March 2. 2007

First Friday Fandom:

Vice

Treasurer

State registration postcard will be done this month so we don't devolve

Secretary

Minutes sent by email

President didn't get them

She has been told to join the list.

"Prince is Back" referred to the artist formerly known as Prince is now known as Prince again.

Refreshment committee

Book Committee

Book for tonight is John Varley Red Lightning/Red Thunder

Book for April is "Retief" by Laumer

COSine 2007

Con Suite paid

Hotel repaid GOH suite expense

Hotel reported 15 Friday/ 16 Saturday / 2 Sunday Room nights

We think we had 50+ total. Room nights. Too late to adjust with hotel 123 total memberships.

$3345 income dealers/members

COSine 2008

We need to promote with Denver

We need to promote with Gamers

Water Stations

Coffee Stations?

Ready To sign with Silverwood

No Brownies assigned yet

COSine 2009

Nothing to Report

No New Business

Adjourn Meeting at 9:05

Book Discussion - Lost Pages by Paul Di Filippo

This is a collection of alternate history short stories based on the writings of many well known authors and how things might have been different in this alternate universe. The book called Star Trek the show that killed science fiction (in the context of the alternate universe).

A lot of people didn’t like the book much. Eric said he liked the concept, but wasn’t thrilled by it. Jack liked the Kafka story, but thought it went downhill from there. Linda & Phil was a story from the book that Eric liked. Jack said the author had a good idea, but was not a very good writer. There was a "Heinlein" story in the book. Marezy Doats , in the style of a Heinlein juvey.

Book Discussion - Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Sean thought it was okay, some issues were not really explained well in this book. Thought ending was contrived. Robin liked it. I felt that it helped to have the background from other Liaden books prior to reading this one. The discussion didn’t go far, as we started talking about local authors and more COSine stuff.

October 7, 2005 Meeting

Meeting was called to order at 8:20pm.

Officer’s Reports

President - nothing

Secretary -needs to update webpage

Treasurer- nothing new, we still have money

Trustees - nothing new

We are having a con - getting the PayPal working for electronic payments is a priority.

Jay doing science programming. Scott doing programming.

Would like to get Dr Bruce Leonard as a speaker on psychology and science fiction. He’s a psychiatrist and has patients read SF books and tell him which characters they identify with. Steve Lee at DMNS part of Mars rover program.

Need to push local publicity hard between Thanksgiving to mid-January. Sean in charage of publicity

Need bookmarks for libraries and bookstores, and quarter page flyers.

Karen wanted permission to dispose of the old art show panels that we have not been using. She had no success in cutting them up into smaller pieces, also they are 1/4” pegboard rather than 1/8” which is standard for the art shows. We have been using the panels from MileHiCon. We approved her wish to get rid of the panels and have judged them to be without any monetary value.

Mary suggests that we have a banquet with the guests of honor on either Friday or Saturday. If we can get a certain number of people signing up, then the hotel might actually have staff available to cook and serve food (unlike previous years). Regency Ball is Saturday.

Will have some signings and such with the GoH’s and perhaps can get some publicity for the con from that. A TV spot would be great if we can manage it.

Mary has not yet scheduled a hotel walkthrough yet for COSine.

Book Committee - good through February, need to meet and choose more books

Refreshments committee need someone to take over. Only involves coordinating volunteers not bringing all the refreshments themselves. Eric Schwartz will take care of it.

Old Business - none

New Business - suggestions in Mem’s email. Changing the time and date of the meetings? Kent said it was clear that we didn’t have enough people present at 7:30 to start the meetings.

Jack suggested that we have the book discussion first. Some discussion of doing the book discussions online. Mary suggested a Yahoo group for the discussions. I thought a web forum would be better. Mary will set up the list on Yahoo and we’ll see how things go and the first topic will be format and how we think it’ll work.

Jack wanted to read more short stories. Suggestion that we pick up an issue of Asimov’s or Analog and discuss all the short stories. We can also put anthologies on the discussion list.

Moving meetings to Sunday afternoons? Some people objected. We voted and the Friday people won by a big majority. Mary suggested that we do Sunday afternoon just as a trial. We’ll do March and April meetings first Sunday. Joe won’t be able to make it, neither will Cary. Originally proposed Feb and March, but we Mary said she will desperately need Joe in February. He wanted me to point out that he was desperately needed. Time 4pm.

Change meeting time back to 8pm. No one is getting here earlier anyway. Some thought a bit later, but 8pm won the vote.

Announcements ; I announced that Terry made good apple crisp. She said it was from apples left over after the SCA event.

Mary said all her books were gone. People borrowed her copies of the books.

Rite of Passage had a sex scene with a 14year old. Jack was in favor of child pornography. Given that the author was only 15 when this was written casts a different light on the scene.

It’s a coming of age story, not directly a copy of a Podkayne, but uses a 14 year old girl as the protaganist to talk about much larger issues. Mary said she read this when she was very young and hardly noticed that they were destroying entire worlds at first. Was very taken with the characters. Really that’s the point of the book, but you don’t see it at first.

Jack seemed to feel that it was very characteristic of Heinlein, revenge. Starship Troopers, Have Spacesuit will Travel. Jack said that Mia made the observation at the end of the book, was wondering if one of the people she knew was still alive on the planet when they went to blow it up. Heinlein didn’t write female characters well, Panshin was much better at handling female characters. Jack said he didn’t like Mia much, Mary said she empathized with the character a lot.

Mem said Rite of Passage wasn’t as blatant as Podkayne. Story of one girl who at first can’t go beyond her own block of the ship she lives in. There are little glimpses of the larger issues and world around her. She is a metaphor for her society. She becomes something of a leader later in the story. Called planet dwellers mudeaters and said they were dirty and smelly. Propaganda and discrimination against them from the spaceship society.

Panshin never wrote in this world again. Eric said he could see a few different possible futures for the character, author left it somewhat open. Mary first read Podkayne after Rite of Passage, because of the relationship between the two books.

Podkayne dies in the original version of the story. Publishers said he had to re-write it. Brother finishes story with her unconscious and injured. Originally he did end with her dead. Red Planet was a lot different from the original, he tied it into Lazarus Long series. Doctor is Lazarus Long in rev¹d version. Puppetmasters was also redone. Mary said it was virulently McCarthyistic to begin with, and was an unreadable diatribe later.

Jay thought that the pace of the book was all quite consistent, but the ending was all crammed into the last few pages. He never killed the protaganist in his boy juvies. Mary asked why and Terry said he didn¹t like women.

Boy’s Life doesn’t let you kill characters in the stories, so his boy juvvies which were mostly published there were restricted. Terry said that he didn¹t see women as real human beings. Heinlein had no empathy for women and can¹t write them believably. Podkayne doesn’t have nearly the depth that Mia does. Kent said that Podkayne was a Barbie.

Panshin started talking about big purple tigers that weren’t really cats. There was a “tiger hunt” involving this. Mary said that Panshin’s was clearly the better book, even if there weren’t fairies. Panshin’s book makes you really think. Xenophobes can be people too. Book was very much about power, the space people had the power to destroy entire planets. Protaganist realizes it as she develops in the course of the story.

Panshin’s other books were very different from Rite of Passage. Mary suggested that Heinlein might be Mia’s father. Panchin wrote to Heinlein from the time he was 12 years old.

Discussion continuing , end of notes.

July 15, 2005 Meeting

Present were Mary, Kent, Jack, Robin M, Ted, Melissa, Jay, Sean, and various kids

We hung around chatting about various things, and moving furniture waiting until we got a quorum. We were talking about Cheyenne Mountain, and airline security when military people are trying to get through with their flare guns.

The book for this month was actually short stories that were nominated for the Hugo awards. Mary said they weren’t bad short stories, but if that was the best for the entire year, than the nomination process has some issues. We noted that all the books that had been nominated were by British authors. Obviously a lot of people are not doing nominations, at least in this country.

Kent felt that the Jonathon Strange book (a Harry Potter like book) would be good if he were having trouble sleeping. They liked the Straas book. Jack read Singularity Sky, and Kent said the author had improved somewhat. You need some understanding of quantum theory and physics to understand why some of the jokes are funny.

It is fairly difficult to find a lot of the books because they are published overseas. If it isn’t published in the US and isn’t nominated, then it can be nominated once it’s published in the US. I felt a lot of the books don’t get read by many people because they are coming out in hardcover. Many people wait until the books come out in paperback to read them, which is usually on the order of a year after first publication. It used to be that most science fiction was published in paperback immediately, but that is no longer the case.

We talked about the remake of Battlestar Galactica. Lost is the other series that was nominated. Harry Potter was nominated for the long media piece. Spiderman 2, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Joe came. Terry came.

Meeting at Jack¹s Sunday for Denver 2008. 11:30 am.

June 3, 2005 Meeting

Present were Mary, Mike, Pamela, Joe, Rod, Micky, Jack, Chris, Robin C, Richard, Kent, Robin M., and Cary.
Kent asked if we should have a meeting. The meeting was called to order at 8:10 pm.

Officer’s Reports

President: Kent had nothing to say.

Secretary: I’ve been working on web pages for Denver 2008 and FFF. Still need to do COSine. Working on flyers for COSine.

Treasurer: Joe said we still around $2000, he can reimburse Ted for FFF registration costs. Kent asked if COSine 2005 was closed out.

COSine 2006: We have a contract with the hotel. I’m working on the webpage. The hotel keeps changing franchises and is now a Clarion. Mary has contacted some convention listings and such.
Mary was thinking that we should send out a mailing this fall, telling people that we’d have a dinner on Friday or Saturday. Perhaps if we have reservations they will have enough staff, and food, unlike the past 2 years.

Committees:

Membership committee reports 2 new members - Rod and Micky

Trustees: The trustees received a membership request from Ms Sappho White. Their response to this has not yet been determined.

Book Committee: For mid July meeting we decided to read the Hugo nominee short stories., the novels are mostly British and are hard to acquire. The short stories seem to all be available on the web.

Book Acquisition has about $38 left

Meeting was adjourned at 8:25

Mem was re-reading it and was struck by the resemblance to Citizen of the Galaxy by Heinlein. Robin M agreed. Kent thought that there was no way to discuss Foster without discussing Heinlein. We wondered which book was first, Tar-Aiym Krang was the first, but this one was a prequel explaining his origins. There were many books written about this character, including Orphan Star, Flinx in Flux, and The End of the Matter.

Cary said it was a character who was constantly searching for something, and as long as he doesn’t find it, you have something to write about. We brought up the Sue Grafton alphabet series. She has written up to Q now, but apparently isn’t moving the character forward at all. All of the books took place over 4 years, and she seems to be avoiding stuff like cell phones, and other modern tech, and the impact that it would have on detective work in the 21st century.

Kent found the Flinx books repetitious and boring after awhile. Mary said he’d said that before, and was being repetitious himself. Kent said he’d repeat that they were repetitious. Jack felt the start was interesting but that the story didn’t make a lot of sense. Where did Pip come from? There are lots of people traveling through Moth, which is a way station. Mary thought the the psychic impression Flinx got about the man beating the woman and her shooting him was the origin of Pip. Others disagreed.

Foster is kind of weak on characterization. Cary noticed more of the behind the scenes stuff that was less evident when he’d read it in high school.

The technology was at a much higher level on Moth than Mary had remembered. She had recalled it being a primitive world, but really that is not the case. I quibbled about the genetic “surgery” talked about. The book was written last century, so of course the tech is a bit outdated. :D

Mary wondered who’s idea it was. We thought it was hers. She said it was Kent. (I have no idea why I typed this into the notes, but I thought I'd still include it - ed.)

Announcement - Denver 2008 meeting Sunday 3pm. At the home of Brian and Melissa Morman.

We thought that most of Foster’s books weren’t as good anymore. Jack felt too many questions were left unanswered by this one. Cary said that reading them in the publication order helped, since you know more of where the character was coming from.

Melissa came to the meeting. She walked in with Ted. Mary pointed out that every time that Ted came to the meetings it was with a different woman. Mary insisted that I put that in the notes.

May 6, 2005 Meeting

I need to redo the COSine page and link it to the firstfridayfandom domain. Con date will be the weekend after MLK weekend. firstfridayfandom.org/cosine should be the URL. Jack will see about listing it with Locus and some other convention date listings.

Michelle came, and was new to FFF. New people are good. Michelle was introduced to Mary, Kent and Sappho (the cat).
Other people present were Kent, Mary, Ted, Robin, Terry, Jack, Richard and a couple of kids.

We got a second new person, named Chris. He was introduced to everyone and told who lived here and who didn’t. He came here from Massachusetts. Mary introduced him to Richard, but called Richard “Cary” instead of his actual name.
Joe came. Mary introduced herself and told Joe she lived here.

The meeting started at 8:08.
No one took notes at the last meeting because I wasn’t here and the rest of you are all lazy bums.
Mary told Joe to write her a check for $350 because it was authorized at the last meeting. No one believed her and Joe refused to write a check.

Officer’s Reports

President: Kent was there. He said that it shouldn’t be May already because that means there is too much stuff he is supposed to be doing for Denver 2008. We all agreed that it should not be May and that time flies. Perhaps that means we’re having fun?

Treasurer: Joe said that we have money; roughly $2000, including advanced memberships for COSine.

Secretary: I wasn’t here last time, so didn’t get to waive (or wave) the minutes from the last meeting since there weren’t any. Joe kind of took some notes, but it amounted to “People came, we talked about COSine and stuff, we talked about the book. People liked the book”.

We debated who was a trustee, until I looked it up on the web. The Trustees are Jack, Terry and Mike. The Trustees were compared to a parole board in that they have to approve of new members. There was the usual ongoing debate as to whether Sappho was a member, and if her membership fee was paid, and if cats were allowed to be members at all. She has certainly attended the requisite three meetings, but we did not believe that the trustees approved her membership.

Mary, Sean, and Robin Clune are the current book committee. Robin doesn’t come to meetings anymore, but we are making her stay on the committee until she has spent all the money that we gave her for buying hard to find books. The committee needs to choose more books. We only have some for the next three months. Note: This has since been done and the webpage updated with books through February 2006.

Melissa, Jay, and kids came to the meeting.
Cary came. Mary called him “Sean”, and told him she lived here.

COSine future
The hotel for the convention has done some major upgrades and renovation recently. It’s been purchased by Clarion. They keep changing the franchise. We’re planning to hold the con the weekend after Martin Luther King weekend, since the hotel is always busy that weekend and we had to change last year.

Announcements
Next Sunday (May 15th) is a working meeting for the Denver 2008 bid at Kent and Mary’s house, at 1pm.

In the general chatter department, a couple people mentioned some lady who was apparently looking for people to answer questions about Star Trek. However she wanted to talk to people who were not part of SF Fandom. She was advised to go to the mall, or a park or something and ask random strangers rather than contacting a science fiction club. Kent watched part of Enterprise. We talked about how terrible it has gotten and if Star Trek was really dead or not.

Book Discussion - Sharon Shinn - Summers at Castle Auburn.

Jack wanted to know if it was a Harlequin romance, and Kent said it was a Harlequin Fantasy. There weren’t any sex scenes so it couldn’t be a romance. It was a coming-of-age story in many ways. Jack asked if it was young adult fiction. Some agreed that it was pretty close. Richard said the protaganist had a prolonged adolescence. She was living at the castle for eight years and had no clue what was going on in court. This seemed a bit implausible to some of us.

Jack told us he spent two days reading this. Mary thought that Jack read slowly and asked him if he wanted the 2 days back. Mary suggested that the book was an exposition on slavery. Jack thught you could take out the entire issue of slavery, and it wouldn’t effect the story. Mary said that was the whole point of the book in her opinion. Jack said you could take all of the rest of the book out and then it would save time. Terry disagreed with Mary on the slavery issue. Kent said it was a regency pastiche in some ways, Mary said it wasn’t a regency and that Kent had never read a regency. He denied this.

Wanting to say at least one nice thing about the book, Jack said that Shinn’s prose flowed nicely, and was not choppy. Mary insisted that there was a significant message about the evils of slavery, but no one believed her. Jack didn’t think the protaganist learned anything. By the end of the book she had changed according to Mary and Terry. Kent said it was no rite of passage, but it was a coming of age novel. We wondered whether we had read Rite of Passage (Panshin). Don’t think so. Kent said that one was gritty, and this one was not. We decided this was a book for women.

Someone mentioned notes related to the book, and Mary said she passed notes in 6th grade. Everyone wanted to know if she got caught or if she got the notes back.

We debated whether Sappho was a member or not. Joe said that Mary never gave him money for Sappho. Cary said that you had to have thumbs to be a member. Mary said due to the Law of Conservation of Appendages then you had to have either a thumb or a tail. One or the other was sufficient. We then talked about cats and how Felix had taught the dog to open the door.

Mary asked if anyone had seen Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Jay and Melissa said they had and they liked it. Mary wanted to know when Revenge of the Doodle Guys was coming out. She meant Revenge of the Sith. Someone said no one in the movie had doodles, and Mary said most of them did, but she wasn’t sure of Yoda, because she had never looked.

Jack wondered if Sharon Shinn had written anything worth reading. Mary liked Jenna Starborn - Jane Eyre derivative, Kent liked the first couple of Angel books (Archangel, Jovah’s Angel) and Wrapt in Crystal.

When asked for a Heinlein reference Ted said that Heinlein would never have written anything like this. Although we then made some comparisons to Podkayne of Mars. Both are a coming of age story about a girl with faeries. It could be inspired by Heinlein. She does set the faeries free and they kill her in the original ending to Podkayne. In Summers at Castle Auburn she sets them free and they didn’t kill her. The original ending of Podkayne was changed for publication so that she didn’t die. After Heinlein’s death, the book was republished with the ending as he first wrote it.

Mary told me to add the fact that Kent made homemade Chex mix. She thought it was very important that this be included in the minutes. So appended. Minutes concluded.

March 4, 2005 Meeting

We sat down and started talking about how Mary got her $35 worth from Microsoft customer support. She called and talked to a nice man from New Dehli who spoke very good English, and was very patient as they spent a great deal of time tracking down the problem she was having with her computer. She felt it was well worth the fee.

Meeting was called to order at 7:51 pm by Kent.

Present were Kent, Ted, Mary, Robin, Joe, Jack, Mike, Pamela, Micky, and Rod.

Officer’s Reports

Secretary - Robin created a webpage on our server again. We need to get FirstFridayFandom.org, since fff.xxx or firstfriday.xxx were taken. That will need to be linked to the site. Money was approved to register the url for 10 years.

Treasurer - Joe still thinks we broke even on COSine, but has not done final reconciliation. He does not have a current balance. Kent requested that Joe have a balance available for future meetings so that it can be included in the monthly minutes.

The periodic report for state filing of FFF was paid by Mary. She said it came out of her paypal account. It cost $1.

COSine past
Kent wondered if there were any outstanding bills remaining from the convention.
Jack said we’d settled with hotel, and the con com members gave their bills to Joe for reimbursement. Pending a final tally from the treasurer, we’re settled financially. There was one person who’d sent a money order that was misplaced. He paid again at the con, but since we found the original payment, he needs to be reimbursed. The PO box has been paid for the next year. Joe will reimburse Jack for PO box at next meeting. The hotel has sent a new contract to Jack for next year.

COSine future
Mary has investigated hotels in the area, and unless we go much larger and more expensive, we can’t find appropriate space for the con other than the LeBaron. Some have too little space, others are just too expensive, and often too large.

Our issues with the LeBaron are that the hot tub has never worked, the rooms are not ideal and modern and mainly that the hotel restaurant has had serious issues with staffing and food supplies the past two years. We could really use another function room beyond what the LeBaron has, but it worked out pretty well space-wise

Committee Reports

Trustees - no new candidates for membership at this time

Sean and Mary are book comm now. They are coordinating on line to create a list. The books for the next several months have been decided.

Refreshments committee - Jay has had this job in the past, but Jack has volunteered to take over for the coming year.

Publicity - Sean is not here. We think he’s in the Mountain right now.

Old Business

July, August, and September - We decided to hold the meetings for these months on the 3rd Friday because of conflicts with Westercon, Worldcon, and NASFic respectively. The motion to change the dates passed, with only Jack disagreeing, because Jack likes to be disagreeable sometimes.

Richard came.

New business

Denver 2008 business is being kept separate from FFF. There will be a meeting for that coming up.

Kent said we would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Meeting adjourned at 8:16

Orphanage - Robert Buettner

Someone commented that it was a space opera in many respects. We felt this wasn’t a bad thing, as space opera can be fun.

Kent said it was extremely derivitive. He felt that Red Thunder was a ripoff of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, this one is more of a ripoff of Forever War by Haldeman. Mike thought that it was more like the Starship Troopers movie than like the original novel. Kind of the popularized version of the original story. Pamela said that it was rather light and amusing.

Kent felt that it didn’t include anything particularly original or novel, or even terribly well-done.

Ted said it was the first book in a long time that included future tech that was a reasonable and logical extrapolation of our current technology. It may turn out to be wrong, but it was at least believable. In one case they needed someone who knew how to type in order to operate some old equipment, but had trouble finding anyone who could because everyone used voice recognition software.
He felt that most of the tech was quite believeable aside from holographic TV and such, which seem to be a requirement of many science fiction near-future technology even though there are huge technical issues in the development of that kind of imaging.
The politics of the story explained tht no one had good military equipment because the Pax Americana essentially made for worldwide peace, and therefore limited the incentive to develop good war technology.

Micky felt that it was interesting to compare it to Forever War. Kent said that the slugs had a great deal in common with Starship Troopers. Mike thought some parts were clever, like slugs oozing out of a cave that had appeared to be safe at first. But he felt the story didn’t come to a good conclusion.

The sequel to this novel is in editing and should be out in September. Jack was surprised that there was a sequel.

Buettner had gotten some books from his publicist to give to people at the con. Haldeman had asked why would people buy the books if we give them away for free. Of coruse we felt that it encouraged people to read books by authors they haven’t previously read. The first one is free. :D Then you buy subsequent books.

Refreshments committee has to remind Kent to make Chex mix for the next meeting. Mary kept complaining because Kent was eating pre-made chex mix from a bag. She prefers the Chex mix that Kent makes himself.

Measurements of space around Jupiter is not right accurate based on our current scientific knowledge. Not knowing that there was 300 feet of dust seems unlikely when they crashed their ship there. The author took liberties with known facts.

Very easy read, and easy to see where the story was going. Many people enjoyed it because it was entertaining and a fun read. There’s never anything wrong with books that are fun to read.

We started talking about some other books that we’ve been reading lately. Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson was 450 pages with no action. Kent felt it was very dull. Mary was reading 40 Days of Rain, theoretically about global warming. She said she was 150 pages into a 350 page book and they are still introducing new characters and there had been no action.

Next month is Conflict of Honors by Sharon Lee & Stephen Miller. These are now available as mass market editions from Ace, but previously were small press published. Also available as ebooks. Mary felt that they have elements reminiscent of Andre Norton.

It was determined that the requisite Heinlein reference for the evening was the entire Buettner book.

We were talking more about Lee & Miller’s books, but I decided to stop taking notes.

February 4, 2005 Meeting

Present were Kent, Mary, Robin, Ted, Jack, Joe, Eric, Sean, Terry, and Richard.

We were chatting about miscellaneous stuff, and reviewing receipts from the con.

Webpage was updated by Elaine at the end of January.

Joe started reporting on the current finances. Ted and Robin paid for their memberships. This is good given that Ted is the VP now.

There was a brief interlude in which Robin and Sean attempted to get their various electronic devices to talk to the wireless network. This involved the entering of a hex password which neither of the computers liked until they were changed to the appropriate settings.

Web connected, Joe was about to resume his report. Heather came. She’s new. We like new people. Erin and Karen came. They are not new, but we like them anyway.

Jack said thank you to people for their work on the con. People continued to hand receipts to Joe. He thought the convention had broken even more or less, but didn’t have a final tally.

We thought we had received some good publicity for the con. There were a couple of good TV spots. Jack said that Joe and Gay enjoyed the con. Jack said any of us who had outstanding bills could give them to Joe to be paid. Several of us volunteered to give our outstanding bills to Joe until it was made clear that only bills relating to the convention would be paid.

Some electronic publicity from next year’s Guests of Honor encouraged their vendors to buy space at COSine. The ezine that goes to their fans mentioned that they would be at the convention and encouraged them to come. Hopefully this will bring some more people to COSine for 2006.

Jack recommended that we pick the weekend in January with the best weather.
While we’re predicting the future, Kent wanted to know if the Amtrak appropriation would passs Congress. It was noted that our next year’s GoH will be travelling via Amtrak since they don’t fly.

Scott Humphries will do programming for COSine next year.

We need to get some more books for the next six months. This also involves getting a reading committee together.

Jack lost the paper plate with the minutes on it last time, so we don’t know if there is any old business.

Support was advocated for Denver 2008. Silly ideas were proposed for themes. Buffalo chips. Mile High Club. Much discussion ensued, but was not relevant to the topic at hand.

The book discussion was postponed for a month because we’ve all been too busy to read the book we were supposed to.

Cary came. We like him too.

We realized that there were a lot of conventions coming up that we’d be attending so we need to plan the meeting dates around the upcoming cons.

Upcoming books

• Conflict of Honors. Lee & Miller - April
• Summers at Castle Auburn. Sharon Shinn - May
• For Love of Mother Not. Alan Dean Foster. June

Jack mentioned Christie Golden as a possible author for the reading committee to consider. Suggestions are being solicited for books for the rest of the year.

• Thomas Harlan.
• Jack Vance
• Tom Swift - could be hard to find, but fun. Illustrations really add a lot, so ebooks aren’t as good.
• David Drake - Hammer’s Slammers
• Steve White
• Emma Bull
• Diana Wyn Jones - Howels Moving Castle, although Eric thought we’d read it in the past.

We talked about a lot of books, and most of them were even science fiction. We talked about Animé too, and probably several other topics, however I gave up taking notes at this point.