Friday 12 AprilGREG PICKERSGILL:In 1968 I went to my first convention. It was the second Eastercon ever to have more than 200 members - and as a newcomer I was just as ignored at it as newcomers to 800+ member Eastercons are today. I had made a few contacts through the BSFA before that, though, and they helped me come away with the idea that there was something in this convention business and it was worth waiting a whole year to try again. I've been to a lot of conventions since then, and though few have been wholly satisfying - given that chance blend of ideas, novelty, and desperate fun that I think constitutes a truly fine convention - I still think they're a good idea someone really ought to do something with. There [were fewer] empty barns in those days, and with only one convention a year fan activity centred around the fanzine. PETER ROBERTS: Just before Easter, I painfully and laboriously cranked out copies of MOR-FARCH ready to be distributed at the Buxton Thirdmancon - my first fanzine, my first convention. It seems a hell of a long time ago now. Damn it, it is a long time ago. There's a nostalgic haze hanging over those days and I must confess my memory is muddled and vague. No matter; don't dispute the facts - I'll just tell it like it probably was.
First things first. I joined the BSFA back in 1966 and did little for a year or so, except organise a school sf society which might well hold some record for least-known sf group. We didn't do much; for a fee, members borrowed my books and read my copies of VECTOR. I didn't realize it then, but with a couple of dozen paid-up members the Clifton College Science Fiction Society was probably the largest fan group in Britain at the time. Hoo. Anyway, a year later I contacted the much smaller Bristol and District Group and started going to meetings. I remember I used to go straight from school during the first few months; a withdrawn figure, keeping to the corners, as silent as the grave, and wearing a nice grey suit - every inch the young businessman. Hardly anyone noticed me - just like at school. Then came the long-awaited release from the institution, and I decided I'd had enough of my drab, conservative existence. The first BaD Group meeting afterwards I went dressed in salmon-pink jeans, orange pajama jacket (embellished with dragons), fake rabbit-fur waistcoat, and a Yugoslav fez. Beryl Mercer called me an exhibitionist. It was a good meeting. PETER WESTON: Thirdmancon didn't happen quite as advertised because only a few months before Easter the Delta group lost their hotel, and at short notice relocated everything to the little spa town of Buxton, out on the Derbyshire moors. Their new hotel, the St Ann's, was a crumbling Georgian relic, and it promptly slid into bankruptcy a week or two before the convention.
Fortunately we had booked late, hadn't been able to get into the St Ann's, and stayed instead at a modest but clean hotel a few hundred yards away, venturing across to the convention for major programme events [which] took place in the main hall, a long narrow room that had a huge astronomical painting by Eddie Jones at one end, a magnificent backdrop featuring a red giant star against the blackness of interstellar space. STEVE STILES: The train trip was as pleasant as it was uneventful. We arrived at Buxton and disembarked, struggling up a very steep hill with the @*!&!! luggage to ask directions to the hotel. Suitcases are cumbersome. So why don't they put wheels on the damned things? The convention hotel was ready for us when we checked in, a three storey affair; I discovered that the convention committee, bless 'em, had already paid for and reserved my room. MARY REED: The hotel had a lobby with one wall papered in Egyptian wallpaper, which is to say, paper depicting various types of ancient Egyptian articles such as sphinxes etc. Very fetching. ETHEL LINDSAY: What makes one con better than another is a puzzle sometimes; but undoubtedly each con registers an atmosphere of its own. The friendlier this atmosphere, the better the con. It was very noticeable to Ella Parker and I, as soon as we got into the hotel at Buxton, that there was this asset to any con. Perhaps the small front lounge had something to do with it. One was always passing through it to get anywhere, and if you sat there you got to meet everyone. Once Ella discovered that she could order tea there; it's a wonder she ever left it!
STEVE STILES: It was a bit past two, and neither Bill nor I had had lunch, so we headed for the hotel dining room. It was obvious that we were early arrivals; the place was deserted, empty tables all around and waiters and waitresses chatting quietly, sometimes flitting in and out in nervous expectancy...a vaguely Kafkaesque atmosphere on the eve of a science fiction convention. The mood pleased me - so appropriate for the occasion - and I silently studied the patterns in my napkin, the one I had placed in my lap when I sat down twenty minutes earlier, while ruminating over the similarities between the present situation and a Hungarian surrealist film I had seen once. On the other hand, I was getting damned hungry. (We later discovered that the hotel had recently changed management, run into a labour shortage, and was using local talent as a fill in.) ETHEL LINDSAY: Somewhen I had a talk with Tom Disch about BUG JACK BARRON; and was assured by him that the dialogue was authentic for the locale. Some other of his explanations of NW were enlightening enough for me to reflect that, it was a pity Mike couldn't give Tom away with every copy as an interpreter. Later I met Gerry Webb staggering away from Tom quite awed to find how well-read was Thomas Disch. I hope I took the opportunity to chip Gerry about his own reading habits again!
STEVE STILES: I was into my second cup of tea when a boisterous "Steve Stiles!" sounded behind me. I looked around to see the smiling face of Ella Parker. ELLA PARKER! Ella is one of those people who are high on my list of fans who are going to have to move to New York if wish fulfilment works. Ella gave me a hug and I grinned and beamed even harder when I noticed Ethel Lindsay behind her. Ella and Ethel are walking advertisements for TAFF and TAFF-like funds. With Ella there and cracking the whip, the waiters were put on the line and under control. Pale and trembling from the tongue lashing I hesitate to quote here, they disappeared into the kitchen with our orders, and we were soon eating. After the meal, I decided to check into my room for a quick nap in preparation for the room parties. As I worked my key into the lock, Eddie Jones and Tom Schlück rounded the corner. Eddie introduced me to Tom, and we dug each other in the ribs and made sly remarks about TAFF reports 'n' Oh You Kid. We TAFF types are a wild lot, slans almost, and it is said that two of us can recognize each other in crowded train terminals merely by the look on our sensitive fannish faces. I don't know if this is true, though, as I had already met Tom at the NYCon, and, in any case, Tom had met me there too. We stepped onto my room and talked a bit on what a great man McCarthy is [Eugene McCarthy, liberal favourite among the Democratic nominees for that year's Presidential election], fan art, and shop talk on TAFF. ETHEL LINDSAY: Practically the first fan we met was Ken Cheslin... a Ken full of smiles and very happy; and the girl-friend accompanying him was so easy to talk with that we all beamed at each other. A welcome like that from Ken was, we felt, a good omen for the con. We were soon chattering with Don Wollheim Phil Rogers and the Guest of Honour - Ken Bulmer. Ken was not only a good Guest of Honour - he is a good guy and promptly helped carry up our cases.
So with a happy babble of talk from friends we started the weekend and this was the way it went so that by the end we agreed it was the best con we had attended for years. PETER WESTON: Eileen [his fiancee] hadn't really met any science fiction fans and was a bit wary, but I persuaded her to come along, explaining how she would enjoy meeting all the interesting and amusing people who would be there. Thirdmancon was not exactly the best introduction to convention-going. We were conscious of strange people everywhere, including one man dressed in black who spent the entire weekend lurking behind the floor-length draperies in the con-hall. Perhaps because of the mixed interests of the Manchester group the convention attracted a record attendance, but a good proportion of them must have been horror, supernatural, and film fans who went around in costume most of the time. STEVE STILES: After my nap, I unpacked and went over my speech notes; "My Fellow Science Fiction Fans,..." I wrote. Nope, crossed that out and started again; "... the casual reader, your average man in the street, does not understand science fiction...." Didn't sound quite right. Glancing at my watch, I noticed it was time for dinner, and gratefully wadded up my notes. A man has to eat. I headed downstairs. Fans had appeared as if by magic. The hotel was no longer deserted. I met Tom again, and he introduced me to Ken Bulmer. Ken, a TAFF winner, and longtime fan turned pro, was the pro GoH at the ThirdManCon, and obviously a deserving one. Outwardly a quiet man, he is both friendly and an interesting talker - as I found out later at parties. With the tendency for U.S. conventions to be mammoth affairs, professionals there have a tendency to stick to themselves rather than - understandably - spending the time nodding to, pumping hands with, and signing autographs for a lot of unfamiliar fan faces. And large conventions tend to keep those faces unfamiliar. But British cons tend to be smaller, with a hardcore of regulars, and with everyone on first name relations the line of distinction between fan and pro had all but disappeared; the pros I met, as typified by Ken, made fandom their social scene. JULIA STONE: The program started at 1pm on Friday with the opening of the Registration desk. People were still arriving during the afternoon, so it was not until 8.30p.m. that the programme got underway with "The Three 0-C Show". This was followed at 9.15p.m. by John Ramsey Campbell who, with the help of several other fen and an off-white screen, presented a lecture of importance to fen interested in both horror and SF films.
STEVE STILES: One of the first items of Friday's program was "Amorality Anonymous," a lecture of "great import, with the aid of an off-white screen" by John Ramsey Campbell. It was a film for monster fans, but despite the handicap, Campbell gave a humorous line of patter similar to Bloch's "Monsters I Have Known" at the Chicon III. People in the audience helped John Ramsey along with constructive criticism, "Rubbish!" and advice, "Get to the point Campbell!" Unperturbed, he finished his talk with the short film "Nosferatu" - a forerunner of the Dracula films, and a great deal more effective than many of them.
The movie programme that night included the Delta Group's BREATHWORLD, which had first been screened at the 1965 Worldcon. The accumulation of too many cigarettes had dried out the membranes of my mouth and tongue, and it was about this time that I made a great discovery; the bar was adjacent to the con hall. I discovered that I liked Guinness Stout. Moreover, you were allowed to carry drinks back into the hall to sip while listening to speakers. I did so, and was just in time to catch a traditional SF quiz conducted by Phil Rogers. I was disappointed to realize that I couldn't name three major works by Charles Fort, but consoled myself with the knowledge that I did know the publication date of the first issue of Galaxy - which is, of course, June 1st 1948. "What is the troposphere?" Rogers queried, appealing to the science minded. I cut out. Party time.
There was a party going on in Billy Pettit's room, and although it was about 8' x 9', it seemed that most of the convention was there, clustered around the drinks table. I had just secured a glass when I noticed someone in a day-glo yellow sports shirt, mod tie, and bell bottoms, and upon reading the name card, I recognized Charles Platt, someone I had corresponded with when we were both neos. Platt asked about various U.S. fans that he had known, and Ted White in particular, and after the usual gossip, race relations once again popped up as a topic. It was a downer to deal with reality at a science fiction convention, but to be expected and hard to avoid. As immigration problems multiplied in the U.K. and [Enoch] Powell blithered, people wanted to know about the scene in the U.S.; to see the lines of their own future. Concerning that, John Brunner would soon write 'The Jagged Orbit' and scare me. A second drink refill, and we were on 'New Worlds' and William S. Burroughs; I've got almost everything Burroughs has written, but Platt thought more of him than I did. I've appreciated Burroughs' writing in 'Junkie' and 'The Yage Letters', where his descriptive powers work for him - but we climbed out between the walls at the bottom, as Burroughs might put it. "*" said Charles Platt, "*." "That calls for a drink!" We drank. The rest of the evening hazes out at this point; I do remember talking to Billy P. and Heinrich (whose last name I didn't catch) about chances for a German world convention. I ventured that most of the American fen I knew were behind the idea - that is, in favour of it. And I recall Billy earnestly explaining to a non-fan femme that science fiction was something like the James Bond novels. At about two a.m. I began to notice Fortean phenomena, and decided to go to bed. My room was bitter cold; with some experimentation, impeded by the Fortean phenomena, I discovered the meter for the gas heat unit was in the closet. Soon the area of the room six inches in front of the grill was piping hot. Grump.
| |||||||
|
