Here’s something new, and very worthwhile. Lavie Tidhar, in between writing great books and annoying the annoyable, has set up a new type of travel fund. The objective is, “to annually enable one international person involved in science fiction, fantasy or horror to travel to a major genre event.”

What that means is that the fund will be bringing someone from a developing nation to an event like Worldcon or World Fantasy. The first beneficiary of the fund will be Charles A. Tan, from the Philippines, who will travel to this year’s World Fantasy Convention in San Diego.

Note that this is not a “fan fund”. The beneficiaries may be aspiring writers or other industry professionals. Also there is no requirement to write a report, and no voting process. But it does need to raise money, and the fund is doing that via the Peerbackers crowd sourcing system..

As is usual with such things, there are rewards available to those who donate. Bundles of ebooks have been offered by Angry Robot, Apex, Chizine, PS Publishing and Tachyon. There are also some special prizes on offer from Neil Gaiman and China Miéville.

Also, as is again usual, if the fund raiser does not reach the stated goal, all donated money is returned (but you don’t get the rewards).

You can learn more about the fund at its own website. One of the things you’ll note is that Lavie asked a bunch of people to advise him on the project. Those people are: Lauren Beukes, Aliette de Bodard, Ekaterina Sedia and me. So I’m going to be encouraging you to donate.

You can donate here.