H With the spread of the expression "ghod", and perhaps as a carryover from the trend noted under "G", addition of an H after the initial letter of a word came to mean, or at least imply, "pertaining to fandom", as in Lhiterature and Bheer. When spoken, such aspirates are voiced: Luh-HIT-er-a- ture, Buh-HEER. An orphan sound, having no companion sound like nearly every other consonant has. Let's shed a tear and pass on to the definitions. HACKS Writers who, to get quantity production, rehash old ideas and strew them with such stock pieces as BEMs and PSDs. Fans are tolerant of the hacks who have to do it for a living, but who turn out an occasional outstanding story; but no mercy is shown to the old Palmer stable and others who may occasionally do fair work but 99% of the time are working over the old Save-the-Earth and There-Are-Limits-Beyond-Which-We-Aren't-Meant-To-Go themes -- not to mention (no, please don't!) the running into the well-known ground of the Crafty Earthmen Outwit Stupid Aliens plot, or the dressed-up mundanes. HAIRCREAM One of the most resented of the idiot-child capers that disendeared 7th Fandom to the more adult stfnists was the SFCon scene when Pete Vorzimer made Burt Satz drink some of this useful but misplaced beverage. Satz was clowning to get attention and claiming that he had to have a drink; when nobody would give him any liquor, he said he'd drink some Wildroot Cream Oil. After a sufficiency of this Vorzimer and company made him go thru with it. (He drank only a drop or two.) Some accounts have made it appear that the whole thing was Vorzimer's idea from the first, but 'tain't so. HALF WORLD (Heinlein:Burbee) The LASFS. In Heinlein's Magic, Inc the Half World was the domain of, uh, nature inhabited by demons, spirits, gnomes, fairies, ktp. The Insurgents used the designation in contempt for the LASFans' retreat from life, but the modern revived group in LA uses it in humorous self-designation. HANDSTITCHED For obvious reasons this method of fastening the pages of a fanzine together is rarely met with, but 'tis said the most primitive multipage fanzine is hektoed and handstitched. Charles Wells once went this formula one better by writing out the masters for a fanzine in longhand, then hektoing and handstitching the product. HANG FROM THE CEILING AND DRIP GREEN (Matheson:Rapp) Objurgation -- meaning, roughly, "go soak your head" -- from "Born of Man and Woman"; given fannish currency by its use in the battles between the DSFL and the Wolverine Insurgents. HARRISON (Hurstmonceaux:Triode) The mainstay and chief support of the British Empire, tho such people as Churchill, Montgomery, Tovey, Cunningham et al filled star supporting roles. Triode ran a lengthy series, Beloved Is Our Destiny, which revealed the part played by Harrison in a few of his less important deeds such as saving Asia, America, Europe, Africa and other areas of the world from menaces like plague, revolution, nuclear warfare, usw. His more vital accomplishments cannot be discussed in a public document. HEESH He or shee... er, she. HEKTO A means, more or less, of reproduction. The basic hekto is a pan of rather firm gelatin; a master copy prepared with special hekto carbons or hekto ink is placed on this, and much of the pigment on the latter is deposited on the former. Sheets for copy are placed face down on this, smoothed out, and then removed; on each one some of the ink comes off -- enough, you hope, to make a legible copy. As the Greek root 'ekatos suggests 100 copies may be obtained in theory; but experience warns that after about 70, "copies" begin to resemble paper with an unusually large water-mark. Legible limit is about 50 (the original FAPA membership limit was determined thusly), best color for long runs being the well-known purple [methyl violet]. All the colors of ditto can be used by hekto, plus some delicate shades available in hekto pencil form which don't hold up for the spirit process. Besides the primitive pan hekto, various film (gelatin on stiff paper) devices and mechanical gadgets for applying the paper smoothly to the jelly are available, but hardly worth it; they don't increase the length of the run. HEKTOGRAPHER'S HANDS is a strange malady afflicting users of the above process. Handle hekto carbons, inks, pencils, ribbons ever so carefully, yet smudges of purple will appear on the ends of the fingers, and by some mysterious process spread to the backs of the hands and up the inner side of the forearm. Then, tho the hektoer never touch his face with arms or hands, purple splotches will break out on the nose and one cheek, and on the nape of the neck, tho he can't see it there. What is more, the dye will spread to all light-colored woodwork in the room, and deposit in an uneven film over the lavatory when he tries to wash. The Ditto company puts out a soap which is supposed to ease the condition, but really it comes off only when the skin does. HELICOPTER BEANIE The badge of a juvenile-type fan, popularized several years ago when the propellor-topped hats were an adolescent fad. Actual helicopter beanies are a rare sight nowadays, but the stereotype of a juvenile fan is a wight wearing a helicopter beanie, carrying a zapgun, and exclaiming goshwowboyoboy in his enthusiasm for stf. Ghak. HERMIT Nickname once frequent among fans because of their introvert characteristics. The Hermit of Hagerstown is Harry Warner, who has met many fans, but never a one outside Hagerstown; the Hermit who wrote for Larry Shaw's mags was Larry Shaw (look for the big red letters on the cave). HIERONYMUS MACHINE What Campbell took up after he'd lived down Dianetics, proving something about that proverb anent burnt fools shunning the fire. The Hieronymus machine is a wonderful collection of circuitry by means of which the adept can analyze ores, alloys, and such things; one inserts the specimen, twiddles the dials 'n all, and gets a sticky feeling on an attached plate of "insulating material"... or doesn't, if he happens not to have the Gift. The machine is supposed to work fine even if you only have a photograph of the stuff you're assaying (without even indicating an abnormally high silver content), and Campbell claims that the machine works just as well as ever if, instead of silly old expensive parts, a pen-and-ink drawing of the circuit is used between the specimen and the detecting plate. (This isn't unlikely.) Martin Alger is reputed to have made vast sums by taking advantage of the machine's method of detection. Algeristic Hieronymus machines were modified so that lecherous young fen who used them found that the plate, properly tuned, didn't feel as if it were sticky... HILY MAGNIFIED WOGGLE-BUG (Baum:Tucker/Speer) Jack Speer, from his intellectual and critical interests. Speer took this up enthusiastically when Tuck tagged him with it, tho, being one of the few fen of his generation not brought up on the Oz books, he didn't know its source till recently. It's sort of critical, for the Woggle-Bug, in Baum's stories, was always showing off his knowledge with horrid puns that made bystanders moan and turn green. HISS HC Konig made a hobby of collecting quotations from stories in which characters are supposed to "hiss" sentences ("Don't come near me, you brute!") in which most people couldn't find anything to hiss. He then became known as The Old Hisser himself. Later, Wollheim pointed out that Heck had been too thoro; he had collected so many examples that what he proved was not that the writers were careless, but that "hiss" had a meaning ("-to speak with whispered sinister intent"-) lexicographers had neglected to note. HISTORY For that of our little microcosm, you are referred to such entries as that for Fandom and Conventions. In various fan groups historical series have been presented from time to time, as Harry Warner's "When We Were Very Young" and Dan McPhail's "From Out of the Past" articles in FAPA, Wrai Ballard's "Tiny Acorn" in SAPS, and Warner's "All Our Yesterdays" in general fanmags. HISTORY OF THE FUTURE (1) A project first suggested by Rothman, to be undertaken by some general fan organization. The idea was to go thru all fantasy stories and, when some approximate date in the future can be fixed for an incident, make a file card on it; eventually these would be arranged by year and the result published. A start on the job was made by Elmer Perdue, who limited himself to cases in which actual dates were given in the story. The idea comes from (2) the history of the future sketched out by Robert A Heinlein for some thousands of years to come. This (detailed on the end-papers of many of his books) was one of the first cases of an author actually constructing and explaining a background for an entire cycle of "prophetic" stories, tho of course many authors have developed consistent segments of the future in various series. Poul Anderson later forecast a future history of his own, differing in many particulars from Heinlein's. Both caught the fannish imagination for obvious reasons. HOAXES Since most of the contacts in fandom are by mail, it is very easy to put something over on the fans for a while, tho almost impossible to keep a secret permanently, or for as much as a year. The most successful hoaxes in fandom have been establishment of penames, like Carl Brandon, Joan Carr, and John A Bristol, as being an actual person. Such tricks have made fans wary, so that each newcomer is scrutinized suspiciously to see whether he looks phony in any way, or whether his address or writing style suggests some known fan. On occasion quite genuine people like Boyd Raeburn and Dick Eney have been accused of nonexistence. Other hoaxes in fandom have included the pseuicide, Tucker and Willis Death Hoaxes, and Odd Tales. Not exactly hoaxes are things like Lee Hoffman's pre-NOLaCon existence. HOME OF THE ORIGINAL HELICOPTER BEANIE The Michigan area. The MSFS-DSFL. Ray Nelson discovered it to fandom here, George Young wore it to conventions, and Art Rapp's SPACEWARP ran Nelson's cartoons popularizing it. HONORARY STAMP CRITTUR Walt Willis was created one on his visit to the United States in 1952. The certificate, as he tells it, once saved him from a fate including death but rather worse than ordinary extinction. HUCKSTER A person sufficientlyfoolhardydegraded to try and make money from stf. Sellers of books & proz, etc. HUGO (Madle) The International Fantasy Award, named after Hugo Gernsback & by analogy with mundane Oscars, Emmys, etc. Hal Lynch and Bob Madle brainstormed this annually presented set of commendations at the PhilCon II; they are presented by a committee to top fanzines, proz, artists, ktp, at the Worldcon. The poll selecting winners in the various categories is perhaps the only fan poll which still produces results reflecting general fan attitudes, thanks to its size. HUMOR Fans excel at humor, relative to the mundane people. Burlesques pedigree back to Hornig's Wonder Stories, as does fan fiction. Cartoons are usually humorous. Puns and similar witticisms are irrepressibly scattered all thru fan writings, even the most sercon. Magazines devoted entirely to humor, however, have not fared well; apparently fans don't dig people walking up and saying "-this is funny:..."- before telling their story. Fan humor is of a sophisticated sort, strongly characterized by double inversion, and often bordering on the Shaggy Dog. The MFS Silly Story should be mentioned. With a few exceptions, funny stuff published in fanzines is clean; your chronicler wouldn't know about that in correspondence or conversation, being a humorless prudish clod who doesn't listen to such things. HURT LOOK (Alger) That's what you'll get if you foul up George H Young. HYPERSPACE Literally a space of more than three dimensions; conventionally, what you traverse when you go thru a space warp. Practically, it's the same thing as subspace: an imaginary miniature universe in which inconvenient natural laws like the light-speed limit on velocity need not apply. And John Magnus once organized a group of this name, the Hopeful Young People's Extra Radical Society for Promoting Amiable Conditions Everywhere. HYPHEN (Madeleine Willis) "A fanzine", defines Chuck Harris laconically, "First issue May 1952". It was co-edited by Walt Willis and Harris, but was really more or less the product of the group known as the Oblique Angles. It became a focal point for a lot of people on the fringe of fandom as well as within it, succeeding QUANDRY as Zeitgeistsprecher of the old Sixth Fandomites who opposed 7th Fandom during the Sixth Transition. It influenced Anglofandom (and US Fandom) muchly by its amiably irreverent attitude toward fandom and stf in general -- the "Serious Constructive Insurgentism" of Walt Willis' which found its most perfect, if not most typical, expression in THE HARP STATESIDE and such other works as THROUGH DARKEST IRELAND and THE ENCHANTED DUPLICATOR. "Neither Walt nor I cared for the name when Madeleine coined it," Chuck explains, "but now we think it's about perfect and wouldn't change it for anything."
Updated January 8, 1999. If you have a comment or question about these Web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.