Out of This World Convention

In 1956, science fiction was still a fringe obsession, its fans dismissed as eccentric teenagers and pulp magazine addicts. Then came the 14th World Science Fiction Convention in New York, and Forrest J. Ackerman was there to document the metamorphosis. Ackerman, the legendary fan who would become the genre's most famous impresario, captures a pivotal moment when the faithful few became a movement. Here are Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke mingling withmasked revelers at the Masquerade Ball. Here are the impassioned speeches and the nervous committee members pulling off something unprecedented. What emerges is not just a convention report but a love letter to a community inventing itself in real time, arguing about the future while dressed as its characters. Ackerman writes with the giddy desperation of someone who knows he's witnessing something that might not last, might not be believed, and writes anyway. For anyone curious about where modern fandom came from, this is a time machine to the moment nerds became a tribe.