not a Star Wars convention), or any conrunning experience, it would be OH HELL NO for me.
    There are plenty of Arab countries where a convention could be run, Tunisia and Algeria for example. Saudi Arabia? Fuck no. There might be countries in the world I would be less disposed to either visit or give money to – but offhand I can’t think of one.

  19. Tunisia has long been one of the most stable countries in the Maghreb and is also a popular holiday destination for many Europeans, so therefore comparatively liberal. Though the security situation in the whole Maghreb area is iffy, since Libya imploded. Still, Tunisia or Marocco or maybe Algeria or even Egypt would be much better and more palatable choices for a WorldCon in the Arab world than Saudi Arabia.

    That said, I do feel sorry for the enthusiastic fans living in countries where the political situation makes a WorldCon unfeasible.

    And while I don’t like the idea of three consecutive WorldCons in the US at all, especially not in the current political situation with Trump about to expand his travel ban to cover more countries, including Nigeria, which has an active SFF scene, a WorldCon in Saudi Arabia is not the answer.

  20. I (and my spouse, methinks!) wouldn’t vote for or go to Saudi Arabia, being a same-sex couple, and thus: illegal there! Gah! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

    Their enthusiasm and interested is noted, though. ;-(

    @Merdith: Agreed re. the (intentional) charm of the bid, though.

  21. I feel for the fans who are obviously enthusiastic enough to want to have a go.

    But Saudi Arabia did recently kill and butcher a Washington Post journalist and sponsors terrorism across the Middle East, which is enough to dissuade me from visiting the country.

  22. While Yasser Bahjatt was very nice when I met him in Dublin and I’m still a bit sad that I managed to miss out on buying one of his anthologies on arabic SF, I will still say “HELL NO!” to a bid in Saudiarabia. Not until the gender apartheid has been abolished and LGBT is legal.

    But I hope Bahjatt will continue to visit Worldcon and bring us more information on SF in the arab world. And I wish him all the best luck with any local conventions.

  23. I’d love to see fandom in more and more diverse places, but you need a much larger local fandom to run one, and the human rights abuses making a lot of fen unwelcome is a definite no-no.

    Re Steve Donaldson’s list, I’m boggled that the UK managed to end up #7.

  24. @K. M. Alexander:
    I know I heard talk that Montreal had been talking another bid.

    Toronto probably wouldn’t be happening, given how badly the last Toronto Worldcon went. (Happening in the same year as SARS and the West Nile infections hit Toronto, not long after the big east coast power outage that year, and only two years after 9/11 while the American travel industry was still recovering… sadly, poor attendance was pretty much guaranteed.)

    Vancouver might be good, though. Toronto’s had it three times (1948/1973/2003), Montreal once (2009), and Winnipeg once (1994). Granted, given how recently it was in Spokane which isn’t far away… maybe either Edmonton or Ottawa?

  25. wrt the unhappiness about 3 Worldcons in a row in the same half of the US — does Nice really look that bad for 2023? If so, can anyone work with them to make a more-plausible bid? It shouldn’t take much to look better than Memphis, whose web page does not make obvious whether there are more than two people behind the bid.

    Spokane was in 2015; as I estimate the boundaries, that quadrant of the continent hasn’t had a convention since, so a Vancouver bid for 7-8 years later doesn’t seem unreasonable — but I have no idea what they have for facilities. (I was at a very unimpressive Westercon at UBC, but that was in 1991 — whatever fandom is now in Vancouver probably has little connection to that mess.)

  26. The folks behind the Nice bid are nice (I talked to a few of them in Dublin), but not very experienced and also not all that great at selling themselves and their city. And considering that mostly US fans complained about things like “The convention centre is not in the city centre, not every hotel is right next to the convention centre, people expect us to use public transport and there were cobblestones” with the Helsinki and Dublin WorldCons, I suspect that US fans will mostly vote for Memphis rather than Nice. And since the 2021 WorldCon is in the US, US fans will have the edge, since a lot of European fans will probably not attend.

  27. US fans used to vote for interesting European sites even with the layout defects you cite; e.g., at The Hague most of the sleeping rooms (including the party spaces) were IIRC over a mile from the convention center. (I didn’t go to Helsinki, but my recollection of their parties in the US suggests they oversold how easy it was to get between hotels and the convention center.) Helsinki-in-2015 didn’t do well on US votes (judging by the 2nd-round count, most of the Orlando votes went to Spokane), but I remember it entering fairly late; a better-prepared bid might do well against Memphis, even if the vote is in the US. (In past years this would mean 90% of the membership was from the US; I don’t know what the split in voters was then, or whether it has shifted after several European Worldcons.) Among other factors is that they’re both hot but Memphis looks like it’s more humid. I have a vague recollection of some out-of-town US BNFs/SMOFs supporting Memphis in order to provide competition for what they thought was a weak bid; ISTM that choosing something further west would have been more strategic, but I don’t know whether they looked and didn’t find anyone.

  28. Spokane was in 2015; as I estimate the boundaries, that quadrant of the continent hasn’t had a convention since, so a Vancouver bid for 7-8 years later doesn’t seem unreasonable — but I have no idea what they have for facilities. (I was at a very unimpressive Westercon at UBC, but that was in 1991 — whatever fandom is now in Vancouver probably has little connection to that mess.)

    Vancouver Convention Centre is right in the heart of downtown, and is one of the largest convention facilities in Canada. I’ve attended several events there. It’s kind of enormous, beautiful, and perfect for a Worldcon.

    That said, Vancouver has some significant problems in terms of hosting. Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly unaffordable to visit. Last time I attended a VCon (the local SF convention), it was nearly impossible to find accommodation at a reasonable rate. Hotels are expensive AF there, especially in the summer. To boot, VCon (the local convention) failed to fire this year due to organizational issues. I don’t know the situation, but if they’re having difficulty organizing an annual local convention, I’m a little uncertain about the capacity for a larger event.

    If we’re looking at Western Canada, I might suggest Calgary as a more suitable venue. It’s a decently sized flight hub, very good hotel prices, excellent convention facilities (that won’t be overbooked in August), a longstanding SF community (When Words Collide is a pretty good little convention).

    It might be noted that Western Canada has never hosted a Worldcon (no, Winnipeg doesn’t count as “west.”)

  29. can anyone work with them to make a more-plausible bid?

    From my vantage point of extremely outside the goings-on, it seems like this wouldn’t be a bad impulse to follow on a general level. It’s easy to have a broad view that more WorldCons should be outside the U.S., but then on a case-by-case basis decide for the U.S. every time (based on the expertise of the con runners, or the suitability of the venue when combined with attendees’ US-informed notions of what makes a suitable venue, etc). As long as most cons are in the U.S., (as I think most are), the US will always have a huge amount of the brain trust/knowledge/experience required to know how to put on a con. There must be a way to spread that knowledge around? (I’m sure this happens all the time on an unofficial level, I guess I’m thinking about something more open/formal.)

  30. Jenora Feuer on February 3, 2020 at 3:58 pm said:
    @K. M. Alexander:
    Vancouver might be good, though. Toronto’s had it three times (1948/1973/2003), Montreal once (2009), and Winnipeg once (1994). Granted, given how recently it was in Spokane which isn’t far away… maybe either Edmonton or Ottawa?

    As an Edmontonian, I can say that we’d have the facilities (Shaw Convention Centre), and hotels are cheap. But I have doubts about our local organizing capacity.

    Ottawa is terrible. I worked as a lobbyist for a few years, so have had to go there on business a number of times. Would never choose to visit Ottawa, though. They’ve got a very good local convention (Can-Con), but the city is awful to visit. Plus it’s much smaller than you would expect, and worse transit than is reasonable.

  31. The more I think about it, the more I think Calgary would be an excellent place for a Worldcon.

    The Calgary Convention Centre (https://calgary-convention.com/) has 36 meeting rooms, and a massive flexible convention space (122,000 Sq. ft.) with 13 more meeting rooms in the Fairmont (connected via walkway), and a half dozen more in the Glenbow Museum (also connected via walkway), and secondary theatre spaces and convention halls in the Glenbow.

    The centre’s right on the main commuter train line, there are about a dozen hotels within walking distance (at various reasonable price points). On the other side of the centre from the train is Stephen Avenue, which is a hub for restaurants in the city.

    As communications director at the AFL, I was a key part of organizing some multi-day union conventions that were held in these facilities. Also organized similar conventions in Edmonton. Attendance was approximately 300 people at each of these, which I know is small by the standards of an SF convention. Because some of our union leaders had significant mobility issues or other impairments, one of our key planning priorities is ensuring that the events were accessible. Calgary poses fewer mobility impediments than almost any convention space I’ve seen.

    During the G8 summit in 2003, this was a key staging ground for bureaucrats and apparatchiks. (I also worked behind the scenes at that event.)

    I can attest to the fact that Calgary would be a pretty damned good place to host. If anybody else ever decides to put together a bid there, I’ll help out in any way I can.

  32. @Chip Hitchcock

    US fans used to vote for interesting European sites even with the layout defects you cite; e.g., at The Hague most of the sleeping rooms (including the party spaces) were IIRC over a mile from the convention center. (I didn’t go to Helsinki, but my recollection of their parties in the US suggests they oversold how easy it was to get between hotels and the convention center.) Helsinki-in-2015 didn’t do well on US votes (judging by the 2nd-round count, most of the Orlando votes went to Spokane), but I remember it entering fairly late; a better-prepared bid might do well against Memphis, even if the vote is in the US. (In past years this would mean 90% of the membership was from the US; I don’t know what the split in voters was then, or whether it has shifted after several European Worldcons.) Among other factors is that they’re both hot but Memphis looks like it’s more humid. I have a vague recollection of some out-of-town US BNFs/SMOFs supporting Memphis in order to provide competition for what they thought was a weak bid; ISTM that choosing something further west would have been more strategic, but I don’t know whether they looked and didn’t find anyone.

    Well, to most European fans “The convention centre is not in the city centre, the hotels are not all right next door and you’ll have to use public transport” are not flaws, but the way things are. In fact, I usually don’t even book at the hotel next to the convention centre, because it’s usually pricy and there are cheaper and nicer hotels elsewhere. In Dublin, I ended up in a (very nice) hotel next to the secondary Point location, but that was because it was cheaper than the chain hotels in the city centre I would normally have used.

    And for the record, I have no idea if the Nice convention centre (which is relatively new) is in the city centre or in a suburb. The CCD in Dublin was in walking distance of the city centre built on reclaimed harbour land. Helsinki’s was in a suburb and required a train or tram trip to get there.

    Nice is a beautiful city on the Mediterranean Sea close to many other interesting places and so should be an interesting location, but for some reason the people behind the Nice bid don’t emphasize the beauty and history of their city at all. Plus, the French Riviera is a prime holiday destination and August is prime holiday time, so hotel prices will be an issue. But yes, Nice could use an infusion of experienced con runners.

    As for Memphis, I chatted with one of the bid chairs in Dublin and she was not from Memphis. No idea why they decided on Memphis rather than somewhere else.

    @Olav Rokne
    I’m all for another Canadian WorldCon. Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary all sound good, especially since I’ve never been to either city, whereas I have been to Toronto and Montreal and (birefly) Ottawa.

  33. Cora Buhlert:

    “And for the record, I have no idea if the Nice convention centre (which is relatively new) is in the city centre or in a suburb.”

    The Nice convention center is close to both buses and trams. There’s several hotels with walking distance (I have not checked out any issues for people with disabilities). It is not in the suburbs and there are at least two museums 2-300 meter from the center.

    I’ve only been to Calgary once, some 15 years ago, and my only memory is that it was an incredibly boring city to walk around in. 😛 But can’t say I gave it that much of a chance, I was working most of the time.

  34. @Hampus

    The Acropolis convention centre looks walkable from the main train station, although with heavy bags on a hot day I probably wouldn’t.

    As for hotels most of the big chain hotels with name recognition for US fen (like the Hyatt Regency) are near the beaches and so look to be a kilometre or more away. There is a Novotel and a Campanile pretty close for those who want a more mid-range hotel chain.

  35. @becca:

    It’s easy to have a broad view that more WorldCons should be outside the U.S., but then on a case-by-case basis decide for the U.S. every time (based on the expertise of the con runners, or the suitability of the venue when combined with attendees’ US-informed notions of what makes a suitable venue, etc).

    Actually, the long-term record has been that a decently-prepared (not superlative, just decent) outside-North-America bid will defeat a US bid. I remember (from living through them) three cases in 45 years where a US bid defeated a non-NA bid: Helsinki 2015 (see above), Croatia 1993 (which had been bidding unspecifically for some years — rumor was that it was a way for one fan to get travel expenses from the government, which finally told him to stop messing around and file for a specific year), and Australia 1983 (moderately well put-together, but probably lost some votes to the drunken clowns from Copenhagen, and maybe to a sympathy vote for a Baltimore bid that had just lost a hard-fought contest). Glasgow 1995 defeated Atlanta II (although it was very close — having the vote in Orlando may have made it closer), The Hague 1990 defeated Los Angeles (although the LA bid had serious PR problems) and Brighton 1979 stomped New Orleans (which probably didn’t help its cause with a blatant appeal to economics) — and those were the cases where a US bid competed instead of saying “We’ll take the NASFIC.” It’s possible that that sometime tradition (of US bids picking years when there are no non-NA bids) is dead, and that shortage issues with Helsinki (function space) and Dublin (?space?, sleeping rooms?) mean US bids are more aggressive — but we’ll see how that works out.

    @Cora Buhlert:

    Well, to most European fans “The convention centre is not in the city centre, the hotels are not all right next door and you’ll have to use public transport” are not flaws, but the way things are.

    And as I said, that did not block US fans (guessing from voting totals and early membership maps) from voting for European conventions — although London 2014 may have suggested that this spread did not need to be “the way things are”. (This based on bits I heard — I didn’t look at the plans in detail because a schedule conflict meant I knew way ahead that I wouldn’t go.) ISTM that Glasgow is also moving toward the US&Canadian model, in which a convention center is often built on available land and hotels, transit, etc. appear around it as the business builds up. And I wonder whether European fans are more resigned to the old model than accepting of it — the UK at least has enough one-site regionals to get fans used to being able to go back to a sleeping room whenever rather than packing for a full day away.

  36. There’s no specific rule with regards to convention centres in Europe. For some cities, they are naturally placed outside city limits because the space was otherwise occupied in the city center (unless people would be happy with a much smaller convention center). While other cities has the space for them.

    As an example, in Stockholm our old convention center had no space around it for expansion, so we had to build a new one in the suburbs. On the other hand, the larger convention center in Gothenburg is in the middle of the city where it has managed to expand gradually since the 1940:s.

    In the end it comes down to if we want a country to have Worndcon or not and how much disadvantages we are willing to accept for the joy of visiting a new place with new organizers.

    It is not so much about if “European fans are resigned to the old model”. It is more a matter of European fans not having the time, money and political power to build their own convention center to their own specifications exactly where they want it on the hope that they might get a foreign Worldcon to visit. And you can forget about local politicians on a wim suddenly start to build a new center of 100 000 sqm when they have already invested enormous sums in the old one.

  37. Hampus Eckerman on February 5, 2020 at 6:51 am said:
    There’s no specific rule with regards to convention centres in Europe.

    I’d think of the Bella Center in Copenhagen: https://www.bellacentercopenhagen.dk/
    or the RuhrCongress in Bochum. They’re both pretty far out there.

    Hampus Eckerman on February 5, 2020 at 2:40 am said:
    I’ve only been to Calgary once, some 15 years ago, and my only memory is that it was an incredibly boring city to walk around in.

    It’s not terribly walkable, but the transit is good. The river area is quite nice around Prince’s Island. Depends what you’re looking for.

    It’s also just about two hours away from the Burgess Shale, which should be a must-visit for all paleo-nerds. Calgary’s the closest city to that amazing site.

    A tour of the Tyrrell Museum would also be a possibility, if you are under the mistaken impression that dinosaurs are cooler than trilobites. (http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/)

  38. @Chip Hitchcock

    Both the SECC (Glasgow) and Excel Centre (London) are basically built on old docks. In Glasgow’s case it is on reclaimed land – the old dock is filled in. Even for Glasgow in 2005, city centre hotels needed to be used for rooms and parties and some of those were 15 minutes walk away from the SECC. There is more accommodation near the SECC now, and some hotels just the other side of the river (there are bridges) so it should be better now (and certainly in 2024) – but it has taken decades to get the hotels there and if it wasn’t on old unused docks I don’t think there would be space.

  39. @Chip Hitchcock
    European cities are mostly old and the space in the city centre is usually already occupied by buildings. And no one wants to knock down a medieval catehdral or a historic city centre to make room for a convention centre, let alone umpteen hotels in the immediate neighbourhood. Not when there are perfectly fine free spaces on the edge of the city, which have the advantage of being easily connected to the highway system, have room for plenty of parking and can be connected to the local public transport network.

    Reclaimed harbour land is about the only larger city-near space you can find in many European cities (and obviously only in those that had harbours, which are no longer active, to begin with). And so the Glasgow and Dublin convention centres and ExCel in London were all built on reclaimed harbour land. And ExCel is nowhere near Central London, but out in the boondocks in Canning Town.

    Bremen’s convention centre, which is theoretically big enough to host a WorldCon, is relatively close to the city centre (though outside the immediate historical city centre) and has several hotels in walking distance and one right next door, but that’s because there was a large tract of open public land near the city centre. And I was vehemently opposed to building the convention centre in the middle of the city (as an expansion of the existing events centre I had no issues with) at the time, because it took up too much of the public land (which literally belongs to the people of Bremen – not the city, the people – thanks to a land grant by the 12th century saint), for which there are better uses. I’m resigned to the thing now, but I still think that Hemelinger Marsch outside the city would have been a better location.

    Oldenburg’s convention centre is in a suburb some ten minutes by bus outside the city centre with only one hotel next door. And yes, the Oldenburg convention centre is theoretically big enough to host a WorldCon as well (it can supposedly hold 23000 people), but don’t worry, we wouldn’t foist that on anybody.

    @Olav Rokne
    As far as I recall, RuhrCongress Bochum isn’t that far outside the city (and well within the city limits), but then Bochum is spread out anyway and cities in the Ruhrgebiet area generally tend to bleed into each other.

  40. @Andy Leighton, @Cora Buhlert: I’m quite aware of the constrictions on older cities. (I worked on both Scottish Worldcons.) If there had been a Noreascon 5 it would have been on former docklands rather than nearly-downtown like the previous 4. (That was not our choice, but what a coordinated authority was willing to offer; now there’s talk of tearing down our old site, which had already been rebuilt almost from scratch 30 years ago, and developing the land more densely.) Even newer cities have to find space as they can; Spokane 2015 was on a former rail yard which the city (what there is of it) had grown up close to (instead of being already so dense that rail parking stopped at the fringes), San Antonio 1997&2013 was on a former blighted area, and Orlando 1992 was well south of the city. Orlando and the Boston Seaport district both developed rapidly, Orlando purely from the convention center (which has roughly tripled in size since 1992, when it was already so big the Worldcon used less than half), Boston because other interests found the land useful — my former employer recently moved there from the suburbs. To some USians, the surprise of Glasgow is how long building up the area around the SECC has taken; others are more surprised that transit hasn’t been developed to make getting between lodgings and the CC easier, given Europe’s friendlier attitude toward transit. But in the past, the spread has not been considered an unacceptable fault against the chance to go new places and see new people, given some enthusiasm and intelligence in the bidding committee (the first Aussie to make a noise about bidding for 2010 was almost assaulted with supporting money, even though the site was much more spread than previous Aussiecons); I hope Nice can get its act together. (ISTM that Yalow, Huff, et al would have done better to make connections with Nice than to go to Chengdu….)

  41. Chip Hitchcock: ISTM that Yalow, Huff, et al would have done better to make connections with Nice than to go to Chengdu…

    Well, if the French government had given them all free vacations, they probably would have, but since it was the Chinese government handing out free trips and fancy dinners to SMOFs, the result was otherwise. It wasn’t about supporting the more viable bid, it was about getting the personal benefits.

  42. Dear Mike Glyer,
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