Minicon 1

Minicon 1 was held on 6 January 1968 from 12:30pm to 5pm in Coffman Union (Men's Lounge), University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). Its membership has been estimated at around 60, but there's a fair amount of doubt as to the number. I (the archivist) am not sure if anyone involved called themselves the chair, or whether anyone had any titles at all for that matter, but understand that Jim Young and Frank Stodolka did much of the work.

Gordon R. Dickson, Charles De Vet and Clifford Simak sat on a panel at Minicon 1 and were used in the advertising. I'm not sure whether they were ever referred to as "Guests of Honor" at the time, but they are at least clearly the closest equivalent. Carl Jacobi was invited, but did not attend.

The only document that we have found is a flyer advertising the upcoming convention. Several people who were there couldn't remember there being a program book, but neither could they specifically remember there not being one. On a panel at Minicon 13 (transcript also in Rune 54 ff) Jim Young said, "I wound up printing the little bulletin that we put out for it... and in ditto, because those were the days of Minneapolis dittoed fanzines." So there must be something else.

You can see the flyer in several formats and quality levels:

• Perfectly good quality (120 kB)
• Higher resolution (810 kB)
• Raw scan (6.8 MB)
• Text transcription, with formatting roughly preserved (0.7 kB)

Note that this is a scan made in 2009 of a photocopy made in 2000 of the original paste-up board for the flyer made in 1968. We haven't found any copies of the flyer as actually distributed, which may look slightly different.