User:Trapdoor2010/Spectator Amateur Press Society

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The Spectator Amateur Press Society (SAPS) is the second oldest of the APAs focused on science fiction fandom. Founded in 1947, its membership limit has varied over the years (occasionally as high as 40) but is currently (2011) restricted to 25—and its actual membership is presently 14. Mailings are quarterly, with deadlines on the 15th of January, April, July and October. SAPS’s activity requirements are 6 pages on entry, and 6 every 6 months thereafter. Most members have no difficulty meeting this standard, and it has the effect of making the group more intimate and interactive than its older cousin, FAPA (the Fantasy Amateur Press Association), where minimum activity is on an annual basis.

SAPS has only one officer, the Official Editor (OE), who is omniscient, taking care of treasury, membership roster, constitutional interpretation, and mailing management. An Emergency Officer is designated to take over in the event of death or disenchantment. In addition to the OE and the EO, SAPS currently has one other designated official position, the KOTT (“Keeper of The Traditions”). In long-ago times, the first place in the annual Pillar Poll award carried the titular presidency with it (with all other members being vice-presidents), but conducting this poll was abandoned in the ‘90s.

SAPS was created at a meeting of the Spectators (“a kind of New Jersey version of the Futurian Society, only without Social Consciousness”) at the home of Joe Kennedy (who later became noted poet X. J. Kennedy). The original name was to be Spectator Amateur Press Association, but then someone had the inspiration to change the last name to Society so the initials would spell you-know-what.

In 1988 Seattle area fan Burnett R. Toskey was elected OE and has held the position ever since. Half of the present membership lives in and around Seattle, which allows for quarterly mailing parties and hand-delivery of the mailings to members in the area. This has allowed SAPS’s dues to remain low even in the face of postal rate increases because the cost of mailing to non-local members is subsidized by all members.

Past mailings of SAPS, both whole and partial, are lodged in various libraries including the Albert O. Kuhn Library & Gallery at the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus and the University of California Riverside’s Eaton Science Fiction Collection.