Science Fiction Club of London

The SFCoL was formed in 1960 by dissidents of the London Circle. It was an invitational club and its earliest meetings were held at Inchmery. Ella Parker ran club for a short while and held the meetings at her apartment, "The Penitentiary".

Club meetings then moved to Ethel Lindsay's apartment in Surrey. A series of open meetings begun in early 1966, and continued for about a year, including talks by prominent SF pros and fans including John Brunner's 'The Fiction in SF' later reprinted in New Worlds.

The club also published the Science Fiction Club of London Club Combozine that featured writings of the club's active members, and excerpts from other fanzines. The second was at 1961 Eastercon, LXICON.

The club staged the London Minicon in November, 1967 but disbanded in May, 1968. ATom said that after 10 years of seeing the same people, everyone knew what the others were going to say before they said it. They had planned to hold annual meetings to keep the club alive at least in name, but it turned out not to be a workable idea. The last club activity would have been the London Minicon 2 in November 1968 but that was cancelled due to lack of interest.

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Club

1960—1968

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. When there's a floreat (Fl.), this indicates the time or times for which we have found evidence that the club existed. This is probably not going to represent the club's full lifetime, so please update it if you can!