Toastmaster Harry Turtledove, known for his alternate history books, introduced the convention guests of honor with a blast of high-energy goofiness.

"They asked me to give a short introduction," the six-foot-plus author said before he knelt behind the podium.

Updates and Other Excitement

Who won the Chesley Awards for distinguished science fiction art? Find out!

For that matter, who won this year's Hugo Awards ?

And what about those zany Galaxy Quest guys?

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	Worldcon

Laughter and applause burst from the crowd of fans, who were dressed in everything from red velvet gowns and Babylon 5 T-shirts to maroon leather tunics and rainbow socks. Beards and long hair reigned. A considerable number wore glasses, no doubt from years of reading those paperbacks. Almost everyone wore their glittering rainbow nametags, most sporting their given names, but some -- like "Big Dan," "Sun Kitty," "Skyefire" and the infamous Wombat -- chose to go covert. No fewer than four beanies spun on heads.

The 58th World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 2000, runs from August 31 to September 4 in downtown Chicago.

Billed as "the last Worldcon of the Millennium" (no sci-fi fan serious enough to attend a Worldcon would be gauche enough to forget the new millennium really starts at 2001), Chicon will host members of the World Science Fiction Society from around the globe. They'll attend panels, awards shows, movies, coffee discussions, the Masquerade costume ball and of course, a room full of hucksters selling anything from $4 Vulcan ears to priceless autographed first editions.

Top fandom machinery

While fans everywhere hold conventions all the time, the Worldcon is the big enchilada and happens only once a year. It's a five-day marathon event, with a schedule that runs nearly 70 pages of small type. Years of preparation are involved - organizers sent out their first progress report in March of 1998.

The heart of the Worldcon remains the award ceremonies, which are not found at any other run of the mill(ennium) convention. The Hugo Awards are voted on in advance by the Con attendees, presented Saturday night, and are considered by some to be the genre's highest reader-bestowed honor.

There's also the Chesley art awards, which since 1985 have been chosen by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists to recognize all the cool cover art and magazine illustrations so integral to the genre.

Each Worldcon is different, of course. Organizers try to score top Guests of Honor -- writers, artists, editors and fans who will help run the con and generally be accessible to all the fans.

Other guests of honor included publisher Jim Baen, artist Bob Eggelton and author Ben Bova.

Becky Thomson, Chicon's associate chairman, said about 6,000 people will hit Chicon 2000, the sixth Worldcon to be held in the Windy City.

"We had no aspirations of being the biggest and best ever," she said. "We just wanted to avoid the mistakes that irked people in the past."

The plastic nature of time; history

And with as many as 22 events happening simultaneously, Thomson said that won't be easy. Lighting and sound problems delayed the opening ceremonies 30 minutes, but those attending didn't care.

"God forbid they break fen tradition and start on time," said one audience member, using the hardcore convention-goer word "fen" as plural for "fan." An entire separate vocabulary has evolved just for convention purposes.

New York City hosted the first Worldcon in 1939. That was the year Robert Heinlein published "Life-Line," the first story in his epic "Future History" series. It was one year before Isaac Asimov would publish "Robbie," his first short story about robots and the Three Laws of Robotics. The Golden Age of science fiction began at the same time as the Worldcon, and the convention has evolved alongside the genre.

All the big authors came in the early days; it was more of a professional gathering than anything else. Heinlein was famous for stomping around the conventions, heckling "mundanes," or people who are at the hotel for something other than the convention. In one apocryphal incident in an elevator, a woman asked him incredulously, "Who are you people?" Heinlein's offhand reply, "We're Gay Nazis for Christ, ma'am," is still used.

Larry Niven has been such a regular attendee, he co-authored a book with Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn called Fallen Angels, in which fans of the near future are an oppressed underground society hiding from techno-phobic enviro-fascists. Nominally, the plot revolves around the fans trying to hide two stranded astronauts from a government that wants to kill them, but really the book is one long in-joke between the authors and the fans who know the Worldcon life. The Passovoys, who just happen to be serving as this year's Fan Guests of Honor at Chicon, are key characters.

On the cusp of the future

With the explosion of mainstream media sci-fi like Star Trek, Star Wars and Babylon 5, today's Worldcons are larger than ever. There are more science fiction authors, and subgenres like cyberpunk and military science fiction have each developed their own luminaries and adherents.

Old-school SF conventions like Worldcon usually thrive on fans of novels -- "print fans." But with so many influential sci-fi movies and television shows, will the conventions change?

"It's a debatable question," associate chairman Becky Thomson said. "There are lots of people who entered fandom because of movies -- especially Star Wars -- but people who stay with these conventions turn out to be fascinated by books. We do have movie exhibits, but there's still a greater emphasis on books."

Chicon's committee said in letters to members that it wants to stick close to the event's roots by encouraging panelists to concentrate on science fiction and not get distracted by discussions of politics or interior decorating. But the committee has also recognized the changing face of the genre, and for the first time has provided a room solely for screening Japanese animation.

After the subdued nuttiness of the opening ceremonies, GoH Ben Bova predicted where science fiction was headed in the new millenium.

"The same place it's always gone," he said. "All over."