Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The Worldcon Heritage Organization (WHO) is a nonprofit organization that collects and preserves artifacts relating to the World Science Fiction Convention. At SMOFCon 41, Mary Morman conducted a raffle for the benefit of WHO, the prize from which was a quilt made out of t-shirts from past SMOFCons. I bought some tickets, as did many other people.

On Sunday, the winning ticket was drawn, and Scott Sanford, Lisa's good friend to whom Lisa had given her membership when she decided she was not up to traveling this December, won the quilt. But the story does not end there.

( Quilt to a Good Home )

When I got home tonight and unpacked, I brought the quilt out to Lisa. (I hadn't told her that Scott had given it to us.) She often sleeps in her travel trailer because she keeps such different hours than I do. It's been cold a lot lately, and while there's a propane furnace in the trailer, she's happy to have another quilt on the bed for cold winter nights.

SMOFCon 41's programming was not streamed, but I recorded the Future SMOFCons presentations and site selection and also special guest Jim Wright's "Keynote" evening discussion and Q&A. You can see these all on the SMOFCon 41 Playlist on the SMOFCon YouTube Channel.

Unfortunately, the SD card filled up during Jim Wright's talk at 90 minutes, but he finished a few minutes after that, so you'll end up seeing nearly everything he said.

SMOFCon 42 will be December 5-7 in Stockholm, Sweden. Memberships are 450 SEK (currently around USD 41.50). See their website for details. I hope to be able to attend.

Stockholm was the only bid presented to host SMOFCon 42 in Stockholm, and the bid was selected by the unanimous consent of the members of SMOFCon attending the bid presentation session. The convention will be December 5-7, 2025. Membership is 450 SEK. (Free to under-26 if registered in advance.)

I recorded the SMOFCon bid, Worldcon and Worldcon bid Q&A sessions, but I am too overloaded right now to try and upload them. to YouTube. The Worldcon/bid Q&As will be on the Worldcon Events YouTube channel. I think that the SMOFCon presentations will be on the SMOFCon 41 YouTube channel once they are able to arrange for me to access it. It may not happen right away, and possibly won't be posted until I get home, due to my having an overload for Saturday at SMOFCon.

I ended up napping for a couple of hours, and when I woke up I needed to put in some work helping the Montréal 2027 Worldcon bid, which hosted the SMOFCon 41 Con Suite this evening.

( Montreal in Seattle )

SMOFCon is always a time to make connections and talk with other people about plans for future events, such as in my case Westercon and Worldcon. I did participate in a number of such conversations this evening. I am not going to talk about them now because the plans need to develop and reach a point where we can deliver on them. However, I will say that in general, and subject to change, if Montréal wins their bid, I expect to be chairing their WSFS Business Meeting, and I have been working on having a team selected to operate it. We haven't won yet, and we aren't the only known bid, so it is premature to say much more. There are, after all, two Worldcons to come before 2027.

I then hung out in the Con Suite until about 11 PM, and as much as I like this part of the convention, I did pull myself away to go back to my room, unwind, take care of some bid business, and get ready for tomorrow, which as usual will be the busiest day of the convention. I'm going to be recording the Worldcon and Bid presentations (for posting to the Worldcon Events YouTube channel) and also the evening "keynote address" by featured speaker Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station. As the SMOFCon 41 website says, "He’s going to speak to us about his experience in analysis and commentary, with a special focus on the Sad Puppies’ attempt to hijack the Hugos, and how he helped turn that into a positive experience for fandom." I do not yet know where his presentation video will be posted, but I'll write about it when it happens.

I expect to have several announcements to post tomorrow, or possibly in the wee hours of Sunday morning, maybe backdated. That's because I will be busy a lot all tomorrow evening, with the Probability & Statistics Seminar (not on the published schedule; it's a private item open to all attendees of the convention, which has given us Cascade 7 for that purpose) happening after the keynote.

This morning I got up at my usual work day time and did not rush. I did make one miscalculation, though: the freezing fog continues to bedevil us, and I cannot find my frost scraper. It's not something that I use all that often given that I work from home and rarely need to be out and about in this weather. I eventually got the windows sufficiently thawed that I could set off for Reno Airport.

About the time I checked my luggage and was making my way to Terrorization, I got an update from Alaska Airlines telling me of a small flight delay. That was actually good because it meant that I would have enough time to have a full breakfast rather than whatever I could grab from Subway or McDonalds. In the end, I had about 15 minutes leeway.

It was nice to have a first class seat. This was my first trip on an Embraer E175, which has 2-1 seating in first class, and I had the side with the single seat, which suits me fine. It was a comfortable trip, and I took a bunch of photos.

( Reno to SeaTac )

The Doubletree Hotel is very close to SeaTac Airport. So it is ironic that it took me almost as much time to get from SeaTac to the Doubletree as the flight took to get from RNO to SEA. First there was a delay getting the luggage out. Then I went to the wrong place to get the hotel shuttle. Then I had to backtrack to the terminal to find a restroom, not helped by the huge amount of terminal renovations making a mockery of the signage. I finally made it out to the correct pickup location and called the hotel second time. They told me the driver would be there soon. In this case "soon" meant thirty minutes. It's just possible that I could have walked to the hotel faster. But I got there in the end, even if I was so disoriented that I left my luggage on the curb when I went inside to check in.

I was given the option of waiting several hours for the single king room originally blocked and reserved for me in the tower, or taking a nominal downgrade to a single queen, but on the ground floor of Wing 6 of the hotel. I took the latter. I'm traveling alone, and having a room sooner was better than later. Besides, while the Con Suite it on the Penthouse floor of the tower, Programming is in the function rooms downstairs, so it is possibly more convenient to be on a ground floor room. At least I'm not out on Wing 5B. (Norwescon regulars will understand why that's a good thing.) OTOH, this room doesn't have a refrigerator. On the gripping hand, there are no stores nearby so there's nothing perishable for me to store.

After unpacking and checking messages, I went up to the Penthouse and ended up spending the afternoon and evening smoffing, as one does at a SMOFcon. I did eventually get a meal, as I met up with Kent Bloom and Mary Morman, who invited me to join them for dinner in the hotel restaurant, which I did. We later were joined by Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf (who is leading the only bid for SMOFCon 42 (2025), Stockholm) and Vincent Docherty.

After dinner it was back upstairs for more socializing, which is to me one of the biggest attractions of SMOFCon. There was certainly no shortage of subjects about which to talk, with the plans of Worldcon 2025 Seattle (not the same group as is running SMOFCon this year) announcing plans to hold the WSFS Business Meeting mostly online.

Several people asked after Lisa, and I explained that she was a bit traveled out from the three month Worldcon trip.

The convention actually starts on Friday. See the SMOFCon 41 website if you are interested. If you are local to the area and are interested in the subject of genre convention running, you can still join at the door.

Fortunately, I don't have any commitments early on Friday, so I don't have to be up early. That's goodk because getting up at 4:30 AM and socializing until Midnight is something that's much harder to do than it was when I was in my twenties.

With the cooperation of the SMOFCon 41 committee in Seattle next month, I plan to run the by-now-mostly-traditional Probability & Statistics Seminar on Saturday night. The decks of playing cards I've used for the past two years are worn out. (An evening of playing a card tournament generally wears out even good-quality cards.) We had several 20% off coupons from Walgreens from our recent immunizations, so yesterday I went over there and bought three sets of two decks of cards (with contrasting backs). Each table (maximum three tables of ten people) gets two decks of cards so that we don't waste time waiting for cards to be shuffled: dealer gets a shuffled deck from the person ahead, while the next player shuffles the cards from the hand that just ended. Of course you have to have contrasting backs if you do this; otherwise, you'll inevitably end up with the two decks intermixed.

Walgreens had lots of "novelty" decks, but experience shows that we only want standard decks. Fortunately, Walgreens had the three sets of two that I wanted.

Generally, I pay for the cards myself. I've won the tournament once, but I don't think that makes up for my entry fees for the others or for supplying the cards. Like most things I do for Fandom, I do it as a contribution to my hobby.

The gaming tokens were contributed by a fan who was upgrading his set. Quality chips are heavy, unlike the cheap plastic chips you can get in places like Walgreens. That has led to some odd logistics, as the two cases of chips have moved all over North America depending usually on who was driving to SMOFCon and could take them to close to where they needed to next be. The most recent move was Providence RI to this year in Seattle. Originally, I thought I'd be driving to Seattle, but it turns out that I'm flying, which set up a problem: how to get the chips back home with me? Fortunately, I was able to use frequent-flyer miles to buy a first-class round-trip Reno-Seattle, which includes two checked bags. I'll only need one going up, and will thus pack a smaller empty bag inside my larger bag going to Seattle. I can then put the chips in one of the bags coming back, putting other things in the second (soft sided) bag. It needs a bit of figuring because of the weight of the the chips, but it should work out in the end.

I reckon that it will take me a while to recover from the two weeks of Westercon/Loscon and SMOFCon. Fortunately, I don't have much scheduled. We're not planning Christmas travel, so the farthest I expect to travel is Yerrington (when they get the Astro repaired, fingers crossed) or Reno-Sparks for grocery shopping. Otherwise, it's just back to the Day Jobbe and earning money to pay for what those trips cost.

After only two or three hours of sleep, I got up very early this morning (0200 Eastern Time), packed out of my hotel room in Providence, checked out of the hotel, walked the roughly 1200 m to the Providence train station, took an MBTA commuter train to Back Bay, a Logan Express bus to Boston Logan Airport, and flew on United Airlines from Boston to SFO to Reno. Lisa collected me from the airport and drove me home, where we arrived about 1630 PST (1330 EST)

I have pictures and a travel story to tell that those of you who follow me on Mastodon have already seen, but that I am too tired to post right now. Once I get unpacked, I really need to try to get to bed, because I have to go back to work on Tuesday.

SMOFCon was great. I enjoyed myself a lot, and I think I got a lot of things accomplished. But now I need to get back into my home routine and also need to get moving with Lisa on the 2025 Westercon Site Selection.

I have heard no news about Filthy Pierre after his fall yesterday. We think he was taken to a hospital, but we don't know which one. He was not back at the convention today. When I know more, I will write about it.

Saturday morning at SMOFCon started early with breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 7:30 with several friends (some of whom don't like me mentioning their names so I won't) before the 9 AM Chengdu Worldcon Debrief. Unfortunately for me, partway through, I started sneezing and had to leave. (I subsequently self-tested negative for COVID.) However, the panel, like the rest of the programming at SMOFCon 40, was recorded and I should be able to see the second half later. The news here was that the Hugo Award stats, should be available very soon. When they are up on the Chengdu website, we'll also post them to TheHugoAwards.org.

I ended up taking a nap before my 1 PM panel about "Are SF/Clubs Shrinking/Dying." I did not correctly set my alarm, and if I had not woke up on my own just before the panel time, I would have missed it entirely.

After the panel, I had lunch with Sally Woehrle, which was nice and allowed us to get caught up a bit.

Then it was time for another nap. This is a necessity, in that I've been up much too late and have to wake up much too early, meaning I'm definitely not getting enough sleep. This will continue until I get home.

After waking up, I went to where we were running the traditional Probability & Statistics Seminar, where I helped set things up and also got a take-out dinner from the hotel restaurant. I skipped the Worldcon and Bids Q&A, once again because I should be able to watch the recordings later.

The P&S Seminar went very smoothly. I crashed out relatively early again, but that's okay. This year's repeat champion was Alex von Thorn.

Seattle was selected by acclamation to host next year's SMOFCon. I'm very happy that someone drove out from the west coast and is driving back, and she has agreed to transport the boxes of tokens back west so we can use them next year. They are too heavy for me to carry in my luggage.

Now I get a whopping 3 1/2 hours of sleep before starting this all over again so I have breakfast and then run a WSFS MPC Meeting (which is on the SMOFCon schedule) at 9 AM Eastern Time.

I forecast another nap is coming after that meeting.

This morning, I was up at 2 AM to get showered and ready to head to Reno Airport to go to SMOFCon 40 in Providence, Rhode Island. Around 3:15 AM, Lisa and I headed toward Reno, where she dropped me at the curb at 4:00 AM. She headed for home, only to get stuck in commute-time traffic to the USA Parkway Industrial Park. My timing was just fine, as the security gates at RNO don't open until 4 AM anyway. I checked my bag with United, cleared Terrorization pretty quickly (they were even sanguine about my having forgotten to put my hat on the X-ray belt and told me to just hand it through to them before I went into the scanner, and I even had time to get a breakfast sandwich at Subway before boarding my flight to Denver for the first leg of the trip.

The Reno-Denver plane (an A320) was 100% full, but I did have an aisle seat in the last row, so I had easy access to the lavatory, which is important with my medication mix. It was a smooth flight, and we arrived about 20 minutes early. That was good because it meant I had just enough time to use one of the two United Club passes that I have from one of my credit cards. I've never remembered to use these passes, but I'm going to do so on this trip because they are going to expire before my next planned airline trip.

Fortunately for me, the United Club East at DEN was only two gates away from my connecting flight to Boston, and it wasn't too difficult to get the pass to work. I had about 40 minutes to get breakfast from their buffet, and I even managed to find a seat near the buffet so I did not have to leave my bags unattended and make people nervous. I do wish they hadn't "poisoned" the eggs and potatoes with red and green bell peppers, though. I got my fill of other things and all the coffee and Coke Zero Cream Soda I could drink, then walked to gate 39, where my flight was boarding.

I got lucky on this 3-hour flight, as I was still in the last row on the aisle, but the center seat did not fill. (Based on the seat map, I assume someone missed their flight.) That made for a much more comfortable trip. I watched the first of the Hobbit movies: yes, I've never seen them.

We arrived a little early in Boston. At all stages of this trip (Reno, Denver, Boston), the weather has been clear. Boston was about the same temperature (or slightly warmer) than Reno. My luggage came off the belt about a minute after I arrived, and then it was time to figure out how to get to Providence.

Using my mobile phone, I puzzled out that the suggested routing was the Logan Express bus from the airport to Back Bay Station (free), then an Amtrak Acela train to Providence ($51). While the bus labored its way through rush-hour Boston traffic, I used the Amtrak app to buy an Acela ticket.

( Training for Providence )

After checking in and moving in to my room, I called Lisa to let her know I'd arrived and to chat about the trip (especially the trains). But after that, I wanted to get something to eat. The hotel room has a refrigerator similar to the one at the LAX Marriott, but there are no grocery store all that close to the hotel that I could find, and of course I did not have a car. Studying the online maps, I decided to attempt a walk to a 7-Eleven about 1200 m from the hotel. There I bought a gallon of milk and on the way back I bought a couple of "New York System" hot dogs (which I'd never had before) and also a burrito (because I was hungry). I hoped the 2.4 km round trip would help offset all of the food a bit.

Back at the hotel, I managed to cause one of the hot dogs to shoot mustard and meat sauce onto my shirt, so I had to rinse that out right away and hang up the shirt to dry. After eating (and cleaning up), I made my way toward the pre-con con suite, where I spent the next several hours happily chatting away with my fellow SMOFs, some of whom were in Los Angeles last weekend.

I have a couple of panel items here, but I'm not doing recording, because SMOFCon 40 has very helpfully offered to let me have copies of the Worldcon bid/convention Q&A sessions, which I can upload to the Worldcon Events Channel, and also copies of the bid/convention questionnaires, which I can upload to worldcon.org. That way the documents/recordings won't go away when the convention's website does.

Now I need to wind down enough to get a few hours of sleep, because I got none on the plane.