February 7, 1992
I, as were most (I would imagine) of CBG’s readers, was appalled at the litany of appalling, spiteful and downright vindictive behavior on the part of various fans throughout the years, as portrayed in Harlan Ellison’s scathing Xenogenesis.
Perhaps part of it, at least in Harlan’s case, is that some fans “know” what a dirtbag Harlan Ellison is. They’ve heard stories, tales, innuendos. Whether these stories about Harlan have any basis in fact is, of course, besides the point. Rarely have they ever met him, chatted with him, or suffered any sort of abusive acts at his hands. But heck, just because hearsay isn’t allowable in a court of law, that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough for the real world, right?
So those fans who think they know Harlan Ellison for what he is lie waiting in the high grass, anticipating their moment to get back at him. Or cheer or encourage others to “get” him. Hëll, I’ve already mentioned how, when I first started this column, I asked people about subjects they’d like me to talk about. And several people wrote to me saying, “Do a column that rips apart Harlan Ellison.” These people didn’t know Ellison is a friend of mine. Maybe they wouldn’t have cared if they did know…or instead assumed that there had to be something wrong with me.
Go figure.
At any rate, my professional career doesn’t stretch remotely as long as Harlan’s…nor, for that matter, as long as any of the people mentioned in Xenogenesis. Perhaps familiarity, or presumed familiarity, breeds far more than contempt. Perhaps it breeds overt hostility.
So look what I have to look forward to. Thus far, however, my career is still young enough that I haven’t yet become the target of the sort of behavior cited in Xenogenesis. Sure, there’s been the occasional rude fan, but then again, I run into plenty of rude people outside of conventions.
In fact, I recall the fan who sought me out at a recent convention and said, “I wanted to apologize for something I said to you at a convention three years ago.” He seemed really eaten up about it. The fact that I didn’t remember him, or what he said, and barely even recalled the convention, was all secondary to the guilt that he was carrying which had magnified an off-hand joke into some sort of massive insult over which I was, no doubt, still nursing a grudge.
So yes, I’ve encountered the occasional rude fan, but none who have crossed the line into maliciousness or vindictiveness. Wow. Just think what I have to look forward to. I have, I’m embarrassed to say, no real fan-related true horror stories.
No, all of my horror stories of my convention going history have to do with hotels.
Hotel horror stories.
Get a bunch of fans together and swap those for a while. You will quickly develop a litany of incompetence, rudeness, thoughtlessness, and just plain poor organization. With horror stories of fan behavior, you could argue that these are fans who cared too much, to the point where they lost all sense of reason and proportion. Hotel horror stories, on the other hand, are invariably tales of hotels run by managements that simply didn’t care.
I don’t want to name the hotels because, for all I know, managements have changed over time. And if a convention is advertising a con at that hotel, I don’t want people saying, “Oh, I’m not going there; Peter David wrote what a lousy hotel it is.” That wouldn’t be fair. So the stories are true, but the names have been omitted to protect the innocent.
When I was growing up and first seriously getting into fandom, I lived about 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia, and attended a number of SF cons there.
I will never forget the year that there was a science fiction convention booked into a Philadelphia hotel…and, the hotel double booked the Shriners in at the same time. Booked the same convention space, the same hotel rooms…everything. My understanding was that the SF fans had booked the space first; no matter. The hotel gave preference to the Shriners. Function space was cut down to a fraction of what had originally been promised. Not only that, but I, along with several friends, were among dozens of fans who arrived at the hotel to discover that our hotel rooms were already chock full of Shriners. We stood there, waiving our confirmation slips, and the desk people shrugged at us. A hotel three blocks away was designated as the overflow hotel, and we had to haul all of our luggage and material to the other hotel.
Now three blocks may not sound like a tremendous inconvenience. The problem was that a friend of mine, Dave Klapholz, and I were entered in the costume competition Saturday evening. (Cut me some slack, okay? I was 19.) We were entered as characters from “National Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings.” Dave was Goodgulf the magician, and I was the Ballhog. The costume competition, naturally, was at the convention hotel, but there were no changing facilities there, so we had to get into costume at the overflow hotel and hoof it.
Words cannot relate the experience of walking down the darkened streets of center city Philadelphia, bouncing a basketball and dressed head-to-toe in a black bodystocking, gym shorts, and a t-shirt that read “Villanova,” the chill wind cutting through my tights, accompanied by a guy wearing swirling blue robes, a tall pointed hat, and a glowing neon necktie that read “Wilt Thou Kiss Me in the Dark, Baby?” Cop cars slowed down, and muggers left us alone because they were laughing too hard.
Perhaps the crowning indignity was all the Shriners pointing and saying, “Look at all the weirdly dressed geeks.” I was a teenager in costume. They were middle aged men wearing Fezzes. So what was their excuse?
There was a convention another year that occurred right at the time that the Army/Navy football game was in town. At least we had our rooms that time, but the hotel was also chock full of Navy guys rooting for their team. By and large they were polite and even mildly interested in the convention. They behaved like officers and gentlemen.
That was before the game.
When they came back from the game, it was the evening, and Navy had won. The Navy guys had their girlfriends with them, and liquor was flowing freely. The hallways were filled with drunken, carousing people. (To be fair, it was mostly the girlfriends who were drunk. The Navy guys were busy trying to corral them, but it was tough work.)
Hotel guests who were neither Navy nor fans complained loudly to hotel authorities, who immediately swung into action. Except, as far as anyone could see, the servicemen and girlfriends were still gallivanting about. So what did the hotel do to assuage angered guests? Yes, that’s right. They shut down all the SF fan room parties.
Fans sitting quietly in rooms, filk singing in low voices, were told by hotel officials to shut it down, while all around the Navy partying continued until all hours. To the best of our knowledge, hotel security either never did anything to slow down the Navy parties, or else cautioned them but never tried to enforce it. But boy, they should had those discussion groups about Marion Zimmer Bradley, or the video-watching parties (where the strongest thing being served was Mountain Dew), shut down tight as a drum by 10 PM.
Of more recent vintage was the convention I brought my entire family to. What a marvelous place that was. The soda machines on every single floor were devoid of soda (not as a result of demand; they were empty from the moment we got there and never got restocked). They botched our room reservations so that the connecting rooms we were supposed to have with the kids became rooms across the hall from each other. This became particularly pertinent when the fire alarm went off around midnight and they emptied out the hotel: The girls had bolted their door and our pounding on the door wasn’t rousing them (the ringing phone finally did.)
Apparently a smoke detector had gone off somewhere in the hotel, but the system was malfunctioning and they had no clue as to where in the hotel it had gone off. So people froze in the lobby for close to an hour while the fire department checked over every single possible location, before they finally discovered…nothing.
I was told the food in the hotel restaurant was quite nice. I can’t swear to it personally; we never got so much as a glass of water, much less a menu. After several requests to the hostess that a waiter be sent over, we were ignored for a solid half hour before getting up and leaving in disgust. The hostess said to us, “Wait, I’ll get someone!” as we walked out the door.
I’ve been to hotels which mysteriously shut down the pool for “repairs” for the duration of the convention. This has happened enough times to make me feel that it’s far from coincidental. Where the ventilation system pumped heat during the summer and cool air in winter, both into function rooms and hotel rooms, and no matter how much you begged and pleaded with the management, they could not or would not stop it.
Billing can also be a challenge. There was the hotel which, after one convention stay, sent me a number of threatening letters, promising to charge me for the hotel bedspread that I had allegedly stolen from the room. I tried pointing out to them repeatedly that the only bed we had in the house was a kingsize, and the room I’d stayed in had a single bed in it; what was I going to do with one of their cheesy bedspreads, even if I had stolen it. Which, of course, I hadn’t. They tried to tack the charge on my credit card and I informed the credit card company that it was not a permissible charge, so they refused to let the hotel do it. So the hotel threatened to take me to court. I said, in essence, “Take your best shot.” I never heard from them again.
Then there was the hotel that tried to charge me $73.71 for a call to…I swear to God…Thailand. I told them I knew no one in Thailand. No no, they swore. There was the record of the charge, right there on my bill. It was, they told me smugly, irrefutable. I endeavored to refute it by pointing out that the records indicated the call had been made the morning of the day that I had checked in…but I hadn’t checked in until the afternoon. It still took another fifteen minutes to straighten it out, and the whole time they acted as if I were trying to pull something. Maybe they’d been talking to the bedspread people.
There have been plenty of decent and even superior hotels, of course, just as there have been plenty of decent and even superior fans. But I still have, to this day, a napkin from the coffeeshop of that Philadelphia hotel that double booked us with the Shriners and shrugged off our confirmed reservations. The napkin carries the then-current motto of the hotel, referring to how dependable their services were: “The Best Surprise is No Surprise.”
(Peter David, writer of stuff, hopes that everyone had a safe and trouble-free New Years.)
• 
Wow, I remember this column, and I can attest to the fact that most bad convention experiences I’ve had are because of the hotels… For that matter, the hotel my late wife and I had our wedding in changed the room we’d reserved (it seems that when we reserved the room and were making all the arrangements, nobody had the slightest idea that they were going to be remodeling the whole wing of the hotel our honeymoon suite was in… which had a large shower with two shower heads that were very high off the floor — my wife and I were both very tall people, so this appealed to us. As you can surmise, we ended up in a very different room, and it was disappointing).
However, in defense of some of the hotels, I can honestly say that a few of them, when we told them about what we didn’t like about the service, etc., graciously discounted our rooms.
But then, I don’t recall anything in my experience being quite as awful as some of what Peter wrote about above!
Regarding Harlan… well, I was one of those people who disliked him for no good reason when I was much, much younger… when I matured more, I was better able to appreciate him, and now I consider him to be one of my favorite writers and speakers… the man is compelling, I tell you, even if I don’t agree with what he’s saying!
One of my favorite convention memories was Mad Media V in Madison, Wisconsin, at which Peter and Harlan were both guests… and I had a bit of a faux pas with Peter that I’d imagine he’d forgotten about… y’see, I’d been out of the loop for a while, and didn’t know that he’d divorced his first wife, so I assumed that Kathleen was she! But I’ve kept up to speed since then. (Peter, if you remember me from there at all, I was the guy who tried to explain the multiple Earths to his wife Saturday night).
Jon
That first convention… it wasn’t a Philcon, was it?
I’m pretty much in awe of Mr. Ellison. As a result, on those occasions where I’ve had him sign things, I just sort of smile, shuffle my feet, mutter “Thanks” and get the hëll out of the way. Which makes him more comfortable, I’m sure.
Last Dragon*Con, I had the wonderful sight of this middle-class emcee at the Awards Banquet make some supposedly cute remarks about this little grey-haired guy in the front row. Which Ellison took, smiling calmly. Then the guy announced Ellison’s name for an award, the little old man got up…and in a few phrases paced with timing that would have had Jackie Mason in awe, put down the emcee. Of course, Harlan invited the guy to the table afterwards.
I didn’t have the nerve to tell Mr. Ellison how special this moment was to me. I went up to Mr. David and his family, and asked him to convey my congrats to Ellison.
The only downer part of this whole thing was, while this nonsense was going on, Luke Sienkowski (The Great Luke Ski) was waiting backstage in a costume, ready to sing a song he had prepared for the banquet. They never let him sing. He was furious to the point of breaking down and crying.
There’s nothing worse than arriving at a hotel and finding out that your card was declined (after receving a confirmation). 🙂
Probably my worst experience in a hotel was actually more of an airline snafu. I was supposed to fly out of Harrisburg International Airport to Washington-Dulles and then to Denver. Well, I arrived at HIA only to find out that my Dulles to Denver flight was canceled, but no problem, they can put us on a commuter puddle-jumper to Philadelphia and then onto a flight to Denver out of Philly (gotta love how dysfunction seems to be draw to Philly) in the afternoon. So, we fly out to Philly and, wouldn’t you know it, everything going west is now canceled. So, after spending all day in the airport trying to find something going west, we ended checking into a flea-infested rat trap of a hotel near the airport (the only place not booked solid). The girl at the ticket counter swore we would be on a flight to Denver tomorrow.
The next day? Yep, every flight canceled and the day after didn’t look good either. We canceled our flights, which United fought us on refunding because it was a weather delay (strangely enough, the skies over the northeast were completely cloudless that whole week), but we eventually got a refund on, but we had to eat the cost of renting a car to drive home.
As for Harlan Ellison, I’ve never met the man, but like many, I’ve heard stories of his notorious rude behavior. Some of them were allegedly first hand experiences. It doesn’t matter to me, though. He’s an immensely talented writer and if I meet him and find I don’t like him personally, I’ll still enjoy his work.
Now, as for John Byrne . . .
You know what my convention horror story is… I never find out which events people I want to so are going to be at until a day before the event happens and I don’t have the time to rearrange my schedule.
So, Peter, I guess what I’m trying to say is, to save me a hotel horror story or at least a hotel parking lot horror story which I’ve my own share of, next time you’re in the DC or Baltimore area plug it on your blog a week or so ahead of time like you do some of your other events. I’d appreciate it. I’ll even promise not bring my Kool-Aid Man comic to get signed. (Don’t ask how I got it.)
“Now, as for John Byrne . . .”
Actually, I remember one Chicago Comiccon (back before Wizard took it over), where Mr, Byrne was spotted walking around with his name badge reversed and, the words “Off-Duty” written rather largely on it.
I’m sure Peter remembers a few years back when the hotel for Dragon Con was also holding a Salvation Army convention, complete with a parade that essentially halted the flow of traffic between the hotel and the Apparel Mart where the dealer’s room and guests were located.
*perks up*
Peter wrote a Kool-Aid Man comic?
OH YEAH!! 🙂
Having been involved in the running of two Deep SouthCons (Chair of one), two non-DSC cons in the same series (ASFiCon in Atlanta, 1980 to 1984) and a šûççëššfûk WorldCon bid, let me say that just about any Bad Thing that happens with a hotel is covered by Frierson’s Law, formulated by the late meade Frierson III, longtime President of the Southern Fandom Confederation and a grad (i believe) of Harvard Law:
“On the day, the hotel can do anything they dámņëd well please, no matter what your contract says. You’ll probably win the lawsuit, but that will be six months after your convention is over.”
I recall a story about a small con in New Orleans, at which the hotel management decided that they were going to close down the convention entirely on Saturday night along about 9PM unless the convention committee immediately settled all outstanding accounts (about $600).
The convention was saved when Karl Edward Wagner pulled out his VISA and paid the bill.
I miss Karl.
Peter, I’m so glad that you mentioned Xenogenesis, because I’ve been trying to find it online or elsewhere for some time. Can ANYONE tell me where I can find it? Pretty please????????????
Oh, and if anyone wants to see what Doctor Doom is going to look like in the Fantastic Four movie next year, here he is:http://superherohype.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=Fantastic_Four/The_Movie/Movie_Stills&image=drdoom.jpg&img=&tt=
Then there was Media*West Con in 1981; the convention was booked in a hotel which was also hosting some type of men’s softball tournament. The softball guys got drunk on Saturday night and started to harass the convention women (not just scantily clad young ladies, but all women) and the hotel wouldn’t do anything. It got to the point that male attendees had to escort women back to their rooms to keep them from being accosted.
I love to listen to Harlan rant. I don’t always agree with his opinions, but I love to listen to him.
*perks up*
Peter wrote a Kool-Aid Man comic?
OH YEAH!! 🙂
yes, of which I own MORE than one copy. I went to every comic store in the county looking for it. They didn’t have it. Then I went to a used book store that was selling all their comics for 10 cents a piece (they wanted to get rid of them) and I bought five. I plan to buy lots of comics by various creators that they probably don’t want the world knowing about. Case in point, I also bought two copies of Deathstroke Annual #2. Sadly, I think the Kool-Aid Man was better.
For anyone trying to find it, it’s the “Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings”, not the National Lampoon. And it’s dámņ funny, too.
I can’t really say that I’ve ever had a really bad experience with a hotel (except being stuck in an elevator when I needed to be at an interview in ten minutes), but a friend of mine had a few bad experiences with some and because of it, I ended up with some really great discounts on a room the next year.
As for Harlan, it’s because of him that I actually have one of my BEST convention stories. My friend and I do a public access show in the chicagoland area and we always try to go to the big summer convention. On year, they had Harlan as the guest of honor and we were excited because we were fans of the mans work.
Now, we had heard the horror stories of what Harlan has said or done to people and I was a little apprehensive to approach him for an itnerview. I stood in line with my cameraman and waited our turn in the line where he was giving autographs. We got to our place in line, I took a deep breath adn smiled and told him I had a question for him.
HE:”Ten bucks.”
Me:”Excuse me?”
HE:”Ten bucks to ask a question.”
Me:”The answer better be yes.”
HE:Nothing in life is guarrenteed. Ten bucks.”
So, I pulled out a twenty, handed it to him and he gave me my change.I asked him to be on the show with an interview and he said no. He DID offer to let us tape him telling 7 minutes of conventionstories and to me that was great! Just to have him on the show, willingly,was to me the greatest thing.
We made arrangements to come back the next day and do the shoot. As we were leaving, (while still in earshot of Harlan) my friend stopped me and told me to get my money back. I said no. My friend actually got mad at me and told me to get my money back and I said no. He asked why and I told him.
Me:”Everyone knows about Harlan and his convention stories. When I read or hear about him talking about how he got some shmuck to pay him ten dollars to ask a question and then tell him NO, I’M going to know he’s talking about me and how cool is that?”
Harlan smiled and said that he wouldn’t calle me a shmuck but soemthing close to it.
The net day, we saw him and made sure that we were still on for that day. He was with his friend and he related to hisfriend this same story you just now read and becuase I had said what i said to my friend, he WILL allow us to tape an interview that his friend is doing with him and air that! I was very happy and to me, Harlan was all class.
And the best thing about it? I’ve got it on tape as a fond, fond memory!
MAN! Lot of typos in that one. I really need to quit staying up so late. Sorry all.
Ah, the memories …
Yes, being double-booked against the Shriners would be a nuisance, but that’s what lawyers are for. It’s harder when the incompetents at the hotel double-book you against a wedding [in Toronto, years back]. Making a fuss just didn’t feel right, somehow.
Being across the hall, rather than having connecting rooms was a concern, to be sure. But put yourself in the place of one fan in Halifax whose room didn’t even have a bed! After enough complaining, he was moved to another room which … well … they eventually moved a cot into it.
I can sympathize with the ‘drunk girlfriends’ bit. A relatively small, quiet ‘relaxicon’ in Toronto (circa late 70s?) saw the hotel divided up between fans, and a Jamaican steel drum band convention. So, when a false fire alarm was called, who was the hotel going to pounce on? A bunch of big, black dudes, or fans? Right the first time. *sigh*
I wonder if fans have since set up an Internet site where people can look up verifyable [as opposed to malicious rumours] hotel screwups such that convention committees know to avoid fan-hostile places when booking con space?
I don’t have any hotel horror stories (the only con I can afford to attend is here in town), but one of my annual goals at ComicCon is to get Joe Straczynski, who usually shows up, to tell another of his Harlan stories. I still chuckle remembering his tale of the time he and Harlan went to watch “Schindler’s List”… 🙂
I do think I’d like a chance to meet Harlan – maybe get his side of that story, or the one about the kid with the knife, or – well, you get the picture. Besides, I like his essays well enough that I’d be bound to enjoy having the opportunity to hear him in person!
(Oh, and PAD, I wanted to apologize again for not coming by your table at last year’s Con. By the time I found a copy of the “Fallen Angel” TPB, my wife had already blown our budget at the “Emily the Strange” booth, and I didn’t want to just ask you to autograph my free convention book. Just seemed like that’d come off cheap.)
I’ve seen Harlan Ellison at 3 conventions now–just two away from official stalker!–and he has always been both highly entertaining and extremely decent to his fans.
He’s also one of those people that you can get a great story out of by throwing out a name or subject. “Bruce Lee!” someone shouted and we got a GREAT story about harlan meeting him while they were shooting The Green Hornet, a story that ended with Lee doing some amazing kung fu demonstration that resulted in another guy literally pìššìņg in his pants. “Issac Asimov!” another cries, and Harlan chokes up during a tender but funny tale. “The Smoot Hawley Act!” would probably get as entertaining a story as has ever been told about the Smoot Hawley Act.
The man is a national treasure. His wife seems to be some kind of saint.
Only ever attended on convention Ellison was at, Toronto Star Trek ’76, if I recall correctly. The only clear memory I have of him (others have somehow faded with time) was of a showing of the fan-made slide show titled CITY ON THE EDGE OF WHATEVER.
One slide showed the bridge of the original Enterprise with this short, rabid being who looked suspiciously like Ellison, clutching a fiery trident in one hand and a smoledring manuscript in the other as he crashed through one of the set walls proclaiming “My script, what have you done to my script…”
Amidst various gasps, one of the bridge crew shudders “My God! It’s … it’s … that sourge of deep space, Arlan Hellison!”
Ellison, sitting at the back of the audience intoned clearly: “You’ll hear from my lawyers in the morning.”
He was, of course kidding. I think.
Peter, when you lived near Philly, if ya don’t mind, where exactly, considering that I’ve lived about 20 minutes outta the city since ’77. And as for bad hotel stories, the best I’ve been there for personally…I’m doing a long term care seminar in Minneapolis and the sound system keeps cutting out on top of getting our supplies lost our seminar next to some weird personal empowerment meeting in which the members were screaming positive things at each other at the top of their lungs. So, the head AV person comes in, our company’s vice president tells her what’s going on, hands over the wireless mike that, to that point, hadn’t worked at all. Angela was trying to make the best of it, so she cracks a joke about getting some chocolate covered strawberries to make up for it. AV woman goes in the back room, flips a couple switches, and we all hear over the speakers “And NOW she wants friggin’ STRAWBERRIES, can you believe it?”
Yeah, we made a good impression on our agents THAT day, I can tell ya.
BTW, what do people have against Harlan Ellison? The only thing I’ve ever heard against him was from somebody who was mad because Mr. Ellison printed the original script for City on the Edge. This guy could recite stardates from episodes and name every guest star from the original series, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. Didn’t take him too seriously.