Just what do DASFA members read? DASFA member Angela found out at the Christmas party in December 2011. She asked each of us to give the name of a book or series, and it could either be an all-time favorite or whatever we're reading now. This is her list, sorted by date published. If a story was cited, the link is to a collection containing it.

According to John Scalzi, "Connie Willis has been given the 2011 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America", which he should know because he's currently the president!

There's some rarified company that Connie Willis is joining, which I could list but wikipedia happily lists them all there. Much congratulations to Connie Willis!

Posted by Paul on the DASFA Yahoo Group. Awesome cover of Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror by Moby, Stephin Merritt, Amanda Palmer & Neil Gaiman.

He also posted this video, Doing the Time Warp, Star Trek style. It includes scenes from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and a couple of the movies. (What, no animated series?) Like all fan videos, it has scenes from the Star Trek TOS episode "Plato's Stepchildren". I wouldn't recognize it otherwise.

Ed Bryant, Jr., a Colorado writer and all around great man, has found himself in a bit of a financial predicament brought about by, among other things, medical costs. The "Friends of Ed" organization has decided to showcase a two-pronged auction event to help raise funds for Ed's immediate needs.

A live auction will take place on October 23, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency in the Denver Tech Center during MileHiCon 43. Additionally, an online auction through Ebay will take place in the week prior to MileHiCon 43, ending on both Saturday and Sunday, October 22 and 23, 2011.

TheWildwriters.com is now up! This site is a group effort by area writers in several fields, including science fiction and fantasy. There are also children's books, from picture books throughtweens, YA, and nonfiction. Ebooks are available through Smashwords; print copies of many titles are also available.

There's also the Whiny Writer video. So far she's just trying to come up with a perfect opening line...

(Sent in by Jane Bigelow)

Monthly meetings and a monthly fanzine-style newsletter have always been central to the identity of DASFA. The table below lists the programs for all of the DASFA meetings from March 2009 to the present. We bring in guest speakers for most of the meetings, with the exceptions of the summer picnic and the Christmas party.

The list also includes feature articles included in the newsletter ("DASFAx") each month. Besides the articles, DASFAx contains artwork, club news, and a schedule of local literary events. It is currently emailed to members in PDF format.

This month, John Stith is our guest. He has written a number of novels in the hard-science vein, including Redshift Rendezvous (Nebula Award nominee), Manhattan Transfer (Hugo Award Honorable Mention), Reunion on Neverend, and Reckoning Infinity (on Science Fiction Chronicle's Best Science Fiction Novels list for its publication year, on the Nebula Award preliminary ballot), Scapescope, Memory Blank, Death Tolls, and Deep Quarry.

Last week I saw a story in the Denver Post about acoustic testing of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle at Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Canyon facility.  The purpose of acoustic testing is to see if a spacecraft can survive the vibrations that occur during takeoff by blasting it with 150 decibels of sound for an extended period of time.

Work on the list of science fiction and fantasy settings in Colorado will continue at MileHiCon.

This is the list of sites that are on the DASFA map, last updated 8/14/2011.  (The map is still in it's temporary location http://www.aupsd.com/Map_of_SciFi_Fantasy_Settings_near_Denver).