John is sleepy, Alison is talking to Chinese fans, and Liz went to the Hugos.
Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.
Content warnings this episode: COVID-19 (chapter 2); racism (chapter 3); foreign policy and sexism (chapter 4)
- Letters of comment
- Farah and Fran talking about masking at Novacon
- A big discussion about BSFA
- You can get by just NOT TELLING THE BSFA your address (DON’T TRY THAT WITH THE WORLDCON)
- Chris Garcia
- Site selection at DisCon III
- Chengdu in 2023 won
- File 770’s reporting on the win
- Chinese fans seem nice!
- The livestream was good, and had 106,000 viewers
- Lots of different Chinese university SF societies encouraging the bid; spot the flag in Gallifreyan and the monolith
- WSFS Business Meeting
- The video of the session we discuss
- Kevin Standlee’s LiveJournal post about it
- File 770’s reporting on the session
- There are legitimate concerns about China
- John found he generally agreed with these tweets from Jeannette Ng
- Tweet
- Thread #1
- Thread #2
- The guests are Liu Cixin, Sergei Lukyanenko and Robert J. Sawyer
- A File 770 commenter outlines the issues with Lukyanenko
- Hugo Awards
- If Fanzine had 53 fewer votes and Fancast had 42 fewer votes they would not have been awarded
- Picks
- John: The Psychopath Club by Sandra Bond (paperback, Kindle)
- Alison: Sibilant Fricative by Adam Roberts (paperback, Kindle)
- Liz: The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (epub, paperback, Kindle)
- Picks for Christmas song
- Alison: Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton
- John:
- California Christmastime by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
- Oh Santa! by Mr.B the Gentleman Rhymer
- Liz: Bethlehem Down
- Alison’s playlist of Christmas songs which do not presuppose God or Santa
- Music credits
- Our theme music is It’s Christmas Time by Frank Schröter, used under the Simplified Filmmusic.io Standard License