World Fantasy 2016

[swan_tower]

Unless something changes in the next month or so, I will not be attending World Fantasy this year. Here’s some other people giving the background on why:

Sarah Pinsker on the issues with the program
Fox Meadows
Jim Hines
File 770 roundup

And then Darrell Schweitzer doubled down.

World Fantasy has had a number of issues over the years, but this turned out to be the straw that broke my back. As I said in my email to the concom, Schweitzer trumpets the fact that there are “smart and friendly people” at WFC; well, as a smart person, I decline to engage with a program that shows such profound ignorance of the last forty years, and as a friendly person, I decline to support the behavior of someone who doesn’t care how many people he’s alienating. He appears to believe that “PC ignorami” and “outrage junkies” are driving people away from the convention — so the only course of action I can in good conscience follow is to provide a data point in the other direction.

WFC is one of my favorite conventions, but that has more to do with the number of friends I can see there than with the convention itself. If they could update themselves to show any awareness of the genre’s development during my lifetime? That would be excellent. But so long as they’re presenting a program whose genre awareness ends at 1980, and so long as the man in charge of it thinks that women, PoCs, and anybody under the age of fifty is beneath his notice? I decline to join them.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[sovay]

And then Darrell Schweitzer doubled down.

I heard about the programming issues earlier in the month. I hadn't heard about Schweitzer's response. Feh.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The response is really what put it over the top. I found myself thinking, "I refuse to let this man take credit for my participation in his con." World Fantasy's success is predicated on writers and other industry people volunteering their time and energy to the program; I don't want to give those things to him.

[sovay]

World Fantasy's success is predicated on writers and other industry people volunteering their time and energy to the program; I don't want to give those things to him.

Especially not when he is going to handle them so badly. You invest trust in a convention as well as time.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

And as I have said elsewhere, anybody who resorts to that kind of name-calling when people object really should not be part of the con's public face. This is on the level of Howard Hendrix and the "pixel-stained technopeasant" nonsense SFWA had a while back (I still have my icon!)

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

some people fear change, even if change is good.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It probably doesn't look good to him. But I see no reason to cater to that view.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

and the joy of the system is that you and others dont have to. What is going on with the convention needs to change, and by evolving or imploding.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping for evolution, and publicly withdrawing is the best way I can think of to apply pressure in that direction.