Among other business taking place at Aussiecon 4, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, was site selection voting for the 2012 WorldCon. The Chicon 7 bid won the voting. The 70th WorldCon will be the seventh held in Chicago, and will be based at the Hyatt Regency from 30 August to 3 September 2012.
Chicon’s web site, http://chicon.org, is already counting down to the event (at press time, the count-down clock reads 724 days, 22 hours and change.
Attending registration (through 31 December 2010) is currently US$155 for adults, $100 for young adults, $50 and for children. Supporting memberships are $50. Conversions for voters are $95 for adults and $50 for young adults (they’ll be announcing rates for upgrades later).
Guests of Honor will be Mike Resnick (author), Rowena Morrill (artist), Story Musgrave (astronaut), Peggy Rae Sapienza (fan), Jane Frank (industry), and John Scalzi (toastmaster). Bios follow.
Author Guest of Honor: Mike Resnick has published more than 60 speculative fiction novels and 250 short stories. Resnick’s novels include Santiago, The Outpost, the Widowmaker series, and the Starship series. He has edited more than forty anthologies, often supporting new authors, and served as the Executive Editor of Jim Baen’s Universe and the science fiction editor for Benbella Books. He has written multiple columns dealing with the business of writing, with his dialogues with Barry Malzberg recently collected in The Business of Science Fiction, one of many non-fiction books he has published. Resnick has won five Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award as well as Japanese, French, Spanish, Polish, and Croatian science fiction awards.
Artist Guest of Honor: Rowena Morrill has been publishing speculative fiction art since 1977, shortly after she arrived in New York. She has produced covers for more than 300 books and has published several collections of her own work, including the Hugo-nominated The Fantastic Art of Rowena, Imagine (in France), Imagination (in Germany), and The Art of Rowena. She won the British Fantasy Award for best artist in 1984 and has multiple Hugo and Chesley nominations. Her art has graced the covers of books by Piers Anthony, Terry Brooks, C.J. Cherryh, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Michael Moorcock, and more.
Astronaut Guest of Honor: Story Musgrave joined NASA as part of the sixth astronaut class, in August 1967. Prior to joining NASA, Musgrave served in the United States Marine Corps, worked as a mathematician and operations analyst for Eastman Kodak, and served a medical internship at University of Kentucky. His first space flight occurred in April 1983, when he served as a mission specialist on the second operational flight of the space shuttle Columbia, where he participated in the shuttle program’s first Extra Vehicular Activity. He subsequently made five more shuttle flights, becoming the only person to have flown missions on all five operational shuttles, spending nearly 1300 hours in orbit. He was the last Apollo astronaut to retire, and prior to John Glenn’s return to space, he held the record as the oldest person to fly into space. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003.
Fan Guest of Honor: Peggy Rae Sapienza chaired Bucconeer, the 1998 Worldcon in Baltimore. Prior to the Worldcon, she chaired Disclave in 1991 and SMOFcon in 1992. She also co-chaired the Cocoa Beach Nebula Awards in 2010 and will be chairing the Washington, DC, Nebula Awards in 2011 and 2012. Sapienza was instrumental in creating the style of exhibition concourse seen at many Worldcons. In addition to con-running, Sapienza has been active in the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Washington Science Fiction Association. She has published several fanzines, including Etwas, Of Cabbages and Kings (and Baby Turtles), and Adventures on Earth. In 1983, Sapienza and her late husband Robert K. Pavlat, received the Big Heart Award.
Agent Guest of Honor: Jane Frank was introduced to science fiction in high school when a blind date decided to augment her reading. She began not only to read science fiction, but became interested in the world of artists, building a sizable personal collection of science fiction art and founding the agency Worlds of Wonder to represent more than twenty speculative fiction artists. Frank has loaned artwork and co-curated art exhibits at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, the University of Maryland Art Gallery, and Rockville Arts Place. She has published several art books including The Frank Collection: A Showcase of the World’s Finest Fantastic Art and Great Fantasy Art Themes from the Frank Collection, the Hugo-nominated The Art of Richard Powers, and The Art of John Berkey. Her most recent book is A Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. A follow-up work dedicated to gaming artists is scheduled for publication in 2012.
Toastmaster: John Scalzi is the author of the popular blog Whatever. He has written a number of science fiction novels, including the Hugo-nominated Old Man’s War, the Norton-nominated Zoe’s Tale, and the upcoming Fuzzy Nation. When he’s not writing novels, he’s the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the creative consultant for the
Stargate: Universe television series, and a columnist for the Filmcritic.com. He has won Hugo Awards for Best Fan Writer and Best Related Work for his collection Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of Whatever columns.