For five years running, Steamcon—"one of the largest, longest running steampunk conventions in the world," according to their website—has been a nerdy Seattle-area fall calendar event. Yesterday, on their homepage, Steamcon published a statement:

It is with profound regret and sadness that I must announce that Steamcon is no longer a viable organization. Our debts are too great a hurdle for us to overcome. Based on my calculations, somewhere between 25% and 40% of the funds that we would raise for Steamcon VI will go towards paying off Steamcon V. The board has been wrestling with these economic realities for several weeks now, and voted one week ago to dissolve the corporation.

Steamcon VI, with the theme "The Mechanical World," was scheduled for the weekend of October 3rd at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency. There's a discussion about saving the convention over on their Facebook page, but things look pretty dire. In related news, if two more steampunk-related organizations go out of business in the next six months, the New York Times will have themselves a controversial "death-of-steampunk" trend piece.

(Via GeekGirlCon on Twitter.)