I spent a short time familiarising myself, somewhat, with the Hyatt Regency layout, primarily to identify where the fan room was.

For true fans, who called science fiction ‘sf’ not ‘sci-fi’, who scorned the dressing up in costumes, whose main concern was meeting and hanging out with other true fans rather than Big Name Authors, the fan room was the centre of any sf con. (Actually, in Britain, our main concern at cons was to drink much beer, preferably – though not necessarily – in the company of other true fans, and the success of the fan room depended on its proximity to a bar. A bar in the fan room was nirvana.)

The Chicon fanroom, or ‘fanzine lounge’ as it was called over there, was where I would come across people I already knew by name, but not by sight. People like Avedon Carol, one of that rare class of fans (true and otherwise) at that time: a woman.

“Come and meet a rabid feminist bitch,” said Avedon, pretty much immediately after we met, gesticulating in the general direction of someone who was female but showed no outward signs of slavering at the mouth. “This is Jeanne Gomoll,” said Avedon. So of course I saw it at once, Jeanne Gomoll – world-renowned rabid feminist bitch. Obvious. “Er – hello,” I said, deploying the wit and verbal dexterity which had won me the TAFF trip in the first place. “Nice to meet you.” Nice? Nice?! What kind of word is that for a world-renowned rabid feminist bitch.

It is interesting that, now in 2021, I am uncomfortable with typing those words. At that time, women were few and far between in sf fandom and the slightest intimation that fandom was primarily a boys’ club, the merest hint of a different perspective on sf and the fan world, brought accusations of rabid feminism. I’m sure that they were the words used, and I’m also confident of the huge quantity of what is today called ‘irony’ which accompanied them. Even though irony doesn’t play well on the printed page, I’ll stick with them. Publish and be damned!

Anyway, Jeanne didn’t bite my head off, or anything else a rabid feminist bitch might be expected to do, and was in fact a most interesting person.

It was also in the fanroom that I met Marty Cantor, whose fanzine ‘Holier Than Thou’ I generally enjoyed. ‘Holier Than Thou’ had the distinction of being an American fanzine with English spelling – ‘colour’ and so forth. I think he did it to annoy; he was quite confrontational in his fanzine, and in person. There was a conversation at the con where some large, bearded guy (I didn’t catch his name and the description would fit several thousand people there, so his anonymity is preserved) was talking about how “… it would be easy. All you needed was some finger nail clippings or a lock of hair, and sympathetic magic would do the rest.” It took me a moment to realise that the large, bearded guy seemed to be saying this in all seriousness, so I was moving into my usual technique for dealing with nutters (nod sagely and edge slowly away) when Marty exclaimed: “You asshole! That’s crap! There’s no such thing as magic!” Which I wholly agreed with and was thinking myself (though not in those exact words, “asshole” being an American idiom) but was too polite actually to say.

Marty was the fanzine lounge supremo, and had a green badge, indicating ‘staff’. At some point during the convention, Ross Pavlac (Chicon co-chairman) woke up to the fact that running the fanzine lounge was really quite an important job and gave Marty a field promotion to ‘assistant department manager’. Marty had to turn in his green badge for a yellow one, though. Couldn’t have an assistant department manager being mistaken for mere staff, could we.

There were five different coloured badges. In addition to yellow and green, there was white, meaning department manager or higher, and blue, meaning gophers. Black, which I had, was for convention members.

Along with the badges, there were ribbons. My yellow ribbon said ‘Program’ on it and meant I was taking part in programmed events. Other colours meant Co-chairman, Nominee (for the Hugo awards), Masquerade, Press, Art show, Usher and Dealer. And before you start thinking how amazingly accommodating of Chicon IV, that’s Dealer in books and other sf paraphernalia. It was entirely possible to have more than one ribbon; Andy Porter had four, for Program, Nominee, Press and Dealer.

We’ll do another cast list, some already mentioned: Alina Chu, Midge Reitan, Marty Cantor, Mike Glicksohn, Gary Farber, Avedon Carol, Mike Glyer, Jeanne Gomoll, Arthur Hlavaty, Jeff Ford, Lee Hoffman, Mary Ann Mueller, Joyce Scrivner, Hope Liebowitz, Bob Weber and Craig Miller.