Laurie Mann

(1957 –)

Laurie Mann, May 2019, in Valar morghulis t-shirt.

Laurie Mann (née Laurie Dickinson Trask) has been part of online fandom since 1988 so she isn't afraid to use a kill file....

She's been in SF fandom since 1974, and is a conrunning fan — she started working on cons in 1975. She's run cons of all sizes, from small Chococon, 1994, 14 people, Lexicon, 1985, about 50 people (con guide), chaired Smofcon 30, co-chaired Smofcon 25 and co-chaired Boskone 25. She worked on many Worldcons and all sizes of cons in between, most frequently Boskone and Confluence. She was the Program division head for Sasquan in 2015, a job she also held (with her husband, Jim Mann) for Millennium Philcon in 2001, and was an assistant Program division head for Renovation in 2011.

She was the first editor of Mad 3 Party and helped organize FanHistoriCon 8. She has been a member of NESFA, MCFI, FANAC, and PARSEC. On the "darker side," at Nolacon II, she was responsible for the tradition that the upcoming Worldcon host the Hugo Losers Party when that was about to die out.

One of the most interesting challenges was serving on the CoNZealand program team during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the team did not expect anything unusual for 2020 (see the short YouTube video Laurie made about plans for CoNZealand, shot at Smofcon 37) The CoNZealand program team, led by Jannie Shea and Jim Mann, with Terry Fong as another assistant, had to pivot to the first all-virtual Worldcon program in just a few months. They used the Grenadine program database. Henry Balen, its creator, had already started to think about how to manage a Worldcon schedule run over many different time zones simultaneously and added many new features to the software to make this possible. Luckily, the Zoom video conferencing system, which was free, turned out to be reasonably robust (cons had been experimenting with video conferencing for a few years before the pandemic and the free systems often did not work very well). Considering the problems of organizing the first virtual Worldcon program, CoNZealand's virtual program was attended by nearly 2,000 fans and pros from all over the world.

Laurie started the first SF award website in 1994: Awardweb, a listing of science fiction award nominees and winners. She created one of the first Websites for a convention, for the New Orleans World Fantasy Con in 1994. Laurie also ran Dead People Server, a database of celebrity death information from March 1997 to January 2017 (which later became a Dead People Server Facebook group).

She wrote for many APAs between 1975 and 1990 or so, including APA-NESFA, Apaloosa, APA-Q, Minneapa, and Scapa Flow. She was active online on AOL, GEnie, Usenet, Facebook, Twitter, Spoutible and created many pages for the World Wide Web.

Laurie & Jim Mann, NorthAmeriCon, 1979.
Photo by Gil Gaier.

She has been married to fellow fan Jim Mann since May 22, 1977; they have one fanspring, Leslie.

About a month after she moved to Pittsburgh to start college at Carnegie-Mellon University, she started writing an occasional article for the student paper "The Tartan." She wrote a piece on cons, "PghLANGE and Other Cons," that was published in October 1975.

Article on SF Cons for The Tartan, the CMU Student Newspaper, October 1975.

Errata Noted by the Author 46 Years Later...

• The paper editor changed the word "fanzine" to "fantasy" in one location.
• There were many more than 10 SF authors at Boskone in 1975.
• I did not go to a Star Trek con until something like 1990 or so; in 1976, I went to Boskone instead.
• The fact that I was taken aback by the idea of a 20,000 person media con in 1975 tells you why I never went to SDCC (San Diego Comic-Con), but have watched a few of its panels on YouTube over the years.

Laurie's college roommate in 1976–77 was Brenda W. Clough.

Various Writing:

• Monty Wells and the NESFA Clubhouse: “Everything I Learned About Buying and Renovating Buildings I Learned from Monty Wells.”
• Personal Website.

Books Edited:

• Glen Cook Sung in Blood
• William Tenn Dancing Naked Best Related Book Hugo Nominee

Fanzines and Apazines:

• The Mad 3 Party 1 Issue 1 (1984)
• Proper Boskonian (some issues: 27 (May 1990), 28 (February 1991), 29 (Spring 1992))
• Stratus SF SIG News
• Worldcon Schedules

Newsletters Edited:

• Mac II News 0
• Mac II News 1
• Mac II News 2
• Mac II News 3
• Mac II News 4
• Mac II News 5
• Mac II News 6
• Mac II News 7
• Mac II News 8
• Mac II News 9
• Mac II News 10
• Mac II News 11

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1988 -- Fellow of NESFA
• 1992 -- Rivercon XVII
• 2005 -- ArmadilloCon 27

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Person

1957—

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