MidAmeriCon
(Did you mean Big Mac the fanzine?)
MidAmeriCon (often called Big Mac), the 34th Worldcon and second in Missouri, was held September 2-6, 1976, in the Radisson Muehlebach Hotel and Phillips House in Kansas City, MO. GoH: Robert A. Heinlein, FGoH: George Barr. Wilson Tucker was Toastmaster. Chaired by Ken Keller.
The KC in '76 bid beat Columbus in 1976 and Highmore in '76 in the 1976 Worldcon Site Selection at Discon II in 1974.
Joni Stopa ran the highly lauded masquerade, the judges included Sally Rand, and Patia von Sternberg did a strip tease while they deliberated.
MidAmeriCon hosted the 1976 Hugos and the 1978 Worldcon Site Selection, which chose Iguanacon.
WSFS business meeting wrangling affecting MAC inspired concom member Bill "The Galactic" Fesselmeyer to pen “How the GRINCH Stole Worldcon,” a classic piece of smoffish faan fiction for PR 2.
MidAmeriCon was very worried about the increase in convention sizes in the ’70s and took drastic steps to control membership by significantly raising the price of an attending membership which started at less than $6 and ramped up to an unheard of $50 at the door — an innovation that became Worldcon tradition — as well as using hospital bracelets to back up name badges as proof of membership, to control ghosting, and limiting programming about fringe fandoms — which did not.
In the event, there were 3,014 attending members out of a total of 4,200. For comparison, Discon II, two years earlier, had a total membership of 3,587 (a breakdown into attending and supporting members is not available).
For the first time, the Hugo Awards Ceremony and GoH Speeches were separated from the banquet and held separately as an extravaganza. While successful, this proved the death knell of the Worldcon banquet and began the rise of the over-the-top, nearly unmanageable Hugo ceremony. (At least Mac didn't keep switching presenters but used Bob Tucker as sole MC and presenter.)
Tom Reamy’s con publications feature professional production values, with the first-ever hardcover program book. The mimeographed convention newsletter was called The Bullsheet, with six issues edited and published by Jeff May and Linda Bushyager (see MidAmeriCon publications, linked below). A significant portion of the convention was video recorded by KMAC, organized by Scott Imes. Some of the video shot there has been digitized and posted on YouTube by FANAC (see below).
More Info[edit]
- MidAmeriCon publications and photos on fanac.org.
- Whichness of the Why.
- Fred Pohl's MidAmeriCon Reminiscence.
- Interesting and extensive con report in Karass #24 (September 1976), continued in #25/26 (November).
- Con report by Tom Perry in Mota 21 (May 1977).
- Video of Masquerade winners.
- Recording of James Gunn talk.
- Video of Robert Heinlein GoH speech.
- Video of Weird & Horror Genre Luncheon.
- Video of panel on mimeography and fanzines.
- Interview about MAC with Ken Keller (2016).
- MidAmeriCon video playlist.
Photo by Bob Webber.
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