The Worldcon 2017 Site Selection Process: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide

Recently, one of my friends confided in me that she found the process for voting for the Worldcon site complicated to the point of being off-putting.  So I decided to make a simplified template to follow for this year's site selection process.  For a far more detailed version, I strongly suggest you read Crystal Huff's excellent post on the subject.

I will update this page with when additional information (links, dates, etc.) becomes available.

1) Buy a Membership to Sasquan 2015
In order to vote for the 2017 Worldcon site, you must have a supporting or full membership to the 2015's Worldcon.

2) Wait for the Site Selection Ballot to Be Announced
The Sasquan 2015 Site Selection Ballot is currently available here.  Follow the instructions on the document to vote, especially if you plan to mail in your ballot or submit it via email.  Candidates are also listed on that document.

3) Pay Your Site Selection Ballot Fee
The fee to vote is $40 and can be paid online via Sasquan's Site Selection page (the payment system is NOW open!).  You may also pay the fee at Sasquan or via Check or Money Order (in US funds) with your paper ballot (see address below).

This fee automatically transfers into a supporting membership for the winning bid.  The winning bidder may also extend additional deals for full memberships after the selection process is over.

4) Download the Print Ballot OR Go to the Site Selection Booth During Sasquan 2015
Worldcon does not currently allow electronic voting, so all ballots must be submitted at the 2015 convention OR by mail or email.

The print ballot is available here (as noted above).

5) Submit Your Ballot
If you are not attending Sasquan 2015, then you must print, fill in, and mail your ballot to the address provided by the deadline OR email your ballot to ballot2017siteselection@sasquan.org (for those who pay their fee online).

To mail your ballot, send it to the follow address:
Worldcon 2017 Site Selection
c/o Joni Brill Dashoff
PO Box 425
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006-0425 U.S.A.

All mailed and emailed ballots must reach the site selection crew no later than August 10th, 2015 at 24:00 PDT.  Send it well in advance if you are concerned about delays.

That's it.  Pretty easy, right?

On the Raging Child of Science Fiction Neo-Snobbery

On a foundational level, the most visible element of SF awards discussions concern subjective assertions about literary quality.  I have participated in some of these discussions over the years, podcasting about nominees I disliked for whatever reason and otherwise raging against what I perceived as the absence of taste within certain award-giving communities (mostly the Hugos).  The further away from those first instances I become, however, the more I realize how foolish these discussions really are.  Why rage against a difference in literary tastes?  I can no more tell someone what they should like than they can me.  At best, I can make a case for what I consider to be "good," but even then, the most effective arguments are those that explain why a text is interesting, not why it is qualitatively better, since the latter is, for the most part, impossible.  What we consider "of quality" could make for a very confusing, intersecting Venn diagram.

Retro Nostalgia: Equilibrium (2002) and the Paradox of Emotion

If you blinked back in 2002, you might have missed this lesser known Christian Bale vehicle featuring stylish gun kata and deliberate and sometimes excessive homages to George Orwell's 1984 (particularly the 1984 adaptation starring John Hurt).  Indeed, one could describe Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium as Orwell on drugs.  

Here, Orwellian propaganda is apparent in the frequent appearance of Father (Sean Pertwee) "teaching" the masses about the dangers of "feeling" and the need to relinquish that human quality for a stable society.  The gesture is reinforced from the start by a veritable lecture, rife with images of human violence, in which Father reminds us that the people of this future have barely survived World War Three, and that humanity cannot survive another such war.  We must not feel if the world is to survive, it seems; and so we must voluntarily purge emotion by taking injections of Prozium.  On one level, this is hardly an irrational prospect, it would seem.  

Space Opera and Epic Fantasy: Two Trees Sharing a Root System (and Then Becoming Two Big Nasty Trees That Eat Other Trees, or Something)

Last month, Paul Weimer suggested I write about the connections between epic fantasy and space opera.  Initially, I didn't know how to approach the topic.  Paul, you see, is far better read than myself, particularly in the literary history of science fiction and fantasy.  What could I say about the topic that Paul couldn't say better?  Well, I'm going to take a stab at it!

There was also another problem:  which period of these two genres are we talking about?  If we're looking at the early years of space opera and epic fantasy, then the connection is apparent, but diffuse.  Both epic fantasy (what might have been better termed as heroic fantasy in its "root" period) and space opera in the first half of the 20th century shared roots with the adventure fictions that preceded them.  Space opera arose, more or less, out of the planetary romances of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, proto-space opera writers like E.E. "Doc" Smith (though some might disagree with that assessment) and late-19th century "future war fiction" (see I.F. Clarke; I would argue that space opera gets its political undercurrents from this movement).[1]  Both forms (space opera and planetary romance) are hard to distinguish,[2] since they often share in the same melodrama, with "space opera" typically playing within a much wider canvas (though not always), and both forms share a common root in the late 19th century adventure stories and the pulps that followed.

My Complete 2015 Hugo Awards Nominations Ballot (Finished on 3/10/15)

It's that time again.  Hugo Awards time.  Since the nomination period closes on March 10th, 2015, I figure it's time to start sharing my ballot with the world.

Note:  this list is extremely incomplete and will be periodically updated as I find things to add to unfilled categories.  Categories are also subject to change.  If you have suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments (seriously; I'm very scatterbrained at the moment, so I'm missing all kinds of things).

Here goes:

Helsinki in 2017: Why I Support the Bid & the Supreme Awesomeness of Finnish Care Packages

If you didn't already know, I'm a huge supporter of Helsinki's 2017 Worldcon bid.  A huge supporter.  I did the whole pre-support thing when I was in London last year, and I intend to go through the whole process of voting for Helsinki at this year's Worldcon -- well, not at the actual con, mind, but you get the idea.

I've never done anything like this before.  But in the last year-ish, I've met and talked to numerous folks from Finland or involved in the Helsinki bid (Crystal, I'm talking about you!), I've held and taken many pictures with Moomins, and I've learned about Helsinki itself.  Plus, I love Nightwish:

Update: Wordpress Move on Hold

Just a quick note for folks who were wondering what was going on:

I've put the move to Wordpress on hold for the moment.  It turns out that Wordpress.com does not allow the use of iframes or scripts, which means I'd need to do a self-hosted webpage.  There's a good reason WP doesn't allow these things -- security -- but I personally prefer using easy iframe or script codes for widgets and the like than trying to find complicated workarounds or using static images that link elsewhere.

Since I'm currently in the midst of financial hell as a grad student -- student fees, etc. etc. etc. -- I won't be able to move things to my own hosted page for a little while yet.  Instead, I'm going to see if I can't redirect my Blogger blog to my own domain, which is financially viable in these annoying "student fees" months.

My apologies if you were expecting a move sometime soon.  Wordpress is probably a better option for what I'm trying to do, but without iframes/scripts, it's just shy of what I need.

So...it's on hold until April at the earliest.  And that means I can stop working on this stuff and get back to blogging about things.  Coming up:  a review of Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) and a Retro Nostalgia piece on Equilibrium (2002).