Mark and Priscilla Olson are The Compleat Fans - or at any rate, in this imperfect world, as close to compleat as we're going to get.
They're print-SF fans. Both of them have been involved with NESFA Press's admirable efforts to put neglected great SF writers back into print. Mark edited their James Schmitz volume, and co-edited volumes of work by Diana Wynne Jones, Hal Clement, and James White. Mark and Priscilla together did the Zenna Henderson volume. And Priscilla, on her own, edited the Charles Harness collection.
They're club fans, pillars of the New England Science Fiction Association. Mark has served as President and Treasurer of that group; Priscilla has been Vice-President. Mark ran Boskone, NESFA's Boston-area con, in 1986; Priscilla was chair in 1992, and has run Programming any number of times - so much so that Boskone regulars tend to go to her with programming questions even when she's not running it!
Their resume as con fans and conrunners is far too long to detail. Mark is a member of that small group of fans who have survived chairing the World Science Fiction Convention - in his case, in 1989. Priscilla co-ran Programming at the 1989 Worldcon and was an assistant division head for Programming in 1992 in Orlando. They jointly ran the newsletter for the 1996 Worldcon in Los Angeles.
And Priscilla is a media fan: she's been a Trek fan since the beginning, and (according to Mark) financed her move to Boston by selling her collection of "filthy Trek zines." ("In what sense do you say "filthy"?" this reporter asked Mark. "Yes," he replied.) Priscilla is also, notoriously, an unabashed Legion of Super-Heroes fan, and the standard condition for her running programming for any con is that she be allowed to organize a Legion panel! Needless to say, in her honor we'll be organizing a Legion panel at Minicon 34.
What not so many people know about Mark is that he grew up in Red Wing, Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, and that his first convention was, yes, Minicon 1. He also attended the second Minicon. Aside from his well-known fannish pursuits, he's interested in history and the physical sciences, particularly astronomy. Inaccurately, but in a way that can only be described as Minnesotan, he calls himself "mostly Norwegian and dull and proud of it."
Priscilla was born in Queens and grew up on Long Island, and met Mark when he was a TA at SUNY/Binghamton and she was taking his courses. She once worked at the Bronx Zoo. Today, while Mark works in computers ("like everyone else in the world"), Priscilla teaches sixth grade at a Jewish parochial school, collects community cookbooks, and runs The Secret Garden, a fannish APA devoted to horticultural pursuits.
They're approachable, easygoing, smart people with a sense of humor about themselves, who routinely do tons of the kind of work that holds fandom together. We're honored to have them coming to Minicon 34 and we hope you'll take the time to meet them.
