There are parties? Sure there are parties. The biggest and best of them are generally put on either by commercial organizations such as online magazines, or by people bidding to hold a Worldcon. As I said elsewhere, the location of future Worldcons is chosen by vote, just like the Olympics, and the voters are the members of the Worldcon three years previous. With over 5,000 potential voters you can't exactly bribe them with expensive gifts as is rumored to happen with the Olympics, but you can run ace parties with lots of free food and drink.

The people from Boston are particularly good at this. Having helped run the parties for San Jose when we were bidding I know what is involved and I am in awe of what the Boston folks achieve. They are bidding for 2004, so they will be running their best parties in Philadelphia next year, the year of their vote. Then there is Glasgow, bidding for 2005. They brought along some fine British cheeses, and stocked up with duty free malt whisky on their way over. And of course there was Tokyo, bidding for 2007. They haven't got the hang of the food and drink yet, but they had loads of cute Japanese giveaways and their room was always packed.

People run parties for other reasons as well. They might have other conventions to promote, or fan clubs, or they might just love running parties. One of the silliest ideas is hoax bids. This is where people devise daft ideas for Worldcon bids as an excuse for having fun and holding parties. My friend Dave Clark ran one for Alcatraz back in '96 (bars in every room, magnificent sea views, you'll feel you can't leave). OK, you are right, we are all mad.

Normal practice for the evening is to party-hop. There is a notice board on which all of the evening's parties are listed, and the convention newsletter has pretty good coverage too. So, armed with a list of room numbers, off you go. If one party has particularly good food, or you get into a good conversation, then stay a while, otherwise, check out what they have, and after a while move on.