Fandom

            One of the remarkable features of the science fiction field is the amount of effort fans put into being fans.  While the term ‘fan’ is sometimes used in the mainstream (mundane) sense, meaning someone who really likes science fiction, or reads a lot of it, it is most often used to mean someone who attends (or organizes!) fan-club meetings or conventions, someone who publishes a fan magazine (fanzine), or someone who writes fan fiction (fiction using a published author’s characters, which therefore can never be sold for money), all for the sheer love of the field and the admiration/notice of other fans.

As a relatively new active fan, I am unqualified to do more than give a rough idea of the scope of organized fandom.  It is enough to say that each year a cadre of a few tens of thousands of fans manage to organize dozens of conventions each with multiple speakers, presentations by scientists, authors and artists, panel discussions on topics ranging from the dangers of biological warfare and the prospects for physical immortality, to the influence of Hemingway on modern science fiction and (of course) how to use science fiction for educational purposes.  At least one of these yearly conventions (the WorldCon) will attract several thousand people to the city whose fans spent years lobbying for selection and then arranging the 5 days of activity (again, purely for the love of the field).

Teachers are very likely to find that there is an active fan group in the nearest city; such a group might already be running a writing contest for students, or have one or two members who are willing to donate books to the school library, or talk about how reading science fiction has helped them in their mundane jobs as lawyers, engineers, or doctors. 

There are far too many fan groups to list, but below are some links to give the interested teacher a start:

There are far too many fan groups to list them all, but below are some links to give the interested teacher a start:

Young Writers Contests

http://www.bsfs.org/bsfsywc.htm  Balticon Young Writers' Contest

http://www.albacon.org/contest.htm Albacon (New York convention) contest

Book Donators

Conventions  

http://www.balticon.org - the yearly Baltimore convention

http://www.locusmag.com/2000/Future/Cons2000b.html - Locus magazine’s huge convention listing.  Locus is the “newspaper of SF” and has a very useful site.

Clubs

http://www.bsfs.org/ The Baltimore Science Fiction Society

http://www.wsfa.org/ The Washington, D.C. area Science Fiction Association

http://www.lasfs.org/ The Los Angeles SF Society

http://www.nesfa.org/ The New England Science Fiction Association (this group operates a small publishing company devoted to reprinting classic, out-of-print SF works)

http://www.fact.org/ A Texas club

http://www.albacon.org/lastsfa/Default.htm A New York State club