Putting the World in Worldcon

[owlmoose]

A couple of months ago, there was a Twitter discussion about SFF awards that touched on the question of why so few Worldcons have been held outside the United States. While we might debate the wisdom of a group of American fans calling their convention "Worldcon", we are probably stuck with the name for the foreseeable future (and if more international bids win, it may even become more accurate). Setting that aside, one common response to this criticism is that Worldcon can only be held in a location that bids for it. You can't win if you don't play, as they say, so it's not the larger membership's fault if very few Worldcons have been held outside of the United States. There are a number of reasons why this analysis is too simplistic, but it also got me to wondering: how often have groups outside of the US, particularly from outside North America and/or non-English-speaking countries, bid for Worldcon and lost? Is there a history of non-American bids not doing well?

So I took to the internet. Surely there had to be a list of losing Worldcon bids out there somewhere, right? But there wasn't. The best I could find was Fancyclopedia 3, which has entries detailing the site selection process for almost every year that Worldcon has been held. So using that information -- and my sincerest thanks to the editors of that site for compiling it! This project would not have been possible without them -- I built a list. I've compiled that list into a Google Sheet, accessible here for anyone who wants to see the data for themselves.

( Some background, methodological notes, and discussion )