GRRM Gets Ghosted by his Favorite Convention
Game of Thrones’ George RR Martin falls foul of Glasgow sci-fi event’s strict rules https://t.co/glLLod4pVg
- Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) July 17, 2024
Author George R. R. Martin continues to avoid writing those main series ASOIAF books by recently posting about his upcoming travels, including his schedule for the upcoming WorldCon, a fan run convention of the World Science Fiction Society. Organized by different people every year as well as hosted in a different city every year, the convention is most notable for administering/hosting the Hugo Awards, a literary award for science fiction and fantasy achievements which are nominated and voted on by WorldCon attendees.
GRRM has attended WorldCon since 1971 and hosts a Hugo Losers Party. But in recent years he's run afoul with other attendees of the convention. For 2019's Dublin WorldCon, organization for his Hugo Losers Party went awry when the booked venue reached maximum capacity and no longer let people inside, leaving partygoers stranded outside while it was raining. He posted a longass non-apology explanation as this failure to organize a pissup in a brewery went viral in certain sff book parts of twitter at the time.
When the pandemic forced the convention to go virtual for 2020's convention (it was going to be held in Wellington, New Zealand), toastmaster GRRM was the virtual host of the Hugos and reportedly did a terrible job wherein he mispronounced many nominees' names as well as publications and going on a bit too long about the old days of the convention. A writeup of his flubs entitled "George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun" was nominated for a Hugo the next year.
Fastforward to recently where he posted (but not on LJ!) about not making it into this year's programming. This year's convention is being held in Glasgow, Scotland starting August 8, a few days after the second season of House of the Dragon finishes. The programming deadline for the convention was in April.
"I will be in Glasgow, attending the con, but whether you’ll see me, I don’t know. I am not on any programming. It is not for lack of trying, though. I wrote the con’s programming chair back in January, and again in February, asking for his phone number so we could discuss the details. No phone number was forthcoming, alas, just a form letter with a link to an application and a warning that while I was welcome to apply, I could not be guaranteed a place on the programme.
I did not give up there, however. Several months later, when I learned how many of my Wild Cards writers would be at the con (about a dozen, all told), I wrote again and offered to organize a Wild Cards event for them [...] I got no reply to that one. A month or so after that, I tried again. Howard Waldrop died in January, and I thought it would be nice to do a memorial panel honoring the man and his work. Several other friends [...] said they would be delighted to be part of such a panel. Alas, no reply to that one either.
As regular readers of my Not A Blog know, I have also been producing a series of short films based on some of Howard’s classic short stories [...] The films are not in theatres yet, but I offered to screen them in Glasgow, as part of the film programme (if there is one) or that proposed Waldrop Memorial Panel. No response to that offer either.
So... yes, I will be at Glasgow. I will check out the art show, as I always do, maybe attend some bid parties, and I will be wandering the dealer’s room (the huckster’s room, as us old timers call it). The rest of the time I guess I may hang out in the bar, drinking with friends both old and new, toasting Howard and Gardner and all the other friends we lost.
Maybe I’ll see you there."
source:1/2/3/4
Have you ever been denied special treatment?
