Alex Von Thorn posted to Facebook that Seattle is looking at bidding for the 2015 Worldcon.
On behalf of SWOC, I announced an exploratory committee to consider the possibility of bidding for a Worldcon in Seattle in 2015…
It is not an active bid at this time, but should it become one Alex says he expects to be the chair.
Aussiecon 4 has set the record as the largest Worldcon Down Under. The convention’s onsite newsletter Voice of the Echidna reports, “At the close of Saturday, there were 1649 pre-registered members on site, as well as 63 walk-ins so far. 142 Saturday Day Memberships were sold.” Even without aggregating the data into a proper warm-body count, attendance clearly exceeds Aussiecon 3 (1999)’s figure of 1,548.
Aussiecon 4 can also brag about its voter turnout for the Hugo race. Vincent Docherty wrote in Voice of the Echidna: “After the record number of Hugo Nominations, we had high hopes about the voting numbers and we are pleased to announce that there were 1094 valid Hugo Voting Ballots. This total is the highest since the 2000 Worldcon, and second highest since 1988.”
Let’s see, what other stories can I pass on from the most excellent Echidna?
The First Fandom Hall of Fame awards for lifetime service to SF fandom this year went to:
• First Fandom Hall of Fame – Terry Jeeves and Joe Martino (tied)
• Posthumous Hall of Fame – Ray Cummings
The Art Show Awards were won by:
• Best SF: Sky Burial #1 by Wayne Haag
• Most Humorous: Sales Pitch by Kathleen Jennings
• Most Stylish: SF Adventure by Naoyuki Katoh
• Best 3D: Mask of Odin by Annette Schneider
• Best Miniature: T is for Trilobite by Marilyn Pride
• Special Award For Overall Excellence in a Body of Work: Shaun Tan
What else impressed me about Aussiecon’s newzine was reading that Echidna’s morning edition is prepared by Alison Scott — at home in London!
Now I’d better lift some news from another source before ending this post — for as you know taking from one source is plagiarism, from more than one is research…
SF Site says the Forrest Ackerman Big Heart Award was presented at Aussiecon 4 on September 5 during the Hugo Award ceremony to Australian fan Merv Binns.
And here are the Aussiecon 4 masquerade winners. (John Hertz was a judge — a fine choice, indeed.)
From the Aussiecon 4 press release:
The Hugo Awards are the premier award in the science fiction genre, honoring science fiction literature and media as well as the genre’s fans. The first Hugos were awarded at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia (Philcon II), and have honored science fiction and fantasy notables such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman and many others.
BEST NOVEL
[Tie for first place]
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
BEST NOVELLA
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace; Orbit)
BEST NOVELETTE
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)
BEST SHORT STORY
“Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
BEST RELATED WORK
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”)
by Jack Vance (Subterranean)
BEST GRAPHIC STORY
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm
Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – LONG FORM
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones;
Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – SHORT FORM
Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” Written by Russell T Davies
& Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)
BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM
Ellen Datlow
BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
Shaun Tan
BEST SEMIPROZINE
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
BEST FAN WRITER
Frederik Pohl
BEST FANZINE
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith
BEST FAN ARTIST
Brad W. Foster
THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER
Seanan McGuire
A photo of the physical award and base, which was designed by Australian artist Nick Stathopoulos, is here at TheHugoAwards.org.
The winning bid for 2012 has now officially morphed into Chicon 7.
The Guests of Honor will be author Mike Resnick, artist Rowena Morrill, astronaut Story Musgrave, fan Peggy Rae Sapienza, and “industry” (it says on the website) Jane Frank.
Mike Resnick has been a dominant figure on the SF scene for many years — just how dominant you can tell from the list of accolades on the Baen site, which begins:
[He’s] the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction; and when you add in novels and non-fiction, he’s fourth on the all-time list. He is the winner of 5 Hugos (from 31 nominations), [and] a Nebula (11 nominations)…
Rowena Morrill is a highly acclaimed artist with a career spanning over 20 years.
Story Musgrave was an NASA astronaut for over 30 years and flew on six spaceflights:
He performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified DOD missions, was the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Telescope repair mission and on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia…. He is a concept artist with Walt Disney Imagineering, an innovator with Applied Minds Inc. and a professor of design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA
Peggy Rae Sapienza chaired Bucconeer, the 1998 Worldcon, and has provided leadership at lot of other Worldcons. She assisted Nippon 2007 in many ways while serving as its North American agent. Her father, Jack McKnight, machined the first Hugo Awards in 1953. Peggy Rae was active in the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society in the late 1950s. She won the Big Heart Award in 1983.
Jane Frank has been a collector for decades and has run WoW-Art since 1991, selling illustrative genre art.
John Scalzi will be Toastmaster.
Update 09/05/2010: Aussiecon 4 later issued a very nice press release, which I have added after the jump.
Chicago’s uncontested bid to host the 2012 Worldcon reportedly polled 447 votes out of 526 cast by members of Aussiecon 4. Another 20 ballots expressed no preference, while the remaining 59 were scattered among write-ins that will be identified later in an official report.
The figures were released in advance of the Sunday Business Meeting at which the site selection result will be officially announced and the Chicago committee will announce its guests of honor.
Around that time PR#0 will be distributed, the 2012 Worldcon’s website will go live, and Aussiecon 4 will put out a press release to the media.
This site selection vote total, 526, is the smallest for any year since 1974 (the earliest listed by Smofinfo). It’s only a shade less than the number of votes cast in 1975 at Aussiecon 1 (528) and in 1985 at Aussiecon 2 (527), but hundreds fewer than were cast in 1999 at Aussiecon 3 (820) so this isn’t something people were expecting simply because the vote was being held Down Under.
The 2012 committee be starting with substantially less funds than most Worldcons do. Something that will help is the pass-along funds they’ll receive from the 2009 Worldcon. The last public figure I saw indicated three future Worldcons (2010-2012) would get $22,500 from Anticipation’s surplus.
Meantime, Secret Masters of Fandom looking for their fanpolitical fix should read Kevin Standlee’s summary of the Main Business Meeting.
Standlee has also announced there is a low-res video recording of the Preliminary Business Meeting available for viewing.
You can also keep up with what is happening through the convention’s onsite newsletter, Voice of the Echidna.
The newsletter reports that attendance at close of business Friday consisted of “1582 preregistered members on site, as well as 52 walk-in full members. On Friday, there were 67 Friday day members.” I guess this means 1701. Which is a very enterprising number.
When NASA’s Solar Probe Plus dives into the Sun’s atmosphere it will gather data answering two persisting questions of solar physics, why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind:
As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding about 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,550 degrees Fahrenheit) and blasts of intense radiation. The spacecraft will have an up-close and personal view of the sun, enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.
There will be several different data collecting systems on board:
The SWEAP solar wind experiment will count the electrons, protons and helium ions in the solar wind and measure their properties. It will also catch some in a special cup for analysis.
Another science mission will use a wide-field camera to take 3-D pictures of the solar wind as the spacecraft flies through it. Another will take direct measurements of the sun’s magnetic fields, radio emissions and shock waves, and the one more will take an inventory of the sun’s contents.
Update 09/04/2010: Corrected to state it’s a flyby mission.
What’s happening at the Worldcon down under? Dave McCarty’s Facebook page delivers photographic proof that DUFF winner John Hertz (and his propeller beanie) are attending Aussiecon 4, in an album to which this might possibly be the link. (But I’m not betting the house.)
Taral will soon be making his 50th contribution to Chris Garcia’s frequent fanzine The Drink Tank as we reported not long ago. But then the dynamic duo asked themselves — why stop there? Taral writes:
You might be amused that the entire issue of Drink Tank 258 will be written and drawn by myself, with the exception of some photos found with Google. Chris and I cooked up the idea when discussing the upcoming 50th Drink Tank article by me. I’ve already written three articles for it, an editorial, and all the locs. I “invited” Chris to write a guest editorial, and he’s doing all the production work.
Once again an old post shot to the top as a side-effect of a huge number of searches about a mundane event. Strangely, my post actually about the August auction of Lost props didn’t get the same boost.
Here is the complete Top 10 list of most frequently viewed posts for August 2010, according to Google Analytics.
1. Lost Prop Auction Coming in May 2010
2. Snapshots 47 Thunderbolts
3. These Aren’t Your Father’s Superheroes
4. Heinlein Letter on Ebay
5. Ray Bradbury’s 90th Birthday Party
6. Andrew Porter: Authorities Query Whether Fire Victim Is MacIntyre
7. The Last Minute
8. Jeff Orth: A Pre-Hysterical Pre-History of the Pre-Bid
9. John Hertz: 2010 NASFiC Notes
10. Ray Bradbury Birthday Week
Ned Brooks
With Dragon*Con approaching you’d naturally expect Access Atlanta to run a feature about this major hometown event. But would you expect it to be devoted to a veteran fanzine fan?
More than 40,000 Klingons, Jedi knights and devotees of science fiction and fantasy are expected to descend on downtown Atlanta starting Friday for the 24th annual DragonCon festival.
Where do these people come from? An answer lies in a nondescript house in a Lilburn subdivision, stuffed with typewriters and mimeograph machines, staplers and faded amateur anthologies.
Welcome to the home of Cuyler “Ned” Brooks, fanzine publisher.
The reporter also quotes Toni Weisskopf of Baen Books and Melissa Conway, curator of the special collection of fanzines at UC Riverside.