San Marino Worldcon Bid: Faux But Fun

San marino Worldcon bidThe new San Marino in 2019 bid asks “Why settle for a convention in a city when you could have an entire country?”

If they win, they’d like to run a 3,000-person Worldcon beginning August 7, 2019.

Even if they don’t – which I suspect is their preference — they will have succeeded in drawing attention to the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, presented at the Hugo ceremony but inevitably overshadowed.

We think this is a mistake, that there should be more noise made about this award. Every year, the list of nominees should be a blazing signpost of authors you should be watching, or better still, reading.

The bid will underscore its message by publishing at least three volumes of an anthology series, Cream of San Marino: Stories by Campbell Award Nominees.

Lawrence Schoen, the editor, says they will only be available to preupporters. The first volume will include work by these 22 authors:

Charles Sheffield, Dan Wells, Daniel Marcus,  David Brin, Elissa Malcohn, Elizabeth Bear, Joel Rosenberg, John Varley, Judith Moffett, Julie Czerneda, K. J. Bishop, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Laura Resnick, Lawrence M. Schoen, Lev Grossman, Max Gladstone, Michael Burstein, Michael Kandel, Michaela Roessner, Ruth Berman, Seanan McGuire and Shane Tourtellotte.

So the bottom line is that the bid is a hoax but the anthologies are real.

The first official bid party will be November 22 at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ.

Presupport information is on the bid website. A basic presupporter gets their choice of one volume of the anthology series, higher levels get more volumes — and loftier titles.