Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:00:11 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Shocking News! Sci-fi conventions are luring
    fewerfans
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

> twhite8 at cox.net 11/4/04 9:19:22 PM >>>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ernest Lilley" <elilley at mindspring.com>
>To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
>Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 6:10 PM
>Subject: [WSFA] Re: Shocking News! Sci-fi conventions are
>luring fewerfans
>
>> So fandom changes. Is that bad? Did we want our vision of
>the future to
>> live forever?
>
>Fandom hasn't really changed -- although its participants
>certainly have,
>over the several generations it has existed.   No, what's
>changed is the
>*definition* of "fandom," which now includes people who
>aren't fans and
>never will be.
>
>The Italian fashion retailer, Fiorucci, *trademarked*
>"fanzine" -- or tried
>to -- in the mid-'80s.

There also was the internet folks who attempted to get ownership of
"fandom" by way of a service mark.  They sank in the great internet
bubble burst.  No loss there.

>   The word is now used by non-fans to
>describe
>non-fan publications (punk rock zines, etc.).   Similarly, money-
>driven
>people noticed that SF conventions seemed to be money-
>makers (they were
>observing mostly early Star Trek cons, which *were* put on by
>fans, using
>expertise picked up from SF cons), and began putting on
>conventions which
>appealed to *consumers* (not fans) of a variety of media.
>
>The whole point of SF fandom is that it's a *community*
>populated by people
>who know each other -- not an amorphous blob of anonymous
>people.   Back in
>the day, people who were into SF were divided roughly into
>two groups:
>readers and fans.  The readers were the majority -- over
>100,000 people who
>bought SF magazines ("prozines") every month, but felt no
>need to join the
>SF community, attend conventions, write letters to prozines or
>each other,
>or read (much less produce) fanzines.   The fans were the
>much smaller
>group (less than a thousand in the '50s and '60s) who were
>active in fandom
>and made up the SF community.   Somewhere along the line
>in the '70s the
>readers began calling themselves fans, in the mistaken belief
>that this
>alone *made* them fans -- even though they continued to
>avoid most or all
>all fan activities and they never joined the community..
>
>I've always felt that there's an easy way to tell them apart.
>Readers call
>it "sci-fi."  Fans do not.  (Some fans call SF "skiffy,"
>mockingly, usually
>in reference to Hollywood-type stuff, or media-SF.)

The corporation that sponsors the LA Worldcons is not LASFS, but the
Southern California Institute of Fannish Interests, aka SCI FI,
pronounced skiffy, of course.

  Fans
>recognize
>"sci-fi" as a marketting term derived from "hi-fi."

To the tune of "Blame Canada": "Blame Forry".

>   Readers
>may or may
>not recognize this, but don't care.

On a side note, for those new to all of this, may I recommend these:

All Our Yesterdays by Harry Warner, Jr.
http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Warner-1.html
(Cover by Steve Stiles)

It's a history of fandom up through 1950.

& this:
A Wealth of Fable by Harry Warner, Jr.
http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Warner-2.htm
Edited by Dick Lynch.
More cover art by Steve Stiles
Winner of the 1993 Hugo, it's a history of fandom through the 1950s.
And it was published by SCIFI Press (those wild & crazy LA fans).

And lastly, Dick Lynch's outline for a history of fandom in the 1960s:
http://www.jophan.org/1960s/

& no, I don't have copies of the two Warner books.  You're on your own,
but people on this list are clever people.  Ordering the books directly
from NESFA might not be as cheap as Amazon, but it is a Good Thing.

Praise Roscoe!
mjw

>
>--Ted White
>