(1) WANT TO HOST A WESTERCON? The 2024 con has no takers at the moment: “Westercon 76 Site Selection Open; No Bids Filed by Deadline” reports Westercon 74 chair Kevin Standlee.
No group filed a bid by the April 15, 2022 deadline to host Westercon 76 (the 2024 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference). Bids can still file up until the close of voting (7 PM PDT, July 2, 2022) to be eligible as a write-in bid to win the election.
Site Selection voting is now open. See our Site Selection page for more information and to download a ballot. The ballot will also be distributed to members as part of Progress Report 5, scheduled for publication sometime in May.
Meanwhile, the fate of the 2023 event, Westercon 75, is still up in the air, too.
Note that no bid was selected to host Westercon 75 (the 2023 Westercon) at last year’s convention, but a committee was formed to attempt to find a group to host the convention. As of now, no groups have come forward prepared to host Westercon 75. It is likely that the determination of arrangements for both Westercons 75 and 76 will be up to the members of Westercon at this year’s Business Meeting. If the Business Meeting is unable to make a decision, the determination of arrangements for Westercon will be left up to the board of directors of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, owners of the Westercon service mark.
(2) REGENERATE YES, REINCARNATE NO. A RadioTimes.com poll shows “Doctor Who fans want new actor, not David Tennant, as 14th Doctor”.
…However, in the comments, viewers were quick to make clear they would like Tennant back for cameos and guest appearances, with one respondent saying: “Love David and I’d be more than happy to see him back in the role as many times as possible- that fits the story, more than happy for cameos or a special but I think it would be best to stick to someone else for a full series.”…
(3) WANT STORIES ABOUT DEMOCRACY. Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine is looking for 15 speculative short stories that explore the theme “Positive Visions of Democracy”. Full details at the link. “Call for submissions from artists and writers for special edition of Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine”. Stories should be centred around an African experience and can be set anywhere in a near or far future, other place, other world. If you can imagine it, let’s see it. Submission deadline is April 30.
As we put pen to paper, it was literally raining coups in Africa.
From Sudan to Mali, from Burkina Faso to Equatorial Guinea to Niger, one hears either of violent truncation of government or an attempt at seizing the reins of power by gun wielding soldiers who purport to act for the greater good of the country.
Democracy, the system of governance that best serves the interest of the individual by allowing them a say in who governs them and how they are governed, is in peril. With this backdrop, Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) – a US-based non-governmental organisation that works to strengthen democracy – is calling for submissions for a special themed edition that explores positive visions of democracy.
(4) LITERARY LADDERSHIP FOR EMERGING AFRICAN AUTHORS. “Nigerian Author Suyi Davies Okungbowa Endows Fellowship for Emerging African Authors” – Brittle Paper has the story. See full details at the African Author Literary Laddership website. Applications open May 4 and close May 31.
African writers in the early stages of their career are invited to apply for the “Literary Ladder Fellowship for Emerging African Authors.”
The fellowship is an initiative of Nigerian novelist Suyi Davies Okungbowa, author of the acclaimed novels Son of the Storm and David Mogo, Godhunter. The fellowship aims to “support, elevate and connect emerging fiction authors of Black and/or African descent, based primarily on the African continent and writing in English”
The fellowship offers:
a funded ($500 each) three-month digital residency,
membership in a private community of practice,
continuous support through the publishing ecosystem….
(5) TURNING BACK THE CLOCK OR ERASING TIMES? A Slate article written by Stitch, “Turning Red: The Pixar movie has one huge blind spot when it comes to fandom”, says “The Pixar movie’s depiction of fandom may be relatable, but some of us know it’s also unrealistic.”
…Turning Red is perhaps the closest that the mainstream has come to showing how women and other marginalized folks both participate in and are mistreated for their interest in fandom too. And it does so without also making them the butt of the joke. At first, the school bully Tyler and his friends make fun of Meilin for her art; later, when Meilin and her friends capitalize upon her ability to turn into an adorable, giant red panda in order to fund their concert dreams, Tyler is one of the people who line up to hang with the cute panda. (Tyler eventually also proves to be a 4*Town fan.) Meilin’s transformation sparks a form of fandom among the students in their school, who come to be downright obsessed with Meilin’s red panda form. Some of the same people who mocked Meilin’s group for its intense fixations, it turns out, are now experiencing fixations of their own.
This angle and its turn of events are both the triumphs and the failings of the film.
…But that portrait is one that either forgets or ignores what fandom was really like then and now. Participating in fandom of any kind was never an experience where everything was nice and fans all bonded over their shared love—especially for people of color. Nostalgia reimagines the way that fans remember early online fandom, suggesting it was a place where no one fought, where everyone minded their business, and where no one was a bigot. It’s a sunny contrast to what many agree is the situation now: Online hate mobs, browbeating, and social media–facilitated backlash are publicly acknowledged. Yet the early 2000s, around the same time that Meilin and her friends were getting into 4*Town, were full of now-legendary tales of discriminatory fandom drama….
(6) FLORIDA OUTLAWS RANKED CHOICE VOTING. [Item by Steven H Silver.] A new law just passed in Florida that establishes an election police force also makes it illegal in Florida for any government jurisdiction to use ranked balloting to determine winners. Any cities or counties that already use it may no longer do so according to the new law. “Florida bans ranked-choice voting in new elections law”.
…Senate Bill 524 specifically said it was “prohibiting the use of ranked-choice voting to determine election or nomination to elective office; voiding existing or future local ordinances authorizing the use of ranked choice voting.”
This means cities or counties can’t pass their own laws on ranked-choice voting.
In a ranked-choice voting system, voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots rather than selecting just one.
The candidate with the majority of first-choice votes wins outright. However, if no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, an “instant runoff” takes place. That means that the candidate who finished last is eliminated, and that candidate’s voters ballots are redistributed to their second-choice pick. This process continues until there is a clear majority winner or candidate won with more than half of the vote….
(7) YEOH Q&A. “Actor Michelle Yeoh wants to change the way we think of superheroes” NPR learned in a conversation with her.
On Everything Everywhere All At Once originally being written for Jackie Chan as the lead and Michelle Yeoh as his wife – but the Daniels rewrote it
They realized, I think, we’re telling the same old story if it was really Jackie Chan and myself as playing the husband and wife, and he is the one who goes on the multiverse thing. But I think the good news was … the Daniels are surrounded by very, very strong women. … I think it’s an homage to all the strong women who are around them. … So I think that cemented the mother and daughter story a lot more. I think it’s much more relatable. It’s much more emotional on many levels.
(8) SECOND INNING. The vampire is playing a bat, again. “Robert Pattinson Returning for ‘The Batman’ Sequel” reports Yahoo!
“The Batman” is getting a sequel, with Robert Pattinson set to return as Gotham’s fiercest defender.
Warner Bros. revealed its plans for another Caped Crusader story during its Tuesday evening presentation at CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners. “The Batman” director Matt Reeves was on hand to announce the news that he will write and direct the follow-up, but he did not provide any details about what the movie will entail….
(9) YES, DEATH WILL NOT RELEASE YOU. “Sony confirms new ‘Ghostbusters’ movie – how it could work” – SYFY Wire shares what they know.
… At the end of its CinemaCon presentation on Monday, Sony Pictures dropped a sizzle reel that included peeks at a number of upcoming projects we already knew about, including the long-awaited Kraven the Hunter movie, as well as reveals of a couple of things we didn’t know about just yet. Those reveals included a title card teasing a third Venom film, and confirmation that a new Ghostbusters installment is in the works.
Though the project is officially still untitled, and Sony offered no clues as to casting or story for the project, the announcement of a fifth Ghostbusters movie likely means a direct sequel to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife,…
(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
2010 — [Compiled by Cat Eldridge] Twelve years ago the sequel to the highly successful and quite popular Iron Man film premiered. Unimaginatively titled Iron Man 2, it was directed by Jon Favreau who had done the first film, and written by Justin Theroux, who had not done the first film (which had been written by a committee of Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Hey it worked, didn’t it?) The first film got nominated for a Hugo at Anticipation (2009).
Iron Man 2 premiered at the El Capitan Theatre, a fully restored movie palace in Hollywood. This theater and the adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple (which are now known as the El Capitan Entertainment Centre) are owned by the Disney Company and serve as the venue for a majority of the Disney film premieres.
Although fandom is very fond of saying it did substantially worse than the first film at the box office that’s a lie as it actually did better. Iron Man did five hundred and eighty million against one hundred and forty million in costs, whereas this film took in six hundred and thirty million against the same production costs.
So how was it received by critics at the time? Anthony Lane at the New Yorker liked it better than its competitors Spider-Man and Superman: “To find a comic-book hero who doesn’t agonize over his supergifts, and would defend his constitutional right to get a kick out of them, is frankly a relief.” And Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Tribune was impressed: “Iron Man 2 is a polished, high-octane sequel, not as good as the original but building once again on a quirky performance by Robert Downey Jr.”
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather good seventy-one percent rating.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born April 26, 1564 — William Shakespeare. World’s greatest playwright and perhaps one of our earliest fantasy writers was born today. Possibly. Or baptized today. Opinions differ. What I do know is that the supernatural is a commonplace thing in his plays from ghosts to fairies. So which fantasy-tinged work by him do you like the best? I go for “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. (Died 1616.)
- Born April 26, 1922 — A. E. van Vogt. Ok I admit it’s been so long since I read him that I don’t clearly remember what I liked by him, though I know I read Slan and The Weapon Makers. I am fascinated by the wiki page that noted Damon Knight disliked his writing whereas Philip K. Dick and Paul Di Filippo defended him strongly. What do y’all think of him? And the Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995. No Hugos and only one Retro Hugo at MidAmericaCon for Slan though he’s had myriad Retro Hugo nominations. He picked a Nebula Grand Master Award. (Died 2000.)
- Born April 26, 1943 — Bill Warren. American film historian, critic, and one of the leading authorities on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films. Bill launched his writing career in the Sixties. His 1968 short story “Death Is a Lonely Place” would be printed in the first issue of the magazine Worlds of Fantasy. During the Seventies , he also wrote scripts for Warren Publishing’s black-and-white comic books Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. He was a leading light of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and which he and his wife Beverly were very much involved in. With Allan Rothstein he wrote a murder mystery Fandom is a Way of Death set at L..A. Con II which was distributed at the convention, and featured many fans including Forrest J Ackerman. The first edition of his film reference guide Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties came out in 1982; it would be revised and expanded several times, the latest in 2009. It is available from the usual suspects. (Died 2016.)
- Born April 26, 1945 — Charles Platt, 77. British writer who’s a naturalized U.S. citizen. I’m very impressed with The Silicon Man which nominated for the Campbell Memorial and Prometheus Award, and also with his nonfiction Dream Makers volumes about the genre which were both nominated for the Hugo, The Uncommon People Who Write Science Fiction by Charles Platt at Devention Two (1981) and The Uncommon Men & Women Who Write Science Fiction at L.A. Con II (1984).
- Born April 26, 1948 — Marta Randall, 74. First woman president of SFWA. With Robert Silverberg, Randall edited two volumes of the New Dimensions series, the eleventh and twelfth volumes. I’ve not read her novels but I do remember the New Dimensions series fondly.
- Born April 26, 1978 — Marie Bilodeau, 44. Canadian writer nominated for an amazing fifteen Aurora Awards. She’s won two, one with Derek Künsken as the 2019 co-chair of Can-Con, and another the next year with him for again hosting that Con. Who here has read her fiction?
- Born April 26, 1985 — Falk Hentschel, 37. Two of my favorite characters in the DCU are Hawkman and Hawkgirl. He played Hawkman in the Arrowverse on The Flash, Arrow and most noticeably Legends of Tomorrow. If you have not seen him there, here’s an image of them from Flash. He has one-offs on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Jouneyman.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest learn what happens to Mr. Potato Head when he needs a therapist!
(13) DEEP ROOTS. Nicholas Barber drills down to find “Doctor Strange and the historical roots of the multiverse” at BBC Culture.
Remember when saving the world was enough for any self-respecting film character? These days, they have to think bigger. In 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Earth’s mightiest heroes went as far as saving the Universe – or half of it, anyway. But since then, even a feat as impressive as that seems woefully short of ambition. In 2022, superheroes are expected to navigate their way around a whole labyrinth of different universes. The multiverse is the place to be….
The scientific possibility of the multiverse
To answer that question, you could go back to the discussions of other realities in ancient Greek philosophy and Hindu and Persian mythology. Plenty of books have been set in two or more realms, too: CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, for instance. But the notion of countless co-existing universes was posited as a scientific possibility in 1957 by Hugh Everett, a mathematician from Washington DC….
(14) YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT. “A Tiny Brontë Book, Sold for $1.25 Million, to Return Home” – the New York Times has the good news.
The last of the two dozen miniature books made by the young Charlotte Brontë to remain in private hands, which resurfaced last month after nearly a century, will soon be heading home to the remote parsonage on the moors of northern England where it was made.
“A Book of Rhymes,” which contains 10 previously unpublished poems by the 13-year-old Brontë, was a star attraction over the weekend at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, where it was offered for $1.25 million. At the fair’s preview last Thursday, a red dot indicating it had been sold appeared on the label inside the specially constructed display case, setting off speculations about the buyer.
On Monday, it was revealed that the buyer is the Friends of the National Libraries, a British charity, which is donating it to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire, home to one of the world’s largest collections of Brontë manuscripts.
… The miniature books and magazines created by the young Charlotte. Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë in the 1820s have long been objects of fascination for ordinary people and deep-pocketed collectors alike. Initially created to entertain their toy soldiers (and sewn together from sugar packets, wallpaper scraps and other stray bits of paper), the tiny volumes reflected the rich imaginary world they created in the isolation of the family home, which fed into novels like Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” and Emily’s “Wuthering Heights.”
“A Book of Rhymes,” a 15-page volume smaller than a playing card made it 1829, was last seen at auction in 1916 in New York, where it sold for $520. It then disappeared from view, its whereabouts — and even its survival — unknown….
(15) STILL NOT EASY BEING GREEN. “’Wicked’ Split Into Two Movies As Universal Unveils Release Dates” announces The Hollywood Reporter. But no hurry, right? Universal has been developing the project since 2004.
“One Short Day” in the Emerald City is turning into two longer stays.
The Wicked film will now come to theaters as two films, rather than one production, director Jon M. Chu announced Tuesday. The first film has set a premiere date of December 2024, with the second premiering the following Christmas.
“As we prepared the production over the past year, it became increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of ‘Wicked’ into a single film without doing some real damage to it. As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions felt like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years,” Chu wrote in a statement on Twitter.
(16) WHERE IT’S NOT TOO BRIGHT. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I have no idea what language this film is in, but it’s sf and has come to Netflix!
Escaped from the sun, took shelter in a submarine… Is it safe now? Yakamoz S245.
After disaster strikes Earth, a marine biologist on a submarine research mission must fight to survive with the crew as a conspiracy comes to light.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Moonfall,” the Screen Junkies‘ narrator notes that many people want an Honest Trailer for The Batman. But there’s an oxygen breach in the Screen Junkies’ compound, and the narrator’s swimming in brain fog. But Moonfall — “That’s just stupid enough to work! But why is the script written in crayon?” And why do the astronauts in this film discover there’s a white dwarf at the center of the moon and their eyes aren’t fried seeing it?
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Steven H Silver, Jennifer Hawthorne, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Adam Rakunas.]
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(11) Haven’t read that much Van Vogt, but his Black Destroyer is a clear inspiration for Stsr Trek in general and “Msn Trap” in particular, so his influence on the genre still lingers.
(11) Charles Platt has a most interesting biographical series of posts at Curbside Classic (all viewable at http://www.curbsideclassic.com/author/charles-platt/) about his automotive life and that of his father, a GM executive.
(11) I’m fond of van Vogt’s short story “The Monster”.* It was one of those stories like Clifford Simak’s “Desertion” that lodged itself in my youthful memory even though I had no idea who the author was. Haven’t read much else of his that sticks with me now.
* Nyvraf ynaq ba n shgher Rnegu jurer rirelbar vf qrnq, naq fgneg erivivat obqvrf gb vagreebtngr gurz. Rnpu fhpprffvir eriviny unf zber nqinaprq zragny cbjref, naq gur ynfg bar gnxrf bire gurve fuvc naq ol vzcyvpngvba gurve ragver pvivyvmngvba.
Liked a lot of Van Vogt when I was young. And a lot of folks took what he wrote and built on it – Black Destroyer, of course, being #1. And are you going to deny that fans are slans?
Erasing? (shakes head) Sorry, I was on usenet at its height, and they didn’t see the feuds. But then, of course, the Web was this shiny, wonderful new thing… before it became monetized and used for propaganda.
15) I could have sworn the Wicked movie had already come out a couple of years ago, guess I must be just remembering the first talk of a movie being made. I haven’t seen the play but I found the book disappointing. With so many possibilities, they choose a basic common storyline.
@mark. Fans are definitely not slans. Fans are known for their lack of social skills, while slans can read other people minds and manipulate them. QED.
I’ve heard it said that “Shakespeare was born in 1564, presumably on his birthday.” Actually, 26 April was the day of his christening; it’s likely he was born two or three days before, probably on 23 April, the Feast of St George, one of the patron saints of England.
I usually think of “The Tempest” as my favorite Shakespearian fantasy, along with its spinoff, “Forbidden Planet.” As for supernatural horror, there’s “Macbeth,” with all its witches and spirits (since I’m not involved in theater, I don’t need to avoid naming it). When I was five or so, my mother brought home a pair of children’s records (78s) which told the story of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with all the background music straight from Mendelssohn.
Sa Long: The folger Shakespeare Library always celebrates Shakespeare’s birthday on April 23.
Sam Long: I’ve never been a big fan of birthday listings for people from hundreds of years ago, so I can tell you how I’d like to solve this enigma.
(6) In 2020 I was writing about POC teens thanklessly stanning for their idols (as well as rescuing them from scientifically accurate feathered dinosaurs), until shedding the thanklessness and celebrating their own empowerment instead. My co-author and I are currently plotting to get tickets to the next Jurassic installment at the legendary Chinese Theater. I understand it has at least one feathered dinosaur.
A stan is not quite a fan yet not quite a slan. I tend to avoid author Twitter because it’s fractious, instead lurking in stan Twitter exchanging musician gossip.
Yup, Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on 26 April 1564 (written record). The usual practice was to do this 3 days after birth, so people guess he was born on the 23rd. He died on 23 April 1616, also in Stratford, so it makes a nice circle.
Best film versions? The new Coen Macbeth is very good, though my favorite is still the Nunn/McKellen/Dench. Titus works horrifyingly well, and I like both the Jarmusch (sp?) Tempest and the one with Helen Mirren. There are several good Much Ados, but my favorite is probably Whedon’s black-and-white one. And it’s quirky, but Peter Hall’s Midsummer Night’s Dream has Dench, Richardson, Mirren and Diana Rigg – who could ask for anything more?
Happy birthday to Marta Randall, with a much smaller score than Shakespeare’s 458.
1) Huh. Can’t speak for other cities, but for a while there Phoenix bid for (and held a fair number) of Westercons at almost every opportunity. There have been roughly three generations of Phoenix conrunners since the mid-70s, but it’s really time for a fourth generation that, from my jaundiced and semi-gafiated viewpoint, doesn’t seem to be forming/have formed. And between the pandemic killing any momentum for that, and the third generation folks aging out, energy for running anything beyond smaller local conventions appears lacking.
Plus a lot of potential attendees find the best choice for their dollars and attendance are the big media-centered commercial cons. Not my bag, never has been, but apparently a lot of people prefer them.
OT) In other news, came home from the hospital today, veins coursing with antibiotics that sadly did not grant me superpowers, but did manage to kick back the cat bite infection that was swelling up my hand and sending a wide red streak racing up my arm. (Not to mention Saturday’s shakes, chills, and delirium.) Several weeks of oral antibiotics ahead to stomp on the last of whatever nasty bug our cat Artemis injected me with. (This all came about Friday as I tried to pick up Artemis when she didn’t want to be picked up. She’s actually a fairly sweet cat when her “Kill All Humans” switch hasn’t flipped itself.) The bug apparently did have superpowers, because it moved like The Flash.
6) When the heck did ranked-choice/Instant Runoff become a partisan issue????
6) Curious, that. (actually not so curious, the logic is clear for a demi-one party state)
3) I’ve said before that I didn’t want a retread of other Doctors. But it should be said that when the Matt Smith Doctor meets the Curator (played by Baker), the Curator tells him that he might “revisit old faces” in the future–which opens the door at least to the possibility, canonically.
16) I got a Netflix spam email about that one – I think it’s in Turkish. Looks interesting, I must admit.
A.E. van Vogt cropped up quite a bit when I was doing the mighty Unknown project – not as prolific a contributor as Hxbbxrd, but he got quite a few stories in. I remember liking Slan and The Voyage of the Space Beagle when I was a younger and more innocent reader, but other van Vogt rather left me cold. He had an unusual approach to writing, especially in his belief that stories needed repeated, sudden, unannounced plot twists on a regular basis – like, every 800 words. Once in a while, his approach works well, and he comes out with a fascinatingly off-kilter piece of SF. Most of the time, though, the result is just a mess, with people doing things without motivation and events happening for no apparent reason. Also, his grasp of science is shaky even by the pulp era’s standards (some people might remember “Vault of the Beast”, which was up for a Retro Hugo a few years back, where the plot’s resolution depends on factoring large prime numbers), and he cannot write dialogue…. All told, an acquired taste.
3) An odd possibility occurred to me with this one… what if the next regeneration only looks like David Tennant? The Doctor with Tennant’s face, but (like every regeneration) a completely different personality – stolid and thoughtful where Ten was wacky and manic, say. Tennant is a good enough actor to pull this off (IMHO he’s the second-best actor ever to play the role, the best being Patrick Troughton). I suppose it’s a silly idea really, though… personally, I’d like to see a new face entirely, preferably another woman, just to make it quite clear that Thirteen wasn’t a weird aberration.
(5) I’m reminded of the recent commentary about how that movie didn’t have anything to say about 9/11 either.
14) Apparently no less an authority than Charlotte Brontë herself spelled it as “Book of Ryhmes.”
I prefer fan ran SF conventions over the large media conventions because I mostly read science fiction. I have been attending Westercon for years so its demise will be sad for me. Looks like Tonopah, NV may be the last one.
1) Bruce Arthurs: A Phoenix-area group bid against Tonopah at Westercon 72. I contacted them (as I did other groups that seemed somewhat interested at one point) regarding hosting Westercon 75, and noted that they wouldn’t have to conduct an election campaign (the committee empaneled by last year’s Westercon business meeting can do a “direct award.” There are $200 in site selection voting fees (currently being held in trust by Westercon 74), and Westercon 74 has pledged to pass along the $1000 grant we received from the disbanded SeaTac Westercon if the selection committee picks a site before this year’s convention. Even with that $1200 incentive, nobody seems interested, which is disappointing.
See the post on the Westercon website on this subject. I encourage anyone with a plausible proposal for a legal site to contact us.
If there are no bids of any sort for either Westercons 75 or 76, I think that we’ll have to hand the keys back to LASFS (which owns the service marks), and recommend that they wait until conditions have improved to the the point where holding Westercon is viable again, and then restart it.
I had sort of hoped that an LA-area group would have expressed an interest in hosting the 75th Westercon, given that it was an LA-area invention. Due to the COVID-induced gap after Westercon 72 in Utah, this year’s Westercon in Tonopah is the actual 75th anniversary.
Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey on April 27, 2022 at 12:51 am said:
I think it possible that the Republicans in Floriday know that they’re not the consensus choice (RCV/IRV favors “least disliked” over “most popular”) and figure that as long as they can win first-past-the-post races (most votes even if not a majority), they can stay in power.
Also, it does appear that to a huge number of people (not just conservatives/Republicans), anything other than “more votes than any other candidate” is Much Too Hard To Understand. sigh
@Kevin @Michael
Also, the knee jerk reaction “Well if Progressives/”Libs”(sic) like it, it MUST be bad.” I think that’s a simpler explanation especially for those who don’t understand or want to spend the time to understand Ranked choice voting.
…after all, haven’t we seen that with the Puppies and the Hugos?
(8) I hope they call it The Manbat, and using the appropiate villain (for the first time on TV if Im not mistaken).
.
11) April 26 is also the birthday of actor Channing Tatum who starred in the film Jupiter Ascending back in 2015. That was written / directed by the Wachowskis.
Maybe his only genre credit, although some might want to argue about the GI Joe movies which seem to have no connection to reality as we know it.
Msb says Yup, Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on 26 April 1564 (written record). The usual practice was to do this 3 days after birth, so people guess he was born on the 23rd. He died on 23 April 1616, also in Stratford, so it makes a nice circle.
Yes, a guess. That’s why I use his baptism date. There’s doubt of what that is.
That April 23 is also St. George’s Day, and the association of Shakespeare’s possible date of birth with the patron saint of England moves that as his birthdate into, as more than one historian has put it, the realm of the legendary.
@Paul Weimer: Not curious at all. “The purpose of power is power” is the one indelible principle of the modern Republican party. Everything else — “character matters”, “facts matter”, “rule of law matters”, or “the best government is the one closest to the people” — is disposable as soon as it becomes inconvenient.
(1) Some of the nicest conventions I have been to were Westercons. They get members from all over and have a diverse program like a Worldcon, without the overwhelming numbers of people. There have been some wonderfully creative and fun Westercon bids. I would put Tonopah in that category. Check out the website and the staff list and the HQ hotel. It looks like it’s going to be fabulous.
I hope other conrunners will be inspired the same way. The opportunities certainly are there. Call westercon.org. Operators are standing by to take your bid.
(6) Alaska is implementing ranked choice voting for federal and statewide offices. State-sponsored party primaries are eliminated. As far as I know, all Alaskan political parties–Republican, Democrat, Alaska Independence. and perhaps others–opposed ranked choice voting. In progress is our first ranked choice election, to fill the house seat of the late Don Young. In the first round, there are forty-eight candidates, including Santa Claus and Sara Palin.
In Australia the local right just runs “micro parties” to game the ranked voting system. But apparently too difficult for Florida Republicans.
Somehow a time of massive social distrust is not my idea of a great time to introduce a non-intutive voting system.
PKD died in 1982, just before Blade Runner was released.
Van Vogt’s writing is famously choppy, following his theory of introducing a radical twist every 700 words or so. He also told me about his sure fire method to cure writer’s block: set an alarm to wake you up every 30 minutes and write the first thing that comes into your head. In Slan, Van Vogt seems to follow this advice throughout. It’s almost unreadable, but we all relate to Jommy, don’t we?
Sorry, for some reason I thought there was a reference to PKD passing in 2000, my crossed eyes from too many pixels to blame….
Notifications are still undependable. None was sent for the April 27 Scroll.
I manually tweeted the link, but subscribers aren’t seeing that.
Tom Becker on April 27, 2022 at 11:25 am said:
Thank you! We are going to do the best we can under the constraints (mostly caused by COVID-19) under which we have to operate. And we want the convention to be something those people who attend will tell others for years to come, “You really should have been there.”
Now seems like it would be a good time to remind people that:
1) Westercon 74 membership increases from $60 to $70 on May 1.
2) Due to the capacity of the Tonopah Convention Center, we are limited to 450 attending members. At the moment, I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near that, but I (and our Treasurer) would like to be surprised, and I’m sure nobody would want to make the trip and be turned away because they didn’t buy a membership in advance.
3) If you are going to attend, you should book your hotel room now if you have not already done so. While there are around 500 hotel rooms in Tonopah, the next-nearest city with an appreciable number of additional rooms is about 120 miles away, and that would make for a really annoying commute, I think. There are still rooms available in our main hotels (the Belvada and Mizpah), and rooms in the Mizpah-managed Old Brewery Hostel (single and double sleeping rooms, shared toilet/showers, common room, kitchen) are only $50-55/night.
6) The runoff system of a second vote held several weeks after Election Day heavily favors highly motivated minorities. General turnout for the runoff tends to be very low.
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