Happy 80th Birthday to...

[gerisullivan]

...science fiction fandom!

Many thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor.com and Rob Hansen for bringing this founding date to our attention!

Comments

[rwl.livejournal.com]

It's a bit subjective to point to any event to say that *this* was the beginning of science fiction fandom. You could make perhaps an even stronger case that the beginning of fandom happened with the June 1926 issue of Amazing Stories. Here is a passage from my article in one of the Nippon 2007 progress reports:

[pnh.livejournal.com]

You could as easily say that SF fandom began the first time two people enthused to one another about one of those Jules Verne books. But the first known in-person meeting of an actual club chartered to discuss science fiction seems like a reasonably good starting point.

All things have fuzzy edges, including the birth of steam power, the nation of France, the formation of the Beatles, and the imminent death of the internet (film at 11). And yet, anniversaries are fun. If you're in a state that's celebrating its 150th anniversary of statehood, do you go around primly telling everyone "Actually the process of becoming a state really got started 153 years and seven months ago, so your celebration is stupid"? Of course not. Rob's point was that in December 11, 1929, we have a reasonable candidate for Founding Event.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

How very cool! Thank you much for posting this! :)