The editors thank all those who helped us obtain and correct material for this book, OSFCI for the use of its laser printer, and apologize to our cats, Telzey and Sassy, for our recent lack of attention.

Jane Lindskold is the author of the novels Pipes of Orpheus and Smoke and Mirrors, co-author (with Roger Zelazny) of Donnerjack, and author of the critical biography Roger Zelazny.

(no surprise there!)

Bonnie remembers a small room with many "famous" people in it and a booth outside where someone from MIT was demonstrating a mechanical hand/arm; Ted remembers sitting behind and listening to Isaac Asimov, Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Lester del Rey, Fred Pohl, and others, and buying at auction two pieces of artwork which were interior illustrations by Wallace Wood from Galaxy magazine. The auction, talks, and everything else seems to have taken place in that one room. Times sure have changed!

That small beginning started us on our way to becoming members of the family of fandom, which just happens to be the theme of this Boskone.

We thought this was a fitting theme, in the light of events past, present, and future. At that first (for us) Boskone we were expecting our first (and only) child. We pretty much dropped out after that until Noreascon II, which we attended for a day. From then on it was all downhill. In addition to creating us as fans, we also corrupted our poor baby. She in turn corrupted her friends, and our fannish family grew. As we became more and more involved in conventions, first as volunteers and later as part of various committees, our family continued to grow as more and more "relatives" were added. We have arguments, make up, help each other, and stand up for each other as more conventional (no pun intended) families will. Our baby grew up, corrupted a nice young man, got married (had a reception at L.A.con III) and is, at the time of this writing, expecting her own baby. So, we hope, the family will continue to grow.

We've had a lot of fun with this convention. We're looking forward to having you have fun, too. As part of our fannish family we hope you'll let us know what we've done right and also where we've made mistakes.

We're trying a few new ideas (stolen from other cons, of course; but since we're one big family we believe in sharing) and hope you enjoy them. We'd like to thank our committee, staff, and volunteers for making this convention work. Without our family, it just wouldn't happen. Hope you've all had fun too.

• Ambassador of Progress, Tor, 1984.
• Knight Moves, Tor, 1985. (Philip K. Dick Award Nominee)
• Hardwired, Tor, 1986.
• Voice of the Whirlwind, Tor, May 1987.
• The Crown Jewels, Tor, September 1987.
• House of Shards, Tor, November 1988.
• Angel Station, Tor, July 1989.
• Facets (collection), Tor, March 1990.
• Elegy for Angels and Dogs, Tor Double (with Roger Zelazny's The Graveyard Heart), August 1990. (A shorter version was published in Asimov's, May 1990.)
• Days of Atonement, Tor, February 1991.
• AristoI, Tor, September 1992.
• Metropolitan, HarperCollins, April 1995. (Nebula Nominee)
• Rock of Ages, Tor, September 1995.
• City on Fire, HarperCollins, January 1997.

• To Glory Arise, published by Dell as The Privateer, 1981.
• The Tern Schooner, published by Dell as The Yankee, 1981.
• Brig of War, published by Dell as The Raider, 1981.
• The Macedonian, Dell, 1981.
• Cat Island, Dell, 1981.

• Frankensteins And Foreign Devils, NESFA Press, February 1998.

• "Side Effects," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1985. Reprinted in Year's Best SF, 3rd Collection, Bluejay, 1986.
• "Sarah Runs the Weasel," Omni, serialized March-April 1986.
• "Panzerboy," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, April 1986.
• "Video Star," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, July 1986. Reprinted in Year's Best SF, 4th Collection, St. Martin's, 1987.
• "Wolf Time," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, January 1987.
• "Witness," Wild Cards (original anthology), ed. George R.R. Martin, Bantam Books, January 1987. Nebula nominee.
• "Unto the Sixth Generation," Aces High (original anthology), ed. George R.R. Martin, Bantam Books, April 1987.
• "Dinosaurs," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, June 1987. Reprinted in Year's Best SF, 5th Collection, St. Martin's, 1988. Hugo nominee.
• "Ligdan and the Young Pretender," Guns of Darkness, ed. J.E. Pournelle, June 1987.
• "Surfacing," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, April 1988. Hugo and Nebula nominee. Reprinted in Year's Best SF, 6th Collection, St. Martin's, 1989.
• "Consequences," Call to Battle, ed. Jerry Pournelle, Sept 1988. Also in Liavek: Festival Week, ed. Shetterly and Bull, Ace, May 1990.
• "Flatline," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, August 1988. Reprinted in Year's Best SF, 6th Collection, St. Martin's, 1989.
• "The Bob Dylan Solution," Aboriginal SF, Sept-Oct 1989.
• "Mortality," Down and Dirty (original anthology), ed. George R.R. Martin, Bantam Books, Dec 1988.
• "Solip:System" (special edition hardback novelette), Axolotl Press, October 1989. Reprinted in Asimov's, Aug 1990.
• Wild Cards: Ace in the Hole, (collaborative mosaic novel w/Martin, Snodgrass, etc.). Bantam, Feb 1990.
• "No Spot of Ground," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, Nov 1989, and What Might Have Been, v.II, ed. Benford & Greenberg, Bantam.
• "Prayers on the Wind," When the Music's Over, ed. Lewis Shiner, Bantam, May 1991. Reprinted Year's Best SF, Ninth Annual Collection, St. Martin's, 1992. Nebula nominee.
• "Erogenoscape," Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, Nov 1991.
• "When Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse," Wild Cards IX: Jokertown Shuffle, ed. George R.R. Martin, Bantam, Sept 1991.
• Wild Cards XI: Dealer's Choice, (collaborative mosaic novel w/Martin, Bryant, etc.) Bantam, Nov 1992.
• "Wall, Stone, Craft," Axolotl Press Special Edition, Sept 1993. Reprinted in Asimov's, Oct 1993. Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award nominee.
• "Feeding Frenzy," Wild Cards: Marked Cards, ed. George R.R. Martin, Baen, March 1994.
• "Red Elvis," Alternate Outlaws, ed. Mike Resnick, Tor, October 1994.
• "Broadway Johnny," Warriors of Blood and Dream, ed. Roger Zelazny, Avon, June 1995.
• "Woundhealer," An Armory of Swords, ed. Fred Saberhagen, Tor, June 1995.
• "Foreign Devils," Asimov's, January 1996.

GAMES

PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN, Fantasy Games, 1981.
• HARDWIRED, R. Talsorian Games, 1990.

"It's the freedom," said Omar Rayyan. "When your art is based on fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, you get freedom to break the rules a bit, twist the rules a bit. One of the big influences on me was the symbolists at the turn of the century, with monsters and demons symbolic of things going on in real life."

"If you want to get analytical," he suggested, "fantasy art lets you explore the psychological realm. It's a chance to look at the real world. The way science fiction looks at a future what if, fantasy looks at the world in the here and now: what fairy tales and folklore are talking about is the emotional health of a society."

In response to my confusion, he launched into an enthusiastic explanation of artistic passion. "If you study art history, you find that with a lot of paintings from 100 years ago and beyond, an incredible amount of hidden messages were visible to the normal person back then. The literacy rate was low, the language of the common person was one of symbols, and the art was a form of preliterate, visual language." He paused, at once thoughtful and intense. He wanted me, an essentially nonvisual person, to understand. Then he found a way.

"As type became the more common form," he began, "visual representations became more concrete, less abstract. There is, of course, abstraction in type: the word 'chair' is squiggles on the page that look like absolutely nothing, but when you look at them in your head you see a chair. When you do a chair in a picture, though, it can start meaning different things, depending on the weight society puts on it. It gives you more flexibility, but a lot more ambiguity, too, if you don't know the rules." I hadn't thought of it like that before, and once again, as with his art, Rayyan has given me a subtle and different image to consider.

A West Tisbury [Martha's Vineyard] resident, Rayyan was born in Jordan in 1968, with an American mother and a Jordanian father. He spent his childhood "doodling, painting, and otherwise expressing myself artistically" as he and his family moved about the Middle East with occasional appearances in Texas. "My favorite images then were wizards and dragons," he says. "I also had a b interest in wildlife, and I was drawing animals from an early age. It's easy to build monsters from that, and my imagination naturally goes in that kind of direction." He also took inspiration from Japanese anime. "It's imported everywhere," he smiles. "My wife grew up seeing it in English and Japanese here, and I saw it in Arabic in the Middle East."

After finishing high school in Jordan, he returned to the US to go to the Rhode Island School of Design, from which he graduated with a BFA in illustration. His work landed him a place in a group show of young artists here, and he arrived to hang his art. It was his first visit to the Vineyard, and it felt right to him. He had no place to live at the time, so he picked up a newspaper, found a year-round rental, and moved in. It was only later that he realized how unusual that sequence is, since year-round rentals are very scarce. "I think it was in the stars," he says. He and his wife Shelia share their home with two cats, a budgie and a bunch of fish.

At first, he supported himself by picking tomatoes at Whippoorwill Farm, and then as the muffin man at the [famous] Black Dog Tavern. "I was drawing the whole time," he says, "trying to get my portfolio together, and make a breakthrough." That breakthrough came at a science fiction convention in Chicago, where he met Ron McCutcheon, the Art Director/Editor for Cricket, a children's magazine. "He's one of those incredible people who really moves a career forward," says Rayyan appreciatively. McCutcheon essentially became his agent, showing his work around, and suggesting places he could submit. "Once you've got your foot in the door," Rayyan reflects, "the networking starts with editors talking to editors, and things move faster."

"That's generally the way it works," he notes. "You fall into it. You see a lot of bad art out there, and good art being ignored. It's really the luck of being in the right place at the right time," he concludes. "But," he adds with a grin, "a constant persistence increases your odds. The more places you're in, the better chance you have of one of them being the right one."

It seems that, one way and another, he has often been in the right place. "I started really, really young," says Rayyan, "and my parents supported me really bly. I never was very much of a social type, and I can really work well alone and independent. And freelance illustrators can live alone anywhere in the world and still make money. You have the option of exchanging ideas with other people, or secluding yourself and still doing what you love."

Omar has always admired the work of turn of the century artists and illustrators like Rackham, Dulac, and Waterhouse. Painters such as Jerome and the art of the Symbolist movement all contributed to Omar's overall visual expression.

While Omar has done a myriad of works, such as logos for businesses, t-shirt designs, editorial illustrations for newspapers, and covers for magazines and books, a majority of his work has been in the children's literature market, and in books for Holiday House. He has also been doing paintings for the fantasy art market, mostly for collectible card games such as Iron Crown Enterprise's "Middle Earth" series and Genetic Anomalies' internet-based futuristic game, "Chron-X." One can also see his work in the Spectrum annuals of fantasy art.

Rayyan has been showing his paintings and drawings at conventions around the country for nearly ten years, and his awards range from a World Fantasy Convention award for "Most Humorous" to a New England Press Association award for editorial illustration. Boskone is not the first convention to feature him as Artist Guest of Honor--Viable Paradise held last October claims that distinction--but Boskone is the larger and better known. For an artist as thoughtful, as playful, and as talented as Rayyan, being an Artist Guest of Honor is clearly the right place.

See more of Omar's art in these books which he has illustrated:

• Rimonah of the Flashing Sword: a North African Tale, adapted by Eric A. Kimmel. NY: Holiday House, 1995.
• Count Silvernose: a Story from Italy, retold by Eric A. Kimmel. NY: Holiday House, 1996.
• Ramadan by Suhaib Hamid Ghazi. NY: Holiday House, 1996.
• The Ring of Truth; an Original Irish Tale, by Teresa Bateman. NY: Holiday House, 1997.

(Well, OK, not millions. More like ten. Or this one guy, at Lunacon, who was mixing up Analog and Asimov's. But I digress.)

Anyway, since Boskone is honoring the honorable Stan Schmidt by making him a Special Guest (without an honorarium), they honored me by asking me to honor their request for a small guide for everyone on how to sell a story to Analog.

Naturally, I turned them down. I didn't know how to sell a story to Analog, or I wouldn't have garnered ten rejection slips between my first two sales to Stan Schmidt and my next two. I only knew how to sell those four particular stories to Analog, right? But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how valuable such an article might be. After all, I could use the publicity.

So here it is, a list of the five steps you can take to make a sale to Analog.

1. Get as many degrees in science as possible. Everyone knows that Analog writers are all technical wizards who can single-handedly repair hyperspace drives while being chased by the lizards of Epsilon Eridani through a wormhole to the fifth dimension. I myself earned two degrees in Physics to prepare me for my eventual low-paying career as a science fiction writer.
2. Start going bald and grow a beard, so as to emulate the esteemed editor. I noticed that while I still had my hair and remained clean-shaven, Stan kept sending back "TeleAbsence" for revision requests. Then it occurred to me that I wasn't doing my bit. So, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Workshop (which by contract I'm required to mention within the first sixty seconds of any article). While there, I had so much stress and so little time that I lost my hair and my beard grew to immense proportions, despite only being in my mid-twenties. Once I had returned, I rewrote my story, and this time the writing was easy and Stan bought it. I credit Clarion, for making me more like Stan Schmidt.
3. Put in music. Stan plays trumpet in a symphony orchestra. He's a sucker for a good music story.
4. Marry a linguist. My wife, Nomi, is a professional linguist, and Stan loves to play with languages himself. At the pre-Hugo reception in Anaheim, I cleverly absented myself from the room after introducing Nomi to Stan. Later, Stan was overheard to be muttering over and over, "Michael's wife is a linguist. Buy stories from Michael. Michael's wife is a linguist. Buy…" etc.
5. Watch Babylon 5 a lot. (Actually, I have no idea if Stan cares about Babylon 5 at all, so perhaps watching it a lot won't help you sell a story to Analog. But I like the show, and wanted to recommend it, and this is my article. Nyah.)

• The Sins of the Fathers (Analog 11/73-1/74; Berkley 1976)
• Newton and the Quasi-Apple (Doubleday 1975; Popular Library 1977)
• Lifeboat Earth (Berkley 1978)
• Tweedlioop (Tor 1986)

• Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer's Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms (Writer's Digest Books 1996)

• "The Reluctant Ambassadors" (Analog 12/68)
• ". . . And Comfort to the Enemy" (Analog 7/69)
• "Lost Newton" (Analog 9/70)
• "The Unreachable Stars" (Analog 4/71)
• "The Prophet" (Analog 4/72)
• "His Loyal Opposition" (Analog 7/76)
• "A Thrust of Greatness" (Analog 6/76)
• "Caesar Clark" (Analog 7/77)
• "Pinocchio" (Analog 9/77)
• "Dark Age" (Analog 12/77)
• "The Promised Land" (Analog 1/78)
• "Mascots" (F&SF 2/82)
• "War of Independence" (IASFM 8/82)
• "The Easy Way" (Rigel, Summer 1983)
• "Johnny Birdseed" (Analog 7/93)
• "Good Intentions" (with Jack McDevitt; F&SF, in press)

• "A Flash of Darkness" (Analog 9/68)
• "May the Best Man Win" (Analog 3/71)
• "I Remember Mahusudanaj" (Morpheus [Heidelberg College], Winter 1971)
• "The Man Who Wasn't Beethoven" (Morpheus, Spring 1973)
• "Panic" (Asimov's Jan/Feb 1978)
• "A Midsummer Newt's Dream" (Asimov's 6/79)
• "Camouflage" (Twilight Zone 7/81)
• "Tweedlioop" (Twilight Zone 11/81)
• "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" (anth. Habitats, ed. Susan Shwartz, DAW 1984)
• "Floodgate" (Twilight Zone, 10/88)
• "The Man on the Cover" (Analog, 10/90)
• "Worthsayer" (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, 6/92; anth. More Whatdunits, ed. Mike Resnick, DAW 1993)
• "Not Even a Chimney" (anth. Christmas Forever, ed. David Hartwell, Tor 1993)

• "Mössbauer Effect Studies of Manganese-Tin Compounds" (with B. L. Robinson and S. Jha), Bull. Am. Phys. Soc., Ser. II 14, 522, 4/69
• Mössbauer Effect Studies of Some Intermetallic Compounds of Tin, (Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western Reserve University 1969; published by University Microfilms)
• "A Realistic Literature" (Morpheus, Winter 1970)
• "Detectors and Linewidths in Mössbauer Spectroscopy," Am. J. Phys. 39, No. 9, 1003, 11/72
• "Constellations Seen From Other Stars" (with Louis N. Rapp), Am. J. Phys. 40, No. 11, 1703, 11/72)
• "Apollo 17: The Beginning, Not the End?" (Heidelberg Alumni Magazine, Spring 1973)
• "Science Fiction Courses: An Example and Some Alternatives" (Am. J. Phys. 41, No. 9, 1052, 9/73)
• "Science Fiction and the Science Teacher" (Extrapolation 17, No. 2, 141, 5/76; also in Teaching Science Fiction: Education for Tomorrow, ed. Jack Williamson, Owlswick Press 1980)
• "Science in Science Fiction" (in Many Futures, Many Worlds, ed. Thomas D. Clareson, Kent State Univ. Press, 1977)
• "How to Move the Earth" (Analog 5/76)
• "Fourier Analysis and Synthesis with a Pocket Calculator," Am. J. Phys. 45, No. 1, 79, 1/77)
• "Off-Broadway Show" (Camping Journal, June/July 1981)
• "Foreword" to Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939 (facsimile edition by Southern Illinois University Press, 1981)
• "Where Have All the New Worlds Gone?" (Empire for the SF Writer #25, 1981)
• "The Science of Science Fiction Writing" (Writer's Digest 2/83; also in 1983/84 Fiction Writer's Market; expanded and updated version in The Secrets of Writing Popular Fiction [Writer's Digest Guide, Vol. 4], 1986; also [as "Good Writing Is Not Enough"] in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, St. Martin's Press, 1991)
• "Broccoli, Oranges, and Science Fiction" (Twilight Zone, 6/85)
• "Science Fiction and the Planets" (in The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. James Gunn, Viking Penguin, 1988)
• "The Ideas That Wouldn't Die!" (Writer's Digest 3/89; reprinted in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, St. Martin's Press, 1991)
• "The Sound of Danbury," (The News-Times, Danbury, CT, 8/7/89)
• "Hypertext: A Powerful New Tool for Writers" (Writer's Digest 2/90)
• "'Staging' Your Fiction" (Writer's Digest 5/90; reprinted in The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing, Spring 1992)
• "A Science Fiction Writer Looks at Editors" (The Writer 7/90)
• "A Science Fiction Editor Looks at Writers" (The Writer 8/90)
• "Seeing Your Way to Better Stories" (in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, St. Martin's Press, 1991)
• "Authors vs. Editors" (in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, St. Martin's Press, 1991; also reprinted as Chapbook #32 in Writer's Notebook Series, Pulphouse Publishing, 1991)
• "Hypertext as a Writing Tool" (SFWA Bulletin, Summer 1992)
• "Introduction" to Love Songs of a Mad Scientist: The Collected Short Stories of Jerry Oltion (Hypatia Press, 1993)
• "Anatomy of a Sale: 'From the Corner of the Eye' to Analog Science Fiction and Fact (in Science Fiction Writer's Marketplace and Sourcebook, Writer's Digest Books, 1994)
• "Curried Goatburgers With All the Trimmings" (in Serve It Forth: Cooking with Anne McCaffrey, ed. Anne McCaffrey with John Gregory Betancourt, Warner Aspect, 1996)
• "Inventing Languages for Science Fiction," (Tangent, Winter 1996)

• Analog Yearbook II (Ace 1981)
• Analog anthologies in hardcover by Dial and paperback by Davis:
• #1: Analog's Golden Anniversary Anthology (1980)
• #2: Analog: Readers' Choice (1981)
• #3: Analog's Children of the Future (1982)
• #4: Analog's Lighter Side (1982)
• #5: Analog: Writers' Choice (1983)
• #6: War and Peace: Possible Futures from Analog (1983)
• #7: Aliens from Analog (1983)
• #8: Writers' Choice, Vol. II (1984)
• #9: From Mind to Mind (1984)
• #10: Analog's Expanding Universe (1986)
• Unknown (Baen Books, 1988)
• Unknown Worlds (co-edited with Martin H. Greenberg; Galahad Books 1989)
• Analog Essays in Science (John Wiley & Sons, 1990)
• Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (co-edited with Gardner Dozois, Tina Lee, Ian Randal Strock, and Sheila Williams; St. Martin's Press, 1991)
• Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space (coedited with Robert Zubrin; John Wiley & Sons, 1996)

• Book, tape, and movie reviews for Am. J. Phys., Analog, and IEEE Spectrum
• Bio/appreciations for Jerry Oltion (Capricon, 1987), Timothy Zahn (Philcon, 1987), Lois McMaster Bujold (Philcon, 1989), Michael F. Flynn (Con†Stellation, 199?), and Rick Shelley (Con†Stellation, 1995)
• Short contributions to fanzines including Lan's Lantern and Empire
• Assorted lectures, often at museums or universities, including invited papers at national meetings of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1982), American Association of Physics Teachers (1986), and National Space Society (Space Development Conference, 1989)

Hmmm . . . Let's start that again, shall we?

A long time ago, Joe was setting up his lonely keyboard at a Midwest convention. As he wandered around the room he heard a comment from a listener, who said with great vehemence, "Keyboards don't belong in a filk!"

And the rest is history . . .

Since Joe was well armed with years of learning and playing music, performing, and teaching small children, he was deeply qualified to prove that keyboards belong in filk.

While pursuing this goal, Joe has been blamed and praised for his many talents, including:

• An ability to (simultaneously) play keyboards, wear a horned helmet, and sing silly songs. This talent has manifested at every convention from Michigan to California and may even appear on the East coast. (Feel free to ask for a demonstration.)
• As part of the "Fish & Ships Players" he helped to write, produce, and perform musical parodies such as Wrathside Story, Spock Pacific and The Once and Future Jedhi. These productions will either a) Strike you silly forever, or b) Make you groan beyond belief.
• Having more interests than a hobby shop, including model railroading, filk, playing several instruments, producing and recording Andrea's CD, fly fishing, reading, songwriting, space exploration, and gaming.

Throughout his career Joe has produced two tapes and a prodigious songbook. His first tape, "The Synthetic Filker" covers a variety of topics from gaming to space flight. His second effort, "The Dream is Alive," premieres a collection of songs based on the space shuttle missions, including an instrumental suite based on the profile of a typical shuttle mission. And, needless to say, the tape cover displays a beautiful picture of his (then) young sun (uh, son) Robert.

Joe's most recent obsession (i.e., accomplishment) was released at ConChord a few years ago. "Sysex Dump!" is a songbook including both original and parody work, with 42 songs. Joe's wife can attest to the sweat, carpet wear, and computer time Joe invested in this detailed, well designed songbook. (And anyone who can master [or at least figure out] all the chords in this book should be worshipped...)

We run a major regional SF convention, Boskone, which is held in February of each year, but we also run two small "relaxacons" (basically weekend-long social events): Lexicon is usually held in midsummer and Codclave in mid- or late-winter (or vice versa). In 1997 we held a Lexiclave in Springfield, with the prime objective being dinner at the Student Prince restaurant. Other venues for our relaxacons have been Rhode Island, Boston, Cape Cod, New Hampshire, and New York.

NESFA Press publishes many critically praised books in and out of the genre. The NESFA's Choice series brings back outstanding works of SF that have been out of print and unavailable to most fans. See Tony Lewis' in-depth look at NESFA Press.

In 1985, NESFA purchased a building at 504 Medford Street in Somerville for use as a clubhouse. The building underwent extensive renovations and repairs (with most of the work done by our members). The building is now the home of our library, and is the site of our Business Meetings, Boskone planning meetings, and other work sessions. Fannish groups other than NESFA may use the clubhouse to hold their meetings. These groups have included Readercon, MCFI, and Massfilc.

We regularly hold two kinds of meetings (as well as various other kinds of gatherings). Business Meetings are where we conduct our business in a somewhat formal style. At these meetings, generally held monthly, we have reports from our officers and committees. We have serious committees such as our clubhouse committee, which is responsible for the management of the clubhouse, and, not so serious committees, such as NESFA displacement, which helps NESFA members move, and the fan production committee, which reports on the next generation of fans. Other Meetings are mainly social gatherings, with a few committee meetings thrown in. These are usually held monthly at members homes. There is also an informal gathering almost every Wednesday evening at the clubhouse for both work and socializing; the week after a Business or Other Meeting, this usually includes collating our newsletter (Instant Message).

We also periodically order our Cat Census, conducted by the Cat Goddess, to identify feline forms cohabiting with NESFA members. These may be past, present, or honorary cats, feline or otherwise. The results of our most recent census should be available at our annual meeting.

NESFA membership comes in several flavors. Subscribing memberships are open to anyone for dues of $16 per year. Subscribers get Instant Message, Proper Boskonian, and a discount on some NESFA publications. People who regularly attend meetings usually become eligible for General Membership. Regular Membership is based on recognized significant commitment to NESFA by contribution to the club and its projects, and gives the right to vote, and the responsibility to help run the club well.

Information about what happens and what is going to happen appears in the club newsletter, Instant Message, which is published twice in most months, after the Business Meeting and after the Other Meeting. All members receive copies, and sample copies are sent to people who express their interest and give us an address.

Proper Boskonian is the club fanzine, which publishes stories, cartoons, articles, reviews, etc., and is published approximately quarterly. Apa: NESFA, a collection of personal fanzines, published monthly, is collated at our Other Meetings, and is mainly distributed to contributors and those who help collate.

Honorary Members

The Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark) is presented annually by NESFA to some person, who in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late "Doc" Smith well-loved by those who knew him.

The Gaughan Award honors the memory of Jack Gaughan, a long-time friend of fandom and one of the finest SF artists of this century. Because Jack felt it was important to encourage and recognize new blood in the field, NESFA presents the Gaughan Award annually to an emerging artist (an artist who has become a professional within the past five years) chosen by a panel of judges (currently Bob Eggleton, David Cherry, and Ron Walotsky).

The 1966 supplements went out of stock and NESFA decided to recompile the supplement from scratch. It was printed with a Stephen Fabian cover. For the next few years the major book publishing activity of NESFA was the annual supplements. In August 1971, we collected the five annual supplements into one volume and published that. It was the first, and last, such accumulation. However, we did continue the one- (sometimes two-) year supplements into the early 1980s, having expanded the scope to cover original anthologies as well and the decreasing number of magazines.

But where is the index today? A study of the economics proved to us that there was no way to print an index covering a reasonable time and sell it for a reasonable price. None of the indexes we produced ever made money; at best they broke even. The current index project is to get the information on the Internet. Because data entry can be done incrementally, we have expanded the project to include all anthologies and single-author collections, as well as magazines; we now have 68,000 item entries (stories, articles, etc.). We will eventually get this on our website with a search engine. It will be available at no cost to anyone who wants to use it. We will also have an interface to allow people to submit corrections and additions.

Boskone Books: The next major addition to the line was the Boskone books. For the 1973 Boskone, Bill Desmond proposed that we print a small hard-cover limited, print-run souvenir book of the minor writings of the guest of honor--L. Sprague de Camp--to be called Scribblings. This was done by Bill Desmond and Bob Wiener, with lots of help from Don Grant. We have continued to produce guest of honor books for every Boskone since then (Boskone 9) with two exceptions. For Boskone 16 in 1979, GoH Frank Herbert did not want to do a book, so local artist Mike Symes produced a portfolio of 5 prints, and Boskone 17 in 1980 which was the same year as Noreascon II. Boskone books kept getting bigger and were including original material. The last 5¼" x 7¼" book was Jane Yolen's StoryTeller (Boskone 29, 1992). The next year we went to a full-sized 5½" x 8½" book for Joe Haldeman's Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds. This is the current size.

NESFA's Choice: In the late 1980s, there were a series of seminars at Boskones talking about neglected authors. These were authors who were very popular in their day but were no longer writing (often because they were dead). Their books were no longer available. We decided to do something about this--to print and keep in print these works. This project was spearheaded by Mark Olson, who edited a collection of James H. Schmitz's stories issued in May, 1991. This series was called "NESFA's Choice" and reflected the interests of a number of dedicated SF readers--us!

The next book in the series was a complete collection of the short science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man, edited by Jim Mann. This was introduced at the 1993 Worldcon in San Francisco and sold excellently. This was followed by Smith's novel Norstrilia in January of 1995. The next book, Ingathering, Zenna Henderson's People stories, got rave reviews when it came out in April 1995, edited by Mark and Priscilla Olson. This was also the first book we sold to the Science Fiction Book Club; that edition did extremely well, too. We were also able to sell book club rights for His Share of Glory: the Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, edited by Tim Szczesuil. Our edition of 1,500 was introduced at the 1997 Boskone; just before Worldcon, we had to go back for a second printing. We will probably add the L.A.con III book, The White Papers by James White (edited by Mark Olson and Bruce Pelz), to this list.

Trade Paperbacks: We investigated this method of producing books in order to keep down the price of books with a more limited audience that were worth printing. It also enabled us to reprint Boskone books that were limited-edition hardcovers when it was clear that the audience was greater than expected. Seven of these have been produced; two of them--Making Book (Teresa Nielsen Hayden) and The Silence of the Langford (David Langford) have been nominated for Non-Fiction Hugos.

Miscellany: In addition to indexes and Boskone books, we were printing filksong books, Worldcon program books and memory books, costume books, games, a 33 LP record, videotapes, and specialized bibliographies. We have produced a number of Boskone-like GoH books for Worldcons.

ISBNs: Around 1973 we started getting ISBNs for our books. Although I have no documentation, I am fairly certain that it was Don Eastlake who arranged for this. Our initial prefix was 0-915368, which allowed for 100 publications (different bindings need separate ISBNs). In 1996, we ran out of ISBNs and had to get a second prefix from Bowker; this one is 1-886778.

Notes:

• ^A The Stranger Club was the Fan Guest of Honor at Noreascon 3, the 47^th World Science Fiction Convention, in 1989.
• Guests were typically Guest of Honor, Official Artist, and Science Speaker.