• Location: Denver, Colorado
• Mood: tired

Worldcon Chairs Party

I am once again being lazy and admitting that I probably will never get around to cleaning up my photos, so here is a photo dump of the Former Worldcon Chairs Party held on the final night of Denvention 3. This was the same room as the post-Hugo Party, and even with a lot fewer people in it, the room was very hot. People bailed out into the side rooms, which were cooler. I have a theory that the huge master suite has the exact same cooling capacity as the much smaller side rooms.

I really enjoyed this party. It was among the most relaxed times I had at the whole convention. Tom Whitmore introduced us to a new poker game variation that crosses poker with If I Ran the Zoo Con. You get three sets of chips: each set represents goodwill, people, and money points respectively. When your opponent bets, If you want to call, you must match the color of that bet, and if you can't match the color, you must spend two of a different color to make the difference. It's very strange and silly. We played it tournament-style, with everyone given the same starting chips, and we did it as a short Texas Hold-em tournament. I was so annoyed when, holding the 5-6 of clubs and with a board showing the 4-7 of clubs on the first four cards, one of the others raised more than I felt I could afford to call. Had it been on the first three, I would have re-raised as a semi-bluff -- with four cards of an outside straight flush draw, it would have seemed good to me. And I'll never know whether I would have made that straight flush, because everyone else folded as well, and we agreed to no "rabbit hunting."

Lisa, after she took most of the photos I posted, got bored -- I'm not surprised, really -- and went off to the main Dead Dog Party. I stuck around and had lots of interesting conversations, including getting to meet Earle Korshak, one of the leaders of the Second Worldcon. After a long time away from fandom, he is getting back into things, including restarting his Shasta Press (as Shasta/Phoenix, he said). He lives in San Francisco, and attended the 1993 Worldcon there, but not the 2002 convention in San Jose. It was very interesting listening to him talk of those early days of Worldcon, when, for instance, convention committees sometimes had difficulty producing a committee member old enough to legally sign contracts.

Kent Bloom, after getting a late dinner, arrived fairly late. As he entered, I shouted out, "Look everyone! It's the Man of the Hour!" and started a big round of applause for him. I then found sfrose, Mistress of Ribbons, and suggested she give a Former Worldcon Chair ribbon to Anticipation co-Chair Robbie Bourget to give to Kent. Sharon did so and Robbie proceeded to award him this coveted ribbon. We gave him another round of applause and congratulations for having survived a Worldcon, thus managing to join the club of Former Worldcon Chairs. (There are a few photos of this in the uploaded set, but they aren't very good ones, for which I apologize; I was in a hurry as they wouldn't hold still long enough!)

Around Midnight, David Clark -- who is staying across the hall from me at the Crowne Plaza and who had asked me to take the stuffed koala he won at the Australia in 2011 party back with me -- announced that he was calling it a night, so Lisa (who had returned after the Dead Dog party closed around 10 PM -- and I joined him and walked back to the hotel. He handed over the stuffed animal and the accompanying very nice carry-bag, and I was delighted to find that it fits nicely inside the ballot box, which means it takes up no additional space. We said goodnight, and Lisa and I shortly thereafter took another load of stuff (including the ballot box) down to my van in the hope of speeding move-out when we leave in a few hours.

And now it's time for about five hours sleep or so, as we have a goal of maybe getting out of here by 10 AM and heading for the Georgetown Loop Railroad. We have no reservations because we've decided not to commit ourselves to a specific train. This means we may end up finding no room on the rails, but if so, we'll just end up getting to Leadville a little early, that's all. That wouldn't be a disaster, particularly if we have time to stop and do some laundry.