By John Hertz. [Reprinted from Vanamonde 1621-1626.]

In Los Angeles our local science fiction convention is Loscon, held over Thanksgiving weekend. Loscon L (or 50, if you prefer) was November 29-December 1, 2024 at the L.A. lnt’I Airport (LAX) Hilton Hotel; Author Guest of Honor Larry Niven, Artist Guest of Honor Laura Brodian Freas Beraha & Ghost of Honor Frank Kelly Freas, Music Guest of Honor Kathy Mar, Fan Guests of Honor Genny Dazzo & Craig Miller; attendance about 700; Art Show sales about $14,000 by three dozen exhibitors; chair, Eylat Poliner.

I led three Classics of SF book discussions, on The Currents of Space (I. Asimov, 1952), Star Man’s Son (A. Norton, 1952), and Wasp (E.F. Russell, 1957)(“Classics of Science Fiction at Loscon 50” at File 770); taught English Regency ballroom dancing (“The English Regency and Me” in Mimosa 29); served as Hall Costume Judge (“Hall Costume Awards” at Loscon.org [Internet Archive link]); and — there being nowhere to put a Fanzine Lounge — helped Heath Row with a Fanzine Corner.

Sue Mason (since 2015), Suzle (Suzanne Tompkins; since 2021), and I (since 2003) judge the Rotsler Award (announced at Loscon since 1998, for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the SF community, sponsored by the S. Cal. lnst. for Fan Interests — initials SCIFI pronounced “skiffy”); we gave this year’s to España Sheriff; tech wizard Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink using her powers to work with me producing the display in the Art Show (“España Sheriff Wins 2024 Rotsler Award” at File 770), added to the full display of all Rotsler winners to date (“Rotsler Award Display at Glasgow 2024” at File 770).

This was Loscon’s first year at the Airport Hilton. First year at a hotel is often awkward. Closing Ceremonies applauded Christian McGuire, the Hotel Liaison. To the fans next to me, who were from Australia, I muttered “If you think his having chaired a Worldcon (L.A.con IV) made it easy to be Hotel Liaison, you should think again.”

The book discussions were on three days at the same hour in the same room. Finding one, you could thus readily find the rest; but what if 2:30 p.m. wasn’t convenient for you? Also, in the Grid we get at cons now, they weren’t shown with most other programming but tucked in a lower-left corner. I pointed them out to folks who knew enough to ask me. The room was arranged well: circular tables that attenders could sit around, better for discussion than placing me behind a table at one end with everyone else before it as if they were an audience for me to do all the talking.

The propeller of my beanie was damaged: I had got a new propeller from Interstellar Propeller of Berkeley, the only Ray Faraday Nelson-approved propeller-beanie manufacturer. The nice people at the Costume Repair Station did the repair.

Friday, The Currents of Space. Its opening scene gives us a better grasp than the characters in the book have of the misfortunes befalling the man called Rik — following the classical definition of irony as a conspiracy of the author and the audience against the characters (e.g. hearers of Greek myth know, though Oedipus does not, who it is he kills and who it is he weds). The opening use of the psychic probe follows both If there’s a gun on the wall in Act I it had better be fired before the final curtain and In tragedy a wrong which the wrongdoer deems minor turns out to have major consequences –– although Currents has a happy ending. Currents does not explicitly state, only inviting us to consider, the parallel between the position of its kyrt textiles and the history of cotton up to the 20th Century; also the racial inversion compared to 1952 in the United States, blacks being powerful in Currents and whites being dominated; a heavier hand would have made much of these. Throughout, Currents gives us several more points of view than many other stories; and, we noted happily, more strong female characters than many 21st Century folk attribute to SF of that time. It’s a detective story; there are lots of detective stories in SF; they’re a way for the author to acquaint the reader with an invented world, since the detective has to go round learning things (here again is Theodore Sturgeon’s Science fiction is knowledge fiction — note that the root of science, Latin scientia, means knowledge).

For lack of a better name we’ve been calling fan tables those locations at a con where clubs, cons, bids to hold cons, and other fan activities, can place an ambassador to answer, (and invite) questions, and more or less, within the bounds of civility, make friends. At L50 these tables were in the Dealers’ Room. Act of policy by the con committee? Forced by the hotel? Done without deliberation? Did the placement of fan tables keep them from people who didn’t consider going to the Dealers’ Room?

My own preference, and what has been usual, is for these to be along a main hallway in which any who wish can pause at a table and engage in conversation. Operations’ agents in the Dealers’ Room want to sell. A member of the Loscon committee who had not made this placement pointed out to me that conventions want to sell memberships, bids want to sell pre-supporting status, and convention attenders (not “attendees”, aiee) who go into the Dealers’ Room are disposed to spend money. Does her way of looking at things commercialize fan activities? We still, in an instance of good terminology, insist we are dealing in memberships, not admission tickets, i.e. a right to participate, not a right to watch others, unlike what is apparently supposed by many who arrive nowadays. Shall we — I’ll say it — pander to that supposition? ln fairness I report I found people staffing L50 fan tables to be civil and not pressure-wielders.

Once, it seems, everyone taking any part in fandom knew, whether or not active in, other parts. Maybe you exhibited in the Art Show, or bought things there, or went to the Art Auction whether or not you bid. Maybe you didn’t, but you did last year. Anyway it didn’t occur to you Oh no, that’s only for those people over there. Likewise panel discussions. Filking (our home­made music, adopting a typo of “folk music”). Serving on the con committee. Fanzines. But we began to fragment.

Heath Row invented the Fanzine Comer for L48. For L50 he and I did it again. The existence or even the possibility of fanzines is apparently not obvious now — commentary, discussion, anecdotes. Patrick Nielsen Hayden says Fanwriting is not a junior varsity for pro writing. A Fanzine Lounge is better for hanging around and browsing fanzines, I think, but so far at Loscons we’ve not managed a place to put one. When there is one it may have the defect of being a Place to Go, thus requiring a decision to go there.

Friday night, Regency Dancing. Jane Austen (1775-1817) lived then, one of the great authors in English literature; but she’s like a Martian writing for other Martians — never mind whether there really are or were any Martians, we have them in SF stories — she doesn’t explain anything. Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) wrote novels set then; she had to do what an SF author must, take us into the world she writes of, without stopping to dump information. She wins us with characterization, event, wit. Her books sparked fannish interest in this colorful period. Among my favorites are Arabella (1949), a neat introduction; A Civil Contract (1961), mostly taking place after marriage; and Cotillion (1953), whose ugly duckling is not the protagonist and is even a man.

Aristocratic pastimes often require a lot of work-up. My task is characterization, event, wit opening the door of this dance to people who don’t have such resources, and might not care to. I musn’t fall into the pit of dumbing things down. Some say I succeed.

The Art Show had a history of Loscons, with names and photos. I was Fan Guest of Honor at L38. At L50 there was a half-panel montage of Jerry Pournelle photos showing him in various stages of his career – his career with us; he had several. I wish it had been captioned “The First Loscon Guest of Honor”.

Loscon is sponsored by the LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, founded 1934; pronounced as if rhyming with a Spanglish “más fuss”), which gives two annual awards, the Evans-Freehafer (after E. Everett Evans & Paul Freehafer) for service to LASFS, and the Forry (after Forrest J Ackerman) for service to SF. There was a list of the E-F winners, and next to it a list of the 4e winners. I wish each list had not just named its award but said what it was.

In recent years con Art Shows haven’t seen our top pro artists. I know some, and I’ve tried to invite them. Fanzine artists too notoriously don’t show, which is one reason I started the R Awd exhibit. At MidAmericon II Steve Stiles exhibited a comic strip about how he’d never win a Hugo (i.e. for Best Fanartist). That year he did. You might think this would have unblocked the road, but – At L50, I was ecstatic to find Rick Sternbach’s work in the Art Show. So was Greg Benford, who bought promptly. I saw Sternbach at a party and thanked him. Hoping to be helpful I described Kelly Freas’ method. He would show a painting he couldn’t afford to sell for less than, say, $2,000 in 1998 money; around it, a few studies he could sell at $500; around those, sketches he could sell at $100 (i.e. minimum bids, subject to Auction rules and like that). Everybody could get into the act. To my surprise this was news to Sternbach.

With Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, the Woman With Too Many Names (which l say affectionately, she’s a long­time friend — she keeps Laura Brodian for work in classical-music radio; Kelly had a two-part unhyphenated surname, like James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879]; she married Kelly in 1988, he died in 2005, she married Steve Beraha in 2012; she accepts Laura Beraha and Laura Freas), being Artist GoH, and Kelly being Ghost of Honor, we had a swell exhibit of their work singly and together.

Actually the fan With Too Many Names was Jack Harness — another long-time friend —  who inter alia was Scribe JH or Scribe, Hawkman or *Wheet–Wheet*, Arson — his puns made people want to set him afire — Harmless, a misnomer since he often won at LASFS Poker — of which, to people who reasonably think Poker is Five-Card Draw or Five-Card Stud with Baseball being for weirdos, I say You ain’t seen nothin’ since in those days we even had Soft Shoe, where you could shuffle off to bluff a low — and now back to our program.

On Saturday in the Art Show I saw another fine exhibit, a Memory Wall with names and photographs of people we’d lost. Tony Benoun, co-founder of the thriving Doctor Who con Gallifrey One, who earned the Evans-Freehafer and whose widow Sherri will chair L51 next year. Marty Cantor. Melissa Conway, so helpful while head of Special Collections at U.Cal. Riverside including the Eaton Collection of SF; she gave a home to Bruce Pelz’ fanzine collection and later Jay Kay Klein’s photos — and a door decorated by Selina Phanara from the 2011 LASFS Clubhouse (File 770: “John Hertz: Klein is Big, Door is Dear”). Karl Lembke. Fuzzy Pink Niven (File 770: “John Hertz on Fuzzy Pink Niven (1940-2023)”). Sean Smith. Here was the Jerry Pournelle montage. With Post-Its people could stick memories onto the photos.

Saturday at 2:30 p.m., Star Man’s Son. Announcing it I’d said “From, say, Paragraph 5, we know what is happening and what will…. Her sense of event — of character — of the telling detail — keep us eager to watch her bring about what must occur,” with which the discussion agreed. We thought the semi-telepathic relation between Fors and the panther Lura didn’t make the book fantasy, since the author presents it as possibly a mutation in her post-nuclear-war world. We liked the interplay of the tribes, and recognized the ancestral Tuskegee Airmen. We were sad to see little of women, but thought this grew organically from the story; no decision whether that point was helped for us by our being aware Norton was a woman.

The hotel had Destination Elevators, three on a side at each floor, A-C, D-F. On a keypad you entered the floor you wanted: a display told you which elevator would take you there. While on the second floor I wondered aloud whether we’d get 2B or not 2B. That joke didn’t work.

Again there was no Masquerade (our on-stage costume competition); nobody could be found to run one. Again a group called the Nerd Mafia held a cosplay event. Cosplay, in principle a good term, has come to mean what the costuming community calls re-creation costumes (faithful copies of known images, e.g. from television, motion pictures, comic books), not originals: so not the whole truth. I found the Nerd Mafia sign-in table and tried to learn who they were, whether they disregarded our decades of Masquerade know-how (and if so, why) or were merely unaware (and if so, why). That too didn’t work. Saturday night at dinner I was just thinking I might learn by going to watch what the Nerd Mafia was doing, when someone came in talking about the results — instead of starting around 8 p.m., it was all over by then. Dean Gahlon says It’s not so much re-inventing the wheel as it is re-inventing the square wheel. But what do I know?

At a party I found Aldo Spadoni putting down the design of the Enterprise from Star Trek; he said the ship was unstable, with various other wrongs. I said the effective imagination of ST deserved applause; look how ST reached people. In SF we invent things that have never existed; what can they be accurate compared to? Afterward —  l’esprit d’escalier (French, “the wit of the stairs”, the thing you think of going downstairs later) – I realized I should have turned the discussion to comparing how this problem is addressed in visual and in verbal art.

It used to be that one’s choices were to attend an SF con in person, or get a Supporting Membership and hear about the con afterward. Now for some cons and some people there’s virtual attendance, e.g. by Zoom. In person you can run into people — figuratively, I mean — at a party, in the Art Show, the Dealers’ Room, the halls. Thus I ran into long-time friend Lloyd Penney at Loscon.

We’d both been at the Buffalo NASFiC: he being Editor-in Chief of Amazing had a Dealers’ Room table; but I having by what Rich Lynch with good reason called “a long and at times strange journey arrived in Buffalo late” (File 770: “NASFiC Third Day Photos”) found my hands full what with setting up the Fanzine Lounge and the Rotsler Award exhibit, and leading Classics of SF discussions; I scarcely got to the D Rm at all and our paths didn’t cross otherwise. He’s now both amazing and Amazing, engaged for this position after a substantial fannish career (Fancyclopedia; Lloyd Penney), which he continues; he and his wife Yvonne had been fan Guests of Honor at L39; he’d said he really wanted to attend this Golden Anniversary Loscon, which he did, coming 2,000 mi (3,500 km) from his home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. So our encounter was welcome, and though each bound elsewhere we managed to converse, about fanzines, prozines, cabbages and kings.

The Rick Sternbach original that Greg Benford was so glad to get in the L50 Art Show was RS’ color illustration for GB’s Against Infinity (1983), which as it happens I’d mentioned in reporting RS’ Art Show tour while RS was Artist GoH at Denvention Ill (File 770 155 p. 28). Manuel Lopez confronts the being “Aleph” on the surface of Ganymede, looking up with mouth turned down, Space gun in hand, standing amid and shadowed by textured rocks, Jupiter with its Red Spot above. The top third of the picture is near-empty Space. RS talking of it at D3 told of having to get lightness, darkness, in the shadows: “I hate shadows.” He did them well anyhow.

Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Wasp. I’d brought the 2001 NESFA Press collection Entities, edited by Rick Katze (rhymes with straits), cover art by Bob Eggleton, cover design by Alice Lewis, with Jack Chalker’s “Wasp is [Russell’s] most famous and most read novel”. On Friday, at the end of Currents of Space, Cheri Kaylor had asked to borrow my copy of Star Man’s Son so she could re-read it overnight to be ready for Saturday, which she did; she did it again with Wasp. We all have different gifts. The discussion agreed Russell had succeeded, in addition to telling a good story, at satirizing bureaucracy, the second of which would have had little force without the first; also, he showed, an operation reflects the nature of the beings running it, comparing the Sirians with the Terrans. The wasp-strategy worked because the Sirians, being tyrannous, were bureaucratic, rigid, and fearful (which may amount to saying the same thing four ways). And Russell was funny.

Just catching the end of Questions & Answers with Larry Niven, I asked “You’ve done fine collaborations, but may we hope for more SF by you alone?” He said, “You can always hope.”

Over coffee, talk of education. I said, as I do, liberal arts are those arts which suit one to the exercise of liberty; this brought in Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), his memoir Up from Slavery (1901) and the Tuskegee Airmen, W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963; inter alia first black to get a Ph.D. degree from Harvard, 1895) and “‘I don’t agree’, said W.E.B.” (D. Randall, 1969). Hispanics and Asians are in it too. Brad Lyau kindly reminded me that DuBois’ name according to his own pronunciation rhymed with poise.

At a party I saw a man performing feats of playing-card magic for a woman. How out of practice I am; I couldn’t pass a Magic Castle audition now. Later I saw the woman had picked up a Mark Wilson (1929-2021) book, so I gave her a recommendation. Here too we suffer from terminological inexactitude. By magic I mean the theater art. The great Robert­Houdin (1805-1871; name rhymes with no fair, you ran) said a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.

I met a man who said he’d learned of fallacies and syllogisms from Martin Young. I found Young and thanked him. Chaz Baden also had my thanks for another set of Bear’s Picnics (he’s sometimes called the Bear). He sat at a supply of alcoholic and non-alcoholic fluids mixing cocktails and mocktails, some old, some new. This lubricated conversation. In fandom more nearly than anywhere else we love you for your mind.

In the Dealers’ Room I saw a U.S. Marine in dress uniform. He hadn’t read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). I described its Mobile Infantry. He said, “Yes, those sound like Marines to me.” And Heinlein had been a Navy man.

There was a tea party for Fuzzy Pink on Sunday. So many wanted to be part of it that it needed several seatings. Kim Brown, Genny Dazzo, and friends circulated with trays of teacakes, scones, tea sandwiches, and pots of green or black (which Chinese call red) tea. I found someone to sit with who looked a little lost, and answered questions. We were all given pink lanyards with Fuzzy’s name. I won a teapot in a raffle. At Closing Ceremonies Larry thanked everyone for tributes to her all weekend.

Somewhere along the line I saw a video of Tim Griffin singing “307 Ale” (T. Smith, 1991) with Larry. In another Denvention III coincidence Kathy Mar had been its Music Guest of Honor. At L50 Closing Ceremonies she sang “Ship of Stone” (Don Simpson, 1981). The gavel was duly struck and given to Sherri Benoun. Afterward there was a feedback session, which I couldn’t stay for, but later several on the con committee told me people had said the Classics of SF discussions were a highlight for them, thoughtful, insightful, engaging. One doesn’t turn away thanks. I thought to myself I’d succeeded in getting other people to do some of the discussing. And (P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins ch. 3 (1934)) it was time to go home.