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H3 ALIGN=CENTER>A convention report by Taras Wolansky
[Editor's Note: This material originally appeared in FOSFAX, Issue #166, October 1993. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]
Copyright 1996 Taras Wolansky
ConFrancisco, Worldcon 1993, was held September 2nd through 6th at the Moscone Convention Center and several not-very-nearby hotels in San Francisco. "Honored Guests", Larry Niven, Alicia Austin, Tom Digby, jan howard finder; Toastmaster, Guy Gavriel Kay (an odd choice as his diction is not particularly clear); Dead Guest of Honor, Mark Twain.
San Francisco fully lives up to its reputation as a beautiful city. To put it simply, it is the first city I've ever visited to which I'd seriously consider relocating. At least until I remember where all those picturesque hills come from! It is also the only place I've ever visited where, depending upon various factors, you can feel hot and cold simultaneously. It was coldest walking along or crossing the wide avenues that run from west to east, because the winds consistently and powerfully blew in that direction. I stayed at the Powell Hotel, which was closer to the convention center than all but one of the other con hotels; and which is not saying much: it was still ten minutes brisk walking, violating traffic regulations, each way. (For various, complicated reasons the convention was unable to reach an agreement with the relatively nearby Marriott Hotel.) The Powell Hotel, which was cheaper than the other hotels, is guaranteed to make you feel at home. If, that is, your home is an apartment overlooking an air shaft, with no air conditioning and uncertain heating, bad TV reception, a broken telephone, and a musty smell. Well, to be honest, after the first night I was able to switch to a (smaller) room overlooking the street which didn't smell and had a telephone that worked. But it still had no air conditioning, uncertain heating, bad TV reception. And one other thing: the hotel is right in front of a cable car terminus; the cars may be quiet, but the resultant crowds attract street musicians with electric amplifiers.
I'm not going to say anything particular about the opening ceremonies, which were rather lame (and rather late: 45 minutes). All I can remember is the illuminated model of the Golden Gate Bridge. I kept watching it, hoping Godzilla would suddenly rush out and smash it to flinders, but no such luck. By contrast, I enjoyed the closing ceremonies much more: I spent them in the Nikko Hotel watching a lovely Japanese video called Maison Ikkoku. People who attack this convention, however, are most likely to cite the lines people had to stand in, usually outside in the chilly wind. Even people who got there the night before the official opening ended up standing in the registration line on Thursday morning; the Wednesday registration had been so brief, and so poorly publicized, that only a lucky few stumbled upon it. But the cream of the jest was, once we finally obtained our membership badge, we had to stand in another line to get the souvenir book and freebies. I spent roughly one hour in each line; at least the second line was indoors. For reasons which are not entirely clear to me, we also had to stand in line for the opening ceremonies, the masquerade, and the Hugo Awards. What I heard was, the convention was being gouged by the Moscone management, and couldn't let people into the big hall early without paying heavily for the privilege.
Looking over my notes, I find I have material on only a limited number of events. On several panels, little or nothing of interest was said. (I will tactfully neglect to give examples.) Or I took no notes, as at the "roundtables", about which more later.
Noon Friday, a blunt-speaking panel composed of Jim Baen, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and moderator Rick Katze examined the track record of "Predictive SF: Perils and Promises". Some things are predictable, said Baen; other things are not, being "chaotic" in the sense that imperceptible differences eventually have enormous effects. On the other hand, "a lot of [SF writers] were wrong because they were lazy and silly." "Lazy and silly," chimed in Pournelle, because the writers want people to behave like angels. For years Pournelle has been editing a series of SF anthologies at Tor Books, entitled "There Will Be War". "Harry Harrison, being lazy and silly," said Pournelle, put out a counter-anthology, entitled There Won't Be War--on the eve of Desert Storm!
Pournelle said he engages in serious predictive work for House Republicans like (SF fan) Newt Gingrich, and he is proud of having predicted the collapse of the "Evil Empire". (Later, Niven saw it replaced by "the Evil Little Kingdoms".) However, when as an SF writer he wrote about a CoDominium of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ruling the world, he hoped to prevent the possible future he was describing. Even so, he feels the scenario almost came true, when elements of the Soviet military attempted their coup, a few years ago. Sf writers "are not in the business of predicting," Pournelle said. "Writers need only be plausible" in their extrapolations, not accurate. Stories which appear to be predictive are really exploring one or more of the following themes: "If this goes on--"; "Wouldn't you like to see--"; "Wouldn't it be wonderful if--".
Niven was proud of having predicted gravitational lensing by neutron stars. Also, he said, "Jerry and I predicted chaos in Los Angeles--big deal!" The things he got wrong, he said, were based on current science of the time. (He gave no examples; but he may have been thinking of "memory RNA".) One notorious Niven "prediction" that has not come true (so far) is the disassembly of criminals into their component organs for transplantation. "We're a nicer species than I thought!"
Niven mentioned one final failure: "I predicted peace. Sorry, Jer; I did." (Much laughter.)
Towards the end Baen hazarded a few predictions: "There will be gene editing; there will be cheap travel in space." He also made a crack about "armed social workers in space"; though I'm not sure if this was a prediction, a new Baen anthology, a comment on Clinton's foreign policy, or a description of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
A woman in the audience questioned Niven about the place of women in his disaster novel, Lucifer's Hammer: "chattels and victims", as she put it. In the absence of civilization, said Niven, women are chattels and victims; and they stay that way until civilization is rebuilt.
Friday afternoon, author/scientists Hal Clement, Arlan Andrews, Geoffrey A. Landis, and Jerry Pournelle were "Mining Extraterrestrial Resources" for fun and profit.
Landis, whose day job is working for NASA, said he has been waiting for years for someone to tell him just what it is in space that will pull us out there. He suspects we won't know what it is until we stumble over it. Ninety percent of natural resources in the solar system that are easily available to us are off the Earth, retorted Pournelle, who was sitting next to Landis. The pessimism of his fellow panelists he said, is "alarming--and a little silly!"
On Earth, said Landis, creating a vacuum for industrial purposes is cheap; energy is cheap; what is expensive is going to the Moon! Pournelle, growing red-faced: Because you assholes at NASA made it expensive!! Sometime later, in response to a question about why the DC-X, or Delta Clipper, is a military project, Pournelle said, because NASA fought against it, tooth and nail! (At a room party a few days later, an author/scientist whose day job is working for NASA told me he hopes NASA will not get its hands on the Delta Clipper.)
Later Pournelle tacitly apologized to Landis for the overly personal nature of his outburst, saying that NASA has a lot of good people, trapped in a bureaucratic maze. Nonetheless Landis seemed a little flustered, making errors like calling carbon monoxide an atom. (Admittedly, Landis' blonde eyebrows give him a certain startled look at the best of times.) Landis suggested a lunar resource that may be valuable in the future, the Helium 3 trapped in surface rocks and dust. He described it as the perfect fusion fuel.
An interesting point that came out during the discussion is that humans have been exploiting extraterrestrial resources for thousands of years: meteoric iron may have been the first iron used by Man.
After a publicity campaign unprecedented in its scope, in my experience of science fiction conventions, several hundred people turned out Saturday morning to see what was billed as Harlan Ellison's lone appearance at the convention. It proved to be a typically reprehensible, possibly actionable, and mostly entertaining Ellison performance. The purpose, Ellison quickly told us, was to sell us Mephisto on Ice, his new, small press book. (I immediately thought, "Hell freezes over!")
The audience appeared to be made up of people who might better be described as Ellison groupies, than science fiction fans. Clearly, many had attended similar presentations in the past. Throughout the hour the audience was very much on Ellison's side, laughing at his jokes, hissing his enemies (NESFA, Locus, Andrew Porter, Gardner Dozois, Jim Frenkel, Tom Doherty, Ronald Reagan, the Bible), admiring his name-droppings (the Rolling Stones, Marvin Minsky, Norman Lear), applauding his triumphs (punching writer Charles Platt, signing a big movie deal). Except for one, telling incident when he thoughtlessly referred to the T-shirt he was wearing as "a slavish pandering to those of you who can only read comics". This was the only remark he made that the audience found offensive; there was an immediate outcry, and he quickly said some nice things about comics. (By contrast, there was much applause when he sneered at the Bible.)
Ellison invited the overflow crowd to sit on the floor near the podium. He joked, "Come, get closer. I like to have people I can kick as I speak!" He never actually did kick anybody; though at one point he did playfully fall to tickling a young man sitting on the edge of the stage. Noticing people craning their heads, he joked about his height, or rather the lack thereof. He has no problem with being five foot five, he said. "I'm incredibly tall when I'm standing in my charisma," he wisecracked.
Ellison said he never gets fanzines any more, but his friend, former Superman editor Julius Schwartz, sent him a copy of a recent Mimosa, in which several episodes from Ellison's checkered past were recounted. "I guess I knew most of the people who were writing these things about me. Every story they were recollecting about me, it was at some point when I was younger, or whatever happened ... and in every one of them I'm a schmuck. In every one of them I do something stupid, or I say something stupid ... God, did I do nothing kind in forty years in this field? Is there no one that I've benefited? Is there no one who would say a good word for me ..." Ellison was apparently referring to Mimosa 12, in which author and editor Ted White told how, thirty years ago, Ellison had pulled a gun on him rather than pay an expensive wager. Aside from calling upon youth, implying he has grown out of such behavior (?), Ellison made no attempt to excuse his behavior or deny the stories; merely, he wondered why no one writes about all the good things he has done. (Perhaps Ellison wishes all the friends he has not threatened with a deadly weapon--there must be several--would write testimonials to that effect!)
"And so," Ellison continued, "I try to stay as far away from science fiction fandom as I possibly can. I mean, one can only take so much horseshit before one has the need to kill. At the moment, I have the need to kill the people at NESFA [New England Science Fiction Association].... I'm so angry, I'm calm."
At 1 AM that morning, it seems, Ellison had been leafing through the convention souvenir book when he came upon an advertisement for The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, published by NESFA Press (Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701-0203; 671 p., $24.95; ISBN 0-915368-68-56-0). His first thought was, yes, complete but for the story "Smith's" widow had given him for The Last Dangerous Visions. But then he read these fatal words: "Appearing for the first time in print in English [is] 'Himself in Anachron [sic?]' (originally written for Last Dangerous Visions and previously available only in French)".
A bit of history is in order. Cordwainer Smith, a.k.a. Paul W. Linebarger, died in 1966. According to Christopher Priest in The Last Deadloss Visions, Ellison first announced having a Smith story for his never published anthology in February, 1974! Yes, Ellison sat on the story for twenty years, so long that it is now of interest primarily to scholars and antiquarians. Discussing The Last Dangerous Visions in 1984 (!), Harry Harrison remarked, "The stories are gray with age, any value they might have had for the authors has long since been diminished to the vanishing point." Under these circumstances, any ordinary person would be humbly grateful to NESFA for undoing a little of the harm he has done. But Ellison is made of sterner stuff: "They've got the story in the fucking book, and it kills the story for The Last Dangerous Visions!" Possibly reacting to a few incredulous glances--at least a handful of people in the audience must have known the true situation--Ellison quickly added: "Now, even if it takes five hundred years to get that book out, five thousand fucking years, it's my story, Genevieve Linebarger gave it to me, gave me the rights to do it, and said, I want you to put it in this book."
Ellison said he had confronted members of NESFA that morning: "I went downstairs this morning to do a Charles Platt on them." Part of the audience didn't understand the reference, so he explained that writer and critic Charles Platt had once said something about a friend of Ellison that Ellison thought went beyond the line. "I travelled three thousand miles from L.A. to New York and punched the shit out of him at an SFWA banquet while everybody watched," he gloated. Actually it was only one punch--"he went down in one," boasted Ellison--and it was at a party following the banquet. Ellison tried to change the subject, but an audience question drew him back to it. "I don't know what the hell to do about it, except kill. ... If I go up to them and say what I want to say, it's: pull the goddam book off sale now, pulp the son of a bitch, republish without that story, or I'm going to sue you, NESFA, and every one of you into oblivion!" (Much applause.) "And they're going to say to me, 'You're not going to sue us, you're going to sue the agent.' The agent?! I don't want to hear fuckin' 'agent'! You know me; you know it was my story; you know that morally and ethically you should have at least called me and said, 'Hey, we've got this story. Do you have any remaining rights to it.' That's called decorum. But did they do that? No." I wonder what Genevieve Linebarger thinks about Ellison's threat to have the most important edition ever of her husband's work decorously--pulped. That is, if she is still alive after all these years!
The impression I got was not that Ellison really intended to sue NESFA, but that he thought it had shown him disrespect. To NESFA, he explained, "only certain writers are legitimate. Sprague de Camp is legit. Hal Clement is legit. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, they write, you know, 'hard sci', so they're OK.
"I'm a pisher, I've always been a pisher to them. And that's fine. ... But now, we're on a collision course. And unless something is done--and if they get arrogant with me ... the minute they do that, I will go hyper-ballistic!"
Perhaps hoping to hear some more verbal fireworks, an audience member baited Ellison with a question about Andrew Porter, editor of the Science Fiction Chronicle. Ellison: "Watch your mouth. There are two names that I will not permit spoken in my presence. One of them is that, the other one is Richard Nixon." (Much laughter.)
Ellison was enormously pleased to have had his Omni story, "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore", selected for the mainstream annual, Best American Short Stories 1993, though he complained the story got almost no recognition in the SF world. The editor--the series editor, not the Big Name on the cover--had called him with the news, saying, "We're just so pleased to be getting some fresh young blood in the book!"
Ellison laughed at his own reaction. Of all his many failings, he said, the primary one is "I never know when to shut my face. I mean, I think I came out of my mother's womb with a U.S. Keds in my mouth already." He immediately read the nice lady a lecture on how many decades he's been writing, how many hundreds of short stories and articles, and dozens of books he has published. As he put it, "caught midway between chagrin, and not knowing I'm this world-famous asshole," the poor woman responded, "Well, I'm terribly sorry, but none of us here knew your name!"
And for a moment, Ellison said, he was entirely crushed. He went off on a disquisition about how a plumber or electrician is more valuable to society than a writer--"Writers mostly sit and masturbate, that's all we do"--and that if he had it all to do over again, he would be a plumber, honest to God. (The audience, of course, wasn't buying any of it.) But then his heart leaped when he realized: "They didn't know my name. The name didn't buy the award! They knew nothing! IT WAS THE STORY!!"
I read the story in Omni, "a powerful and moving work of imaginative fiction", it says right here. Only a few pages long but seeming much longer, it was much worse than I expected from this highly professional writer. Rather like something that might have been produced in the late and unlamented "New Wave", circa 1970, it is a series of thirty-five paragraphs, from a few lines to a whole page. Each paragraph describes one day's activities of a time traveler as he bounces through time writing wrongs and playing pranks, and generally displaying a world view with all the sophistication of a made-for-television movie.
The note appended to the story seems to suggest Ellison did his research for the story over the phone. Which may perhaps explain this odd statement: "In Russian, sertsa means soul." Ellison uses the word, sertsa, several times, and at the end of the story, with heavy symbolism, the time traveller takes Sertsa as his name. But in fact the word serdtse means "heart" in Russian, not "soul" (doosha); serdtsa is the plural. Oh well, the Russians could use a good laugh.
In the second half of his presentation Ellison finally got back to the topic of Mephisto on Ice: the original editor and publisher who wouldn't give him sufficiently more money than they were paying everybody else; the thousands more Omni paid him; the monies earned from foreign rights; the growing interest in Hollywood; the $250,000 MGM deal.
It is worth noting that a day later two of Ellison's "enemies", the fanzine Mimosa and, in a stunning upset, Andrew Porter's SF Chronicle, won Hugo Awards. It is quite possible Ellison's very public attacks on Porter, on various occasions, helped push him over the top. A lot of people in the SF world privately deplore Ellison's various enormities but are reluctant to criticize him publicly, lest he--"do a Charles Platt on them". (Why do I have this uneasy feeling Ellison is going to call me on the phone again.)
Saturday afternoon, scheduled panelist Arlan Andrews was joined by former editor of Science Fiction Review Elton Elliott, photographer of the fannish stars Jay Kay Klein, and biologist Judy Lazar to give a working over to the question of "Workable Technologies That Aren't Being Worked". Taking exception to the description of the panel in the pocket program, which refers to "companies" neglecting new technology, Andrews and Elliott felt business was not the primary culprit. On the other hand, Lazar said that drug companies are putting little money in anti-parasitic research, because there is little money to be gained in the Third World. (It occurs to me as I write this, the government's support of research in this area is probably even weaker: for if there is little money in the Third World, there are no votes.) Andrews put his finger on an important distinction between business and government in a later comment. AT&T had video games in 1978, he said, but didn't bother to pursue them. The difference is, AT&T did not have the power to suppress other companies' work on video games, the way the Federal government had the power to suppress FM radio for thirty to forty years. The FCC also delayed the introduction of color television, added a member of the audience.
Many examples of governmental suppression of technology and science were adduced. Elliott mentioned the use of hemp (marijuana) for paper-making, which could save trees. He thought drug-free varieties could be developed; for the floor, he was informed that this has already been done. Lazar mentioned fetal research, suppressed by the Reagan and Bush administrations for ethical reasons. Andrews said the Clinton administration is sitting on research that shows the AIDS virus can survive in river-borne sewage for 48 hours.
Sometimes neither government nor business is directly responsible. When Andrews mentioned the nuclear rocket program of the late 1950s, an audience member reminded him of the issue of legal liability.
Andrews urged anybody who knows of promising technologies not being developed to tell him about it. Sandia Laboratories, where he works, is eager to find replacements for rapidly evaporating weapons research projects. On the other hand, he continued, some technologies ought to be suppressed: work on starships powered by anti-matter, for example, is just too dangerous to the world. Similarly, the Bush Administration had the opportunity to buy Russian space technology at ten cents on the dollar, but soberly decided it was more important to the safety of the world to destroy the ex-Soviet missile industry. Clinton is reversing the policy, Andrews added.
This being my first visit to San Francisco, I kept hoping to see some of the sexual perversities for which this city is world-famous. After all, at the 1968 Worldcon in nearby Oakland, Bill Donaho informs us, "there was open and public sex in several of the [Claremont Hotel] corridors." However, aside from a rather limp-wristed department store clerk, and street missionaries urging us to change our fornicating ways before God's plague carries us off, I was sorely disappointed. Until Saturday evening, when author Donald Kingsbury, and fans Branwyn Bigglestone, Greg Stafford, and Peter Larsen gathered to discuss "Body Manipulation in Fact and Fiction". Bigglestone said she was on the panel because her parents, members of the convention's programming staff, can't get over her "putting holes in herself". (The pretty teenager's ears were decorated with a multiplicity of earrings; her nose and lower lip were also bejeweled; the audience's curiosity about any further decorations remained sadly unsatisfied.) In Kingsbury's magnificent first novel, Courtship Rite, a Hugo-nominee in the early 1980s, humans living on an inhospitable world practice cannibalism out of necessity and scarification out of self-expression.
Such things were less strange to Kingsbury than to his readers: he had spent part of his childhood with his father in New Guinea. He told how an eleven-year-old New Guinean boy, the five-year-old Donald's playmate, stole a razor blade and showed up the next day, bloody and smiling, covered with designs carved into his own flesh and proud as hell to have passed into manhood.
On another occasion, Kingsbury's father had thrown away a broken teacup; the next day a ten-year-old boy appeared with the broken handle through his nose. Unfortunately such a treasure was envied; the boy was murdered for it a week later, by a member of another tribe. An audience member asked if this led to a war. All the tribes were already at war, all the time, responded Kingsbury.
In our society, Larsen pointed out, body modification is not at all unusual. Normally the purpose is to approach the norm rather than, like the "modern primitives", deviate from it. The urge to pierce oneself can grow and grow for months, he said, until it is irresistible. Without being entirely explicit, he spoke of a body piercing called, for reasons which escape me, a "Prince Albert". As far as I could tell, this involves getting pierced in the absolute last place any sensible person would want to be pierced. Half expecting someone to jump on me, I asked the panelists what they thought of the traditional psychoanalytic view, that this urge to pierce oneself is the product of masochism, of an urge to damage oneself. Bigglestone noted that she got holes put in when she was in a bad mood--and always felt a lot better afterward!
Sunday morning, Larry Niven was "roasted" by friends, collaborators, and unindicted co-conspirators Michael Flynn, Donald Kingsbury, Steven Barnes, John Hertz, and of course his arch-collaborator, Jerry Pournelle. I got there late, but fortunately in time for Pournelle.
Pournelle gave his version of how he and Niven met: wishing to enter the SF field, Pournelle looked for an established SF writer whose stories needed fixing. Pournelle gleefully quoted the remark of their late friend, space scientist Dan Alderson, to the effect that "All the laws of physics known to Larry Niven work in his books."
Pournelle gave an example of how Niven and he work together. In Lucifer's Hammer, their novel about a comet hitting the Earth in the near future, Niven had a vision of a surfer riding the ultimate wave--and Pournelle had to figure out where such a giant wave might be generated, as well as talk to surfers to get their lingo!
Niven once foolishly lent his car to Harlan Ellison, who promptly wrecked it. But that's not the only time their paths have crossed, said Pournelle. For years Niven's mother read only her son's SF; he urged her to widen her horizons. Unfortunately the story the sweet little old lady happened to select was: Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog". To this day Niven's mother reads only her son's SF.
Which may not be all that safe, either. Pournelle urged the audience to reflect upon the fact that Niven has created, not one, but two alien species in which females are not sentient!
In response, Niven was full of praise for his collaborators. Flynn, who worked on Fallen Angels with him, falls in love with the story he is writing, and doesn't want to finish it. Kingsbury, author of the novel-length story, "The Survivor", in Man-Kzin Wars IV, has developed software to answer any possible question a writer working in "Known Space" might have. (Niven might have said, Kingsbury will find any excuse to avoid actually writing!) Steve Barnes educates Niven by giving him books on the mythologies utilized in the "Dream Park" books.
The "Dream Park" books are a three-way collaboration between Niven, Pournelle and Barnes; finding their story judgments so similar, Barnes joked that Niven and Pournelle were "separated at birth". Just wait until you need physics information again, said Pournelle ominously.
Joe Haldeman's name for the SFWA, following its recent name changes: "Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror and Nurse Novel Writers of America". Comment by a red-robed Andrew Porter on SF Chronicle unexpectedly winning the semi-prozine Hugo: "I'm not a Doctor of Divinity, but I'm playing one tonight. And--bless you all!"
Mike Resnick protesting too much on the occasion of his daughter, Laura Resnick, winning the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer: "Dad isn't allowed to see [her stories] until they're in print."
Speaking of awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society handed out the Prometheus--a plaque and a half-ounce gold coin--Saturday afternoon in the concourse area. Accepting for the winner, Brad Linaweaver said James Hogan is not embarrassed to win the Prometheus, nor by the word "libertarian"--unlike other nominees who fortunately have never won, and thus have never been in a position to embarrass the LFS. (I think to myself, aha, he's talking about Ursula LeGuin, whose left-anarchist novel The Dispossessed has been perennial nominee for the LFS Hall of Fame.) Just then the Hall of Fame winner was announced: Ursula LeGuin for The Dispossessed! She is "very pleased to receive the award," said Linaweaver, and "considers it an honor". Comment by his significant other to super-fan Joe Siclari, standing in the art show: "If you want it, put a bid on it--and we'll just not take another vacation!"
There were more than a dozen so-called "roundtables", wherein up to ten fans could sign up to have a two-hour chat with a guest of the convention, like George Alec Effinger or Harry Turtledove or David Gerrold. In terms of people signed up, however, the champion as of noon Saturday was Terry Pratchett, with nineteen names! Names over the quota of ten were treated as alternates. In this one case, however, names 9 and 10 had been crossed out: two later sign-ups had been given "Handicap Access Priority". This seemed bizarre and unjust; it's not as if there had been a footrace to determine one's position on the list.
The main hall of the convention center was home to a wide range of activities: the dealers' room, the art show, the fanzine room, an exhibit area, and a cafeteria. I thought it was curious that a display of photographs from Women En Large: A Book of Fat Nudes was right next to the cafeteria tables; it could adversely affect sales--one way or another! Next to that was a very interesting exhibit of Alicia Austin's work, ranging from her earliest to the present. Seeing the clumsiness of her early fannish illos must have been very encouraging to budding artists. Seen on a Bulletin Board: "Join Us on the First Ever Circlet Press Worldcon Erotic Science Fiction Excursion! A trip to the world's best women's sex toy/erotica shop ..."
Party I was Least Likely to Attend: "Gay Underwear Party" (Friday, 10 PM to 6 AM).
Apart from the colorful wraparound cover by Alicia Austin, the ConFrancisco "Souvenir Book" was an undistinguished collection of the usual stuff: thumbnail biographies of the guests of honor; lists of Hugo winners of the past; convention by-laws; and lots and lots of advertisements. It was supplemented by a 16-page flyer, given out at the Hugo ceremony, with thumbnail biographies of about half of the nominees. I chuckled when I realized Dean Wesley Smith of Pulphouse had been given Damon Knight's biography for some reason!
The pocket program or "Quick Reference Guide" was probably the best any convention has ever produced. (Also the most expensive: three bucks for a replacement!) Spiral-bound and 128 pages long, it included both chronological program schedules and program charts; maps of the hotels, the neighborhood, and the dealers' room; a guide to restaurants, public transport, and other services--yet it could still fit in your pocket.--Taras Wolansky
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