#stf fandom

Sykora resigned both because of his college workload and because he felt the club was neglecting its original purpose of encouraging scientific study. When his friend and ally Don Wollheim took over as chairman, he found the ISA's membership and finances in such a bad state that he disbanded it—which did not sit well with Sykora when he inevitably returned to fandom and wanted his club back. The hard-science faction is represented in my club room with all sorts of scientific things, including a rocket, because there were clubs that were actually sending some small ones up.

You will also see on the side a little occultic setup for fans like Tigrina, who briefly fascinated the boys of the Los Angeles Scientific League when she wrote in to discuss Satanism. Under her real name, Edythe Eyde, she went on to create the first lesbian zine in the US, after a stint as the LASFL's secretary.

The second room, representing the early conventions, begins with some liquor bottles for the Futurians, and a lucha libre corner for Sykora and Wollheim to duke it out. (Not pictured: the outside jail pen I constructed for Sykora and Forrest J Ackerman, the two sex offenders of First Fandom.)

Here we see a projector for the films shown: "Metropolis" at Worldcon 1939 (obtained by New Fandom; noted Communist Don Wollheim had sent a postcard to his mortal enemies in the leadup to the con, forcing them to issue a public statement that they did not send any money to Nazi Germany in order to acquire the film); at Worldcon 1940, a fan film called "Monsters of the Moon" was put together by noted fan Bob Tucker, using clips from actual movies provided by Forrest J Ackerman. In 1941, it was back to full-length films with The Lost World.

Also at Worldcon 1940, cosplay really began to get off the ground, although Morojo and Ackerman had attended the previous year's convention in futuristic costumes of their own design. First prize at the costume party went to provocateur Dave Kyle as Emperor Ming, while others went as Buck Rogers, a nurse, Giles Habibula, the Invisible Man (covered in bandages), various spacemen dressed in robes, and so forth.

The Decker Dillies, a small club from Indiana with no BNFs, nonetheless made a big splash by bringing their skeleton, Oscar, to the proceedings.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were among these early fans, and Superman made his debut in one of their fanzines before he ever saw the pages of DC Comics. According to Bob Tucker, Siegel attended Worldcon 1940, dressed in his street clothes, and when asked where his Superman suit was, he "looked pained and patiently explained we should know it was beneath his clothes."

Not pictured: the boxcar that Olon Wiggin and Lew Martin rode to the convention, traveling in the cold for 30 hours. They won an award for surmounting the greatest difficulty in order to attend, and successfully pitched Denver as next year's host city.

At Worldcon 1941, Erle Korshak brought a skeleton head for the costume party (as a "deathshead") that was reportedly auctioned off to guest speaker Robert Heinlein, who proceeded to offer it back up for auction. Other costumes included Forrest Ackerman as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, with a mask made by Ray Harryhausen himself; E. E. Evans as a BEM described as a "Bird Man from Rhea" with individually applied feathers; Walt Daugherty as a space pilot, using junked materials from the airplane factory where he worked; Old Granny from Slan and a variety of other copyrighted characters.

in the corner, hovering over all, we have Art Widner's car, known to his fellow fans as FooFoo Special, a kind of embodied creature occasionally referenced in fanzines. It was especially noted for the ride Widner took to the 1941 Worldcon with some fellow fans. Jack Speer also had a named car, unfortunately known as the Panzerkampfwagen (technically his brother's), which was used to conduct "the Philadelphia Blitzkrieg", an incident in which he, Elmer Perdue and Milton Rothman drove to Philadelphia to acquire materials for a FAPA zine mailing that the local fans had lost interest in mailing out themselves.