About us
The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization whose purpose is to promote, discuss, celebrate and educate people about science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction in all of their forms.
PSFS meets monthly, usually on the second Friday of the month. Since Covid, our meetings have been a combination of remote (via Zoom) and in-person. Locations for in-person meetings are either at St. Mary’s Church at Penn, 3916 Locust Walk, Philadelphia PA 19104, or the Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia PA 19104.
Meetings usually feature a guest speaker from some area of the SF or fantasy field. Past guests have included Carmen Maria Machado, Josiah Bancroft, Tom Purdom, Jon McGoran, Madeleine Miller, Fonda Lee, Jeanne Cavelos, Jonathan Lethem, Vandana Singh, PJ Manney, Jason Sanford, John Wiswell, A. T. Greenblatt, Cat Rambo, Jo Walton, Stephanie Feldman, Ray Nayler, Premee Mohamed, Randee Dawn, Ellen Datlow, Walter Hunt, and Gregory Frost. Although our primary focus is on literary forms of SF and Fantasy, we also present guests who are involved in science, art, movies, comics, and gaming.
PSFS was founded by a group of teenage SF fans in 1935 and is the oldest continually active science fiction club in the United States. In addition to our regular monthly meetings, we have a book discussion group, a writer's workshop, (several of our members are successful published authors) and many special events such as parties, picnics, and trips to movies and museums. If you enjoy the wide and varied worlds of science Fiction and fantasy, you will find a home at PSFS!
For more information about the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, see our website at www.PSFS.org.
Philcon, our annual three day science fiction convention, takes place every November. It features speakers, panel discussions, performances, exhibits, an art show, costume show and much more. For more information about Philcon, go to www.philcon.org.
We hope to see you at our next meeting!
Upcoming events
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PSFS September 2026 Meeting (in person) - Guest speaker John Ashmead
The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USThe September 2026 meeting of PSFS will be held in person at The Rotunda, located on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. Street and garage parking are nearby, and the location is near SEPTA transit stops. PSFS meetings begin with club business, followed by the author or artist guest talk and Q&A.
The guest speaker for the Septmber 2026 meeting will be physicist and science fiction editor John Ashmead.
John Ashmead has a BA in physics from Harvard, summa cum laude, and a masters in physics from Princeton. For several years he was an assistant editor for Asimov's SF Magazine.
He is a frequent speaker at Philcon, Balticon, Capclave (& WorldCon & NASA) on Time Travel, Invisibility, Star Gates, Parallel Universes, and related topics.Recently he co-edited (with Darrell Schweitzer) Tales from the Miskatonic University: What evils lurk in the dark reaches of the Dewey Decimal System?
He is also finishing up a Ph.D. dissertation in physics, Time Dispersion in Quantum Mechanics. This was published as part of the International Association for Relativistic Dynamics 2018 Conference Proceedings (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1239/1/012015)).He continues to publish papers in various peer-reviewed publications, mostly on the role of time in quantum mechanics.
You can find out more about him and his work on his website at www.timeandquantummechanics.com.Information about PSFS can be found on the Society's website here:
https://psfs.org.1 attendee
Past events
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