X The most important of these unknowns in stf is the mysterious platinum-
group metal which, in the Skylark Series, acted as a catalyst in atomic
disintegration.
X ACT (Ackerman) The Exclusion Act.
XCON The ChiCon II, the Tenth Annual Science Fiction Convention. Here a
reference to Roman numerals is scratched out of the ms as unnecessary.
X DOCUMENT In September 1945 Wollheim and Michel planned to cut Doc Lowndes,
Jim Blish, Judy Zissman, and Virginia Kidd out of the Futurians,
as they had, 'tis said, done to Cy Kornbluth, Harry Dockweiler, and Dick
Wilson on various previous occasions. This time, tho, Judy and Larry Shaw
collected the other Futurians -- the ostracizees plus damon knight and Chet
Cohen -- and threw Wollheim and Michel out of the Futurian Society, instead.
This action was made known in the X document, a four-page oneshot whose
intended title was "X Prime". (The Futurians had once had an organ titled
"X"; for this, cover-artist Larry Shaw got confused between X' and
X1, and used the latter, which most fans read as "#1" instead of
"Sub One".) It went to the membership of FAPA and VAPA, and a few days later
the summonses started to arrive; Wollheim sued for "defamation of character,
mental injury, threat to livelihood" and asked damages of $25,000 -- thus
beginning a tradition. After a get-together by the judge and lawyers for both
sides, the case was thrown out, but it quite wrecked the old Futurians. After
the noise and tension died, various of the seven sued members began to get
under each others' skins in different ways, and by tacit agreement the
Futurian Society of New York was left to die in peace.
= = = = = = =
Y Because some scribes of Norman England didn't know enuf about Anglo-
Saxon to continue spelling words like "hwaet" with an hw, but instead
spelled them wh, the h element has almost disappeared in recent-immigrant-
dominated regions of the US like the Atlantic seaboard, and Y and "why?" are
pronounced identically. Hence such puns as YFanac.
YEAR OF THE JACKPOT (Heinlein:White) After a surprising lack of fan deaths
during our previous thirty-odd years of mutual awareness,
between January 1958 and January 1959 Henry Kuttner, Cy Kornbluth, Vernon
McCain, F Towner Laney, and E Everett Evans -- veteran fans all, and the two
former famous pro authors -- died of various natural causes, and Ken Moomaw
and Bill Courval, promising younger fans, committed suicide. Since fannish
newszines were widely circulated at this time, practically all the active fans
got the news as a simultaneous shock; distress and gloomy comment was general.
YEARBOOKS In Third Fandom and previously, annual indexes of proz and listings
of fmz were published under this general name. (One of these, in
1939, even appeared on the newsstands...in Bloomington Illinois, that is.) Of
the Yearbook in a wider sense, the review of all activity in our field during
a year, memorable examples were the two Fantasy Reviews of Joe Kennedy
("Vampire Yearbooks") for 1945 and '46, and the LASFS/Fantasy Foundation
production for 1948. The practice died out after 1948, but Guy Terwilleger's
BEST OF FANDOM collections were sort of yearbooks for 1957-58, and the
FANNISH, annish of newszine FANAC, was a revival of the full-coverage style.
YEAST IS YEAST IS YEAST Cry of Southern Fandom during Sixth Fandom,
signifying that the South (i e the Confederacy)
will rise again.
YE ED An avoidance meaning "the editor", sometimes scientificombined yed.
In all such uses of "ye" what looks like a y is the Old English letter
"thorn", so that the word should be pronounced "the", but almost never is.
YHOS ("ee-hohss") Stands for "your humble and obedient servant", an
avoidance and nickname of Art Widner's, which has been used by others.
YNGVI (DeCamp&Pratt) The only thing we are told about Yngvi is that when
Harold Shea and Asa-Heimdall were in the dungeons of the Fire Giants in
The Roaring Trumpet, a little fellow came to the front of his cell
every hour on the hour and yelled "Yngvi is a LOUSE!" The mystery has
fascinated fandom, and Yngvi has turned up in all sorts of places -- a
statement as true today as when Speer wrote it fifteen years ago. Sometimes
the statement that he is a louse is taken literally; sometimes Yngvi is
confused with the little guy who didn't like him; once it was said that Yngvi
is a Type Fifteen fan. Elmer Perdue defended him/it gallantly during Third
Fandom days, asserting by sticker and otherwise that "Yngvi is NOT a louse!"
At the DenVention, Rothman made a motion to the effect that Yngvi is not a
louse, but it was defeated. A motion was then passed that Rothman is a louse.
The matter was brought up again at the 1950 PhilCo but ruled out of order by
Moskowitz, who misremembered that Rothman's motion had carried. In 1958 Sandy
Sanderson used "Yngvi" as ekename for a fan who'd been sending postcards to
insurance companies advising them that Inchmeryites were good prospects, and
getting salesmen to call.
Research by your J Fiske turns up the fact that in Scandinavian legend
(the background-mythos for The Roaring Trumpet) the primordial gods
Odin, Vili and Ve were the progenitors of (respectively) the Norse, German,
and English races, and "Ing" or "Yng" means roughly "the people of __".
Somebody like Col McCormick or another of the rabid English-haters who at the
time TRT was written were making all possible capital out of the
freshly-begun Second World War may have been the original of the little man in
the phrase.
YOBBER (Michel-Wollheim) A Ghuist term, obscure in meaning. This thingumbob
is so popular in fandom that it is meet to quote the editorial (from a
Mijimag in the 3rd FAPA mailing) in which it originally appeared:
"I, the Mentator Itself, call upon all heypoloyalists to rise and
slice these absolte ones, slice them, write and wrothe and then -- then
-- Yobber! Yes, Yobber! This is a time for stern measures.
"But first yob the leader. Yob the pohlth ikself! The pohlth that
preens and croos. The very pohlth that would durst murmulate the
Mentator myself! Vah! Tho we scorn with frange these attempts, yet we
warn lesser sorji that things may get out of hand. So forward -- YOBBER
TO THE VERY END!"
The cartoon-character Yobber, created by Jean Young, is illustrated
elsewhere. [not shown]
YOU'LL NEVER SEE IT IN GALAXY! Slogan used by HL Gold to declare his
opposition to the Western-turned-stfyarn that
seemed rife when Galaxy was founded (1950). But most fans would about as soon
have Western-turned-stfyarn as little-magazine-fiction-turned-stfyarn.
YOUNG FANDOM The idea of a teen-age fan club was conceived in February '46 by
Telis Streiff and Norm Storer, who organized their
correspondents and, with help from K Martin Carlsen, some teenage fans from
his mailing list. As The Junior Bems they set up a constitution with two
Governors, three Vough ("judges") and a SecTreasurer running the organization.
Around this nucleus was organized a diffuse group, Young Fandom, which
undertook such projects as a fanzine library and publication of a collection
of fan fiction, The Fan Book. Two issues of an OO were produced, but
the age group was so plagued with officials gafiating under pressures of
school work that it folded after about four years, being un-heard-of
thereafter. Actual fatal blow seems to have been in Spring '48 when OE
Caldwell, President Jewett, and SecTreasurer Grant all resigned
simultaneously.
Here we may mention a few other juvenile general fan organizations.
Henry Ackerman in the old days organized a Scientifiction Association for
Boys, with a circulating library at considerable expense. It never reached
second base. In 1947 Joanne Evans attempted to organize a fantasy club for
children under 12, but nothing ever came of it.
YOUNGFAN Strictly, a neofan. But Leeh Shaw wrote under the pename J Youngfan
III at one time, and occasionally (lucus a non lucendo with knobs
on) it's used as a nickname for Tucker.
= = = = = = = = = =
Z As in the case of A, a race of sorts took place when the SF Checklist of
Swisher was announced. Such titles as ZZ Zug's Gazette and Z[infinity symbol,
which can't be reproduced in HTML] tried for
last place on the list. It somewhat spoiled the fun when Swisher placed at
the end of the list, in more or less random order, certain non-alphabetic
characters that had been used as fanzine names.
ZAP is the sound made by a ray-gun when it's fired, if you've not had
occasion to notice. But a Zap-gun is a water-pistol, or sometimes a toy
ray-gun. Martin Alger explains the ultimate source thus:
"At the Torcon they showed an atomic energy movie and a lot of the neofen
were milling around during the showing. I asked Ben Singer if he were 'bored
because nobody in the film has pulled a raygun and gone Zap! Zap!?'... I never
heard the term used before this, so I guess that was the source."
Apparently, unbeknownst to any, a reporter was standing in the
neighborhood, for the Toronto Morning Star headlines its convention report
"Zap! Zap! Atomic Ray Passe with Fiends!" And, as Martin says, fans were
delighted with this and the term caught on from there.
ZINE Magazine, dummkopf.
ZOMBIE A creature, perhaps formerly dead, who has been raised sans soul to
serve as a slave for a master. Sometimes, because of the pseuicide, a
nickname for Singleton.
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