Posted on 04/13/2025 4:49:17 PM PDT by Angelino97
Writer wants no more World Cons in the U.S. until these "horrors" stop.
Follow the legal entry laws….no problem.
The author, Gary Westfahl, has written this work of fiction article.
And he wants to move it to Canada... where they treat Americans with disdain and condescension. I used to do work with McDonnell Douglas Canada. The border guards treated me like I was out to steal Canadian jobs, when I was moving work into MDCAN. Assholes since the 90’s, that’s Canada. But they really like American dollars.
I’m sure people fly into America everyday with zero problems.
The writer is spreading the propaganda of the Left.
What is happening is selective publishing of stories to create a narrative.
I wish we could get rid of all the cons in America.
Here are some rules to Attend Worldcon and have fun. I know these are complicated and hard for SciFi fans to Grok. Maybe they can get some assistance and tips from other attendees.
DO...
1. Get tourist Visa
2. Attend Worldcon
3. Return home before Visa expires
DON’T...
1. Sneak across southern or northern border into the USA
2. Overstay your Visa
3. Lie on your Visa application and start screaming “From the River to the Sea!”
4. Take off your clothes, run around DFW Airport shrieking like a banshee and throwing things at the monitors.
Science fiction can be a wonderful departure from reality. This guy ignores the fact that such departure is not meant to be permanent. What he is presenting in this notice is a work of fantasy, and not a very good one.
With partial sponsorship funding from Preparation H.
As it happens I’m currently reading a compilation of Hugo award winners (one of the top science fiction awards) compiled by Isaac Asimov, dating back to the 1960’s. And it is striking to me how even then the SF community was dominated by full-of-themselves leftist echo chamber types who are not nearly as bright or scientific as they tell themselves they are.
This is my story at the hands of “Friendly Canadians”. Note that this is not the behavior of individual Canadians I was subjected to, but the government officials.
I travelled up to Canada in the late Winter a few years back, just by myself, going on a road trip. I had vacation time and was going to lose it because I had so much of it, a nice “First World Problem”. But it was early in March, and my wife could not take any time off. So I just picked it out of a hat, so to speak, and thought it might be interesting scenery if nothing else.
I was a middle aged, white, short hair, glasses, wearing a military Navy veteran hat.
I had been driving for several hours straight (through northern Maine) when I hit the border. I figured I would stop and use a men’s room at the border crossing facility, which was good, because at that point, I had to go pretty badly.
When I got there, they asked me questions at the window, then told me to pull my car to the side and come inside the building. When I came in (this was around 20:00) there was one person in this big room with benches, and when I asked him if I could use the men’s room, he said no. I had to wait.
I had to urinate pretty badly at this time, but felt like I had no option, so I paced back and forth, getting more and more uncomfortable.
After about five minutes, two border guards came out (male and female) and walked me to my car, asking me questions about whether I owned guns, etc. and then proceeded to take the entire car apart. Took my luggage out and completely emptied it, pulled out floor mats, emptied my glove compartment, emptied my trunk, searched the engine compartment, etc
The female Canadian border guard pulls my container of prescription pills out (to save space when going on short trips, I just take what I need and throw them all into one container) and asks what they were, so I explain each one, and she admonishes me and says “You shouldn’t put them together in one container” which starts to REALLY piss me off. They are pulling other stuff out saying “What’s this? Why do you have this?”, etc.
Then, they pull my secured gun safe from under my seat, and ask if I had a gun in it. I said no, I already told them about a half dozen times I did not have a gun with me. They asked me to open it, and for some reason, the key didn’t work. At this point, I had to go so badly I said “Look. Why don’t you get a crowbar and force it open, I really have to go to the men’s room!” But I did finally get the blamed thing open.
All this took about 30-45 minutes, and by the end of it, as anyone who has ever had to go that badly knows, you almost begin to salivate from the discomfort.
I was pretty pissed, and not from the “chipping of the porcelain” that took place when I got to go, either.
Anyway, I found a hotel, and stayed there the night. The next day, I drove up to Prince Edward Island, and it was pretty dead, as anyone who travels up there in the winter knows. But I was just driving around smoking my pipe, and listening to music. No agenda. No destination. I went to the “Ann of Green Gables” house, but it was closed. It was at this time, as I was leaving the closed grounds, that I got the notice that I my phone was being inactivated due to non-payment or something stupid like that. So I called ATT, and found that somehow, I had roaming on. I ended up only paying a few hundred dollars instead of a few thousand, and was glad for it.
I stopped that evening at a Chinese restaurant in PEI, and it was the most gawd-awful, worst Chinese food swill I ever had in my life, and I had ordered a lot of it because I was really hungry. I usually have a wide latitude for what I will eat and even enjoy for Chinese food, and this fell outside those boundaries. I ate very little of it, it was that bad.
I found out that to serve Chinese food up there, you have to have some kind of “special” license. Figures.
So I stayed overnight and drove back the next day. I was still steaming about the Border crossing the day before, and as I drove South past St. John, Nova Scotia, it was a beautiful, sunny day. There was absolutely NOBODY on this major (for them) highway, but I was tooling along, listening to music.
I passed a police car parked off the road, it was sitting there facing the road, and as I went by, I reflexively looked down at my speedometer, spot on the speed limit as I was using cruise control when driving through localities I am unfamiliar with. I absolutely do not speed in those areas.
I looked in my rearview mirror, and to my surprise, saw the police vehicle pull onto the road and accelerate after me, turning on its lights. Puzzled, I pulled over.
The police officer approached my car as I watched him in the side mirror, and asked to see my license and registration. I am past the point in my life where I ask “Why am I being stopped?” I figure at this point, I should just let them do their thing, and go passively along, so I handed them over. The Canadian police officer asked if I had any firearms in the vehicle, and when I gritted my teeth, I forced myself to answer politely in the negative.
He walked back to his vehicle.
As I sat there on the side of this wide, sunny, deserted highway waiting for them to run my plate or whatever it is they do up in Canada when they stop someone, I saw another police car come zooming up, lights on, and pull up behind the first police car.
Great. Now I have two police cars behind me, as I sat on the side of this deserted highway.
The female Canadian cop saw fit to walk up to my car, and asked if I had any weapons in the vehicle. Now, I am really starting to get pissed, but again, politely answered negatively. I almost blurted out “What the Hell is it with you people up here and guns?” but the vision of having a cavity search performed in a cold cell by an enthusiastic non-binary police officer compelled me to just shut my mouth.
The other cop eventually comes back and says “Do you know why we pulled you over?” I answered no, and he said “We got a call from a gas station about forty miles north of here who said you filled your car with gas but didn’t pay for it.”
I am sure I arched my eyebrows at this, as I am not the stealing type, and said “Yes, I filled up, but I definitely went inside and paid for it. Look, I would have no problem driving back and squaring it away with the gas station. There must be some kind of mistake, because I know I paid for it.”
The cop handed me back my documents, and suggested I go straight back and not take any detours. I agreed, and drove forty miles back.
When I parked and walked inside, the guy at the counter saw me, and his face exploded with all signs of happy familiar recognition, and before I could say anything, he said in a breathless torrent “I’m sorry-I told the police what happened, and that I was sure it was a complete misunderstanding and asked them to go easy on you...”
I turned out I had stopped for gas, filled up and gone inside to pay manually. The pump didn’t like my card for some reason, but told me I had to pay inside after I pumped, which I did. When I went inside, I grabbed a soda, and went up and paid for it with my credit card, which it happily accepted. However, I assumed I was paying for the gas as well, and as the guy behind the counter and I chatted amiably about the weather, non-Canadian credit car rejections, and the empty road, I did not get a receipt (Didn’t need one!) and jumped back in my car to drive away.
Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling any love from North of the Border. Don’t feel like going back up to Canada again. I probably never will.
Exactly.
The Hugo’s and Worldcon are a freaking joke.
It just doesn’t carry the same meaning or fun.
Let it die already.
The Locus Newsmagazine editorials had pro-mask, pro-vax, pro-lockdown for all the Covid hysteria years.
One last year said some SF people died of Covid and “Why, why didn’t they get their shots and keep the boosters up to date?”
Any opportunity they blast Trump and us.
When Analog Magazine editor Trevor Quachri wrote a nasty, anti-Trump editorial in the first term, a significant number of subscribers cancelled. He printed about a dozen rebuttals from Trump fans.
DragonCons were fun up until the early 00s.
I haven’t had any interest in going back since.
The last one had Martin Landau and I heard one of his panels and talked to him for few minutes getting his autograph.
Great guy to talk with.
I was one of those kids who loved seeing the ITC animation and Space:1999 on Saturday nights.
Laws governing who can enter the country have always been enforced. There is, for example, a law against bringing over $10,000 cash into the US. I saw US Customs take a couple of elderly Japanese women in for questioning because they had more than $10K in their luggage. Did they look dangerous? No. Did they look confused? Definitely. This happened in 2016.
The difference now is that Trump is president, so these incidents that passed under the radar before are suddenly being held up front-and-center in order to try to frighten tourists into avoiding visiting the US. It’s always a good idea to find out something about the laws of the country you plan to visit, no matter who you are.
This tactic is reminiscent of the stories of women who died having abortions using common procedures were touted by the left to try to show how dangerous anti-abortion laws are. Women have always died from routine abortion methods. They only became newsworthy when they died in a state that no longer allows routine abortion.
We could miss out on the next Walter Breen.
never leave home. That’s my motto.
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