North Carolina Fandom

North Carolina is another of those states whose fandom I know nothing about. From Curt Phillips I know that Lynn Hickman moved to Statesville, NC from the Midwest in the early 1950s and started an important early club--The Little Monsters of America. TLMA published an important zine of the period including early Nolacon accounts, and discovered Wilkie Conner to fandom.

Curt also tells me that last year there was to be a Pulpcon in Asheville, NC. "Pulpcon is like the Worldcon of pulp fiction. Thousands and thousands of pulps being traded and sold, old time pulp writers in attendance (guests in NC were Nelson Bond, mystery writer Talmadge Powell and Western writer Hascal Giles), old time auctions of rare old books and pulps, and a recreation of an old-time radio broadcast with the convention guests and attendees as actors."

Guy Lillian, in his SFC Bulletin of June 1984, lists activity in Charlotte with a club producing a "beautiful genzine" called Overwhelm, another club in Asheville, a club at UNC-Chapel Hill that put on Stellarcon--which still seems to be going, although not in Chapel Hill anymore, and mentions Edwin L. Murray, of the Carolina Fan Federation, who "once ran a series of superb mini-cons from his home" in Durham, but who seems to have gafiated. Meade's 1980 Handbook doesn't have much to say either, just mentions of clubs in Charlotte (Starcore), Greensboro (a college club), and a defunct club in Raleigh (The Nameless Order of R'lyeh).

Fanzine fans Arthur Hlavaty and Bernadette Bosky used to live in the Chapel Hill (probably Durham--MLR) area of NC, but moved to New York in the early '90s. To find fan activity in the Chapel Hill area, I would check out the SF bookstore Second Foundation.

Postscript by MLR: At least a couple of active Southern fans live in North Carolina now: Southern Fandom Confederation President Warren Buff (Raleigh) and Toni Weisskopf's assistant at Baen Books, Laura Haywood-Cory. Stellarcon is still going strong--it hosted a Deep South Con in High Point a few years ago.

 

Special thanks go to Samuel A. Smith, who digitized the SFC Handbook 2nd edition and gave gracious permission to use his existing work in the preparation of the 3rd edition. The main text of this page came from Sam's hard work.--MLR

 

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