Worldcon Wayback Machine: Noreascon Three (1989) Day One

Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA. Contemporary photo.

Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA. Contemporary photo.

Twenty-five years ago today Noreascon Three began in Boston, Massachusetts. I’ve been working on a post about its epic Science Fiction’s 50th Anniversary Family Reunion Sunday brunch which will appear September 3. The research reminded me what a superb convention it was, a once-in-a-generation, and I have decided to republish my whole conreport. Here is the first daily installment.

The Worldcon was among the first events held in the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, built the prior year in 1988. In the words of one travel writer the Hynes’ “severe gray interior is reminiscent of an early 20th-century German railroad station.” I see from my first paragraph I at least picked up on the “German” vibe.

(Incidentally, the convention’s name was officially agnostic: “Noreascon 3”, “Noreascon Three” and “Noreascon III” were all declared correct forms of the name.)

Noreascon Three by Mike Glyer (from File 770 #82): Boston’s renovated Hynes Convention Center has ceilings tall as the Tombs of Atuan, floors black as Kubrick’s monolith, and walls as green as Tiffany enamel. The entry from Boylston Street looks like a stark glass and basalt-colored proscenium perhaps waiting for Leni Riefenstahl to jump out of a cab and demand to know who removed the swastikas, but just beyond are breathtakingly tall chrome escalators hurtling toward a promise of incredible activities.

Hynes Convention Center in 2009.

Hynes Convention Center in 2009.

Within, Noreascon’s Extravaganza Division marked the convention with unparalleled heart and understanding. Their events did not merely entertain, they touched the emotions of large numbers of fans. Ellen Franklin and Jill Eastlake’s division existed to stage the big events at Noreascon Three spectacularly. The 50th Anniversary Party (Thursday), SF Tonight! (Friday), Boxboro Fandom Party (Friday), Hugo Awards (Saturday), Masquerade (Sunday) and Closing Ceremonies and Retrospective (Monday) headlined the con’s hundreds of successful programs and events.

Hynes escalators in 2009.

Hynes escalators in 2009.

Mother of Invention: Some of the decisions forced upon the committee by necessity were so successful they will probably form part of the essential architecture of future Worldcons.

When the 1987 Boskone’s crowd problems instigated the Sheraton to dishonor its agreements to host future science fiction conventions, Noreascon Three was forced to create attractions in the Convention Center to compensate for the loss of hotel facilities, or later when they regained the Sheraton through litigation, to keep crowds in the Hynes for the sake of peace with the hotel. A new idea, the ConCourse, with the Huckster Room and the convention program gave members ample reason to hang out in the Hynes. The ConCourse amalgamated fanhistory exhibits, convention information, the fanzine lounge, the daily newzine publishing area, convention bidding and Site Selection tables, and a Hynes-run snack bar in one place, and layed it out as an indoor park. Fred Isaacs and Peggy Rae Pavlat [Sapienza] led the development of the ConCourse and fans responded to it so positively we should see others like it in the future.

A second invention whose mother was necessity, SF Tonight!, showcased the guests of honor in a talk show format hosted by Tappan King. Andre Norton in particular was not suited by health or preference to do her star turn in the form of a long stand-up speech. The interview format made a virtue of necessity, but the audience approval for SF Tonight! Is such that future committees should note how this format uses the guests of honor’s interesting friends to illuminate the guest’s career and personality.

The Virtual Trees: Noreascon Three attracted 7,100 members, including 700 full-attending memberships at-the-door and 900 1- and 2-day passes. The largest one-day attendance was 6,600 on Saturday. [It is the third-largest Worldcon ever.] Over 1,825 pre-registered members checked into the convention Wednesday before it started – probably to set up!

On Wednesday, green-stickered set-up volunteers poured in to convert the Hynes Convention Center Hall C to an artificial park with Astroturf paths, benches, couches, and a gazebo adorned with laserprinted “virtual pigeons” – white signs containing the word “pigeon.” Noreascon Three Hynes Liaison Joe Rico discovered fellow committee member Fred Isaacs also scotch-taping signs saying “tree” to the concrete support pillars. Joe reminded him the con’s agreement forbade taping anything to a painted surface. Fred dismissed that saying, “These are virtual trees.” Steam shot out of Joe’s ears as he announced, “Well I’m a virtual forester –“ *rip* *rip* *rip*

Amy Thomson passed among the set-up crew distributing jars of “100% Organic Apple-Ginger-Mint Jelly… Not For External Use.”

National computer networks Genie, BIX and CompuServe all had booths demonstrating their online services and special interest message bases. Free-lance journalist Francis Hamit, checking out GEnie, logged onto Jim Turner’s board and found himself talking to Tom Clancy; Hamit wangled a phone interview out of it. While setting up her BIX booth Bjo Trimble spied me 20 yards away laboring over my fanzine tables and descended on me announcing: “Flash! The Trimbles have taken over Texas and are selling it to Panama – write that down!” Critically inspecting an air bubble in Amy’s jelly, Bjo said, “That looks like it’s about gone – it will ferment and blow up on the plane and get you arrested – better drink it here!”

Bjo Trimble saw the yellow Ryder truck brought up in the freight elevator was disgorging heaps of cardboard boxes on pallets. She asked, “What’s that van for?” I told her it was the exhibit of the NESFA Displacement Authority.

Right on cue, Spike Parsons arrived to help me move cartons of my own, full of fanzines, from the truck pile to my exhibit. Spike said, “I told them I’d do anything as long as I didn’t have to carry a radio.”

Chef’s Tour of the ConCourse: Hynes Hall C was dubbed the ConCourse at the suggestion of “Filthy Pierre,” Erwin Strauss. The ConCourse was the con suite, although a Hynes snack bar and its satellite hot dog stand were the only sources of refreshments. The Hynes prices and Noreascon’s budget didn’t permit them to compete with the Atlanta (1986) or Baltimore (1983) con suites, nor did anyone really miss the spectacle of fans running on rugs full of broken Fritos in pursuit of the committee member setting out the last unopened carton of popcorn.

Green Astroturf paths flanked by park benches created a unifying visual theme for the ConCourse. Two open spaces, carpeted with green Astroturf and bordered by one-foot-high white picket fences, were designated Hyde Park and Jekyll Park.

All the convention information services and exhibits were in the ConCourse. Strauss set up an all-members message area at the corner next to the Sheraton, and beside it rows of “Filthy Pierre boards” with their string holders for all the different flyers distributed at a Worldcon. Along the wall were Site Selection, worldcon membership and bidders tables. Also, any club that wanted a table could get one.

The ConCourse strategy involved more than static exhibits. Autographing sessions were held there. Myriad events and diversions occurred within the area under the heading of Passing Fancies. It might by a filk performance by Orion’s Belt and Windbourne in Hyde Park, “Stfnal Pursuit” in Jekyll Park, belly dancing, origami, or the Gilbert and Sullivan sing-along, but something strangely fannish and entertaining was going on all the time.

Gavin Claypool showed up at the September 7 LASFS meeting decorated with all kinds of Worldcon souvenirs including what Bruce Pelz termed “A large pink thing he got at Boston.” Gavin, with an even pinker face, was brought up front to explain how he won a Passing Fancy ribbon. Gavin said while the trivia “pros” were off playing Stfnal Pursuit, he competed in a Trivia Bee and won a ribbon. He also won a Noreascoin, worth 10 cents at the convention. “Trivia pros” Jerry Corrigan and Leo Doroschenko won Stfnal Pursuit.

At the corner of Warp Drive and Alice Way (names given to two of the Astroturf paths) was the History of Costuming Exhibit. Dressmaker forms were used to display a variety of prizewinning Worldcon masquerade costumes. On Sunday the convention arranged a guided, tactile viewing for vision-impaired fans. Exhibit organizers Gary and Janet Wilson Anderson described details of the costumes.

Noreascon 3 Worldcon Masquerade History Exhibit. Photo from Fanac.org.

Noreascon 3 Worldcon Masquerade History Exhibit. Photo from Fanac.org.

Behind that was the Alice Exhibit of costumes and paraphernalia worn by the Noreascon bid committee in a past masquerade. Beside it was Joe Siclari’s exhibit of Worldcon bidding artifacts, including a wall of t-shirts (such as the glow-in-the-dark zebra shirt sold by LA in ’90.) Next to Pigeon Park (so named by fans because of its “virtual pigeons”) was a bulletin board of Mundane News containing the front page from a daily paper, coverage of the con, and weather reports from the world outside the Hynes.

T-short display in History of Worldcon Bidding Exhibit organized by Joe Siclari. Photo from Fanac.org.

T-short display in History of Worldcon Bidding Exhibit organized by Joe Siclari. Photo from Fanac.org.

Nancy Atherton arranged the History of Fanzines, which displayed rarities from the 1930s-1960s on vertical boards secured with plexiglass. It was a breathtaking array of important zines, mainly from the collection of Peggy Rae Pavlat [Sapienza]. The exhibit stirred up nostalgic memories for many fans of their early days in fandom, once again making an emotional connection that will distinguish memories of Noreascon Three from other conventions.

I heard all the comments about Nancy’s exhibit while at the fanzine sales table in my Contemporary Fanzine Exhibit. Fans purchased about $1500 worth of zines (including about $230 of one media zine going for $9 a pop.) The sales table ran with tremendous help from Linda Nelson, Dick Lynch, Hawk, Spike, Tony Ubelhor, Teddy Harvia, Marty Helgesen and Nancy Rauban. I also set up eight tables full of recent vintage fanzines for fans to read. Even though it was an unsecured exhibit open at all hours it seemed few zines disappeared, and a number of fans were observed reading and enjoying.

Bruce Pelz assembled the History of Worldcons exhibit. It included program books, banquet photographs, unique Worldcon sales items and press clippings. Most impressive were the sealed exhibit cases displaying 31 of 35 years’ worth of Hugos. Poul Anderson loaned 7, Larry Niven 4, Mike Glyer 4, ASF 5, Richard Geis 5, Carol Carr several, and one each came from Longyear, Whelan, Scithers, Kelly Freas, Virginia Heinlein and F&SF.

A sheet from Bruce Pelz' Worldcon History Exhibit. Photo from Fanac.org.

A sheet from Bruce Pelz’ Worldcon History Exhibit. Photo from Fanac.org.

The ostensible 1958 Hugo loaned by Kelly Freas was merely a brass plaque mounted on wood. After the con Bruce asked Len Moffatt, who remembers Solacon well, whether they gave out rockets at South Gate in ’58. Len Moffatt insisted there were rockets and that Rog Phillips manufactured each individual handmade base. Moffatt remembered in the 1960s Avram Davidson complained he took his 1958 Hugo to Mexico and it fell apart.

A like fate befell my 1984 Hugo with the ceramic L.A.con II rat base. The metal rocket battered apart the ceramic base during shipment to Noreascon. Fortunately veteran costumer Kathy Sanders came to the con prepared with all kinds of quick-fix tools and glue, and reassembled the base well enough to be displayed. (There happened to be spare rat bases back in LA, so no harm done.)

View of the Hugo exhibit at Noreascon 3. Photo from Fanac.org.

View of the Hugo exhibit at Noreascon 3. Photo from Fanac.org.

Distressed by the deteriorating condition of the bases or metal in some of the Hugo rockets he was loaned for his exhibit at the convention, as well as concerned about the advancing age of some winners and prospect that their Hugos may vanish in the same junkheap with the fanzines and old pulps, Bruce Pelz asked the business meeting to create a Hugo Preservation Study Committee to address both problems. The members so far are Bruce, Ben Yalow, Colin Fine, Peggy Rae Pavlat [Sapienza] and Debbie Notkin.

Some of the exhibits will continue on to Holland [the 1990 Worldcon], but the Hugo Awards were returned to the individual owners. Maybe in a few years somebody will find an excuse to do it again.

Thursday Night: The Bay-to-Breakers is an annual 10K run across the Golden Gate Bridge. Its exotic entries include “centipedes,” eight runners in tandem, usually in silly theme costumes. The knots of fans surging towards dinner on Boylston Street looked a little like that. I knew, because I was in Ross Pavlac’s centipede on its way to Legal Seafood with Spike, Bill Bodden, Tasmanian Robin Johnson, pediatrician Elst Weinstein, Rick, Jaice and little Connor Foss.

Walking in the door we found the waiting room so crowded that several of the fans with us despaired and were on the verge of bailing out in the direction of an Italian restaurant. If this had been the International House of Pancakes they might have been right to expect an hour wait for a table, but I had been here several times before and knew they moved people surprisingly quickly, and actually preferred serving large parties. Adding to that the fact that this was a Ross Pavlac expedition, I started giving odds against our waiting longer than 15 minutes. Wisely, nobody took my action for by agreeing to sit in the smoking section the “Aardvark, party of nine” was seated within 10 minutes.

Poring over the menu, I saw out of the corner of my eye Robin Johnson pointing emphatically at his paunch. No, he wasn’t having an attack. He was illustrating a point about his travels with the diagram of the Moscow subway system on his t-shirt.

The meek at the table ordered shrimp nachos, while others, encouraged by Rick Foss, savored fried squid rings. It gave Foss his opening to repeat a favorite story about the squid burritos he made one night, and how the next morning used the leftovers for a squid tentacle omelet. He thought the grey squid bits needed more color and reached into the pantry for some blue food coloring. Right about then his neighbor, Indian Mike, dropped in. Rick waved the beastly-looking omelet under his nose. “Want some breakfast?” Rick admits, “I didn’t know he was on acid at the time.” Foss says it took two years for Mike to get up the nerve to ask whether what had been stuck under his nose was blue with tentacles. Rick moralized, “It must be awful when reality is worse than your hallucinations.”

I had to leave in the middle of dinner to attend the SF Tonight! brainstorming session. Later, I caught up with part of our group and other fanzine fans in the ConCourse. When the subject of restaurants came up, Stu Shiffman explained where Legal Seafood got its name while Gary Farber did an interpretive dance behind him.

Spike was engaged in conversation with Gary, explaining her job in Program Oops. “I’m Fred Duarte when he’s not there – and you thought being Jeanne Gomoll was a hard job.”

Next installment: Friday, and SF Tonight!

How Healthy Is the Eaton Collection?

The estate of Jay Kay Klein has donated $3.5 million to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy announced UC Riverside officials on August 28. It is the largest gift ever received by the UCR library and ranks among the top 25 donations campuswide.

Klein contributed his photo collection of 66,000 images of sf fandom and authors to the Eaton Collection prior to his death in 2012. The photo collection was valued at $1.4 million.

Two Eaton archivists studying a Klein shipment.

Two Eaton archivists studying photos in a shipment from Jay Kay Klein. Photo by John Hertz.

These gifts are credited to the relationship he established with Melissa Conway, the library’s special collections director.

A cash donation of such magnitude might have appeared one more step in the triumphal march of the Eaton Collection’s development were it not just three weeks ago that Nalo Hopkinson, sf writer and teacher of creative writing at UC Riverside, fired off this SOS:

I’m sad to have to report that new library administration doesn’t seem to appreciate the value of the Eaton Collection or the expertise that goes into it. Since spring of this year, their accomplishments have included driving out staff members and pushing changes to collection policies that would reduce the Eaton’s holdings, its value to researchers and as a repository of our community’s history, and its standing as a world-class archive. Meetings with the staff of the Eaton have been productive, collegial gatherings. Meetings to negotiate with the new library administration, not so much. It’s putting the faculty of the research cluster in the alarming position of having to protect the very collection we’re charged with fostering. We’re dealing with the new library admins’ efforts to split up the collection and change priorities for what to collect (eg, e-text over print) without consulting scholars in the field, and with what we’d characterize as harassment of staff, who’ve demonstrated extreme competence over the years.

But Hopkinson followed that warning with this provisional good news just one week later:

We three profs in the science fiction research cluster at UCR met with Dr. Stephen Cullenberg, the Dean of Humanities. He’s the person who had the vision a few years ago to create a faculty research cluster to promote the Eaton. (I should be clear that the profs in the research cluster are not employees of the Eaton. Drs. Vint and Latham are in the English Department and I — not a Dr — am in Creative Writing.) Dr. Cullenberg told us that he’s had a message from the new UCR library administrators. They’re beginning to work on a few proposals aimed at addressing our concerns about the way they’re managing the collection. There will be negotiations and resolutions mediated through a committee that will provide a trackable log of the decisions and actions upon which we’ve all agreed. Of course, this is all a couple of theoretical birds in the bush. The time for rejoicing is when you have actual birds in hand. For, me, this isn’t so much cautious optimism as it is “wait and see.”

She also reports that Eaton’s Dr. Rob Latham wrote on Facebook:

“At this meeting we were apprised of recent, potentially positive news emanating from the library dean involving plans to establish a “focused Eaton unit” with two full-time staff positions. There has also been movement toward creating an advisory body composed of faculty and administrators from both our college and the library whose charge would be to oversee the Eaton. We are cautiously optimistic about these initiatives and hope that they will lead to an enhancement, rather than a diminishment, of the value of the Collection.

Hopkinson and Latham wrote their comments before Klein’s bequest was announced. One can only speculate whether it helped thaw the attitudes they’ve been contending against.

[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the story.]

Today’s Birthday Girl 8/30

frankenstein ms

Mary Shelley’s handwritten first draft of Frankenstein.

Born 1797: Mary Shelley

What would horror fans have done without Frankenstein to scare the bejabers out of them?

Shelley’s book began on a stormy night in June 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva as her entry in a ghost-story writing contest between Byron, the Shelleys, and Byron’s physician Polidori.

Yet Frankenstein received two rejection slips — Percy Shelley’s and Lord Byron’s publishers both passed – before finally being accepted.

Joe Bethancourt III (1946-2014)

Joe Bethancourt performing in 2004.

Joe Bethancourt performing in 2004.

W.J. (Joe) Bethancourt, a professional bluegrass singer with roots in filk and the SCA, died August 29 after a long illness.

Bethancourt joined the Society of Creative Anachronism, probably at the 1969 Westercon — the only date that fits with the rest of the official history — and was instrumental (pun intended) in founding Arizona’s Kingdom of Atenveldt where he was known as Master Ioseph of Locksely. He was one of the first to receive the kingdom’s “Order of the Laurel,” in April 1970. And he later held the office of Imperial Herald.

Bethancourt ran his own production company, White Tree Productions, and recorded solo, with noted filker Leslie Fish, and with the neo-Celtic band The Bringers. He taught acoustic instruments of all kinds out of Boogie Music in Phoenix.

He played 65 different instruments – banjo and 12-string guitar and the rest of a long list including 6-course Cittern, Celtic Harp, Lute, and Ozark Mouthbow.

His professional musical career included a stint as a studio musician in LA before returning to Phoenix where he worked 17 years performing at the Funny Fellows restaurant, hosted a radio show on KDKB “Folk Music Occasional,” appeared regularly on local TV on the “Wallace and Ladmo Show,” and worked with children in the Arizona Commission for the Arts’ “Artists in Education” program.

In March of 2013 he was inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall Of Fame.

UnderTheDoubleChicken_Card

Doc Is Up From Coast To Coast

whats up doc banner3_fw“What’s Up, Doc? The Animation of Chuck Jones,” an exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens (NY) running til January 19, 2015 is reviewed in today’s New York Times – ambivalently approved by the critic in terms that bring to mind the embrace of a relative who doesn’t want her coiffure mussed —

Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the exhibition is aimed at a general audience. It’s cluttered by museum-produced graphics, reproductions and text panels. But it’s enthralling nevertheless, as it includes 136 original drawings and paintings and has 23 video versions of films directed by Mr. Jones showing — in whole or in parts — in a screening room and on monitors throughout.

The films include such classic Warner Bros. cartoons as What’s Opera, Doc? and One Froggy Evening and the Academy Award-winning short film The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics and the TV special Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The exhibition is a partnership between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, and Museum of the Moving Image.  Next year it will visit the Fort Worth Museum of Science and Industry, and Seattle’s EMP Museum. (An interesting bit of trivia is that the Smithsonian charges $64,000 per 3-month slot to host the exhibit.)

CJ_MoMI_website-detail-mainOn the opposite coast from Queens, as far away as you can get without swimming, is the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity located in Costa Mesa, CA.

It’s open six days a week and every Saturday kids of all ages are invited to “Drop In and Draw” from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. There’s drawing and an hour of cartoons at the end. Admission is free, but a nominal donation is requested to help cover the cost of materials. If my daughter wants to go, I will be reporting on this personally!

Get Those Old People Off My (Artificial) Grass

Fans on The Lawn in Loncon 3's Fan Village. (You know, some of them don’t look that old to me.)

Fans on The Lawn in Loncon 3’s Fan Village. (You know, some of them don’t look that old to me.)

The Daily Dot thought all the geezers were a drag on Loncon 3.

“Worldcon is like a family reunion,” said longtime convention-goer and fanzine writer Curt Phillips, at a panel about the history of Worldcon. After a few days, I could only agree. It was indeed like being at a family reunion, in that it felt like you were spending your time with elderly relatives. You might want to talk to them and listen to their stories, but you’ll have to tolerate some offensive and outdated opinions along the way.

Daily Dot greatly preferred the Nine Worlds con held the weekend before Worldcon but did not play fair, inserting a complaint about the San Diego Comic Con that was totally inapplicable to Loncon 3 —

Nine Worlds also made sure their code of conduct was displayed clearly on their website, which is more than you can say for SDCC.

Seriously, that’s the last thing in the world you could fault about Loncon 3.

I also think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Daily Dot modeled the greater acceptance of diversity they claim to want.

For many, the Worldcon experience was just not worth it if your comments were constantly at risk of being shouted down old men. Either some drastic changes will have to be made, or those younger fans won’t come back at all.

When writing about the generation gap at Worldcon 2013, author Madeline Ashby phrased this rather more brutally: “It’s okay, because someday they’ll all be dead.”

I see Ashby’s curse repeated all the time but I don’t take it to heart. Anyone who lives long enough will be getting the same treatment from the generation that follows. I don’t actually wish it on the Daily Dot’s writers, however, nobody has ever been able to stop it from happening, either.

On Which The Movie Was Based

Is it the perfect literary gift — or the gift for a perfect illiterate?

The amount of wordage devoted in this eBay advert for an autographed paperback of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to its being the basis for Peter Jackson’s trilogy could make you suspect the latter.

TOLKIEN, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971. Ninth printing of the one volume paperback edition. Signed by the author J.R.R. Tolkien on the title page in blue ink. This copy was signed and given to Fred Archer, one of the movers, who moved Mr. Tolkien from Bournemouth to Merton Street in March 1972, an incident recorded in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien. A near fine bright copy with a hint of use in printed wrappers. The basis of the film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Ian Holm, and Christopher Lee. Peter Jackson won three Oscars in 2003 for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay for the third and final film ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’. Enclosed in a custom handsome dark green leather and cloth clamshell box

That newly-discounted $20,000 asking price still sounds too high for a pre-movie-novelization. Had the seller stopped after the reference to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography who knows how much high rollers might have paid?

Bradbury in Bio and Bronze

Bradbury biographer Jonathan Eller told Biographile about his Surprising Research Into Ray Bradbury’s Life:

Many critics and scholars had identified the great change in his writing after World War II, when he matured from a skilled imitator of the themes and settings of other genre masters into a creator of original tales told through a unique and metaphor-rich style. But I was surprised to find through my own research and interviews that this transition happened far more quickly than the publication record reveals; some of his best dark fantasies and early science fiction tales were composed during the early and middle war years, but most would not reach print until the late 1940s. Many of the stories that he would weave into The Martian Chronicles (1950) reached print in the late 1940s, but some of the best — “Ylla,” which opens the Chronicles, and “The Million-Year Picnic,” which closes them — were also written during the war, a year or more before he first began to move out of the genre pulps and into the mainstream American magazines.

Ray Bradbury Park signAnd in Bradbury’s next public honor in his hometown of Waukegan may be a bronze sculpture.

Author Ray Bradbury never forgot his Waukegan roots — and now there is a movement in his hometown to bring his likeness back to the city in the form of a bronze sculpture.

A committee has been formed and is set to meet for the first time at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 26, in the Waukegan Public Library boardroom at 128 N. County St. When Bradbury died in 2012 at the age of 91, he donated his library from his California home to the Waukegan Public Library.

“I have been thinking about it for awhile,” said Richard Lee, executive director of Waukegan’s library, adding that he heard Hank and Beverly Bogdala of Waukegan were also interested in pursuing the idea.

Hank Bogdala has already seen his idea for a Jack Benny statue installed in Benny Plaza at Genesee and Clayton streets downtown. Benny is another Waukegan native. His statue cost $55,000, paid for by contributions.

Waukegan already holds an annual Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival and Dandelion Wine Fine Arts Festival, a star on Sheridan Road, and a downtown establishment named Green Town Tavern.

Andromeda Strain at Clarke Center 9/25

Andromeda_Poster_compressed-791x1024The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination will screen The Andromeda Strain (1971) on September 25.

There will be a discussion beforehand with guest speakers Ethan Bier (UC San Diego, Biology), Kit Pogliano (UC San Diego, Biology), and Victor Nizet (UC San Diego, Pediatrics and Pharmacy).

The screening will be in Atkinson Hall on the UCSD campus. The event is free and open to the public. Click here to register.