Something not quite right in the San Diego Comic-Con International souvenir book caught Scott Edelman’s eye: “In the midst of getting verklempt reading the In Memoriam section, I spotted a major error on the page honoring the late Ron Goulart — they’ve mistakenly used a photo of the very much living Joe Haldeman.”
Goulart, of course, actually looked like this:
Ron Goulart. Photo (c) and taken by Andrew Porter.Ron Goulart at 2018 Paperback & Pulp Show, NYC. Photo (c) and taken by Andrew Porter.
Edelman understands these things can happen. Because it’s happened to him.
“My photo appeared on Robert Reed’s Wikipedia page for awhile, after I accepted his Hugo award in Yokohama.”
Robert Reed Wikipedia entry with photo of Scott Edelman
When Scott wrote about the Goulart mistake on Facebook, people chimed in with other examples they’d seen.
Mine was remembering that Torcon 2 used the wrong photo for fan guest of honor Bill Rotsler in the 1973 Worldcon program book. At the time someone said it was really a picture of Philip K Dick. Since I didn’t yet know what PKD looked like I always assumed that was the identity. And therefore, the following year when PKD no-showed for his guest of honor stint at the 1974 Westercon, I thought it was an especially funny inside joke that they brought on Bill Rotsler to give the guest of honor speech instead.
The post I planned to write was going to end there. I knew I could find that old 1973 program book on Fanac.org and copy the photo to run with it. Which I have. There is just one problem. I know what Philip K. Dick looks like now, and that photo doesn’t look like PKD to me. I have never seen a photo of PKD with a long scraggly beard. So who is it really?
I asked Andrew Porter, who turned to others in the Fictionmags discussion group for help. Not only did they come up with the name, they found a copy of the original photo online. It’s artist John Schoenherr. The photo was taken by Jay Kay Klein at the 1971 Worldcon.
Porter sent a copy of the photo to John’s son Ian Schoenherr who confirmed the identity. He also commented, “Still have that corduroy safari jacket somewhere – and the ceramic tiki bowl.”
John Schoenherr at Noreascon (1971). Photo by Jay Kay Klein.
By Bill Higgins: Robert Osband, Florida fan, really loves space. All his life he has been learning about spaceflight. And reading stories about spaceflight, in science fiction.
So after NASA’s Apollo program was over, the company that made Apollo space suits held a garage sale, and Ozzie showed up. He bought a “training liner” from ILC Dover, a coverall-like portion of a pressure suit, with rings at the wrists and neck to attach gloves and helmet.
And another time, in 1976, when one of his favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, was going to be Guest of Honor at a World Science Fiction Convention, Mr. Osband journeyed to Kansas City.
In his suitcase was his copy of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel—a novel about a teenager who wins a secondhand space suit in a contest—and his ILC Dover suit.
Because if you wanted to get your copy of Have Space Suit, Will Travel autographed, and you happened to own a secondhand space suit, it would be a shame NOT to wear it, right?
As Ozzie stood in the autograph line, David Dyer-Bennet, a fannish photographer, was watching. Heinlein was casually dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. (You may have seen some of DD-B’s photos of this autograph session, because they are frequently reproduced in books about Heinlein, and he has made one available on Wikimedia Commons.) He snapped a series of pictures of the fans.
Consequently, there exists a picture of Mr. Osband meeting Mr. Heinlein at that moment in September 1976.
Photo by David Dyer-Bennet. Robert Osband (Ozzie) is getting his copy of “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” autographed by Robert Heinlein while wearing the training liner of space suit he bought at ILC Industries of Dover DE, when the manufacturer cleaned out the attic and held a garage sale following the end of the Apollo Program. Photo used by permission.
This month I found, to my surprise, that the two had something unexpected in common. To put it into a single word, they were both vain.
Vain, but in interesting ways. I will explain.
Mike Glyer, our gracious host here at File 770, has, as you may know, a keen interest in science fiction history. On Friday, April 1, the U. S. National Archives made public the data from the 1950 Census. Mike was curious what the Census might say about individuals in the SF world, and he asked me for a bit of research help. Here’s his article: “What the Heinleins Told the 1950 Census”.
That’s how I came to be examining a list of Heinlein’s residences in those days. Robert and Virginia Heinlein, recently married, at first rented a place in Colorado Springs, Colorado. But in the spring of 1949 they put their furniture in storage and went to Los Angeles, where Robert worked on the film Destination Moon. They returned to Colorado Springs in February of 1950 and rented a house. But their dream was to build a house of their own. Robert had a lot of novel ideas about modern house design.
By springtime, they were negotiating to purchase land. The developer made them an unusual offer. Their lot was between two other homes on Mesa Avenue with house numbers 1700 and 1800. They were invited to choose an address of their own, a number between 1700 and 1800.
This is the reason why, in August 1950, Robert and Virginia Heinlein came to be living at 1776 Mesa Avenue.
To digress briefly, here in the U.S., states allow motorists to specify custom text on their license plates. Usually the state charges an extra fee for this. For example, I once saw an orange Cadillac owned by Forrest J. Ackerman, the prominent fan who coined the phrase “Sci-Fi.” And sure enough, Forry’s California license plate read “SCI FI.” Such custom license plates are known as “Vanity Plates.”
The Heinleins of 1776 Mesa Avenue, both patriotic veterans, had given themselves a Vanity Address.
A vanity address is much rarer than a vanity license plate. But Robert Osband has something even more rare.
Ozzie was—how shall I say it?—um, an amateur telephony enthusiast. He understood well how telephones work, and how the switching network functions, and how phone systems evolved the way they did.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as populations grew, and as the purchase of fax machines, modems, and mobile phones grew even faster, a lot of phone numbers were gobbled up. In large metropolitan areas particularly, the available supply of not-yet-assigned phone numbers became smaller and smaller.
The solution to this congestion was to assign fresh new Area Codes.
Each area code is a three-digit number, and (at the time) all the phone numbers assigned within a large geographic area would share this three-digit prefix. Chicago phone numbers started with 312. Miami phone numbers started with 305.
Ozzie knew about the North American Numbering Plan Administration, which governed the area code system. In Titusville, Ozzie lived in the 305 area code, whose boundaries encompassed much of southern Florida.
In 1988, the Orlando region was split off. A new area code, 407, was assigned to many phones previously within 305’s domain. Titusville remained in 305.
But more people, and more fax machines, and more mobile phones kept eating up available 305 numbers.
So very soon, it was time once again for the congested 305 to calve, creating a new area along the east coast of Florida, with a fresh area code.
Ozzie saw an opportunity. He understood the Numbering Plan. He consulted the pool of three-digit numbers not yet in use. He knew that the Florida Public Service Commission regulated aspects of the telephony business.
Ozzie did some research and carefully prepared his case. There was a particular three-digit string he wanted to advocate, one not yet in use for any other area.
On 24 September 1998, he testified to a meeting of the Public Service Commission. They loved his idea. And they ran with it.
This is the reason why, on 1 November 1999, Titusville, and Cocoa Beach, and Melbourne, and, most importantly, Cape Canaveral, Florida, became part of Area Code 321. As Ozzie had told the PSC, “With the Space Coast of Florida as the Count-Down capital of the world, this in my humble opinion, is the Area Code for us!”
As a result, Ozzie’s own phone number became 321-LIFTOFF.
Yes, Robert Osband had arranged a Vanity Area Code.
So when I learned of Robert and Virginia Heinlein and their vanity address, I recalled Robert Osband’s vanity area code. And suddenly realized that, long after the address was established, and long before the area code was created, they had once met. And that DD-B had photos of the meeting.
Las Vegas fan Bill Mills died January 9 at the age of 69, less than a week after coming home from the hospital.
Mills was a musician, filker, collector of sf movie props, and a masquerader. He was a prolific maker of videos featuring his singing.
As a young actor Mills had an uncredited appearance in the Disney movie Follow Me Boys (1966). Later in life he had acting roles or stuntman credits in a half dozen low-budget film productions.
First meeting at the original LASFS clubhouse in 1973. Back row, L to R: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Jerry Pournelle, A. E. Van Vogt, Forry Ackerman. Middle row, L to R: Unknown, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Wendayne Ackerman. Front row, L to R: Unknown, Bill Mills, Ron Cobb. Photo by Stan Burns.
After Mills found his way into fandom he joined LASFS in 1970. He and his friend Robert Short were the self-proclaimed world’s biggest Man from U.N.C.L.E. fans and amassed a fantastic collection that they displayed at Westercon 23 in 1970, filling an entire room with props, scripts and other materials used on the program, plus merchandising items from around the world.
They also were part of the T.H.R.U.S.H. squad put together by David McDaniel, an LA-area author of several U.N.C.L.E. media tie-in novels. He had obtained some T.H.R.U.S.H. logo patches from the studio, and everyone in the group sewed patches on dark suits and showed up together at a local theater where U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn was playing Hamlet. After the performance they stood politely in line to greet Vaughn, and equally politely insisted they were from the “Public Relations” department of T.H.R.U.S.H. There were several more “T.H.R.U.S.H. runs” to places where they could startle people who weren’t expecting a group of fictional villains to show up. The group included Barry Gold, Robert Short, Bill Mills, Evan Hayworth, Gail Knuth, and Charles Lee Jackson II, many of whom had been Tuckerized in McDaniel’s novels.
Years later he moved to Las Vegas and became active in the Vegrants. Around 2006 he created a new website, The Voices of Fandom, which hosted fannish podcasts, historic soundbites and classic filk music. An oral history page played short testimonials by various Las Vegrants in April 2006 about how they discovered fandom. Much of the material has been saved to the Internet Archive and can be accessed here. Bill’s tech expertise also led to him being part of the Corflu 25 committee in 2008.
In recent years, Bill has been active creating music videos for his YouTube channel.
By Bence Pintér: As a historian and journalist, I always found pleasure in flipping through old newspapers. In these times of lockdown, I happened to be fooling around in Arcanum Digitheca, Hungary’s “largest and continuously expanding” digital periodical database, looking for traces of old Hungarian fandom in the papers.
This is how I found my way to an article from 1973 in Magyar Ifjúság (Hungarian Youth – the official magazine of the Hungarian Young Communist League), about jan howard finder giving a lecture on Tolkien to Hungarian fans. An American fan giving lecture on Tolkien in Budapest long before the fall of communism and long before Tolkien was even published in Hungary?
That is an interesting story, I thought, then googled “jan howard finder file770”, since I never heard about him before, but was sure that I would find something here, and boy, was I right! So I gathered that maybe some of the readers of File770 could be interested in what jan howard finder told to the budding Hungarian fandom about Tolkien. But first let me present you some context with a little the help from Pálma Erdei’s fine dissertation about Hungarian sci-fi and fandom.
In Communist Hungary fannish activities seemingly preceded the official recognition of science fiction: the first Hungarian fanzine was created in 1968 at Berzsenyi Dániel High School, while the first state-approved science fiction collection, Cosmos Fantastic Books started publishing in 1969 at Móra, which was a publisher mainly of children’s fiction. (Of course there were some science fiction books published before this collection in the country, but few.)
The science fiction clubs also preceded Cosmos Fantastic Books: apart from the fanzine-making guys at Berzsenyi High, the first was founded in 1968 mostly by scientists, members of the Society for Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (TIT is the Hungarian acronym for that one). At the end of 1973, TIT got 600 members, a network of clubs in major cities in Hungary, and a rather good fanzine named Pozitron.
The title of the article is ‘A fantázia új útjai’ (The New Ways of Fantasy), but you should know that in Hungarian with ‘fantázia’ does not mean the genre, because we call that simply ‘fantasy’. Besides that, science fiction is also called ‘tudományos fantasztikum’, in which the first part means scientific, and ‘fantasztikum’ is a broader term which means sci-fi, fantasy and horror.
The journalist describes jan howard finder (an American chemistry teacher from West Germany, we are told) a ‘sci-fi specialist’ and a Tolkien-expert, then goes on to wonder about why The Lord of the Rings is science fiction. The answer to this question (drawn from finder’s lecture) is a bit confusing, since it do not try to sell LotR as sci-fi, but goes on detailing the plot. I assume that the translation was not really accurate, and/or the journalist was confused by these terms. Fantasy was not a thing in Hungary then, and rather similar ‘fantasztikum’ meant sci-fi as well.
I would not bore you with the plot summary, but it is funny: it’s like if I want to summarize LotR to my four-year-old. “…in the story there is a ring, which has various magical powers, and which was lost by the leading evil magician. The good side find the ring, but if somewone wears it, he is corrupted…” And so on and so forth. Later the journalist quotes finder to say: LotR is the reason why Western universities started to research science fiction, and also LotR is responsible for the rise in quality in science fiction.
In the next part Finder reflects on new wave: “Science fiction, like every genre, is in constant change. Science fiction concerning technology is only written in East Germany nowadays, because there this became the most notable subgenre. The latest development is ‘speculative fiction’. You should be prepared not just to write ‘speculative fiction’, but also to read it. Honestly, first I was really bored by the ‘new wave’, but soon I found that this is just a perfect ‘brain exercise’ Nowadays I am amused by ‘speculative fiction’.”
The he goes on to describe Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine by R. A. Lafferty, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and Zone Null by the Austrian Herbert W. Franke, which is wrongly attributed in the article to the German Wolfgang Jeschke. (There is a reason for that: the novel was in one volume with Jeschke’s short story collection.)
The journalist ends the article in this fashion: “One thing is sure: true SF does not mean space mysteries and space pulp anymore. The fans of SF only read sci-fi books sophisticated in style and message nowadays.”
While The Lord of the Rings was already a bestseller in 1973 for years, this is the first article in the Hungarian database which even mentions the massively successful book and its author. The Hobbit was published in 1975 in Hungarian, but until the publication of LotR in 1981, there were a total of six articles mentioning the book briefly. (One bears the title “Who is the Most Boring Writer?”, and is a translation of an article about which author is the most boring according to some students.) So it is no exaggeration to say that jan howard finder was like an evangelist prophesizing about a book that will be massively popular in Hungary also – twenty or thirty years later.
There is a quote from translator of the lecture in the article, who told the journalist that she wants to translate LotR, but it will be hard. In fact she will not be the one to translate the epic: most of the geographical and other names, and the first eleven chapters was translated by noted translator Ádám Réz, while the rest of the book was translated by future president Árpád Göncz (prose) and famous poet Dezso Tandori (poetry).
[Editor’s note: WordPress does not support one of the characters in Tandori’s first name, therefore a Latin character has been used instead. Apologies for the incorrect spelling. Also, finder spelled his name using lower case letters, thus the headline.]
by Shieldforyoureyes Dave Fischer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
By Jo Van Ekeren:
I’ve spent the last couple of years exhuming statistics and ephemera about the Hugo Awards from various sources, including old Usenet posts on Google Groups, old fanzines, archived con websites, and various historical documents which have been scanned and made available online (and I give my thanks to those of you who have been making those archiving efforts, especially Joe Siclari, Edie Stern, Mark Olson, and Bill Burns).
I’ve managed to resurrect full or partial statistics for around 23 additional years beyond what was posted at TheHugoAwards.org. A few years have already been posted there, and I will be gradually rolling out the rest of them over the next few months as I get them formatted into readable documents.
I’ve updated it with Site Selection ballot numbers, Advance Membership numbers, and Hugo participation percentages for 2000-2019, plus Retro Hugo data, as well as showing the difference between the number of categories which were on the nominating ballot versus the number of categories which had sufficient participation to be on the final voting ballot.
You are welcome to link to the full Google document — and certainly can make a backup of it if you wish — but please be aware that I expect it to continue to change as more bits of information become available.
Please do report to me any errors or omissions you might notice, either in the comments on this post, or by submitting a message here.
What does the most recent data about Hugo nominators and voters tell us?
Tracking of the electronic vs. paper nominations and votes, at the turn of the century, was helpful in evaluating the amount of electronic uptake by Hugo voters. That hit 99% in 2011, and has remained there ever since. Now this comparison tracking is chiefly of interest in noting how many remaining members are either unable or unwilling to nominate and vote electronically.
From 1989 through 2007, participation in the final ballot was consistently under 20% of the Advance membership (those eligible to participate in voting). In 2008, both overall membership numbers and Hugo participation began to rise steadily. It is likely that common acceptance and the ease of the ability to nominate and vote electronically contributed significantly to this. In addition, 2008 was the first year of the annual Hugo Voter Packet – containing finalist works which were not otherwise available for free – and this has also likely contributed to the rise of member numbers and of Hugo participation among members.
The ratio of Supporting to Attending members has also steadily risen in the last 10 years, and while some of this can be attributed to the Puppy campaigns of 2015-2016 as well as to fans from the U.S. being unable to attend overseas Worldcons in London and Helsinki, it seems clear that access to a large number of free works in the Hugo Voter Packet is also a contributing factor. Percentage of eligible advance member participation in the Hugo Awards is now at an all-time high, at 40% to 50% of the eligible membership.
Site Selection, which has remained a mail-in or on-site endeavour, has seen somewhat of a decline in participation in the last 10 years. This is likely due to having only one bid site in many of those years, but possibly also somewhat due to people who previously voted for both Hugos and Site Selection by mail in the past now only voting for the Hugos online. This is not likely to change unless and until it becomes common for bidcoms to be willing to have electronic voting for Site Selection.
Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Again (1971-1999), by George Flynn
Over
seas
Year
Worldcon
Location
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid
Nominating
Ballots
Valid
Final
Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Site-
Selection
Ballots
Advance
Member
Count
Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
1971
29 - Noreascon I
Boston
9
343
732
9
—
1,600
45.8%
1972
30 - L.A.Con I
Los Angeles
9
270
550
9
256
1,500
36.7%
1973
31 - Torcon II
Toronto, Canada
11
350
708
11
375
2,200
32.2%
1974
32 - Discon II
Washington DC
12
?
930
12
645
2,600
35.8%
O
1975
33 - Aussiecon One
Melbourne, Australia
12
267
600
12
528
1,880
31.9%
1976
34 - MidAmeriCon
Kansas City
12
486
1,595
12
993
3,600
44.3%
1977
35 - SunCon
Miami Beach
12
500
800
12
884
2,800
28.6%
1978
36 - IguanaCon II
Phoenix
13
540
1,246
13
1,154
4,200
29.7%
O
1979
37 - Seacon '79
Brighton, UK
13
467
1,160
13
920
4,126
28.1%
1980
38 - Noreascon Two
Boston
13
563
1,788
13
1,549
5,447
32.8%
1981
39 - Denvention Two
Denver
12
454
1,247
12
1,680
4,529
27.5%
1982
40 - Chicon IV
Chicago
12
648
1,071
12
1,119
5,000
21.4%
1983
41 - ConStellation
Baltimore
12
660
1,322
12
729
5,500
24.0%
1984
42 - L.A.con II
Los Angeles
13
513
1,467
13
1,368
6,740
21.8%
O
1985
43 - Aussiecon Two
Melbourne, Australia
13
222
443
13
527
2,199
20.1%
1986
44 - ConFederation
Atlanta
13
568
1,267
13
1,863 (’88)
1,276 (’89)
5,400 [6]
23.5%
O
1987
45 - Conspiracy '87
Brighton, UK
13
567
990
13
1,373
4,953
20.0%
1988
46 - Nolacon II
New Orleans
14
418
1,178
14
1,455
4,721
25.0%
1989
47 - Noreascon 3
Boston
13
539
980
13
1,636
6,100
16.1%
O
1990
48 - ConFiction
The Hague, Netherlands
14
291
486
14
1,088
3,418
14.2%
1991
49 - Chicon V
Chicago
13
352
1,048
13
2,086
5,126
20.4%
1992
50 - MagiCon
Orlando
14
498
902
14
2,509
5,297
17.0%
1993
51 - ConFrancisco
San Francisco
15
397
841
14
1,282
5,834
14.4%
1994
52 - ConAdian
Winnipeg, Canada
14
649
491
14
1,439
4,388
11.2%
O
1995
53 - Intersection
Glasgow, Scotland
14
477
744
14
1,554
4,900
15.2%
1996
54 - L.A.con III
Los Angeles
14
442
939
14
1,064
6,000
15.7%
1997
55 - LoneStarCon 2
San Antonio
13
429
687
13
1,467
4,400
15.6%
1998
56 - BucConeer
Baltimore
13
471
769
13
2,168
5,131
15.0%
O
1999
57 - Aussiecon Three
Melbourne, Australia
13
425
438
13
820
2,425
18.1%
Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record Yet Again (2000-2020),
by Jed Hartman and Jo Van Ekeren
Over
seas
Year
Worldcon
Location
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Site-
Selection
Ballots
Advance
Member
Count
Final
Hugo
Vote
Ratio
Total
Elec
%Elec
Total
Elec
%Elec
2000 [2]
58 - Chicon 2000
Chicago
13
407
130
31.9%
1,071
475
44.4%
13
1,698
5,262
20.4%
2001
59 - Millennium Philcon
Philadelphia
13
495
178
36.0%
1,050
282
26.9%
13
2,094
5,013
20.9%
2002 [3]
60 - ConJosé
San José
14
626
371
59.3%
924
697
75.4%
14
1,034
4,422
20.9%
2003 [4]
61 - Torcon 3
Toronto, Canada
14
738
776
478
61.6%
14
1,481
4,204
18.5%
2004
62 - Noreascon 4
Boston
14
567
366
64.6%
1,093
14
1,686
5,613
19.5%
O
2005
63 - Interaction
Glasgow, Scotland
15
546
436
79.9%
684
552
80.7%
15
[7]
4,169
16.4%
2006
64 - L.A.con IV
Los Angeles
15
533
434
81.4%
711
600
84.4%
14
1,561
4,128
17.2%
O
2007 [5]
65 - Nippon2007
Yokohama, Japan
15
409
340
83.1%
589
15
902
4,691
12.6%
2008
66 - Denvention 3
Denver
15
483
895
15
826
4,062
22.0%
2009
67 - Anticipation
Montréal, Canada
16
799
1,074
1,040
96.8%
16
763
3,812
28.2%
O
2010
68 - Aussiecon 4
Melbourne, Australia
16
864
1,094
16
526
2,898
37.8%
2011
69 - Renovation
Reno
16
1,006
992
98.6%
2,100
2,086
99.3%
16
760
4,688
44.8%
2012
70 - Chicon 7
Chicago
17
1,101
1,922
17
932
5,218
36.8%
2013
71 - LoneStarCon 3
San Antonio
17
1,343
1329
99.0%
1,848
17
1,348
4,468
41.4%
O
2014
72 - Loncon 3
London, UK
17
1,923
1889
98.2%
3,587
3,571
99.6%
17
778
8,580
41.8%
2015
73 - Sasquan
Spokane
17
2,122
2119
99.9%
5,950
5,914
99.4%
17
2,625
10,321
57.6%
2016
74 - MidAmeriCon II
Kansas City
17
4,032
4015
99.6%
3,130
17
1,321
6,174
50.7%
O
2017
75 - Worldcon 75
Helsinki, Finland
18
2,464
2458
99.8%
3,319
3,315
99.9%
18
1,227
7,672
43.3%
2018
76 - Worldcon 76
San José
19
1,813
1795
99.0%
2,828
2,810
99.4%
19
726
6,393
44.2%
O
2019
77 - Dublin 2019
Dublin, Ireland
20
1,800
1797
99.8%
3,097
3,089
99.7%
20
880
6,000?
51.6%
O
2020
78 - CoNZealand
Wellington, New Zealand
19
1,584
1582
99.9%
2,221
2216
99.85
19
587
4,486
49.5%
Hugo Voting: Let's Look At The Record for the Retro Hugos
Year
Held
Retro
Year
Worldcon
Location
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Valid Nominating Ballots
Valid Final Ballots
[1]
# of
Cate
gories
Total
Elec
%Elec
Total
Elec
%Elec
1996
1946
54 - L.A.con III
Los Angeles
13
111
---
605
---
10
2001
1951
59 - Millennium Philcon
Philadelphia
12
130
48
36.9%
862
157
18.2%
10
2004
1954
62 - Noreascon 4
Boston
13
131
96
73.3%
841
10
2014
1939
72 - Loncon 3
London, UK
16
233
226
97.0%
1,307
1,295
99.1%
10
2016
1941
74 - MidAmeriCon II
Kansas City
16
481
475
98.8%
869
11
2018
1943
76 - Worldcon 76
San José
17
204
192
94.1%
703
688
97.9%
9
2019
1944
77 - Dublin 2019
Dublin, Ireland
18
217
214
98.6%
834
826
99.0%
11
2020
1945
78 - CoNZealand
Wellington, New Zealand
18
120
117
97.5%
521
516
99.0%
12
No.
Footnote Explanation
[1]
Number of categories includes the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award, the Lodestar/YA Award, and any other special categories or awards announced that year. Discrepancies between total nominating categories and total voting categories are the result of categories with insufficient nominations being dropped from the final ballot.
[2]
Chicon 2000 received 1,101 Hugo ballots, of which 475 were electronic ballots and 626 were paper ballots. 30 ballots were invalid, which left 1,071 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 30 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[3]
ConJosé received 940 Hugo ballots. There were 697 were electronic ballots, 226 paper ballots, and 17 fax ballots. 16 ballots were invalid, which left 924 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 16 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic vs. fax.
[4]
Torcon 3 received 805 Hugo ballots, of which 478 were electronic ballots and 327 were paper ballots. 29 ballots were invalid, which left 776 valid ballots. It is unclear how many of the 29 invalid ballots were paper vs. electronic.
[5]
The number of final Hugo ballots for Nippon 2007 is unknown. The quoted figure is the number of Novel ballots / 80%, which is the average percentage of final ballots cast for Novel during that stretch of years.
[6]
Site Selection went from 2 years to 3 years in advance
[7]
Site Selection went from 3 years to 2 years in advance
1930’s Fan Bob Madle and the slightly younger Fan Curt Phillips; May 1, 2019.
Bob Madle, turns 99 today. A founder of First Fandom, Bob attended the 1936 event in Philadelphia considered by some the first sf convention, went to the first Worldcon in 1939, co-founded the Philadelphia SF Society, was a finalist for the 1956 Best Feature Writer Hugo, won TAFF in 1957, and was Suncon’s (1977) Fan GoH.
By Curt Phillips: I visited Bob at his home
two weeks ago just before Corflu 37, which was held in Rockville, MD this
year. Bob is doing very well, and in spite of some health issues over the
past couple of years is active, sharp as a tack, and still loving science
fiction and fandom as much as ever. He’s still selling rare science
fiction books and magazines too and during my visit I parted with a few hard
earned dollars to buy some Wonder Stories
and some other magazines that I’d been looking for, but the best part of my
visit was to simply sit in Bob’s enormous pulp warehouse and talk about early
science fiction with him. He’s known everybody
in science fiction and fandom over the decades and has fascinating stories to
tell. I only had a few hours to visit, but I could have stayed for
days.
First Fandom founder, WWII veteran, science fiction’s master
bookseller; Robert A. “Bob” Madle. He was there at Fandom’s
beginnings and he’s with us still.
Karen Anderson, author and a master of all the fannish arts, died March 17. Her daughter, Astrid Bear, announced her passing on Facebook.
My mother, Karen Anderson [widow of Poul Anderson], died last night. It was a peaceful and unexpected passing — she died in her bed and was found by the Sunday visiting nurse…. Memorial gathering plans to be announced later, but in the meantime, raise a glass to the memory of a fine woman. If you are moved to make a donation, please consider the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund or the UCLA Medical School.
Born Karen Kruse in Kentucky in 1932, she married sf writer Poul Anderson in 1953. They moved to the Bay Area, where their daughter Astrid (now married to Greg Bear) was born in 1954. Poul died in 2001.
Karen and Poul collaborated on a number of stories over the years, and on the King of Ys series published in the 1980s. And she wrote poetry, including the first published science fiction haiku (in F&SF, July 1962).
Even more notably, Karen made many historic contributions to fannish culture.
She was the first person to intentionally use the term filk music in print. ZineWiki explains —
In the 1950s, Karen Anderson spotted a typo in a fanzine while reading an essay by Lee Jacobs on folk music, where he had mistyped “folk” as “filk”. In her words, “Who ever heard of a filk? Since the essay appeared in an amateur publication circulated among science fiction fans, though, there was only one thing to do. Rather than waste a phrase like “filk song”, something must be created to which the name could be applied.” There had been songs written by science fiction fans since the 1940s, but Anderson’s new name for them caught on, and she is credited with naming “filk songs”.
Karen Kruse Anderson also was the first faned to publish a filksong, as Lee Gold documented:
Traveling yet further back in time, to the 26th SAPS distribution, Winter, 1953, on page #22 of Die Zeitschrift für Vollstandigen Unsinn #774 by Karen Kruse Anderson is…the first-known song published as a filk song [123k scan] – written (see the note in The Zed #780) by Poul Anderson.
And Karen, a rare beauty, shined as a costumer. She personified a familiar sf image in this array of “Warrior Women” photographed by George Young at the 1955 Worldcon. (She’s on the right.)
Warrior Women. 1955 Worldcon. Karen is on the right. Photo by George Young.
Later, she brought daughter Astrid into her presentations, as shown here in Ben Jason’s photo from the 1964 Worldcon.
Five years later at St. Louiscon, mother and daughter etched their names in masquerade history as “The Bat and the Bitten.”
Astrid and Karen Anderson as “The Bat and The Bitten,” 1969 Worldcon. Photo by Mike Resnick, used by permission.
Fanac.org relates the dramatic moment:
“The Bat and the Bitten” Astrid Anderson & Karen Anderson delivered a truly chilling performance as a vampire sires a new acolyte. Astrid is the victim in a white mini dress who transforms as the vampire envelops her in her huge black wings and secretly squirted Astrid with a homemade mixture of gelatin, red ink & yellow food coloring so that after the bite, Astrid opened her 14 foot white wings to reveal the blood that ran from her neck and down her dress to a horrified audience. It is still considered one of the best performances to this day and it was awarded both the Grand Prize & Judges’ Choice.
In 1988, costume fandom presented an award for lifetime achievement to Karen Anderson at the Worldcon, Nolacon II (New Orleans). This was the first such award, ever. It is a forerunner of the ICG Lifetime Achievement Award.
Karen had an avid interest in daily life throughout history and in different cultures, especially cooking as shaped by culture, available tools, and local or imported ingredients.
Her interest found a perfect outlet in the Society for Creative Anachronism, started in 1966, of which she, Poul, and Astrid were founding members. She remained active in the SCA for many years, once serving as “herald of the known world.” As late as 2010 she still officered a local organization as Baroness of the Angels.
Karen and Poul joined the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in 1967. She had earlier made her mark in LASFS history by appearing in the fannish film The Musquite Kid Rides Again(1960), based on a story from Lee Jacobs’ fanzine The Ballard Chronicles, She moved back to the LA area after Poul died in 2001, and regularly attended club meetings for several years. She won the club’s Forry Award in 2010 for lifetime achievement in sf.
Karen was also a Sherlock Holmes fan, who co-founded a Holmes society with a couple of friends in 1959. The affinity continued all her life. She was made a member of the Baker Street Irregulars in 2000, receiving her investiture as Conan Doyle character Emilia Lucca.
Karen was an extraordinarily bright and talented person who made towering contributions to fandom and the sf field.
By Karl-Johan Norén: Lars-Olov Strandberg passed away early morning on March 3, never having recovered from a stroke he suffered in January. He was a Guest of Honour at Interaction, the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow.
Lars-Olov was born July 26, 1929. He was active from the start of Swedish science fiction fandom, present at the first Swedish science fiction con, Luncon in 1956, and on hand with his camera at nearly every Swedish sf con since. He did not make a big mark in this very early fandom, but he was present, and his strong organisational skills were instrumental in making the Scandinavian Society for Science Fiction (SFSF) a success after its founding in 1960. Many of its early meetings were held in his apartment at Folkskolegatan 22.
Lars-Olov held a secure, well-paying job at a major Swedish insurance company, and served as treasurer, secretary, or chairman at nearly every con held in Stockholm, often paying the economic deficit of the cons out of his own pocket. He also used this to make frequent travels to international cons. He visited most Eastercons for nearly forty years, and was a regular at Worldcons as well.
When Swedish fandom started to expand in the 1970s, Lars-Olov was there was well. He was one of the founding members of Forodrim, the Stockholm Tolkien society, where he took the alias of Théoden. He organised the first lasting Swedish fan foundation, the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Foundation. He was a member of nearly every science fiction club in Sweden. Perhaps most importantly, he was part of the board of SFSF when they acquired the book club of the Swedish publisher Askild & Kärnekull, instantly making the society’s membership several times larger. The publishing activity and postal order store was the foundation of the Stockholm Science Fiction bookstore, nowadays with presence in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, and one of the largest science fiction bookstores in the world. It is unlikely that the Science Fiction bookstore could have grown beyond its humble beginnings without Lars-Olov.
I first met Lars-Olov sometime early 1999, when I first went to meet Swedish organised fandom. I think he served as the secretary of the book auction, and he was friendly and unassuming. He was never forward, and I never heard him raise his voice. He was so retiring that one could be excused to think he was not there. But he kept careful notes at every meeting, no matter how small, and he was always there, making Swedish fandom better by being friendly to everyone. A Swedish con or an SFSF meeting without Lars-Olov was something impossible.
By Chip Hitchcock: At some ages any year may seem momentous, but 1978 still stands out in memory. I was a couple of years out of college, but still singing in Harvard’s summer chorus and signing books out to borrowers at the MITSFS (owner of the world’s largest open library of SFF); I was working as a ~chemistry researcher, with no idea that in another couple of years I’d be massively more entangled in fandom and working for two other fans at a computer company.
For a start, Boskone (then and now my local convention) grew from 1000 people to over 1400 after a couple of years of near-stability. Star Wars, which had played downtown for several months the previous year, is the obvious explanation for this, and maybe the growth past 1900 in 1979, but how they found us is anyone’s guess; as far as I remember, Boskones then didn’t do much advertising because there was no obvious place for it. Later this led to strains on the committee, and finally to the Boskone from Hell, but at the time growth seemed like an unalloyed good; in 1979 it meant we could take all of New England’s largest hotel, instead of just working the fringes around the biggest ballrooms.
The immediate effect for me was that the RISFA Players had to do three performances in a row of the latest Anderson-Keller musical, Rivets Redux, in order to seat everyone who wanted to see it. I was playing Charles Dexter Ward (one of several obsolete characters in search of new employment), but also served as producer, something resembling music director, and technical director; this last required coming up with a representation of the appearance of the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the previous year’s other SF blockbuster), with a jury rig that we were lucky survived all the performances. (Since this was the RISFA Players, who had first been seen in “Buckets of Gor, or Abbott and Costello Meet the Priest-Kings”, the ship appeared not to the infamous five-note motif but to “Dueling Tubas”.) In addition to the usual problems of an amateur production split between two cities (the creators and most of the cast were in Providence), we dealt with two record-setting snowstorms in the previous few weeks; the second of these shut down the city for a week, right when the entire convention was busiest getting ready. When we finally moved into the hotel we found that all the other scheduled meetings had canceled, which at least gave us a space for some desperately-needed on-site rehearsal.
Then there was the Boston in 1980 Worldcon bid. I had joined MCFI (the sponsoring organization) just a few months before, and immediately “volunteered” (i.e., I was the only person not to step back quickly enough) to find and liaise with a printer so that we’d have someone ready to do the first progress report if we won. (I just discovered that the scan of File:770 #7 is online, listing me as an “officer” of Noreascon Two due to this job.) This later led to my producing several books for NESFA Press, and editing at least one of them. I’d seen a few Worldcon bids go by but hadn’t voted before 1977; MCFI was for the time a stable group (about as many couples as singles, many in solid jobs in computers and I think averaging a little older than typical) chaired by Leslie Turek (later FGoH at Sasquan). Fandom was getting less gender-imbalanced—after the New Orleans in 1976 Worldcon bid had been torpedoed by its CVB rep (“a great place for you to hold your convention, and a great city for your wives to go shopping in!”) I estimated from published lists that the membership that heard this line at the 1974 Worldcon was about a quarter female—but it had been some time since a woman had been sole chair.
Somewhere in this timeline, Iguanacon (the upcoming Worldcon) asked MCFI and its Baltimore opposition to each take on an area of the convention; we were given the costume contest and promptly dubbed ourselves the Boston Massaquerade. I was not going to be involved with the organizing, but it was assumed (based on the aforementioned musicals, which were an outgrowth of backstage work at high-school and college theaters) that I would be tech director—Masquerades being rather less rigorous 40 years ago. (These days the TDs usually have considerable current experience.) This was the first time that a Masquerade had been held in a real theater rather than a hotel hall, and the Phoenix “Symphony Hall” came with more lights already hung than we knew what to do with—and people to focus and run them, apparently already in the budget. So the Masquerade was displayed well despite my inexperience.
Iguanacon II Program Book cover by William R. Warren.
Iguanacon itself had made news for changing its chair a few months out, for reasons discussed extensively at the time, and for GoH Harlan Ellison’s steps to prevent any money being spent on his behalf in a state that had refused to ratify the ERA; despite the noise, and weather that was hot even for Phoenix over Labor Day, it had significantly more attendees than any previous Worldcon, after a few years’ pause in the steady increase that attendance had seen since the 1960’s. The abovementioned scan has discussions of some of the other uproars, but doesn’t mention the report I heard that the Art Show had to be torn down and reconstructed to allow passage from fire doors on an inner exhibit hall through the show to the doors on its outside wall. However, Iguanacon also had some innovations that are still well-remembered:
They persuaded the Hyatt coffee shop to stay open 24/7. An impeachable source told me this made the Hyatt so much money that other Worldcon Hyatts a few years later reportedly refused to believe the figures—which was a pity given the shortage of food around them. These days fandom might or might not average old enough that all-night food wouldn’t be useful.
They picked a hotel with a serious mingling space. The Google view tells me the atrium couldn’t have been much over a hundred feet each way, but crossing it always took at least 10 minutes because you kept running into people you could stop and talk to; in a typical lobby or corridor that would get you snarled at, or pushed. Many Worldcons since have aimed for such a feature.
I answered a few questions from a local TV station that was interviewing people in the atrium. I didn’t see the result, but I was told later that the news item had led off with my comment about blaming my parents because they gave me Tom Swift instead of the Hardy Boys at age 8. That’ll teach me to be smart to mundanes….
MCFI threw parties (on a much smaller budget than nowadays, although large enough that we used the rooms’ swivel chairs as impromptu dollies for ice) and hung hundreds of feet of computer-printed banners (one of the few reasons to miss old-fashioned line-printers and their fan-fold output) on the stacks of railing around the abovementioned atrium. At one of the parties I met the only other ancestral Hitchcock I’ve run into in fandom. (It’s an old name, but not common.) We were pronounced the winner after a notoriously humorless business-meeting chair first announced that a hoax bid (of which there were several) had won. The next day, somebody at our advance-sales table started a conversation with Spider and Jeanne Robinson, who had just won a Hugo for “Stardance”; the result was a performance, called “Higher Ground”, which showed some gravity-bound idea of what stardance might be like.
This was in the early days of airline deregulation, when the cheapest fares required staying for a week, so a lot of us hung around in the hotel lobby until it was late enough Tuesday night to go to the airport for a flight one minute into Wednesday. It turned out groups of us were taking two different airlines’ flights through O’Hare, so we blearily wandered into each other around dawn on Thursday while waiting for our connections.
And a ridiculously long chain of inattentions and coincidences had led to my singing in a chorus behind the the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (their summer home) just days before leaving for Phoenix; I ended up chorusing a handful of concerts with the BSO over the next several years. So when I got home from Iguanacon I was full of beans but had no idea how busy my life was about to get.
By Bill Higgins: As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of Arthur C. Clarke’s birth, allow me to share a photocopy I recently rediscovered.
In 1977 my college SF club, the Michigan State University Science Fiction Society, noted that Clarke’s 60th birthday was approaching. Jim Ransom volunteered to write a letter of greeting and mail it to Colombo, Sri Lanka.
To our delight, Clarke sent a postcard in reply, dated on his birthday, December 16, 1977. He wrote:
==================
Thanks for nice greeting!
Herewith earth end of my next (&last) novel THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE.
All good wishes
Arthur C Clarke
==================
The postcard pictured Sigiriya Rock, a historic fortress where King Kasyapa built his palace in the 5th Century AD.
I kept a photocopy; I wonder if Jim Ransom kept the postcard, which turns 40 this year.
As for the plug for his upcoming book, Clarke did in 1979 publish The Fountains of Paradise and it does indeed feature a fictionalized version of King Kasyapa and Sigiriya Rock, as well as a space elevator.
Science fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate at prophecy, however; Clarke may have foreseen the Space Age and the Information Age, but he was wrong about The Fountains of Paradise being his final novel. He went on to publish eighteen more novels before passing away in 2008.
![the first-known song published as a filk song [123k scan]](https://web.archive.org/web/20061120060639/http:/www.nightsong.com/filk/twippledop/barbarousAllen.gif){kind=link}