Kettering, UK
Kettering is a town in Northamptonshire, UK, about 75 miles north of London. It is the birthplace of the writer Keith Roberts and comics artist Frank Bellamy.
In fannish terms, it is notable for hosting four Eastercons in the 1950s:
A local group called variously the Kettering and District STF Club, the Kettering (Northants) SF Society, the Kettering and District Astronautical Society and later the Kettering Astronautics Society existed from 1952. Six Kettering fans were listed as members of the 1954 Supermancon where the 1955 convention had been unilaterally allocated to the London Circle by Ted Tubb. Denny Cowen of the Kettering group later volunteered to stage it in his hometown and he was the secretary of the resulting Cytricon in 1955.
However, seemingly none of the local fans attended any of the Cytricons after the first. (Cytricon III was omitted from the canonical Eastercon list produced in 1971 where Cytricon IV was renumbered as III. Cytricon III was only restored thanks to the researches of Rob Hansen in 1989.)
In 2008, Peter Weston staged the largely invitational Cytricon V to mark the 50th anniversary of Cytricon IV. In the best tradition, nobody from Kettering attended that either.
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