Little Men

The Elves', Gnomes' and Little Men's Science Fiction, Chowder, and Marching Society, San Francisco Bay area fan club. The name was inspired by the "Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men's Chowder and Marching Society" from the comic strip "Barnaby."

Little Mens was founded in either 1948 or 1949; the traditional date in the club was 1948 but no documented activity has been found earlier than 1949. Meetings (initially every Friday night) and other activity was always centered in Berkeley. In the early days the club published the Rhodomagnetic Digest; the club, or members of the club, put on the 1954 SFCon, a combined Worldcon and Westercon. In the 60s, several club members (Ben Stark, Bill Donoho and Alva Rogers) were behind the Pacificon II and Baycon, the 1964 and 1968 Worldcons in the Bay Area.

By the 1960s the club ceased to have an associated fanzine, but meetings continued, usually at Ben Stark's house. Announcements were sent out by Alva Rogers in the form of mimeoed postcards. Later, meetings were usually held at George and Andrea Mitchell's house, followed by an aftermeeting at Brennan's restaurant. Around 1977 meetings began to be held in The Other Change of Hobbit bookstore, and Dave Nee began publishing meeting announcements as The Rhodomagnetic Bulletin, in tribute to the original Digest. During the '60s and '70s the club attracted members from much of the Bay Area, and the when PenSFA was founded in 1968 its meeting schedule was designed to never compete with Little Men's. In the 1980s meetings became infrequent and eventually stopped.

Members have included: Karen Anderson, Poul Anderson, Ruth Berman, Anthony Boucher, David Bratman, Anne Braude, David Clark, Esther Cole, Lester Cole, Lloyd Eaton, Peter Graham, Al haLevy, Guy Lillian, Ed Meskys, D. B. Moore, Debbie Notkin, Diana Paxson, Thomas Quinn, Alva Rogers, Greg Shaw, Tom Whitmore.

The club ran a noted publicity campaign. In 1951, it announced a plan to claim a small triangular area of the Moon in the Mare Tranqillatis. Don Fabun and Les Cole proposed to file the claim with the UN, and it received widespread coverage in the newspapers.

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Club

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!