Society History

The Ori­gin of the Society

The ori­gin of the Soci­ety begins in a large extended house­hold in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, in the mid 1960’s. At the time, the occu­pants and their friends would hold reg­u­lar Ren­nais­sance Faires in the back yard of the house, where they would have mock com­bats and hold medieval feasts and events.

How­ever, when a mem­ber of the house­hold not only was to cel­e­brate her birth­day and move to the Far East, the back­yard area was deemed too small and the sen­ti­ment was to move the party to a pub­lic park. But when the orga­nizer called the pub­lic parks depart­ment, she was asked for the name of the group. With­out giv­ing any thought to it, she blurted out “The Soci­ety for Cre­ative Anachro­nism” and the name stuck.

Thus the Soci­ety was born

Now, it should be men­tioned that the said house­hold was a favorite of science-fiction fans and writ­ers of the area: the mem­ber whose birth­day it was was Diana Pax­son and the orga­nizer was Mar­ion Zim­mer Bradley. Other promi­nent authors who were also mem­bers of the Soci­ety include Jerry Pour­nelle, Poul Ander­son and Mer­cedes Lackey.