From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: 2007 Worldcon
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:13:00 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "N Lynch" <sfbookfan at yahoo.com>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 11:59 AM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: 2007 Worldcon

> --- Ivy Yap <yapivy at techemail.com> wrote:
> > Without participation and involvement
> > from the rest of the world, the Worldcon will remain
> > nothing but the "American National Convention".  Do
> > American SF fans actually want to remain isolated?
>
> That question of isolation could be made of any
> country with a national convention.  Just about every
> other country with an SF fandom has a national
> convention except the U.S.  If they are not considered
> chauvinistic for that, why should the U.S.?  Is being
> chauvinistic uniquely American, as it is generally
> implied?
>
> I tend to see the Worldcon for what it is, a U.S.
> national convention that combined with a "world"
> event, although no SF con I know of would turn away a
> foreign fan.  Maybe NASFic should be spun off as a
> U.S. national convention on its own and Worldcon set
> free to be where ever.  There may come a time when the
> idea of a Worldcon is dropped entirely for a national
> convention due to expenses and last of committees to
> pull off the truly large con.

The *first* World SF Convention, with an attendance of about 200 (and a
dozen others refused admission due to their politics), was held in New York
City in 1939 in conjuction with the World's Fair.   At one point they had
hoped to hold the convention on the actual fairgrounds (in Queens).  So the
grandiose use of "World" in the convention's name was not an appeal for
world-wide attendance, but an attempt to work a tie-in with the World's
Fair.

De facto, the Worldcon (which was not yet so known) was the national
convention until 1948, when it was held for the first time in Toronto.  But
most Americans don't think of Canada as a foreign country, so the Worldcon
remained a national con until it crossed the ocean for the first time in
1957, as I described in a previous post.   Some fans did not want to "lose"
the national con to another country, and fought it bitterly.  Eventually
they created the NASFiC.  I think the first was held in 1965, in
Philadelphia, during the London Worldcon.   Now an entire bureaucracy
surrounds NASFiC, parallel to that which envelopes the Worldcon.

--Ted White