Category: worldcon

extreme closeup of boxer dog

I have selected my theme for my writing course for the fall of 2025. Each semester I’ve taught the class since 2002, I’ve tried to pick a different theme for my students to research and write about. I can’t say that I’ve never repeated themes, but I always try to think up something different. This semester, I intend for my students to study the biology of Canis familiaris, the dog.

I’ve always tried to select something I don’t know much about. It allows the students to be the experts. And it prevents me from becoming too directive (which happens all too often when I already too much about the subject). It also keeps the course fresh for me and has let me learn a vast amount of biology over the years.

Some themes have worked better than others. Students tend to be strongly biased toward animals, so although I’ve been very pleased with the semesters we studied plants or fungi, students were often less satisfied. I’ve generally shied away from vertebrates, simply because there are a lot of practical and regulatory complications for conducting research on them. So we’ve studied planarians, tardigrades, terrestrial gastropods, worms, millipedes, wood lice, spiders, and many types of insects, which has usually made students happy. (They didn’t like the semester we studied cockroaches, tho. Go figure.) But dogs will be something new.

My thinking was undoubtedly influenced by the excellent panel on dogs I participated on at Worldcon. There’s a wonderfully rich literature about dogs that students can dig into. The real question will be, what kinds of research projects can students propose and conduct? My course asks students to write a proposal — preferably about something they could actually do — and then to select a proposal to actually undertake as a research project.

I encourage students to follow their interests. If they’re genuinely interested in some topic that we can’t actually do, they’re welcome to write it up as a proposal. I often use the example of studying the biology of Mars. We don’t have the resources or time to visit Mars to conduct a project. But that shouldn’t stop them from proposing that, if that’s really what they want to do. It’s typically more fun to pitch something we can actually do. And it’s fun when your idea gets chosen by the class for a whole course research project.

I don’t require that the whole course pick just one project. Each group can choose to do their own proposal or any of the other proposals. Or something different altogether, if something more interesting has occurred to them. But it does sometimes happen organically, that one proposal rises to the top and everyone coordinates to conduct 8 or 9 projects all centered around a single proposal.

I wonder what kinds of projects the students will propose. I think there’s a lot we can do. We could observe dogs at local dog parks. Or simply by walking downtown. Some students will undoubtedly have pets. Or we could look for evidence of dogs in the environment.

Before we write proposals, I have the students perform a “METHODS Project” where they make a multi-panel figure that relates to the theme to get them thinking about the kinds of data they might collect. This year, I’ll ask them to collect photographic evidence of the presence of a dog in the local environment. The challenge for this project is how to collect data that is replicable: Can they think of something to photograph that another student can reliably also document? I can think of a few ideas, but it’s tricky. I’ll enjoy seeing what they come up with.

I’m always happy when I come up with an idea that I’m excited about and that I think the students will also enjoy. I think this is going to be a winner. Now I just need to come up with one more idea for next semester, which will be the very last time I ever teach this class.

In 2022, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and learned that I have a chronic lung condition that puts me at heightened risk from respiratory infections. Even before, during the pandemic, my family was being very cautious due to my 90-year-old mother living with us. The net result has been that, for us, the pandemic never ended.

For several years, I only attended events where everyone was masked. I attended Arisia, Boskone, Readercon, and Worldon in Chicago, while masks were required. But, as events — one-by-one — dropped masking requirements, I have gradually begun attending events where masks aren’t required. This year, I attended Worldcon in Seattle.

I mask everyplace I go indoors, except for my own house. Or inside my own hotel room. It really kinda sucks. No dining in restaurants, no bars, no nothing. (Unless it’s outdoors.)

At Worldcon, a small percentage of people — perhaps 10% — were masked. The numbers were a bit higher in the science panels I attended. At SEATAC, perhaps as many as 5% of people were masked. At DFW, I saw thousands of people during our two-hour layover as we transited between terminals and only saw one other person wearing a mask.

Masks are really not that uncomfortable. They don’t interfere with your breathing at all. When you wear them for hours, however — especially when it’s hot and humid — the increased humidity on your face is irritating. And if I have to do any serious exertion, my mask will become soaked with sweat, which is even worse. It also causes my glasses to be less stable, especially if I’m looking down. I’ve had my glasses literally fall off my face. And don’t get me started about when I use the Portable Oxygen Concentrator (which I need in order to fly) and have to run the oxygen tubes behind my ears too.

Wearing a mask is stigmatizing. People can’t hear you as well and can’t see your facial expressions, which makes you more difficult to understand. It’s isolating because you can’t respond as effectively to social cues. It’s especially bad when you’re one of the only ones masking. It makes you stand out in a bad way.

The modern Summit Convention Center in Seattle has very high ceilings and, reportedly, very high quality air filtration. But I still masked everywhere.

Even masked, I avoided crowded events. If there were a lot of people in a room, I don’t go in. Or I got out.

One of the main reasons people go to Worldcon is to attend parties in hotel rooms and suites. These rooms generally have very poor ventilation. There were a lot of parties on the same floor as our hotel room. We could hear the sounds of merry making in our room every night. SFWA held two breakfasts in their suite. I attended the first for about 10 minutes, when the room completely filled up with unmasked people and so I left.

The net result is that I can only get about half of the experience of going to a convention.

When I returned home, I watched the #disease-self-reporting channel of the Worldcon Discord as reports of cases came in. On my publisher’s Discord, people who had worked in the dealer’s room began reporting positive results too. Every time I saw another report, I would have psychosomatic symptoms. Is my throat scratchy? Why did I just cough?

I finally ran a test this morning, four day after departing the convention. Negative.

It appears I’ve dodged the bullets again. But that’s literally what it is: dodging the bullets. It’s constant and it’s exhausting.

an older man sitting on the garden terrace at the Seattle Worldcin

The 2025 Worldcon in Seattle was generally good. I served on a lot of panels, had a good reading, and (for me) met a lot of people. But I had one unpleasant experience that left a bad taste in my mouth and left me feeling rather mixed on the whole convention.

I had a reading. At first, I realized they had scheduled my reading for Sunday when would have already left. But they were graciously able to reschedule it earlier in the Con. It was, in fact, in the second reading slot for the convention. I worried that it might not get any attendees. After Boskone, I said I would be happy if my reading had any attendees. But there were six people, two of whom came specifically to see me. I joked afterward that it had a non-zero number of attendees and some of them were not even related to me by blood.

I also served on seven panels at Worldcon. Seven is rather a lot, but I like to be busy. I moderated one panel and was a panelist on the others. Many people came up afterward to praise my performance both as panelist and moderator — and to express interest in my books. And some even came to the dealer room later to find me and buy copies.

The panel I moderated, An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy, went very well. One of the participants had emailed everyone within a day or two of the panel being proposed to start organizing it and asked everyone to introduce themselves and describe what they wanted to do talk about. I responded to the email and then, a day or two, followed up gently with the email I normally sent to panels that I’m going to moderate that introduces me as the moderator with my usual information requests, that includes how to pronounce names and solicits questions that will allow each panelist to make the points they want to make about the topic. A few days before the panel, I sent the list of questions I’d come up with. Our presentation went well and I think everyone was able to participate well and say what they wanted to say. The guy who’d tried to take over as organizer apologized after the panel for jumping the gun. He said he’d served on another panel where the moderator never reached out or did anything (which has happened to me too). I said it was no problem. I was pleased that everyone seemed happy with the result.

Most of my other panels were about biology. On Life as we know it, I got to serve with Frank Wu again. We were on a similar panel at Boskone. In the lead up to the panel, I pointed out a couple of new unusual life forms that I had heard about that Frank hadn’t yet seen. He was super excited about them and I think I earned a lot of points with him. In both Can biological research ever be independant? and Human evolution and our influence on it were well-stocked with real expertise and I felt like I could play effectively off points other people were making to add useful information and nuance.

I was on two ‘non biology’ panels. One was about self-publishing for poets, which went well where I got to show off my Esperanto books and the ‘zines I’ve made. The other was about Makerspaces. One of the participants didn’t show up for that one and so it was a little thin. But we had a good time playing off the audience’s questions and letting them to contribute useful information.

My favorite panel was Biology and Evolution of the Dog that had a perfect mix of expertise and personalities. The moderator was a PhD Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who had been deeply involved with sequencing projects. There was an evolutionary biologist and a dog training expert. And me. Since everyone else could play to their expertise, I could just be the weird author and talk about boxer dogs and my story with a character who is a NeoBoxer.

The panel got off to a rough start when it turned out that there was no projector to share the slide presentation the moderator had constructed. I suggested that we could run a zoom session that the participants could join and the moderator could share the presentation that way. In the 15 minutes before the start, I set a zoom session, everyone joined, and it worked. (Mostly. The convention center was experiencing some network issues and the moderator got dropped from the zoom session a couple of times. But we rolled with it, reorganized a couple of the points, and got through everything.)

I also had several SFWA events. I attended a board meeting, served at the SFWA “fan table” a couple of times, and attended a breakfast (for a few minutes: it was tightly packed in a small, poorly ventilated room so I left once it got busy to reduce my exposure to COVID). They had a networking reception that I unfortunately couldn’t attend, because I was on a panel at the same time. But I got to introduce myself as the Secretary to a bunch of SFWA folks, including John Scalzi, while I was serving at the fan table and selling books.

I was too busy to spend a lot of time selling books in the dealer room, but I was there much of my free time. We had brought some books (my own and others from my publisher) and dropped them off before the dealer room opened. I managed to sell most of the books I’d brought and ended up bringing home only a handful. I didn’t manage to sell any of my Esperanto chapbooks, which kind of surprised me. But not that much.

Everything went very well with one exception. One of the other authors with my publisher decided to try to chastise me on two separate occasions for things they misunderstood about what I was doing. In both cases, I felt that they were very aggressive and kind of an asshole about it. I reported the conflicts to my publisher and said that, as things stand, I will not work with this person going forward. But it made me somewhat upset and rather colored the whole Worldcon experience for me.

I should recognize my son Daniel for coming along with me. He was a boon companion and made sure I got at least one good meal each day. Plus he helped me schlep the books all the way there. I really enjoy having him come along with me for many reasons but also because, honestly, I don’t quite trust myself to manage all of the travel details anymore, and so having second set of eyes on everything is reassuring.

We checked out of the hotel around 6am Sunday morning and spent the whole day traveling home: light rail to the airport then two 3-4 hour flights with a long layover in DFW. We finally got home around 1am. I’m rather glad I’m not traveling again until November for LOSCon.

ribbons attached to name badge

My son, Daniel, and I brought ~90lbs of books (two full checked-bags) for Water Dragon Publishing to sell in the Dealer Room at Worldcon in Seattle. So we took the books to the Dealer Room during the set-up time to drop the books off. There was a little old man wearing a convention center staff uniform standing at the door to prevent unauthorized entry.

He peered at our badges and said, “You’re ‘members.’ Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer Room opens.”

We had been listed as dealer-room staff by Water Dragon, so we should have been able to get into the Dealer Room but, due to a snafu, we ended up with “member” badges that didn’t list our role as dealers.

While we were standing there another person came up and then another with the same issue. The guard kept saying the same thing, “Your badge has to say ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.’ I can’t let anyone in unless their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”

One woman was quite irate, “Can I speak to Amy? Can you get Amy? I need to drop off these books.”

He replied, “Your badge says ‘member’. Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer room opens.”

The woman became nearly apoplectic with rage when Amy happened to come by. She listened to us and then promptly directed us to bring in our stuff and drop it off.

When I was leaving, I thanked the guard for his service. He said, “I just can only let people in if their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”

“Yep. It’s waaaay above your pay grade,” I said. “Thanks again.”

Privately, Daniel commented to me, “I’ve never seen someone go full NPC before.”

I commented that he didn’t have much experience with the military because that’s what they train you do to: follow orders.

Later, I was on a panel where someone with a dealer badge said, “Where do you get those name placards?”

“They’re in your participant packet,” someone said.

“Participant packet?”

“Yeah. That white envelope you got when you got your badge.”

“I didn’t get one!”

When I got my badge, I just said my name and gave them my ID and assumed they had everything cross correlated regarding the various roles people had. But evidently their system only tracked one role. So you were either a member or artist or dealer. That’s just my hypothesis.

Later in that day, I was able to get a dealer ribbon that now gives me access to the dealer room during set-up time. So it’s all good.

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.

Reading: Steven D. Brewer

Room ???, Weds 11–11:30 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?

Note: This session has been rescheduled from Sunday.

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.

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.