Tom Seidman

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Tom Seidman was one of the founders of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club in 1950 and its second president. In a loc to G² 10 (March 1962), John Boardman wrote:

Tom Seidman, George D'Asaro and I sent out a call for a meeting, and were answered by a large crowd which proceeded to elect officers, perform a ritual exorcism upon Shaver’s dero-tero cult, and put out a fanzine. I didn’t stay with the club for very long, as I was overawed by the superior fannish background of most of the people who showed up for the meeting.

Ray Nelson didn’t show up at UC until the 1951-2 academic year. He was then married to Perdita Lilly, his first wife. He, Tom Seidman, Mike Girsdansky, Seymour Nelson and I obtained some brief notoriety in that year as the result of a planned Black Mass. (Seymour is no relation to Ray; his version of the common surname was originally Katznelson;) We had planned to conduct a Black Mass at a Halloween party in 1951, with Ray serving as the high priest and Perdita as the altar. However, the story got out. A Catholic student heard about the proposed diabolism, and carried to the university’s chaplain a story that we planned to steal communion elements. The chaplain told Cardinal Strich, the Cardinal told the university’s president, and the principals in the escapade were confined to quarters.

Seidman belonged to The Cult.

In the 1960s, he lived in Detroit.

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