Tonight’s “Former Worldcon Chair Party” was a blast for all the usual reasons, as I went around comparing notes on Denvention, asking people’s plans for the next couple of Worldcons, and seeing a few people for the first time who’ve been on site for days (Kevin Standlee, for one example.) The food and wine was good, but I’d say the cold bottled water probably went as fast as anything — so much for the legend of hard-drinking smofs.
A great treat for me was meeting for the first time Erle Korshak, not just a well known fan, but one of the very few surviving members of the first Worldcon in 1939. (Two of the several others are LA locals Forry Ackerman and Ray Bradbury.) Erle filled me in on the revival of his historic Shasta Press, as Shasta/Phoenix. Shasta was a famous publisher of hardcover sf decades ago. I’ll be watching for new developments there.
This is the final entry for my live Worldcon coverage, though I’ll have more to report based on my notes when I get home tomorrow.)
Update 8/12/2008: Corrected spelling of name.
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By the way: Congratulations!
Small correction: Erle, not Earle.
And some photos:
NyCon I: http://fanac.org/worldcon/NYcon/w39-050.html
MilPhil: http://stromata.tripod.com/id188.htm
I seem to recall Erle saying that he was 87 … her certainly looked better than most of the more recent Worldcon chairs! Gafiation has been good to him .
Also, in the dealers room the Shasta/Phoenix table was next to me, and I was next to NESFA Press … oh, us wacky small press people! And for a day Galaxy Press was situated between Shasta and myself (Shasta published Hubbard’s “slaves of Sleep” in 1948 – with a gorgeous Hannes Bok cover: http://www.americanartarchives.com/bok_slaves_of_sleep48.jpg .