Alice Lawson of Glasgow was presented with the Big Heart Award at
Dublin 2019. The award recognizes “good work and great spirit long
contributed” in the words of past winner John Hertz.
Lawson, who has been helping at conventions since her first con in 1987, co-chaired Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon. She has been a member of at least 30 con committees including Eastercons and Worldcons. Other cons she co-chaired were Paragon, 2001 and Conrunners 2 and 4.
Alice and Steve Lawson have been married for 25+ years. The couple spent their honeymoon at an Eastercon. Both were GoHs at Satellite 4 (Eastercon 65) in 2014.Togerher they ran for GUFF in 2018. At different times each has been voted the Doc Weir Award for extensive work behind the scenes at many conventions, Alice in 2010 and Steve in 2006.
Steve Francis, another Big Heart Award winner, recalls: “I worked with Alice in 2003 in Toronto on the last days of the bid and the final vote count as well as the membership conversion process after Interaction was seated as a Worldcon. She was (and still is) a dedicated, efficient and effective member of any con she is involved with. I also found that she is a joy to work with even under pressure situations.”
[Thanks to Steve Francis and John Hertz for the story.]
The Going Under Fan Fund ballot for the 2018 race is now available on the OzFanFunds website.
Voters will choose an Australasian delegate to Continuum in Melbourne, Australia over the June 8-11, 2018 weekend. The candidates are Marcin Klak, and Steve and Alice Lawson.
Ballots will be accepted until April 3, 2018. The candidates’ platforms, general information about voting, and the online ballot is here. A PDF version for printing is here.
GUFF is the Get Up and Over (or Going Under) Fan Fund which transports SF fans from Australasia to Europe (and vice versa).
The winner will take over the administration of the fund for the next northbound and southbound races.
Here are the candidates’ platforms:
Marcin Klak
I am a Polish fan and conrunner who is truly passionate about fandom and conventions. I run a blog about my con journeys at www.FandomRover.com. Mihaela Marija Perkovi? inspired me to run for GUFF in 2018 and here I am trying to meet the fans from Australia (and hopefully New Zealand). I would like to travel 10,000 miles from Poland to Australia and become a European “fannish ambassador“. I frequently attend various conventions and I would like to exchange experiences with fans from the other side of the globe.
One small step for the fandom, one giant leap for the Fandom Rover!
Nominators: Australasia – Gillian Polack, Julia Svaganovic and David Cake
Europe – Vanessa May and Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf
Steve and Alice Lawson
We have been fans since 1974 (Steve) and 1987 (Alice). We both enjoy attending conventions and meeting new people; we even had our honeymoon at an Eastercon. We have served as committee members for over 30 conventions including Eastercons and Worldcons; Alice was co-chair of Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon. We have also each been honoured to receive the Doc Weir Award for our work behind the scenes. We would love the chance to meet more fans from Australasia and see fandom in action down under, and then be able to tell other fans in Europe all about it.
Nominators: Australasia – Norman Cates and Sue Ann Barber
Europe – Dave Langford, Claire Brialey and Ang Rosin
For a few weeks (months?) I’ve been doing this silly and fun thing on Monday nights. I pick a random Choose Your Own Adventure book from my collection, and I read it on my Twitch channel, letting the audience make the choices for me…
So it’s pretty much a regular thing, now, and I seem to have settled upon 6pm Pacific time every Monday, unless there’s a Kings game or I have some other pressing engagement.
Anyway, I always point out that I am not doing this for money, and I don’t mean to infringe on Choose Your Own Adventure’s IP rights or anything like that. I always point out that I’d rather beg forgiveness than ask permission, and I hope that if CYOA ever stumbles upon my thing, they’ll treat it as free marketing and not a thing to throw lawyers at.
So last week, someone from CYOA emailed me … and it turns out a lot of them at the publisher are fans of my work, including my Storytime with Wil thing!! Not only do they not want to sue me to death, she offered to send me a care package, and it arrived today.
See what good things happen when, for a random example, you don’t raise half-a-million dollars on Kickstarter to turn a fan thing into a moneymaker?
A few people have mentioned they see this as an important cover, because it has a Black girl in a dress. That’s what I want to talk about. I didn’t realize when the cover was being designed (that’s my privilege), but this is the first time a big publisher has this kind of cover.
It shouldn’t be the first time.
The first time a major publisher designed a YA cover with a Black model in a gown, it should have gone to a Black author.
Again, me not realizing that hadn’t happened yet: that was my white privilege at work.
The fact that mine came first is a symptom of the problems in publishing, and who publishing is designed to work for. By the time I knew what was at stake with this cover and the timing, the model had already been hired and her photos taken. At that point, changing the cover would have meant telling a Black model that she couldn’t be on my cover because she’s Black.
I hope it’s obvious why I wouldn’t do that.
Dhonielle Clayton told me I should say all this upfront, but I resisted because I couldn’t think of a way to do that without seeming preemptively defensive or like I wanted a pat on the back. So I just didn’t talk about it. Now I see that was the wrong decision, because this hurts people. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
Meadows also discusses a soon-to-be-published YA novel by a black author that will feature such a cover.
Some of the names involved in the Meadows story are also sources for Everdeen Mason’s recent Washington Post article, “There’s a new way for novelists to sound authentic. But at what cost?”, which reports how publishers are hiring “sensitivity readers… who, for a nominal fee, will scan a book for racist, sexist, or other offensive content.” From Mason’s article, it appears these readers are used most often for YA fantasy novels.
For authors looking for sensitivity readers beyond their fan base there is the Writing in the Margins database, a resource of about 125 readers created by Justina Ireland, author of the YA books “Vengeance Bound” and “Promise of Shadows.” Ireland started the directory last year after hearing other authors at a writing retreat discuss the difficulties in finding people of different backgrounds to read a manuscript and give feedback about such, well, sensitive matters.
One reader for hire in Ireland’s database is Dhonielle Clayton, a librarian and writer based in New York. Clayton reviews two manuscripts per month, going line by line to look at diction, dialogue and plot. Clayton says she analyzes the authenticity of the characters and scenes, then points writers to where they can do more research to improve their work.
Clayton, who is black, sees her role as a vital one. “Books for me are supposed to be vehicles for pleasure, they’re supposed to be escapist and fun,” she says. They’re not supposed to be a place where readers “encounter harmful versions” and stereotypes of people like them.
(3) WHO’S SECOND? The “America First, <yourcountry/etc here> Second” meme (explained in this CNN news segment) has inspired at least two fannish responses –
Mordor Second
Mars Second
(4) HE’S ON THE FRONT. Cool cover by Tom Gauld for the Guardian Review:
…One correction I need to make regarding Likhain’s email since this is a discussion she chose to take public rather than giving Apex a chance to respond. She says: “It is not your choice to publish RH that I find appalling, but your specific choice to ask her to contribute to a roundtable on, of all things, intersectionality.”
This is not true. Djibril and Rivqa, Likhain’s publisher, invited Benjanun to be on the round table. The round table contains four other people with greater wisdom on what is and is not appropriate when it comes to intersectionality than I will ever possess: Cassandra Khaw, Vajra Chandrasekera, Miguel Flores Uribe, and Rivqa Rafael. Since they participated in the discussion I could only assume they had no issue including Benjanun. Djibril had no issue with Benjanun. Therefore, I felt it was okay to move forward.
In consideration to the concerns expressed by Likhain’s public post, our readers, and the counsel of several friends in the genre community, I have decided to remove the round table from our website….
Two generations of TV watchers have been schooled in temporal paradox by Doctor Who, and when one Doctor gives way to the next, as will happen in the next series, the reincarnation generates almost as much speculation as the royal line of succession. Who will follow Peter Capaldi? She will be a Time Lord, after all.
Nor does time travel belong solely to popular culture. The time-travel meme is pervasive. Neuroscientists investigate “mental time travel”, more solemnly known as “chronesthesia”. Scholars can hardly broach the metaphysics of change and causality without discussing time travel and its paradoxes. Time travel forces its way into philosophy and influences modern physics.
How strange, then, to realise that the concept is barely a century old. The term first occurs in English in 1914 – a back-formation from HG Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Somehow humanity got by for thousands of years without asking, what if I could travel into the future? What would the world be like? What if I could travel into the past – could I change history?
(7) REVISITING AN OLD FAVORITE. Cat Rambo walks the razor’s edge between a fisking and a fond reading of the Doc Savage novel Quest of Qui in her latest blog post.
Cassy, in the process of shedding a box of Doc Savage novels, found out I loved them and passed them along. I remember Doc and his men fondly; while at my grandparents for a Kansas summer when I was twelve or thirteen, I found my uncle’s old books, which included a pretty complete run of the Bantam reprints and reveled in them for years to come.
I’m going back and rereading while making notes because I loved and still love these books; my hope is that I’ll start to notice some patterns as I move through the books and that I’ll be able to talk about pulp tropes, gender assumptions, reading fiction aimed at a gender other than your own, and writerly techniques in an entertaining and (maybe) useful way….
You’d think Doc would train himself out of that tell, but even the Man of Bronze has limits. An alarm clock rings and a knife appears from nowhere and hits Doc in the back. At this point, we discover that he habitually wears a fine chainmail undergarment. The material of the undergarment isn’t specified. Neither Renny nor Doc can figure out where the knife came from; at least, Renny can’t. Doc’s a cagey dude and you’re never really sure what he knows and what he doesn’t. The knife is an ancient Viking relic.
The phone rings; it’s another of Doc’s men, Monk, aka Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair (“Only a few inches over five feet tall and yet over 260 pounds. His brutish exterior concealed the mind of a great scientist,” the frontispiece helpfully informs us) What’s new, pussycat, he asks Doc, only not in those words. An alarm clock just rang in my office and then there was a knife out of nowhere, Doc retorts. Of course the phone goes dead at this point….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
February 13, 1923 – Chuck Yeager, the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound. Born in Myra, West Virginia.
First, a caveat: There’s nothing wrong with paranormal romance; it’s simply a different genre from horror (and the two genres frequently have a substantial overlap in readers). A romantic storyline, in and of itself, is not a terrible thing at all. This argument is by no means a condemnation of love and the readers who love it.
Romantic fiction uses a different kind of tension—will the protagonist suffer heartbreak? Will the couple get together? End up together?—than the frequently external threats and emphasis on surviving found in horror. In a horror, too much ink spilled about love ends up replacing one tension with another, pulling focus away from whatever monster, human or not, is menacing your hapless heroes.
…We even have a provisional theme – “new con-runners” and with that in mind Conrunner 5 will have a Y.A membership category for those who will be under 40. And we hope to provide bursaries to help members who are relatively new to con-running. We’ve already spoken with the chair of INNOMINATE who will try to find some money for this after pass-along to follow on from the generous donation by Satellite 4 to Conrunner 4. We’ll also be following this up with Follycon and the 2019 Eastercon. There will also be a 2nd Pete Weston memorial scholarship – but how that will be targeted has not yet been fixed.
But Alice and I don’t “Run” Conrunner – we provide the back-bone for others to put on a con-running programme. Claire [Brialey] & Mark [Plummer] did a stirling job this year. Now it could be your turn.
…But let me end by thanking the 70 con-runners who came to Nottingham, and participated in the convention especially the two thirds of members we managed to get on panels. (Next time join earlier and we’ll try and get that closer to 100%). We hope you had an enjoyable and instructive weekend and look forward to seeing you all and many others at Conrunner 5
(11) SELECTIVE EXCERPTS. That’s what Dave Freer always calls these representative quotes, but today I’m really doing it. Plucked from his typical stew of complaints against Puppy-kickers, Scalzi, Tor, and David Gerrold (as well as a big plug for Jon Del Arroz based on taking his story at face value) comes this spot-on statement about the movie Starship Troopers – “Truth in Advertising” at Mad Genius Club.
The other relevant aspect is you shouldn’t be just selling once. The key to success as an author is building a customer base, building a name. Now over on Tor.com they were busy displaying how not to understand this. You see –according to the genius on Tor.com (I hope he runs marketing for the company) – Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS was a work of genius satirically parodying that nasty evil Robert A Heinlein that the modern literati of sf love to hate.
(shrug) I don’t care if you agree, or disagree, adore the movie or hate it… the problem is one the writer of the article seems blind to, and yet, when you think about it, is behind almost all the adverse reaction the movie received.
…If Paul Verhoeven had called the movie I HATE HEINLEIN, or HUMAN FASCISTS KILL INNOCENT BUGS the same people now calling it ‘brilliant satire’ would still have loved it… (possibly less, because they enjoyed watching the Heinlein fans get furious), but it would have engendered almost no disparagement. It would also have lost a huge volume of sales to the suckers who believed the advertised name.
(12) LIFE INTERRUPTED. Is it dead or not? There’s a thematically appropriate question for a magazine about ghoulish movies, Fangoria, especially now with there being disputed claims that the magazine has produced its last print issue. Former editor-in-chief Ken W. Hanley announced on Twitter –
For those wondering: there will likely never be another issue of FANGORIA, especially in print, unless there's new ownership.
— Ken Hanley (New Jersey Chimney Dad) (@movieguyiguess) February 12, 2017
These words are in no way excuses, more the bitter truth about the current circumstances involving our print publication and interruption of production. With time and continued patience from our fans, writers, artists and subscribers we will be working endlessly to make good on any funds owed for magazines and/or articles written. In the meantime, we’ll continue trying to conquer the uphill battle to restore our print issues that our fans urgently long for.
(13) JOCULARITY. Adam Rakunas and Patrick S. Tomlinson have a plan for boosting author revenue – let’s see if this starts trending.
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Lex Berman, Daniel Dern, Paul Weimer, John King Tarpinian, and an untipped hat for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
He also has a long record of controversy for his on-air shots at women, including Heather Mills and Gwyneth Paltrow. His phone prank on actor Andrew Sachs, featuring tasteless comments about Sachs’ grand-daughter, led to a 12-week suspension by the BBC.
Ross’ connection to the sf genre? He’s been a comics writer and video game developer. Loncon 3’s press release called him “a champion of science fiction and fantasy in all its forms throughout his career, and is one of the genre’s most vocal enthusiasts.” Ross is married to Hugo winner Jane Goldman, co-author of the screenplay for 2008 Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) award recipient Stardust.
How Loncon 3 co-chairs Steve Cooper and Alice Lawson linked up with Ross wasn’t explained in the press release. Nearly all past Worldcon toastmasters and Hugo MCs have been drawn from the ranks of pro writers with a history of attending Worldcons. On the other hand, Seth MacFarlane and David Letterman have never offered to MC an American Worldcon — fans on this side of the Atlantic might prove just as susceptible to shiny things.
Loncon 3 Exhibits Division head Farah Mendlesohn wrote on her LiveJournal (in a post since taken private) that she spent all week arguing with co-chairs Steven Cooper and Alice Lawson against Ross’ selection because of his “public abuse of women.” The chairs made it clear this was not something for the committee to decide. Therefore on February 28 she resigned as division head so she could continue to criticize the decision. (For complex reasons she still intends to work as Project Manager for the Exhibit Hall.)
In her resignation, Mendlesohn pointed to Loncon 3’s own anti-harassment policy, saying “It is my firm belief that a person who has publicly harassed, humiliated and expressed prejudice to a wide range of groups in public and live media spaces, including award shows, is not a fit person to take the role of host of the Hugo Awards.”
I’m disappointed that the chairs apparently tried to marginalize instead of acting on Mendlesohn’s criticism. I happen to agree with her. Even a Worldcon chair hypnotized by the idea of putting a shiny international celebrity onstage to host the Hugo ceremony ought to have enough of a survival instinct to understand that when anyone as respected as Mendlesohn says you’re about to step on a landmine – that the division in the sf community will cost a lot more than whatever benefit there is in the celebrity MC.
Seanan McGuire responded to Ross’ selection by loosing a volley of enraged tweets (promptly Storified by that master of disaster, Jim C. Hines) — disbelieving her offer to MC had been turned down in favor of an outsider with his history, and riding an emotional roller-coaster because she could easily visualize Ross cracking fat jokes if she went up to accept another Hugo.
Unlike McGuire I’m at no risk of winning in 2014, but I’d be sensitive to that idea myself.
Charles Stross’ less personalized reason for rejecting Jonathan Ross was that – however he acquired it — Ross has a lot of baggage and would attract the wrong kind of coverage to the Worldcon.
The problem I see is that while fandom is in the process of cleaning house, inviting him — or anyone with a controversial media profile — to be Hugo toastmaster is like rolling out a welcome mat at the Worldcon front door that says “muck-rakers welcome”. There’s a lot of muck to be raked, even before we get into Daily Mail photographers stalking cosplayers: just look at the recent SFWA fracas (plural), the Jim Frenkel/harassment scandal at Tor, and so on.
Worldcon should be safe space for fans, and inviting a high profile media personality who has been targeted by the tabloids is going to cause collateral damage, even if nothing happens, simply by making many fans feel less safe.
So the position of 2014 Hugo Ceremony MC is vacant for the time being. Before Ross withdrew I considered there to be one silver lining in his selection – it meant I wouldn’t have to watch Paul Cornell again. Now that Loncon 3 needs a replacement we may be in for another round of Russian Roulette where he’s concerned.
[Loncon 3’s original press release follows the jump.]
Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon, passed the 5,000 member mark on January 26. With seven months to go, the committee projects it will be the largest Worldcon ever held outside the United States.
The current record holder is Intersection, the Glasgow Worldcon of 1995, which posted total membership of 6,524 and drew 4,173 attendees.
The Loncon 3 committee says more than 4,000 — over 80% — of Loncon 3’s members have attending memberships. That is the same proportion enjoyed by the last Worldcon in the UK (Glasgow, 2005). A new factor in play since then is the Hugo Voter Packet — it remains to be seen if there will be an influx of supporting members joining to vote on the Hugos and get access to the Packet.
Co-chair Alice Lawson also likes the younger demographic among the members. “The Loncon 3 team is particularly pleased that so many Young Adult members have signed up, as we want to make this Worldcon as accessible, dynamic and inclusive as we can.”
Iain M. Banks revealed on April 3 that he is suffering from cancer and has only a short time to live. He shared his diagnosis in a post at Orbit Books:
The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.
He has cancelled all future public engagements. A website has been set up where people can check his progress and sign a guest book — friends.banksophilia.com.
Banks is a guest of honor at next year’s Worldcon, LonCon 3. The committee extended their wishes and assured he will be celebrated whatever may happen —
Loncon 3 co-chair Alice Lawson said: “We asked Iain to be one of the Guests of Honour at this Worldcon because we wanted to acknowledge the huge contribution he makes to science fiction. Our thoughts and best wishes are with Iain at this time.”
Co-chair Steve Cooper added: “Iain is part of the Worldcon family as well as one of our Guests of Honour. His award-winning work will be celebrated in Loncon 3’s programme, publication and exhibits in 2014.”
A bid to bring the 2014 Worldcon to London was officially announced on April 2 at the British Eastercon by spokesman Chris Priest.
The committee proposes to hold the con August 14-18, 2014 in the new International Convention Centre, part of the ExCeL exhibition centre complex in London’s Docklands.
Leading the bid are co-chairs Steve Cooper and Mike Scott. Steve headed the Publications division for the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon, and is the deputy Facilities division head for 2011 Worldcon in Reno. Mike has extensive Worldcon experience, and co-edits the Hugo award-winning fanzine Plokta.
There are two Deputy Chairs. James Bacon, a former TAFF winner, also co-chaired the 2009 Eastercon. Alice Lawson was the Member Services division head at Interaction and chaired the 2001 Eastercon.
Other members are Claire Brialey, Secretary, co-editor of Banana Wings; John Dowd, Treasurer; Rita Medany, Membership, who is chairing the 2010 Eastercon; and two Advisers, past Worldcon chairs Vince Docherty and Colin Harris.
The bid, and the convention itself, will be non-profit-making organisations run entirely by unpaid volunteers. The bid will be primarily financed by the sale of “pre-supporting” and “friend” memberships, costing £12 and £60 respectively and giving discounts on membership of the convention itself. See the bid website for more details.
