Monthly Archives: September 2012

Monsters of the Idway

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Selected archives of Chicon III, the 1962 Worldcon chaired by Earl Kemp, were exhibited online by the Northern Illinois University’s Rare Books and Special Collections Department in conjunction with this year’s Chicago Worldcon.

There are letters from Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, E.E. Smith, and assorted other pros, plus Kemp’s invitation to Isaac Asimov to deliver a talk on “The Positive Power of Posterior Pinching” and Asimov’s coy but interested reply. (Apparently the talk didn’t happen – at least the item isn’t listed in the Chicon III program book.)

Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds spotted this correspondence and brought it to the attention of fans who are discussing harassment in the wake of Readercon, in a post called “We Don’t Do That Anymore”.

The answering comments — people groaning and throwing up on their shoes — were interrupted by the arrival of Earl Kemp himself for a pleasant stroll down memory lane, sans clue:

What a wonderful find. Thank you very much for posting this. It’s nice to be reminded of some of the good things. I admit I’ve forgotten this, but it certainly was Ike. (There are better stories about him but not here, not now.)

I’m going to disappoint the person who copied the link to me expecting I’d join him in high dudgeon, but let’s be serious. Even Asimov himself seems to have doubted it would go over in 1962 and in 2012 the idea deserves Zwan’s critique.

Chicon 7 Apologizes for Access Issues

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The Chicon 7 committee has answered concerns about access and complaints about its hoax program panel — “Chicon Acknowledges Concerns of Mobility-Impaired Members”

Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), has acknowledged the concerns expressed by a number of convention members over the arrangements made to support scooter users and others with mobility impairments. Chicon 7 apologizes sincerely for any inconvenience caused and is committed to sharing the lessons learned with its successors.

Chicon 7’s support for mobility-impaired members was in line with that used for preceding Worldcons, although inevitably subject to the constraints of the host facility (the Hyatt Regency Chicago) in terms of hotel layout and internal navigation. Chicon 7’s arrangements were coordinated by a disability services team with experience from many previous conventions and included the usual arrangements for reserved scooter areas in key event and program rooms. Elevator management was supported by hotel staff located at key locations.

Feedback received has made us increasingly aware that these arrangements did not work as well as planned. Some scooter users had extended journey times across the site due to challenges finding elevator space, and members could not always obtain access to the program items they wished to see due to rooms filling quickly with more mobile fans during change-overs. In addition, some confusion has been reported with access to the reserved seating area in main Ballroom for the Hugo Awards.

Separately, we have also received complaints over the imaginary “Stagg Field” program track. This tradition of Chicago conventions was trailed in Progress Report 4, and designed to bring a touch of whimsy and local fandom to the program. However, we recognize that the presentation of the track – seamlessly integrated with the real program information – meant that some people did not realize that this was an artificial creation. Among these were mobility-impaired members who suffered discomfort looking for the Stagg Field room, and to them we particularly apologize.

Chicon 7 deeply regrets the impact that these issues caused for some members. While the events cannot now be undone, we hope that members will accept our apology and our commitment to gather and collate feedback and share it with the upcoming Worldcons in San Antonio (2013) and London (2014).

Seampunk

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Listening to a fan talk about making steampunk costumes I soon became convinced that the architecture of the Enterprise is like a toddler’s scribbling beside the complexities of the adjustable bustle. It is suddenly easy to understand why James White thought there was a story in tailoring a suit for an alien diplomat (“Custom Fitting,” 1976, a Hugo nominee.)

Ustream to Rebroadcast Hugo Awards

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The live Hugo Awards broadcast over Ustream was cut off when an automated system detected what it classified as copyright infringement. Although Chicon 7 was authorized to use the material Ustream could not restore its feed before the end of the ceremony, inconveniencing hundreds of viewers and giving Ustream a bad odor among denizens of the internet.

To make amends for disrupting the original broadcast, Ustream is going to feature the full ceremony on its Homepage, un-edited and bot-free, Sunday, September 9, starting at 7 p.m. CT. Ustream also will run the broadcast ad-free on the Worldcon Hugo Awards channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/hugo-awards, and provide additional marketing and promotional support to raise the profile of the event. Thereafter the broadcast will be available on demand from the same channel.

Dave McCarty, new head of the Hugo Marketing Committee, says Ustream has also offered additional support and publicity for streaming future Hugo Award Ceremonies at the San Antonio (2013) and London (2014) Worldcons.  

After Ustream derailed the original Hugo broadcast corporate CEO Brad Hunstable apologized and also blamed Vobile, its third-party automated infringement system. However, Vobile CEO Yangbin Wang denied their technology was at the root of the problem: “Our content identification system provides customers with accurate information. Each customer must decide for itself what it does with that information.”

A comparable incident this week during the Democratic National Convention, when YouTube took down the convention livestream, brought the technological issue to the forefront, as Wired explained:

The most likely culprit is YouTube’s pre-emptive content filters, which allow large media companies to upload content they claim to own and automatically block videos that an algorithm decides matches their own. That would make the glitch the second livestream copyright-policing snafu in the span of a few days: On Sunday, a similar algorithm at uStream interrupted the livestream of the Hugo science fiction awards. The award show included clips of copyrighted videos, though the algorithm didn’t know that the clips had been authorized….

Under the DMCA, sites have to respond promptly to written DMCA requests, but as services like uStream and Google court large entertainment companies as advertisers and content partners, they’ve created systems to make blocking automatic or to allow partners to put ads on videos they claim are infringing.

The full Chicon 7 press release follows the jump.

[Via Colin Harris.]

Continue reading →

Helping Nippon 2007

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The 2007 Worldcon in Japan sustained a large loss and still owes over $84,000.

Anyone willing to help clear the deficit can make a nondeductible donation to the cause by (1) writing a check payable to Nippon 2007 and (2) mailing it to BWAWA, P.O. Box 314, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701-0314.

BWAWA is the Baltimore-Washington Area Worldcon Association, Inc. The nonprofit corporation hosted the 1998 Worldcon in Baltimore and is pursuing the right to host the 2014 World Fantasy Con.

[Via The Write Stuff #9.]

Estimating Chicon 7 Attendance

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The final membership statistics for Chicon 7 are not yet public, however the daily newzine released on Sunday afternoon gave the latest count as 4,776 members present and 5,133 attending memberships sold.

That is enough to make Chicon 7 the largest Worldcon since 2006, though it’s not likely in the remaining day-and-a-half the con came anywhere close to equaling Chicon 2000’s 5,794 warm bodies.

[Via The Write Stuff #08.]

Video of Future Worldcons and Bids

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Kevin Standlee had posted video from the Site Selection Business Meeting at Chicon 7.

Part 1: Formal results, Introduction and Question Time for Loncon 3, Question

Time for Orlando in 2015: http://youtu.be/KGtLkep36lY

Part 2: Question Time for Spokane in 2015: http://youtu.be/8Ba8_kpO28U

Part 3: Question Time for Helsinki in 2015: http://youtu.be/utqjyYKkFGs

Part 4: Question Time for Arizona (Tempe) in 2014 NASFiC: http://youtu.be/ZKXYtv2Q1rc

Part 5: Final Housekeeping, Announcements, and Adjournment sine die: http://youtu.be/B320nmnXPto

Access Issues at Chicon 7

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There’s an illuminating discussion of access problems at Chicon 7 on Sasha’s Dreams, sparked by a letter from Karen Moore.

I didn’t realize how frustrating it was for fans in mobile wheelchairs (mobis) to navigate the Hyatt. However I did witness that the motion-sensor sliding door at the lobby exit didn’t work because once I opened it for Linda Ross-Mansfield when she couldn’t get through.

Karen Moore compares her Chicon 7 experiences unfavorably to WisCon. It’s not surprising to hear they’re ahead of the Worldcon on such an issue. I wonder: Do Worldcon committees assume that because convention facilities have been brought up to a certain standard to meet legal requirements access is not a problem? If we didn’t know better before, we do now.

Worldcons rent (or broker) mobis for up to several dozen people. That means part of a committee’s implied obligation is to scout their facilities, with their plans for using them in mind, to verify they are accessible (lavatories included). Then they can identify problems to the hotel/convention center to be fixed in advance, or be ready to advise fans about work-arounds.

Bill Parker, co-chair of LoneStarCon 3, told this year’s business meeting he had driven a mobi to test the passages and ramps between the hotel and convention center, some having complained about them at the 1997 San Antonio Worldcon. Once he reads Karen Moore’s letter, I hope he’ll have someone scout the elevators, lavatories, exit doors, etc., too.

Karen Moore’s critique also extended to the hoax program track in Chicon 7’s schedule —

And finally, as much pushback as I know Access has gotten from within the committee over its mission, at least none of WisCon’s concom (that I know of) has ever seriously suggested developing an entire track of programming that doesn’t exist, located in a room that doesn’t exist, and then put the damn thing in the pocket program book, the online program and everywhere else. Evidently, someone in the WorldCon committee finds it immensely amusing to think of a convention member with no cartilage left in his hips struggling painfully down multiple escalators, across the tunnel, up more escalators, then searching through a maze of corridors for a program event, only to find a sign that essentially says “Ha, ha, gotcha, Sucker!” The con chair heard from me on that topic as well, by the way. His response? “Well, I’m sorry you don’t see the humor in it.”

The fake programs were listed in the “Stagg Field” room, which did not exist and so, of course, was not on the hotel map – I’m assuming, therefore, Moore’s scenario is cautionary rather than anything that really happened.

Yet I, too, disliked the hoax program track because so many of the items sounded more plausible than humorous. For example, on Monday this was one of the items shown for Stagg Field:

Deke Slayton was the seventh and final member of the Mercury 7 to fly in space. Come hear stories about his legendary flight aboard the Delta 7, which set records for endurance and distance traveled, and made Slayton a household name and a hero of the astronaut era.

If you know enough about the Mercury program you might recall Slayton was replaced on the Delta 7 mission due to a heart murmur. Or for that matter, know Slayton died in 1993, so he obviously wasn’t going to be present. (A great many listed as Stagg Field participants were equally life challenged.) If you know enough trivia, you’d also recognize another panelist on the item, Minnifield, as a fictional character from Northern Exposure. Or by Monday you may have deduced from other items that everything in Stagg Field was a put-on.

I don’t necessarily say they shouldn’t have done it, but every successful fannish hoax depends on a volatile social chemistry in which some fans have the pleasure of discerning the fraud, as well as witnessing the frustration of others who have not, and are even more annoyed once it’s explained to them. Did anyone wander aimlessly around the Hyatt looking for the Stagg Field room? I doubt it. However, the story demonstrates that, in the age of the internet, the calculated insensitivity of hoax humor can easily turn into bad publicity. Be warned.

Update 09/06/2012: See comments reporting not only that the story happened but that the fake “Stagg Field” room was shown on the con’s pocket program map as if it existed. And how that changes my own criticism of the hoax track.

A Get-Well Card for Stu

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Taral Wayne has produced a one-shot, The Slan of Baker Street [PDF file], that he hopes friend and fellow fanartist Stu Shiffman soon will be reading:

I don’t remember my first thoughts when I learned of Stu’s stroke. I doubt it was until the second day, or even the third, that I decided Something Ought to be Done. Since I was unable to perform miracles, I decided that perhaps a one-shot, get-well zine would help cheer Stu up, and aid his convalescence.

The Slan of Baker Street contains memoirs from Taral, Andrew P. Hooper and Rob Hansen, and artistic tributes by Taral, Sheryl Birkhead, Kurt Erichsen, Alan White, Steve Stiles, Brad Foster. Its grand finale is a gallery of Stu’s work from the Seventies and Eighties

I’m a big fan of the writing of Andrew Hooper: his contribution to The Slan of Baker Street shows why you should be, too:

The flights are as safe as one can make a ride in an antique airplane, but I feel just a little uneasy as I peer between the trees and clouds to see the tall tailfin float by again. Another flying B-17, Liberty Belle, made a forced landing in Illinois last year, and was totally destroyed by the fire that followed. Aluminum Overcast drifts overhead so slowly that it gives an impression of searching for something, like an aircraft lost in an old Twilight Zone episode, confronted with the 21st Century landscape below. These anxious fantasies come easily to mind this week, because I’m waiting for someone to get well, someone whose condition seems analogous to an aircraft trying to make its way home through a persistent fog. Stu Shiffman is one of my oldest friends in fandom, a longtime collaborator, correspondent and colleague.

CSI: Philly

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Be on the lookout for these sf and fantasy books stolen in August 2012 from Temple University Libraries’ Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection:

Asimov, Isaac.  Currents of Space. 1952.  First edition.
Asimov, Isaac.  Foundation.  1951.  First, with d.j.
Asimov, Isaac.  Foundation and Empire. 1952. First, with d.j.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Tarzan of the Apes. Chicago, McClurg, 1914. 1st.
Dick, Philip. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968. First, d.j.
Lovecraft, H. P. Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Arkham House, 1943. d.j.
Lovecraft, H. P. Notes and Commonplace Book… 1938.
Lovecraft, H. P. The Outsider and Others. Arkham House, 1939.
Lovecraft, H. P.  The Shunned House. Recluse Press, 1928.
Verne, Jules.   7 Hetzel editions:
Claudius Bombarnac …  [1892?]
L’ile Mysterieuse ..  [1875?]
Mathias Sandorf.  1885.
Mirifiques Aventures de Maitre Antifer. [1894]
Robur-le-Conquerant..   [1886]
Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours. [1890?]
Une Ville Flottante …. 1872.

After seeing what’s on the list, I suggest that if everyone in Philadelphia keeps a close eye on their copies of Asimov’s Second Foundation the miscreant will be caught when he tries to find out how the story ends.

Seriously, if you have information about these volumes please contact either Thomas M. Whitehead, Rare Books & Literary Manuscripts, at [email protected], or Margery Sly, Director of Special Collections, at [email protected].  215-204-8230 and 215-204-1455 respectively.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]