1891: THE WORLD'S FIRST EVER SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION?That at least is the claim that's sometimes made about the Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete, an event that was held in London's Royal Albert Hall in March 1891.
The Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete was a charity fundraiser and fair dedicated to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel 'Vril: The Power of The Coming Race'. Published in 1871, Vril told the story of the discovery of a superhuman race with advanced powers that lived below the Earth's surface. The book was hugely popular in Victorian England and the word Vril (coined in the novel for a special fluid that enhances the powers of the superhuman Vril-ya people) became synonymous with energy-boosting elixirs. This survives to this day in the name of Bovril.
The event bore superficial similarites to an SF convention, but no more than that. After all, SF conventions arose out of SF fandom so how could something that pre-dated both SF fandom and science fiction as a concept be a science fiction convention? Answer: it couldn't. It's an interesting curiosity, certainly, but it was a dead-end that led nowhere. To consider it a true SF convention is akin to considering Francis Godwin's 1638 tale in which his protagonist is transported to the moon in a chariot pulled by swans to be true science fiction.
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