Chapter Six – Together Is Just What We’ve Got to Get: The Convention Age Begins

CHAPTER SIX

Together Is Just What We’ve Got to Get: The Convention Age Begins

THE WEATHER WAS MILD in Boston the Friday before Labor Day, 1980, the temperature in the mid-seventies. Over the course of the weekend it gradually warmed up, finally topping ninety degrees on the holiday.

The sci-fi fans in town for the Noreascon-hosted Worldcon50 didn’t mind or even notice the heat. In fact, they hardly left the Hynes Auditorium on Boylston Street or the adjoining Sheraton Boston hotel except to pick up a quick slice of pizza or a fast-food burger nearby.

Funny-animal fans attending the convention had another reason to stay indoors; they had come across Steve Gallacci’s Erma Felna portrait in the convention’s art show—and they’d never seen anything like it before. They might’ve seen high-tech, hardware-heavy environments in outer-space anime, but never one inhabited by an anthropomorphic animal.

Illustration courtesy of and © Steve Gallacci

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CONTINUED IN –

FURRY NATION:

The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture

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