Monthly Archives: July 2009

Comic-Con ’09: Sold Out

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Publishers Weekly reports that Comic-Con ‘09 is going to be as big as the law allows:

The San Diego Comic-Con International is full up. With every inch of the San Diego Convention Center booked for the show years ago, and every ticket gone and hotels sold out months in advance this year, the annual comics-themed pop culture extravaganza has gotten as big as it can physically get. Yet in the imagination of the world’s enlightened nerds, it continues to grow.

A number of years ago the story went around that the announced Comic-Con membership figure was a certain amount simply because that was the maximum occupancy in the convention center permitted by the fire department. A good story – I don’t know whether it was a true one.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Calling All Faneds

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Lloyd Penney need to stock his Worldcon fanzine lounge with fanzines. He’s just sent out a plea for fans to tell him what they intend to bring to Anticipation, and whether the zines will be for sale, for placement in the reading library on site, or for giveaway.

The fanzine lounge at Anticipation will be about 500 sq. ft. in size, located on the second floor of the Palais des congrès in Montreal.

You can help even if you are not personally attending the con – mail your zines to the following address and, Lloyd promises, “…we will get them out on tables for people to peruse. If you have anything else, like flyers for fanzines, or disks, or APAs, or anything else fanzinish, bring/send those along, too.”

Anticipation
c/o Rene Walling or Marc Durocher
Unit 6092
344 Nazareth
Montreal, QC CANADA
H3C 2L3

He’s also in need of people to sign up for shifts in the fanzine lounge. The address to contact Lloyd by e-mail is: <penneys [at] allstream.net>

Write-in Campaign for a Pasadena NASFiC

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Christian McGuire must have decided that as wonderful as it will be to run a Westercon next year in Pasadena, things will be even more delightful if his con is also the 2010 NASFiC. So I surmise after seeing Kevin Standlee’s announcement on LiveJournal.

Once again the realization that a thing could be done – file a last-minute, legally proper NASFiC bid – provided fans with an irresistible temptation to actually do it.

Raleigh, NC’s NASFiC bid has been uncontested til now. It is the only one that filed in time to appear on the ballot. Supporters of Pasadena will have to write-in the name of the bid when they vote. And voting is only a few weeks away. As provided in the WSFS rules, the NASFiC site voting will happen Anticipation, the first Worldcon held since Australia was selected as site of the 2010 Worldcon.

Update 07/07/2009: Corrected Standlee URL as suggested.

San José Will Host 2011 Westercon

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San José will host Westercon 64 at the Fairmont Hotel over the July 1-4, 2011 weekend. Guests of Honor are Patricia A. McKillip, Kaja & Phil Foglio, and Mike Willmoth.  Glenn Glazer is chairing the convention.

Attending memberships are $45 (not including discounts available to those who voted/pre-supported.)

San José was not officially opposed, though there were the usual write-in votes. Here are the full site selection results from the 2009 Westercon daily newzine:

San Jose 79; Write-Ins: (2 votes) Fordlandia, Maui, Tonopah; (1 vote) Both, I-5 in 2105, Nome of the Above, Reno in 2011, Spuzzum NC, Trona CA; None of the above 1; No preference 1. Total ballots cast: 93.

Khen Moore Has Passed Away

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Ken Moore, long time Nashville fan and founder and chairman of Kubla Khan, passed away June 30 after a long illness. He was 66.

Khen — as his name was fannishly spelled — always seemed bigger than life to me, a Dionysian figure. He was the soul of a good time and known for his friendliness to new fans.

Nashville fandom owes its origins to Khen Moore, John Hollis, and Dan Caldwell, who collected other Nashvillians they met at Worldcons and DeepSouthCons. Their Kubla Khan was reputed to have the best movie event of any convention in the South, with Khen at the projector. Such efforts as these helped Khen win DSC’s Rebel Award in 1974.

The locals became a big, teasing family, remembers Kathleen David:

When Jeanna Tidwell was three or four, John Hollis taught her the names of various Nashville fans – “Who’s that, Jeanna?” “Unca Dan [Caldwell]!”, “Who’s that?” “Aunty Fran [Bray]!”, etc., until it came time to point to Khen Moore and say “Who’s that, Jeanna?” “Unca Nickelnose!”

Khen was a dynamic extrovert among fandom’s many introverts. Usually literally — at one Midwestcon he and Cliff Amos appeared in bikini bathing suits complete with dress cummerbunds in the middle of the Holidome. But pretty much every other time Ken went around in short shorts, no matter the weather, the reason he also won DSC’S Rubble Award (1991) “for having the ugliest knees in fandom.”

He and Lou, then his wife, ran the art shows for the 1978 Worldcon and 1979 NASFiC.

Janice Gelb says her first convention volunteer work came as the result of bringing a slinky dress to Phoenix to help beat the heat: “Art Show head Khen Moore saw it and immediately requested that I wear it the next day to run art for the art show auction. Jobs based more on intellectual qualifications soon followed.”

In the late Seventies Khen and Nashville fandom reached their fanpolitical zenith. Ken Keller published a “Nashville is Neat in 100 Degree Heat” ad in a 1975 MidAmeriCon progress report, a practical joke on Khen. But in fandom, jokes can easily turn into serious bids. Khen became ambitious to run a Nashville Worldcon and investigated potential facilities. However, this was before the Opryland Hotel was a factor and the city wasn’t a viable site. Soon this energy was channeled into a successful Louisville bid for the 1979 NASFiC (a con chaired by Cliff Amos.)

In addition to fandom, Khen loved aviation and was a pilot. He was retired from AVCO Aircraft where he worked as an Aircraft Engineer and Quality Control Inspector.

If you’d like to toast Khen’s memory with a concoction of his own devising, here’s his recipe for Swill, which he served at many a room party:

“Take a clean wastebasket, add a gallon of real orange juice. Real Krogers orange juice that’s got the pulp in it that you have to shake up. A quart of ReaLemon juice. A quart of Welch’s Grape Juice. A half a gallon of cheap vodka. Stir it all up. Take a blender, fill it half full with the mixture, go all the way to the top with ice. Two tablespoons of sugar in the top of the blender. Put the lid on the blender and let it run for about 45 seconds, then enjoy. “

Khen’s obituary appeared in The Tennessean on July 4. A photo of him is in the Fan Gallery.

[Thanks to Joel Zakem and Andrew Porter for the links.]

Presnell, Morrow Die

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Singer Harve Presnell, 75, who died of pancreatic cancer on June 30, starred as Daddy Warbucks in the 1979 Broadway musical Annie, and as Debbie Reynolds’s husband in the stage and screen versions of The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Actress Anna Karen Morrow, 94, who died at the beginning of July, appeared in the TV series Star Trek and was the widow of actor Jeff Morrow, best known for his performances in several SF films, such as This Island Earth.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Update 07/06/2009: Corrected the Morrow reference, following Chris Garcia’s comment. 

NESFA Clubhouse, Movie Star?

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The NESFA clubhouse is in the running to become a location for Ben Affleck’s next movie, The Town, announced Tim Szczesuil at the June 7 meeting. A location manager for GK Films inquired about the possibility of renting the property, and took photos of the clubhouse that the producers will use to make their selection.

Wnd what kind of movie will this be? “Calling all thugs with a Boston accent” was the lead in one website’s announcement of a local casting call. The Town is an adaptation of Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves, and as Affleck explained in a recent interview:

It’s based on a true fact that there is this neighborhood in Boston called Charlestown where there are more armed robbers per capita than anywhere else in the world.

So now you see what comes from allowing too many hucksters to loiter on NESFA’s premises.

Heicon Reunion at Anticipation

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Thirty-nine summers ago Heidelberg, Germany hosted the 1970 Worldcon, Heicon. An international slate of pro GoHs, Robert Silverberg, E.C. Tubb and Herbert W. Franke, were joined by Elliot Shorter, the TAFF delegate also named fan GoH. Americans knew the town as the place where tenor Mario Lanza, in The Student Prince, agreeably commanded everyone to “Drink, drink!” That order fans happily obeyed, quenching their thirst with Verguzz, a 180-proof drink bottled by German fans that ever after became a legend in its own right.

Scratch Bachrach hopes to pull off a reunion at Anticipation of the fans who attended Heicon. He says there will definitely be a panel, the likely participants being Robert Silverberg (other duties permitting), Uncle Jake Waldman, Ginjer Buchanan, Don Lundry, Bill Burns and himself. He’s also hoping a reunion party will be approved the Committee, though the budget is tight. 

Scratch decided to make the big push during the 39th anniversary, not the 40th, for these reasons: “A lot of the 700-plus attendees are gone, and I do not see many of these people going to Australia. The next time this can happen will be at Reno and it will be a lot smaller. I hope that many of those who are left will attend, just to see old friends. We will be talking about what Fandom was like before the world changed.”

Scratch can be contacted by e-mail at <dedrell [at] epix.net>

A Heartfelt Fanzine

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Laura Haywood-Cory wants to get out the word about heart disease:

Since my heart attack and angioplasty/stents, I’ve been trying to think of a fannish way to get the word out about heart disease, which as I’m sure my readers are aware, is the #1 killer of men and women both in the US. I volunteered at a health expo last weekend, at the WomenHeart booth, handing out brochures and information.

Well, on my way to work the other morning, a lightbulb went off. Fans don’t want to read brochures, we want to read *fanzines* (duh). So I figured I’d try to solicit as many stories from as many fannish heart patients as I could, put them all together in a one-shot, and distribute it far and wide.

The zine will be called A Change of Heart. She’s looking for essays, poems, letters and artwork from fans who’ve had heart-related illness themselves, or had experience with family members who did.  

Submissions can be e-mailed to <laurahcory [at] yah00> — the deadline is July 24. She intends to have it ready by the Worldcon.

A Con With No Parties?

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Archon 33 didn’t want to be the guinea pig that tests whether a con can survive without any parties — they simply were given no choice.

Archon is a regional convention held in the Collinsville Gateway Center, across the Mississippi from St. Louis in Southern Illinois.

They cut ties last January with their long-time main hotel (the Hotel Collinsville, formerly the Holiday Inn) because the new management’s refusal to allow room parties was “too stringent.”

However, since January the committee hasn’t been able to convince any of the other hotels in the Center to allow parties, either. Here is the official announcement:

After months of effort, Archon regrets to report that none of the hotels in the area around the Gateway Center are wiling to allow room parties. We are deeply disappointed in this turn of events and sincerely apologize to our members for this situation. Room parties have always been a part of our rich history and one that we wish we could continue.

Surprisingly sober, Archon 33 will take place October 2-4, 2009.