Coventry

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Title:	Coventry
Creator:	Rusty Hevelin (as Rust E. Barron)
Date(s):	Nov. 1941
Medium:	Print
Fandom:	Science Fiction
Topic:	Conventions: Nycon I, Chicon I, Denvention I, Pacificon I
External Links:	Hosted online by fanac.org; Fantascience Digest #14 pp. 22-23; cont. pg. 29
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Coventry was a column by Rusty Hevelin that appeared in Fantascience Digest #14. It was supposed to be a recurring column, but Fantascience Digest ended after that issue. The first and only essay was about fan response to the first three Worldcons. In a September 1941 con report on Denvention, Hevelin had reported "considerable ill-feeling" after Los Angeles was chosen as the next site, and Coventry expanded on his point.

Ultimately, the 1942 Worldcon had to be delayed until 1946 because of World War II.

Excerpt

...An infant movement has at last reached the point of nationwide organization. This national cooperation has enabled fantasy fandom to hold three World Conventions. The city for each convention, it has been decided, is to be chosen by the delegates present at the preceding convention. This has been done. The Nycon chose Chicago as the site of the 1940 Convention. Being more centrally located, it wasn't quite as successful, as far as attendance went, as the first attempt.

The fans who attended the second convention finally selected Denver as the next convention city. Certain eastern fans were "hurt" by this moving of the convention away from them. They wanted it where they could be able to attend without going to any excessive amount of trouble to get there. Rival conventions were suggested. Even the professional magazines were uncertain who or what locality to support for the 1941 convention. It seems that these dissenting fans who tried to start rival conventions must not have remembered the difficulties encountered by the few fans of the far west in coming to the first two conventions. Perhaps they did not realize there were other western fans and readers who would become fans if a convention were made available to them.

Well---- the Denvention came off. It was almost unanimously agreed that it was the best convention of the three. No, not many authors & editors attended, but it brought out several new fans who could manage to travel a third of the way across the country, but not all the way. It showed newcomers that a fan convention was worth coming to. They will want to attend the next conventions even if they have to make further sacrifices to do so.

As it was supposed to be, the delegates who were interested enough to attend this convention chose the site for next years gettogether. After considerable wranglinh, they selected Los Angeles by over a two-thirds vote. Immediately there was trouble. What about the East? What about Dixie? The small minority wanted to know what became of the alleged promise to the east made at Chicago that the eastern part of the nation would hold the '42 convention. That was at the convention.

The next fan mags to appear already were questioning the advisability of the Pacificon. Editorials and short articles berated the groups supposedly refusing to support it. Now rebuttals are appearing. We will see what is to come of it.

Now it is my contention that this is all unnecessary and that if carried on, will be the downfall of what is becoming quite a successful movement. Surely, if we are truly fans, we will attend any convention in any city if we can get there by any means possible. If any of us are unable to attend, we owe it to the rest of fandom to cooperate and then wait our turn. If we all cooperate with a convention across the country, we can certainly expect more of the same when it becomes the turn of our own locality to hold the next convention.