Like many of you, I’m currently making plans to attend Denvention 3, the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held later this year in Denver. Looking ahead to yet another WorldCon brings back memories of my first WorldCon, Discon II, the 32nd World Science Fiction Convention, held in Washington, D.C. back in 1974.

I was still living in Brooklyn with my parents at the time, and drove down in a van with a group of other fans. Here’s the only photographic evidence of that trip. The image is fairly faded by now, because I don’t have an original print, only a poor photocopy. (Click above to see a larger version of these four sorry mugs.) This photo was snapped on a day we stole away from the con for a few hours to play tourists. We’re sitting in front of the fence that surrounds the White House.

Who are these four stooges? See No Evil is comic-book colorist Carl Gafford. Speak No Evil is Paul Levitz, then just a green employee at DC Comics, the company for which he is now Publisher. Hear No Evil is Steve Gilary, a fellow comic-book fan. And as for me at the far right, well … by the placement of my hands, I guess my role is Do No Evil. So while my hair may have changed with the years, my habit of hamming it up for the camera has remained consistent.

It was a great first WorldCon, and if I ever find the clipping of the article I wrote about the experience for the Brooklyn College student newspaper, I’ll upload that as well.