Posted on 03/21/2025 4:29:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
March 20, 2025 by Kathy Bond Dear Worldcon Community,
I am writing this statement in order to share the status of Seattle Worldcon’s current journey through living up to our theme of Building Yesterday’s Future—For Everyone. We have received a number of concerns asking how the convention will respond to orders and actions of the U.S. government, which we condemn, that create hostile conditions and travel barriers for LGBTQ+ members and international members.
We appreciate everyone’s concerns as we navigate the current political landscape together. As I stated when we won the bid, our theme is an acknowledgment that we have not successfully built the future we have aspired to, but we are also inspired by optimism for a better future—including the movements that have existed throughout history pushing us to build communities and pushing us to recognize our shared humanity. The personal is political, and our fandom lives cannot and should not be separated from that reality.
We are not going to get everything right, and I am explicitly asking for your grace as we move forward, do our best, listen to feedback, and correct our course as necessary.
We do not have a list of all the steps we are going to take in light of the political landscape right now, as it continues to shift rapidly. We know this is not a particularly satisfying answer in light of the many concerns that we have heard from you about our members who need to enter the United States and what they might encounter trying to cross the border. We are not minimizing those concerns. The situation is frightening, and we encourage our members to make the best decisions for themselves even if that means that we will miss you at our convention. At the same time we are committed to not cancelling the in-person Worldcon as some have suggested because it is even more important than ever to gather with those who are able to do so to discuss our theme and celebrate the power of SFF to imagine different societies.
We are investigating what concrete actions we can take and offer to our members. Our Code of Conduct, Diversity Commitment, and Anti-Racism Statement provide the guidelines we are using in making these determinations. We would also like to remind people about what we are already doing.
First, we have in place a Virtual Membership for people who determine that they are no longer safe traveling to the U.S. or cannot attend for other reasons. As part of our program, we are partnering with groups from around the world to bring virtual panels to the shoulder hours (before and after in-person programming) every day of the convention to broaden our streaming offerings and include members from other parts of the world. We are actively working on this part of our virtual event and more announcements will be forthcoming. You also can participate in the Hugo Awards online–voting on the final ballot, and discussing Finalists with each other on our social media or in your own book clubs. There is also the on-line Business Meeting as has been previously announced.
Second, building on the work of other Worldcons and conventions, we will be having Safer Spaces Lounges available for members of marginalized communities who attend the convention in person. These spaces will be marked on convention maps.
Third, we will be drafting a resource guide to collate many of the wonderful resources that local organizations have already put together. In the interim, the ACLU of Washington has several Know Your Rights publications available, as does Northwest Immigrants Rights Project for individuals concerned about their rights while traveling.
Fourth, we will be fundraising for the following nonprofit organizations at the convention: Books to Prisoners, The Bureau of Fearless Ideas, and Hugo House. All of these organizations do important work to promote literacy education in the Seattle area and help build community resilience.
Finally, the political landscape is changing daily and impacting all of us in differing, but profound ways. Our staff is not immune. Many of our staff are deeply, personally impacted by the actions of the U.S. president, as his bigoted and hateful orders target our shared humanity. Many of us are federal employees who are now navigating what is happening to the civil service, terminations from our careers, and extreme uncertainty about our livelihoods. Many of us are also still dealing with the impact of the Los Angeles fires, Hurricane Helene, tornadoes, and other recent severe weather events on our families, loved ones, and friends. As citizens in the U.S. and around the world, we have many concerns, which are probably similar to yours. We all care deeply about our community and about Worldcon and are working diligently to navigate all of the waters that surround us, but we are also human with all the fallibility, blind spots, and competing demands on our time that entails.
This is a time to support each other. If you have questions about how we can support you in deciding about your Worldcon attendance, please reach out to chair@seattlein2025.org.
In solidarity, Kathy Bond (she/her)
Yup—We need a new Conquest Law:
“Everything the left touches turns into mindless word salad.”
Lol.
The paranoia here is off the charts.
This is Seattle. An arriving BLTQXYZ+ guest could probably arrange to be drawn to the convention site in an open chariot pulled by teams of prancing ponies of two-legged variety, wearing jock straps, feather boas and nothing else. And every step of the way they would be hyperventilating about the reign of terror under which they were living.
All Heinlein’s works are slanted rightward. In that era of classic sci-fi, it was largely considered to be a right wing subgenre.
Agree on Heinlein as long as “I Will Fear No Evil” is avoided.
That was his one clunker.
Ender’s Game
Larry Correia (I’m waiting for his ripping on this) has some sci fi stuff, he’s freedom loving, mormon too but I dont hold that against him. Baen Books has several authors that are conservative, libertarian bent, but they are freedom of ideas so they have some lefty authors too—some are good too.
S.M. Stirling is my favorite Baen author.
The Draka series is intense.
Liberals are locusts.
They like to move to prosperous, safe, clean areas, and then inject their liberal trash until that place too has human feces on the sidewalks, graffiti on the walls, some homo using the ladies bathroom spraying the seat down, weirdo teachers indoctrinating kids...
After they royally screw the place up, you find their licence plates wonder to new hosts, new areas not yet destroyed by their dysfunctional way of thinking.
Yup—the long march through the institutions.
Most science fiction books are fine—but any awards given these days are highly suspect since the awards panels are leftist zombies.
You obviously don’t see the real Seattle.
Authors rather than specific books: Larry Correia, John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson. There are others.
Robert Heinlein could be considered conservative, though I think of him more as a libertarian.
Bkmk
I used to look forward to reading each year’s “Best Of” anthology books until around 20 years back when SciFi publishers went like Hollywood producers and pushed alphabet freak wokesters over actual talented writers.
I check one out of the library (run by lesbians) every few years only to turn it back in mostly unread, finding they’re still churning out that garbage. Thank God we have so much greatness from the likes of Silverberg, Heinlein, Zelazny, Asimov, Card and so many others still available to read.
A few names come to mind: Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, Keith Laumer, Gene Wolfe, Gordon Dickson, Dean Ing, David Drake, Robert Heinlein (up to about Stranger in a Strange Land, then he went to Hell). A lot of these writers were somewhere in the conservative to libertarian range, but as you can see there is a shortage of *living* contemporary conservative SF writers. As with actors in Hollywood, it’s not that there aren’t writers whose personal politics aren’t conservative, but most learn early on that they’d better keep their mouths shut if they want to have a career. The Fruits & Nuts Faction did a really good job of making examples of Orson Scott Card and J.K. Rowling. Aside from people like Jon Del Arroz, who seems to thrive on it, no one wants to draw the attention of the crazies.
> Not that he really pushes a conservative worldview
Orson Scott Card didn’t need to push a conservative worldview. All he had to do was fail to loudly and publicly praise the genius / talent / heroic struggle / blah blah blah of the homofacist faction, and that was crime enough. They HATE him and want to destroy him.
The SF publishing and fan world has been taken over by demented idiots who don’t actually seem to like anything, but they sure do know who they HATE and want to destroy.
I expect Sarah Hoyt will weigh in on this in her blog: www.accordingtohoyt.com
She generally writes with a libertarian perspective.
Yes, we stay away from the bad parts.
Unfortunately most of those people are dead.😵
If there are bad parts, as you say, then why don’t you do something to make them into ‘good parts’. What this indicates is that you are segregated into a safe enclave. Willingly!
Actually I have relatives living in many parts of Seattle. Daughter’s in laws, my other daughter, her boy friend live in other parts of city. I always visit all of them. The ride from SeaTac airport to Seattle is always trafficky but pleasant. We all took a boat ride last July from downtown area where cruise ships dock. And we visited several nice restaurants. Everywhere it was clean, very pretty and I will visit again in coming July.
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