Not-Anokon 8

Not-Anokon 8 was a Minnstf fallcon, held 5–7 September 1986 at the Bandana Square hotel (not yet a Best Western, I think?). Bob Shaw was the guest of honor. We're not sure who chaired it, but it wasn't Beth Friedman and Gin Nelson, Beth says. The August 1986 Einblatt implies that it was Joyce Scrivner.

Here is a scan of the confirmation card (the back is blank). And here is a text rendering of the same.

This USENET post (found here) gives the following:

   NOT-ANOKON 8.  Sunwood Inn, Bandana Squeare, St. Paul, MN (Queen (queen-size
   murphy bed) $39 sngl/$44 dbl, King (king-size bed) $45 sngl/$50 dbl, Dbl-dbl
   $42 sngl/$47 dbl, Exec. dbl $47 sngl/$52 dbl, Queen suite $67, King suite 
   $72).  GoH: Bob Shaw.  Other guests: TAFF winners. Memb: Supporting $6 ($4 
   to convert at the door); Attending $10 thru 23 Aug 86, at the door TBA.  
   Info: Not-Anokon, P.O. Box 7620, Minneapolis, MN  55407.

Badge

Here are three Not-Anokon badges that don't say what year they are. There have been four Not-Anokons and we have badges for 2 and '85, which don't look like these, so these must be for 1 and 8, but we don't know which is which. One might guess the two pink ones are one year and the orange one is the other.

Mailer

Here's a progress report-like mailer.

Name

The name of this convention is currently a mystery to the archivist, but three sources (the confirmation card above, the mailer, and the USENET post) give it in the same way; it is clearly not "Not-Anokon 3", which at first glance would seem to make more sense. It is marginally possible that it was really "Not-Anokon 86" and the "6" kept getting lost, but that seems like quite a stretch. There's one set of board minutes that simply calls it "Not-Anokon", and the August and September 1986 Einblatts call it just "Not Anokon", neither of which doesn't do much to not clear things up.

David Dyer-Bennet is against the theory of truncated-86, since "using a year rather than a number is all wrong for us in that period."

At least two people have raised the theory that it was named so for being the 8th fallcon. The trouble is that it is the 11th fallcon. Or if Minicons 5 and 9 are excluded, it is the 9th. If Anokons 1 and 2 are excluded (hardly being Not-Anokons!), then it is either the 7th or 9th. So this does not seem to work, although it is certainly possible that whoever named it thought it was the 8th.

This just in (2023): A newly discovered program for this con calls itself "Not Anokon 11". This would seem to strongly support the idea that the name was a joke, a implausibly high number. It seems like it would have been a better joke if it had been more different numbers instead of usually 8, but 11 once. Maybe more materials will turn up eventually with other non-8 numbers.

This just in (2024): Found in Stipple-Apa #52, in Denny Lien's zine "YE OLDE AUTHENTIC RENAISSANCE HOT DOG ON A STICK STAND, FORSOOTH", he refers to this con as "Not-Anokon, eighth in a series (not all of that name)", which rebolsters both the appearance that it was almost always called 8 despite being called 11 once, and also suggests that they did think it was the eighth Minnstf fallcon, or the eighth non-Minicon Minn-stf fallcon, even though it wasn't either of those.