Inaugurated August 19–23, 2015 | ||
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Organized by Seattle Westercon Organizing Committee | ||
The 73rd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as Sasquan, was held on August 19–23, 2015, at the Spokane Convention Center in Spokane, Washington. This location was selected on August 31, 2013, by the members of the 71st World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, Texas. The convention was chaired by Sally Woehrle.
Contents
Guests of Honor
The Guests of Honor for Sasquan were artist Brad Foster, author David Gerrold, author Vonda McIntyre, filker Tom Smith, and fan Leslie Turek. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren participated from Earth orbit as Sasquan's Special Guest while aboard the International Space Station.
Site selection
Three committees announced bids and qualified to be on the site selection ballot for the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention:
The first contested Worldcon selection since the 2007 vote for the 2009 Worldcon site saw active campaigning and drew celebrity endorsements. Authors George R. R. Martin and Cory Doctorow publicly supported the Helsinki bid and encouraged their fans to vote while artist Phil Foglio declared his support for Spokane's bid and artist Bob Eggleton declared his support for Orlando.
Spokane won the site selection contest on the third round of ballot counting in Australian-style preferential balloting. Spokane finished with 645 votes, gaining a majority over Helsinki with 610. Orlando was dropped in the second round with 307 votes and "none of the above" had been eliminated in the first round. Boston, Minneapolis, and Locust Grove, Virginia, each received multiple write-in votes with Pyongyang and other hoax sites receiving single write-in votes.
Staff
After the "Spokane in 2015" bid chaired by Alex von Thorn won the site selection vote, Sally Woehrle and Bobbie DuFault were announced as co-chairs of the convention on behalf of the Seattle Westercon Organizing Committee. DuFault died suddenly on the morning of September 14, 2013. The convention announced that Sally Woehrle would serve as chair with Glenn Glazer, Pierre Pettinger, and Mike Willmoth as vice-chairs.
Awards
The Hugo Awards, named after Hugo Gernsback, are presented every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. Results are based on the ballots submitted by members of the World Science Fiction Society. Of the 2,122 valid nominating ballots, 2,119 were submitted online and 3 on paper. Other awards, including the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, are also presented each year at Worldcon. This year's final ballot was dominated by slates organized as the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies". The controversy brought international press attention to the awards process and caused several nominees to withdraw from consideration. However, only one slate candidate won an award, and in the five categories in which only slate candidates were nominated, no award was given.
Hugo Awards
Other awards
The Sidewise Award for Alternate History, normally presented at Worldcon, were announced online by Steven H Silver on August 17, 2015. Kristine Kathryn Rusch won long form for her novel The Enemy Within. Ken Liu won short form for his story "The Long Haul: From the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009".
Future site selection
Four committees announced bids to host the 75th World Science Fiction Convention and filed all of the required paperwork by the February 2015 deadline: "Nippon in 2017", "Montreal in 2017", "Helsinki in 2017", and "Washington D.C. in 2017". The 2017 site selected by the voters was announced during the convention's third World Science Fiction Society business meeting, on Saturday, August 22, 2015. With 1363 votes out of 2625 valid ballots, Helsinki won on the first ballot and will operate as "Worldcon 75". DC17 ran second with 878 votes, Montreal third with 228, and Nippon fourth with 120.