Send Three and Fourpence

~ Cheryl

It is amazing what rumors tend to fly around at conventions. This evening in the bar I was reliably informed that the 2009 WFC would be in San Diego. That probably came from the fact that the Ontells are starting to put together a San Diego bid, which I guess will end up in 2011 or 2012. Of course all Californian cities are alike to folks from the East Coast.

Also I was informed that the 2008 Worldcon in Denver had lost its hotel space and was going to have to move dates. This story allegedly came from someone who claimed to be a “con runner”. Well, I called Kevin, and there’s nothing on SMOFs, so I think this one is entirely urban legend.

Unfortunately the writers and editors who make up the bulk of the WFC attendance have no means of telling fact from fiction, which is why I’m posting stuff.

(For the benefit of those of you who don’t understand the title, this is an urban legend from the trenches in WWI. Supposedly a senior officer sent out a message saying “Send reinforcements, we are going to advance”, but by the time the message reached its destination it had morphed to, “Send three and fourpence, we are doing to a dance.” “Three and fourpence”, of course, refers to three shillings and four pence in old British currency.)

8 thoughts on “Send Three and Fourpence”

  1. I think what you’re hearing is the actual situation sifted through a filter of “I can’t be bothered to listen to all of the details and besides, everyone knows that all of the sleeping rooms are supposed to be in one hotel.”

    Denver’s hotel rooms are likely to be more spread out than most North American Worldcons, but they’ll have the rooms. Anyone who has attended a Worldcon outside of North America won’t be surprised. People who have attended only Worldcons in, say, Boston, Chicago, and Anaheim, and therefore assume that all Worldcons have one or two giant hotels adjacent to the convention center, are apt to be surprised. But there will be enough hotel rooms — they just will not all be in a single building connected to the convention center.

    Of course, what fans really want is 5000-room all-suite hotel with rooms prices like Motel 6, with no room more than 100 steps from the dealer’s room, and anything less than that will cause at least some of them to complain about how unfair it all is.

    Cynical? Moi?

  2. Kevin@1: The dealer’s room isn’t my chosen central point, and I don’t consider the fact that worldcon isn’t run to my precise tastes to be *unfair*, but you’ve got the right general idea :-).

    As I get older, the amount of camera equipment I want to lug all day decreases, so the number of times I need to return to my hotel room to swap equipment around increases. And I was already doing that several times a day back at my second worldcon in 1973. If doing this becomes a several-block walk, the whole thing becomes less and less practical.

    I may end up at Denver anyway, too, which would be my first worldcon since 1989.

  4. The Denvention 3 committee met last weekend at MileHiCon in Denver, and we toured the facilities. I’m part of the facilities team for the convention, and I can tell you definitely that (1) we have hotels; (2) we have enough rooms under contract to house a goodly-sized Worldcon with no trouble; and (3) the convention center is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

    In fact, downtown Denver has quite a lot to offer, and I was very favorably impressed. Now, if someone would just blow up the new Mile High stadium for me…

  5. I met two other people today who had got the same story. I have been doing my best to squash it.

    Matt: San Diego is in the Costa Rica.

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