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A Science Fiction Fanzine | Winter 2004/5 |
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Wednesday September 1 |
Thursday
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Thursday, September 2: Since Gardner was unavailable, that freed up a meal. Bob Silverberg and I always try to have lunch together at Worldcon, but we hadn't been able to mesh our schedules this year...and suddenly we were both free until 3:00 PM, so we popped over to an oyster bar he knew. While we were eating we decided to collaborate on a non-fiction anthology. I've bought stories from Bob, and he's bought from me, but this is the first time we've ever worked together, rather than for one another. At 3:00 I moderated the panel that was
the most fun of the con ... hell, of the last half-dozen cons.
Fred Pohl couldn't make it, but there was Harry Harrison, Phil
Klass (a/k/a William Tenn), Bob Silverberg and me, telling funny
stories about the giants of science fiction who are no longer
with us. This included the stories of how John Campbell presided
at his own funeral; how Ted At 4:30 I signed at the SFWA table, and I moved over to the Wildside table to sign from 5:00 to 6:00. Then I went up to the room to relax for an hour, and Carol and I walked over to the Marriott lobby, where we met John and Kim Betancourt and went off to dinner at a Persian restaurant, the Rialto, across the Charles River; best meal of the convention. During the meal I sold John the anthology Silverberg and I had decided to put together, and asked what I could do for the next issue of Adventure Tales, the pulp reprint magazine that had run an article by me along with all the old pulp stories in its premiere issue this summer. He said that it was still a reprint magazine, but he would make an exception if I would write a Lucifer Jones story for each issue. (You want to become my lifelong friend? Ask me to write about my very favorite character, the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones.) It was all I could do not to pick up the check for dinner. So we returned to the hotel at maybe 10:30,
just in time for me to grab a handful of stories and go to the
Rhode Island suite, where Donna Drapeau and her gang had invited
me to come do a reading. I like to rest a bit between stories,
so like last year I invited the Harem Division of the Babes For
Bwana - Linda Donahue, Julia Mandala, and any other belly dancers
they could round up - to provide the entertainment between stories,
and as always they came through with flying colors. I stopped by the SFWA Suite, talked to a number of pro friends I hadn't seen yet, went down to the spacious and well-run con suite, and stopped in at the bidding parties. Columbus and Japan shared the same large suite, which seemed counter-productive to me. Back in Chicon V in 1991, Louisville entered the Worldcon with a substantial lead for 1994, but Winnipeg caught and passed them in the five days of the con by the simple expedient of importing a chef and catering service and dishing out some great food. If someone had done that here, the fans would never have known which side was responsible or who was striving so hard to please them and win their votes. I wound up the night at the CFG suite, where CFG members kept arriving -- Joel Zakem, Steve Leigh, Frank Johnson, member emeritus Mark Linneman, others -- and I stayed until maybe 5:30 in the morning.
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Challenger
is © 2003-2005 by Guy H. Lillian III.
All rights revert to contributors upon initial print and website
publication.
and his wife, devout nudists, would invite couples over for dinner
and greet them in the altogether; how Randy Garrett always stiffed
worshipful new writers with huge dinner checks; and on and on.
I hope to hell someone was tape recording it. (Most of the panels
were filled, but this one drew Standing Room Only and spilled
out into the corridor.)
Well,
shimmying colors, anyway. And not to be outdone, the Rhode Island
ladies (and one incredibly graceful guy dressed in a spacesuit
and a grass skirt) performed some hula dances. I don't think
the thing was publicized much beyond my Listserv, but Bob Eggleton
and a number of others showed up and seemed to have a pretty
good time. Adrienne Gormley also read a story, and Donna read
a story by the late Robyn Herrington that I'd bought for one
of my anthologies; it turned out to be the last story she ever
wrote. Wonderful party, and I hope they'll invite me again, if
not at Glasgow, then at Los Angeles in 2006.