Minicon 11
Minicon 11 was held 16–18 April 1976 at the Leamington Hotel (Minneapolis). The executive committee was Don Blyly, Dave Wixon, Margie Lessinger and Jan Appelbaum. It had a membership of about 500. The guests of honor were Edmond Hamilton (pro), Leigh Brackett (pro), and Leigh Couch and Norb Couch (fans). Jackie Franke and Rusty Hevelin were the toastmasters.
Membership
For a long time we listed the membership as "about 500", based on not much. Perhaps it was from Dave Romm's recollection that sometime around Minicon 15, this was quoted as the total at a concom meeting. That was the source of the "about 500" for Minicon 12, anyway.
More recently, we found in the archives a piece of paper with scrawled on it:
MC11 325 PRE 200 AT DOOR — 40 1-DAY ATTENDING 229 — NO INCL. COMMITTEE 56 BANQ
These are clearly also estimates, but at least in written form and probably written closer to Minicon 11. Probably we can say that the total membership was about 525. The archivist is not sure what to make of the "attending" figures. That's way too low for a warm body count. Maybe that's out of the pre-registered members, and the first number is exclusive of people who did the banquet?
Committee
Sue Ryan and Cat Ocel: Registration Richard Tatge: Art Show Gerry Wassenaar: Hucksters Jerry Stearns and Caryl Bucklin: Party Supplies Ken Hoyme and Mark Digre: Films Fred Haskell: Official Happy Deadwood Emeritus Karen Hennebry: Banquet Scott Imes: Video-taping, equipment procurement Joel Lessinger: Auctioneer Benjy Lessinger, John Stanley: Projectionists Ken Fletcher, Linda Lounsbury, Carol Anndy, David Emerson, Denny Lien
The Mimeo Man
The fannish musical The Mimeo Man (a parody of The Music Man) was performed at Minicon 11. Here's an audio recording. A section or two are missing because the tape recorder was plugged into the lights, so when the lights turned off, so did it.
The production was also filmed, but as of 2022, we have not tracked down the video again.
The audio recording of the performance of The Mimeo Man at Minicon 11 is
by Ellen Kufeld and
is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
License. (Unless it turns out to have been published before 1978,
in which case it is in the public domain, but as far as we know it was
first published on this webpage.)
Copied from elsewhere on the web: "September 28 1974-The Mimeo Man [Musical] This is a version of The Music Man that takes place July 1912 in an alternate universe where SF became the mainstream of American Literature. Prof. Abie Dick comes to Nova City in the State of Gafia to sell reproduction supplies, priming the pump by promising the children that they will produce Hugo award-winning apazines. He gets around the mayor's wife and her clique by converting them into a science fiction convention committee (NoCon). Just when things seem worst, true love wins out. Lyrics by: Debbie Notkin, Eli Cohen, Moshe Feder; music by Meredith Willson."
DD-B has some pictures from the production.
Program Book
Here's a PDF of the program book and a text-only transcription. The page numbering in this book is wonky. The PDF and scans here show the actual order that the book was assembled.
Toggle display of more details
Scans are available here in a range of qualities and file sizes. Most people want the middle column, in which the files have been substantially cleaned up but are still high resolution. The right column has the scans reduced to monochrome and to the smallest legible size.
| Raw scans (~16 MB) |
Cleaned up (~500 kB) |
Smallest files (~24 kB) |
|---|---|---|
| Front cover | Front cover | Front cover |
| 2–3 | 2–3 | 2–3 |
| 4–5 | 4–5 | 4–5 |
| 8–9 | 8–9 | 8–9 |
| 10–11 | 10–11 | 10–11 |
| 11–12 | 11–12 | 11–12 |
| 14–15 | 14–15 | 14–15 |
| 16–17 | 16–17 | 16–17 |
| 18–19 | 18–19 | 18–19 |
| 20–21 | 20–21 | 20–21 |
| 22–23 | 22–23 | 22–23 |
| 26–27 | 26–27 | 26–27 |
| 30–31 | 30–31 | 30–31 |
| Back cover | Back cover | Back cover |
Except as noted below, portions of the Minicon 11 Program Book made available here are by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society or Ken Fletcher and
are licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
License.
Content by Bob Tucker may be distributed for fannish/non-commercial purposes. Art by Jim Odbert is © nybor mystical art 2009 and reproduced here by permission. Text by Jack Williamson is © Jack Williamson and reproduced here by permission of his estate. Art by Reed Waller is © Reed Waller and reproduction here by permission. Art by Dan Steffan is © Dan Steffan and reproduction here by permission. Advertisements remain property of the advertisers.
This notice overrides copyright notices in the original document, if any.
T-shirt
Minicon 11 was the first Minicon to have a t-shirt. Here are photos of that shirt, front and back respectively. Or these are possibly photos of the Minicon 16 reprint of the Minicon 11 shirt. It's hard to say.
Notice that the art is marked ©1977, a year after Minicon 11. This seems to suggest, maybe, that these are the reprints and the copyright date was added (with an off-by-one error) as part of the Minicon 16 reprint.
Badge, registration card
Photos
Minicon 11 photos by David Dyer-Bennet.