![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/WorldconBadges.jpg\")
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The Worldcon is the largest science fiction convention of the year, and is the longest running. The first thing to say about the photo is that it is not complete; somehow I don’t have a badge from every Worldcon I’ve attended. (Including one of my earliest, in 1984.)<\/p>\n
Key fact about the Worldcons: they’re in a different city every year. Despite the name, usually in North America; once in a while in Europe; occasionally in Australia or Asia. Will say more about sightseeing opportunities while attending these conventions later.<\/p>\n
Two things in general about these badges. As with the professional conference badges, they do not always indicate the place or even year. I had to look some of them up. Also, the (volunteer) runners of each convention invent cute nicknames, e.g. “Chicon” for a Chicago convention, “LoneStarCon” for one in Texas.<\/p>\n
Also, when attending these conventions (SF conventions in general, not just Worldcons) you have a chance to collect various ribbons to attach to the bottom of your badge, indicating any kind of status. E.g., program participant, dealer, past Hugo-winner, and so on. Dedicated volunteers would sometimes strut around with a couple dozen of these, especially when they became horizontal (see upper middle) rather than vertical. Every community creates hierarchy and signs of status within it; it’s a human nature thing.<\/p>\n
The one in the upper left is a bit of a mystery; it’s clearly from the convention held in 1980 in Boston. And though faded, my name and home city (Northridge CA) are printed on the insert. But in 1980 I was a grad student with no job and no reasonable way to attend a convention at the other end of the country. I think what I must have done was the join the convention as a ‘supporting member,’ for a lower membership price, which gave me the opportunity to vote in the Hugo Awards, and get the program book (and badge) in the mail, but not actually attend.<\/p>\n
The first I remember attending was in 1984, by which time I had a job, and since it was close to me, in Anaheim south of LA and where I lived.<\/p>\n
I attended virtually every year, in whatever city, from New Orleans in 1988 (just after I’d starting writing for Locus) until Anaheim in 2006. Then I skipped several long trips (to Japan, Montreal, Melbourne), attending Denver in 2008, Reno in 2011, and Chicago in 2012. Then I ‘retired’ from my job and cut back on such expenses. In the past decade I’ve attended only the convention in San Jose, because it was close to me, in 2018.<\/p>\n
That badge is in lower right. One more note for now. Whenever you’re nominated for a Hugo Award — the well-known award voted on by the memberships of these conventions — you get a tiny little pin in the shape of a (Hugo award) rocket ship, to pin to your badge. If you win, you get the award of course, but you still have the pins to save and re-pin to following years’ badges. And so my 2018 badge has my two Hugo pins (for nominations in 2002 and 2005). If I ever attend another Worldcon, I’ll take them off this badge and have them ready for my new one.<\/p>\n
More about these conventions, what I remember from them, and what I did along the way, in another post. And there are three or maybe four other forthcoming posts showing badges from *other* SF conventions and conferences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another afternoon of sorting and photographing photos and artifacts. For today, here’s a group shot of badges I’ve collected from the World Science Fiction Conventions (Worldcons for short) over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-history","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12342"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12398,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12342\/revisions\/12398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}