For the benefit of those people who think that Kevin is my sock puppet, or vice versa, here is his take on the Mike Resnick Worldcon article. Kevin chose to zero in on some of the wilder accusations in the article, especially the one about Anticipation padding their membership figures. As a Director of Anticipation’s parent organization, and a member of the WSFS committee responsible for auditing historical membership data, he obviously took that one fairly personally.
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Darn right I did. Telling me I’ve made mistakes or legitimately calling out those mistakes I can tolerate, as unhappy as I might be about it. Accusing me of cooking the books or flat-out lying about the figures is quite another thing. This is why the people who accused me of raking in Big Bucks from the obvious Huge Profits of Worldcons and simply lying to everyone about it infuriate me so.
Our entire community has a tradition of transparency and openness. WSFS rules require that Worldcons make their financial records open to any member upon reasonable request (a “sunshine” rule). Accusing us of lying about these things undermines all faith in the system, and worse, like a lot of conspiracy theories, it’s difficult to disprove, because all proof can be dismissed as “part of the cover-up.”
If I’m wrong about padding the attendance figures, I apologize — but it no way diminishes any of the points I made. A few former worldcon chairs — obviously not Kevin — have e-mailed me privately to say they, too, are alarmed. When I’ve asked them to speak up, they’ve opted not to, primarily because they are convinced that the movers and shakers tend to shoot the messenger.
As I’ve said whenever and wherever I’ve written about it, I will keep attending Worldcon until one of us — me or the Worldcon — expires. But that doesn’t mean I wish it wasn’t dying a slow and avoidable death.
I won’t be addressing the subject again. If I didn’t convince the SMOFs who read Mind Meld (where almost all the editors and artists pointed out -the
ir- problems with the direction Worldcon is going), and I didn’t convince those who were given a link to my Jim Baen’s Universe editorial, I don’t imagine carrying on endlessly here is going to win any converts.
I have been going to Worldcons since 1963. I love them; they are always one of the highlights of my year. I am genuinely sorry I have had to add other conventions to my schedule because of the actions (inactions?) Worldcon has taken. I am not dancing on its grave; I am hoping that the small cotorie of SMOFs who run it will do something to make sure it doesn’t visit its grave before I visit mine.
Mike:
Good to hear that the lurkers support us in email. 🙂
Still, I’m sure you are right, there are people who won’t speak up for fear of being shredded on the SMOFs mailing list. Speaking up is my function in SMOFdom.
However, the problem is that there is no secret cabal to win over. There is a small number of people who continue to make life very difficult for people like Kevin and myself on WSFS committees, but they have very little power. The only way to change Worldcon is for people who want to change it to get involved in running it somehow. If the crusties have power, it is only because no one else wants to do the work.
Mike:
I would certainly appreciate you correcting the factual errors in you article. Angry Robot not only had a presence at Anticipation, it’s where they launched the imprint. Also, like Kevin, I took the implication that we weren’t truthful about membership numbers personally.
I’m not saying there are no problems with Worldcon, but I do believe we have enough of them without having to go around the bloggosphere correcting factual errors that a bit of research would have avoided. Properly stated facts should be enough to make your point.
Thanks!
Mike:
What Rene said. You might be surprised at how many people agree with some of the points you’ve made; however, the way you’ve made them has made your would-be supporters write off the rest because they don’t like being called liars and cheats, particularly by someone who should know better.
Mike, what do you want Worldcon to do? Settle down in one city, run by one permanent professional group, and try to grow to D*C (or preferably Comic-Con) size? Or does it just come down to “give me a free membership and pay my travel expenses every year, and I’ll be happy about it?”
By the way, while you complain about Worldcons not being held in Major American Cities often enough, I continue to see snide complaints about how it can’t possibly be a “World” con because most of the time it’s held in the USA — despite it being outside the USA on the average of every other year for the past decade.