Chicon 8 Posts Updated Business Meeting Agenda 

Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon, published an expanded draft of the Business Meeting agenda on August 7. It can be downloaded here. (Subsequent updates will be found on Chicon 8’s Business Meeting page.) The full text of the proposals plus supporting statements are at the link.

In addition to the proposed rules changes and resolutions listed when the first Business Meeting Agenda was posted are the following items:

STANDING RULE CHANGES

C.1 Short Title: Making Business Meeting Feedback Possible

C.2 Short Title: If You Don’t Have To Print, Neither Do We

(See Agenda for text of the proposed rules changes and supporting statements.)

RESOLUTIONS

D.5 Short Title: Solidarity with Ukraine

Resolved, that it is the spirit of the Business Meeting to offer solidarity with Ukrainian Fans, recognizing that Ukraine has been invaded by fascists. We encourage all to boycott those who would platform or champion the illegal invasion. The Business Meeting looks forward to a return of freedom and fandom to Ukraine.

Proposed by: Borys Sydiuk, James Bacon, Erin Underwood, Chris Garcia, Kelly Buehler, Frank Kalisz, Mike Glyer, Ian Stockdale, Dave Farmer, and Chuck Serface

D.6 Short Title: Sergey Lukianenko

Resolved, that it is the spirit of the Business Meeting to show solidarity with Ukrainian fans and to condemn Worldcon 2023’s Guest of Honour, Sergey Lukianenko’s appalling utterances, calling Ukrainians Nazis and encouraging an illegal invasion of Ukraine. This is utterly unacceptable. Lukianenko should neither be platformed nor celebrated, and we ask the Chengdu 2023 committee, fans and members to refuse Sergei Lukianenko as your guest. It is shameful that he is honoured by Worldcon.

Proposed by: Borys Sydiuk, James Bacon, Erin Underwood, Chris Garcia, Kelly Buehler, Frank Kalisz, Mike Glyer, Ian Stockdale, Dave Farmer, and Chuck Serface

NEW CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

F.8 Short Title: Best Game or Interactive Work

The proposal is discussed in the Best Game or Interactive Work Report:

The updated Agenda concludes with a 24-page report of the Hugo Award Study Committee, which contains reports from other subcommittees.

Also of interest is that in the updated agenda the membership of the Hugo Awards Study Committee has been reduced from 43 to 28 names:

The Hugo Awards Study Committee (“HASC”) for 2019-2020 consisted of Cliff Dunn (Chair); Kate Secor (Co-Chair); Ira Alexandre, Alison Scott and Dave Hook (Subcommittee Chairs); Nana Amuah, Terri Ash, Michelle Cobb, John Coxon, Todd Dashoff, Lindadee, Vincent Docherty, Martin Easterbrook, Farah, Erica Frank, Kat Jones, Joshua Kronengold, Terry Neil, Lisa Padol, Martin Pyne, riverpa, Claire Rousseau, Alison Scott, Sparkle, Kári Tulinius, Jo Van, Nicholas Whyte, and Ben Yalow.

15 thoughts on “Chicon 8 Posts Updated Business Meeting Agenda 

  1. I will look forward to a proposal to show solidarity with the people of Palestine and Yemen, now being slaughtered by US bombs, and an encouragement to boycott the countries involved in the massacres by direct action or by enabling them by weapon sales.

  2. Also very happy to see the proposal to condemn the selection of Lukianenko as GoH. That’s a major disaster.

  3. As for the “One Rocket Per Customer Please” admendment, I can understand the problem that Best Series was to award a series that had been overlooked, where as a series it was considered fantastic even though no individual work had won a Hugo. However, if you’re going to ban any series that has won an individual Hugo, I think you have a problem calling it BEST series. How can you call the winner BEST when a series that’s won multiple Hugos has been excluded? I suggest that in addition to the proposed rule change the name of the award be changed. Maybe something like Notable Series or Significant Series. Something that doesn’t infer that it’s better than a multi-Hugo winning series.

  4. I assume Hampus that will include Sweden that has a long history of selling weapons in Middle East?

    Svenska Freds, your anti-war group, says that Saudi Arabia has been buying Swedish weapons since the late Nineties. Your main arms sales to Saudi Arabia have occurred over the past decade, while Sweden has also been selling major amounts of arms to the UAE.

    Historic note: Sweden’s provided Germany during the Second World War with iron ore for use in the German weapons industry, reaching ten million tons per year.

  5. First off: Resolutions D5 and D6 have my full support, and I’m grateful for the people who thought of doing this (I’d have happily added my name to the list of sponsors if asked.)

    Secondly, I’ve just done a search of the Chengdu Worldcon’s website and social media channels, and I cannot find any mention of Sergei Lukyanenko anywhere. Did they quietly remove him?

  6. Has anyone looked at the changes in wording between the previously posted version of “F.5 Short Title: Fan vs. Pro” and the new version?

    Unless I’m wrong (which I totally could be), there’s now an exception made for semiprozine in this wording. And it seems a bit counterintuitive.

  7. I’m happy to see that the game category has been expanded to include non-video games. Especially since a tabletop game just won the Nebula’s equivalent category!

  8. Xtifr says I’m happy to see that the game category has been expanded to include non-video games. Especially since a tabletop game just won the Nebula’s equivalent category!

    I’ve never played even a minute of a video game but I remember playing Traveller back in the Eighties. Good times that was.

  9. Looking at the full agenda, I hope that the meeting votes down E.5. Discon made a huge mistake by passing that motion and I hope that the Chicon BM takes the opportunity to undo this cruel and silly motion. Permanently barring members whose plans have changed from selling or gifting their memberships just feel wrong.

  10. Secondly, I’ve just done a search of the Chengdu Worldcon’s website and social media channels, and I cannot find any mention of Sergei Lukyanenko anywhere. Did they quietly remove him?

    Well, File 770 reported it here chengdu-wins-2023-worldcon-site-selection-vote.

    Yes I know it happened. I know he has been announced as a GOH. Was there at the announcement.

    What I’m wondering is why the Chengdu folks don’t have him on their website.

    It’s like they’ve scrubbed him off their website and social.

  11. Cat Eldridge: As a previous member of Svenska Freds (they became too war like for me when their former boss wanted to give the organisations support to the US bombings of Serbia), I am deeply ashamed of my countries arms trade to dictators and war criminals, often using bribes to facilitate business.

    I will happily support a boycott if the reason is to lessen arms trade in the world and I expect everyone who supports such a boycott will be as critical towards their own countries policies as they are towards other countries.

  12. Michael J Kerpan on August 8, 2022 at 6:45 pm said:

    Looking at the full agenda, I hope that the meeting votes down E.5. Discon made a huge mistake by passing that motion and I hope that the Chicon BM takes the opportunity to undo this cruel and silly motion. Permanently barring members whose plans have changed from selling or gifting their memberships just feel wrong.

    “Permanently”? As in “this person may never ever purchase a WSFS membership ever again?” Where does it say that?

    Look, what the E.5 does is to rename what we currently call as “Supporting Membership” to a “WSFS Membership.” That is, you join the World Science Fiction Society, a literary society. In order to attend WSFS’s annual convention (Worldcon), you have to pay a convention supplement. If you later decide that you don’t want to attend, you can transfer the convention supplement to any other person. Only WSFS members can attend, so the person to whom you transfer that supplement to, if they aren’t already a WSFS member, will have to buy a WSFS membership. You don’t lose your WSFS membership by transferring your supplement to someone else. Indeed, the proposal says that you can’t transfer your WSFS membership.

    If someone turns up with a supplement but no WSFS membership at the door, they’ll have to buy their WSFS membership at the door, because only WSFS members may attend WSFS’s convention.

    My late father-in-law was a veterinarian. If he wanted to attend the American Veterinary Medical Association’s annual convention, he had to pay the convention supplement. Should he have then decided not to attend, he could give the convention admission to someone else, but that person would have to be an AVMA member in order to attend. Transferring his convention admission to someone did not mean he transferred his AVMA membership to that person. This proposal changes WSFS membership and Worldcon attendance to the same model as other membership organizations that hold annual conventions.

  13. I’m glad to see the proposal against Lukianenko, but the call to boycott anyone who “platforms” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is vague and troubling. Does “platforming” mean giving someone an opportunity to speak? There are situations where doing that is right and proper. It brings the invasion’s supporters into the open and lets their claims be challenged. An effective boycott could go beyond support of the invasion, potentially intimidating event organizers or webmasters who allow criticism of Ukraine’s actions or the level of US funding.

  14. Olav Rokne: An interesting observation (I mean re no Luky/ianenko at WorldconinChina.com etc.). Of course, the website/socmedia in general are a trainwreck, as the whole bid/concom/running seems to be (there is no explicit list of GoHs available either, right? or even a mention of the other two in such a role), yet this might be significant in a Memory Hole kind of way.

    Well, we are living in interesting times.

Comments are closed.