Chicon Overview

mia_mcdavid and I spent the holiday weekend at Chicon 7 with our son James and carpe_noctum_93. We had a great time. I have some pictures up on Google.

There was a lot of good programming, much more than I or any other single person could see. Sometimes there were three good events scheduled simultaneously. I went to several science talks and panels, about which I will post more at another time. They ranged from good to outstanding :-)>

I also went to SF at the University of Chicago Over the Years:

A retrospective of the various generations of fans who have added to the traditions of SF at the University of Chicago and beyond.

This was really getting back to my fannish roots. I discovered fandom at the U. of C. Science Fiction Club my last year at the University’s High School and continued to visit it during my vacation breaks from Carleton. It came out in the panel that the Club has died and been reborn several times. Some aspects of it that I thought were peculiar to my time with it had happened earlier and again later. What was really striking was the continuity over more than 1/2 century of fandom represented there. We really were all one community.

We saw quite a few old friends, notably Beverly Friend, who was in the masquerade.and Frieda Murray, whom I have known since the summer of 1969. I also got to meet brotherguy, and to hear him speak. He is a great speaker and a wonderful person. I bought his book Turn Left at Orion from in the Dealers’ Room (Brother Astronomer has been on one of my shelves for a couple years). I heard beamjockey speak twice by himself and once with brotherguy.

mia_mcdavid and I got to the last filk, on Monday afternoon, and Mia was able to sing there. It was a good time. One of the filkers said: “Gotta love a crowd where Nobody’s
Moggy Now is a sing-along” (yes, I participated).

I did get out and see some of downtown Chicago. The Con hosted a trip to the Adler Planetarium, which I have been visiting since the 1960’s and to which I owe much of my interest in science. I got some cash from an ATM at the Harris Bank, my employer for about 17 years. On a lighter note, I had a beer at the Berghoff on Friday and one on Sunday at the Billy Goat.

On Sunday morning I went to the 11 A.M. Solemn Eucharist at St. James Cathedral. This was the kind of worship that mia_mcdavid and I were used to in our Chicagoland days at St. Luke’s, and is hard to find in Minnesota. In fact we knew Joy Rogers, the Dean of St. James, from St. Luke’s and I was able to speak with her briefly after the service.