At a few minutes before eight, Jeanne Gomoll and I left the dope-ridden atmosphere of Ted White’s select room party and made our way down to the Grand Ballroom. The vast area in front of the doors was filled with people, as we saw when turned the corner in the corridor.
“What a lot of people,” I remarked to Jeanne, or something equally witty and devastating.
There came a quiet voice from the multitude: “Excuse me, are you a VIP?”
Now I wasn’t at all put out by that. This was Chicon IV and I was the TAFF winner, introduced at the Opening Ceremony, nearly recognised by several. Already I was used to being a minor celebrity. And it couldn’t have hurt that I was wearing a white shirt, white jacket, blue tie, very dark blue trousers and white shoes. Also a Chicon badge with a yellow “Programme” ribbon attached. So I confessed that I was.
A young woman in a black evening dress took me by the arm and led Jeanne and I through the throng to the line of people in front of the special door for celebrities, notables, bigwigs and sf authors. That line was not long, and very quickly we were through into the hall. There were no ushers in sight and so we walked confidently towards the front.
“Where do we sit?” I said to a likely looking fellow. He looked blank. He shouldn’t have. He was wearing an usher’s ribbon and therefore should have known everything about where people sit – or at least given the impression of it.
“I’m Kevin Smith,” I said, “TAFF winner, famous personage, representing fan writer Hugo nominee Dave Langford. Also presenter of the BSFA Award at this very ceremony.”
His mouth fell open. I couldn’t blame him. What was a mere usher to make of such an array of talent and famousness?
“Front row,” he said, showing us to seats on the front row. But the ones he showed were very near the edge, so I looked around and saw seats nearer the centre, and what is more they were just in front of Stu Shiffman (famous American TAFF winner) and Avedon Carol (famous soon-to-be American TAFF winner). We strolled across and sat down.
Why, you may ask, was I dressed up so? What were all these people doing here – more than at any other time in the Grand Ballroom?
The short answer, already deduced by astute fannish readers from the none-too-subtle clues dropped earlier, is that this was the Hugo Awards ceremony, handing out the gongs for best sf of the year in various categories. Actually, that’s pretty much the long answer too.
I could make a good attempt at convincing you that I noted down all the winners for novel and fanzine and short story and artwork and the rest, but to do so I would have to google them all. It wouldn’t be difficult – there are lists on Wikipedia – but why should I do all the work? You can look them up yourselves.
Oh, all right then, I will do all the work: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1982-hugo-awards/
It wasn’t just Hugos, of course. Other awards snuck their way in, including the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Awards for best novel and short story from 1980 and 81. Three of the four had been won by Americans who hadn’t been in Britain to collect them. The other one was Mythago Wood, a short story by Robert Holdstock, later turned into a novel which also won the BSFA Award, two years later.
So at the appropriate moment, when called up by Marta Randall, I made my way onto the stage. It’s a strange thing. If I go into a room full of people I mostly don’t know, I find it hard to make contact and say anything. However, standing up there with a microphone in front of maybe 2,000 is no problem. Probably because I’ve already worked out what I’m going to say. Also, I was dressed for the part.
So I made some crack about Britain being an island but its fans not being insular, and that we recognised that a few Americans could write a bit as well [laughter] and got on with the awards. [My only regret, later, was that I failed to mention ‘the brilliant Rob Holdstock’ by name as the UK winner amongst the three Americans. He was a mate, after all.]
So that was me done. Peter Toluzzi had an Australian award to present and he strolled onto the stage in jeans and t-shirt with a yellow cloak draped across his shoulders. Different people, Australians.