Editorial overview
Secondary Universe I was held May 10-11, 1968, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Its importance lies in the way it placed science fiction and fantasy in a public university setting, treating genre fiction not merely as hobby reading but as a subject worthy of lectures, debate, teaching, and cultural analysis.
Table of Contents
The conference belongs to a transitional moment in the history of science fiction. Fans had already built decades of clubs, fanzines, conventions, and correspondence networks, while universities were beginning to take popular culture more seriously. Secondary Universe I sat between those worlds: fannish enough to care about the field from the inside, but formal enough to point toward the later growth of science fiction studies.
A conference at the edge of two cultures
The late 1960s were a charged period for science fiction. The New Wave had made the field more stylistically adventurous, the space program had made technological futures part of everyday news, and university students were reading genre fiction alongside politics, sociology, media theory, and literary experimentation. A campus conference on science fiction and fantasy made sense in that environment. It gave readers a place to ask not only whether a story was entertaining, but what it revealed about modern life.
That was a meaningful shift. Earlier science fiction events often centered on fan sociability, author appearances, publishing news, auctions, masquerades, and fanzine exchange. Those activities remained important, but Secondary Universe I suggested another possibility: science fiction could be discussed in classrooms, auditoriums, and public forums without apologizing for its genre label. The title itself, “Secondary Universe,” echoed the idea that invented worlds deserved serious attention because they gave readers alternative ways to think about reality.
Why Milwaukee mattered
Milwaukee was not an accidental backdrop. The city sat within a strong Midwestern fan geography that included Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Madison, and other centers of convention and club activity. By 1968, the Midwest had a mature fan culture with enough readers, writers, students, collectors, and organizers to support ambitious events outside the coastal publishing centers.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee gave the conference institutional weight. A university venue could attract students who were not already part of organized fandom, and it could make science fiction visible to faculty, librarians, local press, and the broader public. That mattered because many readers still encountered science fiction through paperbacks, magazines, or fan circles rather than through formal courses. Events like Secondary Universe I helped move the field into a wider cultural conversation.
What the conference represented
Secondary Universe I should be remembered less as a one-off curiosity than as evidence of a broader change in status. Science fiction and fantasy were becoming subjects that could support serious panels, historical framing, critical vocabulary, and organized public discussion. The conference helped normalize the idea that genre readers could be both fans and critics.
That dual identity became increasingly important. A fan might collect magazines, write letters of comment, attend conventions, and also argue about myth, utopia, technology, ecology, race, gender, or political imagination. The border between fan enthusiasm and scholarly inquiry was porous. Secondary Universe I made that porosity visible by bringing the discussion into an academic space while retaining the energy of fan culture.
Science fiction before genre studies matured
Today it is easy to forget how early 1968 was in the development of science fiction studies. There were important critics, bibliographers, editors, and teachers before then, but the field had not yet settled into the shape it would later take through academic journals, conferences, university courses, and research collections. Secondary Universe I belongs to that earlier phase, when much of the work depended on individual initiative and local enthusiasm.
That makes the conference historically useful. It shows how science fiction entered institutions from the ground up: through readers who cared enough to organize, professors willing to take the material seriously, students eager to connect literature with contemporary life, and fans who already possessed deep knowledge of the field’s magazines, authors, and debates.
Legacy
The legacy of Secondary Universe I is not simply that it happened. Its value is that it captured a moment when science fiction was moving across boundaries. It was entertainment, but also literature. It was fan culture, but also public culture. It was speculation, but also a way to talk about the present.
For readers studying the history of fandom, the conference is a reminder that legitimacy did not arrive all at once. It was built through many small acts: a campus room reserved, a program assembled, a speaker invited, a local audience persuaded that imaginary worlds could be discussed with seriousness. Secondary Universe I was one of those acts, and that is why it remains worth documenting.
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