Which Was the First Club?

Which was the First Club? This turns out to be a harder question even than Which Was the First SF Convention?!

First, it depends on what you mean by "club", since the earliest things which are usually called SF clubs were science clubs whose members also liked SF. Do they count? If the bulk of the club's activity was sf-related, they would seem to be legitimate contenders for the title, but from when? It seems likely that when they were founded, they were founded as science clubs and over time sf took up a larger fraction of their attention. If so, do you count them as sf clubs from their foundation (clearly wrong) or from the point where sf became a majority interest (unknowable)? It's also worth remembering that in those Gernsbackian days, even a club which considered itself to be an sf club, would still discuss science a lot.

Secondly, the evidence is very unreliable since everyone involved is now dead and fanzines had not yet been invented, so there's little or no contemporary documentation available.

Probably the main controversy is the Scienceers vs. the Eastbay Club.

The claim of the Eastbay Club is based on claims by its founder, Aubrey MacDermott who holds, essentially, that his club was ignored by the New York-centric Fan History Establishment. This is not implausible, but it remains true that the evidence is primarily the testimony of an interested party. (Clifton Amsbury's daughter remembers her father implying that the club first met in or before mid-1929.) Additionally, MacDermott is accused by some of "remembering" new facts when needed to retain his claim to primacy. (See letter from Fred Patten in File 770 15, p. 23.)

Between the vagueness of the question and the unreliability of the data, it seems unlikely we'll be able to resolve this, though the Scienceers seem to have the strongest claim.

Very Early Clubs:

Club	Date	Notes
SCC/ISA	early Spring, 1928	Discounted by most fanhistorians as being mostly a science club.
Eastbay Club	April 1928	The supporting evidence is less strong than we'd like.
Scienceers	December 11, 1929	The Scienceers has long been held to be the first club.
Boys' Scientifiction Club	1930	Supposedly formed by Ackerman because he couldn't travel to the Eastbay Club, but, if so, it doesn't seem to have been very large or very active. Since his co-founder was in Missouri, it may have been strictly correspondence. Also, the name may have been Boys' Science Club.
Ilford Science Literary Circle	October 27, 1930	The first club in the UK

There may also have been very early clubs in Chicago, Boston and Georgia.

• More discussion in File 770.
• “The Tale of Aubrey McDermott”: Video by First Fandom Experience on their research into McDermott’s claims.

See also:

• Club
• Science Fiction League
• What Was the First Fanzine?
• Which Was the First SF Convention?

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Fanhistory

1928—1930

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