The Drink Tank 141 (2007).pdf

This Were WorldCon II

The Drink Tank Issue 141

The second annual This Were WorldCon

is here! This issue is lucky to feature some of

the top fan writers in the world (Claire Brialey,

Mark Plummer and John Purcell) and a little bit

from me here and there.

This year, since I won’t be at WorldCon,

I’ve been thinking a lot about what WorldCon

means to me and the bigget thing is always the

people. I met so many great folks at WorldCon

last year (and apparently I announced Linda

there in The Match Game! and she also ap-

peared in my Post-WorldCon Issue, which is

kinda a weird coincidence) and now I’m excit-

edly waiting for Denver.

And then there’s this year, which I hope

Dave Clark, Kevin Standlee or SOMEBODY

will write up for me. I’m missing out, I know,

but there’s no way I could ever afford it. These

things happen. I’m still hoping that we can

get WorldCon to Finland or South Africa even

though there’s nearly no chance of me ever af-

fording to make that trip. It’s not easy making

just enough to live OK.

So, here’s the rundown: We open with

John Purcell, our man in Texas, telling us about

IguanaCon, or Iggy for short. He was here last

year too with his MidAmeriCon report (of Big

Mac as it was known) and he does another great

one. Claire gives us a little something about

ConFiction. I’m pleased that Mark Plummer,

one of those noble souls who saw it to nomi-

nate me for TAFF this year, gives us AussieCon

from 1999, a con I wish I could have gone to

(and the one where Janice Gelb was the DUFF

winner!)

And so I say to you...Enjoy the Zine!

A Boy in his Pup Tent:

IguanaCon

madness. Fortunately, the Internet has

a way of providing some information

that helps to jog the old memory

banks, so here goes.

IguanaCon, the 36 th World

Science Fiction Convention, was held

from August 30 th to September 4 th in

1978 in Phoenix, Arizona. The primary

hotel was the Hyatt Regency, although

the Adams Hotel across the street held

nearly as many programming items as

the Hyatt and was also booked solid

with fans; the larger events, such

as the Hugo Awards, speechifying,

and Masquerade, were held at the

Convention Center and Symphony Hall

a couple blocks away. It wasn’t a bad

walk, so long as you stayed hydrated

and stuck to the shade. After all, this

was Phoenix and it was Labor Day

Weekend, so the daily temperatures

ranged anywhere from 102° to 112°

F every day. The good news was the

humidity never rose above 8%, so it

was the proverbial “dry” heat.

This is the main thing that I

remember the most about Iggy: it was

friggin’ hot! Hands down, one of the

hottest WorldCons ever held, if not

the hottest. The NolaCons were hot

too, I am sure, and they had humidity

factored in as well. At any rate, the

temperatures didn’t have much of

an effect on the fannish energy level

throughout the con. Heck, nothing

could ever dampen that kind of energy,

as near as I can igure. This is what

August 30-September 4th, 1978

Phoenix Convention Centre & Symphony Hall

Harlan Ellison- Writer GoH

Bill Bowers- Fan GoH

FM Busby- Toastmaster

Tim Kyger- Chairman

Attendance- 4700

Trying to write a retrospective

conreport about a WorldCon I attended

nearly thirty years ago is akin to near-

makes a WorldCon so much fun.

Iggy was the irst and only

WorldCon where I had my own room

(in the Adams). At MidAmeriCon

two years earlier, Dennis Jarog from

Chicago helped split the cost of a room,

but this time I had a pretty decent

paying job, so I decided to really live it

up and treated myself so I could retreat

to a quiet place as needed for naps and

reading. My plan worked admirably, I

might add, and I was glad that I had

this option available.

The Professional Guest of Honor

was Harlan Ellison, who refused to

accept a room in either hotel, opting

instead to spend the week in a

Winnebago parked outside the Hyatt in

protest of the Arizona state legislature’s

refusal to ratify the Equal Rights

Amendment. This was his way to

protest their action – or lack of action,

to be more politically opinionated here

– and I believe, since I didn’t attend

the speeches, that his GoH speech

fervently addressed this issue, among

other topics. Harlan was also involved

in one of the strangest things I’ve ever

seen at a con, and that was when he

spent the better part of three or four

days inside a large, plastic tent set up

in the Hyatt’s atrium, writing a short

story. This was an interesting publicity

stunt that played off an alleged claim

of Harlan’s that he could write a story

anywhere , damn the distractions. So

the con committee set him up in this

clear plastic tent, vented it, stuck a

large fan inside (the air-circulating

kind, that is), a desk with a typewriter

and a ream of paper, and thus Harlan

sat there to write a story; all the while,

fans trooped by the tent, stopped,

stared at the shadowy igure hunched

behind the typewriter, and listened to

the rapid clickety-clack of the keys.

As a page rolled off the platen, a

committee aide (read: gopher) assigned

to the tent would tape the sheet up on

a nearby wall, and fans could read the

story in progress. True to his word,

Harlan inished it. I cannot remember

which story it was, but I think the inal

word count was over 5000, which is a

decent length.

I remember one afternoon when

I was walking through the Hyatt

Atrium with Jim Frenkel, enwrapped in

conversation as we passed by Harlan’s

tent – clickety-click-rattle-a-tat-tat-

clackety-click – and ignoring it, then

stepped around the body of a young

fan passed out on the Atrium loor, a

concommittee member kneeling next

to him, asking over her walkie-talkie

for a medical crew to come on down.

Jim and I didn’t recognize the fan, but

he commented that he had seen this

before, since so many kids come to

these things and try to do it all , run

their bodies ragged, and then just

collapse whereever they happen to be

at the time their body gives out. We

kept walking, knowing that there were

people coming to help this kid, so I am

sure that guy was eventually all right.

Overall, IguanaCon was a lot of

fun. I really enjoyed myself. So much

of it is a gray blur now, but I did take

some pictures, mostly of the downtown

architecture when I took a walk

Friday morning to get away from the

con for a bit. The southwestern style

architecture of many of the buildings

was beautiful, as was the landscaping

(the palm trees and bright lowerbeds),

and the circular fountain in front of the

convention center was deinitely cool. I

stood there for a few minutes, enjoying

the light spray of water drifting across

relevant information about Iggy. It was

actually listed as IguanaCon II because

there had been an earlier hoax bid

called IguanaCon. The irst chairman

of Iggy was Greg Brown, but for various

reasons he stepped down and was

replaced by the very able Tim Kyger,

who did a wonderful job. Besides

Harlan Ellison, other guests were Bill

Bowers (Fan GoH), Josef Nesvadba

(European, but he could not attend

due to an inability to get travel papers),

and F.M. Busby was the Toastmaster.

Total attendance was approximately

4700, and it certainly felt like it. There

were times when you simply could not

move through a room for the crowds;

the huckster room was always packed,

as were also the Hyatt Atrium, the

corridors around the meeting rooms,

and the consuite. Well, this last one

was to be expected, but there were a

ton of great parties going on in both

hotels each night, and I did my best to

get to as many of those as I could.

I had a great time at IguanaCon.

Even though I missed out on meeting a

lot of people due to the large numbers,

I was still able to meet some folks that

I wanted to see, notably Orson Scott

Card (the year before I had taught his

story “Ender’s Game” to an English

class at my old high school; he thought

that was interesting) and C.J. Cherryh,

whom I have always thought looked

so much like Minn-stf member, Kathy

Marschall. One of the coolest things

about Iggy was running into Harlan

at the Meet the Pros party poolside

at the Adams Hotel (I think) and he

remembered me from ByobCon V and

MidAmeriCon. That was nice. Of

course, I did the requisite smooothing

with Bob Tucker, talked with Rusty

Hevelin, George “Lan” Laskowski and

others, swapped songs with Frank

Gasperik since I had brought along

my guitar, hung out with my Minn-

stf buddies (I was active in the club

at that time), and met a whole slew of

fen from all over the world. It was a

grand time, and someday I may have

to sell one of my kids in order to afford

attending another WorldCon again.

my face. That felt so good, even at 10:

30 in the morning.

This was also the convention

where at one of the autograph signings

I got Phyllis Eisenstein to sign my irst

edition copy of Born to Exile . I wrote

about this in my fanzine In A Prior

Lifetime (issue #1(Summer, 2003) and

again in issue #14 (August, 2006)),

so instead of retelling that story here,

go to www.efanzines.com to read and

enjoy; the complete run of IAPL is

archived there.

Sorry for that public service

announcement, so here is some

CONFICTION: A PERSONAL VIEW

This Worldcon is small – but that

one is far away.

– that I irst really took notice of the

idea of a Dutch Worldcon, and thus at

Conspiracy that I feel my path to The

Hague began.

If I hadn’t already experienced

a British Worldcon, albeit from

within the comfort blanket of a group

of several dozen of my fan friends

and acquaintances, I doubt I would

have felt comfortable with the idea

of travelling to Forn Parts to attend

another. And Holland was probably

the most comfortable non-British

location I could have found: virtually

all the population, especially in the

cities, spoke English at least as well

as I did; unlike Ireland (of which the

same is true) it had no recent history

of political differences with the UK or

many inhabitants with a known desire

to bomb or shoot British citizens; and

it was only an hour away by plane.

Yet it was still, at the age of

20, the irst time I had been outside

my own country (and, for all that I

consider myself British, in this case I

mean merely England). I had to get a

passport. I had to get a phrase book.

I had to get brightly coloured foreign

banknotes. And I had to contend with

the joys of travelling with my boyfriend

of the time, who was terriied of lying.

I didn’t realise how scared he

was, and therefore blithely carried on

making plans to ly across the English

Channel to Amsterdam. A number

of our friends were making the same

trip and – since Noel preferred to grit

his teeth and ly than suffer a long

trip by ferry – either assumed that

he wasn’t really scared or felt it was

fair game to try to make things worse.

A combination of brandy and some

prescription tranquilisers which had

been prescribed for someone else

got him onto the plane and enabled

him not to create the sort of scene

that would have had him promptly

disembarked again. And then we

were off. (Foolishly, I thought that

having done it once – and having the

incentive, the next time, of needing to

get home – the return journey would

be easier, but Noel to this day refuses

to believe in either probability as a

discipline or its essentially impersonal

nature, and remains convinced that

every light he takes simply decreases

the number of safe ones he has left

before his plane crashes.)

But Noel probably wasn’t the

only one experiencing light anxiety.

British perceptions at the time were

that, following the Iraqi invasion of

Kuwait at the beginning of August,

a lot of anticipated US Worldcon

attendees had decided that lying

across the Atlantic was too great a

risk – although it was never clear

to me whether this was meant to

be due to a fear of mid-air hijack or

bombing (the Lockerbie crash had

also happened less than two years

earlier) or just to a belief that Europe

48 th World Science Fiction Convention

23-27 August 1990

Netherlands Congress Centre, The Hague

Harry Harrison, Wolfgang Jeschke, Joe

Haldeman- Writer GoHs

Andrew Porter- Fan GoH

Toastmaster: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Chair: Kees van Toorn

It always seemed to me that

the 1990 Worldcon in Holland had

its roots irmly in the 1987 Worldcon

in Brighton, which Mark Plummer

described in the irst instalment of

this anthology. In practice, the Dutch

fans and their international supporters

must have been working on their bid

for several years beforehand, but it was

at Conspiracy ’87 that the site of the

1990 Worldcon was selected and at

Conspiracy – only my third convention

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