Yearly Archives: 2023

The slow Worldcon train wreck

This entry was posted in News and tagged China fandom on by

We’re down to the month of the Chengdu Worldcon, and things aren’t shaping up well. At this point, it’s pointless for me to urge people not to go. Either you’ve made firm plans or you aren’t going. All I can do is advise you to be careful if you are going.

The much-hyped, still under construction convention center isn’t big enough to accommodate the biggest events. At least for Chinese attendees, admission to the opening, closing, and Hugo ceremonies will be by lottery. Hugo nominees and GoHs will be allowed in, as will people from far away if they’ve jumped through the right hoops.
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A look into the cancel culture mind 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged ethics Internet on by

We’ve all run into the vicious nastiness which pervades the Internet. If you make public posts, there’s a good chance you’ve been its target, if only from occasional potshots. Sometimes it’s seriously painful. Anyone who’s had a loved one die of COVID needs to think carefully before mentioning the fact publicly.

An Atlantic article by Kaitlin Tiffany, “How Telling People to Die Became Normal”, looks at the kind of people who try to increase other people’s pain. Referring to a Facebook group dedicated to this kind of malice, she writes:
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Tomorrow’s Songs Today, second edition

This entry was posted in My writing and tagged fandom history Tomorrow's Songs Today on by

Cover, Tomorrow's Songs TodayThe second edition of Tomorrow’s Songs Today, my history of filk music, is now available as a free download. A new chapter covers events since 2015, and the appendices have been updated to list conventions and awards up to the present. The existing chapters have been lightly revised. Many links that broke over the past eight years are fixed.

Hachette v. Internet Archive

This entry was posted in Commentary Publishing and tagged books copyright law libraries preservation on by

The legal battle over the Internet Archive’s Open Library has drawn passionate responses from people involved in the creation, publication, and distribution of books. As I’m writing this, the court of the Southern District of New York has ruled that putting unauthorized digitized versions of copyrighted books on the open Internet is a violation of copyright, and the Internet Archive is appealing the decision.

Publishers Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins argued that distributing books through the Open Library violated their copyrights. The Internet Archive has declared its appeal is “a necessary fight if we want library collections to survive in the digital age.” SFWA has stated that the Open Library “is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights.” The debate pits the rights of authors and publishers against the aims of preservation.
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Will the real Chengdu con chair please stand up?

This entry was posted in News and tagged China fandom science fiction on by

A recent announcement from the Chengdu Worldcon adds to the abnormal level of hype over the slogan and the mascot’s name for the con. But I’ve already written about that. Something else is very weird.

Yao Haijun, the full-time chairman of the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon and president of the Chengdu Science Fiction Association…

Liang Xiaolan, the full-time chairman of the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon and the vice president of the Chengdu Science Fiction Association…

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