Virtual Chicon 8 - Saturday

Here are my notes about being a virtual attendee at Chicon 8

Panels:
Re-engineering the Solar System

Wole Talabi –  Writer. Engineer from Nigeria currently living in Malaysia. Won an award

James Cambia – author ; writes about a reconstructed Mercury,

Terry Franklin – Writer; near future solar system, biology background.

Sandy Parsons – Human colonization of solar system is an interest; not keeping all eggs in one basket.

Spent several minutes troubleshooting Terry’s microphone.  This is why it should be standard procedure to have all the panelists log in 10-15 minutes before their panel.  Especially since Airmeet is new to most. We've been doing remote panels for 2 years, we should have this figured out. 

James: We’re here to talk about re-engineering the solar system and as soon as we can figure out how a piece of consumer electronics works.

Mentioned that Artemis launch was scrubbed.

Thinking it would be easier to redo something we’ve already done. (Ha-ha.)

Terraforming.

SInce this is a huge topic, Panelists are trying to establish a time frame for discussion.

Terraforming Venus might be easier in terms of heat transfer. ; Sunshield; comet bombardment.

Also floating cities

I make a rec for Geoffrey Landis’s Sultan of the Clouds novella.

Problem with Mars is absence of a magnetosphere. Creating a kind of artificial magnetism sphere (Wole) [I recall that in The Expanse that was a milestone for their terraforming of Mars.  Helps keep the atmosphere in and well as protect from radiation.]

Space elevator to Mars surface. would be simpler than one of Earth.  Thinner atmosphere.

Nice that Wole made sure that Sandy is included in the discussion. Unfortunately she didn’t say much of interest.

Make Earth a park and mine asteroids. Sustainable resource extraction. [Reminds me of a filk song I've heard, but I can't remember the name.]

Q&A; Recs for novels about solar system engineering.

Robinson’s Mars trilogy

Charles Stross, Saturn’s Children

James SA Corey, Leviatthan Wakes; Mars terrsforming, Ceres

Gene Wolf , Book of the New Sun

Q&A: Dyson Sphere. Also Dyson Swarms.

Cambias has written about Dyson Swarms. 10,000 years in the future? Von Neumann machine constructors.

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There wasn't much else I was interested in on the program. I tried the Virtual Exhibit Hall, but nothing was on. Try on Sunday for a live walk through.  There were chat rooms, but I was too shy to try one.

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9pm
Masquerade

The past two years have been tough on costumers.  Lack of in person cons plus the general stress of living in a pandemic.  I think they have recovered this year.

Some tech issues.  I tried Youtube link because the video was supposed to be crisper. Howver, there seemed to be a delayed echo , repeat, in the audio. That is annoying. Went back to Airmeet which had live captions (A person is generating the captions, as opposed to automated captions)

MC is William Dezouma.  He did a wonderful job.

18 entries

Several entrees had masks that were integral to the costumes, rather than an add on.
Very High quality entrees, even the novices.

William Dezouma gave a short sermon on how

“Costuming is for everybody”

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Some Fannish Politics;

Business meeting passed resolutions opposing the invasion of Ukraine. Also one condemning the Chengdu Guest of HonorSergey Lukianenko who supports Russia’s invasion.

Some people also don’t like another guest of honor, Chixin Lui, because he fails to condem Uyghur genocide, but that would be dangerous for him to go against his country’s policy. There wouldn’t be time to address that this year. Though it would be cool to bring it up in the business meeting in China, he-he.

As I may have mentioned before, I think it was suspicious how the worldcon at which Chengdu's bid won the site selection had 2000 supporting members from China.  These members didn't appear to participate in any way and didn't become supporting members subsequent worldcons. I"m not even sure they became attending members in the Chengdu worldcon. It's almost like an entity in Chengdu paid for a bunch of memberships just to be able to swing the site selection vote.  I am not going to even get a supporting membership for the 2024 worldcon. I just don't think it was legitimate. Due to the political situation in China, it cannot be a real worldcon with a large international participation or free exchange of ideas.  Imagine if a novel won the Hugo and its author was a critic of the Chinese government.  I also expect they will still have hazardous COVID levels in 2023.   I hope the WSFS can figure out how to amend the constitution so that a Worldcon site cannot be bought.  Maybe restrict voting to supporting members who have been members in three previous worldcons.  It seems there is always someone trying to game the system that is just supposed to be a way to recognize popular SFF stories.  The US is not perfect as far as travel restrictions and other things. A Hugo finalist from Nigeria had his initial visa application rejected by the US state department.  Only after some intervention, it was approved.  I also heard Ireland denied visas for members from Nigeria for the Dublin Worldcon. 

Anyway, there has been progress.  I was pleased by the number of brown faces on stage at the opening ceremonies.