Colorado Fantasy Society
After Chicon in 1940, Olon F. Wiggins and several other fans formed the Colorado Fantasy Society, aka the CFS, to sponsor the Denvention for which it published the CFS Review. For the convention, Wiggins was director, Lew Martin was secretary-treasurer, and Roy Hunt was artist and editor. Other members included Robert Peterson, and Chuck Hansen. Meetings were irregular, and the club was active until about the end of 1941 when the United States entered World War II and many of the fans enlisted in the military.
The club revived after the war, and started holding meetings at members' homes; it kept going in this way through the ’50s and into the ’60s. Members during this time included Chuck Friedenthal, Stan Mullen, Bob Johnson, Paul O'Connor, Charles Schneeman, Ellis Mills, Emile Greenleaf, and Norm Metcalf. Robert A. Heinlein, who lived farther south in Colorado Springs at the time, also associated with the club; Mullen lived in Heinlein's house while Heinlein was on a trip around the world. The Alchemist was effectively its clubzine.
When D. B. Thompson visited Denver after the War, he judged the CFS to be one of the most pleasant clubs he'd known. (Fandom was still very young and feuding was almost a way of life in many places. The CFS seems to have been quite feud-free.)
In the mid-’60s, the club gained an important new member named Camille Cazadessus (also known as “Caz”) whose interests were in small press book publishing and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Caz was an influence on the CFS, but after some differences of opinion with other club members, was also mostly responsible for the creation of a new Denver-area fan club, the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, (DASFA).
See “Ah, Wilderness: Forty Years of Colorado Fandom” for more.
| From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944 |
| The publicity organization for the Denvention. |
| Club | 1940— |
| This is a club page. Please extend it by adding information about when and where the club met, when and by whom it was founded, how long it was active, notable accomplishments, well-known members, clubzines, any conventions it ran, external links to the club's website, other club pages, etc.
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