I see that Chicon 8 has now published their program schedule. I’m not on it. I did apply for programming, and I was offered three interesting panels. However, two of them were potentially quite controversial, and something happened that made me not feel 100% safe to be involved, so I withdrew from participation.

I’d like to note that this is unlikely to be an issue for the vast majority of people. I’m an easy target, for a whole variety of reasons, and I have a very high comfort threshhold. I’m still happy to do smaller conventions, and indeed have three panels at the upcoming FantasyCon which I will write about in a day or two. But I am thinking very seriously about being involved in Worldcons in future because they are so high profile and therefore get targeted by people who want to cause trouble.