This past August, Captain Peggy Rae led her brave pirate crew overland to the Left Coast to join the members of L.A.con III, the 1996 World Science Fiction Convention, in celebrating this annual fannish event.
Judith Kindell, Peggy Rae's "Number One," was in charge of Bucconeer's many activities at L.A.con III and she has written an excellent article on our experiences for this Broadside. I also asked other members of our crew about their impressions of L.A.con III. Specifically, I asked the questions, "What feature of L.A.con III would you want to pirate for Bucconeer?" and "What feature would you make walk the plank?" From the lack of response, I suspect that most of our crew had a little bit too much rum at our party (Our web site has a picture of me at our party, taken at 3 a.m.).
Perrianne Lurie, who is our e-mail liaison and a member of our programming staff, would definitely steal the Adventurer's Club, the main children's programming activity at L.A.con III. I have to agree. The kids had a wonderful time exploring the convention and collecting fun experiences. We should plan some sort of kids' club along the lines of the Adventurer's Club.
Perrianne's least favorite part of L.A.con III was the Retro Hugo Awards. It's very difficult to nominate and vote on SF works produced fifty years ago. How many fans are familiar with fifty-year-old SF material? Perhaps the structure needs to be changed. Say, for instance, using a committee to select the nominees early and providing some sort of access to the nominated works. Maybe you would have to limit the nominations to written work, which could be accessed over the Internet.
Our guest, Stan Schmidt, and his wife Joyce liked the 60-minute program items scheduled in 90-minute time slots. This gave the participants and audience the opportunity to extend the event if they wished. It also gave them time between program items. Stan and Joyce were pleased that nearly all the program items started on time. They also felt that the pocket program was easy to carry and filled with useful information.
As for myself, I loved L.A.con III (my first L.A.con) and I find it hard to decide which feature I would pirate. I guess it would have to be STAT!, the daily newsletter (and really, I'm not saying that because I was on the staff). Having the Guest of Honor presentations grouped together and presented on Friday evening was interesting. I don't know if it's ever been done that way before at a Worldcon. It did give me the opportunity to see all the presentations. Otherwise, I would have missed some of them because I spent way too much of my time in the newsletter office.
My only disappointment was the Masquerade. I came to Los Angeles hoping for a extravaganza to rival L.A.con II's Masquerade in 1984. This masquerade was well-run and fun, but there were fewer than forty entries and it just seemed to lack some magic.
| Broadside 2 | Bucconeer |