After the Masquerade, I was ready to sleep in!  But we weren’t quite done yet.

We had a Masquerade Show & Tell scheduled for 2pm.  The contestants all came and wore or brought their costumes from the night before.  Several spoke about how they had made this or that piece.  At least 2 had props that they were not taking back to the US, and offered them to the Finns.

The winner of the Best Recreation costume, Kerttu Vähänen, was also awarded a membership to Worldcon 76, for her Doctor Strange costume.  The Cloak of Levitation was totally hand-sewn, with 5 different fabrics.  And she absolutely nailed the attitude both on stage and in the convention halls.  

After that, we were off to Closing Ceremonies.  Jukka noted that final registration was 10,516 Members (full week and day passes), and 7119 people on-site.  This made us the second largest Worldcon ever (after Sasquan for 11,742 total members and Loncon 3 for 6,946 attending members).  See the Long List for more details and history about Worldcons.

Kevin was handed the gavel as Jukka transferred things to Worldcon 76.  We showed a short video about San Jose, done to a filk version of Do You Know The Way To San Jose, which had the crowd chuckling with the puns.  It will eventually be available to the public, but not yet.

And then we had a chance to rest before repacking for our next stop: Stockholm.

The Hugo Awards are one of the main events at a Worldcon.  They have been given out annually since 1955, and are one of the primary purposes of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS).  Retro-Hugos may be awarded on the 50th/75th/100th anniversary if none were originally given that year.  There were no Retro-Hugos in Helsinki.

This year, our friend Chuck Serface (aka “Two Buck Chuck”), was one of the finalists for Journey Planet, a fanzine he co-edited along with 6 other friends, including Christopher J. Garcia.  Chuck asked Stephen to be his designated acceptor, should they win.  This meant that we were invited to the Pre-Hugo reception.  We had an opportunity to talk with folks we knew, and folks we had just met.  We had a nice chat with Ada Palmer, who subsequently won the Campbell Award.  I was also talking to folks about Worldcon 76 next year, since I’m running the Program.

We ended up seated in front of Amal El-Mohtar (who won for her short story, see the post here), and Michi Trota and Julia Rios (who won along with co-editors Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas for Uncanny Magazine).  It was loud behind us.  But great fun.

We were also invited to the post-ceremony Loser’s Party.  Winners may attend, but will be mocked and made to wear silly hats.  Worldcon 76 co-hosted with George RR Martin at a local place Steam Hellsinki.  Great decorations, great food & drinks, great company.  Unfortunately, I had an early day with the Masquerade on Saturday, so we didn’t stay that late.

Remember that advertisement about Worldcon?  Our expectations had been for a convention of 3500-4000.  In the last week, though, memberships surged.  The crowds on Wednesday were so bad that many members couldn’t get in to see the panels and presentations.  The hallways were full of folks trying to get to the events.

It got to the point where the convention Chairs made the decision to close membership and limit the number of day passes.  See the post here.  It generated a lot of discussion on-line, but generally folks were positive about the way it was handled.  The worst of the crowds died down around the Info Desk and Registration Desk, but the panel and presentation rooms were still packed.  The Ops staff ended up posting a sign on each door once the room was filled, so that folks wouldn’t keep trying to get in.

Our Outreach/Press Relations Area Head was actually a local news agency reporter, so had pre-existing connections into all of the Helsinki area outlets.  Here’s a permalink to her writeup in the JOF list on Facebook.  My suspicion is that her excellent PR skills lead to the tremendous local interest and the surge of attendees.

As I was busy with Masquerade prep, and in the midst of the crowding, I only got to see one event on Wednesday, but it was absolutely fabulous.  Tea and Jeopardy (Emma Newman and her husband Peter) did a live podcast recording with author George R.R. Martin.  Guests on the podcast get “a nice cup of tea, a cheeky bit of cake, and a spot of mild peril” as they visit the tea lair.  In this instance, after a delightful chat, GRRM drank the potion guaranteed to produce nightmares and the audience had to do their best death howls to wake him up.  Both Emma and Peter have pieces in the new Wild Cards book (which he is still editing).  And Emma avoided mentioning Game of Thrones completely.

As Debi Chowdhury and I were manning the Masquerade Sign-Up table, we kept seeing folks in some great costumes.  Debi was working the crowd and convinced many of them that they should enter the Masquerade.  My concerns about a small and short event became less and less as Wednesday became Thursday.

Worldcon 76 had a fan table and a display in the Exhibits hall.  We had several new pop-up banners, which we ordered from a printer in Estonia.  They did a great job and cost us about half what the same thing would have cost if printed in the US and shipped to Helsinki.  Kevin Roche, the Worldcon 76 chair, gave a great presentation at The Fannish Inquisition on Thursday afternoon.  He announced our two additional Guests of Honor, John Picacio (artist) and Frank Hayes (musician).  The Worldcon 76 crew also sponsored a party, along with several other potential future Worldcon sites, on Thursday evening.  We received pass-through funds from MidAmeriCon II and celebrated Andy’s birthday with cake.  And people started to see the green shirts we were all wearing during the week.

While we were in Kansas City last year, for MidAmeriCon II (Worldcon 74), I was asked if I could help run the Masquerade.  I said sure, and figured it would be a good opportunity to visit Scandinavia.  Stephen had been before, but I’d never been to that part of the world.

We researched flights, looked at the various hotels that had rooms associated with the convention, talked with our friends, and then made a plan.  The plan took us from San Jose to Helsinki to Stockholm to Chicago and then back home.

We arrived at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport about 3pm EEST (5am Pacific), jet lagged and dehydrated.  We caught a cab at the airport, and were extremely impressed with the efficiency of the process.  Well placed signage, in multiple languages, and plenty of TaksiHelsinki vehicles to get us to our hotel, the Original Sokos Hotel Vaakuna.  The hotel was built for the 1952 Winter Olympics.  It’s been well kept over the years, and I would say it’s more of a European business hotel than a tourist hotel.  That said, we were warmly welcomed and felt quite comfortable there.  They had plenty of power outlets for our converters, and we had a balcony room, which was a wonderful way to help us conquer jet lag.  So was the sauna, which is an expected feature for Helsinki hotels.

Monday we decided to do a walking tour of sorts, and play Ingress.  The mission set “Explore Helsinki” started right outside our hotel and took us around the downtown area.  We took our time to see the sights along the way, stopped in for coffee at one place, lunch at another.  We saw an advertisement for Worldcon in front of the tram stop (more about that later).  Tuesday we went to visit GE’s Helsinki office and meet some of the folks behind our operating room monitors and anesthesia machines.  And learned about the efficient and inexpensive public transportation system, as we took a bus and tram to get to/from the hotel.

Wednesday was the first day of Worldcon75.  I was there early, to meet with a couple of folks about tech, and generally help out.  The Masquerade Sign Up desk was part of the Info Desk, so I was extra staff for them.  We were not prepared for the deluge of people who bought memberships, most of whom were attending their first worldcon.  Despite best-laid plans, our signs couldn’t be seen easily, and line management was a challenge.  One lady who was asking about the schedule was visiting from Colorado and was there just for the day — she had been traveling to Helsinki for a completely different reason, heard about the convention from someone on the plane and decided to drop in!