History of ESFCAS

ESFCAS

Incorporated in January 1976, for about fifteen years ESFCAS was the largest and most influential Science Fiction and Fantasy club in Canada. The club consisted primarily of University of Alberta students in their mid-twenties, although it did have a number of out-of-town members, including a regular correspondent from the U.S.S.R. Its members founded NonCon (an Alberta regional Sci-Fi convention) and ConText '89 (a literary convention), and published a variety of fanzines including Neology (the club newsletter), The Monthly Monthly, the New Canadian Fandom, and the early editions of the New Canadian Fandom Guide, among several others.

ESFCAS alumni were instrumental in the founding of On Spec and Transversions magazines and sat on the Board of the Books Collective after it acquired the Tesseract Books imprint, and at least a dozen of its members have gone on to become professional writers, editors, journalists or artists. The club folded in the mid-1990s due mainly to competition from the internet, and the general decline of science fiction "fandom."

Scope and Content

The archives consist of records and publications of the ESFCAS, including correspondence, financial documentation, artwork, advertisements, and other ephemera. While predominately textual, the archives contain 10 photographs and several audio cassette recordings of interviews with science fiction writers and of science fiction events. A few textual items are in Russian.

Arrangement

Arranged in 5 series and 7 sub-series:

Item list available for some files.