Las Vegrants is an invitational, informal Core Fandom fan club in Las Vegas, NV, Started by Joyce & Arnie Katz and Ken & Aileen Forman in the early 1980’s, it meets on the first and third Saturday’s of the month at The Launch Pad.

So, now you know. 

That’ll teach you to depend on “about” links. 

Since you’ve been a good sport, let me help you chew through that chunky definition and make a little more sense of it.

Science Fiction Fandom, born out of the letter columns o professional science fiction magazines in the 1920’s and 1930’s, is a hobby group that embraces a wide range of activities. One of them, fanzines (small circulation amateur magazines), became the focus of a subculture called Fanzine Fandom. The impact of the Internet has made necessary a name change to “Core Fandom.”

Las Vegrants is a local fan club with strong ties to national/international Core Fandom and the most likely place to meet visiting BNFs (Big Name Fans) when they come to Glitter City.

Apart from shiftless revelry, the members are best-known for their writing, drawing and publishing for Fandom in print and electronic media.  Las Vegrants joined forces to produce the highly popular fanzine Wild Heirs in the 1990’s and Crazy from the Heat in the 00’s. Individual Vegrants have produced several major fanzines, including Vegas Fandom Weekly, Smokin’ Rockets, Glamour, Folly and crifanac. 

Las Vegrants also created the Bring Bruce Bayside to import Australian fan Bruce Gillespie, contributed heavily to the development of the Silvercon series of regional gathering, put on the Toner informal convention and will host its third Corflu, the Core Fandom world convention, in 2008 (Corflu Silver) and helped turn Silvercon into one of Fandom’s liveliest regional convention

Las Vegrants is invitational, because not everyone, or even every fan, fits comfortable in this group. Ironically, Las Vegrants is by far Vegas’ largest and most active club. A typical meeting has 12-16 fans, though larger ones draw a couple of dozen. The Launch Pad, which is the home of Joyce and Arnie (me) Katz, generally rocks until 1 or 2 AM on meeting nights.

Las Vegrants draws on a rich tradition of similar clubs, principally the Los Angles Insurgents of the 1940’s, New York’s Fanoclasts in the 1960’s and the Brooklyn Insurgents of the 1970’s  There’s no business meeting, because the club doesn’t have any official business. It also has no officers or written rules, either.  When pressed, we usually give a definitely like the one that led this section, but that’s just a handy explanation.

So what do we do at those 24 meetings a year? We talk, eat, listen to and play music and hang out with our friends. It’s not fancy or grandiose, but we like it.

A good way to get to know Las Vegrants better is to read our fanzines and web sites, including this one. You can also download many Vegrants fanzines at Bill Burns’ efanzines.com. “How Green Was My Vegrants,” a Wild Heirs anthology published by Seattle’s Andy Hooper, is a good starting point.

-- Arnie Katz
Las Vegas
(4/5/07)