Ron Deacon

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Ron T. Deacon was a UK fan from London active in the 1940s and 1950s, and to a degree into the 1960s. He attended the Whitcon of 1948 and all Eastercons through to Supermancon in 1954. He was a member of the Science Fantasy Society (SFS) and was an occasional contributor to fanzines, writing on topics such as the Shaver Mystery and pseudoscience.

He was the inadvertent secondary victim of a hoax by the London fans at the Supermancon. Connie Mackenzie, wife of Stuart Mackenzie, was attending the convention and the London fans contrived to pass her off as Pat Mahaffey, sister of Bea Mahaffey and an unexpected visitor from the United States. Her attendance was supposed to be a 'secret', but Supermancon organiser Dave Cohen found out and arranged a taxi to take himself, Walt Willis, Ted Carnell and Stuart Mackenzie to the station to meet 'Pat'. Cohen then introduced Pat to various northern fans who were completely taken in. It was only some weeks later that Mackenzie admitted the truth and then as much as anything – here comes the relevance to this current page – 'to discourage a local fan by the name of Ron Deacon who had been as taken in as the Northerners and who since the convention had been persistently trying to date her' (Rob Hansen, Then).

As Willis explained in Oopsla #15 (November 1954):

[Deacon] had never met Stu's wife and fell for the hoax completely. In fact he fell for 'Pat' herself and, perhaps encouraged by the remarkable progress Stuart Mackenzie had seemed to make with her, started a campaign to try and date her. This went on with letters and phone calls and other advances weeks after they all got back to London, while Ron thought 'Pat' was a guest at Stu's house. Finally Stu got tired of seeing Deacon trying to seduce his wife under his nose and broke the news to him as gently as possible. Altogether it was a remarkable hoax, and one that deserves to go down in fannish history.

Any link is purely speculative but it is notable that Deacon, a convention regular from 1948 to 1954, seemingly did not attend any conventions thereafter. However, he did place an advertisement in Speculation #16 (Autumn 1967) offering books and magazines for sale, suggesting he may have maintained some contact with fandom.

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