Bubonicon
Bubonicon was first held in 1969 as a literary science fiction gathering in Albuquerque called NewMexiCon. Fans Roy Tackett and Robert E. Vardeman were two of the key figures in establishing and promoting Bubonicon in its early days.
From an Albuquerque SF Society dinner meeting of 20 fans in 1966, Bubonicon grew quickly with roughly fifty members in 1971 and over one hundred in 1973. The name Bubonicon, not officially adopted until 1971, is a nod to Albuquerque's long history of bubonic plague outbreaks, with its mascot, Perry Rhodent, part of this theme. In the 1990s, Bubonicon averaged three hundred members and in the 2000s grew to around 500 members.
In 1976, one of Bubonicon's longest running traditions, the Green Slime Awards, were started in order to honor the worst in Science Fiction from the previous year.
By then, the convention had grown from largely a literary gathering to one which now included science speakers, often from nearby Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico giving lectures on everything from physics to microbiology, and encompassed fiction and fantasy of all media.
Green Slime Awards[edit]
A tradition started in 1976 at Bubonicon 8, when Roy Tackett felt there was a need to recognize annual wretchedness in sf films, books and suchlike. Buckets of slime feature prominently.
The Slime Master (or Mistress) runs the award and counts the ballots:
| Years | Slime Master |
|---|---|
| 1976–1991 | Roy Tackett |
| 1992–1998 | Roy Buergi |
| 1999–2001 | Kathy K. Kelley |
| 2002 | Chad Lundgren |
| 2003–2010 | Kathy K. Kelley |
| 2011–present | Jessica L. Coyle |
| Convention | |
| 1969— |
| This is a convention page. Please extend it by adding information about the convention, including dates, GoHs, convention chairman, locale, sponsoring organization, external links to convention pages, awards given, the program, notable events, anecdotes, pictures, scans of publications, pictures of T-shirts, con reports, etc. |
