Tom Reamy - Fan, Editor, Convention Organizer

Fan, Editor, Convention Organizer

He was born Thomas Earl Reamy in Woodson, Texas during the Great Depression. While still in his teens in the early 1950s, he became active in science fiction fandom's fanzine and convention culture, as both a fan writer and fan artist. During this period Reamy began to experiment with writing fantasy and science fiction stories. He was never quite satisfied with or confident enough to submit his stories to the editors of the professional genre magazines of the era, despite encouragement from friends and others who felt he had talent; Reamy continued to hone his writing for many years, while exploring other expressions for his growing creativity.

Reamy, along with transplanted Texan Orville Mosher, founded the first organized science fiction fan club in Texas: The Dallas Futurian Society (DFS), so named after the earlier New York Futurians. The DFS was founded in late fall of 1953 when Reamy was eighteen, and the club was active until July 6, 1958, when it expired in a colorful fashion. During that active five-year period, Mosher and Reamy traded off editing the club's fanzine CriFanAc, attracting a variety of contributors, both local and from greater science fiction fandom; Reamy also contributed both artwork and commentary to its pages, as he was also doing to other science fiction fanzines of the era.

With fellow Dallas Futurians Jim and Greg Benford, Reamy organized the first science fiction convention held in Texas. A rotating city and state regional convention of the era, Southwesterncon's sixth incarnation was held in Dallas on the weekend of July 5, 1958, concluding the next day, July 6; the professional guest of honor was new writer and well-known fan Marion Zimmer Bradley. Longtime science fiction fan personality, collector, and literary agent Forrest J Ackerman came from Los Angeles as a surprise attendee.

On the last day of the convention, the members of the Dallas Futurian Society disbanded their club as part of Southwestercon VI's business meeting. During that meeting, club co-founder Orville Mosher, the man behind much of the club's behind-the-scenes intrigue and politics during its final few years, was elected by club consensus as DFS' new president. Then just moments later, led by a Reamy motion, the same Dallas Futurian Society voted to officially disband itself forever; the motion passed, despite objections by Mosher. Some former DFS members went off to college following the club's demise, while others continued to gather socially for years, having dispensed with the negative fan politics that had divided them as a more formal science fiction club; Mosher was never heard from again. Greg Benford later moved to California, where he became a physicist and astronomer at the University of California, Irvine and an award-winning science fiction writer.

During the mid-to-late 1960s, while working as a technical illustrator for aerospace contractor Collins Radio at their Dallas branch, Reamy became the editor and publisher of Trumpet, a slickly produced, professionally printed fanzine (the norm for the era was to use the much less expensive ditto or mimeograph reproduction for fanzines). Between 1965 and 1969 ten issues appeared, the later issues having full-color front covers. In 1966, Trumpet received enough nominations for inclusion on that year's final Hugo Awards ballot, but was later ruled as being ineligible because it didn't meet the Hugo's minimum number of published issues requirement needed for nomination; in 1967 and then again in 1969, Trumpet made it on the final ballot in the Best Fanzine category for science fiction's Hugo Award.

In the late 1960s, Reamy also organized and became chairman of Dallas fandom's long-running "Big D in '73" bid to host the 31st World Science Fiction Convention. He also edited and designed the bid's official publication, The Dallascon Bulletin, which also used photo-offset printing. Nothing like them had been produced by previous Worldcon bidders. Each issue's appearance polarized strong support for or against the Texas bid, due to its widespread, free circulation to 6000+, and the large amount of paid advertising each issue carried. As a result, the Texas fans were sometimes accused of trying to buy a win for Dallas. Ultimately, the long-running Dallascon bid collapsed for complex reasons unrelated to this controversy, just a few months before 1973's site-selection vote was taken at Noreascon, the 1971 Worldcon in Boston. As a result, the Toronto bid won the 31st Worldcon, becoming Torcon II.

Early in the 1970s, Reamy became one of the founders of the Dallas area's Turkey City Writer's Workshop. Many new Texas genre writers emerged from this workshop, eventually giving birth in 1976 to the all-Texas original speculative fiction hardcover anthology, Lone Star Universe; the workshop continues to this day.

Reamy's high-profile Worldcon bid in science fiction fandom and its Dallascon Bulletin had a lasting impact: These and Reamy's ten issues of Trumpet inspired the formation on July 3, 1971 of the still-ongoing Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS) and several year's later, Kansas City's bid for the 1976 Worldcon. Many of Dallas' "Big Bid" concepts were adopted by KC and used in its multi-level bidding strategy. Reamy joined the KC bid at chairman Ken Keller's request, shortly before their victory in 1974, filling two key department head positions on the convention committee. The ill-fated "Big D in '73" bid was reborn in Kansas City as "KC in '76." Kansas City went on to win their Worldcon bid at Discon 2, held during Labor Day weekend 1974.

Following his move to KC in the late summer of 1974, Reamy retired Trumpet and began publishing the similar Nickelodeon. There, with new business partner Ken Keller, he started a typesetting and graphic design business, Nickelodeon Graphics. Together, they created the publications division for KC's now official MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention. Reamy immediately established a strong editorial style and modern graphic design approach to the convention's progress reports and other publications. That included a first: a full-sized, hardcover program book, a concept left over from the old Dallascon bid. All of this had a permanent influence on all Worldcon publications that followed. Reamy was also the department head of the convention's ambitious film program department that developed another first: a comprehensive, 80-hour, all 35mm science fiction film retrospective within a World Science Fiction Convention. The concept included a movie theater-style concessions area that offered freshly popped popcorn, selections of soda, and candies.