Fancyclopedia I: G - guild

G - Ordinarily a well-behaved letter, except when people talk about its "soft sound" (meaning J) or retain it in words where it's silent with us tho in de Camp's Aryan America such words were pronounced "frickful", "thockless", etc. But G has been most grievously cursed with the purple poison of ghughu, so that any word beginning with it (or for that matter many words beginning with H and other letters) may find itself altered to start with gh-.

gafia - (Wilson) - Get Away From It All; motto of escapism.

gag lines - Short, well-known sentences. Theoretically they are good for a laugh any time, if used properly; actually their meaning and function may vary considerably with the context. Gag lines famous in fandom are "Who is Anthony Gilmore?", and "The Gostak distims the doshes", "Gosh-wow-boyoboy", "Yngvi is a louse!", and "Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged".

Gakspiro - Esperantic nickname for Jack Speer.

Galactic Publications - Publishing house name for Wiggin's work before he joined Cosmic Publications.

Galactic Roamers - The local for Jackson and Battle Creek Michigan, centering around Skylark Smith and Tripoli. They had exotic names for their officers such as Chief Pilot, Chief Communications Officer, &c. This club led the awakening of Michifandom.

Galactic Roomers (Stanley) - The inhabitants of the Ashley apartment and later of Slan Shack, in Battle Creek.

fan gatherings - Official comings together of fans from various localities at a call issued by some organizations or local group. The largest are called conventions, smaller ones now called conferences.

A yet smaller and more informal getogether is the confabulation.

Oftentimes meetings of local organizations, like the QSFL or the LASFS, have had enuf attendees from outside to rate as conferences at least.

The most important thing about a fan gathering is that the slans can get together with their own kind of people, perhaps forgetting their introversion for a while, and do what they want to do and fangab about mutually interesting things, and develop their stefnic personalities.

games - An aspect of culture not entirely overlooked by the fanationalists is the matter of table games. The oldest one, of course, is Barsoomian chess, for which sets have been made in several localities, and long ago the first s-f crossword puzzle appeared. John Baltadonis invented Cosmic Monopoly, and Boskone III tested Art Widner's game Interplanetary. An effort to commercialize Interplanetary was unsuccessful. There are commercial Buck Rogers and other games which are beneath our dignity to note. A sort of science-fiction bingo has been played at QSFL meetings, with auction-like items for prizes. It is easily observed that these are all mere adaptations of games current in the country, given a stfnal flavor. Interplanetary is the most original of the bunch.

general fan organization - An organization to include all fans, to be synonymous with fandom, as opposed to locals like the MFS and select groups like the FAPA. The SFL was the first important effort at this, and it failed because of its commercial ties. TFG, ISA, and SFA has hopes, as did less important organization of the First Transition, such as SFAA. Speer began plugging a federal organization, but New Fandom, a centralized dictatorship, was the first to revive the aim. Before it expired, individual fans came forward with other plans, and at the suggestion of damon knight and Art Widner, the NFFF was formed in late 1940. It suffered the common trouble of cumbersome machinery and too little that the organization as a whole could undertake, and war conditions gave the coup de grace. However, its Plancom did suggest more activities for it than any previous such org had contemplated.

geogafy - Geofafical considerations have influenced plans for regional organizations and caused considerable controversy on the location of conventions. The East has usually had a larger proportion of fans than other areas, tho since 1939 leadership has shifted to the Mid-East. Most fans are in the United States; there are a few in Canada and Australia, and many in Great Britain; only two or three outside the Anglo-Saxon world. Ordinarily, more fans per capita will appear in large cities, where contacts with other fans are easier; certainly fan activity is on the whole more advanced in the metropolitan areas. All have their ups and down, however.

Gernsback delusion - (Michelists) - The purpose, imputed to Gernsy, of making scientifiction fans into scientists by putting accurate scientific information into stf stories--sugarcoating it. This was proved wrong, said the Michelists, by the failure of the ISA; the purpose of science-fiction should be to make active idealists. Some fans who were working in or studying science replied that they believe s-f had stimulated their interest in science a great deal. Another reply as that Uncle Hugo never expected his readers to turn scientists wholesale, but that reading s-f puts the scientifictionist well ahead of the average man in understanding sciences.

ghoul - A critter what lives in graveyards, eating the meat that's buried there. An altogether disgusting character, and therefore much loved by fans; of "What Every Young Ghoul Should Know".

ghu publications - doc lowndes' publishing house, for le vombiteur et al. Member futurian publishers' group.

ghughuism - a foul and hideous order who worship ghughu as their ghod. According to the researches of FooFoo scientists, ghughu is a beetle-bodied monster living on the sunward side of Vulcan, who telepathically controls a zombie named don wollheim, wollheim itself being usually regarded as ghughu by its followers. there are archbishops in every city where there are ghughuists except possibly those in which the archbishop has at some time left his diocese, thus losing his office. other officials include the high priest john michel and dick wilson, ghardian of the gholy ghrail (the ghrail is now held in a secret place by FooFooists). In many cases the devotees seem to have several titles; "saint" seems a common prefix and doc lowndes calls himself demighod as well as archdeacon infernal of all ghu.

The ghughuists make much of the fact that (at last survey) no ghughuist has ever died. they have issued some books of their gholy ghible, but their chief intellectual efforts has been a ghughuist calendar. the general scheme seems to be cribbed from the World Calendar, but their year starts at the summer solstice. months are named in dishonor of the ghughuists, the first one being called dawn, for dawollheim; others include j'mil for john michel, sterl for kenneth sterling, etc, plus some named from other fantastic words, vomb, cthulhin, ktp.

This purple religion was founded 6 Aug 35, and with this long start, gained adherents in numerous places, but a new day and deliverance dawned in 1938, when Pogo proclaimed The Sacred Order of FooFoo!

Peggy Gillespie - Introduced as a now fanne, sister of Jack Gillespie, Peggy wrote several articles from the feminine viewpoint, and became a full-fledged member of the SFL. It was finally revealed as a hoax perpetrated by Dick Wilson and Abe Oshinsky, Peggy being the Gillespies' family cat.

gleap - (BAA) -

I never know a virdous gleap
That did not snortle in its sleep.

GNYSFL - In the spring of 1939 the QSFL became the Greater New York branch of the SFL. The Wollheimists were members, and in July moved that the chapter send a delegate to the American Youth Congress, which was a Communist Front organization. Director Taurasi refused to allow the motion, as unconstitutional, because it would require all the members to make a special contribution to defray the delegate's expenses. Impeachment charges were brot, but dropped when it appeared that the majority would not approve them. At the next meeting, however, they brot up the matter of Sykora's membership. He has been a member before the Wollheimists, but attended infrequently after they came in, as in the case of the SFCC, and his dues fell into arrears. A motion was made to cancel his membership, which Taurasi refused to allow because the club constitution required that a member be present in case of expulsion proceedings against him. Taurasi was again impeached, and this time removed, tho by SFL rules he must still be nominal director, having the smallest SFL serial number. However, he resigned and took others with him. Sykora carried the matter to Margulies, editor of TWS, and M dissolved the GNYSFL. New charters were to be granted only on condition that Wollheim and Sykora never be in the same chapter. This incident crystallized the Triumvirate, who formed a new QSFL, while the Wollheimists became the Futurian Society of New York.

Golden Atom tales - (Farsaci) - Any microcosmic or macrocosmic story by Ray Cummings, or any other story using some of the characters of the atomic tales, among whom was Tubby. A term purely of collector interest.

Golden Gate Futurians - San Francisco-Oakland local, and core of Starlight Publications. They plugged hard for the 1942 convention, even had a formal invitation from the mayor, but failed. With the real retirement (maybe) of Joe Fortier, they ceased to be much heard, but turned out in fairish number for the Staplecon.

Gosh-wow-boyoboy - (Time) - Symbol of the type of reader who made Time magazine call us the jitterbugs of the pulp magazine field. The expression appears in an allegedly typical letter which they quoted, commenting on TWS; probably it was an invention of the reporter who wrote up the New York World Convention. It has become a gag line in fandom.

Gostak - (Ogden & Richards: Breurer) - One distimmer of the doshes.

Samuel D Gottesman - Pename of Cyril Kornbluth.

gafology - Occasionally an article or series appears in a fanzine, making a gafanalysis of some figure/s well known in the pro or fan world. These analyses are usually put in general--very--terms which could be true of a lot of people, and much of the time the analyst knows the person before he sets to figure him out from his handwriting. The chief contribution of such articles to fan lore is the Type Fifteen fan.

grammar - "Three subjects" says Warfel perenially provoke argument: politics, religion, and grammar. Not the least of these is grammar." The outstanding murderer of the King's (or anybody else's) English in fandom has been Fanny, except for a brief period when Conrad Ruppert was printing it, but numerous other targets, especially from among the young fen such as those behind the fanzine Space tales, were found for Speer's "Little Lessons in Grammar" and "English as She Is Wrote". Most fans protest strenuously against the mutilations practiced by the quote fourteen-year-old mentalities unquote. For the typical fan has done and observed enuf writing that he has a good mastery of the language and its rules, as compared to the average citizen. Whether he will obey the rules in a given case, however, depends on functional tests; for instance, if there seems to be no discernible advantage in setting off the name of the state in commas, he may very well write "Cleveland Ohio", and so on. Fans have done a lot of experimenting with language under the banner of Ackermanese, and produced some inventions in the case of brackets and quasi-quotemarks. In general, they pay unusual attention to the individual elements of writing and use them in varied ways to get across the exact meaning or impression desired.

Grand Old Man - Nickname for EEEvans.

Great Stationery Duel - Originally, a contest between Speer and Wilson in which each was to use a different letterhead or type of stationery in each regular letter, and the first who gave out would lose. They developed specialized kleptomaniac traits. Quite a code of rules was worked out, defining what a different type of stationery is, and forbidding the purchase of stationery simply for dueling purposes. Frequently they used different types of envelopes as well as letterheads. Some time after correspondences with Wilson ceased, Speer was challenged by Warner and the duel resumed. It's typical of a sort of whimsy very common in fankind.

Green Jester Publications - The publishing house of the Leeds SFL, Harold Gottliffe doing the printing.

guild - An exclusive group of craftsman or experts. 'Tis slightly misused in the names of the ISFG, TFG, and Science Fiction Poet's Guild.


Data entry by Mal Barker