(1) TURKEY DAY. Following that overstuffed title it’s time to pay homage to another Thanksgiving tradition, one I’m sure you’ll immediately recognize.
(2) SIGNERS OF THE TIMES. “Bob Dylan Gets Tangled Up in Book Autograph Controversy” – the New York Times tells why.
Simon & Schuster sold 900 signed copies of the singer’s new essay collection, but superfans and internet sleuths noticed something wasn’t right with the autograph. Now the publisher is issuing refunds.
… So when Simon & Schuster, Dylan’s publisher, advertised limited-edition, hand-signed copies of the musician’s new collection of essays for $600 each, Bernstein was among 900 fans who went for one. Last week, he received his copy of “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” Dylan’s first collection of writings since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, with a letter of authenticity signed by Jonathan Karp, the publisher’s chief executive.
There was only one problem.
Karp’s signature “looked more legit than Bob’s,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein was one of hundreds of fans who sleuthed their way around social media, reaching the conclusion that the supposedly hand-signed books had not, in fact, been signed by Dylan.
“I got the nostalgia bug,” said Bernstein, who already owned an unsigned copy of the book, as well as a Kindle version and an audio version. He added, “If he touches this book — he wrote it, signed it — it feels like the soul of Bob Dylan is with me.”
Instead, many fans suggested that the “autographed” copies of the book had been signed by a machine….
(3) OCTOTHORPE. “Just Nearly Froze to Death”, Octothorpe episode 71, is ready for listeners.
John is on the Holodeck, Alison is in the past, and Liz is at school. We discuss what Alison got up to at Novacon before chatting about a few other bits and bobs. Listen here!
(4) SMACKAGE. “Stephen King, Elon Musk spar: MyPillow will be Twitter’s ‘only advertiser’” on MarketWatch.
That was master of horror and bestselling fiction writer Stephen King riffing on the parade of advertisers including GM, United Airlines and Audi pausing or scrapping their marketing on the social-media platform since Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over….
…This is perhaps why Musk responded to King’s most recent tweet about MyPillow with “Oh hi lol.”
Musk followed up by asking, “Is My Pillow actually a great pillow? Now I’m curious.”
(5) DRAGONS DEFENDED. In “Weber & Correia on the mil-SF Dragon Award” – Camestros Felapton delivers lengthy excerpts from the two authors’ remarks delivered in the wake of the Dragon Awards deleting the Military SF category. Weber tries to justify the decision to his grumpy fan base, and Larry Correia upbraids “the people who are nominally supposed to be on my side” for their “black pilled doom nonsense.” If you care what Weber and Correia think about the situation, this would be the place to find out.
(6) PUSH THE PANIC BUTTON! SF2 Concatenation, in an Autumn 2022 editorial headlined “The 2023 Worldcon in China may be cancelled! If, that is, the UN COP15 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD-COP15) changes are a portent”, is volunteering the Winnipeg NASFiC as the backup plan.
The 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu China has had its problems, not least political controversy due to its Guests of Honours’ support for political aggression, namely: China’s Uyghur policy, Putin’s war on Ukraine and apparent tacit support (being willing to share a platform with those of such views) thereof respectively. However, these are not the reasons the event may be cancelled. China has a strict ‘zero CoVID-19 policy that has meant that as soon as a number of cases are reported in a city, then that city is put into strict lockdown: this has already happened a number of times this year. So, for instance, following discussions with China, on 21st June (2022) the United Nations announced that the CBD-COP15 meeting would no longer be held in Kumming, China, but be held instead 5th – 17th December (2022) in Montreal, Canada. The risk of the CBD-COP running foul of, or even itself causing – with the international influx of thousands of participants – a mini CoVID outbreak so triggering, a strict lockdown in Kumming was real enough for the UN to make the change: it was considered a non-trivial risk….
Meanwhile, following the above being written in July-August following the UN CBD-COP15 change, at the beginning of September (2022) 25 million people in Chengdu, China, have been put in lockdown. This is a portent if ever one should be needed, irrespective with what has already happened with the UN’s CBD-COP15.
The crew’s vision for rescuing the Hugo Awards is a little shortsighted — “The rest could be arranged by those regularly associated with WSFS governance (the World SF Society being the body under whose auspices the Hugo’s are organised)” – because WSFS is not an administrative body, it is the members of the seated Worldcons. There’s no WSFS management to pull the plug on Chengdu, or to take funds from them to pay for award trophies. That would take the Chengdu Worldcon’s cooperation. And consider that the minimum requirements for the Worldcon are far more modest than a UN convention. What if Chengdu fell back on doing a virtual Worldcon, like CoNZealand?
(7) MEMORY LANE.
1993 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Tombstone
The Old West has a significant impact upon the SFF genre, be it in video such as Star Trek’s “Spectre of the Gun”, Doctor Who’s “A Town Called Mercy”, The Wild Wild West series or, to note but two novels, Emma Bull’s Territory and Midori Snyder’s The Flight of Michael McBride.
So I’m going to look at some of my favorite Westerns starting with the Tombstone which premiered twenty-nine years ago.
It directed by George P. Cosmatos from a screenplay by Kevin Jarre. He was also the original director, but was replaced early in production. It had three producers — James Jacks, Sean Daniel and Bob Misiorowski.
It quite possibly the most extraordinary cast ever assembled for a Western — Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliott in lead roles, and with Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, and Dana Delany in supporting roles, as well as narration by Robert Mitchum. The Dana Delany appearance, though brief, I think was one of her best ever.
The film was screenwriter Kevin Jarre’s first job as director but he was overwhelmed by the job, failing to get needed shots and falling behind the shooting schedule. Biehn threaten to quit being his close friend but Russell talked him out of it.
I see no need for spoilers as likely you know the story as they really didn’t deviate that much from what has been told before. It’s how they told it that I find such a stellar story. Each of the principal characters is realized, a completely believable human being. And each is given enough lines to come to life in this story. If I had to single out one actor here in particular, it’d be Val Kilmer as the dying Doc Holliday. That is a performance for the ages.
One of the actors gets much of the credit for what the final shooting script looks like. Russell worked endlessly with producer Jacks to ruthlessly cut to the bone Jarre’s originally vastly overblown script, deleting endless subplots and emphasizing the oh so important relationship between Wyatt and Doc.
It is disputed to this day who directed the actual film. Russell claims that he and not Cosmatos did. He says that the latter was brought in as a “ghost director” because Russell did not want it to be known at the time that he was directing the film.
Critics either really liked it or really, really hated it. The latter, all male I must note, thought it treated women badly. I didn’t.
Box office wise, it was a fantastic success, making three times what it cost to produce.
I’ve watched it at least a half dozen times. The Suck Fairy has equally enjoyed it each times she’s viewed it with me. She particularly liked the final scene with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Dana Delany as Josephine Marcus dancing in the snow in San Francisco. She does have a soft heart, you know.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born November 24, 1882 — E. R. Eddison. Writer whose most well-known work by far is The Worm Ouroboros. It’s slightly connected to his much lesser known later Zimiamvian Trilogy. I’m reasonably that sure I’ve read The Worm Ouroboros but way too long ago to remember anything about it. Silverberg in the Millenium Fantasy Masterworks Series edition of this novel said he considered it to be “the greatest high fantasy of them all”. (Died 1945.)
- Born November 24, 1907 — Evangeline Walton. Her best-known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, was written during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy was produced during the late 1940s. It’s worth stressing Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher’s title of The Virgin and the Swine which is inarguably a terrible title. Although receiving glowing praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold quite awfully and none of the other novels in the series were published at that time. Granted a second chance by Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued with a much better title of The Island of the Mighty. The other three volumes followed quickly. Witch House is an occult horror story set in New England and She Walks in Darkness which came out on Tachyon Press is genre as well. I think that is the extent of her genre work but I’d be delighted to be corrected. She has won a number of Awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, Best Novel along with The Fritz Leiber Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Convention Award and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1996.) (JJ )
- Born November 24, 1926 — Forrest J Ackerman. It’s no wonder that he got a Hugo for #1 Fan Personality in 1953 and equally telling that when he was handed the trophy at Philcon II (by Asimov), he physically declined saying it should go to Ken Slater to whom the trophy was later given by the con committee. That’s a nice summation of him. You want more? As a literary agent, he represented some two hundred writers, and he served as agent of record for many long-lost authors, thereby allowing their work to be reprinted. Hell, he represented Ed Wood! He was a prolific writer, more than fifty stories to his credit, and he named Vampirella and wrote the origin story for her. His non-fiction writings are wonderful as well. I’ll just single out Forrest J Ackerman’s Worlds of Science Fiction, A Reference Guide to American Science Fiction Films and a work he did with Brad Linaweaver, Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art. Did I mention he collected everything? Well, he did. Just one location of his collection contained some three hundred thousand books, film, SF material objects and writings. The other was eighteen rooms in extent. Damn if anyone needed their own TARDIS, it was him. In his later years, he was a board member of the Seattle Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame who now have possession of many items of his collection. (Died 2008.)
- Born November 24, 1948 — Spider Robinson, 74. His first story, “The Guy with the Eyes,” was published in Analog (February 1973). It was set in a bar called Callahan’s Place, a setting for much of his later fiction. His first published novel, Telempath in 1976 was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella “By Any Other Name”. The Stardance trilogy was co-written with his wife Jeanne Robinson; the first book won a Nebula. In 2004, he began working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The resulting novel would be called Variable Star. Who’s read it?
- Born November 24, 1957 — Denise Crosby, 65. Tasha Yar on Next Gen who got a meaningful death in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” after getting an earlier truly meaningless one. In other genre work, she was on The X-Files as a doctor who examined Agent Scully’s baby. And I really like it that she was in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, as Denise, Bruno’s Moll. And she’s yet another Trek performer who’s popped doing what I call Trek video fanfic. She’s Dr. Jenna Yar in “Blood and Fire: Part 2”, an episode of the only season of Star Trek: New Voyages as Paramount was not amused.
- Born November 24, 1957 — Jeff Noon, 65. Novelist and playwright. Prior to his relocation in 2000 to Brighton, his stories reflected in some way his native though not birth city of Manchester. The Vurt sequence whose first novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award is a very odd riff off Alice in Wonderland that he describes as a sequel to those works. Noon was the winner of an Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer.
- Born November 24, 1957 — John Zakour, 65. For sheer pulp pleasure, I wholeheartedly recommend his Zachary Nixon Johnson PI series which he co-wrote with Larry Ganem. Popcorn reading at its very best. It’s the only series of his I’ve read, anyone else read his other books?
- Born November 24, 1965 — Shirley Henderson, 57. She was Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She was Ursula Blake in “Love & Monsters!”, a Tenth Doctor story, and played Susannah in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a film that’s sf because of the metanarrative aspect.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Eek! shows that even a successful experiment by a mad scientist can cause problems. (Or do they always?)
- The Far Side shows the real reason they went extinct.
(10) I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT. Radio Times is agog as “Doctor Who unveils new look at David Tennant as Fourteenth Doctor”.
…Fans were previously treated to a closer look at Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor outfit at MCM Comic Con last month, where a special exhibit showed off the blue coat and white trainers that the Doctor will wear in the upcoming 60th anniversary episodes, which are set to air in 2023.
The exhibit also featured the striped jumper and green jacket worn by Catherine Tate, who will be reprising her role as the Doctor’s companion Donna Noble in the three specials….
(11) SHOCKWAVE WIDER. Nature shows how “Shock waves spark blazing light from black holes”.
Radiation from a jet of ultrafast particles powered by a supermassive black hole suggests that the particles are accelerated by shock waves propagating along the jet, making them shine with the brightness of 100 billion Suns!
Most of the 200 billion galaxies in the Universe are centred around enormous black holes that can weigh as much as one billion Suns. Many of these black holes are dormant, but some are still growing, devouring gas from their surroundings and releasing vast amounts of radiation. Even fewer of these active supermassive black holes are capable of launching powerful jets from their cores — ultrafast streams of particles that shine brightly, and can travel distances of up to 100 times the size of their own galaxy. But what provides the initial kick that enables these particles to release so much energy? Writing in Nature, Liodakis et al. report that the push comes from shock waves that are generated naturally…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Patrick McGuire, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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(1) that’s a good poster design. (Well, not for the turkeys, but…)
(8) I was working registration (handing badges to the pre-registered) at one LosCon when Forry came by and bought a membership. He already had one!
Second!
I really love the Fourteenth Doctor’s new costume. To me, it looks neo-Victorian.
“As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly….”
A. Carlson
Thanks for the Title Credit! As God as my witness I like that poster.
6: Push the panic button. At Chicon, I went up to the Chengdu table and asked if they had fallback plans if the city was in lockdown again. They responded with “no, no, it won’t happen, it will be over by then”. This makes me really nervous.
But that leads to another question: can there be a WSFS meeting if a con is fully virtual?
Memory Lane – never saw it, don’t see a lot of movies. I have, however, read that what provoked it was that Earp had promulgated a “no firearms carried in Tombstone”, and that anyone entering had to check them at the Marshall’s office, and the bad guys refused. But I’m not bringing politics in here, and this doesn’t relate to anything now…. (do we now use an egg timer to measure the time between mass shootings?)
Evangeline Walton’s retelling of the Mabinogion was wonderful.
Forry…. The one time I remember meeting him was at my first Worldcon… where, in the Masquerade, there were seven Mr. Spocks (including him). A number of us went out to find dinner, and we surrounded him in the restaurant, gave him grief, then found a table.
That no one bought his entire estate was a disaster.
Today is also Dwight Schultz’s birthday. Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1947. Most genre-related character is Reginald Barclay from Star Trek: The Next Generation and related movies. Also loads of voice work for animation and video games, and Robert Oppenheimer in the 1989 movie “Fat Man and Little Boy”.
8) Ni cxiam devas memori Forjxakon!
mark: The business meeting requires a minimum quorum of in-person participants. The rules do not provide for virtual participation.
You can learn how CoNZealand dealt with the 2020 business meeting by reading “CoNZealand Business Meeting Plan”, and the minutes of that meeting.
As Ghu is my witness, I though Pixels could Scroll.
Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey says Ni cxiam devas memori Forjxakon!
Since it’s addressed to me, I’d prefer English. It’s not Rot13 as I tried that…
Cat Eldridge: It’s Esperanto, which Forry famously promoted.
Mike Glyer says It’s Esperanto, which Forry famously promoted.
Good. Some of us don’t remember that.
“Check your guns on entering town & get them back when you leave” wasn’t an unusual rule in the “wild west.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
I have a headache.
And, for those who don’t know, it means “We must always remember Forjjak!” (According to Google translate, which, to my amazement, translates Esperanto.)
With “j” pronounced as an English “y”, that would be “ForryAck.”
Fancyclopedia 3 says there’s a particular Esperanto nickname Forry went by, however, it includes a character in the middle (resembling a j) that WordPress comments here wants to turn into a question mark.
8) I reread Worm Ouroboros and the Zimiamvia books this past summer and my only regret is that Eddison didn’t live to actually finish The Mezentian gate.
I do need to read all four of Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion books one of these years.
(7) A different sci-fi connection to Tombstone is that John Ringo* was a member of the gang of cowboys at the OK Corral.
*[OK, not THAT John Ringo but still]
Plus H.M. Murdock from The A-Team, which is at the very least genre-adjacent.
Are you sure? After all, he might be a time traveller.
(8) The Worm Ouroboros has the distinction, for me, of being the first book that made me realize a work could be racist without including any real-world groups in it.
8) I read Spiders attempt at finishing off a Heinlein novel.
That previous sentence should be more than enough for a review.
8 also) I loved 4E and wanted to be 4E when my collection grew up. Unfortunately, his agenting, at least, sometimes left a bit to be desired, especially his “representation” of RAH.
But I think both of them are past that now.
8) I thought Variable Star was a perfectly good Spider Robinson novel based on a Heinlein outline. I enjoyed it.
@John A Arkansawyer — my feelings exactly. And the ending was pure Robinson (not surprising, since the last page of the outline was missing…)
I got a notification for this Scroll despite the long title.
Happy (slightly belated) Turkey Day to all!
Nina: Strangely, the subscriber notifications went out, but Jetpack Social failed to post a tweet with the link. Don’t remember that version of the failure before. (I did a manual tweet.)
Forry also received a recognition of the International Costumers’ Guild as the “Father of Convention Costuming.” I had the pleasure of announcing it at the Masquerade at Conadian, the Worldcon in Winnepeg.
A number of years later we also award a recognition as “Mother of Convention Costuming” to Morogo (Myrtle R. Douglas).
I also received the notice. But I didn’t see it until Friday since we went to bed early. (Black Friday. Up at 3AM. You’d think a lifelong retail guy wouldn’t. We only go to one place, generally, since we pick up some standards every year.)
The WSFS Constitution, in Section 2.6, provides that if Chengdu were “unable to perform its duties”, then it it up to the other existing Worldcon, which now would be Glasgow, to decide what to do.
Donald: Since it is a popular saying among business meeting aficionados that the only things the rules require is to present the Hugos and hold the business meeting, what would be your litmus test for a committee displaying incapacity?
I’ve been reading the news stories on Covid in China right now. It’s beyond scary, it’s quite catastrophic. Even the Chinese officials admit that they are unable to handle the major outbreaks that are happening.
If a lockdown happens in the Worldcon region while you are there, you could be there for weeks with no way to leave. The Chinese government will make sure you stay in your hotel room. That’s what they’ve been doing with foreign travellers unluckily enough to get caught in lockdowns.
@Mike G — The active Worlcon has three mandatory duties: they are also responsible for site selection of the Worldcon after next, and, if necessary, for a NASFiC.
Site selection — good point!
The Section of the WSFS Constitution boldly labeled “Duties” lists only the Hugos, Site Selection, and Business Meeting. However, a close reading of the rest of the Constitution shows many other duties. For example, to appoint a representative to the Mark Protection Committee, distribute the WSFS rules to the WSFS membership, submit financial reports, etc., and to process new supporting and attending memberships and conversions with various limitations on the amount charged and when such new memberships and conversions must be offered. Of course, no Worldcon does all its duties perfectly. It is a matter of judgement how well they are performing them.
Donald: I agree with all that and yet, in the final analysis, there’s something missing — kind of like in A Few Good Men when Tom Cruise as the lawyer is quizzing a Marine in the witness box about the manual, and asks how he finds the mess hall, since it isn’t mentioned in the manual. If Chengdu doesn’t put on a convention (as we understand the term) for any reason, however official, it will still be a failure, even if it’s possible to fulfill the rules without doing so.
I’m nearly 100% certain that granting WorldCon to Chengdu will go down as this community’s most monumental mistake.
Michael: Given the baskets of supporting votes coming from folks who likely had never ever been to a Worldcon, I’d say that it’s not the fault of what we would call the usual Worldcon community in making that massive error.
This strikes me as a similar issue to the Puppies issue. That of masses of non members of the community buying a batch of supporting memberships to override what the usual Worldcon community would have chosen to do.
(Note: My use of ‘usual’ refers to people who make efforts to attend at least a Worldcon, and who are active around at least some that they cannot attend)
Do I have a solution ? Sadly no, as the ones I can imagine all have a grossly discriminatory nature. But, that there is a somewhat common problem here cannot be denied.
The autopen is really quite an old technology and signing books with one whilst imagining you’d get away with it feels like a pre-internet strategy. No offense to Bob, I loved Rough and Rowdy Ways and appreciated his recent (highly rare) shout-out to Shane MacGowan in Ireland – when I saw him, we only merited, about an hour into the set, “Hello (name of country)” – but this kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident.
Update: Dylan claims he used autopen only due to a medical problem and only because he was short staffed due to the pandemic and only because he received assurances (from Simon & Schuster??) that it was “done all the time.”
This would fail to explain why he continued to use it after the medical condition got better and his staff came back.
I’m surprised to know it is “done all the time” – I figured people who collect books check.
As it happens, COP15 having been relocated to Montreal is causing difficulties with SMOFCon 38 (itself postponed two years from its originally-planned date) because COP15 is using up all of the hotel rooms in the downtown area, so those of us who were hoping to get an additional shoulder night can’t do so.
(Fortunately for me, there are still rooms out by the airport hotels, and I’m a IHG diamond-class member, so I’m not stuck, but it means moving from the con hotel out to to the Holiday Inn near YUL on the next-to-last day I’m there, which is something of a hassle.)
The “unable to perform its duties” clause in my opinion can’t be invoked unless someone generally recognized as a credible representative of the convention explicitly declares it. This is what happened when Westercon 73 Seattle threw in the sponge and Loscon ended up nominally hosting the 2021 Westercon. For Worldcon, there is IMO no entity other than the individual Worldcon committee that could declare a Worldcon “unable to perform.” There isn’t even a practical way of trying to get the 2023 NASFiC to fill in (unless Chengdu asks them to do so) because the 2023 NASFiC in a few weeks before the 2023 Worldcon.
Those people who tried to raise alarms about what was happening in the 2023 Worldcon site selection were loudly denounced, and in my own case, relieved of our positions. The members of WSFS voted to award the convention to Chengdu, and unless that committee says, “We can’t do it,” I’m not sure of anything that anyone else can do about it.
From a technical standpoint, I think that if a 2023 WSFS Business Meeting doesn’t happen (as noted, it requires a minimum number of people physically present), then all business that got first passage in 2022 dies for lack of ratification, all special committees expire, and three members of the WSFS MPC probably get re-appointed by the MPC for one year on account of their terms expiring with nobody elected to fill them. (This last is what we did in 2020, for the same reason.) What happens if no Hugo Awards are administered? I don’t know.
I don’t remember you raising any alarms, based on this File 770 post and others from the same period. You took the unprecedented step of releasing votes-per-country counts from the site selection vote while it was still going on, a lot of people considered this inappropriate, you were removed as 2022 WSFS Business Meeting chair and 2023 Winnipeg bid committee member and you creditably took your lumps and publicly apologized.
Unless by raising alarms you meant that Chengdu winning was an alarming development.
Rcade:
Oh, I forgot. There were no irregularities of any sort, no, none at all. Therefore, I expect you will be at the forefront of those people demanding than anyone raising any questions about the 2023 Worldcon be utterly silent, as the thousands of members of WSFS who purchased memberships online using long runs of identical email address have spoken.
@Kevin
From the WSFS Constitution:
With sites being selected two (2) years in advance, there are at least two selected current or future Worldcon Committees at all times. If one of these should be unable to perform its duties, the other selected current or future Worldcon Committee shall determine what action to take, by consulting the Business Meeting or by mail poll of WSFS if there is sufficient time, or by decision of the Committee if there is not sufficient time. Where a site and Committee are chosen by a Business Meeting or Worldcon Committee pursuant to this section, they are not restricted by exclusion zone or other qualifications.
It doesn’t say who determines “should be unable to perform its duties”. Is it specified that the Worldcon Committee in question (Chengdu) is the only body that can throw up its hands? What about the other (Glasgow) Committee? Can they declare the other committee to be unable to perform? (after polling WSFS perhaps?)
Paul Weimer: Who is the WSFS that you suggest polling? If you’re trying to do that to legitimize a result, you can’t leave out all the Chengdu Worldcon members who are current members of WSFS.
I voted for Winnipeg, so any presumption that I didn’t want to hear criticism of the Chengdu bid is not accurate. Where did you make this identical-email claim during or before the site selection vote?
I think I need more substantiation before I buy into this. Why? Because when Tim Szczeuil, head of Site Selection, came to the business meeting seeking their support to not count ballots that did not include postal/residence addresses — THAT was his issue, not that the votes were all using the “identical email address”.
@Mike Yes, the entirety of the WSFS membership would have to be thus polled for anything like that to be even remotely plausible or acceptable.
Paging Ben Yalow to the white courtesy phone. Ben Yalow.