Tag Archives: Context

Pixel Scroll 5/18/16 Griefer Madness

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(1) GENRE RECAPITULATES ONTOLOGY. Damien Walter divides the audience into “The 8 Tribes of Sci-Fi”.

Calling sci-fi a genre in 2016 is about as accurate as calling the United States one nation. In principle it’s true, but in practice things don’t work that way. While crime, romance and thrillers all remain as coherent genres of fiction, it’s been decades since sci-fi could be comfortably understood by any shared generic criteria. What do Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Seas trilogy, the fiction of Silva Moreno Garcia and the erotic sci-fi of Chuck Tingle actually have in common, beyond being nominated for major sci-fi book awards this year?

The answer is they all belong to one of the eight tribes of sci-fi…..

The Weirds Most writers at some point play around with the effects that can be induced by engineering stories with internal inconsistencies, mashing together disparate metaphors, or simply being weird for weirds sake. The weirds take this as an end in itself. With China Mieville as their reigning king they were riding high for a while. However, with newer voices like Molly Tanzer’s Vermillion coming through, the American ‘bizarro fiction’ movement, and with authors including Joe Hill and Josh Mallerman rejuvenating the traditional horror genre, the Weirds are still among the most creatively interesting of the eight tribes.

(2) SILENT THING. According to Digiday, “85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound”.

Facebook might be hosting upwards of 8 billion views per day on its platform, but a wide majority of that viewership is happening in silence.

As much as 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off, according to multiple publishers. Take, for instance, feel-good site LittleThings, which is averaging 150 million monthly views on Facebook so far this year. Eighty-five percent of its viewership is occurring without users turning the sound on. Similarly, millennial news site Mic, which is also averaging 150 million monthly Facebook views, said 85 percent of its 30-second views are without sound. PopSugar said its silent video views range between 50 and 80 percent.

(3) YAKKITY CAT. Steve Davidson says an interview with Timothy the Talking Cat will appear on Amazing Stories this Thursday. I’m running neck and neck with Steve in pursuit of interviews with the hottest new talents in the field — he won this round!

(4) JENCEVICE OBIT. SF Site News carries word that Chicago conrunner and club fan Mike Jencevice died May 16.

Chicago fan Mike Jencevice (b.1955) died on May 16. Jencevice entered fandom in 1978, publishing the fanzine Trilevel and serving as the long-time president of Queen to Queen’s Three, a media fan club. He ran the dealers room at Windycon for more than 30 years and served on the ISFiC Board for much of that time. He was one of two associate chairs for Chicon 2000.

(5) VR. BBC News explores “How will virtual reality change our lives?”

Four experts, including Mark Bolas – former tutor of Palmer Luckey, who recently hand-delivered the first VR handset made by his company Oculus Rift – talked to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme about the future of VR.

Mark Bolas: Out of the lab

Mark Bolas is a professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts and a researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies. He has been working in virtual reality since 1988.

VR hits on so many levels. It’s a real out-of-body experience, and yet completely grounded in your body. …

To find a way to make it low cost and still retain that field of view, we harnessed the power of mobile phones – the screens, tracking and processing – and we figured out a lens design that was extremely inexpensive.

It’s been really fun playing all these years, but there’s something more important now, which is making it a space that allows us to harness our emotions, our desire to connect with people.

I’m worried by our current computer interfaces. I watch people walking around like zombies with cell phones in their hands, and I have to manoeuvre a mouse to fill out little boxes on web forms in a horribly frustrating way. I think VR will allow us to transcend this.

I don’t worry so much about where VR is going, I worry about where we currently are.

(6) SHEER WEIR. By the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach: “Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian,’ aims his pen at the moon”

Lots of people who are interested in going to Mars have been gathering this week at George Washington University for the annual Humans to Mars Summit, and the star attraction this morning was Andy Weir. He’s the author of the novel “The Martian,” which has sold 3 million copies, been translated into something like 45 languages and served as the basis of the blockbuster movie by the same name, directed by the legendary Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. So, yes, that book did well — remarkably so given that he originally published it in chapters on his website and later as an electronic book that could be downloaded for free.

Weir, whom I interviewed on stage in the summit’s opening session (you can probably find the video here), was scheduled to pop by The Post for today’s “Transformers” event and then visit Capitol Hill to testify before the House subcommittee on space. Busy day! He said he was going to talk about how an interplanetary spacecraft, such as one going from Earth to Mars, can be designed to spin to create artificial gravity. That’s a potential way to moderate the severe physical effects of weightlessness on the human body. Without artificial gravity, the first astronauts on Mars would likely spend many days just trying to recover from all those months in zero-g conditions.

But he’s also working on another novel, this one about a city on the Earth’s moon that features a female protagonist who is something of a criminal but still lovable, according to Weir.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born May 18, 1931 — Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin
  • Born May 18, 1930 — Fred Saberhagen

(8) THE REAL-LIFE GRINGOTT’S. The BBC tells where the gold is kept.

The largest by far lies in the Bank of England. It holds three-quarters of the gold in London, or 5,134 tonnes. Most of the gold is stored as standard bars weighing 400 troy ounces (12.4 kg or 438.9 ounces) – there are about 500,000 of them, each worth in the region of £350,000.

But the official reserves of the UK Treasury account for less than a tenth of this.

“Just 310 tonnes of the gold in the Bank of England is from the UK Treasury, the rest is mostly commercial,” says Adrian Ash of BullionVault.com.

The gold is held in a system of eight vaults over two floors under Threadneedle Street in the City. This is to spread the weight and prevent the vaults from sinking into the London clay beneath the bank.

“So no maze of caves bored into rock,” says Chip Hitchcock, sounding a little disappointed.

(9) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART ONE. Steven Saus relays “Reports of Harassment at MarCon 2016, including ‘The Chainmail Guy’ who harassed people at CONTEXT” at Ideatrash. (To refresh your memory, see File 770’s post about Context.)

Sadly, I’m hearing from friends who attended MarCon this year that the stance about Chainmail Guy’s harassment – the one that some members of the board decided to destroy the con over rather than censure a buddy who was harassing people – was completely justified.

According to multiple accounts, he was very visible in the main corridor, apparently with a table displaying some chain mail. (Which is exactly the setup that spawned problems at Context.) Sure, he wasn’t a volunteer, but had a very prominent bit of real estate. And, much like the complaints at Context, kept inserting himself into private conversations, just as he did before.

Unlike Context, he was in the main hall – and therefore much harder to avoid.

As one person put it, “if you heard about the stuff about Context, you’d get the very clear opinion that MarCon was okay with all that.”

Sadly, this might just be the case.

There were reports (and these were forwarded to the con chair) of another guy suggesting he should “frisk” a young woman after earlier reaching out to touch her without consent.

A corset vendor walked the line between creepy and harassment by insisting their corset fit perfectly, and any impression otherwise was due to the person’s “body issues”. He told another person that “he needed to see me try on one of the corsets and not in a friendly way…in front of my kids.”

And this is just what’s managed to cross my awareness.

(10) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART TWO. Saus also published “A (Good) Response From One of the Security Team From MarCon about Harassment”. It is signed by JP Withers.

As a fan I really hate it when our community is damaged by harassing behavior. Inclusion is kind of the point of our thing to me.

Our security and operations folks need help making our space better for everyone, and that help is reporting stuff when it happens. I know there can be a lot of reasons someone might not report behavior, but if one of those reasons is a feeling we won’t take it seriously I can tell you that isn’t the case for anyone on my team….

(11) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART THREE. Ferrett Steinmetz, immediately after Marcon, published these generalized comments calling into question how some apply the principle that “A Person Is Innocent Until Proven Guilty By Law”.

…And all the complexity comes to a boil when we’re discussing how to handle missing stairs in a community – potentially dangerous people who have gossip swirling about them, but no definitive proof. (Because most consent violators are smart enough not to do terrible stuff in public with witnesses.) And what do you do to keep your parties free of dangerous players when the only proof you have is the equivalent of “She said Phil didn’t pay her back”? Do you ban people on someone’s word?

Maybe you think the court’s standards are worthy for any institution, which is a noble goal. There is a strong case to be made for “I will hold the people who would spread rumors to the highest of standards,” because yeah, the ugly truth is that there are corrupt cops and there are people who’ll trash folks they don’t like. Having standards for evidence is good, and though there’s no single True goal, having high standards when the penalty is “Banning someone from a party” is not necessarily a bad thing.

But stop extending that to the idiotic argument of “If something someone says has not been proven in a court of law, it is automatically untrue.” No. If that happens, you are adopting the court’s standard of, “We would rather have someone guilty attending our parties than risk ejecting an innocent person.”…

(12) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART FOUR. Reddit ran its own recap of the latest episode, the essence of which is —

But now a different Ohio convention, MarCon, has had a problem with a harasser… and it’s the SAME GUY:

It’s the same stuff different day syndrome at its worst. There is no way for cons in general to keep these people out since conventions don’t have any kind of shared governance… so even when “missing stairs” are dealt with at one con, they aren’t at another. 🙁

(13) UNPAID MINIONS. The Seattlish has screencaps of the legal papers — “Someone Is Suing Emerald City Comicon for Not paying Volunteers”.

A class action lawsuit has been filed by a former Emerald City Comicon volunteer—the organization calls them “minions”—alleging that the convention violates labor laws by treating their volunteers like employees, but failing to pay them.

The suit, filed in King County Superior Court on May 16 by plaintiff Jerry Brooks and naming ECCC and three members of the Demonakos family as defendants, alleges that as many as 250 people may be among the class.

According to the suit, the volunteers are expected to work essentially as paid workers would—performing functions necessary to the operation of the convention—but aren’t required to be paid for their labor or their overtime due to their volunteer status.

This suit could be hard to prove; the volunteers not only willingly enter into an agreement stating that they’ll work for free, but the culture of the convention fosters a competitiveness for the volunteer positions. A lot of people really like volunteering. In a blog post from 2013, a minion wrote that it “isn’t the  kind of thing you do for money.”

(14) STORYBUNDLE. The Story Collection StoryBundle is available for another 15 days. Readers can choose to donate part of each purchase to SFWA. Curator Lisa Mason tells how the bundle was assembled here.

As always at StoryBundle, you the reader name your price—whatever you feel the books are worth. You may designate a portion of the proceeds to go to a charity. For the Story Collection StoryBundle, that’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (“SFWA”). SFWA champions writers’ rights, sponsors the Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction, and promotes numerous literacy groups.

The initial titles in the Story Collection StoryBundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

  • The Green Leopard Plague by Walter Jon Williams. Two stories in this collection won the Nebula Award.
  • Collected Stories by Lewis Shiner. This extensive and multi-genre collection was prepared as an ebook for StoryBundle.
  • Errantry: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand.

Those who pay more than the bonus price of $12 get all three regular titles, plus five more:

  • Women Up to No Good by Pat Murphy. Two stories in the collection were nominated for the Nebula Award.
  • Strange Ladies: 7 Stories by Lisa Mason Six Stories by Kathe Koja. The collection was created by the author for StoryBundle.
  • What I Didn’t See: Stories by Karen Fowler. The collection won the World Fantasy Award and the title story won the Nebula.
  • Wild Things by C.C. Finlay. The collection was prepared as an ebook for StoryBundle and has a brand-new Afterword. Finlay is the editor of F&SF.

(15) NEBULA CONFERENCE. SFWA President Cat Rambo has vivid memories of “Nebula Conference 2016, Chicago”.

For me, so much of the weekend was a reaffirmation of joy in our genre and the worlds that we love, worlds created by some of the best and brightest. Opportunity to talk with so many talented, kind, and outstanding members of the industry. A chance to stand by one of my heroes, someone whose work I’ve read most of my life and who has been one of my role models, and see her body of work recognized. A chance to be in a place where people treated each other with respect as peers and took pride in each other’s accomplishments, where there weren’t the sort of pettinesses that belong on the playground rather than among fellow professionals. A chance to tell people some of what SFWA’s been working hard at in the past year, and some of what’s coming down the pike.

And Liz Argall is still buzzing about Henry Lien’s Radio SFWA.

(16) CONVERT MADE. Say what you like about Seveneves, Bill Gates wrote on his website that it’s got him back reading sf.

“What Bill Gates says: “I hadn’t read any science fiction for a decade when a friend recommended this novel. I’m glad she did. The plot gets going in the first sentence, when the moon blows up. People figure out that in two years a cataclysmic meteor shower will wipe out all life on Earth, so the world unites on a plan to keep humanity going by launching as many spacecraft as possible into orbit.

“You might lose patience with all the information you’ll get about space flight—Stephenson, who lives in Seattle, has clearly done his research—but I loved the technical details. Seveneves inspired me to rekindle my sci-fi habit.””

(17) STAY INVESTED IN THE FUTURE. Helen Sharman speaks out — “First UK Astronaut calls for more Brits in space”.

Britain’s first astronaut has said the UK risks becoming a “backward nation” if the government does not pay to send more people into space.

Helen Sharman believes the country would lose many of the benefits of Tim Peake’s mission if a commitment to more flights is not made very soon.

Ms Sharman said that this was the UK’s “last chance” to be involved “in the future of the human race”.

She spoke to BBC News on the eve of the 25th anniversary of her spaceflight.

The government has effectively paid for one spaceflight, Tim Peake’s, according to Ms Sharman. After he returns to Earth in June, it is unlikely there will be more UK astronauts in space unless the nation makes a further commitment of funds at a ministerial meeting of European Space Agency (Esa) member states later this year.

(18) MR. ROBOT SEASON 2 TRAILER. The Hollywood Reporter summarized the preview video.

“This is what revolution looks like,” the text of the trailer reads. “Control is an illusion.”

Although they were successful in their hack, fsociety will face more obstacles in season two. “They need to know we haven’t given up,” Darlene (Carly Chaiken) says. “That we meant what we said about changing the world.”

However, the most worrisome image in the clip is Mr. Robot himself (Slater) as he puts a gun to Elliot’s head. “Our revolution needs a leader,” he tells Elliot.

 

(19) NEWS FOR HITCHHIKERS. “Towel Day” is coming on May 25, and Nerdist reports a candy store is readying its supply of babelfish.

The fandom of Douglas Adams and his writing is intense, to say the least, and has even resulted in a holiday to honor the late author. Every May 25th, fans around the world celebrate “Towel Day” which itself is a reference to what Adams thought to be the most important item you could have with you through your galactic travels.

As a way of showing their love of everything Hitchhiker’s, a candy shop in Florida that specializes in nerdy confections decided to celebrate by creating some Babel fish of their very own. Using an antique 19th-century drop candy roller, the folks at Public Displays Of Confection rolled out a serendipitous 42 bags of these fish shaped candies just in time for Towel Day, and we can only assume that they went with piña colada flavor because it’s just too hard to perfect the essence of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, Cat Rambo, Chip Hitchcock, Steve Davidson, Tracy Benton, Darren Garrison, Steven Saus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Context 28 Is Cancelled

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Predictions about the demise of Context, an Ohio science fiction convention, may yet prove true. Committee member Sharon Palmer issued a statement today that the 2015 event will not take place:

The Fanaco Board regrets to announce that Context 28 has been canceled. Refund checks to anyone who preregistered were mailed on March 29. Thank you for your support.

If you have any questions, please contact: Context PO Box 163391 Columbus OH 43216

This confirms what author Ferrett Steinmetz tweeted in February:

Harassment complaints made by several attendees at Context 27 in September resulted in a publicly-announced 5-year ban of the accused staffer, however, the committee was torn apart by dissension over the way the process played out. Efforts to reorganize the leadership were reportedly unsuccessful.

Ohio’s Context: Mostly Dead?

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Harassment complaints made by several attendees at Context 27 in September resulted in a publicly-announced 5-year ban of the accused staffer. However, two committee members – Steven Saus and Lucy Snyder – resigned anyway, citing the resistance of several board members of the con’s parent corporation to taking public action on the harassment reports.

The combination of internal dissent and public scrutiny caused the board of Context’s parent corporation FANACO to dissolve itself at the end of November (see Official Statement Regarding the Dissolution of Fanaco’s Board of Directors).

A new president, Mark Freeman, and the six other successors to the FANACO board thought the former leadership intended to assist in a transfer of power that would save the convention. Freeman tried to arrange for signing the state form to name another agent of record, and changing the signers on the convention bank account. But according to Freeman’s detailed statement,  published by Steven Saus, former president Jan Province has not cooperated. Last week Freeman e-mailed her this warning:

“If you fail to sign on Friday [December 26] as you previously agreed in our meeting on December 19th and on the phone with me after you stood me up on December 22nd, I will recommend to the new Board that we all walk away and make public the documentation of the events that led up to the failure to authorize a new Board.”

And how did that work out? Says Freeman —

Instead, on the day of the scheduled meeting, she had a lawyer send a rather over-the-top email to me saying that she would not sign the form and threatening me with police action if I went to her house, among other things. The new Board is, of course, now walking away.

Steven Saus, who made his own observations in a separate post, believes the convention now has no future:

…All the new people who wanted to be part of the new board, who wanted to see Context survive and thrive, realized that they couldn’t fight a (frivolous) lawsuit and simultaneously prepare a convention. Context is dead.

Context Board Reported Dissolved

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Steven Saus announced in his December 1 post “A Short (but significant) Update About Context” —

I learned late last night that the board met and dissolved itself. The convention is starting over, with last year’s Con Chairs (who were not part of the resistance I experienced)….
I am uncertain what, if any, role I will personally have at this point.

He says, “This change resolves the concerns that led to my resignation.”

Steven Saus Comments on Resignation

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While writing about the resignations of Steven Saus and Lucy Snyder from the Context committee yesterday I contacted Saus with questions I had about his decision. He provided these additional insights.

File 770: I read your resignation post, and half a dozen related posts you’ve written lately, trying to understand why you resigned. You make the proximate cause clear enough. But due to your efforts the harassment complaint was acted on and a person banned. If you stayed on the committee, would you have been able to do that if a new complaint arose? In every case I’ve ever heard about there has been resistance to actually carrying out the policy (as Hines’ cartoon [here] illustrates). From the outside, it would have seemed that you succeeded in overcoming that resistance. Which is not the same as changing their minds, but is that required? One of your own posts would say no. If you are willing to comment, I’d appreciate it.

Steven Saus: We did succeed in overcoming the resistance, but barely, and in a case with multiple reports and multiple witnesses for each report. I did not have confidence that any future reports of harassment — especially if they did not have as many witnesses – would be treated seriously by the convention staff.

You are correct; I did say that we do not need to change people’s minds.  But in this case, their *actions* must be uniform and predictable.

When Board members refuse to sign a statement they all agreed to, when Committee members still refer to harassment as “He was guilty of being OLD,” or insist that a report would not be valid if not made during the convention (for three examples out of many), that creates a great deal of doubt about what their future actions will be.

Convention goers need to know that if they report harassment that it will be taken seriously. They should not have to guess which members of the convention staff will ensure their report is taken seriously… or which members of convention staff will dismiss their concerns.

Convention goers need to be able to trust ALL of the convention staff to do the right thing, regardless of personal feelings.

I did not have that trust any longer, and so I felt I had to resign.

Resignations From Context Committee Over Harassment Policy Enforcement

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Context’s Programming Manager Steven Saus has announced his resignation from the committee saying “I do not have faith that the harassment policy will be enforced or that reports of harassment would be treated seriously at Context in the future,” even after the board processed a harassment complaint at Context 27 and banned a con suite worker from the convention for five years.

Writing Workshop Coordinator Lucy Snyder followed suit, announcing her resignation on Facebook. And author Jason Sanford, who regularly attends the con, has written a post “Why I won’t be returning to the Context SF convention”.

Context 27 took place the last weekend in September and several harassment complaints were made against one individual. To outward appearances the committee delivered a prompt reaction, as within a few weeks the individual had made an online apology and the board had announced its ban. However, “prompt” is a subjective term – while the committee may have worked much more rapidly than, say, WisCon (which has taken a year or more in a couple of cases), Steven Saus and Lucy Snyder were so dissatisfied with the progress they began responding about the issue in social media. Then, in his latest post, Saus asserts, “Without myself and a very few others, I do not believe there would have been any public response to the reports of harassment at Context 27.”

The other voices, including members of both the Board and the Convention Committee argued against taking action, reducing actions taken, and not making things public….

One ConComm member asserted that no report of harassment could be taken seriously without an uninvolved third party witnessing it. Another stated that unless reports were made at the convention that they couldn’t be taken seriously. In e-mail, a board member used sarcasm quotes referring to the “victims” of harassment. A board member mused about undoing the consequences that were decided upon after the meeting had adjourned. Others blamed those reporting harassment, ignored all but the public reports, and advocated that nothing be said or done publicly. Much was made of the feelings of the harasser – who never denied these multiple reports – while the feelings and safety of congoers were ignored.

This range of responses is typical of harassment cases. What interpretation to put on the discussion is another matter.

Sharon Palmer, who ran the con suite, left a comment on Saus’ blog disagreeing with his characterization:

I am a member of the committee am saying this as my own opinion, and NOT that of the committee, that Steve has misrepresented the issue. Since he has chosen to make this so public, I want to say that he is wrong.  Context has had an antiharassment policy for several years, and has never tolerated harassment and never would, especially not by a staff member.  Please give us time to work through the ramifications of this. We want Context to be an awesome and SAFE convention.

Palmer also responded to Lucy Snyder on Facebook:

Steve and Lucy said “handle it our way or we quit”. And we did. They quit anyway in a way that seems designed to destroy the convention.

From their choices and the price they’re paying Saus and Snyder appear to be trying to improve Context, not destroy it. However, why was resigning the best response to its perceived shortcomings?

In every case I’ve ever heard about there has been resistance to actually carrying out the full terms of the antiharassment policy. Even conventions designed to attract the most progressive viewpoints have been rent by dissent when it came time to apply the policy to people they knew. And here, Context could point to a successful resolution of a complaint, a rarity among the cases that have become public.

Perhaps the frustration and stress from winning out made the prospect of doing it again too painful to contemplate. Also, Saus doubted the outcome of any future complaints and was unwilling to see his name associated with any failure to enforce the con’s policies:

I do not realistically have the ability to make that change before Context 28. Therefore, both out of my ethics and as a signatory to John Scalzi’s harassment pledge, I must resign as programming director for Context. Further, I will not be attending Context 28.

Saus’ announcement follows a series of posts he wrote to sharpen his thinking as the committee went through the process of settling on its official statement regarding the harassment complaints. He seemed to have adopted a pragmatic approach in “We Don’t Need To Police Thoughts. Actions and Statements Are A Different Matter Entirely”. It says in part —

Think that harassment policies are stupid or over the top?  Great!  Obey them anyway, or go somewhere else.

Because if you’re sexist, homophobic, racist, or generally just an asshat, I’m not interested in changing your thoughts. But I am damn sure interested in changing the way you treat others.

He was writing about people in general, not the Context board. It’s just that in pondering his resignation I’d expect someone whose goal is to change behavior rather than thoughts to treat any resistance to his principles as counting less than a bottom-line result which is honoring to them.

Two More Con Code of Conduct Complaints Go Public

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Quite a few sf conventions have adopted an anti-harassment policy and some go to great lengths to make sure everyone knows what it is. DetCon1 even had Jim C. Hines read its Code of Conduct aloud at opening ceremonies.

It follows that as more fans become aware there are anti-harassment policies and structures in place, reports will be filed. Since for many cons the complaint window only opened within the past year-and-half, there’s limited practical experience for anyone to draw on. The available examples are daunting. Two conventions that took leadership of this issue were rocked to their core. The pivotal incident at the 2012 Readercon taught hard lessons about administering a policy and led to a far more thorough set of response procedures. Meanwhile, WisCon has found it necessary to apologize for mishandling two reports.

The stakes are high – personal and institutional reputations, social media scrutiny – and people want to know how real-life incidents are playing out under these new policies, something not easy to find out because of the privacy protection accorded those who file a complaint. For example, Arisia’s corporate policy is that “incident reports are not to be shared with other people or organizations other than the people in Arisia who take the reports or participate in the investigation.” Readercon’s safety procedures allow for the option of making a public statement regarding its actions, consistent with safeguarding the confidentiality of the report and its maker. These appropriate boundaries make it unlikely a convention committee’s internal deliberations will come to light unless the complainant goes public.

That’s why it’s such a surprise that Context — an Ohio convention just held at the end of September – has already processed a complaint and imposed a penalty on Jeffrey Tolliver, a con suite volunteer now banned from Context activities for five years. And that we know it.

Andi Brunett-Libecap’s conreport described their exchange in the con suite —

We passed a room labeled “Con Suite” which sounded promising.

A guy carrying some chainmail noticed our sad little faces and asked if we were lost. Grateful, we admitted that we were looking for the con’s sign-in desk. He pointed us in the right direction.

And then shit got real.

He lifted his arms to better display his chainmail and we realized he was an artist looking to sell his wares.

I said, “That’s cool.”

And it really was pretty.

Worthless in battle, obviously made for a thin, scantily-clad woman, and clearly something for cosplay.

But very pretty nonetheless.

“I’d wear that,” I added.

That balding, pony-tailed dude didn’t miss a beat as he pointed at Rachel and said,

“Yeah, but it would look better on her.”

Ouch, man.

Just because it’s true didn’t mean you had to say it.

Rachel and I were both so flabbergasted at the man’s cluelessness that we just fumbled goodbyes and moved along down the hallway.

In one smooth move, he had insulted me and objectified Rachel.

Sometimes, you just have to laugh.

That was held to be a violation of Context’s Anti-harassment Policy which says:

Discussions of adult topics may arise at Context, and panels may include adult content. We ask that people be mindful while conversing in public areas; topics that are appropriate in private or with close friends may be inappropriate with strangers. Imposing unwanted discussion of a sexual nature on another person is harassment, and will not be tolerated.

And apparently it was not Tolliver’s only transgression. Context’s Programming Manager Steven Saus and Writing Workshop Coordinator Lucy Snyder said in comments on a follow-up post discussing the committee’s response to the incident that more than one complaint was received about the person’s conduct at the convention.

Tolliver added his own sentiments to the original post:

 I owe deep apologies to you, your friend and all the attendees of Context 27.

If stupidity was contagious I would have infected more people that the Plague.

On another front, an incident at Readercon this past July led Natalie Luhrs to file a formal complaint with the Readercon Safety Committee. She discussed and documented what happened in a post on Radish Reviews.

Here’s the summary: A party was held in my hotel room without my consent.

I know, I know. How does that even happen?

Well, how it happens is that you talk in public about having a small makeup party with a couple of friends–one of whom is sharing your hotel room–on Twitter and an acquaintance invites herself (screencap) and then gets really pushy about making it happen once the convention starts.

Then when it does happen, it turns out that you leave to spend time with another friend and when you come back a few hours later your room is empty but it’s obvious a whole bunch of people had been in there, because there are used glasses, food, and discarded clothing scattered about the room. More than could be generated by the three people who were in the room when I left and the only people I expected to be in the room while I was absent.

The name of the person who orchestrated the party and the surrounding circumstances are in her post.

Readercon’s Policies contain an open-ended invitation to report difficulties:

What sort of problem can I report?

Any behavior or pattern of behavior that violates our code of conduct. If you feel someone’s behavior is dangerous or harmful to you or others, if someone’s behavior makes you feel afraid or very uncomfortable, or if someone is actively making it difficult for you or others to enjoy or fully participate in the convention, we would like to know about it.

Whether an uninvited room party is a cause for action under any other convention’s policy I couldn’t say — in fact, Luhrs indicates it’s not a foregone conclusion that Readercon will find it to be one under theirs, although that is her expectation:

I feel very comfortable with the process so far and I expect and hope that the main outcome will be clarification that their code of conduct applies to room parties as well as to the convention itself.

Pinch Hitters of Honor

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Context: Carol A. Modesitt is yet another person who fell seriously ill at Renovation. As a result, her husband L.E. Modesitt has withdrawn as one of Context 24’s Guest of Honor.  The convention is happening this weekend (August 26-28) in Columbus.

The committee turned to their fellow Ohioan, John Scalzi, who agreed at the last minute to come and “help fill the sudden gap in their programming.” Scalzi can’t attend the entire convention but will do a full block of programming on Saturday, August 27 from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.

I thought that was pretty cool.

VCON: Larry Niven deserves kudos, too, for helping out  VCON 36 (September 30-October 2) on short notice.

Gregory Benford, initially announced the con’s Author GoH, will be unable to attend VCON this year “due to an unavoidable summons from DARPA” (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). He must attend its meeting on September 30.

Now Benford will be among next year’s guests at VCON 37 while Niven has stepped in as VCON 36’s Author Guest of Honour.

The committee also announced that program participant Robert J. Sawyer will miss the con because he, too, was “swept up by DARPA.” The committee called it, “A signal honour for a Canadian Author.”