Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 01:41:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> Subject: [WSFA] Combined reply Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> This is a combined reply to several recent messages. If anyone prefers that I reply to each message, or to each message topic, separately, please speak up. Thank you. Michael Walsh wrote: > Since the likelihood of actually removing NASFiC from the WSFS > Constitution is pretty darn small, the only other alternative I > could think of last year was to vote in the NASFiC site selection, > voting for No NASFiC. Well, it's going to Seattle, & I'm not. What's the point in that? By voting, you paid money that went to the convention. And you must have known that "No NASFiC" had no chance of winning. So the net effect was to *encourage* them. > Just that it's administered by the World SF Society. Which makes it > really hard for WSFS to claim to be a "World" organization, NASFiC > being the only NatCon it administers. Good point. (Though I could nitpick that NASFiC is a continent con, not a national con. One could be in Canada or Mexico, though it never has been.) > Once upon a time, when Worldcon memberships were, er, much less than > they are now, WSFA use to purchase a few memberships to resell to > financially strapped WSFAns at a later date. Perhaps something for > the club to think about? Hotel and transportation costs still dwarf con registration costs, though if the latter continue to grow as they have been, that will soon no longer be true. In looking through old WSFA meeting minutes, the most surprising thing I saw was WSFA collectively voting on the Hugos. Did clubs get votes? Or was there an agreement that all members would vote the way the club decided? > Eh? Eh? (Doing a bad Canadian accent . . ) > Yes, the correct title is A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS. (...as he hurriedly phones his printer and says "Stop the presses! I have a change in the cover!") Ted White wrote: > I have to wonder on what basis Keith says that "the fact [is] that > overseas Worldcons are generally not as well put together as US and > Canadian ones." I've been to five overseas Worldcons ... I have to > wonder if Keith has been to *any* overseas Worldcon. I've been to two. Glasgow in '95 and Melbourne in '99. I won't mention the terrible acoustics in '95, since those have supposedly been fixed. I *will* mention the tobacco smoke, the cold indoor temperatures, the fact that the tap water was not fit to drink in the SECC and that nobody bothered to tell us this until the second day of the con (fortunately I suffered no apparent ill effects), the lack of people (if I wanted a small con, I could have gone to any regional con for a lot less money), and the lack of room parties. The two main things I go to cons for are to meet people and to go to room parties. '99 had even fewer people, and the same lack of room parties, but at least there was good water and little tobacco smoke. > Since I go to Australia or the UK to meet and spend time with fans > of those areas, I'm just as happy to see relatively fewer Americans > there. Unfortunately, as I discovered on the tour of Australia I > took, most of the Americans who have the money to make these trips > are neither people I know, nor, for the most part, people that I > want to know. They are just extra bodies clogging up the facilities. If a con is expensive to attend, you will most get the wealthier fans. The one Australian I'd most have liked to meet -- the SF author Greg Egan -- was not at the Australian Worldcon. Neither were most other people whom I normally expect to meet at Worldcons. > Glasgow in 1995 had far too many people in attendance, and was far > too "American" as a Worldcon. I suspect Glasgow in 2005 will be > even more so. I believe every non-US Worldcon has had more Americans than locals. Japan in '07 may be an exception, albeit with thousands of non English speaking people who have about as much to do with fandom-as-we-know-it as most Dragoncon attendees do. Jim Kling wrote: > Not to dredge up SpamArrest again, but it seems that Ted's objection > is quite valid -- there's no apparent way to make sure that email > list messages get through. I was under the mistaken assumption that > an email from the WSFA list would have from: WSFAlist at WSFA.org in > the from: heading. It does always have that in the Reply-to: heading. And [WSFA] on the subject line. SpamArrest may be marginally tolerable if used as a pure whitelist. But then why bother? You can create a whitelist for free. ecfield at comcast.net wrote: > Wow! Just experienced a deja vu all over again... > http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/8/9 Creating a glass rather than a crystalline solid when cooling is also a major objective of cryonics, since it's believed to cause less cellular damage. Ted White wrote: > But there is a yet more subtle chauvinism. Language chauvinism. Is there any significant amount of non English language fandom, i.e. not just SF stories but also fanzines and cons? > [Worldcon] went first to Canada in 1948, but has never been to > Mexico ... Has there ever been a bid by Mexicans? I know there have been bids *for* Mexico, but I didn't notice any Mexicans on the bid committee. > So how about a Japanese Worldcon? It has two strikes against it > for most Americans and Brits: First, it's almost as far away -- and > expensive to get to -- as Australia. And second, it's a distinctly > more alien culture, non-English-speaking, and thus perceived by > many as less hospitable. Plus (maybe strike three) it's a Damned > Expensive country -- at least in the cities where a Worldcon could > be held. Just one strike might not be a problem, but two or more > strikes are. I agree. I'm surprised Ivy prefers it. For one thing, long before '07 she will be living in the US. For another, even if she's still in the Philippines in '07, will Japan really be cheaper to travel to than the US? I'd think the additional distance to the US would be more than made up for by the higher prices in Japan. > But I'm not saying it will never happen. Just probably not in 2007. Really? I'll be surprised if Japan doesn't win for '07. But whatever happens, you can't blame me, since I won't be voting this time. Still, it will be interesting if the vote totals differ by one vote -- thousands of people will be correctly thinking that it would have been at the other place if not for their one vote.