February 2012 DASFA Director-y

For the February meeting, we will have a panel of three authors, moderated by Mario Acevedo. The subject is “Salty Language is In Effect: The Outré in Genre Fiction.” On the panel will be Jesse Bullington (The Enterprise of Death), Jason Heller (Taft 2012) and Stephen Graham Jones (Zombie Bake-Off and MileHiCon 44 Toastmaster). Don’t miss it!

The January Dead Dog at Alastair’s was fun and more people showed up than last time. Lots of conversation, but no games. At Jane and Bob’s Alternate, there was a small but intrepid turnout due to the snow. Good food, a vigorous but not acrimonious discussion of one of those topics they say not to discuss at parties, and then we played Apples to Apples. Thanks to Alastair, Jane and Bob for hosting!

I saw several DASFAns at Cosine the end of January … it was a somewhat larger con than usual, I expect because of Charles Stross. (I know that’s why Dave wanted to go this year.) I was able to attend programming and not worry about how things were going—a con luxury for me—and hang out with folks.

Coming up in March, Karval Kon 35 and AnomalyCon 2 (March 23-25; http://anomalycon.com)


As many of you have heard, Judith Brownlee passed away recently.

Basically a founding member of DASFA (I believe she showed up at the second meeting), Judith was instrumental in the early days of the club, serving both as director and editor at various times, as well as hosting numerous parties.
She also chaired (or co-chaired with Ted Peak) MileHiCon years 3 through 8 as we were getting established. Judith was also a founding member of the local SCA Barony and the first Baroness. The last few years she came to MileHiCon as a dealer, selling some of the accumulated SF/F/H books and memorabilia from her years as a fan. I attended her memorial on Sunday. There were around 130 people there, from her various circles: science fiction, the SCA, pagan. A number of those there were from the early days of DASFA and the barony … as one friend observed, “Looking around, you can tell we’re all getting older.” Well, yes, when you’ve known someone for over 40 years (as I had known Judith) everyone is older. I will miss her. Blessed be.

Yours in fandom,
Rose