MnSTEF generally throws a small relaxing convention in the fall, a fallcon. Our tradition has been to casually discard names and to give chairs a great deal of leeway as to what sort of con they run. This, along with the very informal nature of some of the cons, makes it challenging to present a complete history. Nevertheless, we will try. In accordance with fannish tradition, a "1" is appended to any convention which was followed by another of the same name, even if the original con with that name didn't advertise itself as such.
As with Minicon there is no connection, strictly speaking, between any two fallcons, except that they are all MnSTEF-sanctioned conventions. None are regularly scheduled, except that Minicon has managed, despite this, to be on Easter weekend once a year for a very long time now. (At least this is how it works under current MnSTEF bylaws. In ancient times, the bylaws did specifically talk about Minicon.)
What I'm trying to say (besides being pedantic, which I do enjoy) is that there's no guarantee that every year comes with exactly one fallcon. Some years, we just at Minicon, and twice we had three cons in a year. Plus, in some cases, you have to squint to say "fall" (one was in August). To muddy the waters further, or to clear them further, depending on what sort of a person you are, two Minicons in the 70's were the fallcons.
Name | Dates | Membership | Location (City) | Guests | Theme, slogan, etc. | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Minicon 5 | Oct 15-17, 1971 | 100 total | Andrews Hotel (Minneapolis) | none | The Genghiscon! | The first Minicon fallcon |
MnSTEF didn't hold any fallcons (or other non-Minicon cons) 1972-1973 | ||||||
Minicon 9 | Oct 11-13, 1974 | 190 total | Minneapolis Public Library/Dyckman Hotel (Minneapolis) | GoHs: Judy Lynn and Lester del Rey | The second and last Minicon fallcon | |
MnSTEF didn't hold any fallcons (or other non-Minicon cons) 1975-1977 | ||||||
Anokon 1 | Sept 22-24, 1978 | 65 pre-reg, 122 total | Holiday Inn (Anoka) | Bob Tucker and Rusty Hevelin | Originally intended to be called Minicon 14, causing Minicon to skip from 13 to 15. | |
Anokon 2 | Sept 14-16, 1979 | Jim Young, in absentia | Updated in the last year | |||
Not-Anokon 1 | Sept 12-14, 1980 | Holiday Inn Capitol (St. Paul) | Not-GoH: Gordon R. Dickson | Updated in the last year | ||
Not-Anokon 2 | Sept 25-27, 1981 | Updated in the last year | ||||
Plergbcon | Sept 10-12, 1982 | Ramada Inn (St. Paul) | Pat Wrede, pro GoH Kevin Smith, fan GoH Peter Touluzzi, fan GoH |
Updated in the last year | ||
Maxicon 1 | Sept 23-25, 1983 | About 150 total | Midway Motor Inn (St. Paul) | |||
Maxicon 2 | Sept 14-16, 1984 | 213 pre-reg, 250 total | Minneapolis Plaza | Updated in the last year | ||
Not-Anokon '85 | Oct 4-6, 1985 | Ramada Inn (St. Paul) | GoH: Pamela Dean | The numerical part of this con's name was not used consistently. | ||
Not-Anokon 8 | Sept 5-7, 1986 | Sunwood Inn (Bandana Square) (St. Paul) | GoH: Bob Shaw | Also calling itself "Not-Anokon 11" at least once. Updated in the last year | ||
C'ntraction | Nov 13-15, 1987 | 150 total | Days Inn (Roseville) | GoH: Patrick Lucien Price | ||
Consensus* *with Don abstaining |
Oct 21-23, 1988 | Hotel Seville (Bloomington) | None | |||
Confection | Sept 29-Oct 1, 1989 | 102 pre-reg, 160 total | Normandy Inn (Minneapolis) | GoH: John M. Ford | ||
Conscription | Nov 2-4, 1990 | Bradbury Suites (Bloomington) | GoH: Richard Tatge | |||
ReinCONation 1 | Sept 6-8, 1991 | 186 total | Radisson South (a.k.a. the RadishTree) (Bloomington) | GoH: Geri Sullivan and Bob Tucker | ||
Supercon 1 | Jan 24-26, 1992 | 64 pre-reg, 101 total, 97 warm | Radisson (Duluth) | GoH: Elise Matthesen | ||
ReinCONation 2 | Sept 11-13, 1992 | 210 total, 199 warm | Radisson South (Bloomington) | Honored guests/GoH: James White and Jeanne Gomoll | Just like it used to be — only different! | |
Supercon 2 | Jan 22-24, 1993 | Park Inn (Duluth) | GoH: Martin Shaffer | |||
ReinCONation 3 | Aug 20-22, 1993 | 119 pre-reg, 207 total, 194 warm | Radisson South (Bloomington) | GoH: Debbie Notkin | This "fallcon" was very much in the summer! | |
ReinCONation 4 | Sept 9-11, 1994 | 124 pre-reg, 190 total, 172 warm | Regency Plaza (Minneapolis) | GoH: Alexei & Cory Panshin | ||
ReinCONation 5 | Oct 13-15, 1995 | Honored guests/GoH: Judith Merril (who wasn't able to attend), Andy Hooper | Cogitamus Ergo Festivamus | Original website; no earlier fallcon had a website | ||
ReinCONation 6 | Oct 18-20, 1996 | Radisson South (Bloomington) | Honored guests/GoH: Spider & Jeanne Robinson, Jan Bogstad | original website | ||
Not-A-ReinCONation | Oct 24-26, 1997 | At least 60 | Various | None | (original website; see also the ReinCONation index page) | |
Flashback! | Oct 30-Nov 1, 1998 | 104 warm | Best Western Northwest Inn (Brooklyn Park) | GoH Steven Brust, GoH Emeritus Gordon R. Dickson | (archive with original site mirror) | |
The Millenium Fallcon/Ditto 12 | Oct 29-31, 1999 | 87 pre-reg | Radisson Metrodome (Minneapolis) | None | We've waited 22 years to use this joke. | Spelled like that, yes. (archive with original site mirror) |
No MnSTEF fallcon, but Relaxacon 2000 was held Oct 20-22 and had roughly the same social function. | ||||||
Consume/Relaxacon 2001 was held Oct 19-21; it's unclear if it was a MnSTEF con | ||||||
Consume/Relaxacon 2002 | Oct 25-27, 2002 | Ramada Inn Northwest (Brooklyn Park) | Posthumous GoH: Scott Imes | The Best Fed Little Fallcon in Fandom! | (archive with original site mirror) | |
Consume/Relaxacon 2003 was held Oct 17-19; it's unclear if it was a MnSTEF con | ||||||
No MnSTEF fallcon, but Consume/Relaxacon 2004 was held Oct 15-17 and had roughly the same social function. | ||||||
No MnSTEF fallcon, but Consume/Relaxacon 2005 was held Oct 14-16 and had roughly the same social function. | ||||||
Convivial 1 | Oct 20-22, 2006 | 43 pre-reg, at least 50 total | The hotel in Bloomington known as the Holiday Inn Select for Convivials 1–4, the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites for Conjecture 1, and the Crowne Plaza Hotel for Conjectures 2 and 3. Sheesh. | None | Starting with Convivial 1, all fallcons have their original websites still up. | |
Convivial 2 | Oct 19-21, 2007 | At least 31 warm | None | |||
Convivial 3 | Oct 17-19, 2008 | 37 pre-reg | None | |||
Convivial 4 | Oct 16-18, 2009 | 37 pre-reg | None | |||
Conjecture 1 | Oct 15-17, 2010 | ~50 total | None | I think it's a relaxicon... | ||
Conjecture 2 | Oct 14-16, 2011 | 36 pre-reg, 51 total, 51 warm | None | |||
Conjecture 3 | Oct 19-21, 2012 | 39 pre-reg, 56 total, 54 warm | None | |||
METHOD Con 1 | Oct 18-20, 2013 | 49 pre-reg, 56 total, 55 warm | SpringHill Suites Marriott (St. Louis Park) | None | ||
METHOD Con 2 | Oct 10-12, 2014 | 60 pre-reg, 77 total, 76 warm | Ramada MSP Airport at the Mall (a.k.a. the Thunderada) (Bloomington) | Featured artist: Tim Cooper, featured authors: Emma Bull and Will Shetterly | ||
No MnSTEF fallcon in 2015, but the second JOFCon was held Oct 9-11 and fulfilled some of the same social functions. | ||||||
Decongestant 1 | Oct 14-16, 2016 | 49 pre-reg, 70 total, 70 warm | Hilton (Bloomington West) | None | ||
Decongestant 2 | Oct 6-8, 2017 | 58 pre-reg, 70 total, 66 warm | None | Food and badge theme: absurd cakes | ||
Decongestant 3 | Sept 28-30, 2018 | 47 pre-reg, 63 total, 61 warm | Sucker GoH: Joe Pregracke | Food theme: digits (fingers and toes). Badge theme: sloths. | ||
Decongestant 4 | Sept 27-29, 2019 | 59 pre-reg, 74 total, 71 warm | Sucker GoH: Clay Harris | Scary Science Fiction; Food theme: Spooky Snacks | Partnered with Arcana | |
Because of the pandemic, there were no MnSTEF cons in 2020 or 2021. Besides intending to have Decongestant 5 in 2020, we had also started taking memberships for Worst Convergence Ever, intended to be a camping con at Afton State Park, July 2-6, 2020, but this was canceled and not revived. | ||||||
Decongestant 5 | Oct 7-9, 2022 | 47 pre-reg, 62 total, 49 warm | Hilton (Bloomington West) | Vampire GoH: Brian Forrest | Originally scheduled for Oct 2-4, 2020, then Sept 24-26, 2021. Postponed twice for the pandemic. | |
CONFelicity | Oct 6-8, 2023 | 35 pre-reg, 48 total, 44 warm | Sucker GoH: Isaac Schneider |
Further notes: For GoH-like people, I have tried to note what they were called by the con at the time. Trouble is, sometimes the distinction between "GoH" and "honored guest", or whatever, is fraught with deep meaning, and sometimes they are just synonyms. It's often hard to tell from a flyer decades later, so I hope I have not horribly misrepresented anyone.
This list does not count the picnic back when it people called it Picnicon, or any other not-really-con that got the suffix -con tacked on for fun. The line is fuzzy, but is basically drawn by requiring the event to be a 3-day shindig in a hotel requiring a paid membership (or one that the board has clearly designated a con). An exception is made for Not-A-Reinconation, which was a 3-day roving house party, but clearly part of a series of cons.
List curator as of 2024: MnSTEF archivist Matt Strait.
We are working on building as complete a digital archive of MnSTEF's history as we can!
For all these items, please contact: [ar
chivist at% mnstf dot org]Physical materials wanted: If you have badges, program books, pocket programs, photos, progress reports, convention reports, or other stuff from or relating to past conventions we're interested in putting that sort of thing online. Photos and audio or video recordings too. If it's something we don't have in our own archives, we might be interested in borrowing items from you or making other arrangements to scan stuff for use on the website.
Digital materials wanted: If you have items in digital format or are willing to put things in digital format, you can send that stuff to us. Please check with us before sending any large files (over 50MB) as email attachments. If you know where we can find stuff about MnSTEF online that we haven't yet linked to, please pass those links along to us.
Transcriptions wanted: We would like our archives to be searchable and accessible. This means that we'd like to make plain text versions of everything that's just an image now. Would you like to help? Find something that needs transcription and let us know you're going to work on it.
Requests wanted: If you're looking for something that isn't here, please let us know. We may already have it on paper and can prioritize it for scanning.