A Note on Methodology and Sources for U.S.S. Aquila: The First 10 Years

by Rob Langenderfer

In writing this history, I made use of club meeting minutes, club newsletters and other papers and letters from the club archives. Since it is not a formal academic paper, I did not see the need to document every single fact with its source, but I am available for consultation if anyone should wish to know how I also utilized my own memory of being active in the group for more than 17 of its 19 years. I am grateful for the recollections and comments of Glenna Juilfs, Tammy Widener, and Cindy Paugh who read an earlier draft of this history and helped to improve it. I am responsible for the content of this history, and all errors (if any - hopefully not!) or interpretations expressed therein are my own.

I originally had an overly long title for this history. In a fit of temporary insanity, I meant to include something from the earlier title in the text itself, but perhaps it fits better here.

The noted historian George M. Trevelyan defined social history as "history with the politics left out." I wrote this as an example of social history. This is not to say that politics were unimportant on the Aquila, but they were not what the ship was ultimately about. However, a listing of the ship's officers are part of an Appendix (Appendix A) to this history and are attached here.

I have also attached a list of the panels at Millenicon that I personally was on that I made a list of a while back. I have every single program from each Millennicon that I attended. However, I know that some of the programs have errors and that sometimes the panelists listed in the program were not the people who actually ended up being on the panel. For that reason, I am going to base this listing on the personal list that I made up. If other people want to see who else was on the panels, I have the programs that they can examine. I can also comb my memory to try to determine if the people listed in the program were actually on the panels with me. However, because I did not list at the time the other people who were on the panels with me, I don't have a source that I can trust for this, and my memory, although good, is not perfect. I do know that the U.S.S. Aquila did a panel on the writer David Eddings in the late 1990s on which I was not present. All this having been said, I have attached a list of the different panels that I have been on at different conventions as Appendix B.