![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
Mar. 8th, 2009 10:54 amYesterday afternoon, after six years and two terms of office (the maximum in succession our constitution allows) I stood down as Chair of the Science Fiction Foundation. Congratulations to Edward James, who was elected by our committee and trustees to succeed me.
I'd like to thank everyone who has worked for or with the Foundation during this time for helping to make these six years so fulfilling. It has included a number of ups and downs, but even the latter made for interesting management challenges. We've published books, run conferences, instituted our Masterclass (now in its third year), provided support for Worldcon, Eastercons and the Clarke Award and set up our Essay Prize.
I can claim little personal credit for most of these achievements but I am grateful to have been able to help support them. I often felt that my main role in the Foundation was to try to keep all the admin and organisation going so that the people who actually produced all the above could get on with doing so. At least, this assuaged my feelings of being a complete fraud in terms of chairing a literary educational charity full of PhDs when my highest relevant qualification was an O-level in English Lit. (But we did do 1984, so it had some genre content!)
I am remaining as a Trustee of the Foundation and, for the time being, as a committee member without portfolio (or, to use the more pithy and descriptive term, 'dogsbody'). There are a number of Foundation projects I am still working on, including the digitisation of the old BSFA Tape Archive, and our new book, The Unsilent Library. But Professor James now has the driving seat - so we have a proper academic back in charge! - and he has my best wishes to take the Foundation forward.
Simon Bradshaw
Ex-Chair,
The Science Fiction Foundation
I'd like to thank everyone who has worked for or with the Foundation during this time for helping to make these six years so fulfilling. It has included a number of ups and downs, but even the latter made for interesting management challenges. We've published books, run conferences, instituted our Masterclass (now in its third year), provided support for Worldcon, Eastercons and the Clarke Award and set up our Essay Prize.
I can claim little personal credit for most of these achievements but I am grateful to have been able to help support them. I often felt that my main role in the Foundation was to try to keep all the admin and organisation going so that the people who actually produced all the above could get on with doing so. At least, this assuaged my feelings of being a complete fraud in terms of chairing a literary educational charity full of PhDs when my highest relevant qualification was an O-level in English Lit. (But we did do 1984, so it had some genre content!)
I am remaining as a Trustee of the Foundation and, for the time being, as a committee member without portfolio (or, to use the more pithy and descriptive term, 'dogsbody'). There are a number of Foundation projects I am still working on, including the digitisation of the old BSFA Tape Archive, and our new book, The Unsilent Library. But Professor James now has the driving seat - so we have a proper academic back in charge! - and he has my best wishes to take the Foundation forward.
Simon Bradshaw
Ex-Chair,
The Science Fiction Foundation
