Junior Fanatics
The Junior Fanatics was a club conceived by Ken Potter and Dave Wood of Lancaster in the aftermath of the 1951 NECON which both attended, having already published some fanzines even though just teenagers. Wood summarised its emergence in George F. Clements's Void (November 1952).
Wood and Potter had the idea for 'a Junior Society' as a purely local club in August 1951 (per Then, the two founded a 'Junior Society of SF Readers' at Wood's fifteenth birthday celebration), but it 'fell through', not surprisingly. Potter then decided 'to resurrect the Junior Society' in early 1952, mentioning it when he sent a short story to Ken Slater's Operation Fantast:
When Ken's short appeared in O.F. for it was accepted, there also was an ad for the Junior S.F. Society, which was then known as the British Teenage Fantasy and Science Fiction Society (phew ! )
There seems no trace of that story in Operation Fantast or Operation Fantast Newsletter issues available online as of 2025. The Operation Fantast Handbook 1952 (February or soon after) mentioned among British clubs 'The JUNIOR S-F SOCIETY. For 'teen agers'' with Potter's address, but this simple inconspicuous listing would likely not have elicited much of a response. It is also possible (though strange, so soon after) that Wood misremembered some details from Potter's account: 'Kenneth Potter' debuted with a three-page story only in Nebula Science Fiction 8, April 1954… where Slater just started to contribute reviews, and his Handbook was mentioned. And the magazine's very first issue included a letter from Potter (not mentioning submitting any story), but that appeared in October 1952, was signed 'Secy. Junior Fanatics', and was followed by a half-page ad for the 'new fanzine run by the Junior Fanatics'.[1] So there must have been some earlier promotion elsewhere.
After more members joined, it was decided through a round-robin letter to abandon the cumbersome if descriptive name in favour of Junior Fanatics Science Fiction Society. The group also resolved to issue a clubzine to be called Peri and Tony Cooper was appointed editor as 'he offered to print a club mag. on a rota-printer' to which his father had access.
There were three issues of a one-page newsletter (possibly carbonzine) called Periscope in 1952/3. Cooper gafiated and stopped communicating almost immediately, causing complications and complaints about Peri, and its first issue appeared only in January 1953 edited by Potter and Wood.
Wood and Potter went on to attend the 1952 London SF Con. The con report 'by W. Peter Campbell' in Operation Fantast #13 noted
Representatives of various fan-clubs gave talks on local affairs. […] Liveliest speaker was Ken Potter, who told of the rise of the Junior Fanatics.
Several Junior Fanatics also attended the 1953 Coroncon, where they had planned to stage a fannish play. The group abandoned the idea after the loss of Tony Cooper, the leading man, however the committee failed to delete it from the programme and insisted they go ahead. Walt Willis described it in Hyphen #4:
After this came the play by the Junior Fanatics, the Committee evidently having been unable to get something better after all. The production suffered somewhat from under-rehearsal, the hero living in Lancaster and the heroine in Bournemouth and neither having very strong voices, and it rather lacked the polish and brilliance we have all come to associate with Seventh Fandom. There were also some slight difficulties at first due to them having forgotten their own lines, but with a fine spirit of co-operation they soon overcame this by reading each other's.
He also said that 'these younger fans keep very much together and don't mix with us old has-BNFs', an opinion challenged by Potter in a LoC to Hyphen #5 (among other, much more embarrassingly puerile verbiage):
If liaison did not take place between the Young Blood and the anemic, it was your fault.
Clearly, this was the Fanatics' swan song. A third and final issue of Peri appeared after a year's hiatus in April 1954, styled 'the former official organ' of the JFSFS'. The editorial suggested that the group dissolved rather earlier:
When we folded the Junior Fanatics, because that mob of youngfen was getting nowhere fast that left Pete Taylor printing PERI, and Dave Wood and Ken Potter editing, untramelled by any society committments. So we were going on to greater things.
The Galilean Science Fiction Society appeared in early 1952 with a similar remit and trans-Atlantic intentions, founded independently by Shirley Marriott who soon became the only female member of the Junior Fanatics. The Galileans were even less successful.
In 1960, the new BSFA launched Young Science Fiction Reading Group for under-21s, but it was soon abandoned as pointless.
Members[edit]
The membership roster appeared in Periscope #2 (October 1952). It said there were 16 members with a further half-a-dozen 'considering it'. However, only 14 names were listed, in an order that seems partly chronologic and partly random (the list below is alphabetic). Additionally, Paul Sowerby was mentioned as 'a prospective member'. Some of the names were also given by Wood in the Void from roughly the same time, where he claimed 15 members and 'We have now opened the Society to American fen'. There are no news of later developments.
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- Saturday 23rd May of Coroncon at Fiawol.co.uk, with several photos of the Junior Fanatics at a poster promoting Peri
- ↑ Pages 120–1. In an amusing oversight, the ad lacked any contact address, which was provided in another for the New Lands SF Club.
- ↑ Listed as 'Crewdsown' but that's clearly a typo; other references including that in Peri #1 give Crewdson.
| Club | 1952—1953 |
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