Bombcon
The 'Bombcon' was the retrospective name given to an informal fan gathering held September 20–21, 1941, in London. It is by some measures an early convention, although the coinage 'Bombcon' was not used at the time and seems to have been an invention of Ken Bulmer in the advertisement for Loncon in the NyCon II programme book in 1956. Contemporary accounts do not term it a convention and while it was included in some listings of pre-Eastercon British conventions, it hasn't been included since 1989. Rob Hansen's page linked below includes reasons for considering it to be something less than a convention.
On Saturday, a group assembled, according to Sid Birchby in Futurian War Digest #13, 'to welcome Maurice Hanson ... who had wangled leave from Somerset'. After bookhunting in Charing Cross Road the party saw the film Fantasia.
On Sunday, they reassembled at Liverpool Street station where according to Ted Carnell in VOM #19:
The gang had spread out numerous copies of recent magazines on the Waiting Room table, and an elderly man had mistaken the literature for general reading material supplied by the railroad people. So he was wading into a copy of Astonishing and nobody had the heart to take it away from him.
They then travelled to Holborn to meet John Beynon Harris, followed by tea and then 'London's first open air meeting of fans, in Lincoln's Inn Field' where the principal discussion was 'What should fandom do after war?'
Birchby identifies 14 attendees at some point: Frank Arnold, Sid Birchby, Ken Bulmer, Irene Carnell, Ted Carnell, Harry Chibbett, Lily Chibbett, John Craig, Canadian fan Bob Gibson, Maurice Hanson, John Beynon Harris, Denise Laws, Lily Jaggers and Arthur Williams. Ken Chapman and Bill Temple had both hoped to attend but were unable to get leave. Carnell pronounced it:
Not a bad gathering considering the circumstances ... It was grand meeting the old faces again, and for a few hours it seemed that we were back in the old days before the war.
See Early Conventions.
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