Leif Andersson
(November 4, 1943 – May 4, 1979)
Leif Erland Andersson, a Swedish fan, was fascinated by science fiction and by space. By age 10, he was producing his own "fanzine", without knowing that such things existed: he wrote and drew stories about space and stapled them together into a small magazine he called "Galaxy." At 16, in 1959, he won the Swedish version of the TV show "The 64,000 Dollar Question" (although the Swedish one was cheapskate; winners received SEK10,000, at the time the equivalent of around US$2,000 – but then again, at the time that was an okay yearly income in Sweden).
In the early 1960s, he formed an sf club in his hometown of Falkenberg, and with fan friend Mikael Bahner began publishing Giornale del Proxima, which had five issues. As an astronomy student at Lund University, he was one of the founders of the club Lunds Fantasy Fan Förening, usually shortened as LF3; he chaired Malcon II, the Swedish 1966 sf convention, one day of which was held in Malmoe, the other day in Lund (the two cities are not more than 11 miles apart). He remained a driving force in the Lund club LF3 until leaving to complete his doctoral studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, then went to work at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1973, he married fellow fan Gloria Ptacek, and together they both returned to visit fans in Sweden and participated in US fandom. He died from cancer at 35; the International Astronomical Union in 1985 named a crater on the moon for him, and in 2000, the asteroid project Spacewatch named asteroid 9223 Leifandersson for him.
| Person | 1943—1979 |
| This is a biography page. Please extend it by adding more information about the person, such as fanzines and apazines published, awards, clubs, conventions worked on, GoHships, impact on fandom, external links, anecdotes, etc. See Standards for People and The Naming of Names. |
