A Re-Introduction to The Proceedings: Chicon III

A lot was happening back in 1962.

JFK was playing nuclear chicken with Nikita Khruschev. We swapped Russian spy Rudolf Abel for American spy Francis Gary Powers. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. A bit more locally, the White Sox, which had won their first pennant in 40 years in 1959, were in the 3rd years of another 40-year drought. (Well, 46 years, but even so it looks pretty good next to the Cubs.) Mayor Daley the First was entering his second decade as Boss.

And Chicago fandom hosted ChiCon III, the 20th Worldcon, at the Pick-Congress Hotel.

Worldcons were a bit different back then. Oh, they still had a Guest of Honor (usually just one, who was usually—but not always—a writer), and they had speeches, and they had a masquerade of sorts, and they gave out Hugos, but they were small compared to today. Chicon III had well under a thousand paid members, and I suspect that there were less than 500 warm bodies on the premises.

What did that mean?

The main thing it meant was that everyone could fit into the program room(s), so they had single-track programming. Only one thing was going on at a time, so the attendees never had to miss an item.

Compare that to the schedule from Chicon 6 in 2000. Here’s the choices you were confronted by at the not-wildly-busy hour of 4:00 PM Friday, when half the con was getting ready to go out to dinner:

Grand Ballroom A: It Came From Outer Space. The NASA Space Product Development Program.

Grand Ballroom B: Critics’ View of the Recent Crop of Science Fiction Movies. Panel with Bob Blackwood, Paul Barnett, Randy Dannenfelser, Matthew Springer, John Flynn.

Grand Ballroom C-D: Volcanos and Ice. The Last Days of the Gallileo Spacecraft, A Bill Higgens slide show.

Regency A: Military Issues. Elizabeth Moon, John Laprise, Joseph T. Major, Charles Walther, Jim Groat.

Regency B: The James Tiptree Award Auction.

Regency C: Creation of a Publishing House. Jim Baen, Tom Doherty, Toni Weisskopf, Lois McMaster Bujold, Mark Shepherd.

Gold Coast Room: 21st Century Fanhistorians. Joe Siclari, Filthy Pierre, Moshe Feder, Keith Stokes, Dick Smith.

Buckingham Room: Should the Vote be Earned, a la Starship Troopers? Audience panel.

Picasso Room: ’50’s-’70’s Vintage. Using clothes from the 1950s through the 1970s for costuming.

Columbian Room: Ancient and Medieval Economic Systems (And How to Use Them in Your Work). Greg Costikyan, John Fast, Mike Moscoe, S.M. Stirling.

Haymarket Room: How to Make a Million Dollars Publishing a Fanzine. Charles Brown, Ed Bryant, Gary K. Wolfe, Mark R. Kelly.

Addams Room: Is the Science Fiction Book Club Still Necessary in a World of Online Booksellers? Steve Miller, Andrew Wheeler, Alice Bentley, Therese Littleton.

Fishbowl Room: Book to Costume to Paint. Bob Eggleton, Joy Day.

State Room: Little Answers to Big Problems. Wil McCarthy, Larry Ahearn, John G. Cramer, Howard Davidson.

Regent Room: ASFA and the Chesleys. Panelists discuss the art awards. Teresa Patterson, Mel White, etc.

Crystal Room: Presentation of the Prometheus Awards.

Ambassador Room: The Future of the Human Form. Lee Martindale, Edwin Strickland, etc.

Embassy Room: Comics Underground. Len Wein, etc.

Childrens’: Children’s Belly Dancing.

Childrens’: Children’s Live Action Role Playing.

Childrens’: Land Before Time Workshop. Hal Clement.

Kaffeeklatsch: Kevin J. Anderson.

Kaffeeklatsch: Linda Dunn.

Kaffeeklatsch: April Lee.

Reading: M. Shayne Bell.

Reading: Carol Berg.

Reading: Mary Marshall.

Reading: Sue Blom.

Tour of Fan History Exhibit: Mike Resnick.

Autographing: Nancy Kress.

Autographing: Jerry Oltion.

Autographing: Karen Haber.

Autographing: Edward Rosick.

Autographing: Orson Scott Card.

And of course the round-the-clock movies were proceeding on schedule, and you could always browse the Dealer’s Room or the Art Show or the special exhibits.

There were some interesting items—but no matter how hard you tried, you were going to miss about 95% of them, and that’s if you attended something every hour from 9:00 AM until midnight.

As this book will show, there’s something to be said for the Worldcons of my youth. With only a few hundred attendees, you stayed in just one hotel (there were seven in Denver and ten in Montreal in 2008 and 2009), and you got to meet everyone you wanted to meet. There were none of the legendary “secret pro parties,” because there weren’t enough fans to bother hiding from—and besides, back in 1962, about three-quarters of the pros had come from fandom. (What did Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, Damon Knight, Robert Silverberg, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and dozens of others have in common besides writing science fiction for a living? Answer: Each of them had published a fanzine before—and sometimes after—turning pro. And artists like Hannes Bok and Jack Gaughan illustrated them.)

The other advantage was that, if you wanted, you could see every single item. No panel was in competition with any other. There was no programming against the Guest of Honor speech or the Hugos or the masquerade. It really was one big family, which is what attracted so many of us—possibly, given that Chicon 6 schedule, too many of us—to Worldcons in the first place.

I didn’t go to ChiCon III. My first was Discon I, a year later. I lived in Chicago, and even though I was as dead broke as most 20-year-olds, I was a 25-cent El (well, El and subway) ride from the hotel, and membership was dirt cheap. But a future Campbell winner named Laura chose the latter half of August to get herself born, so we had to travel all the way to Washington, D.C. the next year to finally meet Chicago fandom.

Speaking of Chicago fandom, it kept busy—and not just hosting the Worldcon. A number of area fans, led by Earl Kemp and George Price, had formed Advent:Publishers, and they were putting out some remarkable books. Basically, if you read everything they published, which came to maybe a couple of books a year, you’d read 90% of the important books to come out about science fiction and fandom for a decade in each direction from ChiCon III. They published Robert Bloch’s delightful The Eighth Stage of Fandom, Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, James Blish’s The Issue at Hand and its two sequels, the Panshins’ SF in Dimension and Heinlein in Dimension, a number of others, all of them fine books, and because they didn’t believe in “instant rarities” some are still available all these years later. And along with all that they did something else, something in addition to the highly-praised criticism and “sercon” books, that no one else had ever attempted, and it worked so well that they did it again the next year as well.

What did they do? They tape-recorded every word of ChiCon III, and after they finished transcribing it, and Earl finished editing it, and they added photos by Jay Kay Klein, Dean Grennell, Richard Hickey, Jean Grant (and some unused Life Magazine photos as well), and George Price finished producing it, they brought out the first edition of the book you hold in your hands: The Proceedings: ChiCon III.

There were giants present at that convention. Most of them have passed from the scene—they weren’t young men and women half a century ago—but they were there, they were approachable, and they were willing to perform, to autograph, to participate in every way asked of them. The Guest of Honor was Theodore Sturgeon, who had broken into print less than 25 years earlier. So had some of his fellow panelists, like Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, Frank M. Robinson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen, and a surprise last-minute arrival, Robert A. Heinlein, who showed up long enough to pick up a Hugo for Stranger in the Strange Land. Quite a few of the “old pros” were there too, including Jack Williamson, Clifford D. Simak, Edmond Hamilton, and E.E. “Doc” Smith (who attended the masquerade dressed as C.L. Moore’s hero, Northwest Smith). Since the convention was in Chicago, home at the time of Playboy, Hefner and the crew were there too.

And as you read through this book, you’ll see another advantage of the Worldcons of old: since they didn’t have fifteen or twenty things going on at once, they didn’t have to split up their major writers so that every simultaneous panel would have one. At 3:00 PM Saturday, you’ll read a panel that boasted Jack Williamson, Anthony Boucher, Fritz Leiber, Judith Merril, and Theodore Cogswell, with Robert Bloch—who later gave an hilarious speech—tossing up a question from the audience.

24 hours later, at 3:00 PM on Sunday, you had a panel featuring Katherne MacLean, Frederik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, Lloyd Biggle, Philip Jose Farmer, Donald A. Wollheim, Avram Davidson, Algis J. Budrys, and Charles Beaumont.

I put it to you that while some of the participants of Chicon 7 will be future generations’ giants, you just won’t see that many of them on a panel all at the same time. (Nor was ChiCon III devoid of fannish giants, as evidenced by the photos of Sam Moskowitz, Bob Tucker, and Forry Ackerman.)

And it wasn’t just the panels that make this book fascinating reading. Consider Theodore Sturgeon’s Guest of Honor speech, with a never-before-told story about Heinlein that’s as memorable as they come.

The photos also give you a flavor of what it was like, too—what they wore and how they looked. We were a big happy family back then, and we’re a bigger, happier family now. It’s always good to know where we came from, to remember our roots—and since we’re writers and readers, it’s even better to re-read them.

Okay, enough history from me. Turn the page and start re-living it yourself. Welcome to ChiCon III!