Category: worldcon

This year, I decided to try to attend the Business Meetings of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) to learn more about the organization. I’ve served in numerous other governance roles, so my perspectives here are largely trying to make sense of these new experiences in those contexts. Here are some preliminary observations.

One caveat about my comments. These are simply my personal observations and should be taken with a grain of salt. If anyone has corrections or suggestions, I would welcome comments to help me learn more.

Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention (which I’m attending this year) is governed by the World Science Fiction Society. WSFS is basically an entirely volunteer organization that is constituted of the local group that is organizing to put on the Convention each year.

The business meetings use the Lumi virtual meeting platform. Another organization I belong to (the MTA) has used the same platform for their annual meeting. This platform works pretty well. It uses Zoom at the backend, but runs in a browser window, so it is a bit clunky. In practice, however, it works pretty well to provide access to the documents, let you see who is speaking, and offer a seamless voting interface.

Outside of Lumi, they also set up a Discord server for chat while the meetings are going on, with separate channels for on-topic and off-topic discussion. And the obligate channel for pictures of pets, of course.

There are five meetings scheduled: A preliminary meeting, three business meetings, and an in-person site-selection meeting to be held during Worldcon. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the preliminary meeting. But I did attend the first Business Meeting and it was rather like being thrown into the deep end.

The first business meeting was conducted entirely in executive session. The public agenda was “Report from the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards.” Since the meeting was held in executive session, I can’t discuss the content of the proceedings. But that’s not my goal in this post.

The Presiding Officer is supported by three additional roles. A Parliamentarian advises on points of order, a Timekeeper keeps track of time used for debate for and against motions, and an assistant Presiding Officer manages the on-screen presentation. This allows the Presiding Officer to focus on running the meeting without having to refer to external documents or deal with the technology. As someone who’s served as Presiding Officer for many years (of the UMass Amherst Faculty Senate) it looked like the system worked pretty well.

The meetings are highly structured using Robert’s Rules, with very strict time limits established for debate for each of the topics. When the Presiding Officer presented a motion with the proposed time limits, they asked the body if they could be accepted without objection. With more than a hundred attendees, basically nothing could accepted without objection. The net result was that we then had to have a formulaic vote on each of the time limits. They all passed handily, of course. So objecting (as is typical) just wasted 10 or 15 minutes of time in the meeting. That’s the goal of Robert’s Rules: to allow the meeting to move forward expeditiously while giving people who object the opportunity to make their objection known, even if that objection is not shared by the majority.

One of my goals in attending the meetings is to get a sense of the key players. Some of the people I’ve heard of before. But many are new to me. You can pretty quickly get a sense for who are the people that respect the process and try to make the best of use time. And those who are there to try to derail the proceedings and gum up the works. It’s the same in every organization.

One of the most peculiar aspects of WSFS is that the organization only “exists” during Worldcon. Each year, people buy a membership in WSFS (as part of attending Worldcon or separately) and there are business meetings in the weeks leading up to the convention. The membership gives you the right to attend the business meetings, to vote in Hugo Awards, and to vote for the following years’ site selections. But there is no leadership or on-going meetings during the rest of the year. Several times (both in the meeting and on the Internet generally) I’ve seen people use this as an excuse for why problems can’t be addressed or solved.

There are typically thousands of attendees at Worldcon (~8,000 in Glasgow in 2024) and even more people who purchase memberships to be able to vote (a total of 10,000 memberships). But there are only about 150 people attending the business meetings. It’s time consuming to learn enough about any organization to understand how it works and participate meaningfully.

I currently have no plans to try to get more involved in the governance of WSFS. I’m already serving as Secretary of SFWA and that’s plenty of service, thank you very much. But I’m always interested to see other models and there are enough connections between SFWA and WSFS that learning more about the organization and the key players seems useful.

The final(ish) Schedule for Worldcon has come out and I am on the program! My experience with Worldcons seems to be either feast or famine. I had eight appearances as a participant in Chicago, for my first Worldcon, and then was totally declined as a participant for Glasgow. This year, I’m excited to moderate one panel, appear in six more, and I also have a reading. Here is my schedule in chronological order.

Can Biological Research Ever Be Independent?

Room 447-448, Wed. noon–1 p.m.

Let’s face it, we conduct science in an inherently for-profit environment, which leads to all sorts of biases. How do we work around these built-in barriers to create truly independent science? Without breaking too many laws, of course.

An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy

Room 343-344, Wed. 3–4 p.m.

Ewww! Gross! WTF? Yep, all of this stuff is real… and some is common in your back yard.

Self-Publishing for Poets

Room 445-446, Thu. 10:30–11:30 a.m.

From chapbooks to zines, poetry has a rich history of self-publishing. Whether your goal is merely to get your poems into more hands or to craft an online presence as a poet, this workshop will help you learn how to market, sell, and self-publish your poetry. From blogging to Instagram to Amazon, we’ll dive into the important details of crafting a bestselling poetry collection. Learn how to format poetry, how to find the best distribution sites for poetry books, and how to market a collection from advertising to book reviews.

Life as We Know It

Room 447-448, Thu. 1:30–2:30 p.m.

Nothing in fantasy or sci fi is original (no, don’t rage-quit); it is all amalgamations of things we have seen or heard of. So would we recognize life that is truly alien?

Human Evolution and Our Influence on It

Room 445-446, Thu. 3–4 p.m.

Just because we’re at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean that humans are done evolving. Can we predict what is in the future for our bodies? Which creators’ visions are realistic?

Biology and Evolution of the Dog

Room 447-448, Sat. 9–10 a.m.

Human’s best friend, best creation, and best companion: What was the evolutionary path of the household dog? Was humanity the worst thing to happen to wolves?

Makerspaces: For When You Can’t Own All the Tools

Room 335-336, Sat. 6–7 p.m.

A makerspace is shared workshop or group of workshops where people can use the tools and facilities to work on their own projects. Some are membership-based, and some are in public libraries. Assume that any major city will have at least one. Our panelists will discuss their involvement with makerspaces, what they recommend, and how the user can get the best experience from a makerspace.

Reading: Steven D. Brewer

Room 429, Sun. 9–9:30 a.m.

A Familiar Problem. Becoming a powerful demon’s familiar might just be the best thing ever. But what’s the catch? Rory Soletsa is supposed to find his magical familiar, but he doesn’t want something trite, like a cat; or stupid, like a bird; or ugly, like a toad. Amazed when he is captured and becomes the familiar to a powerful demon who presents as a voluptuous, beautiful woman, Rory discovers how much more powerful his magic is with her. And he’s ecstatic when the demon tells him she will train him in advanced offensive and defensive magic. But just what is she training him for?

Percent Human DNA ribbon

When I attended my first WorldCon, I created some Airship Pirate ribbons to promote the serialization of Revin’s Heart. It was (from my perspective) a wildly successful promotional campaign. It was a huge amount of fun, gave me an ice breaker to discuss my book as people walked by the table in the dealer room, and was surprisingly (to me) gratifying to see dozens of strangers all over the convention wearing my ribbon. Since then, I’ve thinking about what I could do to meet or surpass the standard I set then. I think I may have done it with a new ribbon to promote the Better Angels.

The Better Angels are non-human biological androids. That means that they have no human DNA — they are the product of clean-room biological engineering. They are molecularly assembled to spec, fully grown (well, as pre-teen girls), and have a personality module that has programming to govern their behavior. So, although they look like pre-teen girls, they are not human. They were not born. They don’t grow or develop. And they are programmed with a stack of modules that provide all of the functionality for their behavior, from basic autonomic physiology to language and higher-order behavior. In the case of the Angels, they can be singing-and-dancing pop idols or ruthless, cold-blooded covert-military soldiers (Or more! Read the stories to see what else they can do!)

This time, I’ve created a ribbon people can wear with a space to write in their percentage of “human DNA.” You might ask, “How do you know your own percentage of human DNA?” What a great question! To answer that question, I’ve created an app (well, just a webpage, actually) that analyses your DNA and tells you what percentage is “human.” The Better Angels, of course, have zero percent “human DNA”, but how much do you have? Luckily, the app can tell you!

screen of Makasete Human DNA Analysis screen

The 任せて Human DNA Analysis app is simple to operate. You scan a QR code to open the app on your mobile device and tap the fingerprint icon on the screen. The app runs, emits several progress messages, and finally reports your percentage of “human DNA”. Sometimes the first time it runs, it may give you anomalous results. But if you run it a second time (or more), it gives you “more accurate,” precise, and consistent results.

Note the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, however: “Accuracy of 任せて DNA Analysis ±100%”

Also note that, yes, of course I could link the app here. But you’re going to have to come visit me in the dealer room to get the QR code. (smiley-face)

I used to write little web apps like this all the time. For most of my career, I was the Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center at UMass Amherst. I created dozens little web apps for teaching or infrastructure for the Biology Department. But I haven’t done anything like that for a few years. I had to solve a variety of minor technical problems to make it work, and I was tickled to find that I haven’t completely lost my touch.

I invested a fair amount of time investigating what to use as a plausible value of percent human DNA. The simplest answer would have been 99% or something like that. But that wouldn’t have given me a context to talk about the structure of the human genome, which is delightfully weird and complex.

Most people know there are these things called “genes.” And a lot of people know that genes contain the “code” for proteins. When Francis Crick and others “cracked the genetic code” there was great optimism that we would quickly be able to read the “blueprints of life.” But genomic structure turned out to be way, way, way more complicated.

It turns out that only a tiny part (1%-2%) of the DNA in your genome contains coding sequences to make proteins. There are lots of other sequences in there, many of which are still only poorly understood. Each coding sequence is paired with regulatory sequences that control when it is transcribed. There are also bits that code for RNAs that aren’t translated into proteins (transfer RNAs, etc). As much as 8% of your genome includes human endogenous retroviral sequences. Retroviruses (like HIV, varicella-zoster (aka chicken pox), and herpes) have been sticking their DNA into eukaryotic genomes for billions of years. Then there are structural and repetitive sequences, that include things like centromeres, telomeres, and microsatelites, that may comprise as much as 50% of your genome.

Humans are primates and mammals and tetrapods and vertebrates and eukaryotes. The amount of “uniquely human” DNA is actually vanishingly small. Almost all of our genes are literally identical with bonobos (our closest primate relatives) and are functionally identical with all mammals and tetrapods and eukaryotes. Some proteins (like ubiquitin and cytochrome C) have been honed by billions of years of evolution and are virtually identical across all living organisms.

In the end, I met with a couple of professional biologists to ask them what percentage I should report as “human DNA” with the goal of being able to tell a fun story about genomic structure. They were pretty amused by the idea, once they got past the science fictional elements (One said, “What! They don’t go through development!?”), and we agreed to pick something something around 60%.

The ribbons are currently scheduled to be delivered in time that I should have them for Readercon! And I will bring plenty to Worldcon. (Well, a goodly number, anyway. These things don’t grow on trees, after all.) I’m excited, because I suspect they’ll be a hit and, when people see others wearing them, they’ll want to stop by the table to get one of their own. And, who knows, maybe even pick up a book!

So if you’re coming to Readercon or Worldcon, come find me at the Water Dragon Publishing table and get your DNA analyzed.

June was super busy, with the Nebula Conference and the two Pride bookselling events. July looks to be quieter. There are a bunch of events I could have attended, but I’m currently only scheduled to go to Readercon. Look for me in the dealer room where I will, again, be running the tables for Water Dragon and Small Publishing in a Big Universe.

If you’re an author planning to attend Readercon and you don’t have a place to sell books, there is probably still time to request a spot at the Small Publishing in a Big Universe table. It costs very little and gives you a place to tell people to buy your books. Plus you can stand behind the table yourself to meet with readers and sign copies. It doesn’t work so well for authors who are not in attendance but, if you’re there in person, you can really make a lot of sales that way.

I was so busy in June, I didn’t get much writing done at all. Some people can snatch moments here and there to write. For me that can work alright for the little story fragments that I write for #wss366, but it doesn’t work for making progress on my serious writing projects. I did, finally, get back to writing in the past week and wrote the final, climactic scene of one of the storylines in The Ground Never Lies. I had been putting it off for months. Now I only have one or two world-building scenes left to write and then I can try to merge the two storylines. After that, I hope to pass it off to my trusty beta readers to see if the whole thing hangs together. It will need a lot of revising, but July should be perfect for that.

In August, I will be attending Worldcon in Seattle. The schedule has not been finalized, but my draft schedule looks great. I’m currently scheduled for seven panels (serving as moderator on one) and a reading. The reading is from my forthcoming book A Familiar Problem which has been delayed since January. I’m really hopeful it will be out in time for Worldcon. (Of course, I also really hoped it would be out for Boskone and Watch City and the Nebula Conference and Readercon, but… Well… Sigh…)

I finally bought our plane tickets. The most convenient airport for us is Bradley, in between Hartford and Springfield. It’s nice because it’s a somewhat smaller airport and only half the distance to Boston. But Boston tends to have more direct flights. When I fly to Europe, I’ve usually flown out of Boston. I did a search and found that there were no non-stop flights to Seattle from Bradley. There were two from Boston. When I checked, however, they were operated by Alaska Airlines and the cost was nearly twice as much as having one stop. So, we’re flying out of Bradley.

After Worldcon, I will be busy with family and then getting ready for the fall. The fall… Sigh… I have to teach the writing class two more times (in Fall and Spring) and then I will finally be able to retire and be done with working. Then I can dedicate myself to writing full time. I’m really glad I did the phased retirement, but I’m looking forward to wrapping it up.

I was excited to be offered a place on the program at Worldcon in Seattle, but recent events about Worldcon have left me in a quandary. I will probably still attend, but I’m dismayed and discouraged by what’s happening.

I first attended Worldcon in 2023. I applied to be a participant with little expectation of getting on the program, and was very surprised when I ended up with eight appearances. I applied again in 2024 and, expecting to be selected, made all of my arrangements to travel internationally to Glasgow. When I was not selected, I decided — at significant expense — to cancel all of my arrangements. So, when I applied for this year in Seattle, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I filled out the interest form to be a participant in October. In January, I was very excited to be invited to be a participant. And, in early April, I had the opportunity to fill out the panel selection survey, to propose myself for particular roles. And then, just before May, the Worldcon Chair issued a statement, followed by an apology, and then a clarifying statement, about the use of ChatGPT, a generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) in the participant selection process, that included the actual ChatGPT prompt they used to investigate participants.

Basically, they tried to use ChatGPT to assess potential participants (who were identified by name to the system) for disqualifying attitudes, statements, and behaviors. The system collected information and provided it for review, along with an assessment of the suitability of each name.

The reaction of the speculative fiction community was swift and almost universally negative. A few people have tried to speak up for the organizers, but most expressed outrage. A number of prominent people have withdrawn as volunteers and participants. Or even pulled their works from consideration for awards.

Large Language Models are reviled in the writing community for many reasons: they have been unethically developed, frequently exhibit bias, and are known to “hallucinate” false information. Moreover, they represent an existential threat to the writing community if their corporate masters are allowed to profit from the unethical use of the source materials that were used to train them.

Others, with more expertise, have written about the shortcomings of using Generative AI in general, and ChatGPT in particular, for this purpose. Both the choice of tool and the nature of the prompt meant that the results would be potentially biased and untrustworthy.

Many people ran the prompt on their own name to see what their report looked like. Out of curiosity, I finally decided to do that too, to see what they would have found when they investigated me. The report about me was banal with no wildly incorrect information. (I could speculate at length about why, but the reasons aren’t really germane to this discussion.)

I have written about my grave concerns about the use of generative AI and that fact that I do not personally use “AI” for anything. I had previously never used ChatGPT. And I regret having given into my curiosity to use it now.

My overall reaction has been dismay. Worldcon was already going to be thinly attended due to the unsafe conditions traveling to — or even within — the United States for many people. Now, even more people are canceling their plans to attend for this unforced error.

My initial hope was that they would reject the work done by AI — the fruit of the poison tree — and redo the participant selection process — even it meant I risked being denied a spot on the program. But, unfortunately, they seem to have doubled-down on retaining the work done to date.

So, I’m left with a quandary. I don’t plan to take any immediate action. I don’t even know if I’ve been selected to appear on any panels. And I have other obligations to fulfill at Worldcon: My publisher has applied to sell books there — presumably including my forthcoming book. Furthermore, as Secretary of SFWA, I would like the opportunity to meet with and coordinate with my colleagues. But I’m left dismayed and discouraged. And deeply unsettled.

My year in writing has been a year of transition. During the spring, I negotiated with my employer to begin a phased retirement. I was distracted during much that time trying to figure out all of the ins-and-outs of this huge life change. There’s a lot to learn and a huge number of details. Luckily, my life partner is good at this sort of thing — much better than me — and she did the lion’s share of the work. I’m so lucky to have her. But starting this fall, I began teaching half-time, which has freed up a lot of time for writing.

I attended several events related to my writing. I was both a participant at Arisia in January moderating a panel on gender and sexual identity in media and serving on several other panels. I was a participant at Boskone during February where I served on panels about evolution and romance. I ran the Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) Marketplace table at the Watch City Steampunk Festival. I also ran Water Dragon and SPBU tables at Readercon in July.

I offered several readings as well, at Arisia, Boskone, and for Straw Dog. I mostly did readings from Better Angels: Tour de Force with selections from Military Morale Mishegoss and all of The Super Sticky Situation.

To support sales of the signed edition, I made a Better Angels ‘zine similar to the Revin’s Heart ‘zine with snapshots and descriptions of each of the Angels with their vital statistics and “three measurements.” I was really pleased with how it turned out — especially the pictures of the individual Angels. They’re really kyuto!

I continued to offer Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. Roughly forty people have signed up or attended at some point, The average attendance was four with a range of 1 to 9. Attendance was lower during the summer but a few loyal attendees came nearly every week.

I set up and ran Wandering Shop Stories beginning in 2024. I have written a story fragment almost every day as a warm up exercise. We have four or five other participants nearly every day. In December the server we had used to operate the bot was scheduled to shut down, so I migrated to wandering.shop. Nearly 100 people have signed up for the feed. And in late November, I created a bot to offer the prompt on Bluesky as well.

I had two works published in 2024. The collected edition of Revin’s Heart came out from Water Dragon Publishing with the original seven novelettes plus three “side quests” — short stories from the perspective of other characters. I also had a short story, Always a Destroyer, selected for the anthology Romancing the Rainbow by Knight Writing Press.

I have signed the contract with Water Dragon Publishing for A Familiar Problem. A young man desperately wants a strong magical familiar but, instead, is captured and made the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up for something. But what? The book is tentatively scheduled to be released in January 2025.

I did a lot of writing. I finished writing a new series of six novelettes: Lady Cecelia’s Journey with a seventh omake novelette for the extended edition (totaling 74,000 words). I’m calling it a sapphic romantasy road story:

Love blossoms between two young women, aristocrat and commoner, who risk everything to pursue a life together in face of parental and societal disapproval. Their hope takes them from their small town, across the island, to the Capital following the passionate dream that they can be together openly.

I also have written tens of thousands of words of The Ground Never Lies another sapphic romantasy about a geomancer with an anger problem who thinks herself unlovable, but discovers a capacity for love she believes she had lost. I had developed an original outline and when I finished writing it, I realized I only had about half a novel. But then I realized that I could write another timeline of the events that led to her disillusionment and intersperse the two timelines. At least that’s the plan.

I have several other works in progress. I have two novellas written as sequels to Revin’s Heart with a third in in progress. I’ve written several other short stories set in the same universe as Always a Destroyer.

In the fall, when the candidate for Secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) dropped out, I proposed myself as a write-in candidate. In October, I was elected and took office on November 1. It’s been an interesting experience and a good fit for what I can offer to an organization. It’s been a steep learning curve to get up to speed with the current challenges and culture of the organization. But I’m very happy with the rest of the leadership team and feel appreciated for making a useful contribution.

Not everything went well in 2024, however. I was very disappointed when I was not offered a participant role at Worldcon in Glasgow. I had already purchased plane tickets and lodging. I ended up deciding not to go. I was able to recover some of what I had spent, and it turned out that many many people got COVID, so it was perhaps for the best.

I have some exciting plans for 2025 that I look forward to sharing soon.

Worldcon in Glasgow wrapped up today. I didn’t attend any of the last day’s events. Of course, I didn’t end up attending Worldcon in person and only attended a few events remotely. I had signed up very early (I had a badge number in the 3000s as opposed to 15k or 16k by the end.) And I had purchased plane tickets and made hotel reservations before January. I signed up before they announced their “disease mitigation policy.” (Due to my chronic lung condition, I have to be very careful of respiratory infections that are likely to put me in the hospital.) I had been hopeful they would adopt a masks-required policy. But they didn’t. Even so, I planned to attend until I learned that I hadn’t been afforded a place on the program. At that point, I decided to cancel my plans to attend.

I was able to recover some of my sunk costs. I had (at significant expense) purchased fully-refundable airline tickets, so I was able (at some significant effort) to get the airline to refund them. The hotel had required us to basically pay for our stay upfront as a non-refundable deposit, so that was a huge loss. And, of course, I had purchased attending memberships for myself and my son, which were worthless. I offered my attending membership to someone on Mastodon who might want to attend in person, but no-one expressed interest. So I ended up using my membership to attend online. (Someone suggested that I could offer the memberships via other networks, but I said, “F— ’em. If they can’t bother to follow me on Mastodon, they deserve NOTHING.”)

I had been planning to travel to Glasgow with my son, my brother, and his wife. Instead, they flew here (as we had originally planned) and then we just hung out and spent the week together visiting. It was wonderful. I had just finished constructing a new patio with comfortable patio furniture, so we had a marvelous time.

I did attend a few events online. Although, to be honest, it made me feel bad every time since I had been so excited about attending and it was merely a reminder of what I was missing.

I did notice, however, that — in spite of the “disease mitigation policy” which said “We strongly recommend that every member wears a mask, particularly indoors or in crowded areas, such as the registration area and programme rooms” — the number of people actually masking was extremely low. I got several views of the audiences in presentations and counted masked and unmasked participants, and the ratio was between 1/5 and 1/10. So, if I had attended, I probably would have spent a lot of time having to cower in my room. Brrr.

Instead, I had a great time with my brother. My mom, who is over 90, lives with me and I always feel a little guilty that my brother doesn’t get to spend as much time with her. So it was great to have us all hang out together. And we’ve been going on fun adventures. We went to Hawley Bog together today. We’ll go to the Bridge of Flowers tomorrow. And we’ve visited a number of breweries — totally appropriate for Brewers.

In a couple of days, they’ll head home and then it will be time to start getting ready for classes to begin in the fall.

So, in the end, it was an expensive lesson. But it’s just money. We had a nice time anyway, even if I didn’t get to go to Glasgow or have the opportunity to promote my writing.

I made a ‘zine about the Better Angels with photos, descriptions, vital statistics, and their “three measurements.” You can get one by ordering a signed copy of Better Angels: Tour de Force from the publisher.

Last year, before Baycon, I created a ‘zine about the Islands of Revin’s Heart. I had made a map of the islands (for my own purposes mostly) and saw this as a way to get it to people. Plus it was just a fun way to do something creative. I like playing with graphics and design and page layout.

I did the page layout using Scribus. Scribus is free software for desktop publishing. I’m told Scribus is similar to QuarkXpress though I’ve never used the commercial software. I learned it twenty years ago and have laid out five books of haiku and art with it. I have also taught countless students to use it to make scientific posters. When I ran a poster printer, you could count on Scribus to generate correctly-structured postscript files that would actually print accurately — unlike most other apps people use (cough Powerpoint cough).

When I wrote the Better Angels, I had the idea for a ‘zine that would be a guide to each of the Angels that would include a snapshot and other information. I originally had the idea when we did the cover, but we were both busy and so I didn’t push the issue then. But this summer, I finally got around to requesting the artist to create the snapshots of the Angels for me.

The snapshots turned out great! She provided nine (one for each Angel), plus one bonus “freebie.” The artist, Kelley York of Sleepy Fox Studio, does fantastic work. She really captured a whole series of cute expressions for each Angel. (Note: the images are computer-generated (CG), but not AI generated. Although, since the Better Angels are non-human biological androids, I rather like the uncanny-valley-esque appearance of the CG photos.)

Originally, I was planning that the photos would be just headshots. But that proved to be difficult, because their costumes are off-the-shoulder and so they simply looked naked! After some consideration, we zoomed the photos out just a bit so you can see the top of their magical-girl dresses.

I had originally planned to give the ‘zines away at Worldcon, since I would be unable to sell copies of my books there directly. But, when the organizers declined to allow me to be a participant, I canceled my travel plans altogether. So now I have the ‘zines, but don’t have any immediate plans to attend a con where I could give them away.

Instead, you can get a copy of the ‘zine by ordering a signed copy of Better Angels: Tour de Force from the publisher. I will include a free copy of the ‘zine with every book. It’s a really nice book, BTW — especially the hardcover edition! And signed by the author!

I don’t imagine this promotion will somehow kick off a whirlwind of purchases but you never know, right? Sometimes you just have to sow the wind and hope for the best.

On July 15 (less than a month before the convention) I was notified that my request to be a participant at Worldcon was declined. I was pretty disappointed. Since I had been given eight participant roles at my previous Worldcon, I had expected I would get at least some role — even if just to read. But I was not selected for anything.

Given the huge expense of traveling internationally coupled with the heightened risk of COVID transmission on long flights — plus the decision of the convention to not require masking — I decided to cancel my travel plans altogether and not attend the convention.

Given my health issues, I had purchased fully refundable plane tickets. I will have to pay a non-refundable deposit to the hotel. And, of course, I paid the registration cost of the convention. But the expense is little compared to the disappointment of not being a participant.

Maybe next year.

It’s been sad to watch BayCon happening and to not be there. Last year, I traveled to BayCon and got to meet my publisher and a bunch of the other authors with Water Dragon Publishing. This year, I decided I couldn’t attend because they no longer required masking.

Due to my health conditions I need to cautious of respiratory infections. Up to now, I’ve only attended conventions where masking was required. (Except for Rhode Island Comic Con early in the pandemic, where I ended up getting the respiratory infection that put me in the hospital.) Unfortunately, ReaderCon, which I’m attending next week, may be the last convention where full masking is required. I decided to attend WorldCon in Glasgow in August before their COVID policy had been established, but they adopted a policy of “masking recommended”) and I suspect that is going to be the trend going forward — until we have the H5N1 pandemic or something.

So I didn’t go to BayCon this year. And now I’m watching my fellow authors attend and feeling sad that I’m missing out.

Partly, I’m just remembering the wonderful trip that my son and I took to drive all across the country. That was amazing! We saw so many wonderful things and visited a lot of people along the way.

I do have WorldCon coming up in just a month. That’s going to be exciting, although I’m not really looking forward to the trans-Atlantic flight. And all of the rigamarole of crossing an international border. I still remember the misery of going through the hideous check point at Heathrow. It was in a gymnasium-sized room with a line that snaked back and forth 8 or 10 times until it reached a line of booths. We spent at least an hour shuffling back and forth across the room until we finally got to the booths. It was horrible.

I learned a long time ago that I have a lot of inertia. When I haven’t traveled for a while, I don’t want to go. I’m comfortable not going anywhere. But, once I start traveling, I’m happy traveling and then I don’t want to stop. So I know that once I start going, I’ll have fun.

That said, it’s hard watching everyone enjoying themselves at BayCon and not be able to be there.

Oh, well. There’s always next year.