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Minicon 33

The Vision: [click through to see the list of vision statements that used to appear randomly here]

Minicon is an annual gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans. The convention is held each year over Easter weekend, and for the last decade the main venue has been the Radisson South Hotel in Bloomington, MN.

Minicon is sponsored by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, Inc. (Minn-StF). It's one of the largest fan-run conventions in the U.S.; in 1996 and 1997 we had over 3500 members (but not in 1998).

Historical note [added in 2011]: To make a very long and complicated story short, Minicon essentially split into three conventions after Minicon 33, those conventions calling themselves Minicon 34, MarsCon '99, and CONvergence 1999 (1, 2). The latter two were (and their descendants are, as of 2011) run by new different non-profit organizations that split from Minn-stf.

Latest News

2017

Here's the t-shirt, front and back. It was available in several colors, at least green, cream, blue and brown.

And there was another t-shirt whose front looks like this, and whose back is blank:

And here is a volunteer t-shirt. This is the front, and the back is blank:

17-Mar-2017

Here, let me make a link to the programming page where you can see, amoung other things, the call for the reprise of Midwest Side Story, first presented at Minicon 12.

Here's the Midwest Side Story program. (It is a straight scan of the unstapled pages, so you will need to reorder it in your mind into a booklet.) Copies of the fake crudzine IDEA #1 that figures in the plot were distributed to audience members. You can see this publication on the Minicon 12 page. It's not clear at the moment whether these were leftover copies from Minicon 12 or if it was reproduced for Minicon 33.

24-May-2016

We've scanned some more documents associated with Minicon 33.

• Here is "Welcome to our invitation", which was distributed as low-quality photocopies at Minicon 32 and had nice copies mailed out a month later: Front, Back.
• Here is Progress Report 1, also available as individual page images: Cover, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13.
• Here is Progress Report 2, also available as individual page images: Cover, 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21.

Progress Report 2 was sent out after Feb 1, with a registration deadline of March 1, so there were almost certainly only two PRs, despite "Welcome to our invitation" announcing that there would be three.

20-January-2010

Here are some photos & audio from Minicon 33's Opening Ceremonies at Brian Westley's site. (I just moved this link here from the main Minicon page; it's been there for a while.)

19-April-98

The Minicon 33 postmortem will be held on Sunday, 26-April-1998, starting at 2pm, at the Radisson South hotel (we figure most of you know where that is by now).

The souvenir book and the pocket program are now available in pdf form, largely for historical interest.

[Added 2010-Jan-17] Here's a PDF version of the souvenir book that is a more faithful reproduction of how the paper book actually looks than the above version. Here are page images of the same: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|32.

With the exception of the cover art and advertisements, The Minicon 33 Program Book by The Minnesota Science Fiction Society is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. This overrides the original copyright notice in the document. Cover art is © Derrick Dasenbrock and reproduced here by permission. Advertisements remain property of the advertisers.

12-April-98

Minicon 33 is OVER. You can all GO HOME now.

6-April-98

the programming schedule has been updated to draft 5.

A link to a map showing the location of the Radisson has been added to the bottom of the hotel page.

5-April-98

4-April-98

2-Apr-98

31-Mar-98

15-Mar-98

1-Mar-1998

When

Minicon has invited a number of people to be guests of honor at Minicon 33. Those who have accepted so far, in order of their acceptance:

• Fan Guest of Honor: Dave Langford. From his web page: "Who the hell is David Langford anyway? A little-known British freelance writer living in Reading, England, who has won inexplicably many science fiction awards and publishes an sf newsletter called Ansible."
  [bibliography]
• Publishing Guest of Honor: Gardner Dozois. Editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, nominee for the 1997 Best Editor Hugo (and winner in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1996), and editor of 14 years (so far) of The Year's Best Science Fiction, and winner of two Nebulas. [bibliography]
• Toastmaster: John M. Ford. He has won the Rhysling Award for SF poetry, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel AND Best Short Story (this last for a long poem), the Philip K. Dick award, and has twice been a finalist for the Nebula award. He's also done game design, comics, Star Trek novels, and of course Ask Dr. Mike. [bibliography]

Important Dates

Registration rates increased on 30-Apr-97, 27-Nov-97, and 1-Mar-98. Those are all in the past, okay? Too late to register at the pre-registration rates now.

Room request forms must be postmarked by 27-Nov-97 for priority consideration.

Registration

The final rate increase was March 1. Any registrations not postmarked by March 1 cost $70. You can mail this in or pay it at-the-door. More info.

Hotel

We're using the same three hotels as in recent years. Most events take place in the Radisson South, some in the Hotel Sofitel, and many people are staying at the Holiday Inn Airport #2.

Minicon is again handling reservations. Rates, forms, procedures, and further information are in the hotel pages.

Gaming

Gaming has an off-site web page, here.

Childcare

Childcare does need to hear from you if you're going to be needing their services at Minicon 33. Professional care givers will be providing most of the care, but there's room for some volunteers, especially at swimming time, too. Please email .

Who Are We?

Running Minicon

A lot of work goes into making Minicon happen, and it's essentially all done by volunteers. The executive committee buys memberships to attend. The department heads buy memberships to attend. And we spend from dozens to many hundreds of hours in the 18 months before the convention working to make it happen. Then, at Minicon, hundreds more (we documented over 500 people volunteering formally at Minicon 32, and many people do important work that isn't formally logged) people show up from around the city, the state, the midwest, and in fact throughout the US and Canada, and volunteer their time to put in the thousands of hours (the volunteers department logged over 6000 hours of work, teamsters more than 2000, and again a lot of work is not logged at all) more work needed at the convention to make it all happen.

Want to know more about how Minicon happens? Check this out.

US Mail

Voicemail

E-mail

E-mail autoresponder

Mailing List

The list is also available in a digest version, the administrative address is minicon-d-request@mnstf.org.

Web

The official Minicon 33 page is at http://www.mnstf.org/minicon33.