I have a lot of friends in California. Some of them are crazy; crazy enough to want to run a Worldcon again. Actually they have been talking about it in SMOFish circles for some time, but with Westercon coming up it is necessary to do things a bit more publicly. Last night invitations started going out on Facebook to like the page there, and I added a bunch of invites this morning. I’m rather pleased to see I have brought in 60 people already. I did try hard not to send invitations to people who were likely to be annoyed by it, or have nothing to do with science fiction, and I have probably left off a few people who would be interested, so apologies for any screw-ups. More info will trickle out in due course, and of course there will be parties at DetCon 1, Loncon 3, Shamrokon and so on.

Of course I won’t be able to go, so to some extent it doesn’t matter much to me. However, it will make (my) Kevin happy if we win. Also the bid is being chaired by Andy Trembley. He and his husband, Kevin Roche, have run some awesome conventions in the past, including Westercon 66 which had Nicola Griffith & Kelley Eskridge as the headline Guests of Honor.

I should note that Worldcons are huge undertakings that involve very many people over several years. Having lived through the previous San José Worldcon, I know how hard it can be to make your vision for the event come to fruition. However, I have a huge amount of faith in Andy & (his) Kevin. Also I am still a director of SFSFC, the parent corporation of the bid, as is (my) Kevin. While we are there, we will be doing our best to make sure that the event (should we win) is welcoming, diverse and international.

The year we are bidding for is 2018. There is opposition. It is New Orleans. It makes me very sad to be bidding against one of my favorite cities in the world, but there was no way we wanted to go up against Helsinki or Dublin. Also, as we are somewhat responsible for their bid, we owe it to our Kiwi pals not only to steer clear of 2020, but also to try to provide them with the best possible venue for their vote. Those of you with long memories may remember that when we were bidding for 2002 we were so friendly with the opposition from Seattle that we even staffed each other’s bid tables, much to the horror of certain older SMOFs. We hope that we can be just as friendly with the New Orleans folks.

Any questions should be directed to the bid team rather than me, though I will probably be able to take pre-supports at Finncon if anyone wants one. There will doubtless be more info available then. If you want to know more about the location or facilities, ask anyone who went to the 2002 Worldcon, the 2009 World Fantasy, or this year’s Nebulas Weekend. Or there’s a website, and a Twitter account, and a Google + page.