Latest news with #SeattleWorldcon2025
Geek Wire
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Wire
‘Game of Thrones' creator and other science fiction writers trace twists and turns at Seattle Worldcon
Geek Life: Fun stories, memes, humor and other random items at the intersection of tech, science, business and culture. SEE MORE George R.R. Martin, the author behind the 'Game of Thrones' saga, takes part in a panel discussion at Seattle Worldcon 2025 as sci-fi editor Neil Clarke looks on. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) If you were to track the milestones in the career of George R.R. Martin, the science-fiction and fantasy writer whose knightly tales spawned HBO's 'Game of Thrones' and 'House of the Dragon,' you'd have to include his twisted take on 'The Pit and the Pendulum' in high school. Martin — who famously killed off good-guy Ned Stark early in the 'Game of Thrones' saga — recounted that part of his literary origin story during a panel session at Seattle Worldcon 2025, a prestigious science-fiction convention that wraps up today. The spark for the story came when fellow sci-fi writer Isabel J. Kim told Martin that the father of a friend had lent her a 1966 yearbook from Martin's high school, in hopes that the 76-year-old author would add a fresh signature over his class photo. The crowd laughed at the contrast between the fresh-faced kid in the yearbook photo and Martin's current bewhiskered visage — but seeing the yearbook reminded Martin of a story. George R.R. Martin's 1966 yearbook photo, as shown during a session at Seattle Worldcon 2025.. 'I think my life was changed by a high-school English course,' he said. 'I had an English teacher who decided once to give an assignment — I think it was in my junior year. We were reading 'Pit and the Pendulum,' by Edgar Allen Poe. And the teacher said, 'Well, your assignment this week is to write a better ending for 'Pit and the Pendulum.'' Which is, of course, one of the ultimate deus ex machina's of English literature.' In the young Martin's ending; the French army doesn't come to the narrator's rescue. 'I wrote an ending where he wasn't saved, where the pendulum cut him in half and the rats came down and ate his eyeballs,' Martin said. His classmates loved it. 'Everybody likes this,' Martin recalled thinking at the time. 'Maybe I could do this writing thing.' 'And that's how Ned Stark was born!' award-winning author John Scalzi interjected. Of course, the gestation period took decades. After college, Martin was a journalism instructor for a couple of years, and then went on to produce scripts for 'The Twilight Zone' and other TV shows. But he kept writing science fiction and fantasy tales as well, occasionally pulling the same writerly tricks he used in high school. And that's how a star was born. During a different Worldcon panel, Martin noted that J.R.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' was an early influence on his own fantasy writing — and recalled that at one point in Tolkien's tale, the wizard Gandalf appeared to be killed off. 'Now yes, I know. Gandalf came back,' Martin said. 'Actually, I would have kept him dead. But that's an issue for me and J.R.R. to discuss down the line. I still love Tolkien, and there's no doubt that his influence was great. But as a reader, I like books that are not familiar to me. I like to be surprised. I like twists and turns.' Luke Elliott and James Bailey, the hosts of the Ink to Film podcast, interview science-fiction author Martha Wells at Seattle Worldcon 2025. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Here are some of the other twists and turns from Worldcon:
Geek Wire
12-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Wire
Worldcon 2025 celebrates the past and future of science fiction — and the part Seattle has played
Geek Life: Fun stories, memes, humor and other random items at the intersection of tech, science, business and culture. SEE MORE Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans will be going back to the future this week when Seattle plays host to Worldcon, the world's premier sci-fi convention, for the first time since the Space Needle opened its doors. 'The Pacific Northwest is a great community of makers and doers and learners, and people really deeply engaged in speculative fiction and all that genre has to offer,' Kathy Bond, the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025, told GeekWire. 'We want to share that with the rest of our world community.' Registered Worldcon members selected the site of the annual convention under the auspices of the World Science Fiction Society — a tradition that started with the first convention in New York City in 1939. Seattle's organizers have been preparing for this week since 2017, when they sent in their initial bid to host Worldcon. Bond, a volunteer who works as an attorney at her day job, became involved after attending her first Worldcon in 2015 in Spokane. 'From there, I got it into my head that we could totally do this in Seattle,' Bond said. The path hasn't always been smooth: This spring, a controversy arose over the revelation that generative AI was used to glean information about prospective speakers. Bond issued an apology, and the organizers reworked the process for vetting Worldcon's panelists — but the episode led some writers and fans to create a one-day alternative convention called ConCurrent Seattle, set for Thursday. 'The goal is to provide quality programming that rejects the use of genAI at all levels,' ConCurrent's organizers said. 'We firmly believe there is no place for genAI when it has been used to steal from artists and has a devastating impact upon the environment.' Headliners and the Hugos Worldcon's five-day program kicks off on Wednesday. This year's best-known featured guest is Martha Wells, the author of the Murderbot Diaries, a series of tales about a conflicted killer robot. 'With the Apple TV+ adaptation, the timing has worked out really well for her appearance here,' Bond said. Other guests of honor include sci-fi / fantasy artist Donato Giancola, rocket scientist Bridget Landry and folk minstrel Alexander James Adams. The convention's hosts are sci-fi authors K. Tempest Bradford and Nisi Shawl. George R.R. Martin, the writer whose novels inspired the 'Game of Thrones' and 'House of the Dragon' TV series, is among more than 800 panelists who have signed up to talk about topics ranging from generative AI and surveillance tech to the joys of Star Trek fanfic and tips for creating the perfect costume. You can expect a heady swirl of cosplay, particularly when the Worldcon masquerade takes place on Friday night. The convention reaches a climax on Saturday night when the annual Hugo Awards are handed out. But if you take a wider perspective, the Pacific Northwest and its science-fiction legacy could well be considered the stars of the show. Worldcon's organizers are leaning into the fact that the last time the convention came to the Emerald City, in 1961, the Seattle World's Fair (a.k.a. the Century 21 Exposition) was just seven months away from its opening in 1962. Promotional materials for this year's Worldcon reflect an appropriately '60s-style retro-futuristic look. The theme for the convention is 'Building Yesterday's Future — For Everyone.' Qne of this week's panel sessions will take a long look back at Century 21 and assess how close the fair's techno-optimistic vision of the future came to 21st-century reality. During the past six decades, the timelines for Seattle's tech history and science fiction's progress have become closely entangled, said Frank Catalano, a journalist, former tech executive and self-described 'minor science-fiction author' who is participating in three Worldcon panels this week. Catalano's résumé includes a stint as a GeekWire contributor — and he's also been the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association as well as a member of the administrative team for SFWA's Nebula Awards. He has vivid memories of Seattle's science-fiction scene during its heyday. 'It was amazing to me, even back in the 1980s, what a rich group of speculative-fiction writers lived here,' Catalano said. 'You had Frank Herbert, you had Vonda McIntyre and Greg Bear. Octavia Butler moved here in the 1990s. Terry Brooks, the fantasy writer, is in this area. So, you have some of what are considered now the greats of science fiction and fantasy living in this area and stimulating other writers.' One of Vonda McIntyre's contributions, beyond her sci-fi novels and short stories, was her role as the founder of Seattle's Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1971. Hundreds of writers have gone through Clarion West's summer workshop, under the tutelage of some of the best-known names in speculative fiction. The future of science fiction and tech Catalano argues that science fiction had a hand in making Seattle into the tech powerhouse it is today, with the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen serving as a prime example. 'I'm sure that Paul Allen, were he still alive, would admit that he was inspired by many of the same people whose artifacts he later wound up exhibiting in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame,' he said. 'The science-fiction presence in the greater Seattle area is not because of the tech industry and economy. It stimulated and was a precursor to that.' Catalano isn't so sure that Seattle's current cultural environment is as conducive to fostering the science-fiction community. 'Amazon and Microsoft and the other tech gorillas tend to suck all the speculative air out of the room,' he said. 'People are more interested in talking about the latest hype about AI and intelligent assistants than they are in speculating about the future and what these things might do.' That's where Worldcon could provide a boost. 'My hope is that with Worldcon here, and with the attention that gets, it will help raise the profile of science fiction, fantasy, horror writing and related speculative writing in the area, and maybe help writers find each other and re-create a stronger community here,' Catalano said. Convention chair Kathy Bond is on the same page. 'I've been thinking a lot about 'why this.' Why am I asking people to spend their money on coming to Worldcon when they could be donating their money to bail funds, or donating their money to Gaza, or all of these other things?' she said. 'The answer I've come to is that art is still really important,' Bond said. 'We need our fiction, particularly our speculative fiction, because it helps us build better futures and aspire to be better than we are currently. These spaces that we create for the community to come together and celebrate what's already there, and challenge each other to come up with new ideas and new ways to try to build better futures … I think that's really important.' Seattle Worldcon 2025 runs from Wednesday to Sunday, with most events taking place at the Seattle Convention Center's Summit building. Membership rates for attendees range from $75 to $500 for the full convention, and $20 to $70 for single-day attendance. Check the Worldcon website for details. ConCurrent Seattle offers a full day of panels on Thursday at the ACT Theatre / Union Arts Center. Admission is free, but registration is required. To hear more about Worldcon and the state of the science-fiction community, check out this week's Fiction Science podcast. Alan Boyle and science-fiction author Dominica Phetteplace chat with Tim Chawaga about his newly published climate-fiction novel, 'Salvagia,' and also discuss what's happening at Worldcon. Chawaga will do a book reading and participate in two panels at Worldcon this week, while Phetteplace will talk about the outer solar system with astronomer Pedro Bernardinelli of the University of Washington's DiRAC Institute.
Gizmodo
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy
Another year, yet another Hugo Awards-adjacent controversy? That might be what fans of sci-fi lit and related media are thinking, with news today that a trio of leaders from the Seattle 2025 Worldcon, the upcoming iteration of the convention where the Hugos are annually presented, have resigned. This year, at least, the awards themselves—voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS)—seemingly aren't directly involved in the dust-up. In a post on Bluesky co-signed by Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte, deputy Hugo administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and World Science Fiction Society division head Cassidy, the trio announced they were resigning from their roles ahead of the Seattle event, which takes place in August. 'We want to reaffirm that no LLMs or generative AI have been used in the Hugo Awards process at any stage,' the statement read in part, which might turn the heads of anyone who is a) interested in the Hugos, but b) not up on the latest controversy. However, plenty of people in the community are well aware of what's been going on. A quick journey to the blog File 770 will bring you up to speed, as will a visit to Seattle Worldcon 2025's own site, which on April 30 shared a post clarifying exactly what role AI played in the upcoming event. 'We have received questions regarding Seattle's use of AI tools in our vetting process for program participants,' Seattle Worldcon 2025 chair Kathy Bond wrote. 'In the interest of transparency, we will explain the process of how we are using a Large Language Model (LLM). We understand that members of our community have very reasonable concerns and strong opinions about using LLMs. Please be assured that no data other than a proposed panelist's name has been put into the LLM script that was used. Let's repeat that point: no data other than a proposed panelist's name has been put into the LLM script. The sole purpose of using the LLM was to streamline the online search process used for program participant vetting, and rather than being accepted uncritically, the outputs were carefully analyzed by multiple members of our team for accuracy.' Bond's post goes on to explain that 'using this process saved literally hundreds of hours of volunteer staff time, and we believe it resulted in more accurate vetting after the step of checking any purported negative results. We have also not utilized an LLM in any other aspect of our program or convention.' That last line is what today's resignation post from Whyte, MacCallum-Stewart, and Cassidy also emphasized: that the Hugos themselves were not pulled into this process, which was meant to help Seattle Worldcon 2025 more efficiently compile the panels it offers to convention attendees. Bond later posted an additional message on May 2, re-iterating her apology about using ChatGPT as part of the convention's program vetting. 'Additionally, I regret releasing a statement that did not address the concerns of our community,' she shared. 'My initial statement on the use of AI tools in program vetting was incomplete, flawed, and missed the most crucial points. I acknowledge my mistake and am truly sorry for the harm it caused.' However, as File 770 pointed out, the damage has apparently already been done: the use of ChatGPT in any capacity in connection to Worldcon created a furor on social media. It also inspired at least one Hugo nominee to remove their book from contention: Yoon Ha Lee, whose Moonstorm was named a Lodestar Award finalist, which honors YA releases. In a May 1 post on Bluesky, the author linked to the April 30 Worldcon blog post noted above, and noted he was withdrawing the title from consideration. Then, in a post shared today responding to File 770's latest post announcing the resignations, the author wrote 'All respect and I'm grateful to them for their work, sorry [things] came to this pass.' Seattle Worldcon 2025 takes place August 13-17; the Hugo Awards will be handed out August 16.
