Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Ballots for the Hugo awards of Sasquan, the 73rd WorldCon in Spokane WA, are due tonight at 23:59 PDT. You can come back to your ballot as needed, it won't be finalized until voting is closed.

Voting will close for good at 11:59 PM PDT, *this* Friday, July 31. To vote, you will need your membership number and PIN. To avoid confusion, your membership number is the short number (up to five digits in length), and the PIN is the long number starting with "SQ".

Go to the Hugo Award Voting page to cast your ballot. Your entire ballot is recorded each time you hit “Save” next to any entry. You can change your vote as many times as you wish, with the final "Save" being what will be counted. You will receive e-mail confirmation of your ballot each time you click “Save.”

Please check your ballot one last time before voting closes, even if you've already selected your choices, to confirm that the ballot accurately reflects your preferences.

This may be the first time I voted for the Hugos. I attended the 70th WorldCon, Chicon 7, in Chicago, but I don't remember if I made the deadline for the ballot. And I was so busy with panels, I clean forgot about voting for the 2014 WorldCon site. Eh, newbie problems. Who wants to hear about 'em? (evil-grin)

No. I am not discussing my Hugo ballot with anyone, whether former students, classmates (Grimsley, NU, MTU, ISP, Clarion, WOTF), fair-weather fan, poser, hedgehog, aardvark, kitty, puppy, Chicago Cubs fan, armadillo, crustacean, BEM, Borg, Hugo winner, Hugo loser, Hugh Borg, friend, foe, cute android girls from Andromeda or -- especially -- the idiots in Redmond who thought charging an annual fee to play Solitaire in Windows 10 Was A Good Idea (see Borg and BEM). It's an interaction between me and a computer. (Oh crap, do you think they just updated Redmond's Windows 10 in Spokane? We're DOOMED.)

75th WorldCon Site Selection for 2017

As you imagine from the LJ icon above, I got a Sasquan Supporting (non-attending) membership specifically to vote for Helsinki's bid for the 2017 WorldCon (9-13 August 2017). We've been to Helsinki in 2003, and not only is a fantastic city, but 2017 is the 100th anniversary of Finnish independence AND Finland heavily supports the arts, including Finncon, their national SF con -- which is free and huge. And if you're worried, most Finns speak better English than most Americans. (grin) And yes, you can watch all sorts of American television on Finnish TV. (double-grin)

BUT...

You should know that the site selection vote is run differently than Hugo voting, which can be done online. In addition to a Supporting or Attending Sasquan membership, to vote for the WorldCon Site Selection, you also have to buy a voting token for $40 (which turns into a Supporting membership for the winning 2017 bid city, no matter who you voted for -- which means you can definitely vote in the 2017 Hugos and the 2019 WorldCon Site Selection... grin)

NOTE: Although mail-in ballots are due on 10 August 2015, online Pre-registration ends August 2. Voting tokens will continue to be made available and physical voting ends in Spokane.

To vote in the 2017 Site Selection, you must: 1) be a member of Sasquan (Supporting, Young Adult, Military, or Full Attending), and 2) pay the Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) fee, which provides the individual with a Supporting membership in the winning 2017 bid.

The bids collectively have negotiated an Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) fee of $40 U.S.

Voting fee payments may be made by check or money order in U.S. funds or by purchasing a voting token on the Sasquan web site using a credit card. The deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots, whether by postal mail or email, is 24:00 PDT on Monday, August 10, 2015.

Payments for voting fees may also be paid at Sasquan either by check, U.S. cash, or credit card, and voting will remain open during Sasquan through 6 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 21, 2015.

The online voting fee payment system will send the voter an email receipt and assign a payment voting token number to be included on the site selection ballot. The site selection administrator will verify that each ballot accurately contains a signature, Sasquan membership number, and payment (including voting token, if paid by credit card). The online site selection payment option will not be available after midnight (PDT) August 18.

The 2017 site selection ballot is available online at the bottom of this page as a printable form and as a fill-in version for subsequent printing. However, Site Selection voting is by PAPER ballot only. The WSFS Constitution guarantees the bidding committees the right to audit the voting.

Voting is tallied by preferential (also known as Australian) balloting. Place a number 1 next to your first choice, a number 2 next to your second choice, etc. If you mark an “X” with no other marks, that will count as a “1” for that bid with no other preferences. Please do not use any marks other than these.

Ballots may be sent in advance by postal mail to the address on the site selection ballot, and such ballots must be received by the mail-in deadline of August 10, 2015.

Although there is no electronic or online voting, if you pay your voting fee online, you may send a signed PDF of your ballot by email during the mail-in voting period to ballot2017siteselection@sasquan.org. Every effort will be made to protect the privacy of your vote by immediately folding the paper ballot to cover the voting portion as it comes off the printer, but absolute privacy cannot be guaranteed by Sasquan. However, the rest of the ballot is subject to the usual verifications. Postal mail voters are reminded to fold and tape their ballots as instructed to ensure the privacy of their ballot.

If you use the fill-in form, do NOT use Acrobat’s electronic signature. All ballots must be printed and signed manually.

Elections may be decided by the second or third place choices, so we encourage each voter to place a number next to each entry for which the voter has an actual preference on the ballot.

The winning site for the 2017 WorldCon will be announced at the Saturday WSFS Business meeting at Sasquan.

We've talked about differing ways to get to Helsinki, including trying to find an ocean crossing ship on the way over. Alternatively, I wonder if a bunch of people could get a great air fare by chartering a group out of say, Detroit.

Really, though. Helsinki is a fantastic city. And the Tennispalatsi -- the indoor tennis facility from the Helsinki Olympic Games -- is an incredibly huge and comfortable cineplex. Just right for keeping up with the 2017 summer blockbusters.

And when Americans get home from Helsinki, the next week is the biggest total solar eclipse in a century across a vast swath of the continental United States.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

War of the Worlds Musical

Partial Recall, a blog on SF/F in Finland, announced:

In January 2013, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds will play at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki. The producers promise good music and lots of special effects, including a 10-meter tall Martian Fighting Machine and a hologram Liam Neeson. Sounds entertaining. Tickets will be sold starting March 26.

Alas, the weblink is in Finnish, so I looked up "wikipedia war of the worlds musical". Huh. This isn't new? Just a new production:

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is a 1978 concept album by Jeff Wayne, retelling the story of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.[1] Its format is progressive rock and string orchestra, using narration and leitmotifs to carry the story via rhyming melodic lyrics that express the feelings of the various characters. The two-disc album remains a bestseller, having sold millions of records around the world,[1] and was the 40th best selling album of all time in the UK with sales of 2,561,286 by 2009.[3] It has since spawned multiple versions of the album, computer games, DVDs, and live tours.

Why did I not know about this? The 1978 album had the Journalist spoken by Richard Burton! My dormmates clearly dropped the ball on this one -- too mesmerized by Hotel California methinks.

I tell you -- the world can sometimes be a magical place.

Dr. Phil