Jim Baen's Universe

In My Opinion

Columns

The Literature of Fandom

Written by Mike Resnick

There has always been a close tie between fandom and the world of professional science fiction. Many of our greatest names—Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Judith Merril, Robert Silverberg, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Donald A. Wollheim, Harlan Ellison, tons of others—were fans before they became pros. Most—in fact, each of the writers I just named except Isaac—published fanzines. Fandom not only has a long and honored history of turning out topnotch professional writers, but it has a long and honored—and well-codified—history, period.

Indeed, never has a hobby been so thoroughly researched and written up. Even Mike Glyer's Hugo-winning fanzine, File 770, is named for the most famous fannish party of all, held in Room 770 of the 1951 Worldcon hotel in New Orleans.

But as science fiction has become big business, we are no longer written almost exclusively by former fans or read exclusively by fans (at least, not in the sense of being members of organized—or disorganized—fandom.)

So I thought it might be interesting and informative not merely to mention that science fiction has the best-documented fandom of any field, but to discuss those books—over 50, believe it or not!—that have codified it for future generations. Now, this doesn't pretend to be a complete list, not by any means. It's just what I have managed to accumulate during my 45 years as a fan and a pro (which, I hasten to point out, are not mutually exclusive. I am, always have been, and always will be, a fan—the IRS's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.) You won't find more than a tiny handful of these at your local Barnes or Borders, or even on Amazon.com—but go to the dealers from a science fiction convention, or check out bookfinder.com, abebooks.com, albris.com and some of the other bookfinding services online, and eventually you'll be able to find most of them.

HISTORIES

The first book of major import has to be The Immortal Storm, by Sam Moskowitz (published by the Atlanta Science Fiction Organization Press in 1954, and later reprinted by Hyperion). It is nothing less than the history of American science fiction fandom, culminating with the first Worldcon in 1939, all described in incredibly minute detail. Now, for those of you who may not know it, things did not go as smoothly at that first Worldcon as the participants might have wished. Moskowitz himself (a/k/a SaM, just as Forry Ackerman is a/k/a 4e) barred Don Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Fred Pohl, Robert A. W. “Doc” Lowndes, and John Michel from entering, and the latter part of The Immortal Storm, told in the third person (though with Moskowitz as a major player), is an account of events leading up to, and including, what has come to be known in fannish history as The Exclusion Act. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that these are not Kissinger and Disraeli SaM is writing about, but just a bunch of acne-faced kids with delusions of grandeur.

L. Sprague de Camp calls it "An extraordinary (if quite unintentional) study in small-group dynamics." Harry Warner, Jr. adds that "If read directly after a history of World War II, it does not seem like an anti-climax." An unnamed fan is quoted in All Our Yesterdays as calling it "Badly translated from the Slobbovian," a problem SaM would have again and again with his prose over the years. Damon Knight devoted a short chapter of his book of criticism, In Search of Wonder, to The Immortal Storm. The title of the chapter was "Microscopic Moskowitz." How microscopic?

Try this brief excerpt on for size: "The membership never exceeded the original five, and since these five promptly split into two factions . . ."

I should add that there's a companion piece of sorts. It's Jack Speer's Up To Now, available in A Sense of FAPA (which will be discussed later), or as a stand-alone chapbook published by Arcturus Press in 1994. It's Speer's version of fannish history in the 1930s, and actually pre-dates Moskowitz's book. Is it any gentler and kinder?

Well, according to Joe Gilbert, it's "as if someone had gathered up all the hates, prejudices and petty jealousies that have clogged the pipes of the stream of life since the world was first begun."

So is it possible to write a history of fandom that doesn't gather up all the hates, prejudices, etc.? It is if your name is Harry Warner, Jr. Harry took up where SaM and Speer left off, and covered the next two decades of fandom in two volumes. The first, dealing with the 1940s, was All Our Yesterdays, far better written than its predecessors, and without any axes to grind, since Harry's primary interaction with fandom was through fanzines and letter-writing.

It's a fabulous, informal history, covering all the high points, reporting on (for example) the initial meeting after the war between DAW (Wollheim) and SaM (the man who barred him from the first Worldcon), filled with well over 100 photos, even indexed. It's a true treasure of fannish history and anecdotes.

Advent published All Our Yesterdays in 1969, and was set to publish A Wealth of Fable a few years later when Harry pulled the manuscript because, as he said in a letter to the Hugo-winning fanzine Mimosa), "(Editor) Ed Wood submitted a list of things which he thought I should insert in my manuscript. Every one of these items had one thing in common: they concerned Ed Wood's activities in fandom or matters with which he had been closely associated."

Anyway, it was Joe Siclari and his Fanhistorica Press to the rescue. Joe mimeographed A Wealth of Fable and turned it into three "issues" of a fanzine in 1977, and that was the only form in which it was available until SCIFI Press and editor Rich Lynch finally brought out a fine-looking hardcover at the 1992 Worldcon.

It's not even a sequel, but rather a continuation, of All Our Yesterdays, heavily illustrated, obviously written by the same hand, chock full of the anecdotes that almost instantly become fannish legend.

A fascinating, though very localized history, was written by F. Towner Laney back in 1948. It was called Ah! Sweet Idiocy!, it was about his few years in LASFS (the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society), and it pre-dated Sen. Joseph McCarthy in accusing almost everyone the author knew of being either a homosexual, a Communist, or both. The villain of the piece seems to be 4e Ackerman—yet it was Ackerman who footed the publishing bill. Ah! Sweet Idiocy! appeared serially in FAPA (the Fantasy Amateur Press Association), and was later included, in its entirety, in Dick Eney's massive collection, A Sense of FAPA.

Laney soon dropped out of fandom. He was married four times, and theoretically died on June 8, 1958. I say theoretically, because in the early 1980s I saw the name "F. Towner Laney" on the masthead of a computer magazine published in New York, and how many F. Towner Laneys can there be in the world?

Well, I've referred to A Sense of FAPA twice now, so I might as well tell you about it. Back in 1962, Dick Eney collected some of the most interesting items that had ever run in FAPA—fandom's very first apa, which is still going strong in 2007—and published them before they could be lost forever. Its 370+ pages encompassed tons of artwork and articles, including Speer's history and Laney's idiocy. In a way, it's a rival history of fandom, by people who had no idea they were contributing to fannish history until Eney put all their old articles and cartoons together in one fat fannish volume. You'll also find "Mutation or Death," John Michel's propaganda tract that drew the battle lines between the Futurians and New Fandom, and some wonderful excerpts from Redd Boggs' immortal Skyhook, young Bob Silverberg's Spaceship, and other now-classic fanzines.

DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS

The first fannish encyclopedia—a dictionary of fannish terms and their origins, actually—was Jack Speer's Fancyclopedia, published in 1944 by Forrest J Ackerman. It ran over 100 mimeographed pages.

It was succeeded in 1959 by Fancyclopedia II, edited by Dick Eney (and with co-editorial credit to Speer). Fancy II (its fannish nickname), one of my two or three favorite fannish books, runs 184 single-spaced pages, with 19 pages of Additions and Corrections and 24 pages of The Rejected Canon. A fabulous book, which is equally adept at discussing the X Document, telling you how to mix an Atomic cocktail, or displaying the floor plans to the Tucker Hotel. Jack Chalker's Mirage Press printed a facsimile edition in 1979.

Eney also published the Fancyclopedigest, which was to be a bridge to Fancyclopedia III. When he ceased publishing, the project was taken over by some Los Angeles fans, who announced a pending publication in 1984. As I write this, it's only 23 years overdue, nowhere near as late as The Last Dangerous Visions (also a Los Angeles project, now that I come to think of it), and I still have some slight hope of seeing it during my lifetime.

A more recent and somewhat less ambitious publication is Elliot Weinstein's The Fillostrated Fan Dictionary, published in two parts by "O" Press in 1975. It comes in two volumes, totaling 171 pages, and may even have more definitions than Fancy II. But the reason I prefer Fancy II is that it gives anecdotes and histories of the terms, while Fillostrated simply gives definitions.

Halfway between a (small) dictionary and an (equally small) encyclopedia is The Neo-Fan's Guide, written by Wilson "Bob" Tucker back in 1955. It has been reprinted a number of times, to the best of my knowledge without ever being updated. The most recent copy I've seen was published by Mike Glyer in 1984, though I've been told that Ken Keller published the authorized 7th edition in 1996. I think its popularity is a combination of two things: Tucker's continuing status as fandom's most beloved member until his death a year ago at age 91, and the fact that, unlike, say, the Fancyclopedia, is it quite small and hence inexpensive to print.

Finally, there's Roberta Rogow's Futurespeak: A Fan's Guide to the Language of Science Fiction, published by Paragon House in 1991, and much too limited and media-oriented for my taste.

PROCEEDINGS

For a while there, I had high hopes that I could revisit every Worldcon since 1962 just by reading the transcript, but alas, it was not to be. Still, three of them did see print.

The first was The Proceedings: Chicon III, the complete, heavily-illustrated transcript of all the panels and speeches from the 1962 Worldcon, edited by Earl Kemp and published by Advent in 1963. To me, the highlights of this book are Robert Bloch's lecture on Hollywood, and Theodore Sturgeon's Guest of Honor speech.

Then came The Proceedings: Discon, the 1963 Worldcon transcript, also with close to one hundred photos, edited by Dick Eney and published by Advent in 1965. The best thing in this one is a panel with Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Willy Ley, Leigh Brackett and popular sf cover artist Ed Emshwiller, that addressed the question, "What Should a BEM Look Like?" There's also a fine Guest of Honor speech by Murray Leinster, who seems to have been forgotten a little faster than most of our giants, and if you never experienced Isaac Asimov as a toastmaster, this will show you what you missed.

Finally, Leslie Turek edited the profusely-illustrated coffee-table-sized edition The Noreascon Proceedings, the main-track transcripts of the 1971 Worldcon, which was published by NESFA Press in 1976. Highlights include a panel with Asimov and Clifford D. Simak, and another with Asimov, Marvin Minsky, and Larry Niven.

By then, Worldcons had gotten so large that it was impossible to glean even a hint of their flavor from a single track of the proceedings, and to print the entire proceedings—which has occasionally run to 15 and more tracks of programming, from 8 to 14 hours a day, during a 5-day weekend—was simply not feasible.

PHOTO BOOKS

The continuing growth of Worldcon eventually spelled fini to a series produced by Jay Kay Klein, science fiction's unofficial photographic historian. Surely no one who has ever been to a Worldcon prior to the last few years has been able to avoid Jay Kay and his flash camera—but not all that many people know that in 1960 he published his Convention Annual #1, Pittcon Edition, a memory book filled with hundreds of photos and captions from the convention, covering panels, speeches, masquerades, the Hugo ceremonies, lobby lizards, and dozens of parties.

This was followed in rapid succession by Convention Annual #2, Chicon III Edition, in 1962; Convention Annual #3, Discon Edition, in 1963; and Convention Annual #4, Tricon Edition, in 1966. Jay Kay was all set to publish a fifth book, from 1974's Discon II, but the Worldcon had grown so huge by that time that even with help, he could barely identify half the fans in the photos, and so he retired the series.

Looking back on them, I think the Klein photo books gave even more of a sense of what the conventions were really like than the various Proceedings did, since Jay Kay not only photographed every panel, but also thoroughly covered the art shows, the huckster rooms, the masquerades, and just about every party that was thrown on Worldcon weekend. Until we invent a time machine, these photo books are probably the closest you'll ever come to experiencing— or re-experiencing—those early 1960s Worldcons.

There were two more memory books, published only months apart—and both, while slickly produced, were far less thorough than the Klein books. In 1984, Steve Francis edited Memories of NorthAmericon, a photo book of the 1979 NasFic that was held in Louisville, Kentucky—and just a few weeks later, Massachusetts Convention Fandom brought out the Noreascon Two Memory Book, the photo book of the 1980 Worldcon, edited by Suford Lewis. (They have since published the Noreascon III Memory Book as well.)

It's been quite a while since the last photo memory book was produced, yet I know fans cherish them; hopefully some future committee(s) will reestablish the practice.

PRO/FAN MEMOIRS

As science fiction has reached larger audiences, and its practitioners have become more famous, it was inevitable that some of the leading professionals would be asked to write memoirs and autobiographies—and since so many pros came up through fandom, especially in the early days, many of their recollections also concern fandom.

The most important, and delightful, of these is Damon Knight's The Futurians, published by John Day in 1977 (and later brought out in mass market paperback). Damon chronicles the group of teenagers who banded together in New York in the late 1930s, determined to have an effect on the field of science fiction— and considering that their numbers included Don Wollheim, Fred Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Robert Lowndes, Cyril Kornbluth, Virginia Kidd, Judith Merrill, and James Blish, among others, I think it's safe to say they did just that. Knight chronicles their interior and exterior feuds (and one can be forgiven for feeling that, for their first couple of years of existence, they lived only to feud), follows them as Wollheim, Pohl and Lowndes nail down editorial jobs and begin buying from each other (and by 1943 they controlled more than half the magazines in the field), and then traces them to the present day, with Isaac becoming an international superstar, Wollheim morphing from Communist to capitalist and starting his own very successful publishing company, Kornbluth dying far too young, John Michel dying in almost total obscurity. It's a difficult book to put down.

There's a collection of six novelette-length autobiographies, edited by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, entitled Hell's Cartographers (an editorial tip of the hat to Kingsley Amis's ground-breaking collection of essays about science fiction, New Maps of Hell). It was published by Harper & Row in 1975, and three of the six autobiographies—by Fred Pohl, Damon Knight, and (peripherally) Robert Silverberg—deal with fandom.

Fred Pohl also wrote a full-length autobiography, The Way The Future Was, published by Del Rey in 1978, which covers much of his life in fandom before he turned pro. Isaac Asimov's In Memory Yet Green, published by Doubleday in 1979,