World Con 1981
This weekend I was reminiscing with a friend about the time I met Ms. Moore, and a flood of memories came pouring out.
It was 1981 and the World Science Fiction Convention was in Denver. I worked for Ace Books in sales and marketing. I was one of three, had 16 states and Colorado was one of them. It was the perfect opportunity to attend my first World Con.
My pal Warren Norwood had just had his first novel, The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices, published by Bantam, so it was sort of his coming out party. Being a published author, Warren didn’t have any money, so I told him he could room with me on Ace Books’ nickel.
A great convention! Science fiction was in transition. Star Wars had been let loose upon an unsuspecting public and films were duking it out with books for the love and money of the fans.
I got on the elevator and a lovely young lady stepped in behind me. She was dressed, painstakingly, like Indiana Jones, complete with, olfactorily , about three days worth of sweat. She was speaking in an animated fashion to her companion. She slapped her thigh to make a point, and a cloud of dust sprang up beneath her hand. I was stunned, and so failed to ask if, as it appeared, she had hand-pasted the tiny little day-old-beard follicles to her face. Wow!
Later, I think it was at the GoH banquet, a heated argument sprang up about banning “media” from our beloved World Con. Said advocate wanted books and magazines—only. A lot has happened in 27 years.
Now my good bud, Warren C. Norwood was, like me, a salesman. Hell, he got in his truck and drove around the country, armed with covers of The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices, and pre-sold it to wholesalers. As I recall, the first print run was over 100,000 copies! The man could sell.So, jolly salesman that he was, Warren met and knew everyone at World Con by the second day and he introduced me around. In the dealer room, I had the good fortune to meet Catherine Lucille Moore. Memory, as faulty as it is, has her standing tall and willowy. Her hair was cut short and very white. She was kind and gracious and had a swell smile.
Donald Grant had just published a great collection of Northwest Smith stories, Scarlet Dreams, a limited hard cover with illustrations by Alicia Austin. I bought one right then and there and got Ms. Moore's autograph. Meeting C.L. Moore is right up there as one of my greatest publishing memories.
Lots of things happened at this World Con. My Clarion East buddy Bruce Sterling was there. We had both recently read R.A. Lafferty’s rip-roaring novel The Flame is Green and were raving about it. We were both Lafferty fans before, but this was a pretty extraordinary book. Bruce had discovered it and told me to read it. A copy was not easy to find. Still isn’t.
Well, Bruce and I attended an Ace cocktail party in the Ace suite. Ace was republishing Lafferty’s Nine Hundred Grandmothers. There was a blow-up of the new cover on the wall. Not nearly as good as the original Leo and Diane Dillon cover when the book had been a Terry Carr Ace Science Fiction Special—but I understand, new covers make old product fresh and saleable. I had just been out selling the book in my territory (Technically the books were sold by Kable News representatives, but most of them didn’t know science fiction and fantasy from a dead dog, so I was out spreading the good news.). I suspect my territory made up most of the put-out on that edition of Nine Hundred Grandmothers. What a collection, I still salivate thinking about some of those stories like “Slow Tuesday Night.” Man, “Primary Education of the Camaroi,” “Land of the Great Horses,” which had first been published in Dangerous Visions—one of the greatest short story collections in history—in my humble opinion. And I am referring to both collections.
So Ray Lafferty had had more than a wee bit of whatever he was drinking, and, as an Ace employee, I was asked to politely remove him from the party. He was using a walker, bad knees he said, temporary, he said. So Bruce and I removed Mr. Lafferty and ourselves and went off in search of adventure. We wandered the halls of the Con hotel letting Ray, wobbling and weaving, follow his nose. Bruce and I were just happy to be in the great man’s company.
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty, in his own way, was bigger than life. He was a grand Irishman like Finn McCool striding through the hotel, his mighty shoulders brushing both walls at the same time. I took one side and Bruce took the other lest the good ship Lafferty list too far to stern or port and capsize. The impact of that mighty fall could well have brought the hotel down, Sampson-like, around our ears.
I have a memory of Ray, maybe not at this convention, but sometime, giving a young and sloe-eyed Carolyn Cherryh a big, slobbery, mildly lecherous hug and declaring her “My fellow Oklahoman!” Carolyn seemed to take it in stride and I suspected this was not the first such hug she had endured.Eventually, Ray’s very accurate nose led us to the annual party hosted by the Japanese fan group. Bruce and I thought we were headed for the SFWA suite, but Ray made a sudden right turn, and a door was opened as if on cue. A lovely Japanese lady in traditional garb stood aside and our Cúchulainn strode in, dominating the room. Then dear old Ray spun around, sat down in a chair by the door and promptly passed out.
Our hostess commented, matter-of-factly, “Lafferty-san, he always drunk.” I reached behind Ray’s head and cranked the window shut lest he catch cold in his sleep. A host handed me a Schlitz tallboy and proffered a plate of jellied-something cut into cubes, with frilly-tipped toothpicks stuck into them. And that was that.
At this convention I met Robert Silverberg for the first time. And Larry Niven, and Steven Barnes! Jim Baen, at his party, handed out advanced reading copies of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Now, I usually drank more than Warren, and he would be up every morning noisily shuffling his 3x5 cards on which he kept notes about everything. I would be buried under the covers hoping 10 more minutes of sleep would cure a hangover. So the morning after the Baen party, I was lying there wishing I was dead and Warren was sitting in the bathtub laughing uproariously. His laughs echoed painfully, to my ears, off of the bathroom tiles. Whilst soaking in the tub, Warren had started reading Hitchhiker. He came running out of the bathroom, dripping wet with a towel around his waist and began reading to me. Despite myself I started laughing too. This was good stuff!
Later, two more Clarion East pals, William F. Wu and James Patrick Kelly escorted me into the SFWA suite so I could drink free beer. Of course, I was on an Ace expense account, but to salesmen and sports writers, free beer always tastes best. And I was in the SFWA suite, by golly!
In those days World Con had a GoH banquet. You had to buy tickets, so I went and Warren didn’t. The Guest of Honor was Clifford Simak. I will never forget his GoH speech which was a reminiscence of his years as a writer. He concluded, evoking memories of City by thanking us all for letting him sit by our campfire and tell the stories the dogs used to tell. I had tears in my eyes.
Later, Warren and I wandered through the streets of downtown Denver in the wee hours of the morning. We had each carried away a beer from the SFWA suite. I gave mine to a homeless man who was up late, sitting on the sidewalk and leaning against the handy wall of a bank. I remember him as being very grateful.
Back in our room, Warren and I tried, unsuccessfully to close some floor-to-ceiling drapes. We were too drunk to be coordinated and way too drunk to know better. Perched on the back of two chairs we managed to fall, bring the drapes down on our heads, and just barely avoid making a quick exit out a fifth story window.
On Sunday, I drove down to Colorado Springs to watch early season NFL football with my friend Rod. Monday I flew home. Tuesday morning I received a phone call informing me that I had been laid off. I was the next-to-last Ace field agent to go. Shortly after, the parent company, Grosset and Dunlap, went belly up and all the sales staff was out on the street.
But what a time I had! So many people I had loved forever but never met…so many people gone now, including Warren. But so many friends made and still around. And this year, World Con is in Denver again. What wonders will I see?
