The 2023 World Science Fiction Convention will be in China, a country notorious for suppressing dissent, persecuting minorities, restricting communication, and monitoring its citizens. Worldcon sites are selected among bidders by members of an earlier Worldcon, as just happened at Discon. It appears that the selection was the result of a large number of votes sent in from China from people who purchased supporting memberships. In other words, China bought the Worldcon.

Science fiction is the realm of speculation, exploration of ideas, and examination of alternatives. The idea of a Worldcon in such a repressive nation is absurd. Hopefully few fans in free countries will have any interest in this charade, and they’ll sit it out.

It’s appropriate that one of the guests is Robert J. Sawyer, whose Hominids presents a rather sympathetic view of the surveillance state.

I’ve seen predictions that membership will hit five figures or even six. The overwhelming majority will presumably be Chinese. This is far larger than any Worldcon in history; the biggest ones have been around 10,000. A fan-run convention can’t scale up that much and keep its community character; this will likely be more like a Comic Con, with members being treated more like consumers than participants. Don’t expect free-wheeling, uncensored discussions at the panels. Many fans are concerned how it will all turn out.

Hopefully pro writers will declare in large numbers that they’ll have nothing to do with this convention. That can turn an unfortunate occurrence into an opportunity to send a strong message. There’s precedent in the fierce opposition which the 2022 Jeddah Worldcon bid encountered, though that bid was headed off in the voting, getting a mere 33 votes.