es, Virginia, there really was a Cincinnati Worldcon. It was held at the Hotel Metropole ("Over the Rhine in '49"), and locals who don't recognize that name are either immigrants or as young as the CFG's Web Geek now occasionally wishes he were.

Not that he wishes to live in the past, mind you -- who would fardels bear, not to mention the lack of a microwave, cable, and a reliable Internet connection? -- but it certainly is a nice place to visit whilst maintaining a firm grasp on the return ticket.

Speaking of which, here's yours, chum. Now press on.

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t's hard to believe we've passed Cinvention's 50th anniversary...until you examine the program book (actually a half-sheet booklet) and see just how much has changed in the interim.

A scanned version is viewable as a randomly-accessible page by page facsimile. You can select items of particular interest directly from an index of its contents, or you can begin at the front cover and surf as the spirit moves you.

Fair Warning: All page images are displayed at approximately 70% of their scanned size, and some features -- particularly typewritten text -- are distorted a bit in the process. To download the full size originals (in JPEG [covers] or GIF [inside pages] format) for viewing with your own graphics-editing software, right-click (Windows 95) or click-and-hold (Windows 3.x / Macintosh) the image and select the "Save Image As..." option from the pop-up menu.

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his is an alphabetized text version of the list on pages 1-2 of the Program Book. Members who are known to have since died are indicated by struck-through membership numbers (e.g., 00).

Anyone with biographical material to contribute is requested to contact the CFG's Web Geek through the email link at the bottom of this page.

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he first World Science Fiction Convention (New York, 1939) is well documented. So, of late, is each new year's. In the middle, though...

Some of that fog was dispersed by a series of accounts of the first seven Worldcons, written by Fred Patten, which appeared in the Progress Reports for MidAmeriCon (the 34th WSFC; Kansas City, MO, 1976). The last of these appeared in PR4, and the portion covering Cinvention is reproduced here by Mr. Patten's kind permission.

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hanks to the dedicated folks at FANAC's Fan History Project, the CFG has had the opportunity to scan a copy of the Cinvention Memory Book. FANAC has posted these images in its Fanzines/Classic and Older Fanzines category, and we encourage you to drop by for a look. If, on the other hand, your tastes run to the transcribed, corrected and (eventually) annotated...have we got a Cinvention Memory Book for you!

As with the program book, you can select particular items directly from the index; once inside the contents, you can step to the last or next item in order, or return to the index to make another selection.

=[ Open a new browser window to FANAC's web site ]=

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xtracted from the Memory Book (and with direct links to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million where possible), here is the list of books purchased with leftover Cinvention funds and sent to the fen of England and Australia.

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URL: http://www.cfg.org/history/cinvention/index.htm All material © Cincinnati Fantasy Group, unless otherwise credited.   Last updated: Monday, August 25, 2008     Created for the CFG by Scott Street (scottst@ix.netcom.com).       Maintained by the author. Comments, questions & broken link reports: (webgeek@cfg.org).