Armchair Speculators of DePaul University
A club at DePaul University in Chicago which published the clubzine Effen Essef. Also known as the DePaul University Society of Science Fiction Freaks and Armchair Speculators.
The club was formed in the early 1970's by Jeff Duntemann and others, and was joined by Chip Bestler, Steve Johnson, and Phil Foglio, among others, soon thereafter. The fanzine Effen Essef was published by the club, comprised of three issues.
One of the club's activities was the rehabilitation of the DePaul University observatory, a project largely done without faculty supervision or even permission. The telescope had been used in 1910 for the Chicago area's first observation of the return of Halley's Comet by a faculty member, and had sat largely unused until refurbished in the 1960's. By the mid 1970's, the telescope had fallen once again into disrepair. The members of the science fiction club arranged for or performed the cleaning and restoration of the telescope, the observatory offices, and the dome. The completion of the project was celebrated by a party advertised with a poster of a dragon eating the moon, drawn by Phil Foglio.
Members of the club were very active in helping organize WindyCon, particularly WindyCon 2, where Steve Johnson arranged for teletype terminals at the hotel to be connected to DePaul's timesharing service so that the interactive Star Trek game could be played by convention attendees.
Members of the club were also regular attendees at the Chicago-area Thursday meetings.
| 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! |
