Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I have a lot of pictures from the Churchill-to-Winnipeg return train trip, but I haven't had time to caption them, which means they're useless. If you follow me on Mastodon, you will have seen some of them when I had a little bit of bandwidth on the train trip.

We had a lot of people on board from Churchill to Waboden, which is where the people who had come to Thompson to board the train and were stymied by the derailment got stuck. They were airlifted to Churchill, but were returning by train, including a charter bus to take them from Waboden back to Thompson. After they left the train, things got much quieter.

The crew of our train took a liking to our group of six SF/train fans, and near the end of the trip, our sleeping car attendant gave Lisa a big hug. I think they're looking forward to seeing our future episodes of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories about this trip. We certainly shot a huge pile of material.

Because of the Thompson derailment, we spent more than eight hours standing at The Pas waiting for our schedule to catch up to us. Nevertheless, we lost some time toward Winnipeg. However, as we neared the end of our journey, it looked like it might be just barely possible to get over to the auto shop. I called the mechanic, told him we were nearly in Winnipeg and I would come directly to his shop as fast as I could. He said that he would wait for me, which was a huge relief.

We arrived in Winnipeg at about 5:30 PM, and Lisa and I had gotten our luggage stages so that we were off the train pretty quickly. We got everything to the station rotunda. I left it all with Lisa and ran outside. No taxis waiting, but while I was fumbling with my phone trying to call a taxi company, an available taxi pulled up. I hopped in and we got to TS Auto Service at 5:55. I paid for the repairs and made for Union Station.

I had unwanted excitement pulling out of the shop, as he'd not properly closed the sliding door, and it slid open as I turned onto to the street. Fortunately, it is a relatively quiet street and I could immediately pull over, hop out, and close the door. I then followed the Google Maps directions back to the train station; unfortunately, that ended up leading me around to the back of the station and into parking lots, and it took me a few minutes to get untangled.

Lisa had managed to secure a luggage cart and had made her way out to the curb just a couple of minutes before I got to the loading area in front of the station. She loaded the minivan while I ran inside to use the restroom. The van was ready when I came back out, and I was working out our next stop while she went inside to use the restroom herself. While I was fiddling with my phone, a Via Rail employee came out and retrieved the cart, saving us having to take it back.

We had managed to get so far ahead that Lisa suggested that we go get the stored bags and boxes immediately. She drove and I navigated down to our friend's house. When we got there, I cleared her kitchen and living room of the stuff we'd stored in her house, Lisa repacked the van, and we thanked her for her generosity.

From there, it was off to the downtown Winnipeg Holiday Inn & Suites. They were very nice to us. In lieu of a room upgrade, they gave us free parking and a free breakfast, which I think is a fine trade. They were out of luggage carts, though (customers inconsiderately not returning them), so Lisa and I took only a few things up to the room; it would be at least enough to repack some of the things we'd need for our return road trip.

We made a short walk to the nearest grocery store we could find, where we bought a whole lot of cold beverages. Even if I end up leaving behind half of the 4 litre container of milk I bought, it will be worth it. I was really thirsty!

While Lisa took a bath (something you can't do on the train), I ordered pizza, which arrived as scheduled. Unlike the Delta, which required us to come to the lobby to collect our food, the Holiday Inn allowed the delivery person to bring it to our room. I felt a bit better after eating the pizza and drinking my fill.

I'd love to add photos, but sleep is more important. Originally I was going to work a half-day tomorrow morning, but instead I'm going to get extra sleep before we hit the road to head west across Canada. Maybe I'll someday get those photos arranged and can write about the "missing" days from my timeline.

The Churchill trip was great, and I could even see doing it again, but I'm glad to be back in a large hotel room instead of a small compartment, especially a room that we can cool to suit ourselves. I have an extended checkout on Tuesday morning. Sleep awaits.

After Lisa and I spent quite a while this past weekend looking over maps and considering that we have to make our daily trip legs shorter on the return trip than the outbound, today I booked our hotel rooms for the road trip to Winnipeg. While we initially were trying to plan a trip that was a complete circle, the trip is now more like a "word balloon" or a lasso-shaped trip, with the segment from Fernley to Elko to Idaho Falls being the same both out and back. Generally speaking, on the way out we'll aim toward Winnipeg relatively directly. On the way back, we'll first head west on the Trans-Canada Highway before heading south through the Glacier Park area. Our original plans were to spent at least one night in Essex MT at the Izaak Walton Inn, preferably in the Locomotive Suite; however, the new owners have temporarily closed the hotel until next December for extensive renovations. We'll see if we can sneak in and get a picture or two as we pass through the area.

My IHG preferences have to give in cases where there are either no IHG properties or no properties at a price I'm willing to pay. Kalispell MT is a case of the latter. The Holiday Inn Express is going at $450/night! That's a place where we'll go way down-market to an EconoLodge. In addition, for our final night in Winnipeg before we head west, I'll use some of my IHG points rather than paying cash for the room. The other two Canadian IHG hotels in which we're staying are more reasonably priced.

We could save money by booking the non-refundable advance rates, but we consider this too risky. There are enough variables in the trip as it is, and if something requires us to change our plans, we need to maintain some flexibility.

Another place where the IHG prices are through the roof is Butte MT, and there we're going to try an independent hotel that's conveniently located. In their case, a "junior suite" would be only about $130/night, but unfortunately it's booked for the night we'd be coming through, so we'll have to settle for a less expensive standard room.

We'll try to do railroad tourism along the way, so for example between Kalispell and Butte, we'll stop at Deer Lodge, site of the driving of the Milwaukee Road's last spike in 1909. We continue to research other interesting places to visit as our relatively limited travel time allowed. As we're using the largest part of our tourism taking the train from Winnipeg to Churchill and back, we won't be able to stop for long elsewhere on a road trip that will exceed three weeks as it is.

Some time ago, Lisa unearthed the VHS videotape of the 1994 ConAdian Worldcon Masquerade that was among my files along with the 1994 Hugo Awards Ceremony and Highlights of ConAdian. Recently, she digitized the Masquerade, and I uploaded it to the Worldcon Events YouTube Channel.



With the permission of Conadian A (the parent non-profit corporation behind the 1994 Worldcon), and after having to mute the sound on at least one of the entries because of a copyright block, I was able to make this video public.

Note that the credits at the end were cut off in the original. Lisa thinks that the original was slightly longer than the 2 hour VHS tape onto which it was recorded.

Thanks also to Wizard's Tower Press for letting me use one of their Adobe Premiere licenses for WSFS purposes, including editing this video slightly and converting it from Panasonic P2 format (which is what is was after Lisa digitized the original tape) into MP4 format so that I could upload it.

There was one comment posted to the video that implied that being in a Worldcon masquerade would have been a highly embarrassing experience and chastised us for uploading this video, but I think it was a troll and I deleted the comment.

On Sunday, I appeared on the Winnipeg in '23 Worldcon Bid's Twitch.tv stream to talk about Worldcon, WSFS, and the Hugo Awards. The stream was live at the time, but apparently didn't appear as a saved stream on their channel. However, it was being recorded and will eventually be re-posted to their YouTube channel. This may be just as well, as shortly after we started the live Twitch stream, they realized they'd forgotten to turn on recording for Zoom (it was a Zoom call that was being streamed to Twitch), and we had to start over.

( Props for the Show )

From Winnipeg's point of view, the reason they wanted me there was to explain why you have to not only spend at least US$50 do join a Worldcon in DC to be eligible to vote, but then to spend another US$50 to actually cast a vote. We stressed that both of those amounts are effectively your membership dues in WSFS: the first for 2021 and the second for 2023. You end up with two years' worth of membership, and you get certain rights (like nominating and voting for the Hugo Awards) with those memberships.

In addition, I stressed that, particularly in an election with more than two candidates like the 2023 Worldcon Site Selection, how important it is to not just mark an X by a single candidate, but to rank your candidates in order of preference, and how we count the votes in an instant-runoff voting race. I have personally been involved in ballot counts for a Worldcon and for a NASFiC where no candidate had a majority of the first-ballot votes, and so the subsequent preferences of the people who supported the least-popular candidates were what swung the election to the eventual winner. Also, just having the most first-preference votes is no guarantee of eventually winning. There have been multiple Hugo Award races where the first-ballot plurality leader has not won. Indeed, in at least one case, that candidate not only did not win, but eventually placed last, which is a sign of a polarizing candidate who has a strong minority constituency but who is deeply disliked by the rest of the electorate. Instant-Runoff Voting doesn't select for most popular: it selects for least unpopular, a subtle-but-important difference.

We ended up going on for an hour, and I apologize for having rambled a bit. I probably need to work this up as a more structured discussion, because a lot of what is in the official rules was built up step by step over time, and so there's a lot of places where, as Cheryl Morgan pointed out to me, you have to say, "Before I can answer that question, I need to tell you some other things."

Still, I'm sort of glad we were able to start by saying as forcefully as I could that WSFS is the World Science Fiction Society, and the only way to join it is to be at least a supporting member of Worldcon. That works both ways: if you buy a Worldcon membership, you're a member of WSFS. Given some nonsense I read recently about someone who IMO must think that the Hugo Awards are some outside event that asked Worldcon to host it, I wanted to make it clear that the Hugo Awards were created by the members of WSFS (that is, the members of Worldcon), belong to WSFS (the members of Worldcon), and that separating the Hugo Awards from Worldcon would be like separating your foot from your body and expecting the foot to go off and have an successful independent existence.

Because I'm an advisor to both the Winnipeg and Memphis bids, I did my best to not tell people for whom they should vote, but only how the system works and how they can become a member, what they get for being a member, and how they can effectively exercise their membership rights. I'm happy to do that for anyone who will listen to me.

I will post when the recording of the interview goes up on YouTube.

Yesterday's big news in Worldcon was that Winnipeg announced that they are bidding to host the 2023 Worldcon.

( Logo and Press Release )

With this filing, the decision of DisCon III to ignore the WSFS Constitution and declare that the original deadline for filing bids to be on the ballot for the 2023 Worldcon Site Selection stands even though the convention was postponed from August to December is no longer academic. There's a real case before DC3, and I do hope that DC3 reconsiders their initial decision, not just because I'm a director of Winnipeg's parent non-profit corporation, but more importantly for the reason I cited in my original post about their decision: If a Worldcon ignores a clear directive in the WSFS rules, and for that matter one that is relatively easy to obey and is not ambiguous, what is to stop them from ignoring any rule?

As I noted above, I'm a director of CanSMOF, Winnipeg's parent non-profit corporation. When the CanSMOF board of directors began discussing how they were being approached by Canadian sites interested in hosting Worldcon, I was in a touchy situation, for multiple reasons. Not only am I the Parliamentarian of the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting, but I'd also already agreed to run Memphis' WSFS division should they win. I was obliged to navigate a minefield of conflicts of interest.

( All Sorts of 'Inside Baseball' Here )

Given my involvement with the Memphis committee, I was asked to open communication with them on Winnipeg's behalf. I had a nice conversation with Cliff Dunn, co-chair of Memphis, and I found myself somewhat unexpectedly in a group conversation with Winnipeg's bid chair (Terry Fong) and one vice chair (Linda Ross-Mansfield) and Memphis' co-chair, Kate Secor. This happened a few days before the Winnipeg bid was officially filed and the press release issued. (There were a few days of delay while the final version of the Tourism Winnipeg package was prepared and signed off by the appropriate person.) The bid was filed with DisCon III several hours before the bid issued the public announcement.

Winnipeg also asked me to run their WSFS division should they win. In order to (in my opinion) give equally fair (or unfair, depending on your point of view) advice to both bids, I am an "official double agent" as a member of both bid committees under the title "WSFS Advisor."

How will I vote? That's between me and my ballot. I wouldn't have agreed to be on either committee if I didn't think either of them could put on a good Worldcon. However, I will say that the 1994 Worldcon in Winnipeg is one of the best Worldcons I've ever attended, and I would rank it ahead of the one I co-chaired. Incidentally, while the quality isn't that great (it's a VHS-to-digital transfer), here's a video of the 1994 Hugo Awards Ceremony, during which I make a brief appearance (skip to 1:26 to see my five seconds of fame) as the stand-in to accept a Hugo Award for a finalist who apparently never got the letter asking them to designate someone if they weren't attending.

I would, however, encourage anyone who picks either Memphis or Winnipeg as their first choice pick the other one as their second choice. Worldcons are selected by the same preferential-ballot ranked-choice system that the Hugo Awards use. In a multi-way race, members' second preferences could easily make the difference. If no site gets a majority of first-place votes, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated (usually this means eliminating the votes for ineligible write-in bids and None of the Above) and their votes redistributed to their next preference, with the process repeating until a candidate polls a majority.

In 1990, in a race between San Francisco, Zagreb and Phoenix on the ballot plus Hawaii as a filed and legitimate write-in bid, San Francisco eventually won, but not until Phoenix was eliminated: most of their votes redistributed to San Francisco, giving us (I was on the bid committee) the 1993 Worldcon. Your lower preferences may be vital, so consider them carefully when you cast your ballot.