Nydahl’s Disease, a.k.a. "Annishthesia," is a particular kind of gafia or fafia with overtones of "burnout." The specific case for which the disease is named involved a young fan named Joel Nydahl, who published a monthly fanzine called Vega which some regarded as having been something of a focal point after Quandry folded. For the first anniversary issue, Nydahl knocked himself out producing a 100pp annish – a rare accomplishment in those days, particularly for a 16-year-old – but it was inferred that it apparently got comparatively little in the way of response. When the young fan editor promptly gafiated, it was assumed it must have been because he was puzzled and/or dismayed over the lack of response to such an huge effort on his part.

Walt Willis coined the term “Annishthesia” around 1954, citing two strains of the disease: Primary annishthesia is invariably fatal; the effort of putting together an annish becomes too much, and before it can be printed the fan editor succumbs to permanent gafiation. Secondary annishthesia, in which the annish is actually published (despite the fan ed it question suffering from pores stopped up with mimeo ink and fingers bleeding from errant staples), only to receive no (or at least extremely little) reaction from other fans, so that the disappointed editor slinks into glades of gafia and is never heard of again. Only frequent injections of egoboo can prevent this from happening. This secondary form was the one which fans inferred had happened to Nydahl.

It would appear, however, that in coming up with the disease, some of the assumptions made were unwarranted – Harry Warner Jr. cited correspondence from Nydahl which indicated that he received plenty of egoboo and praise for the issue and other friends of Nydahl have stated that the actual truth is that he had been falling behind at school while publishing his fanzine and so dropped out of fandom not in disgust or dismay over the poor response his final effort received but because he was entering college and had to stop letting his grades fall.
(9/18/2005)

Once upon a time there was the New York University Science Fiction Society, founded in 1969, with a constitution defining a NYUSFS member as any sentient being that considered him/her/itself a member; the Thursday-evening meetings at the Loeb Student Center were thus open to anyone who wanted to show up, in contrast to the closed, members-only meetings of clubs like the Fanoclasts, or clubs which distinguished between members and attendees like the Lunarians. APA-NYU a.k.a. APA-nu was founded there a few years later.

In the spring of 1979 their membership policy figuratively reared up and slapped them in the face when the Loeb administration, claiming too many groups with little student involvement were using rooms, began doing a series of ID checks, the upshot of which was that NYUSFS was kicked out. The club kept meeting, kept the acronyms NYUSFS and APA-NYU, letting the U stand for anything at all except "University"; met in Washington Square Park across from Loeb in nice weather and scrambled for winter meeting space than ranged from a MacDonald's, to a small public lounge in the university library and even back at Loeb under the aegis of sympathetic student clubs like the Libertarian Alliance, the SubGenius Alliance and the Science Fiction Club @ NYU (a club organized several years after NYUSFS was banned).
(8/14/2005)

Archaic. Short for "obligation". From Eric Frank Russell's sf classic, "...And Then There Were None" but listed here because fans have used it enough to adopt it as a term of their own. Also a net term.

British mimeo correction fluid. (Long obsolete.)

Official Collator, the person responsible for collating an apa. Like many an OE, they may also mail out the apa. The exceptions tend to be those apas which are adjuncts of some local club; Apa L at LASFS, e.g., where virtually all the members/contributors pick up a copy after it has been run off on the club's electric Gestetners.
(8/24/2005)

Official Editor; the person responsible for collating and mailing out an apa. Many variations on the title are possible, of course, but this is the most common.
(8/24/2005)

In the UK, often used to describe the classic oneshot fanzines and sometimes just for any one-time-only fanzine publication, such as a collection or a “best of” volume.
(8/24/2005)

A fanzine most often (but not always) published on one and only one occasion, usually on the spur of the moment, many of them first draft. The latter frequently results in a publication that is forced, stilted and unpleasant. The "classic" oneshots, as published during the Laney/Burbee Insurgency, were different because the participants usually brought previously drafted and even somewhat polished material to it.

Official Organ; the memberzine of an apa, although clubs other than apas can also have OO's–The National Fantasy Fan is the OO of the N3F, e.g. In an apa, the OO generally lists (1) the titles, editors and number of pages of publications in the individual apa mailing being sent out with it, (2) a membership roster listing all active members and dues and/or minac owed, plus waiting listers (with or without addresses), and (3) official reports from the OE/OC and other officers, if applicable.
(8/24/2005)

A former Los Angeles-area fan club for members of LASFS who lived in the "outlands" of Los Angeles, and thus found it difficult to make it to every meeting of LASFS. When the Outlanders (a.k.a.the Outlander Society) disbanded in 1948, some fans began using the slogan "South Gate in '58" as an interlineation or filler in their fanzines–South Gate being the town where their founder Rick Sneary, a.k.a. "the Hermit of South Gate," lived. The idea was initially to promote an after 10-years reunion of the Outlanders, but eventually it became a successful Worldcon bid. The Solacon was held in a Los Angeles hotel which was ceded for the Labor Day weekend to the Mayor of South Gate by the Mayor of Los Angeles, as South Gate did not have a hotel large enough to host the event which drew fans in the hundreds.
(8/24/2005)

1. The fantasy world created by L. Frank Baum for his classic children's series which began with "The Wizard of Oz."

2. The affectionate term for Australia, in and out of fandom.

Where Claude Degler planned to have his "love camps" in which members of his Cosmic Circle could breed the race of fans destined to rule the sevegram.

A collection of people called together to conduct a discussion on a specific topic at a con.

A zine put out by one person, usually about the activities and thoughts of the editor in such a way as to make his/her personality the theme of the issues.

(See "Poctsarcd")

In Fansmanship (which see), a ruse or other clever means by which one appears to be doing one thing while actually accomplishing some hidden agenda self-serving purpose. A cited ploy in early Conventionsmanship, e.g., involved charting out in advance all the squeaky boards in the room where a convention program was to be held, showing up 15 minutes after it was scheduled (since program items in those days never started on time), stepping on the boards to draw attention to your arrival, leading those awaiting, as the program finally gets under way, to the inescapable conclusion that you are so important to the proceedings that it could not possibly start until you arrived.

Ploy was also the name of a Ron Bennett fanzine, the first issue of which was to fanzines what the Invention (which see) was to conventions – an amusing hoax that came off well despite the fact that its name alone should have alerted fans to what it was. Bennett started publishing Ploy with the second issue, and filled its lettercolumn with paeans of praise (supposedly written by well-known fans) to the brilliant material written by pros and BNFs that had appeared in the (nonexistent) first issue. Fans who fell for the hoax were quick to rush letters to Bennett, begging for a copy of the first issue.
(10/28/2005)

Sometimes known as the little typo that made good. Walt Willis made it and Lee Hoffman elevated it to fannish fame. Walt and LeeH were initially engaged in a correspondence which was fast and furious, long letters supplemented by shorter ones that passed each other in the mail, and in turn were added to by postcards. Then, when there hadn't been any mail from LeeH in a while, Walt dashed off a postscript to one of his letters that asked, "What, no poctsarcds?" LeeH replied that, alas, there were no poctsarcds to be had in her area – not even pitcuer poctsarcds. And from that time onward, at least for a few years, no one in fandom ever used a postcard again. Willis, tickled, used his press to run off some poctsarcds, so labeled. He also supplied the definition: While postcards have the space for the message printed on one side and the space for the address on the other, with poctsarcds it's done precisely the other way around.

Some apas (and particularly quarterly apas) – FAPA, for example – allowed members to post mail their apazines to the membership. In this term, the word “post” is used in both its meanings – as in via the mail and as in after the actual FAPA mailing was sent out. Although FAPA had a membership of 65, the members had to send 68 copies of their zine to the Official Editor for distribution or, if they post mailed, the three extras had to be sent to the OE anyway. In this way, if a bundle got lost in the mail, members could request one of these extra copies; if there was no need to do this, the extras would be offered to newly-invited members or, when not needed for either of these purposes, they would be auctioned, usually to those who remained on the waiting list. Post-mailing was most often done when an editor needed to meet minac requirements and did not have enough time to get the 68 copies to the OE by the mailing deadline. The OE would acknowledge the previous mailing’s post mailings in the club’s official organ – in the case of FAPA, The Fantasy Amateur. Other quarterly apas, like SAPS, did not allow post mailings for credit; if minac requirements were missed by the mailing deadline, the member was dropped for lack of activity. SAPS also did not acknowledge post mailings in its OO, The Spectator, and further had a no-prior distribution rule, so fans who circulated their genzines via SAPS had to wait to post them to their regular non-apa readers until after the SAPS mailing deadline.
(9/18/2005)

In fandom, generally it means anyone who has been paid for a published sf story. Although, since it is in fact short for "professional," it probably should only be applied only to those who have made a significant portion of their living by writing sf.

A whimsical and mythical commercial enterprise, run by Walt Willis and Lee Hoffman. Proxyboo, Ltd., offered to conduct various egoboosting forms of fanac in the name of whoever paid their exorbitant fees (which started at $10,000/year and went up, depending on the services rendered) which were guaranteed to turn the customer into a Well Known (or, at the higher end of the fee spectrum, Big Name) Fan. Its advertising claimed that anyone who was a WKF or BNF was, of course, already a Proxyboo, Ltd. client. Vernon McCain ran a rival service, but it was quite exclusive, working only for those whose initials were "RB"–its advertising named its supposed major "success story" clients, i.e., Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Redd Boggs, &c. Much later on, rich brown ran a free mailing label service for a dozen or so fanzines which was called Drudge Enterprises, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Vernon McCain Division of Proxyboo, Ltd–largely because the first two "clients" (himself and Richard Bergeron) shared the initials of those Vernon McCain customers.
(8/24/2005)

A professional sf magazine. Although Harry Warner indicated in All Our Yesterdays that Louis Russell Chauvenet coined the term around the same time he coined the term "fanzine," there is some question as to whether this was actually the case. The coining of “fanzine” has been tracked down to the October 1940 issue of Contours, but “prozine” was not coined in the same issue. When and where it was first used in fandom remains a mystery. However, it is safe to say that if, within the microcosm of sf fandom, you use the term for a professional magazine that isn’t an sf magazine–Playboy and Time Magazine, e.g.–the fan language purists might very well point their outflang fingerbones of scorn at you.
(8/10/2005)

Slogan immortalized on one of the earliest Corflu t-shirts. Used initially tongue-in-cheek among Fanoclasts, a club made up primarily (but not exclusively) of fanzine fans, when it was presumed by those who were not members that publishing a fanzine was an absolute requirement for membership.
(9/18/2005)

Neither the Squire of Gothos nor the inventor of technical gadgets for 007 but rather the affectionate nickname for Quandry, the focal point fanzine of Sixth Fandom edited by Lee Hoffman. The 30-issue run is regarded as perhaps the finest example of the fannish fanzine, taken as a whole. Yes, it‘s a misspelling of “Quandary.” (It was also used later to refer to Arnie Katz’s 1960s fanzine Quip – but usually only within the pages of Quip and even though Arnie’s fanzine was one of the finest of its period, as a general rule if you see or hear someone referring to “Q” today, unless they’re Trekkies or fans of James Bond, they’re most likely referring to LeeH’s fanzine.)
(8/6/2005)

A way of indicating, while writing on a regular typewriter, that you were quoting the gist of something. It was a quotation mark over struck (and thereby effectively underlined) with a hyphen–easy to do on a typewriter but not so easily rendered when using a word processor. It remains possible to “underline“ quotation marks to get something approaching the same effect, but the practice has passed out of use. A quasiquote of what I just wrote might read like this: Regarding the quasiquote, rich brown says they “hardly use them any more.“ This is the gist of what I said, but not the precise words I used to say it. Because the correct kind of quasiquote can only be rendered easily by using a typewriter, the use of quasiquotes is slightly more archaic than the use of typewriters.
(8/10/2005)

For a decade or more, beginning around 1954, many fans followed the practice of passing on in their correspondence 3x5 or smaller cards which contained some humorous quote, a comic picture or both. When you received a quotecard, you were supposed to sign it, with or without making a comment of your own, and then pass it on to someone you exchanged letters with other than the fan who sent it to you. The cards were supposed to get back to the originators when they were full and provide some notion of just who was corresponding with whom. The practice simply ran it course and died out. Terry Carr wrote a piece of faanfiction about it entitled “The Fan Who Hated Quotecards,” but it’s doubtful if anyone really ever felt all that strongly about them. People just stopped doing them; perhaps too many had sent them out without receiving them back and the practice just seemed pointless. In any event, the term is thus archaic.
(8/11/2005)

An apa term used as a brief standard mailing comment, acronym for Read And Enjoyed But No Comment or Rare And Ennobling But No Cigar. More often the former than the latter, we’re told, but how one could possibly be expected distinguish one from the other is a bit of a mystery.
(8/10/2005)

Short-hand for rec.arts.sf.fandom, the internet news group that is probably the closest net equivalent to general fandom which is not invitational and/or is not focused on being primarily just that. Simply put: A lot of old-time fanzine and convention fans and former fanzine and convention fans tend to hang out there.
(8/11/2005)

Fannish term meaning “eventually” used as hyperbole with initial caps – Real Soon Now – so frequently that it could also be rendered as the acronym RSN. There were also variants in common usage: “soon or Soon” was particularly popular in SAPS and at times it was sufficient to say “Soonest.”
(9/20/2005)

A convention at which there is little or no programming, but plenty of places where fans can gather and talk and party and SMOF and engage in mental and verbal fourth dimensional crifanac. The template was set well over half a century ago at the annual Midwestcon.
(8/11/2005)

Hugo-like awards given out retroactively, along with the regular Hugos, to works and people eligible roughly 50 years prior to a current World SF Convention, and of course for years in which the regular Hugos were not given out. Retro Hugos have thus far been awarded three times – in 1996 for works and people eligible in 1945 (but awarded for 1946); in 2001 for works and people eligible in 1950 (but awarded for 1951) and in 2005 for works and people eligible in 1953 (but awarded for 1954). The first actual Hugos were awarded at the 1953 Worldcon for works and people eligible in 1952, but the next set was not given out until the Worldcon two years later, so the last retro Hugos filled in the blank. See HUGO.
(9/13/2005)

A variation on the Vicolor process for application with Rex Rotary, Gestetner and other silk-screen inking mimeographs to produce multi-color mimeo work, developed by Dick Lupoff in his fanzine Xero. The silk screen could not be “painted” with different colored mimeograph inks in the way the cotton pads were in the Vicolor process, because the use of the silk screen inking process was specifically designed to distribute the ink evenly. However, Lupoff discovered that by introducing different colors to particular parts of the drum at the top of the machine he could produced a “striped“ color effect, and the way to continue the effect once the silk screen began to even out the combined colors was simply to apply the different colors again. See VICOLOR..
(9/20/2005)

A ghod of fannish myth invented by Art Rapp, Rick Sneary and Ed Cox in 1949. Sneary and Cox were mainstays of Fourth Fandom and Rapp published the monthly Spacewarp, which was the focal point of Fifth Fandom. Roscoe is a beaver whose birthday is Labor Day Weekend–thus, all fans celebrate it, even those who are not followers. Possibly the most popular of the fannishly invented ghods, for reasons that remain open to conjecture. Rapp himself speculated that it might not just be because most Worldcons in the US are held on Roscoe’s birthday–it might have been a numbers game. Which is to say, FooFoo was invented by one fan (Jack Speer) and GhuGhu by two (Don Wollheim with the help of his High Priest John Michel), and what Rapp speculated was as follows:

Then mighty Roscoe's cult arose
(as every Spacewarp reader knows)
Interpreted by deacons three:
Rick Sneary, Edmund Cox and me
. The moral of this history, fan
Is: cults ain't founded by just one slan;
Attempts by two make fandom nod,
For only t'ree can make a ghod.
(8/24/2005)

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