1998 - Year in Review

Page Created: 10/25/10. Last Updated: 10/25/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 05/13/08.

1998: The Club Year in Review (Part One):

The past year was neither the best nor the worst of times for the S F A B C. In general, our outside activities did pretty well, but there were significant problems with the speakers and attendance at our general meeting.

Membership & Attendance

Overall membership of the Association has been reasonably stable for the past several years, hovering at around 100. Unfortunately, turnout at the general meeting on the second Saturday of the month has been slowly eroding from its 1995 peak. This is a matter of serious concern because the general meeting attendance is the engine which drives the club. This is readily apparent when looking at the budget. When a meeting is lightly attended, we lose money. It costs $ 65.00 to rent our usual meeting halls in Upper Saddle River. This is a fixed cost whether 15 or 50 people are physically in the building.

It is not as obvious, but no less true, that good turnouts make good meetings. Bigger is better, at least within certain limits. There are more people asking questions and (hopefully) applauding our guest speaker. There are different people to talk to before the meetings instead of the same conversations with the same people year after year.

There are a number of factors which may contribute to this state of affairs. Traditional science fiction is very much a baby boomer phenomena. As baby boomers age they acquire more responsibilities and interests and have less energy to deal with things. Many clubs and conventions are having similar problems.

Other difficulties are unique to this area. People relocate more frequently than in most of the country. The number of science fiction fans in the area is probably constant, but it is hard to make contact with the newcomers.

We were also unlucky the way the convention schedule worked out this year. Our meetings are always opposite some area conventions like Philcon, and sometimes against other conventions like Lunacon, but we have never been up against a Worldcon, let alone one virtually in our backyard.

The conflict with conventions also made it more difficult to corral guest speakers. There were some wonderful talks give, those by Susan Garrett and Jeff Ford, for example, but there were not many "names" which would cause people to make a special effort to attend.

The general meetings also suffered because Philip De Parto has only a certain amount of energy to give the club, and he allocated the lion's share to organizing or reorganizing many of the club's Special Interest Groups. More on that next month.

The following table lists the dates, guest speakers, and backgrounds of the people who made official presentations at meetings of the Association in 1998. The final column shows the Official Attendance for the corresponding month of each of the past four years. Official Attendance is a tally of the total number of people in the room. It excludes young children and those who left before the meeting began or arrived after the meeting had concluded. It does include the guest speaker and his companion(s).

DATE SPEAKER, SUBJECT 98/97/96/95

01/10/98 Lucienne Diver, Literary Agent 37/44/22/39

02/14/98 Cynthia Soroka, Writer/Publisher 15/32/41/34

03/14/98 Ted Bohus, Horror Movie Producer 38/32/46/41

04/11/98 Steve Saffel, Del Rey Books Editor 25/38/35/45

05/09/98 Video Program: THE SIMPSONS 31/34/33/38

Ernest Lilley: S F REVU Publisher

Video Program: OUTER LIMITS Episode

06/13/98 Michael Flynn, Author 37/39/36/52

07/11/98 Susan Garrett, Writer 28/41/32/36

08/08/98 Mike Straniere: THE B FILES: Laundry Day 37/35/55/42

09/12/98 Jeffrey Ford, Author 41/38/42/38

10/10/98 Paul Dellechiaie: Celestial Matters 28/35/38/45

John Upton: Costuming Slide Show

William Wagner: Edgar Rice Burroughs Talk

11/11/98 Evelyn & Mark Leeper on Neglected Films 21/25/41/26

12/12/98 Jim Freund on Science Fiction Radio 33/43/47/21

John Upton: Costuming Slide Show

1998: The Club Year in Review (Part Two):

A lot of planning and effort went into redeploying club resources for our various Specialized Interest Sub Groups. Many have changed moderators, meeting sites, and formats and should emerge stronger for the change.

First the bad news. The Computer Users Group held its last meeting at Barnes & Noble in Paramus in November. The group was conceived as a speaker-driven activity which would allow the Association to tap into a new pool of potential members. This never occurred. The group flourished for about a year from mid 97 to mid 98, but we wre never able to bring people from that group to the other club activities. Internal events within B&N caused us to have to reschedule three guests and we had a run of bad luck with last minute cancellations by our speakers. The actual meetings were usually very enjoyable, but it was taking too much time and effort and producing no real results.

The other disappointment ws that we were unable to launch several new groups we had discussed. At the present time, the Barnes & Noble stores in Edgewater, Hoboken, and Paramus (Route 17 North) are not interested in housing events. Things change. We will wait for other opportunities.

We did debut one new group, the Science and Science Fiction Group, at Barnes & Noble in West Nyack, New York. This group is held on the third or fourth Thursday of the month and is moderated by Paul Dellechiaie. It is too soon to make an evaluation of this group.

Several groups remained virtually unchanged. The Final Frontier at Barnes & Noble in Livingston, New Jersey, the Monsters of Horror Book Groip at B & N in Nanuet, New York and the Writers' Critique Group at Borders in Wayne, New Jersey are established groups with devoted followings that have pretty much remained unchanged. (This article continues next month).

1998: The Club Year in Review (Part Three):

A number of the Association's Specialized Interest Sub Groups changed moderators, locations, or both during the past year.

Carol Smith replaced Philip De Parto as leader of the Classics of Science Fiction Group in January. The Art of the Fantastic changed its time to 7:30 and its venue to Barnes & Noble in West Paterson, New Jersey the same month. The Author Discussion Group moved to Borders in Paramus, New Jersey with Ernest Lilley as its moderator in July. All three groups are flourishing.

The biggest change of any group occurred with the Media Tie In Group. The last meeting of the group in its original incarnation was in February at Barnes & Noble in West Paterson, New Jersey. The group changed its time, location, and moderator in July and is now run by Steve and Jim Spinosa at Borders in Livingston, New Jersey. Attendance has improved, but it's too early to make judgments.

The Topic Group has been the most inconsistent of all our offerings. It moved to Borders in Wayne, New Jersey in July, trading places with the Author Discussion Group. Turnout has been good once, very good twice, and poor two other times. Wait and see is the word on this group as well.

The three activities held on the second Saturday of the month before the general have all evolved in different directions. Charles Garofalo has taken over Anime Associates from Patricia Malone who had started the group. Attendance is down over the past year, but that seems more to do with a decline in attendance at the General Meeting than anything else.

The TREK, etc group had been on the wane since Tony Tellado moved on. Rather than try to keep it going as a shadow of the old Final Frontier, we repositioned it as a purely television viewing group and changed its name to Armchair Odyssey to reflect this.

The Fantasy Gamers group is going strong. The group changed direction in July, converting from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to Runequest set in the Mars of Space 1889 when Game Master William Molendyk's van was stolen. The vehicle contained all his materials for the AD&D campaign.