A When Dr Swisher's S-F CHECK LIST was first published, fanzine editors
scrambled to be alphabetically first; and such publications as the AAANTHOR
ARGUS were produced. "a", published by Swisher himself, finally secured first
place.
_
A See "Null-A", the pronunciation of this symbol. Korzybski would have
grotched if he'd recollected that it also means "average value of A".
AA 194 Back in 1945 Speer stopped at the Slan Shack in Battle Greek where he
gave the assembled stfnists some sorta Mental Alertness and General
Intelligence Test. On this, the widely-read Al Ashley scored 194 out of a
possible 200. That's pretty good, being in the upper 5% of college graduates'
scores. Al bragged this up and did not contradict people who interpreted his
score as an IQ of 194, but by the time the Insurgents got thru raking him over
the coals he wished he hadn't. In later years, Jack Harness, a Scientological
"priest" actually claimed that Scientology had raised his IQ into the 170's;
hence "the equation of fandom", JH+20=AA 194.
[CORRECTION: It was at a 1943 Michiconference, not one in 1945, that Speer
gave the test that earned Ashley his nickname. ]
ACC (1) Arthur C Clarke, English fan-turned-pro. Now that he's passed from
among us it's used mostly in puns like Willis's "ACColade -- Ego's
favorite drink". (2) Of a group: Adolescent California Crowd. Dave Rike,
Terry Carr, Pete Graham, and Boob Stewart, back when they were... adolescent,
that is. Stewart was apparently responsible for much of the juvenility before
he went into a Papist theological seminary.
ACKERMANESE The grammatical practices followed by Forrest J Ackerman and in
part -- the degree varying from fan to fan -- by those in whom
his example propagated. Several minor wars were fought over the question of
its uses but the invention went on insidiously spreading till about the time
of the Insurgent War in LA. The practice, tho not the name, was revived about
1954 as described under DEMOLISHISMS.
Lapse of Ackermanese was not directly caused by the Blowup; it was
abandoned by 4e himself, with the explanation that he was disgusted with a lot
of things like this that he'd tried to popularize with slight success.
Originally it was a radical form of simplifyd spelng, like "U & I r
to b praps th lst 2 men to go roketng to an xtra-galaktik planet wher a rekt ship
is strandd". This sort of thing ("Ackese") was a little too much even for 4e,
and as it eventually developed Ackermanese included a toned-down simplifyd
spelng. Stylistic peculiarities included nonstoparagraphing, a colloquial
style with plenty of scientificombinations, and punnery wherever the
opportunity presented itself. Quotes were rendered with all their typing
peculiarities and errors; only one set of quotemarks was used on a series of
consecutive words or phrases from various sources; the native names were used
for geographic locations ("Moskva, Deutsche, Ceskoslovensk", etc -- and the
use of quotemarks here illustrates the preceding point). Syntactical oddities
like omission of "of" in "another th fans" and placing modifiers outside verb
phrases as in "He undoubtlessly'd say so" instead of "He'd undoubtlessly say
so", should be noted. Mechanical characteristics, as seen in the writings of
Mirta Forsto and others, are the use of green pen and mimeo ink -- green is
the official Esperantist color -- neotric green-and-brown typeribbon, and the
Vogue sans-serif typeface.
ACTIVITY The amount of your material that appears in an APA. (For other
sorts of activity see under FANAC and CRIFANAC). All the fan APAs
demand a certain minimum activity (6 pages every 6 months in SAPS; 8 yearly in
FAPA; 16 yearly in OMPA); this is "required activity".
ACTIVITY PARTY A group (Art Rapp, Rick Sneary, Ed Cox) of the poor misguided
people who spring up every now and then to try and revive the
N3F. From 1948 to 1950 (when Rapp and Cox entered the Army and Sneary began
to gafiate) they plugged for an Activity Requirement Plan (ARP) which would
require each member of the club to accomplish a certain amount of fanac each
year. When put to a vote in 1949 it failed of adoption, tho its proponents
were elected.
ADVERTISING Both classified and display ads are published in fanzines, tho
convention booklets have more than all other fan publications
(except Adzines) put together. (Adzines are simply fanzines which exist as a
medium for advertisements; other material may be included without changing the
nature of the zine.) Want ads are often placed to fill gaps in a collection,
or for rare items. For sales include the same thing, sometimes offering an
entire collection; and a good deal of trade results from these and swap ads.
There are also advertisements of stickers, stationery, odd typeribbons,
organizations, fan gatherings and all sorts stuff.
Mention should be made of the humorous fake advertisements of
Lowndes, Danner, Grennell and others. Lowndes and Danner imagine a capitalistic future
and offer remedies for horrible new maladies, books on spicy customs of ETs,
begging ads for unlikely charities, industrial novelties from the United
Vacuum Fabricating Machinery Works, ktp.
ADDITION: AFSF Armed Forces Science Fiction. A club for fans in service, started by a bunch
of unknowns; Gar Williamson, the BEM (President), Ron Vogt, Jack Jardine,
Woody Ayres, and Bob Rhodes, plus civilian Larry Maddock. Jardine attended the
NOLaCon and some of the group made it to Chicago, where they distributed a "preview"
issue of clubzine CONFUSION; there was no other known activity.]
AGE Fans range in age from the early teens to the seventies, but most of us
were born between 1930 and 1940. Various polls -- IPO, Poll Cat, and
later ones by Campbell, MacKenzie, and assorted fans -- put the median age in
the early twenties; the arithmetical average isn't reliable because
calculations are distorted by the very aged such as Bloch, Tucker, Doc Smith,
Ackerman and others who have existed ever since Gernsback created the world.
The question whether mental and chronometric age among fans are related is
hotly argued, some maintaining that those under a certain youngness are not
competent to dispute or judge their elders. And sometimes the expression
"young fans" refers to the time the people concerned have been in fandom,
rather'n their calendar ages.
AGENT Agents are used by many pro authors, even the best established. They
relieve professional writers of the tedium of submitting their own
manuscripts individually and, if any good, make each script produce more
income for its author by holding out for higher rates and selling all sorts of
subsidiary rights. (Apparently personal contact gets better results than
sending the story in by mail.) Numerous fans have been agents, or worked for
agents for a short period; in fact, it's said that you can't turn around in
New York without running into a Scott Meredith graduate, and the Futurians
moved into editorships from their agenting jobs.
Traditionally, ethical agents don't advertise or charge reading fees.
However, many agents run (and advertise) manuscript criticism bureaus on the
side, charging fees of $5 or more for this service; a few so-called agents
derive practically their entire income from this source. The most prominent
agents handling science fiction writers at present are Forrest J Ackerman,
Harry Altshuler (both one-man operations), Ann Elmo (slightly larger, with ex-fan
and editor Theron Raines handling the stf clients), Byrne and Reiss (old-time
Fiction House editors), and Scott Meredith (a large outfit, and one that does
have a reading fee department). Heinlein uses the services of Burton
Blassingame, probably unknown outside the field but highly respected within
it; Asimov was once burned by an agent who was careless with writers' money and
now uses no agent at all; Tucker has an agent for his books but markets his shorts
himself.
If you're not interested in crashing the proz, this is probably more
than you need to know about agents. If you are, a word of advice: don't pay a
reading fee. If you have anything on the ball at all, you'll find agents
willing to read and criticize your work for nothing; if you haven't, some
honest editor will tell you so eventually.
AGHARTI In some branches of occultism, and in many's the story in Amazing or
Other Worlds, a buried city in the Tibet area which may or may not be
the home of the King of the World (the ultimate psychic adept) but which
always contains individuals so full of philosophic wisdom that they slosh audibly
when they walk.
AH! SWEET IDIOCY! F Towner Laney read fandom the riot act in this mammoth
publication, 130 pages explaining his disgust with fandom,
its inhabitants, its attitudes, its interests, and any other group
characteristics you can think of. It was the culmination of his attacks on
the more undesirable features of the LASFS in particular, which had previously
been blasted in a series in the club organ SHANGRI-L'AFFAIRES. The title
represents his view of fandom from the outside, as seen by a non-fan; it was, in a way,
Laney's fan memoirs, and described his entire fan career to 1946 and the
Pacificon -- during which time he went from looking at fans thru rose-colored
glasses to looking at them without, perhaps, any glasses at all. This growing
disillusionment is the whole point of the work, in which Laney explains how
and why he became an Insurgent.
ASI immediately provoked discussion and argument pro and con from all
over; some disputed the facts and some the propriety of describing fandom in general
and the LASFS in detail as a nest of ineffectuals, perverts, fuggheads and
worthless creatures generally. But the almost universal acceptance of the
Insurgent Attitude and its later equivalent, the Trufan idea, among the top
fans, suggests that FTL had an uncomfortable amount of the right on his side.
AHMF ---- Algeristic Home Made For (sum). Martin Alger of Detroit ("Photo-
Fanatic Lensman") has a fabulous number of tools and much facility
with them; once he made his own mimeograph and published on it a one-shot
instructing the fan how to make his own mimeo for $3.75. (Of course
other fans like Dale Tarr and Bill Danner had made their own flatbed mimeos,
but Alger's was the first rotary job.) The renown of this feat spread till Martin
became mythologically credited with infinite manufacturing potential and a
mania for making things himself at the lowest possible prices, from Heironymus
machines (which see) to thermonuclear devices ("AHMF $1.35 -- not counting the
hydrogen").
[CORRECTION: Alger's wasn't the first rotary homemade mimeo; Dale Tarr
had made one, too, in the longago. There's a rumor that Boff Perry did the same.]
AJ or AJAY Amateur Journalism, which see. Producing or writing for amateur
magazines. The initials usually refer to the hobby as carried on
in the mapas; but an AJZINE is one distributed in an amateur press association,
not just any amateur magazine.
[ADDITION:
AKA Also known as. We apparently picked this up from police slanguage.]
ABDUL ALHAZRED (Lovecraft) Arabian necromancer of distinction, author of the
Necronomicon. In the Lovecraft Mythos he opened the
first gate for the entrance of the Great Old Ones into "our" world, but
nonetheless -- or perhaps we should say "and therefore" -- came to a
spectacularly messy end; in the sight of a crowd at his city's gates, he was
eaten alive by an invisible monster.
[ADDITION:
ALIEN SCIENCE-FANTASY CLUB A national fan group formed by Vic Waldrop jr. in 1952;
it failed to attract much support. There were about 20
members, including Lee Hoffman, Shelby Vick, Charles Wells, Janie Lamb, Lynn Hickman,
and Bill Berger. Waldrop's THE ALIEN was official organ.]
ALPAUGH IS GHOD The motto, and entire corpus of laws, of SAPS around 1948
when Lloyd Alpaugh was OE. SAPS' OE has all power, limited
only by assassination or rebellion.
AMATEUR JOURNALISM Technically includes any form of publishing where monetary
gain is not the primary motive. With us, it means
publishing fanzines of any type or, by extension, writing for and illustrating
them. Fans sometimes use this valuable expression when asked what their hobby
is by someone who wouldn't understand about fandom; and, indeed, fan activity
is amateur journalism -- plus. The manufacture and distribution of our
mimeoed and dittoed leaflets is one of the most important characteristics of
our hobby.
ANGELS The word usually means somebody who contributes a sizeable bit of
dough to a fanzine to finance something special, like a lithoed cover.
ANGLO-SAXON POETRY Did not have rime or regular rhythm. Each line was cut in
two by a pause, with two accented syllables in each half,
the whole line tied together by alliteration; as, "A rocket was
ready to take you to Rio".
ANGLOFAN A fan who lives in England, nacherly; but here by "England" we
understand the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland. Anglofandom resembles and has many links with US fandom,
but is somewhat more adult in point of age and less plagued with the
fuggheaded sorts of serconnishness... the latter, no doubt, being due to the
former.
Since the hiatus of the Second World War the evolution of Anglofandom
has been considered as paralleling that of US Fandom, for no very sound reasons.
Earlier, however, Doug Webster marked out a series of distinct fandoms in
Britain.
First Fandom, Webster style, was marked mainly by interest in science
and science-fiction, and their fanzines were marked by pseudoCampbellism, news of
the pros and proz, fiction imitating professionals, and suchlike. Carnell,
Gillings, Manson, Meyer, et al were the chief members of First Fandom, and
were mainly interested in the foregoing subjects and also in social questions.
Second Fandom included Webster's own type of fans; CS Youd, Burke,
and others, who are interested in many things (good literature, swearing, women,
atheism, and phonetics) more than in science-fiction; they replaced First
Fandom (to which they were a partial reaction) about 1939, and offered a sharp
contrast to the sociological emphasis of the original British fans.
Third Fandom comprised the younger fans that appeared in wartime
Britain, once again interested mainly in such science-fiction as they could get, and
supporting the idea of a British general fan organization (the BFS) which the
sophisticated Second Fandom had outgrown. Historically inclined Anglofen
would perform a worthwhile service by continuing the analysis to a later date.
ANIMALIST PARTY was begun by fans in Beacon NY, under James H Madole; '45.
Animalism, said Madole, was the doctrine which called for
complete integration of all social, cultural, and governmental units to pave
the way for greater productive capacity. Bureaus would be replaced by
technical councils, slums and tenements would be eliminated, free college
education and generous old-age pensions provided, etc. Madole claimed to have
started political groups in New York, California, Idaho, and Kansas, but the
movement had fizzled out by 1947. The point of fannish interest was that fans
were to form the nucleus of this political party "which would include others"
-- so far as your K. Breul can determine, the last original stirring of the
old save-the-world-by-political-action notion among fans; tho older movements
like the Technocrats had disciples persisting in fandom even longer.
[CORRECTION: A horrid goof. The right spelling is "ANIMIST". Madole
dropped this idea and is currently (1959) F&#uuml;hrer of the National Renaissance
Party, America's only for-real Fascist movement -- not counting those like the
American Nazi Party, whose "fascism" is actually racism. The NRP's BULLETIN
carries the masthead-line "The Only Fascist Publication in America", and Madole
still howls regularly up in Yorkville, NY, where there is still an audience for this sort
of kookabooism.]
ANNISH or ANNIVERSARY The issue of a subscription fanzine which comes out, or
is planned to come out, in the same month as the
fanzine was launched, is the occasion for great celebration by the editor,
since relatively few fanzines reach even one anniversary. He often makes it
an extra-large number, which contains material solicited from Big Names, and
sometimes booster ads requested to help defray the additional expense.
Annishthesia is the gafia-like syndrome associated with publishers who
subside, stunned, after this herculean effort. It's commonly a result of
first-anniversary issues; those editors who survive this mark are usually too
canny to catch the disease again. One picture being worth a thousand words,
we present a 2000-word composition by Leeh on the following page.
[ADDITION: We might mention the habit fans have of designating annishes
with words of which this is a component; Quannish, Vegannish, Innish, for Quandry,
Vega, and Innuendo. It may derive, as an independent word, from Ann-issh, from a
Boggs article in the Vegannish.]
ANNUAL A publication, usually sponsored by an organization, which is supposed
to appear annually, but probably appears only once. It is supposed to
survey and summarize the work of the past year. Notable ones were the FANTASY
REVIEWS of '45 and '46, brought out by Joe Kennedy, and the 1948 one produced
by Ackerman and the Fantasy Federation. Not connected with any organization
are the yearbooks which appeared up to about 1944 indexing proz and listing
fan magazines.
[ADDITION: The 1948 Annual was indeed mimeoed by the LASFS and paid for
by 4e's left pocket, the Fantasy Foundation, but it was the brain-child of Don Wilson
and Redd Boggs, and after Wilson dropped out Redd did everything but mimeo and
mail it.]
APA Amateur Press Association. A group of people who publish fanzines and,
instead of mailing them individually, send them to an official editor,
who makes up a bundle periodically (altho these mailings have sometimes not
been temporally regular) and distributes one to each member. Such apazines
are contributed to the bundle by their publishers without charge, being
considered exchanges for the other members' fanzines. The procedure saves
time, work, and postage for the publishers; and since the mailing bundles are
identical and all members may be assumed to know their contents, comments on
them lead to lively discussions. For fan APAs see under FAPA, OMPA, and SAPS,
all still active, and 7APA, Vanguard, and WAPA, now defunct. (Whether the
Cult is an APA is hard to decide, but go ahead and look it up anyway.)
Many mundane APAs are in existence -- in fact, fandom got the idea
from them. These mapas usually print their publications with hand-operated
equipment, and are for the most part distinctly more interested in getting a
pleasant format and appearance than in producing interesting writing. Several
fans have vanished into or emerged from the mapas, and some stfnists, notably
HP Lovecraft, have been active Ajays at the same time. The memberships of
mundane associations are considerably larger and less active than those of fan
APAs, and it does not seem to be required that publishers send in sufficient
copies to cover the entire membership.
APPRECIATION MAGAZINE Is published one-shot style -- altho it may be a
special issue of a regular fanzine -- to commemorate,
celebrate, or sometimes castigate its object. The Tucker Issue of QUANDRY
(#24) was a case in point, as was Rotsler's HOMMAGE A BURBEE, (with nothing by
Burb in it!) A different version of the idea appeared in Harlan Ellison's
1953 "Galaxy Appreciation Issue" of SCIENCE FANTASY BULLETIN, which featured a
long and scalding harangue by Rich Elsberry, protesting various objectionable
practices indulged in by Galaxy editor Horace Gold a year or two previously.
[ADDITION: This should have been tied in with a mundane notion: it's the
nearest approximation to the German word Festschrift, used in mundane
(mostly scientific) circles to refer to a one-shot collection of articles dedicated to, though
not necessarily about, some figure being specifically honored. With us, of course, the
articles almost always have some connection -- however oblique -- with the vic...uh, honoree.]
ARISTOCRAT OF SCIENCE FICTION (Palmer) A glance at the entry under
"Palmerism" will explain the hilarity which
followed RAP's application of this tag to Amazing Stories, and the reason why
it's quoted solely in sarcastic connections.
CORRECTION: The credit should be (T. O'Connor Sloane). Amz was tagged with this
long before ZDays; it was the degradation under Palmer that made the label ludicrous. And
Galaxy and F&SF have applied the term to themselves, claiming that LIFE called them that in
an article on fandom and stf.]
ARKHAM HOUSE The first successful fantasy specialist publishing house.
August Derleth and associates, who, in a fit of pique at being
turned down by regular publishers with the Lovecraft Memorial volume The
Outsider and Others, decided to publish it themselves (December 1939).
Several other volumes of weird fiction have been produced in addition to
various books of Lovecraft & -iana. AH does not, of course, do the actual
printing and binding of its publications.
ARMY Several fans have managed to keep up their activity thru a hitch in the
service, and some (Rapp, Sanderson, Buckmaster, Riddle) are
professionals. In the APAs, OEs have a tradition of leniency in enforcing
activity requirements in such cases.
ARS American Rocket Society. Formerly American Interplanetary Society, its
name was changed to avoid scaring conservatives and also because its
experiments were not directed, strictly, to interplanetary flight but to
terrestrial uses of rockets -- e g JATO devices, antitank weapons, ktp.
Several fans and pros have been high in the organization, however. Before the
war, much pioneering experimentation was carried out on such problems as the
most efficient fuels and the best shape for the combustion chamber. With the
war and its sequelae the ARS ceased to sponsor experiments and became a
lecture society; but its old Experimental Committee became the nucleus of
Reaction Motors, Inc. As an educational organization the ARS has about 6000
members (1956). But the only private rocket research of any importance today
is carried on by a couple of Los Angeles groups which have a test station in
the Mojave Desert.
ART Well, maybe that should go in quotes. Fandom has some talented artists,
& some who, like Bill Rotsler, have the benefit of training and
employment in the field; but many fans, whether artists or not, have now and
then turned their hands to illustrating what they're trying to say, or putting
what they want to get across in a more expressive medium than words. Much fan
art may be considered under Cartoons, where illustration combines with our
normal (literary) means of communication. Of other types: nearly every
subzine has a cover illustration, which usually shows a fantasy scene having
no relation to the contents of the magazine; VOMaidens are the ultimate of
this type. Title headings for departments are often embellished irrelevantly;
put some rivets on the letters or a spaceship behind them, and that's that.
When fiction is included in the magazine it is often illustrated; articles may
be, too, tho this is sometimes impossible. Display ads may be decorated.
Fragmentary sketches are also used as fillers (hence the byname fillo) or
sometimes stuck around on the page to break up the dead-solid type. Well-
drawn illustrations for their own sake are rare, tho there are some full-page
illustrations with a few lines of poetry inspiring or inspired by it. Most
frequently artwork standing alone is cartooning about fan events real or
imaginary. On a slightly higher level are short-lived scientificomics in the
fanzines, and some caricatures of Wollheim and his "stooges" done by
Baltadonis of Philly during the Futurian Wars. Our illustration [not shown] is of
historic importance, because its appearance on a card addressed to DAW was the
basis of the Wollheimist charges that he was the object of "libelous and
utterly vicious attacks" in the 1938 FAPA campaign. In addition to all these
art types, photography has shown up increasingly; first as tipped-in prints in
the early 40s, followed by the discovery of photolitho and a process for
putting photos on a mimeograph stencil. Sometimes heard is Artoon, coined by
Jack Harness to describe his type of drawing but applied to any small
illustration of a humorous type.
ARTICLE The most plastic form of non-fiction writing. Some articles are so
long as to require serialization or fill an entire booklet;
paragraph-length fillers may be referred to as articles. Subjects include
science discussions, news of the proz (future line-ups, changes of ownership),
interviews, reviews of books movies music or what have you, collectors' dope,
quizzes and polls, humor and satire, biographies of fans and pros, news of fan
activities and plans, accounts of fan gatherings trips and visits,
whitherings, discussion and exhortation in fan feuds, reminiscences, autoanalyses,
discussion of philosophical and sociological concepts, opinions on the quality of modern
stfsy, and unclassifiables like hoaxes, the number of fans having the same
first name, graphanalyses, and women's hats. 'Tweren't always thus; as explained
under Numerical Fandoms sub First Transition the field of discussion has gradually
broadened until now it takes in anything the postal laws allow, and many that
they don't; this despite several "back to fantasy" movements and much exhortation
by people like Marion Z Bradley.
ASFO The Atlantia, Georgia SF Organization, whose wheels were various Dixie
fans like Macauley, Burwell, and others. In full swing by July 1951,
they accomplished a notable feat of fan publishing by getting out a hard-cover
edition of Sam Moskowitz's The Immortal Storm.
ASHLEY MYTHOS Appeared in SHANGRI-L'AFFAIRES, BURBLINGS, and MASQUE tho the
term itself was coined by Rotsler. The Insurgents, in these,
gave poor Al Ashley such a vigorous and sustained raspberry that he gafiated.
ASP Associated Slan Press -- the BNFs of Midwestern fandom during World
War II. Tucker and the Ashleys were the most important members of this
publishing house. Tucker says that membership was by invitation only, with
members required to keep up to the standards of the organization. In the
emblem the ASP isn't a giant thing crawling around a hill with a pyramid on it.
(Cleopatra's.)
ASSOCIATION An organization of individuals working in the same field who
expect to make greater progress by collective effort. This
designation is the one applicable to most fan organizations; some of those
actually bearing it are FAPA, OMPA, BSFA, WSFA, and ESFA.
ASSORTED SERVICES Partnership of Ackerman and a Mr & Mrs Emsheimer, on the
model of an enterprise in Paris. They undertook to do
various things for hire, but most of their business came from fandom, when
they introduced publishers to the lithograph process on a large scale. Much
merriment-material came from the publication, about the time Associated
Services was announced, of Heinlein's "We Also Walk Dogs" (ASF Jul 41), telling of
General Services Inc.
[ADDITION:
A*S*T*E*R*I*S*K*S Their use as illustrated apparently comes from the Hyman Kaplan
stories. This usage is mostly honorific, as in R*O*T*S*L*E*R.]
ATHEISM An issue bound to come up in a bull session of skeptical-minded
types, and fandom is a continuous bull session. Muchly debated in
the letter columns of Eofandom, it arose in the fanzine world with Wollheim's last
Phantaflexicon column, which, discussing Science Fiction and Religion,
remarked that the majority of ISA members he knew were atheists. Shroyer added comment
on the observed correlation between atheism and the liking for SF. Argument
on the main questions, such as there was, was hot, but no changes of opinion
are known to have resulted, and the Michelists showed a disposition to
relinquish the point to gain support for their faction. In the Second
Transition the IPO found the proportion of 9:14 against church adherence, with
several of the churchgoers indicating that they didn't really believe in it.
How many of the nays are honest-to-Roscoe atheists and how many agnostics,
pantheists, and other exotic credists, cannot be accurately determined. At
any rate, it is pretty well established that fans generally hold to a
mechanistic philosophy which precludes the existance of a personalized god
like the gaseous vertebrate of Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology. Len
Moffatt's chief fame is as the only outspoken Christianfan, tho there are a
number of others, not forgetting Palmer. Some mystically inclined stfnists
hold that the Unknown Source of the Universe is what they mean by "god", not
realising that they are defining a demiurge rather'n a deity. And all good
fans occasionally spurn and kick at the Fundamentalists.
WILLIAM ATHELING JR Jim Blish, a fan-turned-pro who contributed a long series
of percipient criticism under this byline to Redd Boggs'
SKYHOOK in the mid-50s. The pename's from that of Ezra Pound, who wrote
criticism as William Atheling. Junior's identity was a great puzzle at the
time he was writing; those who pondered it might have reached the solution if
they'd known who senior was, since Blish is a great admirer of Pound's poetry
and criticism.
[ADDITION:
ATOMIC BOMBS When they fell on Hiroshima stfnists gleefully chortled "I told you
so!" Still more reflected egoboo -- because, you see, it demonstrated
that we were participating in the future by reading this crazy Buck Rogers stuff -- came
when it was revealed that the Military Intelligence people had raided the offices of
Astounding Science Fiction in 1944, when Cleve Cartmill's story "Deadline" had
appeared; the story dealt with E-T's making an atomic bomb of U235, and
gave the Security boys quite a turn when one of them happened to pick up a copy on a
newsstand in Oak Ridge.]
ATOMIGEDDON (Ackerman) The atomic war which will destroy the human race;
a bigger and better Blowup, with no survivors.
AUCTION One of the chief sources of money for fan gatherings is an auction of
collector's items, usually contributed by pro editors and fans. All
conventions, most major conferences, and some large meetings of local groups
are scenes of auctioneering; at conventions, the auction is usuallly not
completed in a single session. Most popular auction pieces are original
illos. Back issues of the prozines and some fanzines are sold (frequently in
sets in the case of famous serials) and a few books, original manuscripts, and
odd items appear. Prices paid vary according to supply and demand - also
according to the time of night, falling as money runs low, auctioneers get
hoarse, and most of the best items vanish. The highest price recorded is $70
by Harry Moore for a Finlay cover (for Theodora DuBois' The Devil's
Spoon, from FFM); and some items have gone at three for 1¢.
AUSLAN or AUSSIEFAN An Australian fan, o'course. There are New Zealand ones,
too, distinguished as Kiwifans. It's a designation of
location today, but just after World War II when the Sydney Futurians admitted
foreign members they actually called their organization the Auslans (a name
coined by Sterling Macoboy). Readers of German will dig the double pun.
AUTHENTIC You mustn't refer to Bert's old British prozine by its initials.
That'd mean two ASFs edited by a Campbell.
AUTOANALYSES Originally called psychoanalyses, articles of this type
consist of taking oneself apart, usually in the third person,
explaining how a fan got to be what he is and what he thinks he is. The
Washington Worry-Warts took the lead in this activity. Emphasis is usually on
universality, or at least wide applicability, rather than Byronic display of
differentness from everybody else.
AUTOMOBILES As fans reached the age where they could earn money, many of them
bought second-hand cars to make visits and trips to fan
gatherings in, and gave them appropriate names such as Panzerkampfwagen, FooFoo Special,
Stfnash, The Hop Bitters, or The Ay-rab Steed. Some of these have been
painted all over like the vehicles comic strips supply for teenagers, while others are
dignified bourgeois conveyances, but most all are second hand. Fen show a
real attachment to them, and often personalize them, especially in describing their
ills: a flat tire is a sprained ankle, the headlights are eyes; if the gas
tank runs dry you may have to take the top off the carburetor and feed it
intravenously to get the motor going again; etc. Metaphors are mixed; the front fenders may
be either shoulders or knees as the situation makes convenient, usw.
[ADDITION: Westcoasters are strong followers of the custom of naming cars, etc..
Sneary's '50 Chevy is Grossvogel; old Outlander Bill Elias has a motor scooter that was
named Aristotle, because it only had two cylinders.]
AVOIDANCE An expression used to keep from overusing the first person
singular, which is supposed to be bad taste. A couple dozen rather
farfetched ones are used in this book, but the most common in fan usage is "we".
AVOIDISM (Price:Hoffwoman) Not originally fannish at all, but a philosophy
devised in a rather stomach-turning book, In One Head and Out The
Other, this doctrine became confused/associated with the Gandhi-following
folk of Eric Frank Russell's "And Then There Were None". It inspired an APA, MYOB,
and an Avoidist Movement which avoided amounting to anything. Tenets are those
implied by the root word. Lee Hoffman explains that three types of avoidism
are distinguished: (1) pure, (2) applied, and 3) active, or Activist. In pure
avoiding one avoids everything except eating, breathing, and metabolizing. In
applied avoiding one avoids as many things as possible. (Bus drivers are good
at this sort of thing, like avoiding people waiting at bus stops.) Active
avoidism isn't true avoidism and is practiced to Publicize the Cause, or as an exercise
in Avoiding. Under active avoidism there is the subgroup Counteravoiding; to
counteravoid vegetarianism, for instance, one eats meat. Leeh concluded: "A
last word on Avoidism: I had one grunch but the eggplant over there".
AWARDS The principal awards given in fandom have been called laureates and
Hugos. But pros receive egoboo from their Hugos (International
Fantasy Awards), Invisible Little Men, and such trophies, or from things like the
LASFS' Fanquets -- which, despite the name, honor pro-crashers.
Updated January 9, 1999. If you have a comment or question about these Web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.