Minn-StF is the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, Inc., a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation organized “to foster an interest in science fiction and a general involvement in fandom” (from the corporation’s by-laws as of 4-Dec-2021).

This Fan Photo Archive is a project of Minn-StF.

We believe that Minn-StF is currently the oldest operating organization of science fiction fans in the Twin Cities. An earlier organization, the Minneapolis Fantasy Society, was formed in 1937, on the remains of an even earlier branch of the Science Fiction League, but was formally disbanded in 1944 (and probably inactive for some time before that). There was then a rather long interregnum before Minn-StF popped up in 1966.

What Minn-StF has to say about itself is on our website.

By now some of you are probably wondering where that “T” comes from in the abbreviation. We know the answer to that!

It comes from “scientifiction“, which was the term Hugo Gernsback introduced for the genre in the first issue of Amazing Stories (April 1926). (The term is a contraction of “scientific fiction”.) You will note that that was a long time before Minn-StF was founded; it was apparently a bit of conscious reference to the history.

There is a tradition (which many of us remember, but for which we have found no written basis so far) that there is no one official abbreviation for the name of the group. The abbreviation “Minn-StF” (with many variant capitalizations) and MNSTF are in common use. All of the abbreviations are pronounced “minn-stiff”, regardless of spelling.