Sunday 6th AprilROY KETTLE:After less sleep than the night before I awoke to Sunday, final day of the programme. Somehow it seemed easier then clawing my way from the sleep of the besotted. These days I prefer to leave the festivities sooner and also have a quiet time in mid-afternoon. When I looked back at the programme booklet I collapsed with laughter to see that Greg and I had arisen early for the privilege of going to the BSFA AGM. Of course, this *was* in the days when the BSFA meant something and wasn't just a playground for retarded intellectuals and you still had change out of sixpence. Once more the panels and talks were generally good. An interesting point is that they were, for the first and last time ever, I believe, sponsored by various publishing companies. This is a perfectly reasonable idea if they'll do it, but only if they have no control over money spent, except insofar as quantity is concerned. Was it John Brunner who helped set this up? I think it was. MARY REED: I didn't see much of the official programme, though I sampled a couple of speeches. Mainly I spent the time meeting friends, and renewing acquaintances. I asked Jake [Grigg] to pop his head out and shout after a friend who had just passed the door of the room in which we sat. He did so, and collapsed laughing: "He's turned into a cactus!", he said. I looked out, and so he had - all in sight was a cactus in a corner! I saw a neofan wander past with his head swathed in bandages. He was felled in the Tourney on the Saturday night, and taken off to the Radcliffe, where he had a dozen stitches in his head wound. He returned, game, and pale.
BERYL MERCER: At 2.pm. Chris Priest was supposed to be chairing an item called "Build a Story", but he was suffering from a stomach upset and had to be excused. Missing from the photo of that panel below are John Brunner and Charles Platt.
ROY KETTLE: Many of the panels contained people who I would come to know and love, or recognise anyway: Chris Priest - But was he really there, or was he locked in the toilet to avoid the panel, a feat emulated several years later by the equally insecure John Brosnan. Dav Garnett - he was a minor God having just sold his first novel at an age young enough for him to be unable to sign the contract. Charles Platt --- he impressed me then with his laconic replies to Ted Tubb's furious onslaught against the pornography of New Worlds. Graham Charnock - who, on the basis of one published but probably unsold and fairly unreadable story, was on the panel of authors. The subject of erasing didn't come up so he got little chance to speak. John Brunner - he infuriated me with his condescension, ubiquitousness and ego. ((John --- No Other Gods But Me --- Brunner had a condescending attitude towards fans and was perpetually self-advertising - "This is Brian Aldiss whose latest book has not got the same title as mine which is Stand On Zanzibar.")) Although I've since heard that he contributed vastly towards the success of the con in other ways. He also annoyed me at the time with his habit of continually nodding alongside guest speakers as though confirming what they'd just said and of sitting with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth and lighter in his hand as though waiting for them to finish. He was an easy target for Greg and I to mutter about. Peter Weston - despite subscribing to SPECULATION and having my name printed in one issue I didn't speak to him. Possibly it was because he was recently married and had other things on his mind. George Hay - what can anyone say about George that he hasn't already said at greater length himself about something else entirely. Mike Moorcock - he was never actually on a panel, but when he was asked a New Wave question from the platform he leaped to his feet, shouted "I've got a train to catch" and rushed off, never to be seen again that Easter, dragging Hilary Bailey with him. Some of the mighty achieved rapport with the audience, despite being frequently (and quite reasonably at times) cliquish outside of the programme. Ted Tubb and Brian Aldiss for instance. Ted was an excellent auctioneer, who lifted the auction out of reach of mere grabbing hands and made it into a very entertaining item, while still retaining a sense of proportion about what he was selling.
BERYL MERCER: I noodled around for the rest of the afternoon, watching two TV cameramen from Swedish Television interviewing fans and authors. (They had filmed the entire tourney the previous night). Greeting The Mushling [Mary Reed] and co-Twingrin Churl [Chas Legg] who had come over just for the day, talking to Gill Adams in the lounge, noticing James Ballard on a settee in the very same lounge. (I didn't give a damn. He doesn't care for SF fans, I gather - I *think* I'm right in saying that he has referred to us as "illiterate morons", but correct me if I'm wrong - and as far as this fan is concerned, the feeling's mutual.) MARY REED: During part of a quiz, the audience was asked "After whom is the Hugo named?" Of course everyone shouted "Hugo Gernsback". Gardner, now sporting a beard, sitting by me was disgusted. "Fancy asking sf fen that," he cried, "Why, everyone knows it's named after Hugo Veebelflitzer!" I laughed so much I nearly got thrown out of the auction. They were auctioning incredible things - filthy pictures, a typewriter, which went for £7-10s, a taper which failed to get reserved price, filthy pictures, plastic fingernails, filthy pictures, plastic fingernails .... During a conversation with Bram Stokes he remarked that he had won the Bob Richardson award again for his Heroic costume in the Fancy Dress (I think I forgot to say in my conrep on Buxton that he won it for his portrayal of Elric); and that 'next year I'm giving the Bram Stokes award'. He showed me his costume. It was a black scarf. WALTER GILLINGS: A poetry reading session by Edward Lucie-Smith - BBC critic and poet - and writer-poet John Brunner was a popular new departure.
A discussion of the New Wave in SF chaired by former editor John Carnell [with Charles Platt, Edward Lucie-Smith, John Brunner, Dan Morgan, and George Hay] produced forthright criticism of recent trends in 'New Worlds', which a few defended for breaking with tradition and experimenting with new forms. Majority feeling, however, was that its contents had little relation to SF.
PETER WESTON: This was a slightly odd mixture, especially since Ted Tubb was in the audience along with Michael Moorcock and Judith Merril, all of whom might have had something to say. Brian Aldiss was also present, although for some reason he was making only fleeting appearances at the convention. Rather than the anticipated fireworks, the discussion veered onto the far less interesting subject of the obscenities in 'Bug Jack Barron'. Determinedly, Dan Morgan brought the panel back on-topic: "I would just like to say a few words about a failed writer for literary magazines who came to science fiction and tried to make it something that it isn't, nor ever was. This man is capable of writing competent, even brilliant SF short stories. But he has the effrontery to insult our intelligence — you and me, the average science fiction reader, for whom he has publicly voiced his contempt in the SPECULATION interview, with such drivel as 'Generations of America,' and 'Dr Christopher Evans Lands on the Moon.' The dreadful irony about this is the way in which this cynical view has been slavishly followed by one pseudo-Ballard after another, in the so-called stories published in New Worlds."
He concluded, to considerable applause, and the panel went on for another half-hour, with interjections from an increasingly irritated Ted Tubb in the audience. Eventually someone asked Mike Moorcock a direct question and he leaped to his feet, shouted, "I've got a train to catch," and rushed off, not to be seen again that Easter.
ROY KETTLE: Not long after this was the Cosmic Quiz. The results of Ken Bulmer's haphazard question and answer sessions had thrown together a final group of masterminds consisting of Phil Harbottle, Walt Gillings, Vic Hallett and me. We answered questions and suchlike and I was earnest and frightened and tediously literal but the end result was that Phil, Walt and Vic all tied and I won easily. I was given a cardboard box and clapped. I wandered back into the audience a little dazed and expecting congratulations from Greg and Alan. Alan said: "Greg knew *all* the answers," I turned to Greg. "Fancy not knowing who the editor of Infinity was." I stared at him. "Well, what's in the box? An Easter Egg? I'm starving," he said. I opened the box and thought it was an Easter Egg, but it turned out to be an egg-shaped light-on-a-stick. (This served me faithfully (on and off) for six years, then Chris [Atkinson] hit me with it and it never worked again.) Shortly after the quiz I happened upon Phil Harbottle, and having made his acquaintance while in the process of thrashing him in the quiz, I mentioned that I had sent him a story prior to the con. He asked me what it was about. A pregnant robot, I replied. He gave me an odd look and said he was quite sure he hadn't read it but he would let me know as soon as he could. He hurried away. Having blown *that* I still managed to enjoy the rest of the con. MARY REED: A herd of us descended on a Chinese restaurant for a very happy meal, when St. Hugo Veebelflitzer fandom was born. When we returned to the hotel, I spent a very happy couple of hours talking to Bill Burns, the Chuck Partingtons, and John Muir, Dave Britton, and Brian Marshall, Northerners all. WALTER GILLINGS: Guest of Honour at the "Galactic Fair" was the American anthologist Judith Merril, noted for her "Best of Sci-Fi" and "Annual S-F series. At the banquet which wound up the weekend she revealed that she would shortly give up this role for other activities and would leave the U.S. to live in Canada.
David Kyle, introduced by toastmaster John Carnell as "our globe-trotting science fiction professional - amateur," said Miss Merril was regarded both in Britain and America as a very special person who had made her mark in sf. "Speaking on behalf of all Americans. we are delighted to see you honoured here at a British convention," he added. Miss Merrill replied: " I hope people will no longer regard me as an American. I am emigrating to Canada for reasons which I think most people outside America will understand. I do not wish to be any longer considered an American."
PETER WESTON: Judith Merril's Guest of Honour speech at the Sunday night Banquet (an innovation for a British convention) was appallingly bad, rambling, and incoherent, and though Bob Rickard dutifully recorded it, we decided not to use it in SPECULATION. Merril was not a very good GoH, and no one was impressed when Graham Hall attached himself as her "toy boy" for the weekend and moved into her suite. He was subsequently seen looking exceptionally flushed and greasy, boasting loudly about ordering expensive meals, bottles of champagne and brandy and so forth, all "on the room bill," to be paid by the convention committee. Chris Priest commented, "John Brunner paid the bill, something he remained bitter about for many years afterwards. He didn't have to stand those expenses personally, but he felt very keenly that Merril and her acolytes had thoughtlessly taken advantage of the convention, which didn't have a lot of money." Meanwhile, unnoticed, unseen, newcomers on the scene were burrowing among the undergrowth of the convention, rather as did those small, rat-like mammals during an earlier age of dinosaurs. Bob Rickard remembers Oxford vividly because "that was where Leroy Kettle was sick on John Brunner's dog." Roy, Peter [Roberts], Greg, and others at Oxford like John Hall and Graham Charnock would later become 'Ratfandom' and would transform the British scene more thoroughly and completely than the earlier New Wave ever had. BERYL MERCER: Of course, the highlight of the banquet for me was learning that I'd won the "Doc" Weir Award. If I said that I was absolutely flattened with surprise, it would not be strictly true. I had suspected that I was in the running, but oven so it was extremely heart-warming to find that hard work does sometimes got recognised: I thanked the assembled company, briefly described how I sometimes wailed "it's never worth it!" when faced by a mountain of work after a day at the office. And I concluded by holding up the Cup and saying: "I've changed my mind. It is. Thank you"
After the banquet we went to a St. Fantony party in Gill Adams' room, and from there we moved on, some time later, to another one given by the German contingent. This one was terribly crowded and noisy, and elicited a couple of complaints from the management which wore sharply squashed by Concom member John Brunner. It was here, too, that James White asked if he might drink his boar from my Goblet. He pronounced the flavour quite unique; I gravely informed him that "it's the metal-polish that does it, James" - whereupon he turned an interesting shade of pale green.
MARY REED: About 1 am, we went up to Arthur's room party, which gradually filled up. I didn't mention that Darroll Pardoe rang up from the USA, and that Beryl won the Doc Weir Award this year, or about being interviewed with the others by the Swedish TV team. I gathered from conversation with their leader that they were doing a series of ten SF programmes for their TV, and that fandom in Sweden numbered thousands .... and not very much contact between us, I thought. Their sound-recording man was the image of Alfred E. Neuman.....
ROY KETTLE: Neither Greg nor I could afford the banquet, so we stayed outside and I listened to 'I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again' on the wireless until chased away because it drowned out the sound of Miss Merril eating, or something. We missed the speech, but Bob Rickard informed us we didn't miss much. Then we went uninvited to Arthur Cruttenden's all-night party where he shot at me and several pigeons with his incredibly anti-social ginger-ball gun. Ginger went around speaking in a high voice, and Rog Gilbert told us about his sex life and his many abilities in that regard. Gray Boak got very drunk. We *did* stay up all night. It was during this particular night that Greg and I decided to sneak down to the con-hall and steal the vast 2001 poster which adorned the rear of the platform. We were stopped prior to our nefarious activity by the squeaky voice of Charles Platt and the resonant one of John Ramsey Campbell who also seemed to be cooking something up in the hall itself. The next morning the poster was gone. (I never forgave Platt for this and even resorted to stealing the Tremulant and the Bourdon Bass 16Ft stops from his organ just before Mike Moorcock gave me a penny not to be sick any more. Recently I visited Gerry Webb's house and found he had covered one wall with a 2001 poster. Quick as a wit I started off on my humourless anecdote about Oxford. "But Leroy," he said, "*I* took it." Organizer's perks. You don't get your organ stops back, Plattie.) That night we also saw The Raven, all squashed up like a technicolour waterfall, and I ate two meat pies. But such delights couldn't last forever and the next day they came to a halt.
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