One of the perennial complaints about Worldcon is that there is no point in going because they have so few guests. This is, of course, a misunderstanding arising from the different use of the word “guest” at different conventions. Anticipation’s PR#4 has just been released (you can download a copy here) and I’m pleased to see that they have released an “also attending” list of over 130 writers, artists, editors and media people who will be at the convention. Some of these are new to the business, or write in French, and so won’t necessarily be familiar to you, but here are some highlights:

Ben Bova, David Brin, Charles Brown, Pat Cadigan, Ellen Datlow, Cory Doctorow, Scott Edelman, Esther Friesner, Marc Gascoigne, Donato Giancola, Laura Anne Gilman, Karen Haber, Joe & Gay Haldeman, Janis Ian, Hiroaki Inoue, Guy Gavriel Kay, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Donald Kingsbury, Jay Lake, Geoffrey A Landis, David D Levine, Kelly Link, Sean McMullen, Farah Mendlesohn, Steve Miller, L E Modesitt Jr., Larry Niven, G David Nordley, John Picacio, Mike Resnick, Geoff Ryman, Robert J Sawyer, Stanley Schmidt, Karl Schroeder, Gord Sellar, Josepha Sherman, Robert Silverberg, Melinda Snodgrass, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Cecilia Tan, Amy Thomson, Jo Walton, Robert Charles Wilson, John C Wright.

You can find the whole list on page 57 of the progress report, and it is now out of date because people keep on joining. You can, I think, add Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Daryl Gregory, Anne Harris, John Scalzi, Ann VanderMeer, Connie Willis and Gary K Wolfe to that list. There are also a lot of top class academics attending this year, which I’m very pleased about.

Apologies to anyone I’ve missed out, but the basic message here is, you don’t get that sort of guest list at just any convention.