Westercon, the movable west-of-El-Paso-east-of-the-Pacific regional, no longer draws a couple of thousand fans on Independence Day weekend, but a lot of the attendees (about 700 this year) are people I know, and in programming, parties and SF gossip it remains in the convention Big Leagues.
Tempe is very hot and not as dry as advertised. The convention venue, the Mission Palms (to be the site of the North American Discworldcon over Labor Day weekend), offsets the heat with ferocious air conditioning. It is located in the middle of a restaurant-dense downtown area. On the night of the Fourth, the pool deck offered a splendid view of Tempe’s forty-minute fireworks show.
To start with unhappy news, I learned that Khen Moore, a Southern fan best known for his incredible art collection, died a few days ago. He had been ill for a long time, suffering the effects, sadly, of inveterate alcoholism. While I didn’t know him well, we had a few pleasant chats, and he thoughtfully pointed out to me where I could buy a print of an Alan Clark painting that he had commissioned and I had admired. It’s not clear yet whether he left a will and made arrangements for the disposition of his paintings. If he didn’t, I’m much afraid that Tennessee probate costs will lead to distress sales and the effective loss of a number of excellent pieces of art. (Let that be a warning to all of you who keep putting off will making till the Greek calends.)
Worldcon bidding has not emerged from its lull. Reno, unopposed for 2011, threw a couple of nights of reasonably good parties. Chicago, unopposed for 2012, had a bid table but no party. Texas will announce a 2013 bid at Anticipation; the city is a secret (at least from me). I predict San Antonio, which was a delightful site in 1997. Also on the verge of announcement is a British bid for 2014, reportedly for the London dockyards (overbuilt for the 2012 Olympics and therefore cheap). San Diego has made noises about 2015, though I’ve heard nothing new for several months and am told that there is local skepticism. Japanese fans have politely informed reliable sources that they’d like to bid again in 2017 and establish a once-a-decade tradition à la Australia.
And that’s it. No year has more than one likely bid, and the out-years are not promising. I’d bet a great deal that Los Angeles will pounce on 2016, or on 2015 if San Diego looks shaky. If anyone in Boston is currently enthusiastic about campaigning for any year, he, she or it is keeping very quiet. Philadelphia is equally mute. Balto-Wash will surely bid someday. Alas, the local fans seem to be waiting for the D.C. city council to give the go-ahead for a hotel adjoining the new convention center. Cargo cults will have their prayers answered more quickly.
There are moments when I muse that we ought to give up selecting cities and vote instead for con committees, leaving it up the winner to come up with a place. I look forward to the epic battle of Yalow vs. Standlee.
Westercon bidding is tame, too. Glenn Glazer’s San Jose bid won unopposed for 2011, and Seattle has announced for 2012. If chosen, it will use either the Marriott or the Hilton at SeaTac airport.
Those looking for a contest may have to be content with the NASFiC. Raleigh has been running all alone to host the North American regional in 2010, when the Worldcon will be held in Australia. Since the filing deadline has passed, it ought to be a shoo-in, but late word is that next year’s Westercon (Pasadena) is launching a write-in bid to add the NASFiC to its banner. If the effort is serious, it will be interesting. Having good friends on both bidcomms, I am going to declare my strict neutrality and tell no one (maybe not even myself) how I vote.
I’d have more to say about the program – one of my retirement resolutions is to attend panels rather than simply look at them in the program book and intend to show up – but I found myself preoccupied with finishing my Hugo reading. (The voting deadline was Friday night, so, if you didn’t cast your ballot, it’s too late now and you have no right to curse the idiots who picked the winners.) For various reasons, I’d put this task off. Hence, I absorbed in a short time what some subset of fandom thinks were the best works of 2008.
This concentrated reading left one particularly strong impression: Our contemporary writers are fascinated by bold new ideas but not too interested in making them into genuine stories. I’ll single out one especially blatant example, Robert Reed’s Best Novella nominee “Truth”. The concept is fine: a lone time traveler who, wanting to destroy Western civilization, arranges to be captured shortly after 9/11, pretends to be one soldier in an army invading from the future, and tricks his too-clever interrogators into taking the counterproductive actions that will bring about his goal. In precis, it sounds like a great story, and a sufficiency of nominators must have seen its potential. In fact, however, we are never told how the saboteur carried out his mission, and its unraveling is heavier on atmospherics than ratiocination. In the end, the tale remains potential rather than realized. It is not alone among the nominees.
One program item that I will mention is the panel on “Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?”, where Rick Foss found himself moderating between two anti-Stratfordians. Since one of them was Eric Flint, the session was basically a monologue. Mr. Flint, who doesn’t pretend to be a deep student of the “authorship question”, declared his support for the fatuous idea that a whole bunch of playwrights used “William Shakespeare” as a handy pseudonym. (Yeah, if I wrote Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, I’d let some angel take the credit, too.) His “decisive” argument against Shakespeare of Stratford’s having been the sole author (making allowances for occasional collaboration, as with Fletcher on Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen and with Middleton on Pericles) was that “he retired permanently to Stratford in 1604” – a “fact” about which his certainty was unshakeable, even though there’s not a shred of reason to believe it. For the rest, he expounded some of the standard anti-Stratfordian delusions, e. g., that Venus and Adonis is exceptionally learned and that the Stratford Man made his money as a “grain trader”. To give credit where it’s due, he also had the good sense to knock down some of his own side’s stale chestnuts; as an author himself, he knows that Shakespeare didn’t have to visit Italy in order to use it as a setting.
Oh, I mustn’t overlook a personal milestone. At the Westercon business meeting, I spoke on the prevailing side on a motion. That hasn’t occurred at any business meeting at any convention (including the mock business meeting at the Colorado Springs SMOFCon) since 1986.
To conclude, it was an enjoyable Westercon, arguably the most satisfactory in several years. My hope is that this, the oldest of continuous science fiction conventions after the Worldcon itself, is now on an upswing.
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